Aunt Sally and Those Pizza Pie Dreams (A 30:30 Report)
It only took me three weeks to score a job at the pizza place right down on the boardwalk, that was after I’d flown in from Rhode Island and had been crashing on Roy’s floor, this being of course my brand new life, one I’d been dreaming about since I was like 12 and now here I am, hello California, and here in what we refer to as “the Southland” I was preparing to set up shop on a relatively permanent basis, say another 75 years give or take.
So I’d flown in on a United flight out of TF Green in Providence, where I’d been staying with my Aunt Sally for the last year working in a printing company just off the Brown campus, but I’d grown weary of permanent ink stains in my life and visions of hot molten lead slipping up under my covers while I slept, I’m thinking it had something to do with the 237 copies of Amazing Stories sci-fi I’d gathered and collected and bid on and, yup, stole maybe 20 of those bad boys too, and read them all, the point is enough with the printing factory even though that meant giving up smoldering weekends with gal pal Johanna whenever her roomies were out of town, maybe a couple times a month, since my aunt was cool and all but had this religious thing about no unmarried sex under her roof – a rule she would never bend assuming you find a way to ignore that one pretty big exception when we – Aunt Sally and me – got whacked dramatically on a bottle and a half of gold tequila, we’d ordered in with burritos and chips and stuff, and I cannot tell you how this happened but freaky Friday or whatever at some point after I heard the old grandad clock in the front hallway downstairs bang out 11 chimes me and Sally were in fact not sneaking through some alley buy instead found ourselves banging the Christ out of each other in a transversing escapade which featured both our rooms and the linen closet and even up against the glass shower wall, and there is no evidence in this lifetime that my auntie and me ever got hitched and that means, oh shame on you girlfriend, Ms. Sally Hastings broke her one big vow, the one about no unmarried sex under her roof you better believe, and it wasn’t like I snuck Johanna in or anything so discreet or sneaky no sir this was me and Sally doing the big bang our own selves, which there was a period of about four days directly after where things were a tad weird in the old Hastings household but you ever notice how you can just shine something on enough so’s eventually it is nearly like it didn’t happen and that is exactly, well was since I’m out here in Venice Beach now, but that was what happened and pretty soon we were drinking and hugging and telling each other broken heart stories and brainstorming very cool sci-fi plot lines like creeping molten lead up the wazoo and once in a while we’d fantasize about ripping off the Co-op Bank just down Elm because the manager there was generally every time a dick to Sally when she went in to do banking, so we came up with a couple of pretty frigging cool ideas about ripping that asshole off – and doing no harm to any other no doubt underpaid employees, that’s the way it goes with fat cat assholes up at the top wrung,
But Sally and I are pretty much these days confined to thick letters every couple of weeks, which sometimes must be passing in separate planes or post office 18-wheelers or however they get out here or back there, and we’ve had a couple of calls on the phone which is just a little too much in the coin department for me, so there you go about Aunt Sally (who’s last birthday was her 42nd) and what I tell myself I’ll write a story about one day and called it Mexicali Svengali or some such south of the border name piece, but now I’m a resident of the golden state and yes I have not registered to vote yet as if I would give a shit about that nor do I own an automotive means of transport so no need for the joyous experience of the DMV or whatever it gets called out here, of course with no car I’ve never been in one in California so I’m making an assumption that motor vehicle state places are run by evil shitheads and the truly incompetent everywhere, yeah I know you shouldn’t ever generalize, but that’s a big whatever, Brah,
And as for me I have landed this sweet employment at a place called Zeppy’s Pizza which is about two-thirds of the way down the boardwalk from where I’m crashing with Roy and his three roommates, though we have had a midnight séance kind of thing last Sunday, me and Roy, where we each drank nine cans of Hamm’s beer and wrote down all kinds of thoughts, unedited and unsolicited and you could say they were so virginally undressed, the point is plan one is to head out in the next couple of days in a full-court press to come up with an apartment for just him and me, screw the roommates, and so later today I intend to head down into Santa Monica, up the beach walk but turning off way before the pier and rides and tourist central and head up into those neighborhoods off Ocean and look in windows for empty places or signs on lawns or realty billboards and bring the small notebook which is pretty beat to shit but which I would never head out without, plus two pens in case one runs dry or I just drop or lose it, and write things down so when Roy can get a couple of afternoons free, which he expects this week, we go and find us a new abode,
And then I want you to stop and deeply consider this for a few minutes – yours truly, Milky Bent, living large with the dream, a cool apartment in freakin’ Santa Monica USA, baby, can you say Hollywood just down the street?, and me having a job – I didn’t tell you this yet – as, get this, ‘ The Manager’ at Zeppy’s and make that the pretty famous Zeppy’s down on the for sure wickedly famous Venice Beach boardwalk, and just kitty corner across the way from one of those muscle beach pens, they’re all chain-linked in and you have to be a member if you don’t want to be king konged your ass to smithereens by sauntering in with a flimsy “What’s up, Bros?”, nah, better have some heavy medicine available, but there can be no doubt that soon enough say after a couple of weeks all those dudes will be stopping by our pulled-up, wide-open, extra-large front window and ordering slices and salads loaded with garbanzo beans and other implements of natural health and we serve wine through a tap there too, white only, and beers on draft which I didn’t mention is yet another in the long list of what contributes to living the big dream Sherman, and already I have taken up body surfing, and – oh yeah, my third day hanging down off the boardwalk and wearing cutoffs and ditching into the ocean every five minutes and then out on a towel soaking in SoCal sunshine this girl dropped down onto a spot just next to me and after a couple of tick tocks we got rapping and it turns out she’s this Mexican chick from a town called El Centro somewhere inland and down near the Mex border and her name is, are you ready?, Consuela, like how many old black and white western movies was I watching Saturday afternoons in Providence with characters of young women named Consuela….
And now I’m about to very likely get to know her real well, especially wait until Roy and I cop our own place, and oh man I have written a lot of these notes in my notebook and Roy told me about a place up on Lincoln that sells used typewriters and my first paycheck I’m literally racing up there and buying one and bringing it back to our bachelor pad and become the California bop, jazzy, let-it-rip writer I always dreamed about. Wait til Aunt Sally hears all this.