Finally we came over a long hill and the smog stopped and I opened the can of Coors I'd brought for the ride.
“Give me half of that.”
Silverman took the beer and was about to pour it into my sperm sample container.
“Nah, nah, nah, don't do that'
“Why not?”
“It's dirty.”
“I don't mind.”
I grabbed his hand. “You'd mind.”
“What?”
“You don't want to know.”
“What, is it your spittoon?”
“If it was just spit, I'd let you drink out of it.”
“Piss?”
“Keep going.”
“Huh?”
I made a jerk-off motion. He yelped and flung the container into the back.
“What is wrong with you?” he said.
We stopped and picked up a six-pack and as Silverman popped open his first can, he said, “We are officially in retox.” Entering the desert, we saw thousands of giant windmills, their monstrous blades perpetually slicing at whomever passed, beauty and corruption aligned together, spectacular, terrifying; a fitting moat to the kingdom called Hollywood. Then came the plaster of paris dinosaurs and date shake stands. The temperature quickly climbed to over one hundred degrees, but snow somehow sparkled on the brown moun-taintops. Then an oasis of green, green, green.
There's something about deserts that seems to cause time
warps. I'd only been to two and both felt like the 1960s. I'm not talking Woodstock, I'm talking about the way the sixties were for my parents. Frank Sinatra. Herb Alpert. Hi-fis. Highballs. Brazil '66. Debbie Reynolds. Joey Bishop.
These Boots Are Made for Walkiri'.
Palm Springs was a lounge town. A pickup town. The birthplace and retirement home of leisure suits. It was a town undiscovered by the National Organization of Women. A gold lame town. A Sonny Bono town. A tough-talking-big-titted-waitress-with-a-heart-of-gold town. Dean Martin and Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra each had streets named after them, and everywhere you turned was a golf course with loud golfers in double-knit slacks and shirts with big collars. It was the town that elected Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The women were bathed in bright colors and even the young ones had hairdos that would be the envy of Donna Reed. The bars had never stopped having “happy hours” and the drinks were still served stiff in small glasses. There was an underlying mob mentality, similar to Vegas. Everyone claimed to be connected to a wiseguy or two, with the biggest connection being Frank himself.
The next morning we drove out to the Desert Marriott golf course, a magnificent track peppered with bouquets of palm trees, unblemished fairways, and baby powder sandtraps. We played eighteen, then threw on our shorts and laid out by our hotel pool, which was pretty much girl-free. After all that sun, I took a thirty-minute nap, then went to the spa and splurged on a massage and steam. I was starting to feel pretty healthy, so I did twenty-five push-ups and a hundred sit-ups in my room. I showered, shaved, put on pressed slacks, a fresh golf shirt, and met Silverman down in the lounge for a cocktail around seven.
We sucked down Stoly martinis while two women played backgammon
in the corner. Herb noticed that their margaritas were getting low, so he sent over two fresh ones. They acknowledged this with a wave, but didn't touch the drinks, and after a while we figured out that the first margaritas weren't theirs to begin with.
After the martinis, we each drank a Dos Equis, then moved to another room and studied the dinner menu. An elegant-looking man wearing a white blazer with frilly gold epaulets on the shoulders— “the rear admiral” Herb called him—was playing show tunes on a white piano in the middle of the room. He was surrounded by six or seven younger men who listened attentively and then clapped and hooted and called for more.
“This place is a gerbil's worse nightmare,” said Silverman.
I nodded, but it was all right with me because I was fried and all I wanted to do was listen to Captain Stubing play the piano and have enough drinks to numb my sunburn, and before I knew it, I was calling out for
Moon River
and Herb was shaking his head.
“You ever hear that story about what's-his-name—you know, the actor—getting a gerbil stuck up his ass?” Herb asked.
“Yeah, I heard it.”
“You believe it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes no sense.”
“It's true. These gay guys stick gerbils up their asses—they like the feeling of the thing running around up there.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You doubt that?”
“I doubt the movie star story.”
“Why?”
“Because he's a big star and a multimillionaire,” I said. “If he had a gerbil stuck up his ass, believe me, he wouldn't be running down to Cedars Sinai so everybody's best friend's sister could be checking him into the emergency room.”
“Well, what's he supposed to do?”
“He's supposed to call a gay doctor, offer him a thousand dollars to make a housecall and another thou to shut up about it, and he's supposed to tell the guy to bring along a pair of forceps and some cheese.”
There was applause as a good-looking Brit in his mid-forties slid in beside the pianist. The Brit had long blond hair and an above-average voice and he sang two Andrew Lloyd Weber songs for the adoring gentlemen.
“Who do you think's gayer?” Herb said. “The guy who thinks about dudes when he's fucking chicks, or the guy who thinks about chicks when he's fucking dudes?”
“Hey, let's go to a movie after dinner.”
“I don't go to movies.”
“Why not?”
“I just don't.”
After another beer, we ordered dinner, each of us starting with a shrimp cocktail and asparagus salad.
Herb said, “You know, this stuff makes your piss smell funny.”
“What is it about asparagus that compels people to talk about their urine at the dinner table? I don't get it, since when has asparagus and piss gone hand in hand? When you have chili, do you tell everyone how your shit's going to stink the next day?”
“Classic. You got a load in your car, but I can't talk about my piss at the dinner table?”
Our waitress was a little speedbag with big tits, so after the main course—he had a pepper steak and I ordered herb-encrusted salmon—Herb asked her where the best place to get laid was. In so many words. She sent us to a seventies-style disco, up on a hill, called Atlantis.
This was the kind of place that would make Telly Savalas misty. The interior was black, metallic, very shiny—rather cutting edge for Palm Springs. I'd had a pretty good time in the seventies, but going back now, in this state of mind, surrounded by loud divorcees, was sad, and I wanted to leave as soon as I paid the fifteen-dollar cover. Silverman was right at home, however, and before I knew it, I was holding a drink that looked like the blue stuff they soak combs in in barber shops.
“There's a couple flight recorders for you,” he said, nodding at two women sitting at the bar. “What do you think would happen if we walked up and said, 'Hey, you two are far and away the best things in here—let's go somewhere and fuck.' Do you think that: (A) They'd try to kick us in the balls, or (B) They'd be so impressed with our honesty and forthrightness that they'd say, 'Let's go'?”
“A.”
Silverman nodded. “Well, let's say hi anyway. I'll take the one on the right.”
She was about forty with Dow Corning breasts and a face the color and texture of luggage. The one with the bad nose job was mine. She probably wasn't yet thirty-two, but she looked forty-five, a torn sneaker if ever I'd seen one.
“I don't think so.”
“Come on, man, this is a team sport. You've got to play your role.”
As Herb headed toward the women, he laid out a big smile like a line of coke and when Luggage-Face looked his way, she couldn't help but snort it up.
“You know something?” he said. “When you smile, you look just like my wife.”
“That's a conversation stopper,” she said.
“Oh, I'm not married. I just meant if I were, she'd probably look like you.”
“What, are you trying out lines on us?”
“Actually, yes. Hunt here's a writer.”
“Oh, wow, how unprecedented—a writer, in Southern California.”
This came from my girl, though she never took her eyes off Silverman. I sprung for a round, which seemed to be the extent of my rap lately, and then Silverman's girl said to him, “I saw you when you came in and I said, That guy's pretty cute.' “
“Really?” Herb said in that lilty way that really means “interesting.” “I was telling Hunt the exact same thing.”
They smiled, and I said, “It's true. He was just saying, 'You know, I'm pretty cute.' “
Silverman wedged himself between the women, forcing Nose Job to turn her attention to me. We quickly checked each other out. Now I could see that it wasn't a bad nose job after all—just a few too many good ones. She had some kind of Samsonite deal working with her skin, too, as if she'd spent the last fifteen years boozing and smoking Kools under a sunlamp. Her teeth looked as if they were capped by Calloway—about a half size too big—and her hunched, indifferent posture suggested she'd just been put through the ringer. Her name was Cindy Green.
“As in mucus, money, and envy.”
“Huh,” I said.
She blew a megaphone-sized cone of smoke over her shoulder.
When I found out she was newly divorced, I felt bad and made a bet with her that she wouldn't be single long. I said a couple other things, too, trying to build up her ego, straighten her backbone. This softened her up, and it turned out she wasn't so tough after all, just lonely, and she really wanted someone to hold, to love for a night, in return for which she would allow me or someone else to slip a cock into her body. For a minute I considered it, but I didn't want her waking up in my room, and doing it in the parking lot would just make her feel crummy, and there was no way in hell I was going to her sad, divorced apartment with the divorced furniture and the divorced kids and the divorced cat because that would make me feel pretty crummy, too.
Cindy Green told me a long story about the great deal she'd gotten on an armoire at Shabby Chic in Beverly Hills, but it hadn't been delivered on time and so on and so on, and I became self-conscious about staring at the picket fence in her mouth and developed a bad case of lockjaw. After a few more minutes waiting for Silverman to close his deal, I excused myself.
An elderly black attendant sat smoking a cigarette in the black-tiled bathroom. The place smelled strangely of Kool-Aid. I didn't have to go to the toilet, so I threw water on my face to look busy. Three guys with short hair up front and long hair in the back stood in an open stall doing blow. One man would carry on breathlessly, and when he made the mistake of trailing off, the others would yell, as if yelling were the high itself, and the loudest yeller would hold the floor for another long-winded tale of bravado. I wondered how they could do the shit after Len Bias and all the famous ruined lives.
I left the attendant a buck for my paper towel and returned to
the room, but hung out on the other side. I tried to appear content, even though I'd always despised being alone in a bar. Finally I saw something of interest. Little sundress, perky butt, rich tan, amazing face. Beautiful Waspy hair.
Vortnoys Complaint
hair. Cybill Shepherd in
The Heartbreak Kid
hair. On the way over, I thought of a dozen things I could say, but they all sounded like pickup lines. I didn't want to pick her up. I wanted to know her, to make her laugh, to take her to lunch tomorrow, write her long love letters and talk on the phone for hours, to marry her in a couple years, have kids, watch them grow, have grandkids, retire down the Cape, die with her at my side.
“Hi,” I said.
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“Fuck you.
Get the hell away from me, you slimy little Dorito breath.”
I winced. “What the hell's that all about? Did you just break up with someone who looks like me?”
Before she could answer, a six-foot-five-inch giant charged across the room, straight-armed me into a wall, and I was still in the running for the “die with her at my side” part.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I said. “What'd I do?”
The guy stuck his mustache up to my neck (actually, he was only about five-five, but he was some kind of steroid freak and may as well have been a foot taller).
“Get the fuck away from her, she don't want to get bothered.”
“Okay, okay, I'm history. Relax.”
He released my arms and I said, “Jeez, if she doesn't want to be around people, she shouldn't hang out in nightclubs.”
Now the little bulldozer's nose was nudging against my chin
and I could smell his breath coming through it, something like salami.
“What, you got a problem? You can't take a hint?”
“No, I don't have a problem. You made your point. I'm out of here.”
“What's going on?”
Herb was holding another one of the blue drinks as well as a beer. When the bodybuilder turned toward him, I ducked out of the corner and slid behind my well-built redheaded friend. I was hoping the pit bull would calm down, but he was wearing stonewashed jeans with pockets on the side of the knees, so reasoning with him was unlikely.
“You with him?” he asked Herb.
“Yeah.”
Herb handed me my blue drink.
“Get him the fuck out of here before he gets his head split open.”
“Look,” Silverman said, “I know this guy. If he did something wrong, it was out of stupidity. I mean, who in his right mind would want to fuck with a guy like you? Come on.”
The “I know you” smile again.
“Just get him out of my face.”
“Okay, take it easy, friend, we're all Americans here. Can I buy you a beer?”
Silverman put his left hand on the guy's shoulder and when the pit bull relaxed his neck muscles, the base of Herb's beer bottle slammed into his forehead. There was a fantastic popping sound over the music. The bully grabbed the wall with one hand, his forehead with the other, then recovered enough to throw a halfhearted punch at Silverman, as if he were swinging underwater,
before awkwardly sinking to the floor. Despite the tremendous impact, the bottle didn't crack, and it took Herb two more whacks on the floor before it did break and the never-more-fraudulent Jew was suddenly holding the jagged glass against the dazed man's cheek.