Clubbing in LA, 1987

Excerpts from a GenX memoir

Author’s Note:
Inspired by my friend and colleague Wink Twyman, I have begun work on the memoir of the first half of my life. That dude I was before I got married. The working title is Seventeen Girlfriends and I may very well decide, following his lead, to publish excerpts from that here at Stoic Observations. But today I cannot resist reading some of my old journals from October of 1987 when I was living in West Adams and driving around in my BMW wearing a black duster with black fingerless gloves trying to find a stable girlfriend and trying to make sense of my life. Here’s a peak inside of my 26 year old mind.

A couple notes, I was writing about a night I spent club crawling in El Segundo, then DTLA, then Hollywood. ‘Carolina North’ is a play on a tacky popular club called the Carolina West. I was referring to the legendary Crush Bar, where the reality of the stereotype of black guys picking up homely white chicks was happening in 87. But none of this impressionist stuff is in narrative order - even I can’t figure out what happened first.

1987-10-07 / 15:50
Life is getting richer. I am delving down, pulling more out, investigating fractal intricacies of every act like a dancer who seems only to stand on tiptoe and turn, but within acts on the most precise scale.

Last night I flew around the city in wild escape, fleeing boredom as it doused me with its blue dread companion: loneliness. I forgot them, only never really defeating them, and today another flesh-bright day I am alone with myself, inspired by myself. I pledge dedication to that which I love— my learning, my privately organized world in which I arrange all the fractal inputs into the mosaic mind.

I contradict myself at night. I move and entangle vicariously, acting the character until it touches whatever alluring fantasy I have conjured, writing scripts for the characters of the night unawares and fumbling their way through my drama. I am amused or disgusted, but it doesn’t matter, because I am involved. I danced by myself in the middle of the floor next to a column padded with leather, beer cans underfoot, the bottom of its leather jacket permanently stained with Bud and Coors Light. Then I moved toward the DJ booth, oblivious to this tasteless, less-than-beautiful crowd of early twenties whites finally getting a taste of the 70s funk. I wasn’t drunk enough to continue dancing alone.

I picked the homeliest Black girl of the four present, after three other non-Black rejections, and danced with two like I really was drunk. I didn’t care really, though I was somewhat surprised that I couldn’t get a chance. This place was Carolina North, I’m quite sure.

In Chinatown, The Surprising Taste of No-Wax Formica had closed down. I never had the chance to see how good it was. I ate BBQ pork fu yung around the corner @ 23:30 for $3.75, very quickly, and I noticed how quickly the tea sobered me up. I drank with precision, back to the door listening to the young Chinese waiters talk. As I left and walked down the alley on this second lap of dark Chinatown, now knowing where I was, I pulled out my last Dunhill and sucked on it, passing by two more Chinese youth playing some Chinese rap music, doors wide on their Japanese car. I didn’t drop the square until I reached the Crush Bar’s door.

1987-10-07 / 16:15
The tea was what got me going again, and I consider the strength of Ken, who gurgles tequila. It took two shots and no dinner at Friday’s to lay me waste. My shots take two gulps apiece, and as I bit through the wedge, I considered the strength of the features on my face as the reckless characters began to play into my unchained mind. That girl over there, that guy over there.

It must be obvious that I was averting disaster or should I know not to drink alone and chain smoke? Gary is giving a Halloween party. He breaks my concentration and now I must be friendly. It takes me two minutes to convince him that I am very well, thank you, and get back to my drama. And that other guy, hadn’t he the nerve, returning my gaze? I cocked the old bean at him lengthwise. He caught me again, so I fixed my eyes at his stare. I couldn’t keep it up. I had to laugh.

But the characters weren’t funny any longer. It was time to go dance, so I got my money and headed to 943 N. Broadway, knowing full well that nobody from GT would understand.

I’ll see them tonight anyway Valerie, Patrice, Brandy.

I can only take so much, being the bachelor I am, of women as pals, I sense the magnetism which is both attraction and repulsion, depending on how you are turned at the moment. I am a powerful spinning motor, my alternating poles making such a different use of the basic energy that to entangle me wrecks all works. I simply must be enthused at a different level. So I passed around Calvin and Hobbes. Pat got it best, but why did she change her hair?

Brandy is job searching, she looks my type but feels gutless. The ugly men trying to mack began to make me sick, weak play at conversation. Dave and Charles rescued me. I can’t play gentle bourgeois any longer. I swing my coat out and leave without the proper farewells. The air is chill and a fresh breeze from the coast braces me. I respect the other woman leaving the club. Valerie had her mouth full all night. Time to dress in black.

Now, today, I am going to get some Chinese food as soon as Appassionata finishes.

⸻

1987-10-17 / 13:30
Perhaps I have ruined myself.

I am thinking right now about nothing in particular, except the notion that I have been reborn. About a year ago I was in the process of having all of my illusions shattered. Now I feel like a professional student of life. I can’t seem to simply live nor live simply. I am a bustle of unstructured activity. My structures were built on illusions, and now I am somewhat lucky to have landed on my feet after having the rug snatched from beneath them. But on my disorienting way down from that great height — as I viewed the world from odd angles, flipping and falling I developed a survivalist sensibility. Now my legs are sore, though not broken, and a part of me, my honor, is telling me to climb again. Yet my dignity has been reordered such that I can live with myself on the low plane. Or have I simply been self-destructive?

I have seen living life in a computed world. I had been hoping that was enough. But I am still so very hungry for more. I am dying from exposure.

1987-10-17 / 19:25
I lament today’s empty realism. Its voice has been my public education, and as the son of a broken home I feel my sorrow is insignificant. To recover my humanity, whatever that may be, I must suffer additionally. To build myself into one truly capable of citizenship, I must acknowledge the frailties of the soul and put myself through the training. Basics I should have had as a member of society. Since no one understands manhood any longer, I need sensitivity analysis. My head must be shrunken for my heart to expand. Yet I find equal comfort, whatever comfort may be, in the mastery of the manipulation of symbols for which our society has rearranged itself in the worst way. I still see zeroes and dollars.

My words, for me, non-transferable. I dance alone to my own interpretation of my ears. Madhouse! Madhouse 1. Paisley Park Records. Yeah!

Am I becoming misanthropic, or self-hating, or ashamed of my race, or less accepting of man’s inhumanity, insanity, and confusion? It’s hard to know, when Ellison and Baldwin, denizens of the Invisible Underground, are heroes of mine. Is there a face that can save me from this, that I can touch? Is it the mirror? Is it an icon?

Postmodern grey, black, and red. Blood in the ashes. I dance to the rhythm of clanging steel; the pulse of collapse. Irony, the highest sensibility. Iron rusting at an accelerated tempo. Toxic waste… Outrage is the only sanity. All intellectual progress Balkanized. America is terrorized, and humor is all dirty jokes.

I think that perhaps, listening to The Art of Noise with my shirt off, two hours before the party, I am preparing for the next tragic chapter of my drama of clumsiness.

I’ve been thinking about going to church recently, for the music. The ridiculous tyranny of God over the postmodern mind is a comfort, knowing that God holds no nuclear gambits. God, man’s greatest invention. Still, a heavenly chorus would be nice to hear. I could even appreciate nice for that hour.

⸻

1987-10-17 / 20:00
Everyone thinks that I am heavily padded with babes. He haw. What a cover! I hate writing out in longhand my most profound pleas to the air. Can’t we be friends? I didn’t even hear that. Ah, so what?