The bartender didn’t serve anyone else but us that night. We asked him what he thought we did and he answered something serious, something boring-sorry. We begged him to take the small group of us back to his studio apartment which felt more like a shack on an island and we desperately wanted [[Jimmy Buffet]] to play in the background. Or [[Chris Isaak]], we couldn’t decide. He looked up at us from the carpet as we listened to one another. We spoke about diets and dreams; fitful things. But most of us yearned for [[intangible things]] like being the kinds of people who threw a poetry reading every Wednesday in their Brooklyn backyards. Or drank the whole milk carton before it spoiled and sufficiently replaced it in time for the next bowl of cereal. We wished we were the kinds of people who wanted a [[boat]]. That was easy.We could have sworn he was wearing a [[blue Hawaiian shirt]] too, but our minds sometimes played tricks on us. For instance, we swore we saw our mothers in every [[painting]] we came across, even the one that hung above his bed. We sat in his chairs; they looked lived in and comfortable, a little dirty-like him. But we sat in them and watched him slowly take a seat on the carpet. There was a full moon that night and the visible palm tree on his porch hit the screen door. Tap, tap…tap. It repeated itself just to make sure we heard it. The cars loudly whizzed by on the bridge and our attention vanished. The cacophony didn’t appear to bother him, in fact, he seemed to tap his thumb to the rhythm, but again, our minds played many tricks. [[Chris Isaak->boat]] Sarah explained the closest she ever got to being a film director was the entire year she had sex with an action star in his garage turned gym in the hills. That seemed to propel her into a false sense of ownership for a few years over the job title “aspiring director.” And Mike always dreamed of being a famous writer. But editing scripts and attending Adam Sandler’s Holiday Party three consecutive years in a row did not make him a writer. Then Charlotte, maybe the most aspirational of us all, dreamed of being a singer. But eight years of background crosses and eating food in paper bowls from craft service turned her cold. And she longed to do literally anything other than sing and be anywhere other than LA. We wondered what would happen if we looked down at him. Would he get embarrassed that we caught him staring? We looked-he didn’t get embarrassed, not at all. When one of us spoke to the group, he watched and now that he had total permission, we felt a hole burning in our cheeks from his eyes. His whole [[body]] squared off to us and we wanted him. We answered each other’s [[questions]] with conviction.It might have just been a [[vodka tonic]] but we could have sworn it was a [[Malibu]] rum drink. It should have been if it wasn’t. "What are you looking at?"
Nothing, I’m just seeing your potential he said as he wiped some alcohol off his [[body->lip]] onto his [[body->bare knee]].He lived under a bridge and so did another guy and his roommate from the group. They had that in common; cheaper rent because of the [[noise]]. They were then deemed the [[three sexy bridge trolls]].
There was sake being poured from a pot into each of our [[mugs]]. It felt precious and ritualistic because it was made by the pourer. And we loved the warmth that hit our tongues as we listened to him talk about his [[surfing days]]. It was foreign to us, he was foreign to us, so we kept warming the sake.We all wanted to sleep with him but it wasn’t in the cards so we let him kiss our [[Neither]] and [[peck]] our lips, no tongue-that would have ruined the whole thing. Sleeping with him would have been like exposing the morning routine of the [[Dalai Lama]] or finding out what foods [[Mother Theresa]] was allergic to. We didn’t want to know, we couldn’t; he was just perfect to us. We backed out of his driveway and waved goodbye to his island shack under the bridge. He ran out and motioned to roll the window down and whispered in our ears something none of us even remember now. But we felt like we were just perfect then, too.
[[noise->Mother Theresa]]We got hungry and decided to go to the only restaurant open at 3am. Charlotte put two twenties down on the bar and bought a burrito and double of Don Julio. It was only $18 but she left both twenties perched on the bar. She spent money like that when she was all mixed up and felt like she needed to spend until nothing was left because there would be nothing left of her soon. I’m ending it all she’d joke when she was at her lowest. After a while, the laughs stopped. She kept quiet about the ending it all joke but we knew what spending like that meant. [[three sexy bridge trolls->Dalai Lama]] One of the few things we liked about LA now was the seemingly scarce amount of funeral homes. In New York, we noticed them. It’s because there’s so many people we agreed. Stuff like that isn’t always mentioned in tv shows or movies we watched growing up. [[mugs->Neither]] But we could be anything we wanted that night and we were all loving who we were or thought we were; our lost dreams didn’t seem so lost. You could see it in the way we spoke with our whole bodies. Or maybe we were emulating him and the way he spoke. Either way, we felt comfortable in our skin and always wanted to feel like that. [[surfing days->Dalai Lama]]You are neither. We went back to New York where we took note of funeral homes and the ironic Hawaiian shirts- not the authentic, vintage ones like he wore, of course. But we bought them new anyway and spoke with our bodies and remembered how bright it was in West LA that night.You are the Dalai Lama. You are Mother Theresa. [[blue Hawaiian shirt->boat]][[painting->blue Hawaiian shirt]]Double-click this passage to edit it.