Saturday before Easter: Wilbo Wanders

Time Date City Note Miles Miles
11:32 AM 4/7/2007 Culver City, CA Extended Stay LAX 3808.9

I have stayed three nights at this Extended Stay. Lately, if you punch in a bid of 50 dollars for the Venice Beach area, Priceline places one for the night at an Extended Stay. An ESA has a kitchenette, small fee for service wireless and good beds. I haven't seen an ESA with a pool or hot tub, but I love swimming in a pool for exercise and hot tubs purge my legs of lactic acid crystals. At least, my knees become flexible again after a few days soaking for 15 minutes in a hot tub. So If I keep bidding on Priceline, I'm staying in great facilities without a hot tub that helps me walk easier. Hate to give up a good deal for this.

My mother calls me about important documentation that has arrived at her house. I'm not sure I need it. It is good to talk to ones mom on Easter weekend, even if she's calling because she got a package that signifies her son has money problems. It is overcast in Los Angeles, but Mom and Dad have a White Easter in Shiawassee County, Michigan. The last snowfall in Michigan comes in the first two weeks of April, and the accumulation melts in days. Did you know that the Easter Bunny lays eggs because the Easter Bunny started existence as a frozen bird. A white Easter makes some sense. Dad gets on the phone, and talks about his virus-compromised computer with the Microsoft operating system, the one before Vista? It's going to seem like a theme. There's nothing I can do from 2300 miles away. A fellow my dad trusts is coming to look at it Monday.

8255 Vista del Mar, Playa Del Rey, 90293 - (310) 305-9503

I'm parking in Playa Vista (Or is it Playa Del Rey?) by the lagoon and the baseball field. There is plentiful parking and it is free, right between the berms protected by high, chain link fences and the ball field. It is so unlike Venice Beach, where the free parking is gone by sunrise, where the free parking is hosting recreational vehicles. The chain link fences protect a succulent plant that grows in the sand. It has leaves shaped like a crescent and bright yellow or fuscia flowers. Most of the sand on Playa Del Rey came there by truck, Hyperion sand, or so a poster tells. I wrote, sitting in my truck's driver seat, "What is this wooziness. Sickness doesn't take a holiday, but that health insurer does. It only seems that I called them on a Saturday because I had two weeks off between Michigan Hospitals Association and my current gig". Upshot, my previous contract house didn't get around to sending my health insurer, SRC Aetna, a termination notice until the end of March. So I called SRC Aetna and paid them money by credit card to keep my policy current.

That contract houses finally sends a termination notice. SRC Aetna sends my payment to my credit card account. Now they're are sending a Cobra notice to my house mail box, 2300 miles a way. The representative agreed to fax this letter to me in California, but the fax machine outbox stayed empty all day. So now I have to call them again. And the first payment must be made by check. Hmm , when will a company be responsible enough to over-ride a policy when the company sees they've already taken money, already over-ridden the policy. And when will a company be compassionate enough to take a premium from a begging father
so his daughter doesn't go to the emergency room and be refused service when he's got cash money to give, but he's totally blocked from putting it where it counts because of a policy? There's little to be done on this on a Saturday. I can see sails of sailboats making their way out to sea, out of the channel of Marina Del Rey, the Marina of a King, a King who has no dominion.

TANNER'S COFFEE COMPANY, CULVER BOULEVARD

I borrowed a pen from the coffee cup holding markers, pens and pencils. I couldn't get one of the three barrista's attention to ask permission to do so. A family man, there with his wife and five-year old child, said right in my ear with a cheery accent from some British commonwealth, "Go ahead". "Do you own the business?" I asked. "No, I've been a regular a long, long time." And so I had a Bic disposible pen to write these words: "The problem with sitting in here is I'm virtually guarding the door, seeing everyone coming and going, and being distracted by jiggly tits at eye level." There's two window seats, and each was occupied with a writer tapping away at a Mac G book, one many with a Blackberry, one young woman with a cell phone. I didn't ask if they were writing scripts. Dang, every woman arriving jiggled, braless beach women wearing tee shirts and light jackets. As a gentleman should, I give myself the command "eyes up" when I notice that "frisson" I feel when looking inadvertently chest high. I blame the chest high perspective on my choice of seat, one of the few available.

"This is one morning after viewing Penn and Teller's Bullshit segment on Women's Breasts." Penn and Teller present the female spectacle of bosoms without blinking or adverting the camera's gaze. And each since woman gave her signed consent to show them off on Showtime, I could look without too much compunction. It's different when consent has been worked out in advance.

"Documents by their silent nature happily coexist." It's when people read them and begin debating that the trouble starts. European reads Marx in the early 20th Century. An American reads Locke and Hume in the early 20th Century. The two interact, and the cold war arises. "I know nothing about story, and I know nothing about what people want to hear. And yet, in denying it, I do know." Yep, I usually keep this psychobabble to myself, but today, I blog it. Who the hell is still reading?

"I like the tidal estuary of the final reaches of that hapless drain." We are talking about the tamed Ballona wetlands with its channelized creek. There's a great series of photographs from the early part of the 20th century that tell of the taming of the Ballona wetlands. It's hard to sell real estate when a river, such as the Los Angeles River, changes course during the rainy seasons. So the wetlands of Los Angeles are reduced to a channelized and dammed-up-in-reservoirs river. The Ballona wetlands are bereft of its population of wild currs and ferals as it awaits the Marina Del Rey treatment.

"It was a brother and sister that day at Trader Joes." I mistakenly wrote Trapper Joes. I talked with a beautiful woman and her brother, but I had first thought she was shopping with her boyfriend. Again, I know nothing about human reality. I have a story for every moment my eyes and ears are open. These stories rarely obtain.

"Another pair of matching men on cycles". The cycles are the same. The racing jammies are the same. The sunglasses are the same. The helmets are the same. Or so I perceived. I've already told you how I distrust my perceptual instruments. I have also dropped one word from this phrase in my journal.

"On the drowse cloudiness, my mind is filled with hundreds of episodes that are not created by my waking consciousness and are not used my waking language, but it is drowse that reveals all these structures to me. I hear talking in the drowse, I feel conclusions set in stone. But I know I've never sat in on those meetings. Life is such a fucking peep show and I am one of many peeps." I was feeling drowsy at my work computer, and yes, I do enter briefly a reality that is crystalized inside the brain, a life I haven't lived but that influences the life I do live. Now, I can only access this databank during drowsiness.

"'Poor baby', my mom says as she hears me whine." She's said poor baby from the earliest days of my life. She also shows me the world's smallest phonograph. Thumb is turntable, forefinger is stylus, and it is the stylus forefinger that rotates around her thumb's turntable. It plays my heart bleeds for you. God, I can't believe I am remembering that ! Why is she saying poor baby on this phone call? Because I whine, 'I've never been to a rock club with my mom'". One of my friends has his mom for the holiday weekend, and she and he did a night at Spaceland up in the Hollywood Hills together."

So this is from the department of what I didn't say: "So I talk to SO, and I get my puss right up close to her ear. 'So, do you have a man?' And to whatever she says short of a diamond and an engagement with a reserved church and willing minister, 'No, that's not having a man. That's an option on a booty call.'"

So this is from the department of commenting on whomever waltzes in Tanner's front door: "Another skinny model type small enough to dress in American Apparel sizes." Even when I'm skinny, I can't wear those sizes. I am sure this is how the neanderthals came to their demise. The sexy prehistorical clothing makers didn't make clothing to fit their dimensions. American Apparel doesn't make clothing for men my size, and so, I have lesser chances to breed. No hair on my knuckles, thank goodness. Interestingly enough, a man she didn't walk in with walks off with her. It's not a sign of psychological health when one thinks this hard about people one hardly knows. I didn't even see him walk through the front door. Did the two arrange to meet in advance?

So this is from the department of regret: "I left fresh Italian bread and a half-full mixture of oil, balsamic vinegar and spices on the table at Michelangelo’s." This requires no commentary.

Still at TANNERS at the top of the page.

"It was the coffee house I tried to leave once. I came back and raised my involvement by 2 dollars by buying a small coffee, up to 5 dollars total." I remember drinking coffee in the morning at Raffi's Tuscan Cafe, and then I would write in my journal until I had used up my allowances of refills. One day, I bought a bagel to go with the coffee, and my bill went up to over 3 dollars. Raffi had rung me up, and I said to Raffi, "I'll have to stop coming here. It's getting too expensive." It was fun to make Raffi laugh, back in the days when we still had an unmuddied friendship. Raffi is an hard-working Armenian-American who played chess with me during the early days of his cafe. He also was running a manufacturing shop, paying everyone he could on a 1099. He also was the son of a man slain by a sniper when making a bread run in Armenia. Even the sniper mourned when he learned who he had shot. What does an Armenian do when he wishes to relax in the evening? He does what Raffi did. He starts a coffeehouse and even makes deli sandwiches with healthy price points.

"She was wearing a black dress not unlike the cut of a dress worn by a woman on a Hollywood date two nights ago, a sushi bar at Highland and Franklin, within view of the fresco on the anterior wall of the Kodak theatre. The woman on the date wore a daffodil yellow number, and it cascade to her knees, reminding me of an upside down daffodil. The woman at Tanners was wearing an upside down black daffodil. It is sexy when a woman dares to show off her tennis-buffed calves." (Or is it Calfs?)

I did talk with one of the female customers, just as she was leaving. She grew up in Playa Del Rey, and she had graduated high school just three years ago. She needed a manicure to clean off the chipped polish from her last one.

"Pastor Boyer gave us Fellowship Hour". Pastor Boyer came from Toledo, Ohio, and with the help of his wonderful wife, became a Lutheran Minister. He instituted Fellowship Hour in the church library with coffee and doughnut holes, covered with messy white, powdered sugar. Coffee and Timbits beat communion wafer and thimbles of wine everytime . And that's why I wrote this stupid thing: "Maybe I should start dating a woman I could go with to Catholic mass, nice enough to eat doughnuts and drink coffee together during fellowship hour." To be frank, I remember only two Fellowship Hours, one held in a Sunday school classroom. My parents, and I'm glad they carved out this time together, slipped out to Nickerson Farm's for a full breakfast as Ann, Matt, Ed and I sat in our Sunday School classrooms together. I don't remember being hungry sitting in those classrooms. I do remember really enjoying the free bible comic books given away at the end of class. I don't remember a regular fellowship hour with Timbits and coffee until Church of Today, where you could have coffee from an urn and Timbits for a donation or one could upgrade to pastries and a latte from a cart.

WRTTEN AT THE BISTRO DU SOLEIL, CULVER BOULEVARD

Tanner's barrista had doe eyes. The woman reading a magazine after her breakfast smiled at me. I had declared at the front door that my coffee in a paper cup and java jacket had come from outside. A sign admonished against food from outside. The owner and the woman who became my waitress accepted my paper cup and poured it into a real, china mug. When I saw the woman smiling at me, why didn't I say this gambit: "This table looks fine". I was offered my choice of table, and I could have explained, I wanted the one with the smiling woman, the woman who had contented her hunger, paid her bill and was reading her lifestyle magazine. I could help her assemble the parts list for the rooms she was studying in that lifestyle magazine.

Sidebar. My journal has sidebars: Dying of alcoholism at age 40, he said to his true love, "My language did this to me. How?" Were these the last words of Spicer, the man who taught Poetry as Magic at San Francisco State in 1957, 6 years before my birth?

Going
back to the journal: "Why did my waitress blush when I proposed, 'Do you have a dollar handy?' At this restaurant, no one handles cash but the manager. My bill was 7.30 and (7.30 X .20) = 1.46, and I took back a dollar from the change of 10 dollars, giving her a buck seventy, a 24 cent premium. Where do I get off tipping 3.00 dollars for three nights of maid service at the LAXESA when I didn't get any service until after I had departed the room and Monday I was a few dollars from homelessness and destitution? I had left a mess of street magazines, and I had left three nights of mess for the chambermaid to clean up. Plus, I always get return of forgotten items because I leave tips.

SOMEWHERE, I BEGIN WRITING AT OUTLAWS. I HAVE THEIR BUSINESS CARD:

OUTLAWS BAR & GRILL
A RUBBIN' AN' GUZZLIN' ESTABLISHMENT
230 Culver Blvd., Playa del Rey, CA 90293
Tel (310) 822-4040 * (866) 479-0916
Outlaws: Get PBR-ed in PDR

I needed a leak, and I patronize places with restrooms open to the public. So I order a small bottle of Freixenet sparkling from Saint Sandurini D'Anolia, Spain. Welcome to Outlaws, California's answer to Oklahoma's fatgirl bars. On a panelled wall, Outlaws had a framed print of the 1919 Black Soxs, who were defrocked White Soxs, including Shoeless Joe. It was a picture of the early baseball cards. It's 2007, so this event in 1919 took place only 88 years ago. I was born in 1963, so this event in 1919 took place 44 years before my birth. So anyone who had any memory of it by the time I was ten was already 60 - 65 years old. It means my grandfather Juntunen probably had read about it in the paper.

Before strolling into Outlaws, I had checked out boutique shopping at "Friends to the End". It was still open, so the end hadn't arrived. She must have been talking to a friend. The woman was sitting at a round bistro table outside, chatting on a cordless, and she hung up when I arrived. She suggested I buy something for my girlfriend. Instead of saying I hadn't been picked as a boyfriend in years, I said, "Well, sometimes I do need a gee-gaaw or a bauble." She suggested a baseball cap. One embroidered cap had the following: "PDR, No Mercy". Another announced, "PDR: No Short Drinks". Another seaside town with a drinking problem is PDR, Playa Del Rey.

The following was written in my pocket Moleskinne at Outlaw's bar, with the Master's tournament playing on all the small screen, hung from the ceiling color televisions. Outlaws had not yet invested in big screen, high definition television yet. Freixenet is the cheap champ, and it is ubiquitous, bottled in Espana but hauled into the U.S. by an office in Sonoma , California. Very close to Outlaws, there is an old Nike missle silo. It is almost three in the afternoon. Why raise the rent on NOMMY , the perfect renter with plenty of house sense. I drank one glass of Rod Strong Cab Wednesday, one glass champ Thursday and a split of Freixenet Saturday afternoon.

Last night, I cruised LA looking for a gentleman's club, but I didn't drive by one. As I watched the Master's, I thought of the peril to my mere notebooks, sturdy Moleskinnes that anyone moving in would throw out. Notebooks are so unprotected. My former wife threw out my runner's journal notebook, but I was documenting our arguments in its pages. Now I do all my miles in my truck, recording my mileage. My body would be a very different body after three thousand miles of America crossing on-foot.

Can't watch the Soprano's last season. It is hyped too much. My old roomie had lunch is Century City with John Legend. I guess that I can look who that is on Google.

Getting lost in LA. It's a surefire way to really see the Cityscape. Don't try this during rush hours. Funny, I would be all over a MOPFOP OPVASIO JAPF KOC parlor, but I've not got on the southbound train to have more for less. Have to admit, the Hubbard Foundation center on Sunset Boulevard looked uptone. I know oysters that are kinda better suited for survival than am I.

4:01 PM, Playa Del Rey, Krauch Field:
Save me from get-you-drunk bartenders. The woman was asking me, "want another one" as I polished off the last swig of my sparkling. She's acting like she's not paying attention to me until she notices, 'the glass is empty' event. I remember a fellow from Kentucky, a journeyman machinist or rigger or tool-maker machine-builder who was staying at a Holiday Inn just off a cloverleaf in Normal, Illinois, or was it Bloomington? Not Bloomington, Normal just north of Bloomington. Lonely guy, looks for company at the Holiday Inn bar. Next day at the factory, where he was putting in place a line, we all learn he's gone to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. I can see some bartender not practicing principles of sensible alcohol vending, filling up his glass each time its empty, of course, asking. And it's the only conversation between the traveling man and the bartender because if you have time enough to lean, you have time enough to clean. Biker and boater bars are all in one compact. I left a buck, and decide to keep my opinion to my blog. It reminds me of the bartender I wanted to give my tip to in person. Her partner looked at the bartop, pointed at the bartop, "just leave it right there". I'll leave offerings for God on the table of votary lights, but I like to make tipping somewhat personal, thank you. Save me from imperial bartenders!

I remember an Irish-American lawyer from Chicago who was conducting real estate deals in New Buffalo, Michigan. He asked how successful I was being in finding real estate deals on the shore of southwestern Michigan. The principle on information hiding comes into play in a big way in high-stakes real estate deals. He claimed, and I didn't doubt his claim, that he studied game-theory in depth because it gave him resources for winning in Texas Hold-Um poker, which he played at the floating Blue Star Casino in Michigan City, Indiana. He often brought along a waitress or patroness from the Stray Dog Bar & Grill, a great pub with a view of the marina lagoon. He claimed rarely to lose and to often win big, and I believed him. That's where he and I drank tall pints of microbrew, and he shared the sexual and maternal histories of all the female bar employees and as well as the female bar denizens. Self-disclosure is a game that falls under the maxims of game theory, and I didn't give him any reference to me, except I was Will and I was working at the nuclear power plant. Nothing he could look up. It probably didn't help conceal anything about me, but there was no need to know anything about me. He successfully persuaded me to adopt his practice of 100 percent tipping (which Marcel Proust, according to legend, practiced), and I left a tip of 100 percent of my purchase price when I got on the road to drive home to Royal Oak, Michigan. I have no idea what happened next.

The Stray Dog Bar & Grill
203 West Buffalo Street
New Buffalo, Michigan 49117
616-469-2727

Written on Dockweiler Beach, the State Park,
825 Vista del Mar,
Playa Del Rey, 90293
(310) 305-9503

I did call my daughter, the day before Easter so nobody announces "he's a bum" when Amanda leaves the Easter dinner table to get the phone. I still had some sparkling in my veins, and I never call her with any alcohol coursing in my veins. But I saw children cycling with their parents on Dockweiler Beach State Park, so I called anyway. I guess I was quizzing her. She now knows that "Playa Del Rey" means "Beach of the King". The might not be right. I was a taco wagon with a grill plate stamped, "Del Rey", so it's an important pair of words. I think I taught her this last year. When I say, "He is risen" to her during the Easter season, she is to say, "He is risen indeed." 18 years of continual religious instruction in a family that brought Lutheranism from Finland in the 19th century, and that is all that is left, a call and response on Easter weekend. I got a little maudelin as I explained this to her. She wanted to keep the phone call short so she could spend more time with her visiting friend. Love goes to those who show up. The cellphone is dead.

Playa Del Rey:

To my former wife, some raving words that I wrote and publish only because I'm giving up the habit of self-editing: try not to gloat. I make it easy for you. I tell you exactly where I am and give you name, address and phone number for you to turn over to the friend of the court, for the friend of the court to serve income withholding notices. She hasn't put a big court order on my yet, garnishing me for back support. I have given more in cash than is owed in back support, but now all the cash goes through the friend of the court accounting system. So much for paying ones obligations in cash to an obligee's open palm.

Los Angeles: This is no 600 dollar a month big easy on the side of Lake Michigan during off-season. There is a 20 - 100 % premium on everything, and then a hustle factor that makes each item in everything totally dear. I had to wait 2 hours after calling a central dispatch out of New York City to bring a locksmith out to my S-10, keys locked inside with the lights on. The battery hadn't gone dead yet, so thank goodness for new batteries from Belle Tire in Royal Oak, Michigan. The locksmith had the passenger side door pried open with two inflatable envelope balloons when he announced, "this is a difficult job. It's 39.00 for the service call and 95 dollars due to the difficulty of the repair." The dispatcher had demurred on quoting a price. She mere stated that the price depended upon difficulty of the key job and model of the car. I agreed, if you can call a response to coercion agreement, and he pulled a long bendable metal rod coated in plastic from his Jeep's hatchback. He pushed this into the crack between door and cab, pulled it out to give a fingerbend to its end, and pushed foward the indoor lock in thirty seconds. I told him in Detroit, this would have been a 60 dollar job maximum. He answered in Detroit, gas didn't cost four dollars a gallon. His job cost me more than double the Detroit price. LA's price for gas isn't double Detroit's price for gas. I have to protect myself from highway hustle by making copies of my car keys and joining Triple A. My auto insurance company is only willing to reimburse my outlays. I am certain an analyst at this insurance company keeps a graph of cost avoidance due to this policy.

The twice married man from Chicago who was drinking at the bar rail of Detroit's Hard Rock Cafe talked with me animatedly. He was in town promoting vitamins, and he had singled me out for a head-fuck. After the bartender herself had upbraided him for being rude to me, I had explained to the bartender that what he said to me wasn't taken personally. I wanted to listen to him unabridged, without him feeling self-conscious.

Near Charlevoix, I gave an inebriated young woman a walleye, crappie or rock bass I had caught as the fish had been biting in advance of a rain storm. I had lent her my rod and reel to see if she could reel in her own, but the short feeding frenzy had passed by the time water drops pocked the small lake's surface. My mom was there, on the shore watching the two of us on the dock, so this took place in the eighties. I am often flicking into memory and often the connections into memory are imprecise.

Time Date City Note Miles
4:50 PM 4/7/2007 Mar Vista, CA Venice Grind 3824.7

I go into the True-Value hardware trying to find some wet wipes to clean up my keyboard. I have an urgency, and I ask the clerk if True-Value has a restroom. Clerk is a nice looking young man, but there is not restroom for the public. I explain to him that I am ceasing my shopping and turn to leave. He suggests to me as I walk away that I talk to a manager. I declaim to him without turning my back, "I decline to beg !"

The woman behind the counter at Venice Grind sees me, and calls me sir. I smile back at her and call her maam. If you call me sir from now on, I'll call you maam. Maam, if you keep sarcasm out of ones voice, is better received than one could believe before hand.

At the Venice Grind, I order a pair of Silk chocolate milks, which are served in packaging that would make Gary Snyder faint. I see a Polynesian woman is a lovely sundress wearing sunglasses that could pass for a veil in Bahrain enters the coffeeshop with a paper bag from Soaptopia. She sits on the leather lowboy couch and studies her soap purchases. I ask her, "You must be a great housekeeper, really neat. Do you keep your bedsheets stored in a closet scented with Lavender spray from Provence." She laughs as she denies this. Outside at a bistro table, three woman and a dog out of a William Wegman feature are having a Saturday afternoon chat. I ask permission to pet the hound who is already sniffing me without permission. We all admire the dog as we chit-chat. I catch a brief glimpse as one leans over to pet the dog with me, and her love-puppies spill more into view.

Time Date City Note Miles More
7:19 PM 4/7/2007 Van Nuys, CA Rouge Gentleman's Club 3847.9

TIP: Free parking along the railroad fence.

DENIZENS OF THE ROUGE:

Agressive Mariah liked my shirt, red emblazoned with surf boards, and wanted us to go on a free tour. Which gets me walking to the VIP areas, where stripping buff and starting to dance before my seated warm body ticks 40 dollars up on her meter. It's a free tour that ends in a trip. She's wearing a Spearmint Rhino string halter, and I offer to swap shirts, but she's making the offers around here. I didn't ask her if her bosom was enhanced, but I always wonder. I am like the dice man, and usually, I say whatever rolls into my head as language. I get the same wobbly results that find our dice man. I claim I haven't eaten, and I go up to the bar, which has an extension that allows me to sit on the bartender's side and see the stage show, which isn't really happening because who wants to dance for three guys who aren't tipping dollar bills? I have an exotic, dramatic waitress, and there's no bar tabs. I have to pay for my steak and my red bull right up front. I avoided the 4.50 valet fee, paid the 15 dollar cover charge, and since there's not yet a state show, I'm enjoying my 20 - 30 dollar steak that was priced at 8.00 dollars on the menu. In the bathroom, no aggressive tip-for-towel attendants monitored the sinks.. One woman, slender, shapely and of small, unenhanced bosoms comes up and hits me up for a dance without any nice chit-chat. I don't understand her, but he sounds French, so I beg off, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak French." She explains she speaks Russian, has emigrated from the Ukraine, and Ukraine girls give the best lap dances. She leaves when I say, "Well, a lap dance can only be so good." I didn't have a chance to wonder out loud if Ukraine had any women of nubile age left. I didn't point out to her the irony of a woman from Ukraine saying that she speaks Russian, not Ukrainian. I didn't have the chance to call her, affectionately, a Ukie. Becky, the exotic-dramatic, is not aggressively patrolling the floor enforcing a two-drink minimum.

I hate places with no cover charge and a two drink minimum racket. All day long, shill girls outside Glitter Gulch under the Fremont Street experience pass out free VIP passes. The instant one sits down in a banquette booth, a cocktail waitress informs one of the two drink minimum. It's a place where one is hit for bottle service. Ah, Bottle service is that euphemism for paying 300 dollars for a bottle of chilled vodka that cost twenty dollars at duty free. I explain to the waitress that I'm waiting for a friend before I order drinks, and she informs me before she relents that the two-drink minimum is mandatory. Mandatory means if you are a man, you got to pay the mandatory fee. Besides, being a lonely guy in a gentleman's club, you can say I am chronically waiting for a friend to show up, any friend. So when the girl from Manitoba sits down, she's wondering where's the bottle service, exclaiming that the girls are a little slow today. In the meantime, as we wait for a waitress to come back to offer us bottle service, she listens far too closely to me go on and on about what I think I know about Canada. I enjoy this bikinied babe for about ten minutes, and unimpressed with the stage show, I flee to the safety of the open air arcade of the Fremont Street Experience.

Let us return back to Rouge of Van Nuys. I had noticed from my father's men's magazines, the ones the didn't get delivered by postal services because they couldn't be delivered by postal services then, that most of the models featured lived in Van Nuys. I had a mnemomic, Nudes from Van Nuys, so I didn't forget. So my goal tonight was to witness Nudes in Van Nuys. An Arabic man, a total gentleman who talked softly to me, respectfully, punctuating his points with brief pats on my shoulder, explained the ways this club had been denatured by the laws. One couldn't smoke inside the club, although could not smoke outside, but not with one of the girls. That was forbidden by law. I was even told that my writing in my notebook could be denied, but that was explained to me by one of the dancers.

Tylo from Reno sat right down on my lap without asking. I was happy to let her sit, but she was a buxom
woman, not fat, just buxom. My knees protested and she shifted a little, knowing by my squirmming which point of my thigh had no blood anymore. She sat there for three stage shows of two songs in duration, the first for dancing and the second for pole dancing and deshabille. One woman peeled off a top in the first. One woman peeled off nothing and the DJ upbraided us for not applauding. One woman so totally astounded us with her "no-gravity" fully-nude pole dance, I gave Tylo the dollar I had rolled and ready in my left breast pocket and asked her to throw it onstage. I can't remember her name, but Tylo loved the turquoise outfit she peeled off almost right away and Tylo lusted after her high-heel shoes. I gasped as she plummeted to the stage in an upside down pose, and slowed her plummet and rolled onto her shoulder a moment before impact, avoiding a closed-head injury. Becky the exotic-dramatic offered to bring a drink for the lady perched on my lap, but I said I'll give her a call. Tylo didn't mind. She only drank coffee at work, saving liquor for when she parties until passing out. Fuck, I hate the gentleman's club mentality that calculates "patron has a woman on his lap and he'll do anything to keep her there." Tylo was waiting for the two for one special, and she offered it to me when DJ declared it. I declined, asking her to come back later. I threw her a dollar when she performed her two. What makes a woman leave Reno for Los Angeles? Reno is where California Money meets the Nevada Silver one never reliably wins. Plenty is available for gentlemen's club before the tables suck it down.

I had a nice conversation with Stevie, whose mommy came from Dallas and whose daddy came from Vegas. We now have cities not nationalities in our pedigrees. She was tall and slender, showing off a compact booty that is a fetish type for one of my buddies. She had bottle blonde soft hair sure to ensnare the Marilyn Monroe fetishers.

She offered me a dance, and I explained I lived across the river from the Windsor ballet. I could enjoy a sweet VIP dance for twenty Canadian, even though I just went to Leopards to eat, drink and buy the more interesting girls cocktails. I was spoiled and a 40 dollar charge for a 3 minute VIP didn't appeal to me. And besides, she was an intelligent talker. Why would I willingly degrade our newborn relationship?

I had watched all ten of the women on stage do their shows. So I left to check in at my new hotel in Northridge, California.