The Pacific Dining Car is a swanky steak pit on the edge of downtown L.A. It’s been there since 1 921. It’s dark and wood paneled. It’s a self-contained time warp in a city of time warps and dark continuums.
Hanson’s uncle Jack brought him to the Car for steak dinners that his father couldn’t afford. My father brought me to the Car on my tenth birthday, in 1958. I met my wife at the Car. A minister married us a few yards from my favorite booth.
I sat down in the booth and stretched my legs. I was exhausted.
I’d watched Bud White shoot the rape-o two dozen times. I’d watched Hanson refine and perfect the scene. I felt dispersed. I was losing track of all my L.A.’s.
Hanson showed up a few minutes later. A waiter brought us our drinks automatically.
We discussed the day’s shooting and the thematic shifts between my novel and his film. Our conversation drifted back to L.A. in the ‘5os and the dark corners we had peered into as children.
I said, “There’s a phrase that puts it nicely.”
Hanson said, “Tell me.”
I said, “L.A.: Come on vacation; go home on probation.”
Hanson laughed and said, “It’s inspired.”
October 1997
LET’S TWIST AGAIN
Seasons of grace come and go. People never designate them in th moment. They look back individually or en masse and imposc narrative lines. It all comes down to what you had and what you lost.
The lines apply to nations, cities, and people. Kodachrome snapshots offset them. Faded colors send out a glow. Gooey music fills in the rest of the picture and tells you what to think.
It was better then. We were better then. I was younger then.
It’s specious stuff all the way. It’s schmaltzy hindsight built from verisimilitude. It obfuscates more than it enlightens. There’s just enough hard truth in it to keep it running strong.
One season defines the whole mind-set. A formal name denotes it. Knights and maidens in a savage time. A three-hanky weeper on stage, screen, and CD.
A corny musical and a worn-out media concept. With a threepoint intersection running soft and sure in my head.
I had my own Camelot. It ran concurrent with the Broadway show and Jack Kennedy’s spin in the White House. I lived in a dive apartment with my pussy-hound father and our unhousebroken dog. I had a fancifully corrupted mind and poor social skills. I had a Schwinn Corvette with gooseneck handlebars, chrome fenders, rhinestone-studded mud flaps, fringed saddlebags, and a speedometer that topped out at 150 miles per hour. I had a great city to roam and a shitload of kid lore to assimilate.
Our pad straddled Hancock Park and lower Hollywood. To the south and southwest: Tudor castles, French chateaus, and Spanish haciendas. To the north: small houses and studio back lots. To the east: wood-frame cribs and apartment dumps on a hilly plumb line downtown.
My beat covered Hollywood to Darktown. The southern border was a race line that white kids never crossed. It was pre-riot L.A. L.A. was pre-hysteric. Parents told their kids not to stray south of Pico and let the little flickers roam.
I started roaming at age i i. It was summer I had to start junior high in September. It scared the shit out of me.
I bike-roamed. I shoplifted books and candy bars. I ran into strange kids in bike cliques and picked up information.
How this girl popped some Spanish fly and impaled herself on a shift knob. How Hitler was still alive. The word on aspirin and Coke. The word on Liberace and Rock Hudson. The word on your local junior high schools.
Le Conte Junior High, AXA “Le Cunt”: Coool guys. Fast girls. Partyville, U.S.A. A breeding ground for studs in the “Lochinvars” and “Celts.” Be cool or stay out.
Virgil Junior High: Full of cholos with Sir Guy shirts and slitbottomed khakis.
King Junior High: Full ofJaps and creeps from Silverlake–the “Swish Alps.” Lots of homos who wore green on Thursdays.
Louis Pasteur Junior High: Full of uppity spooks who thought they were white.
Berendo Junior High: Danger zone. Pachuco rumbles. Full of Catholic girls who smoked Maryjane and had babies out of wedlock.