L.A. Blues by James Hippie

      Rudi Riet CC



​L.A. Blues


     I saw The Writer at the Tuesday night AA meeting on Alvarado. My girlfriend had previously informed me that it was strictly against code to directly acknowledge anyone famous in a meeting. Clearly everyone knew who the celebrities were, but this was the social construct they had agreed to: they grace us with their presence, and we bask in the conceit that they are “just like us.”

     So far this had not been a problem. I rarely found myself starstruck by anyone I saw, and in fact had come to dislike most of the musicians I encountered in meetings. I couldn’t take them seriously in their leather pants and eyeliner, decked out like they were at a video shoot and not in a dingy church rec room.  The social hierarchy in the L.A. meetings brought back unpleasant memories of junior high school. It was disturbing to watch people jockeying to be near their heroes, as if some of their luster would rub off on them. I preferred the meetings back in Orange County with the dumpster diving winos. I could relate to them better.

     Going against protocol, during the break I introduced myself to The Writer and told him I was a fan of his books. We made small talk for a few minutes, during which I mentioned that I hadn’t been aware that he was in the program.

     “Are you fucking kidding me,” he said.  “I used my 4th Step as the outline for my first novel.”

     The Writer filled his styrofoam coffee cup and walked back to his seat, where a stunning blonde was waiting for him. Even though writers were somewhere near the bottom of the social order here, they still had enough cache to command a decent seat. 

     After the meeting, my girlfriend walked back to the apartment ahead of me and I went to the 7-11 and bought a Coke.  I sat on the curb outside and lit a cigarette, thinking about what the writer had said. It was a good line. Complete bullshit, I was sure, but a good line nonetheless. The kind of thing he undoubtedly crafted to drop on starstruck fans that recognized him in the rooms. It was a nice bit of self-mythologizing. I wished I had thought of it myself.

     In meetings, I never shared about having aspired to be a writer when I was younger. It was a part of my story I preferred to gloss over. I had never been published, and I rarely finished anything worth reading. I had stopped thinking of myself as a writer somewhere between the first trip to rehab and the voluntary commitment in Phoenix, considering it not so much a phase as a poor lifestyle choice.  

     There had been a few of us would-be writers in our group, and together we would make the rounds of the open mic nights and dive bars, acting out our studiously degenerate dramas, certain that we were legends in the making. I had bought into the whole mythology of the tortured artist and spent years playing it out, always drinking more than I produced. It worked well for a couple of years, when I could afford to drop in and out of college and explain away gaps of unemployment. I discovered there were females who seemed predisposed to find that kind of misanthropy attractive, which just encouraged me to continue. I could talk a good game, although I wonder now if I was fooling anyone other than myself. I genuinely believed that one day I would sit down and write that novel, that the dysfunctional way I survived would become the source material for something brilliant and utterly astounding. 

     Of course none of that happened.

     Now I was pushing forty, sober for two years, and working as a telemarketer in Anaheim. I had managed to put together an uncomplicated existence for myself. It was about all I could handle.   From sitting in meetings, I learned that my story was not all that unique. The plumber from Riverside had basically the same tale to tell as the one-hit-wonder rock star, the same predictable story arc that inevitably ends the same way. We all did the same insane, selfish, pathetic shit, and if it didn’t kill us, we would find ourselves in these dingy meeting rooms trying to shake it off and move on.

     Somewhere at home there was a box of notebooks, unfinished stories, outlines, drunken scrawls, polaroid photos taken in bars I couldn’t remember being in. Looking at it now there are no regrets, and I’m glad I never attempted to publish anything then. I remember more than I care to let on, and I’m not particularly proud of the person I was then. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to be a drunken asshole.

     Walking along the ass end of Sunset, I saw a man sleeping in the dirt a few feet from the bus stop at the corner near my girlfriend’s apartment. A carload of gangbangers cruised by slowly, and I looked to the ground until they passed. The street was still crowded, even though it was getting late. I thought about Fante’s Los Angeles, about Bukowski’s, a place I had grown up fetishizing and longing to experience and write about, and which I now found myself in, living a much different life than I ever imagined I would.

     I couldn’t think of a thing I could add to it. 

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James Hippie is the author of The Punk Called Rock, Terminal Jive, and the poetry collection XX.  His writing has appeared online at Horror Sleaze Trash, Unlikely Stories, Terror House Magazine, and Literary Yard.