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fifty in Los Angeles
Friday, February 16 2018
location: Norton Avenue, West Hollywood, California
Being still on Eastern Standard Time, I awoke early on what just happened to be my 50th birthday. Actually, I awoke out on the couch and then went into the bedroom I've been sharing, but couldn't get to sleep there. So I went back out to the couch and made use of Hyrax, the trusty laptop I'd dragged around all last night. Somehow I hadn't lost anything of value (though I'd come close to losing my phone in the Uber Pool).
[REDACTED]
The workday began as it had yesterday, with me (this time burdened somewhat by a mid-grade hangover) going to the Whole Foods on Santa Monica and Fairfax and getting what I'd gotten yesterday: tofu spring rolls (which comes with a peanut sauce) and a large cup of black coffee.
[REDACTED]
Not long after that, I was upstairs at my makeshift workstation when Jake reminded me of some meeting I'd probably forgotten about [REDACTED]. I was in the middle of trying to check in for tomorrow's flight back to the East, so I grabbed my laptop and went down to the conference room. When I walked in the door, everybody in the office was there and they all shouted "SURPRISE!" in unison, just like in the movies. As immediately explained by Jake, Gretchen, who normally makes me a delicious gourmet birthday pizza on my birthday, had secretly arranged with Fresh Brothers (a West Hollywood pizza place that makes a great vegan pizza) to have sufficient pizza delivered for the number of people expected to be in the office. Not only that, one of them was in the shape of the heart and all of them had the sorts of toppings I like (faux sausage, mushrooms, onions, jalapeños). It was embarrassing (and I said so) but I was also delighted. Unfortunately, Jake had somewhat underestimated the number of people who would be at the office today, and there wasn't quite enough (which, according to Gretchen, is about the worst thing that can happen when a person of Jewish extraction is provisioning food). There'd also been seitan wings, for example, and they were all wiped out by the time I wanted to have one. Still, the pizza was delicious and I definitely had enough.
Later in the afternoon, I returned to Whole Foods for another cup of coffee to help me through the balance of the day. [REDACTED]
Back at the place I've been staying, I lay on the couch and drank some orange juice cut with a little gin to chase away the remaining demons of last night's hangover. I then transitioned to a mediocre IPA I found in the refrigerator. After drinking these things while continuing my Slack-based socializing, I ordered up an Uber Pool for the final adventure of my 50th birthday: meeting friends at Harvard & Stone, a dive bar in East Hollywood. We'd wanted to go to Gracias Madre for a sit-down meal, but it's impossible to get reservations on a Friday night.
For some reason Uber's algorithm sent my car to a side street instead of in front of the house (I'd also been let off on that side street last night, though, when coming from the airport, I'd been dropped directly in front of the house). I saw the car approaching on the map, and just when it should've turned onto Norton, a fancy little two-door sports car rounded the corner. Wait, is that what a Kia is supposed to look like? Perhaps they made a sporty model. (I don't really know much about cars other than how they work.) So I walked up to the car, opened the passenger door, to find just some douchebaggy guy, precisely the kind who drives a sporty black car. "Are you Mario?" I asked. "No!" he replied, adding, "Can you please shut my door." That was the first time that had ever happened! It made me realize how poorly Uber would function in a place with open carry. Such mistakes must happen all the time, and a douchebag with a gun might easily think he was being car-jacked.
The backseat of Mario's car was filled, so I climbed in the front seat. I quickly told Mario that today was my 50th birthday and about all the incredible things that had happened. Mario, who looked to be in his 60s, acted as though 50 was youthful. He proceeded to tell me about his son's recent 40th birthday party in Las Vegas. It involved a 4000 square foot suite, though it didn't sound anywhere near as fun as the day I was currently having. Mario then told me about his day job working in a virtual call center for a furniture distributor, and it sounded unpleasant. In the company communication system (which is not Slack), small talk is discouraged, though at least everyone gets to work from home. I told Mario that I only take Uber Pool now, and it's not even because it's cheaper (though it is). I said that I liked that bit of community it introduces into my life (random though it is). Of course, you never know when you get into an Uber Pool whether you will interact with others or not, but who knows?
Mario was very explicit about things in a way that most Uber drivers are not. As he let me out in a corner shopping area adjacent to Harvard & Stone, he said that he would be giving me a five star rating. When he saw me wandering the parking lot looking for the entrance to the bar, he shouted out his window that it was that way a little down the block. Thanks, Mario!
Harvard & Stone was cavernous space that looked deliberately aged. In the murky light, its walls looked dingy and brown, as though someone had filled a cast-iron kiddie pool with lignite and let it smoulder over a weekend. The place was empty save for a couple bartenders (one of whom resembled Frank Zappa) and my co-worker Allison. She'd told me that Harvard & Stone opens at 8:00 (with happy hour!), so that accounted for the deadness of the place. Allison was having some sort of whiskey drink, though I was feeling more in the mood for something clear. I ordered a gin & tonic, leaving my card at the bar. Though it was my birthday, I hoped to be paying for drinks tonight. I'm in a different phase of life than my colleagues and can afford things that they cannot. After awhile we were joined by Cameron and then, some time later, by Brittany (whom I had only interacted with across the Internet). Those are the only people in our department who actually live in Los Angeles.
It's mind-blowing how immediately comfortable we are with each other, though I suppose it's not much of a surprise given how much we communicate in Slack (and in our various video conferences, one of which is a weekly happy-hour-cum-booze). As I pointed out to Allison, just minutes before, we'd all been in Slack talking about whatever and then it was as if we'd walked out of that zero-dimensional universe into reality, though not all of us had. Where, for example, was Dan? We'd just been talking to him too. But he'd been communicating from China, and that physical handicap made it impossible for him to attend the part of our evening that would be unfolding in three dimensional space.
It wasn't just that we talked well with one another; there was a rhythm to our communication, with us trading conversational partners on a regular basis so that all four of us had a chance to converse in every two-person permutation in the increasingly-noisy space. A discovery that seemed really mind-blowing at the time was how musical Brittany is, something that never comes across over professional channels of communication. When I'd shriek out something in response to the music, she'd harmonize over it almost reflexively.
Up until today, I hadn't been explicit about my age. I thought people knew I was in my 40s, but I look and act young for my age, so I got along well with a department that (with the exception of Dan) consisted entirely of Millennials. But my being 50 isn't just shocking on some level to me, it's kind of mind-blowing to my colleagues, particularly since they'd never been super clear on what exactly my age was. At one point Brittany, who is thirty and whose parents are only six years older than me, asked "How are you a Millennial?" By this she meant something like, "Why don't you act like my stick-in-the-mud parents, with their terrible taste in music and their fusty sense of humor?" The truth of the matter is, I suspect my taste in music is a bit old-fashioned from the perspective of a 30-something. But, in answer to this question, I've been on the public internet practically from day one, and have gradually (and not even deliberately) adapted to the culture that Millennials now find themselves in. I used to think "lol" and emojis were stupid, but now I use them as much as any Millennial when communicating in chat applications (though I would never use them in more formal communication). Those are just two of many examples.
As you may recall, I had in my possession a bag of marijuana-laced cookies, which can now be sold in public marijuana stores (because we're now living in the future we never thought would come). The cookies were each the size of a ping-pong ball and I'd been told just to take one to start with. Though they looked like cookies and may have even contained chocolate chips, they tasted strongly of marijuana. About an hour after I'd eaten one, I became concerned that I was going to lose my mind. I even had few "waves" of overwhelming "cookie" energy. But then I rapidly stabilized and could enjoy myself.
We were having so much fun just talking to each other in various combinations that we were almost oblivious to what was happening in the bar around us. It was now full of people. It was a youngish, mostly white crowd, and they were dancing. Normally people-watching would be a huge part of hanging out in a place like this, but we'd been too wrapped up with each other.
At some point the four of us started dancing. I'd had a lot to drink and I was now on my second cookie, so I just naturally moved to the music with out any self consciousness at all. Various dudebros came among us, mostly to check out Brittany, but she has (as Cameron later put it) "a great spidey sense," and Cameron wasn't going to put up with any of their shit. There were actually a couple near-fights. But it's hard to say really what was happening by now, since a fog of amnesia shrouds my recollections. Cameron's big drink discovery of the night was a $12 beverage called "Baby's First Bourbon." When I wanted my third marijuana-laced cookie, I discovered someone had stolen the bag. Given that we'd abandoned those cookies for many minutes at a time, it was surprising that they hadn't been stolen earlier. Oh well; I'm sure those cookies went to a good home.
By the end of the evening, we were out on the sidewalk staring at our phones as our Ubers negotiated the Pac-Man grid, coming for to carry us home.
As always, I'd ordered an Uber Pool, and my driver had the wilted muscular build of someone who had once played a lot of football. I was in a great mood and friendly from the get-go as he went out of his way to pick up his next rider, a woman who kept saying she was waving her arms but whom he couldn't see. Eventually the woman was found. She was young, nubile, and drunk, the last of which was to be expected on a Friday night. She climbed in the backseat with me and I said "Hi!" She may've told me her name, but I don't remember what it was. Let's just call her Deborah, since she looked like a Deborah (though not a Debbie). She quickly started telling me all about herself, that she was a student at UCLA with an interest in shooting film. I asked if she knew anything about editing or any of the other film-related occupations, and Deborah said no, just shooting film. I said that it sounded like she needed to collaborate with someone who did the other stuff, perhaps somebody with a YouTube channel. Drunk as I was, it was not my intention to seduce this young woman (who was probably thirty years younger than me), but, as with the random stripper last night, Deborah wanted some human contact and decided I fit the bill. She pulled my hands towards her to put them on her body (I don't remember where; at the time it didn't seem especially sexual in nature). I didn't mind; there was no reason to reject this sort of behavior. So I snuggled with her in a way that made no physical demands. Seeing this in his rearview mirror bothered the driver, who called back to me to say "You know, bro, she's more drunk than you are, so..." But Deborah wasn't having it, interrupting him to say everything was fine in the back seat. Soon thereafter she fell asleep. When I got to my destination, I had to peel her limp body off me like a snuggling panther.
Me tonight dancing with some random dudebro at Harvard & Stone. A still frame of some video that Cameron shot.
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?180216 feedback
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