So why does it come as such a shock
To know you really have no one
Only a river of changing faces
Looking for an ocean
They trickle through your leaky plans
Another dream over the dam
And you’re lying in some room
Feeling like your right to be human
Is going over too
Well some are going to knock you
And some’ll try to clock you
You know it’s really hard
To talk sense to you
Trouble child
Breaking like the waves at Malibu

Trouble Child – Joni Mitchell (1974) Court and Spark

My mother and her sister, my Aunt Alice, were like oil and water, or animal vs vegetable from the earliest years of their childhood and from the time that they reached adulthood onwards they quite sensibly (for the mental health of everyone else in our family) resolved to have as little to do with other as was possible. In my mother’s case, she was quite happy to entirely forget her sister’s very existence.

It was the late 1960’s and my family had feet on both sides of the on-going culture war then going on in society. Alice, the eldest by one year, had gone to college and discovered ‘causes’, free love, and recreational drugs, probably about in that order. My mother on the other hand, got knocked up while still in high school, never graduated, and was content to be a housewife and pillar of her local church until the very end of her days, and drank at least two glasses of bourbon each and every night.

Of the two sisters, I think I could say for certain that my Aunt Alice had by far the happier life, and she lived it on her terms. When she died, about a decade after her younger sister, she had absolutely no regrets. I envied her ... and to this very day I wish that I’d been born to her, and that she had been my mother instead. When she too passed on, I think her absence affected me more than my mom’s had. I’m sure that I got my strong rebellious spirit directly from her, in both good ways and poor ones! I was ‘troubled’ even as a kid and the only time I ever felt happy or ‘myself’ was when I was at the beach, trying to ride a wave.

If I could sum up my mother’s increasingly hardened attitude towards her sister, it was that ‘Alice was a slut’ ... and if you don’t slut shame the girls while they’re young, they’ll grow up having positive attitudes about sexuality and body image and well, that just can’t happen in proper Christian households! We have to teach women to hate/fear their bodies, that orgasms are liberal/pagan myths and good Christian women only have sex (in the dark in the missionary position only) to breed and that’s it. Then when you’ve crushed a girl down to the lowest point they’ve ever been in their lives ... THEN you offer them a bible.

Hey, if we don’t destroy women’s self-esteem when they’re young, they tend to grow up being strong, confident and relatively happy people who can handle whatever life throws at them. She couldn’t have that!

I was about to turn thirty when I started to realize (entirely on my own) that I hadn’t accomplished much, if anything meaningful, in my life. I’d spent my teenaged years and well into my thirties mostly out on the surf, trying hard to make it as a semi-professional nearly full-time surfer before I realized that the handful of peers and role models whose advice I’d been ignoring for the last decade, were spot-on correct. I wasn’t quite good enough to ever make it ... nor was I enough of a pretty ‘Beach Boy’ to win any corporate sponsorships that would allow me to earn more than a petty part-time wage to support myself.

So, I hard-quit and gave up surfing cold-turkey and decided that it was past time that I got a real job. That wasn’t much more successful (or profitable) either. I’d had a decade of crap jobs, no training or any meaningful job skills, and even fewer positive work references, pretty much torpedoed my odds now of ever finding a real (good paying) job. So, I buckled up my nerve and gave Aunt Alice a semi-groveling phone call, asking her rather directly, if she could use her innumerable contacts and find me a reasonable starting position somewhere. She did, and I have to say on the whole that the new job with a very large and prestigious record store chain was a damn good fit for me, and I stayed with them for over fifteen years. I started off working in their main warehouse until eventually working my way into lower/middle management, eventually running one of their branch stores in another city ... until the chain went bankrupt and out of business.

I was rather close to living under a bridge once more when Aunt Alice wired me some money to return back home to L.A., even paying for a small apartment for me. Already her health was declining and she’d joke (kindly) that soon she wouldn’t be around any longer to help pick me up when I fall. At least now my professional curriculum vitea wasn’t a complete disaster and I fairly quickly scrounged a series of low-end manager jobs thereafter that were enough to keep food on the table, gas in the car, and my wonderful aunt from writing me a check every month, as if I were a remittance man in exile.

When I got the notice of Alice’s death (not entirely unexpected as I visited her at least monthly) I was the night manager for a rather scruffy West Hollywood bar with a rather interesting but checkered history that had seen much better days once, than the dump it was now. Built in the 1920’s, it had been a famous ‘lavender’ bar, where the most famous lesbian and bisexual women of Hollywood (in front of and behind the camera), could safely hang out, far from the cinema press. This was ‘their’ place, back in the day. By the 1950’s it had become unfashionable to be in that part of town after dark and its heyday was over and the closeted actresses had new and nicer places to play. By now, it was just a semi-famous name with a local, rather lowbrow, and rather morally dubious crowd of regulars.

Still, for the last year or so there, I wasn’t entirely dissatisfied. I did 95% of my work in the back and didn’t have to deal much with the bikers and other scooter-trash, cholos, low-grade putas and common street workers (mostly drug dealers, pimps and whores) that tended now to be our regulars. It was just too much of an utter blast to kick up my feet at the end of a long night, sitting at a table where Judy Garland (allegedly) had eaten out another famous older actress, and where Greta Garbo had once held court. And the women’s restrooms ... if those walls could only talk! Rumors were that once Barbara Stanwyck, Agnes Moorehead and the famous costume designer Edith Head once hosted a legendary cocaine-fueled orgy inside there, capturing and ravishing any female that dared to enter over an entire weekend.

Rumor is to this very day that the women’s restroom is seriously haunted, but I’ve never seen any ghosts here ... but I admit I’ve heard some strange sounds, like women’s’ laughter, long after closing hours when no one but me was still on the premises. 4am is closing hour and the start of my ‘happy time’, and to celebrate I’d share a brief drink to commune with Judy’s shade and then wander over to the Awful Waffle across the street.

At 4am there are two main types of people in a Waffle House. It’s the guys and girls who’ve been drinking all night and need some food in their systems before going back home to do another line or two. Waffle House is definitely where you go when you’re feeling too drunk to be seen in a respectable establishment like Denny’s. Or else it’s people who get up at the crack of dawn to do labor intense jobs starting at o’dark-thirty who need a good infusion of grease to get started in the morning. You also get the occasional hunter who’s also up at the crack of dawn and is probably illegally armed with a concealed carry sidearm. The People Republic of Kalifornia is none too fond of people advocating (or celebrating) their 2^nd Amendment rights. I liked this place because its dodgy clientele suggested a place that even idiots wouldn’t try to rob. Also, it’s the local place for tired and aggravated bartenders (and bar managers like me) who just shut down and want to chew some marginally edible food in relative peace and quiet ... until (inevitably) a gaggle of strippers and whores who just get off their shift, all pile into the place and raucously take it over, signaling to the smarter folks, like me, that it’s time for some shut-eye.

Waffle House at any hour has nothing on Roscoe’s just before midnight. “Yes, dear the man that handed you the syrup was a real life pimp, yes dear he was really wearing a white velour track suit with green cashmere trim”. What has thirteen teeth and three teats? The two night shift waitresses at the Awful Waffle. God bless them, each and all.

I suppose now is as good as anytime to explain something about my aunt’s career, over thirty-five years of working for Columbia records in various capacities. She started off as a coffee-girl, working as a low-paid intern directly after college, but fairly quickly afterwards she found a permanent position in A&R ... soon becoming one of the top, most desired junior and eventually senior representatives.

A&R means ‘Artists and Repertoire’, which is the department of a record label that, historically, is responsible for discovering talent to sign to the label, overseeing their recording process and artist development, and assisting in marketing and promotion of the artist. Essentially, A&R is THE primary interface (and lubricant) between the artist (the talent) and the record company (the money people). If a good A&R rep is worth their weight in gold ... then Aunt Alice’s value had to be nearly priceless.

She knew (and partied) with every major Columbia recording star of the next quarter-century, knew from memory each of their unlisted telephone numbers and private get-away addresses, had a good enough ear and the pulse of the record buying public (the great unwashed) to strongly approve the acquisition of many of the stars of the 70’s and 80’s, or judge (more accurately than not) when a talent was close to burnout or their musical inspiration had faded, and thus no longer a prime commodity for the corporation.

Aunt Alice may have snorted blow with just about every celebrity in Hollywood, and allegedly sleep with half of them as well (she admitted to me once that she’d given Frank Sinatra a blow job), but even while partying down nearly every single night, she never lost sight of the big picture ... keeping the artists happy and productive, recording and selling records, and making the corporation money. She did all of the above until her retirement, when her health started to decline.

She was a relic from a different age than we live in now. An elderly reminder of the days when we drove fast Detroit muscle cars, flew to the moon, had casual sex without getting medical references, and openly drank hard liquor while at the office ... and then a myriad of people with more good intentions than sense in my generation went and fixed all that.

When I sent in her Obituary notice to the LA Times, I reported that she ‘died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 76, with her hands still wrapped tight around her teenaged poolboy’s junk, a vibrator up her cooch, and a half-empty whisky bottle inserted halfway up her ass, and clear traces of cocaine powder around her nose. Her last words were reported to be, ‘Man, what a rush!’ Look for copies of her numerous amateur sextapes soon at your local adult bookstore!

She would have heartily approved of this last sendoff, but oddly the paper declined to run it ... but an alternative LA rag that covers the local music biz did, much to everyone’s amusement.

When Aunt Alice passed (again, not entirely a surprise), it was something of a surprise to be called into her lawyer’s office, right after the funeral, for a discussion about the disposition and distribution (inheritance) of her estate, which was surprisingly significant. I was pretty sure I’d get ‘something’, as in our last few monthly dinner get-togethers she’d clearly hinted as much, but what I ended up getting was rather a complete, if pleasant shock.

The money, bank accounts, bonds, stock certificates (lots of Columbia shares), and other holding weren’t that much of surprise, although the total amount was slightly disturbing. I knew that Alice had made a boat-load of money in her time, but the fact she had frugally invested most of it, while providing for a beloved prodigal nephew, was something of a stunner. Knowing her attitude towards life, I would have thought that she would have blown huge chunks of it in one last final blow-out party, right before the end days. She didn’t ... and to this day I can’t say if I’m relieved or a bit disappointed. She was a free-spirit right up to the very end.

Her ranch house where she had lived most of her life, up in the wilds of Laurel Canyon, was being gifted elsewhere, I was told, and I admit to being disappointed, as I’d been very fond of visiting there, and as far as I had known it was the only piece of property that she had owned. I would receive custody of her record album and promotional materials collection any day I wanted them, which were at the Laurel Canyon ranch house. I didn’t let much moss grow over my feet and later the same day I rescued the several dozen boxes of signed record albums and promotional photos from a quarter-century career, including a near dozen signed pics from the Chairman of the Board himself, Frank Sinatra, all signed ‘To my close friend Alice’. It seems that the BJ story might be true after all.

“This will amuse you, I hope,” the lawyer smiled, “that she wanted the land to go to a pair of old friends that were down on their luck, with the provision that the two of them turn the house and substantial grounds into a porno-film studio.”

I had to laugh ... and hard. ‘Yes’, I could absolutely see Aunt Alice making that sort of gift! Alice had joked once that she’d ‘performed’ in several films in the 1980’s, but she had been extremely vague about what these films were ... indie stuff where she’d bared her tits, I had assumed, but knowing Alice, hardcore was not out of the question.

“Instead, and probably much more to your general liking,” the lawyer continued, “she has granted you her other significant property, a pair of beach-houses on Malibu Beach, both in an extremely exclusive gated community with private beach access. One of those properties, you must understand, was rented by your aunt to another old friend, named only as Roberta, for the contractual and perpetual rent of one-dollar per month. Now and until Roberta’s death or her permanently quitting the property, her will very expressly states. I trust that this won’t be a problem for you, as contesting this clause might otherwise legally invalidate the entirety of her bequests to you and then the entire will would go to probate court for resolution.”

No, it wasn’t a problem. If Aunt Alice was supporting some long-time friend living next door to her, then the reasons for this must have been pretty darned good. In my book, any life-long friend of Aunt Alice was therefore an immediate friend of mine ... until demonstrated otherwise.

The remainder of the discussion regarding the will was fairly straight forward. I’d have access to a decent lump-sum of ready cash in about a month or so, once the legalities were completed, and the rest of her financial holdings were to be sold and converted into a trust, paying me a not inconsiderable monthly sum thereafter, and my heirs as well, should I ever procreate any. Far above what I could reasonably calculate I’d need for regular living expenses. Her financial advisor would be calling me soon, in the next week or so he said at the conclusion, for a meeting to confirm all of the precise details. He did, and rather sooner than I had expected I had the ownership documents for the pair of beach houses, a set of house keys, and a brand-new checkbook to a financial account that already in just month had more cash in it than I’d spent in the last decade.

Financial security was wonderful, I quickly decided, but I resolved to never just blow the money, living large in a way I’d never been accustomed to ... or frankly ever wanted to. I’d mostly never had much money, and now having it was pretty darned cool (as Alice would say), but I could easily remember where I’d been and how close I’d been (several times) to being homeless.

This did mean, I quickly decided, that I could tell the mob ownership of the ‘Lavender Lounge’ to go fuck themselves.

“I am quitting to pursue my lifelong dream of not having to work here,” I informed one of the heavily mobbed-up owners and he just shrugged. People in this profession come and go, and often without even a token notice. I’d been at least man enough to quit in person, and I took my leave of the joint after spending one quick last farewell caress at the table where Marlene Dietrich and Barbara Stanwyck once hung out, usually diddling younger sweet-meats and then a final parting glance into the infamous (haunted) women’s restroom, to tell all of the restless gal shades that I was gone ... for good.

I now had a rather nice home and a guaranteed income for the first time in years, so (silly me) I decided that I’d try and date, perhaps even finding a decent woman worth having before my age stuck the death-toll of fifty, irrevocably marking me forever as an old-fart. I should have known better.

I’d briefly tested the dating waters in my mid-thirties, after I’d been promoted into a salary job (with benefits) rather than being a hourly wage-slave, but it didn’t work out too well then, or at any other time since. I’d almost tied the knot twice, but made fortuitous lucky escapes each time, I’d decided in hindsight. Gals who work in record stores or are associated with the music industry in any way, all tend to be rather eccentric, to put it mildly. Most had partying addictions, not to mention substance abuse issues or serious alcohol consumption habits. Nearly all of them were fairly financially irresponsible, always being dead broke the Monday after payday (usually without paying the rent first). None of them I tried dating could keep their panties up (if they wore any) or their knees together.

Rule of Thumb #1 – never buy anything that one hundred or more people before you have rented.

Dating at (or near) age fifty was if anything, a dozen times worse. Even trying to date women in their thirties, you’re still going to inherit all of their baggage, unusually involving at least a child or two and already a half-dozen ‘exes’. Listen attentively to the way that they talk about all of their exes ... that will be you she’ll be complaining about to someone else in just a few years. Then when a woman ask you how much you make (which every date did, extremely early in the ‘getting to know you’ process), I’d ask them in return what is the best temperature to cook a turkey at. None of them knew ... and I was quickly branded as a chauvinist pig of the old school. Fine by me, they could go home alone to their vibrator and cats. No one seems to know how to really cook anymore – it’s boxes, cans and a microwave. I had a roommate once, back in my surfing days who was a professional cook and he taught me a lot ... more it seems than any of the women I’d met since knew about the culinary arts.

The worst part was that even while talking, I could never win my point, with women of any age. If I was upset by something she did or said, there was never any apology. It was... ‘How dare you be mad at me for hurting your feelings. You need to apologize to me for hurting my feelings by being mad at ME for hurting your feelings!’ It’s very emotionally exhausting to always be ‘wrong’; a woman seems to know instinctively that everything a man does is always wrong and needs to be told (or nagged) into doing everything her way.

Oh, and dating a gal displaying 25 (or more) tattoos is worse, IMHO, than having 25 cats in your apartment! There nothing wrong with a gal that has one or two tasteful tats (I have one of my own) but the more inked flesh she shows on display is an indicator that she had significant personality issues that I particularly don’t want to deal with.

I suppose I just had trouble ‘talking’ with women. Us guys are simple in our desires for a relationship. They would rather not be nagged, and yes they like sex (frequently please). In return we’ll bring home the bacon, improve the house with the application of power tools, and fight off the odd cave bear for them. By comparison, woman have such convoluted views of what should occur in a relationship that it can make the more simplistic views of a man seem feckless. The women and girls I met were almost Machiavellian in their perspective, no conversation could ever have a direct explicit purpose; all interaction must have hidden subtext, and deeper incentive, and there must be a rich infusion of drama.

Too many of the women I dated between thirty and fifty had drama addictions. Some people want to go through life being offended and butt-hurt every waking moment, triggered by everything and everyone around them. Me? I want a peaceful life preferably filled with peace and harmony, and the ability to ‘get some shit done’ without drama distractions and some sort of crisis every day.

Sure, I can look in a mirror and admit that I’m not much of prize either. My mouth also gets me sometimes in more trouble than I need. I told one very annoying date who seemed to think that her cunt was gold-plated, that I was the real-life inspiration for the BDSM enthusiast from the Shades of Grey books, and I lived on a diet of fresh hobo poop and hookers’ tears, and liked to say things like ‘It isn’t true love if it doesn’t leave a scar or rip off some skin and hair’ and ‘A day without shame, degradation, and forcible insertion of vegetables and rusty antique dental tools is a day I must be out of the house and back in prison again.’ Now tell me lil-darling, do you think our relationship can last? I think she got the point fast and skeedaddled.

My last bit of relationship advice: The three steps of having a successful relationship

Step 1) Talk.
Step 2) Fuck.
Step 3) Ask yourself “Can we still do Step 1 and are they worth the hassle?”
Repeat as many times as necessary

This advice is universal, suitable for both men and women. Me, I could never, at any point in my life then or now, answer ‘yes’ to Step 3.

Technically, I was rich now, and while money can’t buy you love, it does allow you to rent it at a reasonable cost, or put a lonely heart advertisement in the numerous SoCal swinger rags, looking for a bisexual gourmet cook with an interest in 60’s surf music ... but I refrained from doing so. As a teenager, a threesome with two surfer girls sounds like a good idea (and usually was), but as an adult, I now preferred to disappoint my women one at a time. Anybody who fantasizes about collecting two women - or more - has never dealt with even one of them on an extended, regular basis.

Rule of Thumb #2 – Know (and accept) your limitations.

I had to admit that as a semi-professional surfer I did get more well-tanned young ass than a toilet seat at a chili cookoff! Those days were long over, however, and I moved into my beach house surf paradise entirely all alone, without a serious girlfriend for occasional cuddles and sleep-overs. I was used to this ... but I didn’t have to like it!

There’s a snake in every paradise it seems, and for my new surfer heaven the snake in the tree was our local neighborhood association. I suppose I understand some of the appeal my new neighbors (and the City Council) had for this sort of very high-handed management, to protect the “residential integrity and character” of our section of heaven. After all, this was one of the most select areas on Malibu Beach, occupied by the richest of the Hollywood rich, and the most ultra-liberal and ‘wokest’ of 1%-er twitter mob. So of course, their properties must be protected from the legions of street-people living just blocks away and heaven forbid that any of peasants find an open side-gate that allows them open beach access! Even worse, some of the homeless might root around in one of millionaire’s trash cans! By law, California beaches are public domain, up to the high-water line ... but my peers all felt otherwise and illegal fenced off all street access to the shoreline.

Apparently, Aunt Alice had incurred the association’s ire by tearing down the fence on her own property, allowing the peasants easy access to ‘their’ beach ... and now that I was the new owner, the legal notices and warnings to (illegally) rebuild those fences ... yesterday, if possible. The association had sued Aunt Alice at least twice about this in the last decade and a local judge (not surprisingly a local resident) had ruled twice in their favor, but being blatantly illegal, these rulings were overruled in state court.

All too soon, it became just like when I had lived with my mother. It was the anal-retentive ‘my way or the highway’, dealing with the very kind of people that everyone hated in school. Just like the girl in grade-school who’d always suck up to the teacher and remind them on Friday if they hadn’t assigned any homework. Every school has one. They made a few million and then wondered ’how can I continue to make peoples’ lives a living hell? Wait, I know! A Homeowners Association!’

No, you can’t have a grey satellite dish on the roof. Why are you flying an American flag you right-wing Nazi? No, you can’t change your drapes or awnings without us pre-approving them. You want to paint your porch that color? Why aren’t you wearing a surgical mask when you leave your house? No, don’t even think about owning a dog! Etcetera.

The last straw was, ’No surf boards are to be left out in plain sight, even on your own porch!’

I decided that in the interests of humanity, that I now needed to make it my life’s work to fuck with their heads!

“Can I keep a pony in the garage?”
“What?! No!”{br}

“What about a Studebaker then? I was thinking I’d park it on the front lawn or put it upon on blocks ... change the oil, maybe rebuild the engine...”
“No!!”

“Can my heavy metal band rehearse in my garage evenings? Our drummer doesn’t get off work until ten o’clock, but we can promise to quit by two am?

“Never!!!”

“Can I erect a 12’ garden statue of Randy Rarick?”

“Nope, too tall and violates our height ordinance”

“Ok, how about a smaller, life-sized statue of Laura Blears? That short enough, oh ... but she’s posed topless.”

“No, No, No!!! Not garden art of any kind!”

“Can I run my own internet porn company from my home?”
“No! We’re not zoned for that”{br}

“What if it wasn’t hardcore porn? No orgies, double-penetrations or even any anal. What if it was ... topless knitting? Or practical advice for people with acute urinary difficulties hosted by a heavily pierced and tattooed gal named Golden Flo, demonstrating her enormous bladder capacity live on a webcam?”

The Association president (a plump busy-body bitch who resembled my mother) then had mild heart attack and her successor thereafter refused to have anything to do with me ... and they mostly left me the fuck alone afterwards.

Late one night, I hung up a warning sign “There Be Madness and Crazies Within, Beware” and it remained posted for a surprisingly long time afterwards before being taken down. Threats about lawsuits over the missing fence died away and even the humorless Hollywood moguls living around me cut me some slack afterwards, sensing (correctly) that arguing with me was pointless, because I’d bring them down to my own level of idiocy. True dat!

With all of daily excitement, annoying my betters, and driving at least one local politician to the refugee of a diet of soft foods and copious anti-depressants, I realized that I’d never once yet gone next door to meet in the flesh the other recipient of Aunt Alice’s largess. I’d tried phone three times, leaving a few messages, but no one ever answered or bothered to return my calls.

Then I did the bold sensible approach and just walked on over one nice evening, armed with a grocery store purchased cake, knocking upon her door. No answer. The drapes were pulled and they looked pretty thick ... and stayed tightly closed all day, every day thereafter, every time I looked. The appearance was that no one lived there, that this was just an occasional vacation property, but this was false. Someone did live there, and apparently never left. Groceries were ordered over the internet and delivered to the door, as were occasional Amazon packages that someone (usually after dark) would briefly open a door to claim.

So, I made of point of going over to her house about once a day and knocking on her back door anyway, just on principle.

“Hi, I’m the new guy next door, the nephew to your old friend Alice. I’m just checking in on you to see how you are. Do you need help with anything? Just let me know, anytime, if I can be of assistance.” I must have repeated this mantra all winter long, for months, never once catching a peak of my elusive tenant. Eventually I tired of the wasted effort, and pretty nearly washed my hands of the entire situation.