the future is unwritten (by stephán amery mckenzie)
That is a damn shame! Cannot say I blame her. But I still want to slap him.
the future is unwritten
by stephán amery mckenzie
Oh. Hello. Did not realize you had popped in. I am not sure when you came in, so let me back this thing up like Kim K in her first starring role. And yes, let me paint you a picture:
We are at this…oh, let me add, if you saw or heard this already PLEASE stop me! Do not let me ramble while you try to be polite as you internally shake your head in pity because you think I need the attention like Anthony Michael Hall’s character in “Sixteen Candles.”
Where was…right, so we: this chick I met at the pound (more on that in a bit), her skittish girlfriend (not Michelle Rodriguez and Cara Delevinge, more like Gayle and Oprah… stop it. I SAID STOP IT), Olivia Newton Johnson (yes, only in Hollywood. Her parents were fans of the movie but apparently not fans of their daughter. This poor homely girl got her hair pulled out, or pulled her own hair out, when someone else was not pulling it out, due to her crazy-ass name. No offense Ms. Olivia Newton John, but you would have to agree you kinda ruined the name for everyone else). So it is me, The Chick from The Pound, ONJ and some dude-trap.
Dude-trap? Dude-Trap: A totally killer (as in AWESOME) dude that has one GLARING issue. Issue: An undesirable flagrant habit for those around him. For example: deep-drugs, aggressive-klepto, soapbox hoarder (of everything even if it is not his), an emotional-sprayer with anyone including your six year old niece, etc. And once he has you ensnared in his cloak of sensational happenings akin to Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “The Wolf of Wall Street” minus pilfering people of their life-savings and you have committed to be his BFF for life in a blood-oath, the ‘issue’ reveals itself in a grand entrance kinda way; causing one to wish time machines really did exist so someone could ‘accidently’ forget to turn off the gas in the car while he was comatose in the backseat. Picture the Unabomber with a better set of teeth and hair. Hence, Dude-Trap.
This is my crew for the evening. An evening I can tell is destined for lunacy. Or as Dude-Trap likes to shout every time he steps outside of a door, “The future is unwritten, so let us write this BITCH!”
But before we get to the ensuing madness, let us talk about The Pound. I did not know about the rest of the world or the rest of the United States for that matter, but here in California you have Breeders versus Adopters. I am not about to get political, so calm your ass down. I am not talking about straights versus gays (LGBTQQIAAP). I am referring to potential dog owner being swayed to adopt from a pound instead of going to one those Cruella de Vil breeders. My stance? I will breed one and I will adopt one like any respectable Hollywood elite or in my case, wannabe (you go Michelle Pfeiffer, Madonna, Nicole Kidman 2+2). Besides, it is a well-known fact that you get Karma cred if you adopt and I need all the extra mojo I can get from Buddha, God, Allah and Whoever else may be up there. LGBTQQIAAP
I do not know if you have ever been to a pound, but think of it as the shabby-chic of the leftovers. The place has an odor that I cannot quite place. If you have a fifteen year old son or younger brother you probably know exactly what I am talking about. It not, let me paint you a more graphic picture: it is over a hundred degrees; the humidity is off the charts, six rugby teams have been scrimmaging for three days in the same uniforms without washing them or airing them out. They played in the uniforms, slept in the uniforms, and they have not showered. Now, after the three days they all take off their underwear and throw them into one large barrel that has last year’s unwashed three-day scrimmage underwear already in there. Now I do not care how much Fabreze you spray, or how many Bounty dryer sheets you slip into that barrel, that will not be strawberry cheesecake you smell.
The dogs…well, they are trying. Maybe trying a bit too hard. If they toned it down a bit, about seven or twelve notches, it would help disguise the scent of desperation. I imagine the staff at The Pound the same way I imagine a plastic surgeon with an aging starlet, they do the best they can but no one can turn back the hands of time or the unfortunate circumstance of hard-living. The staff is ALWAYS a complete pleasure…and to some degree intense whore barkers. I often feel like I am on Melrose Avenue with Armenians grabbing any body part they can get their hands on to get me into their stores as they tell me they are going to give me the special ‘you look like a model’ discount and how I look good in EVERYTHING just standing next to the item on the rack. It also reminds me of the Red Light District…from…what I saw on the Discovery Channel (or at least I think that was the Discovery Channel).
I see this miraculous diamond in the rough—a brown, grey mix mutt with red hair, ears and paws. I almost fainted. It is my new thing. I needed a new thing after I wore out ‘the slow clap’ every time I got excited. Right as I slid across the room, like MJ circa nineteen eighty-three, this chic and I found ourselves salivating over the same throwaway.
‘She was cute but not as cute as me,’ her hair smooth, clean, glistening her father’s bank account. Her body—yoga was paying off. Her smarts—not that most care if she is cute and has a great body—above average. The best part about her was that me and the mutt had not sniffed any craziness. Actually, there were two best parts—no initial craziness and a non-Angelino impulse to the tell the truth. This makes her fun! “Oopsie-pie! You saw him too? I would like to say I saw him first but that would be a lie because ever since I have seen him I have not been able to see anything else. You know, you take him. Wait. I’m going to be honest.” I think to myself, “There is more truth inside you?” “I got dumped this week. It wouldn’t hurt as much if he would have been a quality man but he was living with his grandmother because his mother got fed-up and kicked him out. I was only dating him to boost my self-esteem. Please don’t ask how’s that going. BTW— horrible. Not the breakup, which it is, but that’s how it’s going. It’s…” “Little Shop of Horrors” horrible, “ I interject. She perks up, “That’s funny. And accurate, too accurate considering we just met. Well, that’s my pathetic life at the moment. It was good and it will be good again but right now it’s pathetic. No sense in…” She pauses to think. “Faking the funk, juicing the juiceless, trying to figure out how Steven Seagal still manages to walk and talk?” I rattle off in quick succession. “Oopsie-pie. I think I just found my new best brilliant friend,” she squeals. What is not to like (besides the ���oopsie-pie’)? She has great taste in people and pups. “I guess I should confess,” she takes three deep breaths, “I only came here to find a new boyfriend…” “Me too,” I sheepishly murmur. “So finding this dog is a sign,” she says as she cradles the mutt. Yeah, I realize I may have left out the best part about The Pound. It is better than e-Harmony, OkCupid, Grindr, Tinder and speed dating combined.
Back to the impending Apocalypse (side note—I cannot wait until the X-Men franchise deals with him). The four of us (The Chick from The Pound, ONJ, Dude-Trap and me) end up at ONJ’s friend’s fundraiser. That is one of the things I would not miss in LA—fundraisers and traffic. I guess that is two things. Because in LA you cannot just have a fundraiser, it has to be a viral-inducing, water cooler-worthy, Cirque du Soleil swinging from the rafters spectacle. Do not get me wrong, I get it. This is mainly to get fundraiser-fatigued Angelinos out of their houses, away from their digital video recorders and to the event.
This fundraiser was in an alley. Not a cool Third Street Promenade alley or a Downtown Culver alley. This was a Downtown Los Angeles alley. I guess they were going for the authentic experience. This alley was primed with the alluring scent of urine and shit, homeless, with accidental ass-displaying chaps, overflowing trash bins, backdoor to a foreign speaking restaurant with foreign cooking staff barking undiscernible orders, and an occasional drug deal from a nineteen-seventies pimp in a trench coat whose ensemble made him look like Superfly’s evil twin brutha. To the oblivious, which was ninety-seven point two percent of the guest, they thought The Pimp was part of the planned décor. Some of the ‘activities’ at this money-sucker: tagging (they actually got a convicted serial tagger to mentor. It was part of his community service), dumpster diving (the closest this clientele ever got to dumpster diving is being forced to dig through their toy bins to decide which toys they could part with to donate to the homeless children at Christmas), photo booth (where you could dress like the homeless to show your friends ‘you get it’. There was an actual disclaimer posted saying clothes were donated by Paramount’s costume vaults) and a scavenger hunt. Some of the items on the scavenger list: syringes, liquor-sized paper bags with human waste inside, semen, condom wrappers, broken forty bottles, molded half-eaten buns, blood, meth foil, crack pipe, etc. What I could not figure out is if I had walked into “Synecdoche, New York” because I could not tell if these people—the guest enjoying the activities—were for real or imitating what is for real or both at the same time.
The three of us (The Chick from The Pound, ONJ and myself) grab another drink—FREE DRINKS; the only way to throw a legitimate fundraiser. “What the f…? What is this? A strobe party?” At least that is what I am thinking until I realized almost everyone was snapping shots of someone in the corner. Of course, it must be a celebrity, specifically, The Rock. There are rumors circulating the party that he is supposed to make a duck-duck entrance—duck-in, then quickly duck-out; envision revolving doors. Nope. Not Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It is skittish ONJ frozen in a panic-stricken state, eyes squinting, as some legless homeless man humps her thigh. Oblivious, the alley-goers think this is performance art. I on the other hand, know it is as close to date-rape as ‘Stubby’ was going to get. Before I can go rescue her, The Chick from The Pound pulls on my neatly pressed Tom Ford leisure coat (hand-me-down, waaaaaay down). Mouth open, she points in the opposite direction. Guess what Dude-Trap is doing? Not starting The Cupid Shuffle.