On the porch of a house in Hollywood a girl in harem pants plays a mandolin and sings, “No new friends, no new friends, no new friends…” We walk along the side, entering the way pool guys and gardeners do, to arrive in a backyard full of mostly bespectacled men with beards. They’re all 29 years old. Well, that’s not true. Some are 28, others are 30. And not all of them have beards, some have mustaches.
Other than the bearded men, who all introduce themselves as writers, there are also actors and improvisers, and actors who hate improv and improvisers who insist they have no interest in acting.
I drink two or three or four beers with the American flag plastered on the side before I notice my friends have disappeared. And of course, the beer isn’t working. I’m talking to a black guy with a Mohawk who tells me he speaks French fluently and thinks I’d be very handsome if I didn’t have a beard. When I don’t respond quickly enough, he tells me he’s a very talented graphic designer and has a background in the theatre and once spent three weeks in Paris when he was fifteen. Then he asks me who I am dressed up as. He says he can’t tell. I look down to confirm that I’m dressed as I’m pretty much always dressed. He tells me that this is a 90s costume party. I excuse myself, citing an empty Dixie cup.
Around midnight, a busload of girls who are too pretty, too pale and have snorted too much coke, show up. They swing from one end of the party to the other, like marionettes chasing each other. They look like they’ve just stepped out of Nylon Magazine. As it happens, and as they are quick to tell you, they are those girls. “Google me,” one of them says. “I’m legit.”
I tell her I believe her. She tells me she doesn’t care if I believe her or not, because there are a lot of people talking a big game here, but she’s actually very legit. She asks if I recognize her from an HBO show that she was on. I do, I tell her so. She says she doesn’t care if I recognize her or not because she’s legit. But then, in almost a whisper, she does ask one favor of me, “Don’t tell my sister what I’ve been doing.” I agree and she floats across the party, plucking a joint from a stranger’s fingers, she disappears in a haze of smoke, leather, and the obligatory floppy black velvet hat.
My drink is gone. Or rather, I drank it all, but the crowd is too thick to fight my way back to the bar. I haven’t seen my friends in an hour, maybe longer, so I elect to take a lap around the party. One stride into my lap, three guys ask me if I want to go in on a gram. I tell them I’m not actually looking to hole-up in the bathroom with three strangers and a gram from somebody’s friend’s neighbor’s roommate’s connect. They look at me like I’m fucking insane and we part ways.
The girl in the leather jacket and the floppy hat swings back in front of me. Her skin is almost translucent. Her eyes are blue, her scleras are a shade of porcelain, and her jaw, grinding down her perfect teeth, seems to have a mind of its own. She asks for my number and I ask why. She tells me to fuck off and that she’s making a movie and the budget is 3.5 million. Then she asks again for my number. I guess we both assume that she’s answered my question so I give it to her. She puts my name into her phone and then under company she writes: Financier*. I tell her that she’s confused me with someone else. She assures me that she hasn’t because she doesn’t make mistakes and that she doesn’t care what I think because she’s legit. I can google her. Then a tall blonde girl wearing six shades of black, whisks her away so they can pose for a photo shoot. Not an impromptu photo shoot. There are lights, C-stands, a prop couch. And now there are models dropping their chins, pursing their lips, flicking off the camera.
I’m ready to fight my way over to the bar when a girl in a crop top comes over and asks me to guess who she’s dressed up as. I say, “Sheryl Crow,” for reasons that are still unclear to me. She says she’s Courtney Love. Then she proceeds to tell me that Courtney Love is not just a singer, but she also used to be married to Kurt Cobain who was the lead singer of Nirvana, which was a band in the nineties, before he died of an overdose. She tells me she learned all of this in a documentary she watched on HBOGO using her parents’ login info. She asks if I have any coke. I say no and she tells me that she was born in the year of the Ox. I say, “I think I was too – 1985, right?” She buckles over laughing then says, “No. Gross. 1997.”
I guess I’m getting old. Maybe that’s why the booze isn’t working. The girl in the leather jacket and the floppy hat texts me her name and the words: director/writer/actress/model/singer. I look around, but I don’t see her anywhere. I also don’t see my friends or the girl who was born in 1997. I find my way upstairs and into a conversation where a girl wearing a Wu-Tang shirt volunteers that she doesn’t actually know a single Wu-Tang song. Then a blond guy doing his best James Dean takes her to a nearby couch where they proceed to aggressively make-out while ten guys watch, sipping their beers.
I wander back outside with a cup half-full of vodka, which is not how I approach life by any means, but rather this cup was empty and then I filled it up. Thus, well, you get it. On the perimeter of the party, I sip my lukewarm vodka while actors improvise conversations and girls who look like models, because they are models, pose in front of a lime tree, a staircase, a parked car. A man wearing a baja hoodie comes up to me and demands to know where we’ve met. “I don’t think we have,” I say. He tells me his name and that he’s on mushrooms and that surely he’s met me before because he’s a musician and I’m a musician. I tell him I’m not a musician, but he doesn’t believe me.
He puts his hand on my shoulder and continues to talk about knowing people on a deeper level. The more he talks, the less he sounds like someone on mushrooms and the more he sounds like someone trying to act as if they’re on mushrooms. He continues his monologue while tightening his grip on my shoulder. I can’t fathom why someone would decide that this party would be a good place to do mushrooms. I tell him that I need to go home, he tells me that I don’t. I tell him, “I need to take my dog out for a walk.” It’s three in the morning.
“You’re a good pet owner,” he says. “A dedicated pet owner.” I ask him to please let go of my arm. He tells me that he used to have a blushing disorder but he had endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy surgery and now he never blushes, but a side effect is he sweats in weird places like his chest, his groin, his feet. He holds up his hand and says, “My palms don’t sweat anymore, neither does my head. That’s another side effect.”
Maybe he actually is on mushrooms. I’m also starting to think I should leave now. I slowly back away from the man on mushrooms so as to not alarm him. He watches with wide eyes and pleads for me to not go. I get into an Uber with a driver who tells me he’s studying at a famous barbershop in Inglewood. “It’s where Ice Cube trained for his role in the movie Barbershop,” he says. I applaud him for pursuing his education.
By the time we reach my place, my driver has pitched me his mobile barbershop business and targeted me as a potential investor. He tells me the sky is the limit when it comes to the mobile barbershop industry. I’m not convinced that’s true, but what the fuck do I know about haircuts on wheels? I tell him to count me in. He gives me a card and we agree to talk in the morning. I’ve had enough of Hollywood, I’m going to get into the mobile hair game.
Exchanging Pleasantries 