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The Night the Lights Went On

Perched at a watering hole in Hollywood, nursing my woes on White Russians and Negra Modelos, a nuisance only to myself when a woman took the empty stool next to me and offered a lingering once-over that hung from her like locker-room stink. Initial impression on my end was lukewarm at best; not a stunner in the carnal sense of the word, but there was faint hope of salvage in some departments--nothing a scalpel and a little Botox in the right hands couldn't right. Age was within acceptable parameters--that is to say not too long in the tooth, though she'd certainly left thirty in her wake around the time Germany was split. The eyes were nice...kind of violet in the ambient light. Cute dimples when she smiled, though she carried that sloshed, incessant grin on her face that had her glowing like spiked punch. She made up for all this however with lust. It was unquestionable in her stare, and she didn't mind jabbing me with it ad infinitum. Wonderful, I thought: here a woman decided to initiate a come-on, I'm hopelessly juiced, interest having left the building who knows when, and last call was thirty minutes ago.

She started off blatantly enough: said I looked a bit too young to be sitting at a bar.

Precious.

I chuckled good-naturedly and thanked her for the compliment.

Stupid.

That only encouraged more word-play, and we were both ill-equipped for verbal jousting at the present moment. This continued for about ten minutes whereupon I found myself actually reaching a state of interest I didn't think possible earlier. She'd grown on me through force of will, like a Bob Dylan b-side. Then the barkeep flipped on the lights to usher us out, and I was bestowed the truth:

The "dimples"--vicious acne scars.

Her "glow"--the reflection of red neon from a Budweiser sign off dense pancake makeup.

The "violet" eyes--cheap contacts sold at any novelty store in town...nothing Liz Taylor need lose any sleep over.

I instinctually recoiled from this manifestation and she didn't miss it.

"Let's see you in about twenty years, Warren Beatty," she crooned through a whorish smile, then oozed off the stool and went about the task of arranging lodging for the evening.

I thought: What level of debasement, the incalculable transformations and permutations this creature has undergone.

It racked my body in place and it forced me to consider two things I'd thought impossible before the evening began. One was to quit drinking, and as I staggered out of the bar to wait for a cab I wondered if I could do it--along with the other thing I had in mind-by years end.

Six months later I'm blissfully tying one on at a dive in Culver City, content in my head that I'm twenty-six, my liver was still going strong and break-outs were a thing of my past. The very next day I swallowed some aspirin--and my pride--and saw a dermatologist.

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