I read from a glossed card with a hot Latina on it:
S. Guaro! No carbs! No sugars! No additives! No impurities! No regrets!

No regrets? It's a rather hefty promise, isn't it?

I read on:
S. Guaro (which I'm now calling "S. Guano") has 14% fewer calories than vodka and 44% fewer calories than rum, and I know this to be true because it is stated quite clearly on the card to be an excerpt from a "Self Magazine" article. The character of Self Magazine is unimpeachable. There isn't money enough to compel Self Magazine to print hocus pocus about the healthiness of foods--MSG-laden protein shakes, supplement bars with longer half lives than diamonds. The health experts at Self Magazine say that smooth, white bat shit is good for me, so I say, pour me a double, barkeep. Tonight I'll live up to my reputation as "batshit crazy."

I greedily take my Guano from the red head, telling him that his liquor sounds like the name for feces. He stares blankly, and this makes me chuckle. I turn back to my non-alcoholic friends who are sipping juices, The Producer and Paul Cullum. Paul is a writer, a real writer who has a hundred impressive irons in the project fire, cover stories, hurricane Katrina pieces and something for the New York Times. He asks me what I am working on, and I say, "going three days without masturbating." He doesn't hear me. I am thankful for this, because this is something I would later regret saying. No regrets? Whatever.

We are at an event called "The Best of LA," and we have been invited there by Paul, who writes for the weekly publication throwing the bash. The event is being held at Union Station. I am nostalgic and it is not a good feeling, for it was ten months prior that I arrived in Los Angeles via Union Station, sick, bruised and hoping to find a friend. I'll explain.

-

People call me "batshit crazy," and that's because they've never spent time with Gina. I met her through Tucker about a year ago, and we quickly became phone friends. She and I would 'chat' for hours. This means that she would ramble manically and I would listen to it. She needed a friend, and I needed attention.

It was decided that I was to spend January at her spacious home in San Diego, writing, RESTING, farting around and spending some time with her little boy. It's very important to note that I was going to San Diego to do some resting. On New Year's Eve morning, I flew out of Midway airport San Diego bound. Right before I boarded I called Gina with my flight information.

Gina: "You're not going to try and hit on me are you?"
Me: "I hadn't planned on it."
Gina: "Oh. Good. I'm not dykey like that so keep your distance."
Me: "Um...okay."

When I arrive at the San Diego airport, I am met by one of her friends. His name is Michael. He is oddly nervous, hands trembling beneath the heavy cuff of his designer leather coat. He wears obscenely shiny shoes. They sparkle, one at a time, while we walk to the baggage claim...LEFT! Ahhhh, RIGHT! Ohhhh. He has wonderful manners and eyes like an infant's. He's too pretty to be a man.

My considerable baggage thumps against the metal edge of the corral. I point to it, and he sparkles over, picks it up with ease and carries it to his car, a black one, obscene like his shoes, low to the ground and all engine. In the passenger seat I feel sexy. I ask him if he wants to wear the purple or the pink spandex cat suit to "Cannonball Run" this year, hinting that I'm partial to pink. He has no clue what I'm talking about. He stares blankly. This awkward moment ends in greater awkwardness when he puts on a mix disc of violent punk music and plays it too loudly.

We drive fast. We are "that car," the one driven by the guy who hates his life, the one that zips from lane to lane with a few feet of buffer between bumpers making everyone else slam on their breaks in horror. We go on like this for what seems like an eternity. This frightens me since Gina has told me she lives a stone's throw from the airport.

Me: [shouting over the punk] "WHERE ARE WE GOING?"
Michael: "I wanted to show you my house."
Me: "OH. OKAY."

It then occurs to me that this is not a good scene. I have no idea who this man is. He is more than a tad strange, and is driving me around a city I've never been to at an uncomfortable speed so that we can go to his house where we will be all alone. It's not good, but I try to not think about it. I switch my pepper spray from purse to sweatshirt for easy access.

We are near the ocean, about a mile from it or so, when it begins to get very hilly. We zoom anyway while the car stereo screams, "I NEVER LOVED YOU...I NEVER LOVED YOU... I NEVER LOVED YOU...YOU CUNT! AHHHHHH!" I don't like San Diego.

We stop at a house a block from the Pacific. He owns a nice little place, not that impressive, but nice. I sort of "oooo" and "ahhh" because it is what's required of me at the moment, but I only want to be taken to my phone friend's home for writing and resting and farting around.

More zooming and screaming, and we are at Gina's "spacious house" which is, in actuality, a two-bedroom apartment, seven hundred square feet perhaps. I am undaunted by her vast misreporting of dwelling size because I am finally safe from Michael and his car.

Gina meets me at the door to the apartment with wide eyes and an undulating jaw, the likes of which I have not seen since Florida. She is wrinkled beyond her thirty or so years, but she is also spritely and energetic. She hugs me and then welcomes me inside.

Gina: "Oh my god, I'm so glad you've come, I didn't think you were actually going to come, and I'm not really made up or anything, but oh my god, I'm so glad you got on the plane, and this is going to be great, and isn't Michael really nice..."

She gives me a present, to my horror. I am not prepared with a reciprocal gift. It is wrapped in a My Little Pony bag, pink, with metallic ribbon that you curl with scissors. Inside of it are several pony pencils and a container of acne face wash from Walgreens, opened and half-used. I am confused by this present, mainly because I don't have acne. I put the pencils and face wash back into the bag, and while I'm doing this, she unzips my luggage and begins to stow my things into the various corners of her apartment, a few shirts over here, some shoes over there...it all gets tucked away. Again, I am confused, and this is when it dawns on me that I was safer in the zoomy hate car with Michael. I go to the kitchen and pour myself a large vodka, no mixer.

-

I decide I like the LA Weekly very much, for they know how to throw a party. The lines for the various bars are no more than two thick, and should they get thicker, I could always grab some Guano off the trays of the mostly Hispanic, mostly hot cocktail waitresses. I have eaten a world-famous "Pink's" hot dog as per the Producer's recommendation. Paul Cullum informs the two of us that there is a "Chocolate Fountain" in the foyer, and we waste no time finding it. Largely undiscovered, it bubbles over on a corner table surrounded by piles of marshmallows, bits of cake and a tree made of strawberries. I eat one of each item drizzled with chocolate, and...okay, three more strawberries. I photograph the Producer as she goes wild with the marshmallows. She has a zippy Asian metabolism, the bitch.

The music is good too. The DJ is quite clever with his matchups, Missy Elliot and Nirvana, Freddy Mercury and The Black Eyed Peas, Taylor Dane and Ludacris. I tell the waiter by the Baklava table that he looks like Freddy Mercury, and he stares blankly before saying "Yeah...but I'm straight." Then what's that mustache all about Mr. Macho?

A girl floats by in Brazilian jeans and a midriff shirt, which ends just below her saline mounds. Her hair, black, falls in glossy sheets around her face. Her midsection could be entered into and ultimately win the New York State Fair butter sculpture competition. I lean toward the Producer and say, "Now that's something you don't often see in Chicago."

Producer: "What's that?"
Me: "A midriff shirt?"
Producer: "Its almost a uniform out here."

Later, we have to explain what a FUPA is to Paul Cullum. He has never heard of the acronym for "Fat Upper Pussy Area" before, and what's more, he doesn't understand how a woman could have fat on her upper pussy area. There are so few overweight women in Los Angeles that it takes ten minutes of scanning the populace to spot an example, and when I finally do spy a FUPA, I have had too much Guano. I exclaim, "RIGHT THERE! LOOK! THERE'S A FAT PUSSY!" The owner of the FUPA turns, glares and walks away. No regrets, eh? I don't think so.

-

Gina: "I can't wait for thish party, its going to be great, and you'll jus love my boyfrien Matty and 'is friends, and this part of town is real [hic] arsy farrrsy, and has all these great stree' musicians and stuff, and I think you'll really like it there, and..."

It is 6pm on New Year's Eve night. Gina is hammered, and hasn't put her pants on yet. I sit on the edge of her toilet in shock, sipping vodka with a dollop of olive juice, watching her fiddle with her pigtails for the eight hundredth time.

Gina: "So I heard you have a little crush on Michael."
Me: "Um...no. I mean, he's real nice and stuff, but..."
Gina: "Oh! He told me you guys made out already."
Me: "Um...no. He showed me his house and that's..."
Gina: [rubbing a banged elbow] "Did he? Awwww...he's so proud of his house. It's in such a great neighborhood, so close to the water, and it's the first apartment he's had all to himself, so he keeps it real nice, and..."
Me: "Huh? He doesn't own it?"
Gina: "No. He just rents it."

Again, I am confused. I've rented many nice apartments, but as they ultimately belonged to my landlords, I've never showed them off to my friends, acquaintances or random girls I've just picked up at the airport. I mean it's rather easy to rent isn't it? You call the landlord, have him or her run your credit, sign a lease and move your shit in--not a major accomplishment.

Michael has been waiting patiently in the living room. When we are finally ready, he drives us to "his house" in the zoomy hate car. Both Gina and I choose to sit in the cramped back seat. Gina passes out in my lap.

When we reach the hills and ocean part San Diego, Michael and I carry her corpse into "his house." He heats up a burrito for her, which she eats, cries about and then promptly vomits up at 7pm on New Year's Eve. We have tucked her into Michael's bed for the night when her boyfriend Matty arrives. He looks like Gobo from Fraggle Rock. He wakens her and then asks Michael and I to leave so that they can "talk."

I sit soberly in the living room with Michael. Inside the bedroom, the moaning turns to shouting. The shouting turns to screaming, there are several banging noises, presumably the sound of a Fraggle being thrown against sheetrock, and then Gobo emerges with his pants half up, holding an eye and bleeding from the nose. "YOU CUNT!" He rushes from the house.

Gina falls onto the living room floor in her undies. "I DON' WANNA LIVE!" She stumbles into the kitchen and retrieves and long, and thankfully dull, knife from Michael's silverware drawer, which she feverishly rakes over her wrist. Nothing happens. She collapses again. Gina has now been twice unconscious and it is only 8pm on New Year's Eve. Michael carries her to the couch, knocks the dust off his hands, winks cheekily and asks, "So whuddyu wanna do now?" I pick up the discarded knife. It's a butter knife.

Happy New Year's to me.

-

There are girls in panties and gold paint at this party. They have on bikini-like shorts and gold boots, tiny triangles for a top, and on their backs are airbrushed angel wings. I catch them by the chocolate fountain, and take their picture. I say, "wouldn't it be nice if I could just dip you girls in the fountain?" They smile blankly while I imagine it. Mmm, mmm, mmm...I thank them for posing so sexily and rejoin the Producer who is unapologetically shoving strawberries into her little Asian mouth. Bitch.

It occurs to me that I should mingle and speak to all the LA people, but I am having wicked fun doing the opposite. I don't have much in common with these people and this is not so much a bad thing as it is an intriguing thing. They use the word "ironic" a little too often for my taste. "Is this Michael Jackson t-shirt ironic? Or does it look like I'm trying to be ironic, but I'm not really clever enough to be ironic?" It's hard to tell the homeless from the millionaires, and the women resemble extras from 'Carrie,' who've been on a coke bender since the movie wrapped in 1980, pig's blood and everything. When you do engage them, they are unique and witty, but why should I bother with all that tedious intrigue when there are chocolate fountains, buttery midriffs and naked angels to take in? I'll just stand back and let my senses be piggish.

Should I feel the need to be "ironic" I can laugh heartily and say, "Here I am, "batshit crazy" while sipping bat shit." It's my little secret for the moment. A delicious, minty flavored one.

-

Oh, I love San Diego. This is because there is a stripper rapping on my lap. Seriously, I am in a crowded bar at 2am, and a woman in red hot pants and matching pasties is rapping on my lap, "TAKE YOUR FUCKING CLOTHES OFF, SO I CAN EAT YOUR PUS-SY!" No need to tell me twice, I say. She pulls out a can of whipped cream, sprays a little dollop onto her pasty and I lick it off. I experience the first feelings of comfort since my arrival to this confounded place. Then I catch a glimpse of Michael leering from a corner, jealous of the girl. My comfort vanishes faster than sanity in San Diego.

[Midnight came and went while tending to half-conscious Gina, crying and suicidal Gina. My only consolation prize was the bar and the pasties and nice fat ass in a pair of red hot pants. I decide it was a good consolation. I'd do it over again gladly.]

In the morning, Michael zooms us home, but not before showing us albums full of artistic pictures his friend has taken of him faking anguish in black eyeliner and a grim reaper robe. When we reach Gina's spacious/tiny house/apartment she takes a horse pill of pure Vicodan (for the hangover, of course). Her ex-husband arrives with her son. We all sit down to play a game of "Chutes and Ladders," and this is when the Vicodan becomes too much for Gina. She elbows me in the ribs and whispers, "watch my kid, I'm gonna go do a line."

Regret sets in. Heavily. I wait for Gina to get back and then leash her dogs and take them around the corner with my cell phone.

Me: "Oh my fucking god, she's crazy! Everyone's crazy. I have to get out of here."
Tucker: "Shhhh...it's okay. Go to the train station and take the train to LA. I'll have my friend [The Producer] pick you up. You can stay at her place."
Me: "Okay."
Tucker: "You're going to be fine. Just get to the train station. I'll call [The Producer.]"

I walk to the very top of the hill and look out. I can see no train station. In fact I see nothing for miles.

When I get back, Gina looks at my cell phone suspiciously.

Gina: [not smiling] "Where did you go?"
Me: [disturbed] "For a walk."
Gina: [snottily] "Whatever."

When it is bedtime for the little boy, I help him brush his teeth, don his jammies and say his prayers. After he is tucked in, Gina lies next to him and tells him how thankful she is to have the "greatest little boy" as her son. It is touching. I am supposed to be at the train station already, but I can't bring myself to leave. The kid is beautiful.

Instead, I put my own pajamas on and lie down on the couch with a blanket. Gina tells me I am to sleep in her bed with her, and I am once more confused. This is the same Gina who begged me to keep my distance because she wasn't dykey.

I curl into a fetal ball in her bed, but she won't let me sleep, and I have a feeling the cocaine has something to do with this. She pokes me in the ribs to wake me up and ask me this: "How was Michael in bed?"

Me: "What? I didn't sleep with him. I haven't touched any part of him."
Gina: "Really?"
Me: "Yes."
Gina: "He said you guys had sex."
Me: "Well, we didn't. We didn't even touch."
Gina: "MY MOTHER BEATS ME!"
Me: "What? Did you just say..."

She collapses onto my fetal ball in tears. All night we discuss the many ways her mother has beaten her up as well as the reasons for the beatings.

Gina: [slobbering] "I don't want to burden you with this, but she's coming down from LA tomorrow to take us all out to lunch and I'm afraid that she's going to hit me."
Me: "Well, I'll be there, and I can handle myself. Everything's going to be fine, okay? You just need sleep."
Gina: [snorting] "BUT YOU DON'T KNOW, BUNNY!!!!! You have NO IDEA what she used to do to me! The screaming and ripping out my hair, and the way you dug your nails into me, MOM! YOU THINK THAT WAS OKAY, MOM?!"
Me: "Okay, shhhh...I'm Bunny. I'm Bunny. Everything's going to be okay."
Gina: "NO, IT'S NOT! She still hits me!"
Me: "Okay...maybe you should talk to your dad about this..."
Gina: [matter of factly] "I can't...he's a child molestor."

It goes on like this till the sun comes up. My ribs are poked again, around 10am, right before the abusive mother arrives. I splash my face with cold water and ready myself for a rumble. There is a knock at the door.

Gina: "Mom?"
Mother: "Yes. It's mommy."
Gina: [opening the door] "Mommy! Oh my mommy!" They hug, and kiss like nothing violent has ever transpired between them. And nothing violent does.

-

I decide that Guano is tasty. I have had a net ton of it. But there is something far tastier in my sights, and it's making its way toward me. The LA Weekly has had the most genius foresight to rent the In-N-Out Burger trailer. There are now hot Hispanic waitresses walking the patio with the most delectable burger on earth piled high on the tray, little pyramids of sex in a bun.

While eating our burgers, we spy coupons tossed onto the middle of the cocktail tables. I examine one. It is glossy like the card explaining the Guano liquor, and it says this:

"Sports TV, Bachelor and Birthday Parties, Sensual Atmosphere for Couples 18 and over..."

Curiosity piqued, I flip it over:

VIP PASS TO SCORE'S!

JACKPOT! LA WEEKLY, I FUCKIN' LOVE YOU!

-

I am with Gina in a souvenir shop around the corner from "Michael's home." I am in no mood to shop because I have barely slept in days. Gina has slipped little bottles of warm Cuervo into my purse to make me feel better. I do not understand how this is supposed to do the trick. I only want to sleep, or to leave so that I can sleep. I know I have get out of San Diego, but the kid is just so damn beautiful, an innocent in the mental shitstorm that is his mommy.

Gina: [swigging from a little bottle of Absolut] "Someone keeps calling Child Protective Services on me. I wish I knew who it was."

I think it could be anyone. I think about doing it myself all the time.

We leave the souvenir shop and go into a head shop. I fall asleep on a bench in the incense cubby. Gina finds me and pokes me in the ribs to wake me up. On the way out, I spy a bumper sticker with a picture of William Shatner in his Star Trek gear on it, and I think how nice it would be if I could just "beam" myself back to Chicago.

After checking out the Pacific ocean from the safe distance of the boardwalk (the beach has been closed because someone has hidden hypodermic needles in the sand) we walk back to Gina's SUV. On the way, we are inundated with crackhead beggars. Gina lets one use her cell phone, and he uses it to call New York. His buddy asks me to buy him coffee. He treats me like Pol Pot when I tell him to buy his own damn coffee. I am a "fascist" and a "republican" and I didn't even know it.

When we get back to the house, I fall asleep on the couch. Gina pokes me in the ribs and says, "You have to take me to my D.W.I classes."

-

The sun sets behind the walls Union Station. Guano passes by me in twenty-cup increments every few minutes. I am surrounded by fascinating people to whom I am an exotic Midwestern beast, and while I bask in this odd glory an angel with ass cheeks like boulders saunters by. I've never seen anything so round. There are two of them, to boot. Glorious! I follow them with my whole upper body as they pass, and this is exactly the kind of thing one does on Guano and later regrets. Oh well.

Inside Union Station, trains full of alert passengers enter LA. I see them when I go to the bathroom, which I do in ten-minute increments because I am drinking vast amounts of bat shit liquor. They wait for pickups and taxicabs on familiar leather benches with art deco arm rests. I remember doing the same thing ten months prior. Except I wasn't alert. I was miserable.

-

The skin of my neck is stinging with cold. I have just taken an icy shower to break my fever. I take my temperature again. I am at 103 degrees, which is good only because I was previously at 106. I call Tucker and he yells at me.

Tucker: "YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT THAT FUCKING PLACE A WEEK AGO! I DON'T CARE HOW ADORABLE THAT KID IS! THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO FOR HIM! NOW YOUR FUCKING BRAIN IS COOKING IN YOUR HEAD!"
Me: "I know. I know. I just feel terrible for him."
Tucker: "GET TO THE TRAIN STATION! GO TO LA! THE PRODUCER SAID YOU CAN STAY WITH HER AS LONG AS YOU LIKE!"

I consider calling Michael to see if he might take me to the train station, but his number is erased from Gina's speed dial, as he and Gina have decided to never speak to each other again. I don't know why, but I expect it's because they are both bonafide, batshit crazy.

Gina is in her bedroom crying through the phone to her mother. I can hear her wail about me through her closed door, saying things like "why doesn't anyone like me?" and "I should just kill myself." My desire to leave is tempered with sympathy for her. It can't be easy to be this insane. But what she does next eradicates my sympathy.

She hangs up the phone, and kicks the bedroom door open. It slams against the doorstop then flies back into her face. She slams it against the wall again, pounds into the living room, stands furiously over me with a pointed forefinger and yells "YOU NEED TO START PICKING UP AFTER YOURSELF!" I can't think of a single thing I have left out that can actually be picked up. I have had enough.

Me: "I'm out of here."

I begin collecting my shit from the corners of Gina's house. She wails and tells me I am selfish again and again, and when this does not stop me from collecting my things, she sits on her bed and screams obscenities to me and to her mother via the phone.

Gina: "YOU NEVER LOVED ME!"

My computer is under the kitchen table, my pants are in her dresser, my bras and panties are in her liquor cubby, and my toiletries are under the eightball. I shove what I can find into my bag and wheel it to the door. My bag is half the size it was when I arrived, but I can't find the rest of my things. I will have to abandon them.

Gina: "YOU NEVER APPRECIATED ME!"

I open the door. To my dismay, it is pouring down rain--cats and dogs kind of rain. Gina grabs my arm as I wheel out the door, and this leaves a bruise upon it that will take weeks to heal. She asks me to stay and says, "Fuck you" all in one sentence, one last bit of batshit crazy for me to remember her by.

I wheel my bag down the hill Gina's complex is built upon. There is an office building a mile or so down the road, and this is where I will go to take shelter and call a taxi. I am feverish, but can't feel it through the adrenaline. I have escaped. I am safe and soon I will be on a warm and dry train, surrounded by people who expect nothing from me. This thought comforts me.

But then I hear wheels screeching around a corner. I know it is Gina in her SUV. I push my bag into the ditch next to the sidewalk and dive beneath a row of bushes. It is, sadly, muddy under these bushes. Gina drives up and down the road for an indeterminate amount of time before giving up her search, and when I feel it is safe to emerge, I begin my walk to the office building again. I walk, frantically.

Later that night, my train pulls up to Union Station. I knock as much dried mud off my pants and sleeves as possible, buy an orange juice from the vendor and call the Producer. I sip my juice and wait for her in a leather bench with art deco arm rests. She arrives a half-hour later. I spend the entire month of January at her home, during which time we get along famously. So I guess I've got no regrets about coming to California.