Copyright © 2012 by Ben Peller
All rights reserved.
Published by Algonquin Round Table Publishing
Cover and Rear Photos by Jill Demby Guest
Interior Photos by Jill Demby Guest and Shawn Michals
ISBN: 0615602088
ISBN 13: 9780615602080
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62111-391-1
To anyone who has ever been foolish, crazy, and fearless enough to fall in love.
Greetings, fellow travelers.
Acknowledgments
To all those I’ve loved, in Los Angeles and beyond. Rest assured, you all do hold a place in my heart.
I love you, Georgette, and wherever you are I hope you’ll forgive me for being too young and not strong enough.
Kudos once again to Team Fusion. You make spilling blood on the page a pleasure.
“What’s in the brain that ink may character which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? What’s new to speak, what new to register, That may express my love or dear merit? Nothing sweet boy, but yet, like prayers divine, I must each day say o’er the very same, Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name…”
- Shakespeare
Sonnet 108
“Are you kidding? He sees damn near every woman who writes or phones him. He tries to get them drunk, he makes promises, tells lies…”
“How does he justify all this?”
“He claims he needs something to write about.”
- Charles Bukowski
Septuagenarian Stew
“Love is barely contained insanity.”
- Shawn Michals
The bathroom wall of an L.A. bar
To steal a famous secret agent’s line, this is a work
that is stranger than truth and fiction shaken…
not stirred. Resemblances to people or
organizations living or dead is purely
coincidental, used fictitiously, etc.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
A SAVAGE EMAIL FROM SHAWN MICHALS
LOVAHOLICS ANONYMOUS
WRITERS IN THE NIGHT
THE LATENT HOMOSEXUAL YOUR MOTHER ALWAYS WARNED YOU ABOUT
TO SWING OR NOT TO SWING
THE CRAZIEST GIRL IN L.A
HOW TO TRAP A COUGAR VS. HOW TO TRAP A CUB
LAWYERS IN ENTRAPMENT
ANALYSTS AND ANALISTS
TEMP ROMANCES AND PERMANENT SCARS
ZOMBIES IN LOVE
FIN AND RELEASE AT AN INN BY THE SEA
SPECIAL FEATURES - TOO MUCH INFORMATION FROM THE INSIDE DOOR OF A MEDICINE CABINET AND OTHER PHOTOS OF A RISQUE NATURE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EDITOR’S NOTE
(Reader Discretion is advised)
Preface
Before you put this down, please let me explain.
To Live and Drink In L.A., the prequel to this book, is a journey through the psyche of Shawn Michals. I am the one he chose for its assemblage, and assemble it I did. It wasn’t easy, being that I had to spend months cobbling together notes of his that veered the thin line between fiction and non-fiction, his stream-of-consciousness journals, and written ramblings that quite frankly flirted with insanity. For those who haven’t read To Live and Drink In L.A., a quick recap:
Young man comes from the Midwest to Los Angeles, young man realizes he has a hell of a lot of growing up to do, young man comes to something of an epiphany by the final page.
In The Industry, as Hollywood calls the moviemaking business, that’s what’s known as a Pitch. Note that it was thirty-six words long. Given that this is six words more than most studio execs can stand to absorb in one sitting, To Live and Drink In L.A., the movie, will most likely not be coming soon to a theater near you.
However, the book itself is still happily in print. After seeing through its publication I’ve moved on to the next phase in my life, which consists of trading stocks, losing hair, and wondering what in the hell my purpose in life is.
It’s not like I feel totally useless as a member of the human race. After all I donate blood four times a year, have fathered a wonderful child, and back in seventh grade I knocked out a bully named (of all things) Norman when he made fun of a mentally handicapped kid during P.E. class.
I’ve also helped Shawn Michals spread his saga to the world. Dubious or not, at least it’s helped keep the written word alive.
It’s fair enough to assume these achievements probably won’t win me a Nobel or Pulitzer prize, and that’s all right. Hell, I’d settle for a Golden Raspberry Award, which I’ve always secretly coveted since Joe Eszterhas’ screenplay for the movie Showgirls took the prize in 1995. (Though savaged by critics and moviegoers, there were some hot scenes in that movie, not to mention Eszterhas was paid millions for writing it). Unfortunately, this award also seems to be out of my talent’s reach. It’s a sobering thought to consider the possibility that I’ve already achieved my “life’s purpose” and that the rest of my existence will simply be a matter of treading water until I’m in some nursing home shitting in my diapers before being whisked off to parts unknown.
Sure, there may be various tentpole events. My daughter’s high school graduation, and hopefully her college graduation. Then again, given that she lives with my estranged ex-wife who has been feeding her a daily dose of verbal poison about what a loser I am, I have no idea whether I’ll be invited to either. Back when our marriage seemed salvageable we’d agreed, out of consideration for our daughter, to go to counseling and “make it work.” This exercise only unearthed more things we couldn’t stand about each other. She went on diatribe after diatribe about how I was never home, and I would respond that I was working. She accused me of having affairs, and I replied, accurately, that I was too tired to have an affair. I wanted our daughter to be able to go to college, and we were in the middle of a Great Recession while my capacity to make money depended on how well I could make money for others.
Then the last straw in our relationship came when I’d seen fit to put my name as the author and editor of Shawn’s writings. Not only that, I’d made it a priority to take the book to the streets, selling it in bars, coffeeshops, and eventually working my way up to crashing movie premieres. When I was arrested at the premiere of *1for trespassing and illegal solicitation, I called my wife from jail.
“Honey,” I said. “I’m in a bit of a jam.”
“You’ve been in a jam your whole life!” she replied, and proceeded to unleash her usual arsenal of complaints. I was never home, I didn’t really care about her, I’d never really cared about her. I listened, nodding and hating myself for a few minutes until above the words “-you’ve been an absolute shit-” bobbed the sound of a suspicious snoring in the background. I knew that snore.
“Is that Brian?” I asked. Brian and I had been best friends all the way through college. I knew that snore from “mornings after” wild parties at our fraternity, and also the morning after my bachelor party when he’d drunkenly confessed that he considered my soon-to-be wife an “uber hot dish.”
“At least Brian’s here for your daughter’s birthday!” my wife shouted at me. “And now he’s going to do me good! Better than you ever did!”
She slammed the phone down. I felt terrible. I’d actually planned to surprise Chanel, our daughter, with a huge purple horse, its head sporting five golden reins, one celebrating every year of Chanel’s age. Unfortunately the horse was still in my car parked on Hollywood Boulevard. I’d been arrested while trying to orchestrate a getaway from the premiere after hurriedly tossing books in the general direction of the red carpet in hopes that one of the arriving elite would catch one, open it up,
and read enough to find a reason to laugh, cry, or at the very least throw the novel down in disgust.
Now here I was incarcerated while my former best friend was shagging my no doubt soon-to-be former wife.
I simmered quietly that night in jail, cursing Shawn Michals and his stupid book while at the same time cursing myself for believing so much in it.
My wife visited me the next day with her attorney, who served me with divorce papers.
“That damn book is more important to you than I am!” she snarled at me, as her lawyer shoved the papers through the slot.
It’s possible she was right. Her family is very wealthy, old school money from the coal industry days, and has always disapproved of me, being that I’m not from what they call “a family of substance.” I signed the divorce agreement at my weakest moment, giving away all custody rights to my daughter. Chanel, if you read this, I hope you forgive me, and understand that at the time I signed those papers I was so distraught at the possibility of spending five to ten years in jail that I barely read them. I apologize for behaving like William Faulkner, who, after assuring his daughter he would stay sober during her birthday party, tumbled down the stairs drunk during the affair and told her “Nobody remembers Shakespeare’s father.” I am not comparing myself in the least to Faulkner or Shakespeare, but I am guilty of being a lousy father, and for that I am so sorry.
Two days later all formal legal proceedings were dropped. Except the divorce charges, and the undeniable fact that I’d gone from being a father that teaches his daughter to stare at a butterfly because they have so little time to live into a father who got arrested on his daughter’s birthday because it happened to fall on the date of a movie premiere and I just had to be there to heave copies of my book at various A-list actors and directors.
So here I am, freshly divorced, with no ties, my whole middle age ahead of me. What other events can materialize? There’s always the possibility I’ll be promoted to assistant branch manager and then maybe even, down the road, the manager of the branch of the company I work for. But the idea of this seems more haunting than promising. Dealing with clients and making money with the sole purpose of using that money to make even more money has lately seemed to be doing me more harm than good. Every day I notice more loose strands of hair on my keyboard at work. My vision has grown a distinct shade blurrier, but I refuse to see an eye doctor on the grounds that a visit might confirm the fact I’m growing older and still have no idea what to do with my life.
Then, like a lightning strike, I receive an email from the man I’ve spent the past two years trying to immortalize as a character on par with Tom Sawyer or Jay Gatsby: Shawn Michals. His subject line itself is combative; it even is “in regards” to an email I don’t even recall sending. But rather than an insult it reads more like a lure, a dare that tempts one to start a new chapter.
So here we go. Kiss a loved one (even if it’s only yourself), and raise a glass.
Cheers,
Ben
A Savage Email From
Shawn Michals
From: *77
To:
[email protected] Re: HELLO, YOU POMPOUS ASSHOLE
Greetings Ben,
Well, I see you found my work. I trust you did the best you could under the circumstances. I was in no condition to arrange all those stories myself. Just spewing them out had exhausted me. I liked the ending you gave to them, by the way. The other thing I liked was the cover design. Whoever Jill Demby Guest is, she’s a damn good designer.
That being said, you COMPLETELY SCREWED UP almost everything else. The book’s funny. It’s cute. It’s, if I dare say so myself, pretty well written. But there was way more material I left you in that apartment. You could have gone MUCH deeper. I wanted to spill gallons of my blood on the page and you managed to leak out only a few drops.
However, in spite of the tender emasculation you performed on my work in To Live and Drink In L.A., you still managed to get the damn thing published. And I’ve seen you out and about in taverns (no I’m not stalking you; I just like going to taverns) and on the beach and God knows where else hawking it for ten dollars (although there are dark rumors you’ve been known to exchange a copy for a free cocktail or a couple of cigarettes.) Then when I read about your arrest at that movie premiere in the L.A. Times, I couldn’t help but think BRAVO! Shit, Peller, if more authors were as blatantly self-promoting as you, this world would be a truly unbearable place for people who choose not to read books. And I mean that as a compliment.
But while you were out hustling, I was going through one of the many hells that come with being a writer: namely, what on earth was I going to write about next? The idea of a “genre” novel (I.e. mystery, horror, chick-lit) terrified me, being that my attempts at writing genre screenplays had failed miserably (a point I noted you didn’t fail to make in the last book). I considered a self-help tome, maybe something along the lines of How to Drink Like a Gentleman, but after two pages realized that someone like myself writing a book with such a title was obviously ridiculous.
I decided to leave it up to the Writing Gods, those accursed creatures who nail us with the curse, the will to write, and then dangle a stick and carrot before us. Surely they’d come through with some inspiration.
Come the carrot did, in the form of a woman from my past I spotted on a Wednesday afternoon shopping at the grocery store. She had a white t-shirt on, the front of which read in glaring red letters: “I survived a train wreck (relationship) with Shawn Michals.” Luckily she didn’t seem to recognize me as I ducked into the vegetable aisle, burying my nose in carrots and celery as she passed. I chanced a glance at the back of her shirt only to see colored in the same hue: “And the S.O.B.’s probably writing about it.”
The next week, while tramping the grounds of UCLA, I spotted another woman wearing an identical t-shirt. This stunned me, being that I had absolutely no recollection of ever seeing this woman before in my life. True, I’ve had nights when I’ve woken up and wondered what exactly happened the night before. But to blackout through an entire relationship seemed a bit much, even for me. So I made a show of walking past this rather attractive co-ed, nodding and smiling. All she did was nod and smile back. No frown, no glare, no indication that we’d ever laid eyes on one another prior to this moment.
“Who’s Shawn Michals?” I asked her.
“From what I hear,” she replied. “He’s the kind of guy you don’t want to bring home to Mom and Dad, if you know what I mean.”
She seemed equally nervous and excited while telling me this. She even glanced around quickly, as if just by describing this monster, in keeping with the boogeyman’s myth, it might conjure him up. Little did she know the boogeyman was standing right in front of her. “He’s a charmer, but also a total sociopath,” she went on, her voice dipping as the description flew from her. “He’s a full-fledged alcoholic, borderline psycho, and totally incapable of giving himself to one woman only. Women buy him stuff because they believe that he’s some kind of genius. Supposedly he organizes orgies, gets women to question their own sexuality… he makes them question… everything.”
She shuddered, and I must say I was kind of turned on that she seemed to be excited about the potential of meeting this creature that was Shawn Michals. She may as well have been talking about Bigfoot, and it isn’t every day one is spoken about as an urban legend.
“He makes them question everything,” she repeated.
“Wow.” I said quietly, intoxicated at the idea of being granted so much power I didn’t remotely believe I possessed.
“My sisters at my sorority house are selling these shirts,” she continued. “And they’re on the Internet, too.”
Evidently I’d been transformed into some kind of symbol, a character of sorts that was representative of “that guy,” the one women fell in love with and then fate took a hand and someone’s heart got broken amidst screaming fights and broken promises and general chaos.
“What??
?s your name?” she asked me, but I was already walking away with considerable haste. The Writing Gods had spoken. I knew what my next book would be about.
Love.
Not dancing in the roses holding hand love but the kind that cuts deep. The kind that can make you feel as though you can fly and the kind that can make you want to wriggle your way into the earth like a mole, curl up, and never wake up again. The kind of love that acknowledges that the phrase “falling in love” faithfully presents this act as challenging, intimidating, scary as hell, but nonetheless a risk worth taking. Kind of like a bungee jump into the abyss of one’s emotions.
Of course love usually (or at least hopefully) brings sex along for the ride. And the truth is there are times I hate sex, when I’m absolutely terrified of it. I like to pass these instances off as the result of being a “complex individual,” but quite frankly for the most part the vagina intimidates me. And why shouldn’t it? A big gaping black hole from which I was thrust upon this planet and then I’m supposed to fill it up again with another seed and then another little “me” pops out and then the cycle continues until either some lunatics blow Earth back to the stone ages or the zombies take over or the sun consumes us.
Women have told me they sometimes harbor these same thoughts, that the idea of hatching babies and then being linked to these creatures regardless of whether they turn into Nobel Prize Laureates or serial killers is scary as hell.
These are the considerations that can keep us all, man and woman, awake at night.
And yet, there are also considerations that make us grateful for awakening from sleep to greet another morning. The sensations of breathing, stretching, the first piss of the day, being alive, and of course, the possibility of discovering romance, poetry, and hot sex before the day is done.