Bureaucracy: Frustrating to Deal With, Hard to Spell

Back in December of Aught-Nine, when I was only two months into this West Coast experiment, I was pulled over by the LAPD while cruising around town with my friend Wam.

This is an accurate transcript of the events that followed, at least as best as I can recall them:

CHiPs: Do you know why I pulled you over, punk?
Me: No, Sir. I was driving safely and at a reasonable speed.
CHiPs: Don't back-sass me. What you were doing is driving while talking into your fancy-schmanz portable phone box.
Me: Oh? I'm sorry officer; I didn't realize I was breaking any laws. I know ignorance is not a valid defense but I just moved to California and I still have an out-of-state license, that's why I don't know all of the traffic laws. Otherwise I never would have accepted a collect call from my Grandmother in the hospital. Please have mercy on my soul.
CHiPs: Warnings are for women and retards. Here's a ticket. Suck it up like the man you'll never be.

Just like that, I became indentured to the state of California. At least when you owe Tony Soprano money, he gives you the option of breaking some legs to shave points off your debt.

Yes, I broke the law and I should have paid my $50 ticket. I knew that at the time; it's not like I considered fighting it in court. Sometimes you just get sidetracked by life. I put the ticket in with some other bills and tickets, not fully understanding the qualitative difference between parking tickets and moving violations. When I finally paid those parking tickets off and I could type in my DL number and no infractions came up, I thought I was in the free and clear.

Nope. Apparently moving violations are paid from a completely separate website.

I was looking into finally getting a California driver license yesterday and that's when I found out I was trekking through Feces Canyon without shoes. You can probably guess that the ticket was never paid and interest accrued. A lot of interest. I let an earlier parking ticket get out of control before paying it and it went from $45 to $135 -- so if this moving violation was also going to triple, I would have to scrounge up $150 buckaroos to switch over my license.

I typed my driver's license number into the new website, it gave me the old citation number to type in the next field. That's when the waiter served me a warm bowl of steaming dogshit and forgot to bring the napkins.

I owed $875 dollars. On a $50 cell phone ticket. What the motherfucking fuckity fuck?!?!??

Worse yet, I was docked for a failure to appear in court and my CA driving record was in a "hold" status. I don't know what that means exactly, especially since I was still using my (seemingly?) valid CO license, but it reminded me of having a financial stop on my university account preventing me of registering for classes until I paid the bill.

There was a big difference, however; the University of Colorado never sought to arrest me for a failure to pay. I suspect that, in the past four or five months, had I been pulled over by the police for any reason at all, I would have been arrested for driving with a suspended license and/or failure to appear in court.

That would have sucked a great big uncircumcised monkey cock.

I found all this out last night right before I was about to drive for work. The reason I was looking into all this is because I was trying to fix my registration. I (hopefully) took care of re-registering the vehicle in Florida but I don't anticipate the stickers arriving for a few days. I was fully prepared to get pulled over with expired tags, show the officers the receipts and such and hope they let me be on my way or, at the very worst, receive a fix-it ticket that I could easily take care of once the registration paperwork was processed.

Suddenly I was faced with driving to work with expired tags, a suspended license, and a possible bench warrant. That changed everything, of course. I've been known to do some dumb shit, but I wasn't going to drive into West Hollywood with expired tags at night hoping one of the 28,313 on-duty cops in the area wasn't going to notice me and haul me into the Big House.

This mental math was done at about 9:40 p.m. My shift starts at 10:00. Since buses take all fucking night to get anywhere, my only real options were begging for a ride or take a cab. I don't have any friends so I called a cabbie.

The dude was quick, actually. No one at work noticed my slight tardiness. But that was $35 ($10 for a quick-ride tip) I'll never get back.

This also left me stranded at work but, mercifully, one of my coworkers was sweet enough to hang around the bar for an extra hour after she got cut to drive my car-less ass home.

My girlfriend was pissed off at me for a whole assortment of reasons. The chief one I can empathize with is this: I've been borrowing her car 5 times a week for the past month. There's a good chance that, if I would have been pulled over, I would have not only been thrown in the slammer but her car may have been impounded. She trusted me with her car and now she thinks perhaps she shouldn't have.

I don't think that's what pissed her off the most, though. She's mad because it's yet another entry in the "Immature and Unreliable BF" database. I'm sure that's disappointing for her and I hate that but sometimes I wish she'd be a little more supportive of me in my failures.

When she fucks up, I feel like I'm unconditionally supportive. "You drove home drunk and ran over an Oriental family? Don't worry boo, they were probably asking for it anyway. I'll help you hide the bodies." Whereas when I fuck up sometimes I feel like she piles on.

I fuck up thrice as often as her. And I'm probably succumbing to some psychological fallacy here wherein I think I'm always magnanimous, regardless of the truth. I might be way off here, but that is how I feel.

When I talked to her this morning, however, she sounded more optimistic. That helped.

Today's plan was to call the collection agency that was now handling my ticket and try and negotiate a settlement. That didn't go over so well.

The lady flat out told me that no one in her office was authorized to settle. She said I must pay the amount in full but that she was allowed to structure different payment plans. I asked her if she was authorized to allow me to pay one dollar every ten years. She did not laugh.

Her manager told me the same thing. "But I don't have $825!" I told him. He suggested I reschedule a court appointment. He transferred me to a clerk that was supposed to help me out.

Now I'm rescheduled to appear in court. If I ever live that long. The next available court date was April 4, 2010. Fuck L.A. Just fuck it.

God know how I'll remember to attend court next April, but at least that is taken care of for now. But what about my license? Is it still suspended? Is there a warrant out for my arrest? The clerk gave me a new number to call. The lady who answered that number was actually nice and surprisingly helpful. (I forgot to ask for her name or else I would include it here.)

She directed me to the Superior Court on Hill Street. I could walk-in, pay $10.00 and all the holds/warrants will be erased and that I wouldn't be hassled about payment until the court date next April.

So I took her advice. Being unable to drive a car, I took the metro. I had to transfer once but it actually did a good job of transporting me to where I needed to go (rarely is that the case with Los Angeles public transportation).

I passed through the metal detectors and entered the court house at around noon. I was peckish, and thirsty, but I decided to take care of all that later. Fuck Maslow, he don't know my hierarchy.

The line snaked around the entire building. Every single person there was miserable. Much like any bank or the Ralph's near the lady friend's house, there were a ton of different cashier windows where employees could help these wayward citizens but only a few of them were actually open for business.

I was in line for about two hours before making my way to one of the surly cashiers. The transaction itself was quite easy. I paid $10 to "buy an abstract" -- I'm not at all sure what that means -- and the holds/warrants will supposedly be taken off my record by the end of the business day.

We will see.

It wasn't the most terrible experience in the world but it sure was mildly soul-crushing. I felt like an extra from one of those working-class rage movies (Dog Day Afternoon, Falling Down).

I'll keep you posted on what happens next but the lesson here today is stay on top of your shit, kiddies. Only 20% of problems go away on their own. The rest will grow exponentially and eat your fucking brain.

Confessions of a Man–Slut or: Fuck My Life (a Two Act Play) -- Part 2 of 2

ACT II: Bathroom Shenaningans
(If you missed ACT I: Wam’s Birthday, be sure to read it first)

It's three in the afternoon. I still hadn’t heard from Molly.

I entertain several notions:

A) She’s still sleeping (if we had data on the sleeping habits of persons across every profession, strippers would surely be amongst those who slept the latest, right?).

B) She was walking around the streets of Boulder at 2:30 am last night, drunk and dressed in stripper gear, and the police picked her up for solicitation.

C) She was walking around the streets of Boulder at 2:30 am last night, drunk and dressed in stripper gear, and she was abducted, murdered, or eaten by a criminally depraved pervert or an extremely hungry moose.

D) Something happened to her phone.

E) She hates me.

---

I wait. And I wait. If there’s one thing my conscience doesn’t need, it's another dead stripper.

Finally she sends me a text. I'm honestly relieved that she's alive. There's bad news too, though: Apparently she’s moving to Chicago tomorrow.

Fuck. Last night was my one and only shot at stripper poontang.

I contemplate suicide. Nah. I contemplate Taco Bell. Mmm.

And then Molly sends me another text:

“Tonight’s my last night in town, I want to spend it with you.”

I forgive the missing semi-colon and agree to meet at the Sundown Saloon at 8 pm.

That's two hours from now, though, and I already feel like drinking. I go to Bacaro and sit down at the bar in front of my buddy Beeler—a rookie mistake if ever there was one. When Beeler's pouring, you're lucky to get a splash of Red Bull with your glass of vodka.

I leave Bacaro at 8:15, drunk and cheery and, well, drunk.

I finally reach the ‘Downer. Molly sits at a table drinking PBR with her creepy looking male friend Chris (or something). She asked me earlier if it was okay to invite some other friends (I said "of course.") It’s her last night in town, she should do whatever the hell she wants.

Chris-or-something talks but I really don’t listen. I do watch him speak though because I’m pretty sure he has sharpened teeth. Creepy.

Getting back to Molly, she’s different than I recall.

First, her hair is dyed bright pink (her dark roots indicate it has been this way for some time). Maybe it was the poorly lit strip club, maybe it was the liters of booze running through my veins, but I hadn’t noticed any pink last night.

Second, she’s not as hot as I remember. She’s attractive, sure, but on a scale from one to 10, she’s a seven. Not a nine. (Sevens are still well above my threshold, of course.)

Her two demerits are perhaps blessings in disguise. Molly still intrigues me but she’s no longer a perfect creature to be worshiped or feared. She's simply another girl I want to fuck.

As this epiphany manifests, more stragglers join our (once) small group -- and it’s obvious all these new guys at the table know her only through the strip club.

Before I realize it, there are almost a dozen horny douches surrounding us and I feel like a contestant on Who Wants to Bang a Stripper?. Molly is used to this sort of situation; she takes turns talking to and accepting drinks from each of her desperate suitors.

After about an hour of playing “musical dicks,” I’ve had enough. Besides, the odds of her being on my lap when the music stops are no longer spectacular.

Mercifully, I find an out. Attic Brad and Wheels, two tertiary friends from my days in the service industry, sip whiskey at a nearby table. I excuse myself from Stripperpalooza and bring a pitcher of beer over to my two buds. Seeking less sausage-filled pastures, the three of us soon leave.

Sundown Saloon, Boulder

Just in case you're confused, I made you a map.

By midnight, we are retardedly drunk and heading into the Pearl Street Pub. It’s a brash, annoying bar, but they serve food until the wee hours of the morning. We sip on our beers and Wheels mocks my stripper-naïveté as the annoyingly slow line cook prepares our sandwiches.

Molly arrives as the food is being delivered (her sausage entourage nowhere to be seen). I hit the bar for a fresh round of beers to go with our food and by the time I’ve returned three quarters of my cheese-steak is already gone. Molly licks her fingers with a nervous enthusiasm, as if to say she’s sorry but she can’t afford her own meal. I wonder what she did with the three dollars I stuffed in her panties on Saturday, but decide against asking aloud. “That,” I say instead, “was very uncool.”

Her response: “I was hungry, sorry. Let’s go dance and make-out.” Her apology is inexplicably satisfying.

My disdain for dancing in public is overshadowed by my vow to never disappoint strippers that hope to make out with me. Some crappy bar band plays “Mustang Sally” and I flail around like Janet Reno on ecstasy. Molly doesn’t seem to mind.


(this version of "Mustang Sally" is only slightly worse than the one we danced to)

The song ends and I prop her tiny frame up onto the bar. She shoves her tongue so far down my throat I think maybe she’s looking for the rest of that cheese-steak. We make-out for two or three minutes and I keep telling myself, she doesn’t taste like stale beer and cigarettes, she tastes like glorious wonderful stripper! I slowly slide my right hand up her thigh and beneath her cute yellow sundress. I reach her panties, half expecting to find my singles from last night.

I’m about three seconds from taking a finger hike down into Victory Canyon when Molly pulls back and says, “Slow down. I’m not drunk enough to cheat on my boyfriend back in Chicago.”

God damn it.

Let’s get something straight. I have absolutely no reservations about banging chicks with boyfriends. In fact, there’s a distinct upside (which I won’t get into now). But she should have either 1) opted against jamming her tongue down my throat or 2) never brought him up at all.

My drunken logic tells me she’s more interested in playing with my mind than she is in playing with my cock, so I leave her at the bar (well, on the bar) and seek out my friends in the other room.

On my way back there, I literally run into this plain looking blond woman who is approaching forty.

I’m already in full-blown drunken-horny-hammered mode and I have no reservations about getting straight to the point. The following is an exact transcript of our short conversation.

Approaching Forty: “Hi. I like tall guys.”
Me: “I like fucking in bathrooms.”
Approaching Forty: “Hmm.”
Me: “…”
Approaching Forty: “Do you have any condoms?”
Me: “Nope.”
Approaching Forty: “I have some in my purse. It’s with my date at the front of the bar.”
Me: “Get them.”

Approaching Forty heads to the front to get some condoms. I smile. Drunken reasoning: If you can’t fuck the prom queen, you might as well fuck the lunch lady.

She reappears with her purse. I whisk her to the very back of the bar, toward the bathrooms. As we pass my friends I yell, “Hey Wheels, watch this!” and begin giggling uncontrollably.

I take her into the Men’s room (which was surprisingly clean in retrospect). I want to set her on the sink and fuck her, but she'd rather do it in the handicapped stall. That works too I guess.

Inside the stall I pull down her shorts and panties. She grabs the condom from her purse (a condom, actually; she has enough in there to safely satisfy the entire Roman legion) and rips open the package.

I slide the condom on my dick but something isn't kosher. Shit. It’s one of those free condoms they give out in urban bars. Invariably, they're cheaply made and uncomfortably small. And I’m not being immodest here -- it's not like I'm making my sandwich with six pounds of Genoa salami. These are crappy condoms designed for people with micro-junk.

I keep it on and fuck her from behind anyway, but this thing just barely fits (and I feel like it’s cutting of some circulation). My effort is truly uninspired.

As men wander in and out of the bathroom to piss in the urinals, they clearly see my head above the handicapped stall and our bodies through the cracks in the door. It's honestly all a bit awkward. Whiskey-brain tells me it's a good idea to make conversation with these guys (or at them, as it were); it might put both them and myself at ease.

Various dudes go to and from the urinals as I’m fucking this old woman, and I've decided to chat them up.

Guy number one walks in. “Hey bro, what’s going on?” No response.

Guy number two enters. “Hey man, you used to work at Catacombs, right?” No response.

Numbers one and two wash their hands. “Don’t worry guys; I’m fucking a girl in here, not another dude.” They break into laughter and leave.

After about seven minutes of fucking, this extra-small condom is really irritating me. I pull my dick out, rip off the condom and throw it into the toilet. Approaching Forty barely notices I've stopped.

"Blow me," I say. She obliges but only sucks me off for about 45 seconds before stopping. Apparently the condom left a gross tasting residue on my penis. Whatever.

I leave her in the stall and get another drink. As I exit the bathroom, the ten or so patrons within a 15-foot radius of the door burst into laughter and faux cheer. I'm hammered enough to think it's all hilarious.

Wheels and Attic Brad have a beer waiting for me when I get back to the table. I rehash the bathroom details and we all laugh about it for another fifteen minutes. Eventually, Approaching Forty comes back around and gives me her number before leaving with her boyfriend. I’m drinking Jameson on the rocks now. Sometime later, Molly reenters the picture. Unfortunately, her sausage entourage has nearly tripled.

Molly apologizes for acting “weird” earlier and we talk awhile about movies and music. She has good taste, which is cool, but at this point I’m only interested in her vagina. We make out once or twice more and she even inquires about sleeping at my place. As exciting as that sounds, I can’t seem to convince her that it’s “bed” time. The bars are closing, but she wants to keep drinking with her friends. I’m not about to let the sausages party at my house. And telling Molly this makes her a bit whiny.

Fuck it. Maybe there was a 40% chance I would fuck her after all of that, but I’ll be damned if I was going to play video games in my living room while the stripper fucks two other dudes on my bed. As much as I wanted to cross this one off the bucket list, I wasn’t going to be humiliated like that.

So I wandered off. And then I called Approaching Forty. She met in front of the bar and drove us back to my apartment (drunk driving is so cool, kids). Her clothes were soaking wet and caked in sand. She must have spent the hour or two we were apart at the beach—which is interesting considering we live in a landlocked state.

The two of us get to my room, I find some legitimate condoms, and we engage in fairly vanilla drunken bar-skank sex (my black-out drunk modus operandi typically consists of fucking the girl doggy style while trying hard not to pass out). We bang for 20 minutes. I’m amazed I can still keep hard, but I know I’m way too drunk to ever get off—my sour cream will not be topping her seventy-nine cent taco tonight. Bored now, I take off the condom and throw it to the ground in disgust. “I’m going to sleep,” I announce. She's altogether indifferent.

Fast-forward to this morning. I wake up and am delighted to see that Approaching Forty is already gone. Strangely enough, she left her shirt and her slutty pink bra behind. My brain is still operating at a drunken and diminished capacity, but I still wonder how she made an inconspicuous exit if she was naked from the waist up.

Maybe she had a second shirt hidden in her purse. Maybe her chest is so hairy it looks like a sweater. I don’t know.

Shit. I can’t find last night’s condom. I know it's on my floor around here somewhere.

Fuck my life.

Confessions of a Man–Slut or: Fuck My Life (a Two Act Play)

ACT I: Wam’s Birthday

08/09/99 - Last night, the crew went out and celebrated Wam’s birthday. Since his third favorite activity in the world is seeing day boobies, we made a point to hit Nitro before dark.

The awesomeness was threefold.

1) The working ladies were surprisingly slightly above average (considering they were the daytime shift and probably not the “A+” squad).
2) The club has no cover charge or drink minimum during the day.
3) All drinks were half priced before 9 pm (sure, the drinks are normally so expensive that you aren’t saving much money even when the prices are halved, but it’s still kind of cool).

Our group pounded shots and threw singles on to the stage in the highest of spirits.

I took a particular liking to one of the girls. “Molly” is this uber-cool and very cute young lady who immediately grabbed my attention when she came out stripping to “Ava Adore.” This is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands, and never before had I listened to it with perky nipples bouncing off my face.



After her set, she sat down next to me and we conversed for a good half-an-hour. Eventually, it was time to move on, but not before getting Molly’s real name and phone number. She wanted to hang out after work and told me to call her around 2:30 am. I was smitten with this, as I hadn’t bought her any drinks or paid for any lap dances. This allowed me to assume that her interest in me was genuine and not financially motivated.

Our crew went from bar to bar, slowly dwindling as one of us would get thrown out or silently stumble home.

Eventually only Wam, Alexis, and I are left standing. Alexis and I have hooked up before, but she is just a friend. Friend, perhaps, is even too strong a word. She constantly cock-blocks me when we’re out together. Her efforts are intentional and stem from some raging insecurities, I guess. I usually tolerate her annoyingly childish behavior because she so often buys all my food and drinks and because she has gigantic cans. Her goal this evening was to get me to forget about the stripper I had fallen for only a few hours ago and, sadly, she was mostly successful.

At 2 am, I’m chilling with Alexis at my apartment (she’s letting me play with her knockers or whatever, but her only motivation is preventing me from banging the stripper). Things start to fade to black around this time. I fall asleep with my head resting on her boobs.

This morning I wake up, stumble into the bathroom to pee, and then it hits me.
“FFFUUUUUUU!!!” I yell, pounding my fist against the wall. The realization that I didn’t capitalize on my golden stripper opportunity has me so upset it’s even affecting the aim of my stream. After cleaning the pee of off the floor and toilet, I come back out to the living room to examine my phone.

Apparently, we conversed a bit before I passed out on the devil’s bosom. She texts me after work, asking if I still want her to come over (it should be noted: THIS NEVER HAPPENS TO ME, I am not the guy who brings the strippers home from the strip club, I am the other guy, the one who buys her drinks all night and watches her go home with some douchebag instead).

My response is immediate, emphatic, and drunkenly misspelled. At 2:36 am, I tell her she should still come over and give her the cross streets for my apartment building. That’s apparently when I fell asleep.

After that, my phone shows five missed phone calls and six increasingly annoyed text messages:

“Cool. On my way.”
“I’m at the corner of Broadway and Maxwell, where do I go now?”
“Heh. You alive?”
“Where you at?”
“WHERE ARE YOU?”
“Goddammit.”

intersection of Broadway and Maxwell

The last known whereabouts of "Molly." They say if you inhale there at 2:30 am, you can still catch the faintest aroma of stripper lotion.

Yup, I fucking passed out last night. And I stood up the cool/cute stripper on her way over to my apartment at three in the morning.

And now she won’t answer my calls.

Fuck my life.

Look for ACT II: Bathroom Shenanigans tomorrow.