Guantanamo Bay: The Clinton Years

Sometimes Los Angeles stops moving.

It's like watching a wide-eyed child disappear quietly into the darkness. You're left with a memory of her face, eager and wired, and a nagging confusion as to why exactly this had to happen. And perhaps that's a little melodramatic, but to Los Angelenos (you know, the drug-addled, self-involved assholes who never refer to themselves as Los Angelenos), when nothing's going on a Friday night, our usual flirtation/twitterpation/confrontation attitude slows, pauses, and then makes a quick turn to bewilderness.

We breathe earthquakes, guns, car chases, and inebriation; the absence of chaos is the absence of life. Quippy aphorisms alone just do not cut it in the City of Angels.

And so it was, Friday, as that wide-eyed child fade slowly out of view, that I sat scrolling through names and numbers, methodically calling and saying "Hey, what's up?"

"Nothing."

Fucking politics -- Muck and mire in tweed blazers and selvage denim.

You see, you can't just ask someone for something in Los Angeles. It's un-Hollywood, it's *gasp* so Manhattan. Thus, it's "Hey, what's up?" and not "I'm in shambles, it's one of those Fridays, what the fuck." It's showbiz in this town, you can't just pitch something. You have to feign interest in someones life, you have to pretend like you're not about to sell them a dream, you have to... chit-chat.

But it's not just school yard gossip. No, it's complicated meandering conversation, meant to sound as genuine as possible. You build up a rapport, and then slide gingerly in for the kill.

And as silly as it sounds, it is absolutely necessary.

Take this presently bemoaned Friday for example:

First. When you call, you know they're in shambles too. There's no ear to the ground, there's no secret handshakes, there's no "OMG I just found the hottest spot." There's places to be and places not to be and that information is shared digitally.

Second. A city-dwellers rolodex is filled with half-friends and acquaintences, so it's wholly appropriate to fill the beginning of a conversation with neat little reminders of who you are and why you have their phone number.

Third. You have to have an exit strategy. The last thing you want is to call, find out that they have no idea of anything going on tonight (a fact that you essentially already knew), and then have them say "Call me if you find anything to do!" You won't. They're just some Yo in the same boat as you, and it is not your responsibility to man the Party Phone. The polite conversation preceeding "the question" allows you to respond coyly. "Oh, I don't know, I'm probably just going to stay home. If I do anything, it'll be because my friends came over and kidnapped me, ha ha."

Fucking politics.

Deft dodging of half-friend hanger-ons aside, this Friday was a bust. And in Los Angeles, when the world stops turning, you give it a motherfucking spin. You eschew the politics and make something happen.

And maybe that's why this Friday, this G-d forsaken Friday, felt so G-d damn good. We weren't wingmen, we weren't accessories, we weren't names. In Los Angeles, your friends are people you use and your friendship is based on how much tolerance each person has for being used. But this Friday, this unrelenting Friday, my friends were something else. They were shitty Jenga players, they were excellent drinkers, they were people...

In Los Angeles, you do not play board games, you do not stay home, you do not childishly fall asleep with your roommate on the living room sofa. In Los Angeles, you do not take stupid videos of yourselves dancing or freestyle about statuatory rape.

We broke the rules, and I'm glad.