Southern California

So as I walked along a nowhere road somewhere between Thousand Oaks and Santa Monica, I ran into a very peculiar character. Walking the opposite direction, right in my way, was a hugggge black guy, wearing white pajamas. Looked just like Eddie Murphy in that movie “Holy Man” actually. He also had a large black horn curled around one of his arms. I just had to comment.

“That’s a great horn,” I said. He pulled it out from under his arm and played a long note. It sounded like something out the swiss alps. Then he spoke.

“What are you up to my friend?” Says he

“I’m trying to walk across the US,” Says I

“Do you know who I am?” He asked

“No”

“I am a prophet my friend.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this one. He went on.

“When you leave from Phoenix, I want you to make sure you go through the Indian reservation on that way. I see a great blessing for you there”

“Well Actually, I think I’m going to go up though the Flagstaff rou-“ He put up his hand and cut me off here.

“When you go though Phoenix, make sure you remember what I said.”

And he walked off. This was also the moment I decided I had to get a camera, which I did just before leaving LA.

LA was a gorgeous blast. I spent a good 2 or 3 days hanging in a crazy local artists house by the name of ZOSO, He toured me around LA and chatted about the local underground art theme. He had an extreamly unique style which I could only coin as “sleepy Quasimoto” Heres a little exaple, a “self portrait of his”

Check out his website here: http://zoso1.com/ Also talked about a great deal was his –and now my- art idol, a shy Japanese girl by the name of Audrey Kawasaki. She did these bizarre wispy anime-like girls drawn in wood. I’ll always laugh at the immortal words of Zoso: “I want to fuck her paintings”

Another highlight was him and his friends driving me out to that place where they filmed the race scene in “Grease” in the pitch black of 3am. I sat there on the concrete and looked up and the stars for a good hour, wallowing in that beautiful feeling that only comes from traveling again..ahh to travel. The Nomad spirit is in me!

So now we enter the dangers of Date Rape In Palm Springs!

Plam Springs, Beautiful aint it?

Well, no, not really, but it was a bizarre incident. So I arrived in Palm springs weary, limping and in general just strait up exhausted. But good news! I was getting hosted that night, so I was a happy man. Apparently my host was quite the world traveler himself, or at least his job took him all over the world. I’d talked to him several times by phone, he had quite the charming cockney little English accent but seemed harmless enough. Upon meeting him I was acutely reminded of one of my favorite English actors Bob Hoskins.

Within 5 minutes of meeting him 2 things became very apparent:

1. He was very gay*
2. For some reason he was attracted to me

*Now, I should explain here that I am not a crazy-anti-homo-gun-toting-religious-zealot. In fact, I’ve had many gay friends, one of my favorite uncles in gay. I live very close to San Fancisco, and I’ve attended at least 6 or 7 gay pride parades world wide (Go Madrid!) This does not, however, make me gay.

Now, I should explain here that my reasoning behind number 2 first started developing in his car when he started to do this little “oh you” and grab me somewhere every time I told a joke. Normally I wouldn’t take much notice to this except I realized I did the same thing back in the day with girls I liked. Actually, I can keenly remember the first time this happened to me on a train to Paris where the girl I was sitting across from leaned over and squeezed my hand after some joke I’d told. I remember thinking “good lord, she likes me!” And yes, turned out she did when she jumped me in the train bathroom later ;) A story for another time though.

Now then, as we drove back to his house so I could drop my bag off and take a shower, he suggested we hit the bars. It sounded like a good plan to me, he was my host after all and it’s not like he had crossed a line or anything. So we made our way to town down Palm Springs where according to him “the party was at”

It was sometime on the ride over there he started talking about why he lived in Palm Springs.

“There’s a Marine base here man, I love marines, they’ll do anything for a few bucks-I got some staying over tomorrow in fact”

I told him what a shame it was he was just stuck with me for the night. He laughed and pinched my cheek. I started wondering where I was going to have to draw the line. So far however I was committed to having a good time.

We arrived at the first bar, can’t remember the name. This was clearly not a middle Texas bar though by the site of a 6’3 “babe” as we walked in the entrance wearing a particularly cheesy blonde wig. I was already having a great time though, if you will remember I am no stranger to this kind of thing. We sat back at the bar and got drunk off White Russians and some kind of bland English ale. Then the Diva Denise Carter came on, the reason why he had taken me here in the first place. It was her birthday and she took over the place. Think Aretha Franklin. I actually got a picture of her from her website.

Man, was I into it. I sat back and sang along as loud as I could when she would break out with “Respect” and drunkenly mumbled to the verses I didn’t know to Fergies “Glamourous” only to come back screaming “IF YOU AINT GOT NO MONEY TAKE YOUR BROKE ASS HOME” during the melody.

We returned to his house some hours later, fairly good and liquored up. I decided the best solution here was a quit exit. I told him I was going to call it an early night. I’m not going to go into detail the next hour here, I’ll only say that I was sober enough to see though his kind of sad attempts at seduction, specifically because they reminded me so much of my own idiot drunken feats before I knew any better. But he just didn’t get it, sometime after the perhaps 5^th polite but clear statement that “you just need to let this go man” the straw that finally broke the camels back was when he started drunkenly offering to pay me to masturbate in front of him. I said a polite good night, walked over to my room, and locked the door.

I sat there in my room for a while, pondering if he was drunk enough to try to stumble into my room during the wee hours of the morning. I wasn’t worried about a fight, I was fairly sure I could physically overpower him if it came to it and his personality didn’t seem to be prone to violence. All in all I doubted he would try to come in even if he couldn’t seem to take a hint. Never the less I propped my bag up on the door to give me some warning, jumped into my night clothes and went to sleep.

In the morning all was well, he looked a bit sleepy and sorry and we said our farewells. As I walked out of Palm Springs I remember thinking: Man, even stupid stuff like this makes an entertaining memory. I love traveling.