Aftermath of Dreaming(78)
Then Michael starts waving his hands at Kevin in some pseudo Essa Pekka Salonen motion. “Just relax with the rawness,” he says. “Let yourself be open to the firmness of the flavor.”
“I think I’m going to do it,” Kevin says. “I think I am actually going to do it. My mother would die; she’s been trying for years.”
“Just experience the tomato in its natural form.”
So, as Michael guides him, Kevin puts the piece of tomato into his mouth and we all watch as he succumbs to the flavor, losing his long abstinence from that flesh.
“I think I can eat more,” Kevin finally says.
I have a sudden unwelcome image of him as a teenage boy coming up from a very deep dive.
“No, no, don’t…” Michael says. “That’s enough. I feel bad. Don’t eat the tomato; you don’t like it.”
“No, really, maybe just with some bread on it…” Kevin pleads.
At this moment, the maid comes in to clear the salads. The two remaining tomato slices on Kevin’s plate are squished under the weight of other plates, Kevin’s conquest of them thwarted forever.
I have an almost overpowering impulse to start speaking Spanish to the maid, but she is moving too quickly, and I have no idea what I’d say; in fact, I can’t remember any of the words Kitty taught me.
After dinner, we move out onto the terrace to look at houses jammed into the hillside. I know they don’t have emergency brakes on them, and I am astonished at the people who live in them, these high-rising, stilt-depending structures built on air. Does Isaac Newton mean nothing in this town?
Slim’s husband, I think, whose name I still don’t know, starts raving about the last kilo of pot he bought, then says, “You’d think the government would take the power back and legalize the goddamn stuff” to which Kevin replies that “pot is for pussies” and “LSD is where it’s at.”
Michael declares that “everyone should do hallucinogens at least twice in their life. No, make that twice a year, just to keep it fresh.” Then the four of them simultaneously expound on their many different trips, when abruptly Kevin looks at me for the second time in the entire evening and says, “What about your acid trip?” and they all stop talking to stare at me.
I have not said word one since my “tomato like an apple” disclosure, but before I can think, I find myself saying, “Oh, well, ever since I was fourteen and my friend took LSD and got gang-raped with a broomstick, I’ve only tried speed and cocaine. You know, aware and alert.”
Slim doesn’t skip a beat. “Oh, I’ve got some coke from the last diet I was on, you want some of that?”
Her husband, I think, says, “There’s cocaine in this house right now?”
He is suddenly sounding very Republican, as if it wasn’t him who just made a pitch for legalized marijuana. I wonder if his political alliances switch with the drug.
I look at Michael. I do not want any of this woman’s cocaine, and I really do not want to be around while her husband or whoever he is finds out about it. Michael takes my hint and we leave the palatial home.
The moon has climbed farther and farther up the sky. Before I get in my truck, I stand looking at it for a moment, wondering what it would be like to rise knowing exactly when and how you would fall.
I follow Michael’s car down the hill to my apartment. He has promised me that he’ll spend the night, but I’m not getting my hopes up. The street we are driving down angles sharply around blind curves; it is barely wide enough for one vehicle to pass.
L.A. defies gravity. The cars, the skin, the houses, the light. I keep waiting for it all to fall. A day when the cars will crash, the faces will drop, the houses will collapse, and the light will hit hard and direct like a black-and-white film shot in a wintry Midwest. But so far, its emergency brake continues to hold. I know I should be comforted by that; I’m just not.
23
My first winter in Los Angeles, a few months after I moved from New York, was a new experience of that season. December that year was one of stunningly clear mild days with nights that were cold, as if my freezer door had been left open, and I could walk through the frigid air knowing warmth was on the other side. And the mountains all of a sudden were there. In the fall, they had been hidden by haze and smog, but suddenly, miraculously, they appeared closer than ever before. I’d be driving along, up on the freeway or turning a corner, and I’d see them standing out against the sky: near, crisp, photo-ready. God’s art department working overtime.
I was juggling my waitress shifts with my job for Bill, while creating new art and learning about L.A.’s gallery scene. Not to mention thinking about Andrew and the sex we were having underneath, centered in, and on top of everything. Life is what I did around thoughts of him. And seeing him.
Which we were doing pretty regularly. Stephanie apparently had no interest in spending every night with him, God knows why, so it was normal for Andrew to call me at eleven P.M., usually our third or fourth call of the day, and say, “What’re you doing?” in that low, quiet, inside-of-me way. Then, “Get over here.” And I would. Drive the long road to his home in Bel Air, up and up and up to his world that I was part of during our regular hours of eleven at night to one-thirty A.M. The time of night that makes things invisible; we were veiled by everyone else’s sleep. The hours a road into the country of us.