By Scott Tejerian

In 2004 I met a guy who called himself the Certified Health Nut. He was a former Versace model who had lived in Milan, Miami, Tokyo, and any other place in the world that funded the glorious life of being beautiful and getting paid. Only for him it was a self-indulgent, drug and alcohol-addicted vortex which left him on the brink of madness, though with a desire to want something more fulfilling and sanctifying in his life. After failing many twelve-step programs, he created something all his own, turning himself into the best looking, healthiest, youngest 37-year old I had ever seen. His magic bullet, attacked with the same tenacious aggression previously fueling his debauchery, were herbs, juicing, Maori Healers, yoga, daily meditation; anything pure, natural and uncontaminated by the greed of mankind.

This was music to my drug and alcohol-addicted ears. I was twenty-eight years old and had never felt worse in my life. I had created a world where salsa and pizza sauce were my vegetables and most food I ate only grew in boxes on the grocery shelf. Espresso kept me alive in the morning, and strung out through the afternoon. Every meal I ate felt like it needed to be followed by a nap. I could drink six cocktails without a buzz and with a little help I could go twelve deep. On Sundays I could barely leave the couch, and Mondays and Tuesdays were often a haze, and by Wednesday I would start to feel better and the madness would start all over again. I was malfunctioning while dad was functioning with cancer. We both needed help, so I decided to be our lab rat. By getting myself healthy, maybe I could save both of our lives. Maybe I could find dad’s cure.I bought a juicer. Did colon and liver cleanses. I changed my diet, learned about meditation, even did yoga a few times. Then with the gentle force of a hurricane I suggested dad follow suit. There was no time to waste. The challenge was changing ideas and views developed over a lifetime. This is not the kind of stuff that happens over night.

“Dad, you need to do a cleanse,” I told him. We were at home and it was breakfast. The meal was delicious, a traditional All American breakfast of pancakes and bacon, coffee with cream and a glass of OJ—but all I could see were hormones and antibiotics, pesticides and saturated fats; things that would get stuck in your colon.

“A what?” dad laughed off.

“Do you ever take your car to get an oil change?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, the engine will break down.”

“Exactly, so clean your colon, so your engine doesn’t break down.”

Dad smirked, the way he did when I knew he wasn’t taking me seriously, “I don’t eat badly.”

“That isn’t enough for someone who’s missing an eye.”

For me it was easy to understand. I was young, angry with the world, willing and eager to find fault and create drastic change. I juiced raw carrots, kale and garlic on a regular basis. So much so one could smell the garlic still seeping from my pores the next day. That was the power of raw, organic food. That was the massive force that could destroy any malignant cell with ease. I felt vibrant, like I did when I was sixteen, before the booze and the blow. I could turn back the clock, shave off the years, and if it worked, then dad could live forever! The only thing was taking a radical plan to a practical, logical man. Dad never smoked, and drank only the occasional glass of wine, so in his mind he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Since his cancer had gone into remission, he had left it in God’s hands. He was getting his annual PET scan, but not much more. One time, after leaving an eye appointment where the doctor had said his prognosis looked good, dad pumped his fist in the parking lot and said, “Thank you Jesus!” But I didn’t believe that faith was enough. I wanted him to be proactive beyond conventional medical wisdom. I wanted him to listen but instead he smiled and tilted his head.

“Son, are you a doctor?”

“Doctors get rich when you get sick,” I said. “They benefit from your ailments!”

But dad wasn’t buying it. Not from a waiter who showed up on his doorstep in Fresno seasonally for complementary room and board, then took off with his buddies to the Elbow Room until three in the morning.

“Son, what does enucleate mean?”

I bristled, “Just because you understand the medical terms doesn’t mean you have a better understanding of health!”

“Leave the doctoring to the doctors,” dad told me.

It never seemed to matter how hard I pushed or how gently I nudged: Father Knew Best. But I was also determined. I bought him nutrient rich, organic vitamins and the purest herbs and tonics from the Amazon. When dad refused to try them, I used everything myself. Yet this only caused me to change my tactics. Rather than make idle suggestions, I would proudly point out all of my health conscious decisions as a clever way of taunting him.

“I did yoga last week and it was amazing!” I said, one night at dinner.

“Yeah, just be careful,” Dad said curtly. Then with deep gravity, he explained how yoga could influence good Christians toward a pagan Buddhist mindset.

“What does yoga have to do with religion?” I laughed.

And then, as we inevitably did, dad and I erupted into a philosophically painful bout, to the point where mom and sis had to pull us apart like pit bulls with jaws locked. Later after dinner, as dad angrily stormed across the parking lot, they begged me to leave him alone. Or at least make suggestions in a more civil manner, though this was beyond my capabilities.I needed dad to listen. He was the one with cancer. My inability to convince him was turning me into a frustrated mess.

In March of 2007, my bitterness reached its apex while visiting family in Peru. In the weeks leading up to the trip, I was certain the plane was going to crash. I saw it in my dreams and it wracked me with anxiety. I was sure we all were going to die, until my therapist dutifully pointed out my visions might have more to do with spending two weeks with my family. From the moment they arrived, I was tense. The only way I muddled through was to ridicule dad’s fanny pack. Mom sensed trouble and threatened to leave me behind if I couldn’t be polite. So I went the opposite route and said as little as possible for the 4,000 mile journey. Only when we landed, and I popped a beer on my cousin’s balcony, did I finally take a breath. But it didn’t last long. The next day we journeyed to a remote beach near Chincha, two hours south of Lima. We found ourselves at the edge of nowhere with nothing around us but a few bamboo huts, sand and the sound of waves breaking off the Pacific. For a minute, I was almost happy, and convinced myself that now was the right time to talk with my father.

“Dad, I love you.”

“I love you too, son.”

I started talking about the past, but he didn’t seem to hear me. The words I so desperately needed to hear were lost to a chaotic moment in paradise. Kids screaming and tides crashing shrouded my words in a haze of white noise. Here we were standing man to man, but I felt the power of intimidation he was once able to hold over me. My first memories of love came from dad’s affection. But when his anger would betray my trust, it spun me out of balance. I’d been wild and obnoxious as a kid, yet it never validated how dad reacted. The belt, the switch, and the intense force of his voice had left its mark upon my soul, and I needed this absolved. I had once imagined I would have a lifetime to right the ship, but when the cancer arrived, pressure intensified to be honest with dad while there was time. I had poured out my heart, but all dad said was my cousins were cute playing in the sand, and I went off for another beer in hopes that I could drink myself into believing all was good between us.

For the next many days, I was on the war path. We drove two hours from Chincha back to Lima and stayed up all night to make an early morning flight to Cusco. The ground snuck up during our landing and our short decent made our arrival feel abrupt. Everything seemed to wear on my nerves, and I focused all my ire on things that bothered me about my father. At that moment, his umbrella, safari hat and fanny-pack.

“There he is! Tour Guide Tom!” I taunted him through the airport terminal.

At the hotel the staff kindly greeted us with Coca tea so we could acclimate to the higher altitude, though when I finally got to my room, I felt like the walls were closing in. The setting was beautiful, if I could enjoy it. Here we were more than ten-thousand feet up in a place where it never snowed. The roads were narrow and made of stone and pebble. The locals, of Incan descent, looked alien, and I wanted to stare at all of their faces, but felt ignorant for my curiosity. And then, in the midst of it, was our one-eyed “tour guide-in-training” with fanny pack and safari hat. We’d been told not to look like foreigners, as unrealistic as that seemed, for fear of being pick-pocketed. But dad wouldn’t listen. When the locals approached, he would stop and try conversing, though he barely knew a word of Spanish. In churches, he marveled at the massive gold and silver alters, oblivious to how they’d been erected with the blood and treasure of his new friends’ ancestors. Secretly, I decided that I was an Inca, while my father was an ignorant Spaniard.But a burden like this was hard to carry. At Machu Picchu the next day, I wanted to decompress. The sun was strong, though the clouds cooled my skin. I climbed up the side of the mountain and pondered my thoughts in an old stone room that must have been somebody’s home long ago. The view of the river below, and the rainforest just beyond were inspiring. But my soaring heart came crashing down once we returned to the town below. We were sitting outside at a small café, eating Peruvian pizza, when it began to rain. The rain was especially hard for dad, who only had one eye to work with, and he’d asked me to keep both of mine on his fanny pack.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t see it. It’s on the wrong side of my good eye.”

I didn’t say anything, just shrugged, and moved the fanny-pack from on top of his suitcase to the top of mine between my legs. A much safer place, I thought, but Dad didn’t agree. He poked my leg with his umbrella.“Put it back, son.”

“I thought you wanted me to watch it.”

“Put it back.”

“It’s right here between my legs! Relax!”

Again, he poked me with the umbrella. “How many times do I have to tell you before it sinks into that thick skull of yours?” Maybe not those words exactly, but that’s how it felt. My mother and sister, sensing the tension, tried to intervene. “Scott,” they said. “just put it back.”

“No, because that’s stupid. If you want me to watch something because you’re afraid it’s going to get stolen, don’t leave it sitting on the outside of the table where anyone walking by can grab it!”

“God darn it, son!” dad with power, like a champagne cork ready to blow. “Put the fanny-pack back or so help me God!”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m five! You don’t scare me!”I swear he was ready to throw the table right on top of me, but mom and sis continued to beg and I finally relented. The six-hour train back to Cusco made me sick. I hated myself for fighting with him. I wanted so desperately to connect, but there was so much else to overcome—and I didn’t know if I could do it. To entertain us on the long ride back, the stewards put on a show with costumes and music, dancing up and down the aisles. Bizarre for the setting, but it lightened the mood. They followed the performance with a full fashion show, and here I found an opening. Dad had grown up in the family’s clothing store and he appreciated fine threads. I was mad as hell, but I bought him a red Alpaca sweater, then through tensed lips and frozen heart, I told him that I loved him.

“Thanks, son,” he said warmly, and I could tell he appreciated the gift. Yet I was only stalling the inevitable. Nothing could bridge our vast divide, not sickness nor neutral territory. We were running out of time, and my shallow peace offering was just that. Peace with dad meant shedding all of our empty gestures. I’d cloaked my anger long enough, and once and for all, even if I didn’t know how I would do it, I needed to own up to our struggles and make clear the truth of my pain.

Next: “Dad’s Last Drive” Conclusion

Scott Tejerian is a Los Angeles writer and contributor to Walkabout Jones.

—

As I walked outside Kevin was waiting for me.-Ta git fooked, brodder?-Yep. I said enthusiastically.But Kevin looked worried. -Ya ‘tink we’re gonna get ta’ herpes, like Nietzsche did?I thought about this. -Well… I hope not. But if we do, at least we’re not getting it from our sister.This seemed to satisfy Kevin. He nodded, smiled and we walked merrily back to our hostel; one experience richer than we were when we left.Sean McGann is a writer, painter and filmmaker. He works in television production, and given the subject of this long-ago tale, has a very loving and understanding wife.

By Christopher Foss

A year of this

and that, and before we know it,

lines streak our faces.

Telling the artfully arranged

mask from the real thing

is no longer the game it once was

for us sojourners veering now

so close to the road’s edge

at every turn. And as we drive on,

the scenery on either side –

forests of recrimination, plains

of derring-do, pre-glacial remnants

of hope – grows opaque, as our attention

is drawn to the vanishing point ahead

Day breaks

and that helps matters. Children

rustled off to school clutching

a beloved toy, secretly relish the routine

despite endless foot-dragging.

In the playground, playful yelps

impose a state of distraction

and this in turn begs the question:

distraction from what?

The main thing

is to hold the line against itself;

scan the digital persiflage, messages

in aim but not much else. Then:

look up from one’s handheld

to acknowledge – or even admire! –

the state of play, new sights

along the road, and of course to locate

the vanishing point’s reassuring shift

yet further up ahead.

Christopher Foss writes poems; he’s plied his trade in advertising and corporate communications, but for several years now he has stated he “Will Work for Bud” if it also means helping companies with their social and environmental performance. He’s done this kind of thing for the likes of IKEA and Coca-Cola.

I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. Flavio, one of a handful of approved Apple technicians in the area, is very impressed with my two-year-old laptop and reveals to Felipe, my boyfriend, how he looks forward to working on it. He rarely gets the opportunity to work on a MacBook Pro, he says. They chitchat some more in singsong Brazilian Portuguese, then Felipe translates their five minute, very cordial conversation into broken English, which I’ll sum up for you here: Flavio needs to open it up to find out what’s causing the annoying, possibly disastrous, buzzing sound. And, if he needs to order any parts, they’ll likely take three days to arrive from Rio de Janeiro.

I do the math. Best-case scenario, Flavio is excited enough to get to work on my laptop right away. He quickly sorts out which parts need to be replaced, calls Rio on Friday, and everything is placed into an envelope and shipped out to Belo Horizonte on Monday—for an on-time arrival Thursday morning. Flavio replaces the part right away and calls Felipe for a next day pick-up. All told, it’s a one-week turnaround. Hmm…

In a land I like to call Brazil, it would go more like this: Flavio opens my laptop sometime late Friday afternoon. He checks it out as he text-flirts with a ficha he met last night at one of the city’s 12,000 butecos. He looks at his watch. “Shit, it’s Skol time.” He closes up shop for the weekend and heads out to meet his crew. Flavio is in his early twenties, so we all know what that means.

Sometime during the groggy Monday after, he remembers my laptop. He pokes around inside for a while, but realizes he can’t do anything productive through the haze. Around Wednesday, he gets back to it, sorting out the possibly disastrous, but really-she-could-have-waited-to-get-back-to-the-States problem. A parts order is placed. Unfortunately, the only guy who knows anything about MacBook Pros has gone home for the day. Flavio hangs-up, notices he has finally recovered from the weekend, and dials-up his crew to see if they want to get a beer later. Need I go on?

Flippantly, to Felipe, I say “I don’t want to be without my computer for that long. I’ve got work to do, work that requires my computer.” Felipe translates, again. They smile and laugh, and I can tell Felipe has translated the words sans the sentiment. He’s protecting me from my very-American, very-impatient self. Good thing, too, because before I’ve agreed to anything, Flavio has walked out of the computer repair shop and is jaywalking across four lanes of rush hour traffic with my MacBook Pro tucked under his arm like it’s a Trapper Keeper.

My heart races. I snap at Felipe, “What just happened?”

“He’s going to look at it. We go? I’m hungry.”

Temporarily distracted by thoughts of Scooby Snacks (i.e. pão de queijo, those scrumptious little cheese breads I’ve been eating day and night), I follow Felipe outside. Across the street, a Happy Hour chorinho trio enchants a boisterous buteco overcrowded by lively discount drinkers. Girls act coyly. Boys press for numbers. They lift their bottles and toast to good times and cold beer. My eyes dart through the crowd as I search for Flavio. My stomach twists into a tight knot. I’m sure he’s got a tall boy perched on top of my laptop. Like it’s a coaster, the sweat of the bottle pools on its previously-well-cared-for sleek silver casing.

My breathing becomes shallow. My hands curl into fists. I panic. I realize, in my haste to stave-off certain computer combustion, I have not password protected any of my financial information. All of my account numbers and those pesky three digit “security” codes are easily accessible. Oh god, what have I done? I really don’t want to be that American on vacation, but let’s face it, I’m in a third world country, and Flavio is really cute and nice, but he’s…Brazilian and… Well, this whole computer shop could be some kind of massive criminal front, a con to swindle naïve tourists like me.

Fuck! Shit! Dammit! This fate was way worse than the buzzing sound could ever be! Had I just waited to see my nerdy white guy at the Genius Bar at the Beverly Center, I wouldn’t be in this blasted situation. Now, my identity is going to be stolen, my credit destroyed. My future children will end-up going to Los Angeles public schools and sleeping head-to-toe in a cramped apartment in the Valley.

All at the hands of the evil and sinister mastermind, Flavio! I force myself to take a breath and consider my plight.

Belo Horizonte might be the third largest city in Brazil, but I hadn’t even heard of it until I met Felipe last year in Paris. From his description, I imagined a Brazilian version of my childhood hometown, Chicago. And, between its urban energy and love for beer, I was spot-on. The only difference is Belo Horizonte scares the crap out of me.

I know that sounds harsh. It’s just, when I look around here, I realize there are things I don’t understand and probably never will. At night, I look up and am hypnotized by the twinkling favela lights that are creeping ever higher into the hillside. What would be the most coveted land where I come from—movie stars, infinity pools, yoga—is the worst place to live in the entire city.

I pass little kids selling trinkets at the intersections and wonder, “Why aren’t they in school? Where are their parents?” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that they are malnourished and in need of a new pair of shoes.

I want so badly to do something about it, but I know it’s just my imperialistic “America the Savior” posture creeping into the equation. Haven’t we done enough? McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Blockbuster, Outback, TGI Friday’s? I want to scream to the masses, “Don’t take the pox-infected blankets!” But, I only speak English, and frankly, they’re way past being warned. President Lula bbq’d with President Bush not too long ago in Texas–the proverbial thumbs-up was heard ‘round the world. I loathe the day when America gains access to the newly found oil off the coast of Rio. Daniel Plainview’s voice rings in my ear, “…If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake…”

But, I digress. I was talking about Flavio and his gang of thieves who surely have aims to escape the favelas by stealing the identities of unsuspecting, xenophobic Americans.

Felipe and I are standing on the curb outside the computer repair shop. He’s hungry; I’m feeling like I’m on un-Fantasy Island. Wait. Is that smoke I smell? I follow my nose. Not fifty yards away, a fire rages out of control under an overpass. It’s dangerously close to a parked car. Felipe glances at it then trots across the street toward the buteco. I yell, “Do you guys have, like, 911 here?”

“For what?” he replies.

I’m flabbergasted. Can’t he see the fire? Can’t he smell the smoke? Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?!? I step off the curb in distracted pursuit. A truck swerves around me and nearly creams a Fiat. Horns. Expletives. “What the—?” I jump back and double over, choking on the exhaust just blasted into my face. I squint through the cloud to make out three arrows painted in a triangular fashion.

This was their idea of a RECYCLING truck.

Somehow I make it across the street and find Felipe. Piled high in front of him are the promised pão de queijo. I pop one into my mouth as the waiter arrives with a cold beer. He pours some into two small tumblers in front of us. I slam mine back like it’s a shot of Johnnie Walker, and secretly wish it were.

The next day, I make Felipe call the computer repair shop twenty times. At four o’clock, he finally speaks with Flavio. Soon, we’re racing through rush hour traffic to fetch my darling MacBook Pro. When I finally have it in my hands, I boot it up and brace myself for damage beyond repair. First, I look at the battery. It was at sixty-seven percent yesterday. It had better be—

67%

Huh? I check the history. That’s where I’ll catch him.

Nope. Nothing. It’s exactly the same as I left it.

All the while, Felipe and Flavio are chitchatting in singsong Brazilian Portuguese, laughing and chatting some more. They’re not concerning themselves with silly Americans who always fear the worst. Finally, they shake hands warmly, and Flavio walks over. I quickly shut my laptop and try to appear innocent.

He surprises me when he says, in perfect English, “It looks like you might have hit it on something.”

What? How dare he— I catch myself.

I take a calming breath and look at my laptop. He’s pointing at something on the sleek, silver casing. I squint. Sure enough, there is a tiny little dent on the top of it. He charms me with a smile, and I notice for the first time he has braces on his teeth. Oh, how I will long for that delightful smile when I return to Los Angeles and finally take my MacBook Pro to a Genius Bar where they will keep it for nine days and not fix it properly. I snap out of it, look at the dent then back at Flavio. I bat my eyelashes and say, “Oops, my bad.”

Katrina Elder travels the world for Walkabout Jones. Check out her personal blog, Stages of Drudgery and Triumph, at http://drudgeryandtriumph.blogspot.com/

When my sister was five,

“Go Gadget Go!” she’d say, and I’d somehow have to swallow the urge to stuff her headfirst into the toilet.

“I’m watching Charles in Charge,” I said.

I expected a moment of contemplation. She was after all a sentient being, a pinnacle of evolution. She wasn’t chasing cars down the interstate.

But little sis persisted undaunted. There was no forethought, no cause and effect, much the same as the ten or so times she’d leapt headfirst out of her crib, or the mass destruction of private property in the wildcat years that followed. Her reputation as a sort of sugarplum black widow had earned her the nom de guarre, Rebecca the Wrecker.

I had to be tough. It was for her own good. I raised the remote control like a laser, “You know,” I explained with a clean sense of purpose, “these TV remotes have a special button. One where I can turn you off.” The shift in her eyes was instantaneous and she stared at the chunky black remote as though it was a cold steel weapon.

“But you love me?” she said, like it was a question.

“I never said I’d keep you off. I’ll probably turn you back on eventually, but if you don’t get out of the way, I’ll zap you til the end of Charles in Charge… Here… Have a preview.”

For an instant everything went dead, as we hung in suspended animation. Sis waited for me to move, but I wouldn’t. Only the sound of “Charles in Charge” trickled disjointedly in the background. I pressed the red button. “How was it?”

Sis wiped a tear from her eye, “It was terrible.”

Time has passed. Adolescence, work, the depravity of gravity beginning to tug on our youthful bodies. Little sis is twenty-seven and I’m thirty-three. Our lives have run like Monopoly boards—we’ve circled once and returned home—me, a victim of poor health, sis one of unfortunate circumstance. I don’t seem to have warped her badly. Thanks to my work, she stopped chasing Inspector Gadget and started chasing Marines. Apparently, sis requires a man who can fire a basic infantry weapon. But otherwise she turned out normal. She hopes to be a school librarian, when there are jobs for school librarians. And so we sit in Marvin Gardens, little sis waiting, me recuperating, our bedrooms set at catty corner.

You learn new things about your sister when living together a second time. I’ve learned my sister loves television, loves it to the point of a twelve-step program. She’s a treasure trove of production deals, an encyclopedia of past credits. My room is filled with mom’s cookbooks, at least a thousand tomes—while sis has a super phat media center. When I go to sleep in the cookbook library, sis is calm in the light of her television. She’s watching “Christmas Wishes Comes True” starring Valerie Bertanelli, Santa Claus, and a well-oiled handyman. A blanket is swept over her knees and warm milk steams in a tall thick glass. The remote control always stays within reach and I think this goes back to our childhood.

She always holds it very tightly, always wants to know where it is.

I noticed this once, and then again, until one night it occurred to me, “Holy shit, I broke my sister!” A wave of guilt rolled over my body, and I felt a need for cosmic accounting. As a kid, I had abused the privilege of turning off my sister. I’d done so because it was convenient, and sometimes because it was fun. I turned sis off to watch tv, or listen to my Top Gun soundtrack. I turned her off occasionally just to watch her spin around. I turned her off for days and weeks, always wondering where she went. Sometimes we would have conversations. I poured us cups of lemonade and gave her oatmeal raisin cookies, then addressed her with a cordial, brother-sister salutation.

“How is your afternoon going?”

“Turn me on!”

And I should have. But I was lousy with acne, and girls didn’t like me, and there was an outside chance I was going to flunk math. I wore astigmatic contact lenses, the best technology of Reagan’s day, but the discs felt brittle on my eyes, like twin shavings of plastic. Little sis deserved better, but clearly I wasn’t up for the task. Today was a different story, however. Today was when I could finally show all I’d learned from “Charles in Charge.”

Because the root of our conflict was television, I realized moral justice demanded I endure some kind of tv torture. An evening where sis could compel me to watch anything on her dvr. I would be forced to endure whatever horrors her demented media mind fathomed. This would last as long as she wanted. I was, to use the prison vernacular, her softy, her bitch, no matter how many pounds of cosmetics were involved, or how many leading men were named Aidan. And if she harbored rage in her heart, she could choose to digitally waterboard me with all ten episodes of “The Bachelor.”

This was a settling of old scores. A move made ever more dangerous because little sister is a sadist. Maybe she’d call for reinforcements. Army. Navy. Air Force. Marines.

“Bring it on,” Wrecker said, when I made my peace offering.

I saw my future clearly now. The wheels in her head moved fast on their pins, and all I could do was smile like Gandhi, hope that my non-violent campaign might somehow win her better instincts. Sis was a sweetheart, she wasn’t all body armor. This was a woman who kept the Thanksgiving Day Parade permanently on her dvr. She enjoyed the giant cartoon balloons and fancy Broadway dance numbers.

But in the short term, she’d make it rough. For two weeks, she taunted me, whispered opaquely in my ear of everything she had in store. Or more accurately, stored. She was compiling a compendium of tampon commercials, flower ceremonies, and long-lost siblings unknowingly married, a testament to sugar and smut like none compiled before.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you,” she said too calmly.

“You enjoy my hopeless pain.”

Sis grinned, “Isn’t that the point of this whole little exercise?”

The apocalypse began at just after eight. Sis had no fewer than four Hallmark Hall of Fame movies at her immediate disposal. There was a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, but I quickly saw through that facade; knew it would never be turned on. Sis lay calm across her floor, a bowl of ice cream near her chin, as though this was a slumber party. On her bookshelves were tiny porcelain horses and women in eighteenth century gowns. It seemed an unlikely place for a massacre.

I sat on the bed. “Do your worst,” I told her.

First choice: “Farmer Wants a Wife.” “Season finale,” sis beamed. Then, to twist the knife a bit further, “You’ve never had a reality show where a farmer’s looking for a wife.”

I agreed, it was historic. Sis explained how the episode involved a battle between the final two girls—one from Texas, the other New York. Would Farmer choose Manhattan, who wandered the drug stores of rural Missouri searching for boxes of condoms? Or would he choose Dallas, the sweet girl with the big ol’ smile who looked like Snow White with a tanning bed addiction?

“Seems more his type,” sis said.

Meanwhile, Manhattan could catch the next bus. One came through town each week, we imagined. “She’d be complaining about no shoes,” sis said. One picnic and horse-drawn carriage ride later, Farmer invited the town to his farm to reveal the lucky lady’s name… on the banner of a crop duster.

“You’re sapping my will to live,” I told her.

Sis smiled and switched to the next. This one, “Movies That Rock ” had been warming on her dvr since December. It appeared harmless enough at first, until the curtain rose on Beyonce dressed as Judy Garland. Chris Brown tried to shake it like Elvis. A Pussy Cat Doll looked embarrassed as Marilyn. Carrie Underwood sang to the Von Trapps, while Mark Anthony murdered Mrs. Robinson. Big stars, bad production numbers, costumes borrowed from Busch Gardens. If torture meant laughter, sis had a killer on her hands. Usher paid homage to “Singing in the Rain”—but splashed through the puddles like a little girl. No one ever looked more graceful romping through puddles than Gene Kelly.

“Are you having a good time?” sis asked.

For a moment I’d forgotten myself, but sis didn’t look dismayed. Her look said something else all together.

“What was your plan tonight?” I asked.

“Just to spend time with you. See where it takes us.”

“Really? Just that?”

“After a long day at the grind, we need it.”

It was then I saw the whole thing clearly. Punishment was her siren song, which was strange because we’re not Catholic. Sis had used it as a way to spend an evening together. My sister is much sweeter than I am. I’ve grown cranky near middle age, while sis maintains her earnest idealism. Maybe I deserve some credit for this: For years of mistakes I aspired she not repeat. For all of the things that I did wrong, but hoped she might get right. Maybe what older siblings give balances our baser instincts, absolves us of those unfortunate moments when we fire remote controls into our loved ones. Foundations, after all, are erected on forgiveness. Life is temporary, intimacies fleeting. In the end, we learn to love the few who learn to love us.

“One thing,” I asked sis. “If you just wanted to spend time together, why not invite me to hang out?”

Sis smiled in a satisfied way. In the dark arts of sibling sadism, she’d been trained by something close to a master. She began erasing Hallmark movies, searching for something a little less brutal. Maybe Victoria’s Secret, even. We were grown and this part of our lives was over. We would have to find new ways to get under the other’s skin.

Diary finds beauty in the everyday saga of living. It appears when it feels like it.

A few times a week, I get calls from correctional institutions. Wrong numbers mostly, usually at two or three in the morning. My phone resides in the 213 area code, and as those who’ve lived in Los Angeles know, it’s an urban exchange which includes many places: Downtown, Koreatown, Crenshaw, Skid Row and one of the roughest Latin neighborhoods north of San Salvador. Half of the calls are from little drunk men slurring in Spanish, asking for a cab. Half are the steriley recorded voice of a female civil servant, speaking as though it’s the middle of the afternoon, saying, “This is a call from a Los Angeles County correctional institution. Your caller’s name is Isaak.” And then she explains I’ll be charged $3 should I accept the call.

I hang up, because why would I want to be charged three bucks to talk with some dude who I don’t even know? I realize this might appeal to some, and if the thought of being awakened by a mysterious hombre calling from prison stiffly stirs your inner juices, go forth and do what you like.

But me? I’m not looking for the late-night lowdown on the pokey. I’ve never been intrigued by the pokey. I take the word of those who have visited the pokey. Plus, I don’t want to burn the guy’s one call and leave him smoldering over a weekend. I picture him sitting, repeating my number over and over, wrathfully plotting his revenge like Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear.

So I hang up, but each time I wonder. What’s it like on his end? Does he hear me answer, grasp I’m not Bo’s Bail Bonds, and start busting fist-sized holes through the lime green walls at county? Do the police give him a do-over? Have wrong number regulations been properly codified?

A few years ago, I could have explained things to a desk sergeant. How I long for the days when it was so easy! When I might have just yawned, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and explained that someone transposed a digit. That some bail guy was losing his shirt. I could tell a man and be done with it, then go back to sleep. But what does one do when the wheels of justice run thru 1-800-Collect? Do I shout into the vacant air, hope that our call is being recorded? And what do I say? Sucks to be you? What is Miss Manners’ advice for handling automated phone calls from criminals one doesn’t know?

My old number got queries for Rheem Valley Bowl. Kids wanted to know the cost of shoes. Different time, different place.

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In Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Sal Paradise trundles off to San Francisco with $50 in his pocket and just about nothing else. The trip is doomed from the start. Sal’

When I set out from LA on my own trip this summer, it wasn’t with a predisposition to mirror Kerouac’s trek. But in effect, I hit my own shit storm once I arrived in Lake Tahoe; one that left me just as flat-footed, and like Sal Paradise, prematurely haunted and tired of travel. In my first entry, I alluded to a serious medical condition, one that sapped me of my strength and made me question my very future. I didn’t delve into specifics. Sometimes the past is left behind for good reason. But as my trip moved into gear, I began to notice a resurfacing of many of the same symptoms that have plagued my life in recent years. Extreme exhaustion, an inability to concentrate and mood swings teetering toward depression became a daily exercise. A trip to a new doctor confirmed my worst suspicions. The physical and mental toll of my travels had contributed to a medical relapse.

I suffer from something that is little understood but is becoming increasingly common. It’s caused andropause, and the suffixal similarity to menopause isn’t accidental. Have you ever seen an old man cry? Then you’ve seen what happens when a man gets hormonal. Just as women experience a drastic reduction of hormones as they age, men lose power too. The average man loses roughly 10% of his body’s ability to make testosterone every ten years. Often, a seventy-year old man has less than half what he had when he was twenty. But some of us lose our stash even faster. Chemicals in food, free estrogens in the air, and a surfeit of other ills are exacerbating the problem. Estimates suggest that 20 million men could suffer andropause-like symptoms in the United States within the next twenty years. 

With that said, you can probably guess what happened next. As my energy decreased, my ability to do the daily work to build Walkabout Jones dramatically lessened. Stories I wanted to cover while in Lake Tahoe, places I hoped to visit, and people I wanted to interview, slowly were crossed off the list. When my blood work came back in early September, my hormone levels had fallen two-thirds below normal for a man my age. My only treatment is anabolic steroids, and to make matters stickier, in this age of Barry Bonds’ swolen noggin, it’s often difficult to find doctors willing to prescribe testosterone and syringes. My previous doctor wasn’t worried about the dangers of hormone replacement therapy. He was worried about getting sued.

So back I drove to Southern California, grateful for good times in Lake Tahoe, but needful of medical attention administered by those in the know. The good news is that I’m getting my strength back. A loving family, a good doctor and plenty of rest and healthy food have made a difference. I’m hopeful that I’ll eventually be strong enough to take another stab at the road. I’m also trying to figure out funding. With improved health and financing, I’ll be better able to focus on the great writing and pictures this endeavor is predicated upon. I truly believe that there’s room on the Internet for this kind of art project. Not everyone wants to look at boobies all the time.

Regardless, I’m grateful for the chance for this adventure. Thanks to all of the truly awesome people of Reno and Lake Tahoe who made my stay a good one. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, as the old cliche goes, and for the first time in a long time I can see it. Look forward to discovering what’s on the other side.

When I answered, they didn’t like my answer. Some responded with “???” While others rebutted with “!!!” Others wrote with awesome candor how they’d thought about my big idea, and though they wished me great success, and truly wanted to be supportive, if they were going to be completely honest, it didn’t make one lick of sense at all.

My friends are kind and decent people. Like patron saints, selflessly giving, they’ve welcomed moi into their lives with a measure of fidelity one rarely sees around these days. They’re like the golden-hearted grandmother who adopts the rangy, three-legged dog. I’m the dog in this analogy. And how do I repay such kindness? I piss on her rugs, and feast on her pillows, and drink from her toilets, and howl-ll at three o’clock in the morning. It’s a mystery why my friends keep me around. I guess to absolve their smallest of sins and assure their easy passage to heaven. Otherwise, it beats the crap out of me.

“It’ll be an adventure,” I had told them, after I ignored their warnings. “I’ll thumb my nose at wicked convention—that big, bullying eighteen wheeler hogging both lanes on life’s divine highway. I’ll make an end run, flip the bird, and find a better road to travel.” It occurs to me now that maybe I shouldn’t have broken the news in a mass-mailed text because that’s when my phone began constantly ringing, events extending beyond the lazy reach of slower moving email. They worked to play things calm and cool but I felt the panic in their voices. Their words were lean and softly clipped and very stiffly formed.

“It’s not so unusual,” I told them.

“Who are you, Tom Jones?” they said.

I saw their mood was drifting toward mockery. If they wanted to beat up on me, okay, fine, but don’t attack Velvet Tom. “C’mon, it’s not so bad,” I said. “People go out on the road everyday. I appreciate your concern, but there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. I’m young, single, the world is my oyster.”

“You’re not so young,” they curtly said.

Do you ever have those moments when you’re talking with your friends, and they say something that’s so latently hostile, you begin to rummage through your garage for yarn and buttons and that extra set of voodoo dolls the shaman next door gave you for Christmas? This was where I found myself. But then I took a step back and objectively looked at the situation. I was infallible, this much was obvious. But that didn’t necessarily mean my friends were sharp-tongued, miserable bastards. Hadn’t I compared them with grandmas and saints? How soon could I forget?

The hardest part about any relationship is knowing when to be quietly brave, and when a deeper, more intimate history allows you the luxury to share with others how you’re actually feeling. But even with good friends, the truth isn’t easy. I had a marble-sized lump in my throat. “Things aren’t good right now,” I said.

“What do you mean? Is it your health?”

“No. I’m doing fine with that. It’s this place. It’s waking up every morning and feeling like I’m going nowhere. There are no good jobs left in LA and none of the women I know want to date me. If this place succeeds at anything, it’s showing you where you don’t measure up. I’m not tall enough, or handsome enough, or rich enough, or famous enough. There’s a chance that maybe I’m smart enough, but nobody in a hundred miles honestly cares very much about that.”

“You have to keep the faith,” they said. “Things are going to get better.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Okay. Then tell me how the traffic will be tomorrow on the 405.”

I know this sounds a little glib. I understand the precepts of faith, but it’s easier when your object of yearning is something a tad more run-of-the mill. Like golf clubs, a Fendi bag, or a pony. Not when you’re staring at oodles of bills and a tauntingly finite bank account. To those ends, I was trying to ascertain whether my friends were secretly psychic. Maybe they actually could see the future. If yes, imagine the possibilities. If no, the far more likely scenario, why were they saying with such strong certainty that all of my troubles would turn around? Didn’t they realize that false hope was torture? I can be a contemptuous, cranky old sass when plied by empty platitudes.

“Someone didn’t love you enough,” they said.

“All I’m asking is how you’re so sure. You want me to bet my bottom dollar on a place that’s provided little more than disappointment. How is my life about to get better? If you really feel so bullish about it, regale me with the magic of now.”

I heard only a crackling silence and I knew they had no ready answer. I gazed out of my bedroom window. I lived in a tall apartment complex and all around were the shadows of buildings cast before a setting sun. My eyes fell on the streets below, every artery hopelessly clogged by syrupy streams of evening traffic. I watched an old man push a cart past a well-dressed woman as she laughed on her phone. It was the same old ugly parade. Life in LA: The ultimate buzzkill. But it hadn’t always been like this. There was a time when the glass was full. I wondered when Los Angeles had lost all of its magic.

At first, the city is something else: Bluntly electric during the day, brash and flush with boastful excitement, and cloaked in glamorous debauchery once the sun goes down. But then one morning, you wake up, and everything that once felt luminous has faded into stripmalls, billboards and other low-slung civic sprawl. Variety, that strongest of urban intoxicants, gives way to careful calculations of time surrendered slogging through traffic. Weathermen speak of inversion layers. Your friends change faster than your phone. On lonely nights, at first surprising, you wander into smokeless dives, far removed from the circular spotlights, and strike up fleeting conversations with toothless strangers across the bar. You entertain Gums with your usual stories, occasionally peppering them with lies. You’ll never see Gums again. Not by accident, not if you tried. Better to just sip your drink, shoot some pool, ogle girls while their boyfriends are peeing, then bumper home through midnight traffic to a flat as expensive as it is small.

The author, Raymond Chandler once said, “If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood. And if they had been any better, I should not have come.” For seven years, I’d been here, waiting for Chandler’s ‘trenchant lady’ to lovingly open up her arms. I’d come in search of opportunity, though lately it seemed my life had become like an endless hall of closing doors. I had gotten sick and the hospitals were always teeming. The doctors never learned my name. After awhile, I couldn’t help feeling there had to be a better place. Better than a town where most everybody’s true intentions were as soiled and cloudily opaque as the summer air.

“Why not move someplace else?” my friends asked.

“That’s the raison d’être for this trip.”

“The what?”

“The reason for doing it. I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t want to move anywhere that I’ve been. And I sure don’t want to live near you. So how else should I go about it? Pick a pretty dot on a map?”

“Wherever you go, you’ll be the meanest grouch in town.”

“You’re full of donkey parts,” I said.

“How about this?” my friends said hopefully. “Life has been really hard on you lately. You’ve had a run of bad luck. Why not give it one more year? One more year for good things to happen. You can last in LA a little bit longer. It’s just another few months.”

“You make it sound as quaint as San Quentin.”

“Enough with the smart talk,” they said impatiently. “You’re living in the center of the entertainment universe. Television, movies, all of that stuff. Why not drive over to NBC and fill out a job application? Those sitcoms don’t just write themselves.”

“That’s exactly how they hire writers.”

“You’re always doing this,” they said, with billowing exasperation. “Big ideas and oddball schemes. Isn’t it time to settle down?”

I considered it briefly so I wouldn’t hurt their feelings. Then I answered, “No.”

“But this trip doesn’t make any sense!”

“Talk to anyone in LA and they’ll say it makes all the sense in the world.”

“You have everything that you need right there. Nightclubs. Movie premieres. You can play volleyball on the beach in January! What more could you possibly want?”

The conversation hit a bump. The mood was becoming so frazzled and frayed that not only was I afraid of the future—of all the uncertainty my life had begotten, and all the things far beyond my control—but I wondered if I would lose my friends. Maybe they would finally give up. Most had built very orderly lives with steady jobs and comfortable homes. And here I was, a donnybrook of seismic schemes, reaping havoc on all that was normal. When it came to staying in LA, I understood their firm positions. My friends had a portrait of my life, one they’d gathered from getaway jaunts through Hollywood and Venice Beach. This was the city they passingly knew. They had never seen it without its makeup. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I’d never played volleyball in January.

“I know you’re trying to help. So for the millionth time, I’m sorry.”

“Save it for someone with ears,” they said.

“I know you think it’s nuts,” I told them, my voice shedding a few hard decibels. “And fine, I guess it’s a little crazy, packing up and running off like some kind of wild, barefooted hobo. But please, try to have some faith. I’ve been here long enough to know all this city has to offer. But it isn’t where I’m supposed to be. Not now, maybe never. When I first came here, I dreamed about staying. Now I only dream about leaving. All I can think of is packing my car and driving out of the Los Angeles basin. Of all those landmarks fluttering by until I reach that magic place where the road gradually starts to rise and the city disappears behind me.”

“Leading where?”

“People. Places. Possibilities. C’mon. Trust me. Can’t you try?”

They sighed and I knew their hearts were true. Like saints, and grandmas, and kindly sea captains who want nothing more than to keep your ship from hopelessly running aground. “You’re the writer,” they quietly said. “But if you’re going to act like a maniac, at least have the sense to write some of it down.”

And so it went, and so it is. My bed is in a storage locker, none too far from Downtown. I don’t know how much time will pass before I’ll sleep in it again. One Sunday morning, a few weeks back, I locked that steel door one last time. Then I skipped down a flight of stairs to my car and set off north on Interstate 5. “Goodbye Big City,” was all I said, as the highway rose up toward the Grapevine. Los Angeles became little more than a speck, and soon I found myself twisting and turning, tracing a path along mountainous roads. When I came out on the other end, I saw a great big world in front of me.

Photos: LA Nightscape: Hope Street skyscrapers, Downtown Los Angeles – Daytime Streetscape: Sunset Boulevard, East Hollywood – Classic Lamp: Old Bank District, Downtown Los Angeles – Window to the 101: Hollywood Freeway as seen from Little Tokyo.