I wasn't allowed to be angry when I was growing up. I wasn't allowed to have reactions to any wrongness that was directed my way, in part, because the wrongness tended to find its way up my branch through the roots of the good old family tree. Honor thy mother and father at all times, you know. We'll get into that later.
Anger has never been difficult for me to express; I just express it in the wrong direction. If someone is a bastard to me, I clench my jaw and then get depressed. It's a snap reaction, one of those reactions you pick up in your formative years--if you were guilted into being the family punching bag--and though it's a tremendously unhealthy and unreasonable venting strategy in regard to the self and to others, it's also a bitch to kick. It's been one of the things I've worked very hard to change throughout the years.
So now, I guess you could say I get angry. Really angry. I'm pretty confrontational, particularly where I currently live, Hollywood California, where no one seems to have any manners, where people with twenty-seven items get in the "ten items or less" line, where people drive fifteen miles below the speed limit because a Bluetooth headset is somehow so distracting that they're incapable of operating both it and their car. Where no one knows how to merge from three lanes to two. Where no one knows how to parallel park. Where people take their sweet time maneuvering both a blunt and a left turn on the green arrow, so that only one--maybe two if lucky--cars can enjoy the privelege of the green arrow. Where people are so simultaneously narcissistic and mannerless that I find myself raging apoplectic every time I get behind the wheel.
So I finally got into a fight, and it was everything I dreamed it could be.
Runyon Canyon is a park in West Hollywood. If you've ever driven north on La Brea or Fairfax, and you've seen a cragged hill carved up with butter colored trails, then you've seen Runyon Canyon. It is the preferred exercise spot for actors, actresses, studio executives and my dogs, Maxie and Murphy, which is unfortunate because I have to take them there each day and be close to actors, actresses, and studio executives. I can't tell you the superficial inanity I hear there.
While heading up to the second overlook via the long trail (Murph requires a ton of exertion)--the girls and I fell in behind this douche with floppy hair and Diesel jeans on--oh yes--a Bluetooth headset. He had with him a dog he called "Wanda." Wanda was a some sort of pitbull mix, perhaps pitbull and pointer, and she exhibited all the behaviors of a dog with dominance issues. She pounced on other dogs' backs and necks, bounded around banging into humans and never listening to the douchebag (who would?), who called her in an effeminate tone she ignored the entire way up the mountain. He whined "Wanda, come," no less than a hundred times. Wanda never came. When Wanda took a shit on the side of the trail, douchebag kicked rocks over it. Apparently, its not possible to pick up shit AND operate a Bluetooth headset at the same time.
I began to fume.
We got to the top of the mountain, a good spot for Maxie to sun herself and flirt with the actresses, and for Murph to play "fetch the tenny ball." I tossed her tenny, and not surprisingly, Wanda dove on Murph's back and attacked her, which the douchebag responded to by pointing his pussy finger in Wanda's apathetic snout and effeminately cursing her. I just lost my shit.
"You listen to me and you listen good," I found myself saying after bounding over to someone who was at least twenty years my senior and probably powerful within the Hollywood hierarchy.
"Your fucking dog is out of control. Your dog has BEEN out of control the entire way up the mountain. Either get control of your fucking dog, or put it on a fucking leash."
He was rather aghast. He took off the Bluetooth, and though he had already scolded his dog for attacking mine, he said, "Your dog attacked Wanda."
[What kind of man names his fucking dog Wanda?]
I clenched my fists. I nearly punched him. "Oh no, no, no, dipshit. Your dog is a fucking mess; it attacked three dogs on the way up, and now it just attacked mine. Put it on a fucking leash."
"N...no."
A crowd had gathered. Shirtless, glistening Hollybots with visible six pack abs. They liked this next part.
"And how 'bout if you pick up your dog's fucking shit piles instead of kicking rocks over them?"
"It...it was diareah!"
"No it wasn't. I saw it. It was a huge pile of shit."
He turned circles, red in the face. There was some muttering, and then he looked me in the eye and said, "Do you know who I am?"
I burst out laughing. Cackling. Really, really hard. What place is this? What matters here? Who suggests they're so important I should grant their mongrel the pleasure of chewing on the neck of my precious Murph pup without protest?
"Do I know who you are? That's priceless. You know who you are? I'll tell you who you are: you're a fucking pussy who can't even control a dog, that's who you are, and you get your fucking dog on a leash and you pick up it's shit, because you're ruining it for the rest of us responsible dog owners."
With twenty Hollybots snickering, I started back down the trail. I called out, "Maxie, Murphy, come." My well-behaved pups trotted up to me without hesitation, which doesn't always happen--I must admit--and I had never been so proud. Just to be a cunt I turned and said, "That's how it's done," and then "Douchebag."
Two models who saw my outburst approached me on the descent and said, "I cannot believe you just spoke to him like that. Do you know who he is?" I told them I didn't give a shit, but now I wish I would have asked because it would have made the fight all that much more satisfying knowing the day of which raging douchebag I had ruined.
What is wrong with this place and these people within it? I would sooner leave Steven Spielberg's lifeless corpse on the top of that mountain before I'd let his dog attack mine because he's "somebody."
Posted by The Bunny at 11:30 PM