inexhaustible blues

I pack my bags and move to West Hollywood among a cluster of homosexuals who don’t hit on me.

My landlady is Israeli.  She automatically assumes I’m anti-Semitic.  I can tell by her suspicious smile.  She refuses to shake my hand when we meet.  Her husband tells me she’s a germaphobe.

A garage band in the duplex beside mine is carelessly playing the Dead Kennedys.  After every song, the lead singer screeches into the mike, “That was bloody fucken awful!”

My upstairs neighbor is 77, a former screenwriter and member of the Communist Party.  Says they hauled him in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  “When they asked me if I was a commie-pinko,” he says.  “I told ‘em to kiss my Marxist tuches…did a year in the Federal Corrections Institute in Danbury, Connecticut…”  He falls asleep with a half-lit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, muttering, “In this life, kid, you gotta have a platform…Gotta have a platform…”

After tucking him into bed, I return to my place to view my Tia Chi instructional video.

Around midnight, a fight breaks out in the courtyard between a cordial cokehead and a reformed Catholic.

The old commie upstairs is shouting at them:  “Neo-realism is a decidedly left-wing thing to do!”

The following day, I received a call from my germ-phobic Israeli landlady.

“What was all the ruckus about?” she says.

“It was about platforms, Mrs. Zur. In this life, you gotta have a platform…”

Mrs. Zur sighs, says, “Oy gevalt…farshtunkener,” and hangs up.