2007-04-06 - 10:21 p.m.
On Saturdays, I have to shlep across Santa Monica to a branch of the library that is situated in the middle of nowhere, right at the center of a forest of identical stucco apartment buildings and cement Elks Club buildings. I had really never believed that there were so many Elks Clubs and Masonic Temples and Order of the Goofy Moose clubs in Santa Monica, but there they all are – all in a long row on Ocean Boulevard, which seems to be Santa Monica’s suburb, as it were. A suburb deep in the heart of Santa Monica, just as Starbucks are now popping up in the middle of supermarkets.
Anyway, at this branch of the library, I have to, once a week for four hours, put in a shift “tagging” books so they can be read by computer. The job consists of me grabbing a book, slapping a sticker on it, and sliding it under a laser beam scanner, which makes a “beep” or a “buzz” depending on whether or not the computer is able to “read” the tag. I do this for hours with dozens of books. Over and over again. Sometimes the tag goes “beep!” in which case I a press button to “set” the theft control lock. Sometimes, on the other hand, the tag goes “buzz!” in which case I have to rip off the tag, mark it as a “bad nut” (like the squirrels in the Willy Wonka book), and toss it into a pile of discards.
This single shift, for four hours on most Saturday afternoons, might actually be the most boring thing that I have ever done in my whole life. I mean, it is not just boring, it is excruciatingly boring. It is boring enough to make you want to poke out your eyes so you don’t have to do it any more.
Have you ever had tasks to do that are so numbing you almost wish you could hurt yourself just so that you could actually just feel something and thus be convinced that you are still alive? That is what this chore is like.
You slap a tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer, slap another tag on, run it through the computer.
And so it goes. In fact, the only way to get through the shift is to put your mind in a sort of meditative state, imagining that you are somewhere else – in the Sierras perhaps, or having chocolate at Florians in the middle of San Marco’s Square. The minutes trudge by. And then suddenly the four and a half hours are finally over and you are rushing out the door while the pruny-faced librarian sneers at you and the high school age library assistants are picking their noses.
Today, after I finished the shift of tagging, tagging, tagging, I hopped a slow bus heading East and went to the theater. I wasn’t reviewing the show I was seeing tonight – rather, I was just seeing it for the sake of being able to vote in the Annual Big Paper awards next year. It was a production of MISS JULIE, and, really, it was quite good, even if it was rather awkwardly set in the deep south, circa 1957. That is, of course, not remotely the milieu Mr. Strindberg had in mind when he wrote the damn thing, but what of that? People have been shoe-horning the classics into oddball settings for longer than Jesus was walking the Earth.
When I arrived, the usher showed me to my seat, which was on the aisle in row four or something like that. And a few moments later, he came by with the woman who had been assigned to the seat next to me. She was a statuesque, exceedingly beautiful blonde woman – about five foot eleven, I’d say, with long billowing hair and piercingly sad eyes. I’d put her in her late 30s, but her better days had clearly been behind her – she had developed rather deep frown lines around her mouth and laugh lines around her eyes. Yet, her body was ballet dancer lean and she was quite beautiful. Dazzling, I’d say, if I were so inclined.
She also seemed exceedingly familiar to me for some reason, but I could not place her from where. But then I twigged to it: She was none other than Taja Moore, an incredibly famous TV star, best known for her appearance in the series “White House Adventures,” during which she portrayed the character of Megan, the Secretary of Defense’s Secretary. I was sitting next to a bona fide celebrity! And, more amazing, my seat was better than her’s!
I am not usually one for being star struck. Indeed, far from it: Actors usually just make me yawn, and I am fairly immune from being impressed by any performer. But it’s an unusual thing to actually be seated next to a celebrity-type person. And so I turned to her and made pleasant and inconsequential small talk. And do you know what? When she heard that I was a theater critic for the Big Paper she all but pigeonholed me and yammered at me for about half an hour! Well, you can hardly blame me: I wasn’t about to tell her that, in addition to doing the play reviewing, I push a cart full of books around a bum-filled library.
I was quite astonished, really. It turned out that, even though she had become famous playing the girlish and plucky west wing Secretary, she considered herself a theatrical actor. And nothing really seemed to please her more than to talk plays with an honest to goodness theater critic, albeit one in a downward career trajectory. We exchanged opinions on Strindberg and she told me how she and her best pal from college, who was playing Miss Julie, actually, were both simultaneously planning to move to New York.
“You see,” she noted. “I was on ‘White House Adventures’ for seven years. I just kind of want to see new streets. You know?”
I said I understood entirely and advised her to do a Broadway show. She snorted with laughter.
“I would LOVE to! But, make no mistake, there’s a lot of competition. I don’t think I could get a part on Broadway,” she sighed.
I was amazed by her friendly and self effacing humbleness, which was utterly unexpected in someone who had been above the line talent on a prime time TV series for almost a decade. People really are amazing in their own heads. Anyway, at the end of the evening, she shook my hand and looked me right in my eyes and told me just how delightful it was to meet and chat with me. Quite charming!
I wished her well on her new life in New York. And I made sure I walked away from her with a great deal of dignity and masculine energy, ducking around the corner and hiding in a doorway so she would not see me afterwards, slouching my way to the bus stop on Normandie and Almeda. Which is a disgusting bus stop, by the way, I just want to tell you.
Much later on, I reported the whole event to my mother, who shook her head and sneered, “You dope! She was flirting with you? Can’t you tell anything?” I found this hard to believe, but she told me that single women in their late 30s are still women in their late 30s even if they are fabulous movie stars. And Taja must have been evaluating me as a potential suitor, even though God knows I was not.
But is it not surreal to be slobbering away at the library at noon and then glamorously hob nobbing with celebrities at 8? You see, that’s living, that is. And I have noticed that of late I have been having tons of trouble actually defining myself. What am I? Am I a story analyst? A writer? A theater or film critic? A library mouse? I can’t even tell you any more. It’s as though I have lept clear of any strong commitments and am flying through space, with no net below me.
Mind you, I could easily define myself as a sleazy slut, because, after the show, I somehow found myself trolling the Melrose Spa, splendidly caparisoned in one of those fluffy white towels and nothing else. It was a pleasant enough visit to the bathhouse, I suppose, but I have to admit that the most bizarre part of it was the fact that I hooked up with the young doctor who sits in the little office at the end of the hall offering sexual compulsivity counseling. No, I am serious. Why would I lie about that?
I just happened to walk by his office a couple of times, and I noticed him, well, undressing me with his eyes. Not that there is much to undress at a bathhouse, as you know. I figured he was judging me as a candidate for some serious sexual compulsivity counseling and dismissed his glance. He was kind of a good looking fellow, though: A very smart-looking Latin guy, in his late 30s, I’d say, in a beautiful blue oxford shirt and black slacks. He kept looking at me, as I stood in the door way to the lounge – and finally, he just waved me over.
“Come in! Come in!” he called in a deep, heavily accented, but beautifully basso profundo voice. I stepped into his office and he slide the door closed, clicking the lock with an audible snap.
“Aiee,” he said. “I just gotta say, you are sooo handsome and I just have to play with you.”
I laughed, and asked if it wasn’t against the rules for the compulsive sexuality counselor to hook up with a bathhouse patron for a quickie. He acknowledged this to be so, but throatedly mused, “You don’ know what it’s like to be here, working. You see all these men – and you get sooo horny. You go crazy!”
We made out and then he whipped off my towel so he could play with my schvance. And then he dropped to his knees and started slurping on my cock and playing with my ass with all the lust of any other perv, not just a supposed shrink who’s supposed to talk you out of doing just what he was doing. I wasn’t going to leave things like this, so I stood him up and unbuttoned his shirt, spreading the panels aside so I could play with his hairy chest. And I unbuckled his slacks sliding them down and exposing his tight white briefs.
We made out some more, and then I started sucking on his modest-sized, but impressively hard and uncut prick and sliding my finger inside his muscular ass crack. He gasped and moaned, grunted some imprecations in his native Spanish, and ejaculated a huge load of jizm all over my bare shoulder. I wiped myself up with my towel and gave him one final kiss. Before I unlocked the door and headed out, I turned back for one more look at him. And there he was: His Oxford shirt, untucked and open, my spit all over his nipples and pecs, and his slacks around his ankles and his briefs bunched up around his knees. He was breathing heavily, and his cock, still semi-tumescent, was still slightly oozing some semen. You see? Now that is how we deal with counseling!
