The Script of life

From Job corps to The Crazy Brits screenplays to now exploring the straight seen on fourth street......

      Job Corp was supplementing my living expenses and I hoped it would take be to bigger and better places. Teaching had failed me in the past and the Hollywood train and already passed. I could see the plumb of what could have been in the distance. The facitity was a drab place surrounded by high fences with cement dorms in the middle and various non-descript building within the interior of the campus.

     I had gotten the job a month before after being rejected twice. The facility employed many of the below average people, who themselves would have done better if they had enrolled in a class or two. The employees were dull, ignorant young people of all races, looking as if they had been hit with the ‘stupid’ shovel. Many were probably the high school forgotten or the one in the family everyone forgot about during reunion or birthdays until they showed their plain faces and broken smile.

     When theses types of individuals get together they choose to keep their way of life intact too forget the truths: they are just the cotton filling for the rest of us. Instead of choosing a side: they play the safe area. Risk and reward are like strange lands with hostile natives, but having a new daughter and being on the edge of homelessness it was a bitter, poisoness pills.

      My only responsiblity was to was teach the GED course until another perminant teacher could come aboard. Most of my class were the kids and young adults that the harsh world had forgotten.  They were also ignored by the staff who somehow facied themselves better, but how can one be better when it seem like the entire staff started in the dorms cleaning bathrooms and waking tired trainees?

    The task brought in pretty penny when done consistently. I didn’t have to worry about food, because I had gotten stamps so the Golden State was paying for my Fresh and Easy Chicken salads and Coconut water. Truthfully, they had been footing the bill for a good two years. I had been on assistance so long I forgot how to purchase food with paper money.

      Soon, it would all come tumbling down: for that was the system. To bring you have way up to have you tumble. I rode it out while the getting was good, because when it did it: back the dollar chicken sandwiches and cup of water. Sometimes I would sneak over to the soda fountain and pinch Sprite because resembled water and could be taken easily. 

Sneaky thief man! I will drink all your soda. Your clear soda will be mine!

        I would eat like the well to do until the troth was empty. The money would be towards my rent, which was fairly cheap  and what I could purchase for my newborn daughter. The only caveat was the parking situation, if I got around the area any less then five o’clock: finding a close spot was impossible and once parked you could not risk moving your vehicle or be a more than a mile out on Seventh street, watching you back as you made the eight block midnight stroll, back after searching hours for a precious open space, while cursing the universe for making fellow human with steel horses.

     Many days I woke up to the sunshine and be out of the place by six. The air mattress was horrible and a point of contention between Susie and I. It never held enough air and I would wake with my back on the floor and was somehow being blamed for the failure of the apparatus to hold oxegen. The cleaning lady later told me on my way out, the mattress was bad and had always been that way. Seemed like Susie was in denial or trying to hustle me or maybe a little of the two. I was not an easy hustle so eventual Susie would relent.

      After completing the days toils: I would sometimes work out on site and then head to Java and write. The energy would be peaceful and the interior full of color. It was a feeling of easiness rather then the stress and pretentiousness the Valley offered. The V energy from the struggling filled the Valley air like a strong, heavy current. I wrote my own stuff and then met the Brit for our screenplay session.

      I pulled out a pocket recorder and we would talk about the trip that was going to be transcribed into a script and probably not get made nor bought. That was the world I knew and lived for over a decade. It brought a chuckle to my lower regions how everyone in the city of dreams could write a script about an event they deemed worthy of a twenty five million dollar budget and an A list star rolling his eyes at a table read.

I can’t believe I’m doing this! I need to leave the Coke alone!

     But for Green tea and sandwiches I was game. She came down and we moved outside table below the heat lamp and the brit moaned into the recorder.

Even her moan was Cockney!

     She sounded like her wounded heart was abused over in the Dominican Republic, by old friends that were jealous of her LA life which unknown to them was: a studio, disability insurance and various other scams. She was living the LA life that was mostly- fake. All of it was an act like a failed puppet show that was not be believed. There was no possible way to make a puppet realistically, you always knew without much hesitation that it was a simple piece of cloth with someone’s hand up it’s a*s.

    She was a failed singer, who tried a little bit but fell into the trapping of a family, friends and weed. But failed in LA was not a bad thing, because everyone was a failed something. We all were at one point or another.

     Yet at that very moment, she was going to be a screenwriter: the best. Her story would break all the records at the box office. She knew a B rated, Kiwi actor through her girlhood friend (so she said) that could get her script to someone. Everyone one I knew seemed to have someone in this town but that someone always led nowhere. If I had a dollar for everyone who said their friend, cousin or uncle knew someone: I could have bought my own studio.  It was like a rabid dog chasing his tail. That’s what trying to remain sane in the city of fallen angels was like. If she wanted to chase her tail no problem. I knew the truth but if it kept her mentaly sedated and healthy with the green teas. 

     After her baited ranting she asked what I was doing afterwards. I told her heading up to the Red Room on Fourth to have a drink. I couldn’t afford the bar scene earlier but now I had small checks coming so I could explore them: the expensive remixed areas around Fourth street with the Indie movie theater, the retro thrift store, the expensive fusion food munched on by wealth gay men and the post graduate hipster from Long Beach State.

      It was everything Santa Monica with out the world wide international spin. It was everything Belmont Shore minus the Palos Verde slash orange country golden dusty grim, which clung to the edges or artist want. I never liked the area much but now I was investigating everyman’s Fourth street: where the ghetto and the gays crossed paths while the Rockabilly and hipsters drank and plotted on the twenty year old female bar hoppers.

     I had been to the Red Room once before to watch a Lakers game. The bar’s reputation proceeded it even before I walked in the door. I had driven by one night and noticed a large group of twenty somethings standing outside waiting to get in or maybe they were not. Maybe they were smoking or outside for some kind of Bible reading. Jenny my kids mother told me told me about the room and said it was a cool hang out and she had been there a few times in the past with a friend.

     I visited one weekday afternoon. I didn’t like to use Susie’s TV and was not comfortable sitting in the living room and watching the tube. Mind you I was not a big TV person to begin with; usually I watched sports. I was also uncomfortable with the fact she must have thought I was a thief.

      She would leave various objects in the open forgetting that I was now a resident and when I returned it would be put away. I think only a thief themselves feels that everyone wants to steal. Like suburban housewives walking down the street that makes direct eye contact and grabs her purse flicking it to the other side. If I digested it too much it could be a soul crusher.

     Reality is if a Brother from Watts or a starving Meixcan Pisa transient wants your Louie knock off and the twenty dollars mixed in with mints and coupons, there was nothing a Zumba loving, soccer mom can do but watch her handbag do the hundred meets down the boulevard.

     So I was personally inspired to make my way to Fourth Street rather then stay. I entered the door, which was already open. The inside was dark and small with a bar counter to the right and a pool table in the center. To the right was a jukebox and three tables to the side. One was occupied by a group of thuggish Mexican men.

Author's Note

A short connection chapter transitioning to another adventure and more about the Brits script. Comments please

Reviews

[Imara]

"...being on the edge of homelessness it was a bitter, poisoness pills." I think a period would be useful here between homelessness and it since you are starting a new idea.
"I rode it out while the getting was good, because when it did it: back the dollar chicken sandwiches and cup of water." This sentence is a little awkward. What is "it" and what did it do?
You jump around a lot and it made it hard for me to follow what was going on but that might be due to the fact that this is a chapter and I haven't read the whole book.

I really like the narrator here, he's really human. Stealing the sprite, the way he thinks about how everyone including himself comes to write some big movie script but most of them fail. I'm not much sure of the point with the whole college thing at the beginning. It confused me.
Over all great job, go back and do another read through because there are some grammar mistakes with commas and such. I really liked it :)

[Judas Hammer]

Thank you for the advice and the edits. It all help and the fact you went out of your way make me very thankful. It does jump back and forth, if you get a change check some prior chapters. Thank you again Imara..

[Imara]

I will try to get around to it, it seems like a really great story!

[Veronica Chandler]

This short chapter is very good, and adds some dimension to the character Susie which helps add to the experience. The story continues and I enjoy your way of telling them, which paints such clear pictures. I would have liked to read more about the "Brits" script, but probably only because of the authors comment. Keep writing for I intend to continue reading for your style draws me in.

[Judas Hammer]

Thank you for the read and review veronica. More of the brits script is coming up where it has more in detail.

[Leslie Philibert]

A writer that I like - and I refrain from much comment, simply go your way and don`t listen too much what critics or reviewers say, just keep working as you do and you will be read !

[Judas Hammer]

thank you my friend for the inspiration

[Silhouette]

Awesome job with the descriptions and the topic…another great chapter, I love it =)

[Judas Hammer]

thanks again.....

[Silhouette]

Anytime =)

[Dayran]

Its quite a topic to tackle when dealing with the ' Script of Life.' It aims at a description of cosmology of our lives that provides a peripheral sensation of the environment we are in. Everybody needs to do that ... its the basis of understanding ourselves in relation to others and gives meaning to our thoughts and actions.

Your LA appears like the dream makers studio and its residents pay the slightest courtesy of attention to issues of home and family. But they bring everything they have to discover the contact their physical being makes with the world, their thoughts and its growing relation to life.

It starts great, without pretensions and with a simple honesty regarding life the way it is. But I believe it has to pick up somewhere along the way to point to the dream a person has and how they bring it to realization. To do that a person must believe in their dreams and find that connection with their cosmology. Its a good place to start.

[Judas Hammer]

Very statue. You know the LA world quiet well. I agree the script has to pick up and it will.

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

I would eat like the well to do until the troth was empty....love this. An excellent chapter.

[Judas Hammer]

Thank you very much for the read and the review

[Coyote Poetry]

A very good chapter. I like the description of how you lived and pay for your food. I like the description of the job. California always left me in wonder. Complete different from my home in Michigan. Thank you for sharing the excellent chapter.
Coyote

[Judas Hammer]

Thanks again my friend......that means alot from you.