Big Egos Read online

  “But it’s part of the costume. And chicks love sitting on Santa’s lap.”

  “Yeah, well, they don’t love synthetic beards.” I take off the wig, then reach under my coat and unhook the fake plastic belly. “Or beer bellies.”

  “Maybe you can be a young Santa,” says Nat. “I mean, even though he’s always portrayed in the white beard and all, he had to be twenty-one at some point, right?”

  “Hypothetically,” I say. “But we are talking about someone who’s just a mythological amalgam of a nineteenth-century Dutch figure, Father Christmas, a Norse god, and a fourth-century gift-giving saint. So to say that he would have been a young man is kind of a pointless justification.”

  “Hey, don’t channel your father’s practical, dream-crushing bullshit to me,” says Nat.

  “He just prepared me so I wouldn’t be disappointed.”

  “Whatever.” Nat takes a drink of his own beer. “No offense, bro, but your dad should go down in history as the world’s biggest douche bag.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “I just appreciate that you didn’t ruin Santa for me,” says Nat.

  “Yeah, well, that wasn’t easy, considering you believed in him until you were eleven.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m a believer.”

  A couple of drunk leprechauns stumble past us and into the fraternity while Bigfoot and Mothman walk out onto the porch and start talking about how they both want to kick the shit out of the Jersey Devil.

  “In all honesty, bro,” Nat sits down on the wall next to me. “Me to you, no bullshit . . . I think you’d make a great Santa Claus.”

  “You’re so fucking stoned.”

  “I know. But you’d still make a great Santa.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nat and I sit there on the porch wall, drinking our beers, listening to the music thumping inside and watching the menagerie of mythical creatures, when three women wearing identical long white robes step outside to share a clove cigarette.

  “Who are they supposed to be?” says Nat.

  “I think they’re supposed to be the Moirai.”

  “The more-eye?” he says. “You mean like spiders? Spiders have eight eyes, you know.”

  “Jesus. Do they look like spiders?”

  “No,” says Nat. “But I wouldn’t mind getting caught in their web.”

  “The Moirai,” I say. “The Fates. It’s from Greek mythology. One of them spins the thread of life, one of them measures it, and the other one cuts it.”

  Nat checks them out. “I think I’ll stay away from the one with the scissors. But I’ve got something the other one can measure.”

  He puts his hand up in the air for a high-five. I just shake my head and drink my beer, so Nat takes his unreciprocated celebratory hand gesture and fingers one of his horns instead.

  “I think I’m getting a little horny,” he says.

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I know. And it never gets old.”

  The Moirai finish their clove cigarette, then turn and head back to the dance floor. One of them glances back at Nat and smiles, then follows her friends inside.

  “Did you see that?” says Nat.

  “I saw it.”

  “She digs me. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

  “Why don’t you go enlighten her? Educate her on all that is the glory of Nat?”

  Nat nods in agreement but he doesn’t move. “You think I should?”

  “You’re a satyr. You’re subversive and dangerous. A lover of wine and women. Ready for every physical pleasure. Of course you should.”

  Nat rubs his horns again, as if to verify what I’m saying. Or else to give himself some courage. If there’s another reason he keeps playing with his horns, I don’t want to know.

  “You think so?” he says.

  “Isn’t that why you chose the costume?”

  “You’re right.” Nat drains the rest of his beer. “It’s time I find me a nymph, bro.”

  Nat jumps off the porch wall and heads off after the brunette, strutting along, trying to play the role of a sexually appealing and evocative creature. If I were taking odds on his chances of finding a nymph, the smart money would be ten to one that he comes back out alone. But maybe he’ll get lucky. Maybe his costume will help him to overcome his social ineptitude.

  That’s the beauty of the Mythological Creatures party. Or any party where the guests can get dressed up in costumes and shed their inhibitions. It’s amazing what kind of transformation takes place when you put on a mask or a corset or a pair of horns and allow yourself to become someone or something else. To let go of your preconceived notions of who you are.

  The shy, awkward kid who sits by himself at lunch and gets picked on in gym class puts on a pirate costume and becomes the life of the party.

  The soft-spoken blonde who sits in the back row and wears sensible clothes with long sleeves and no revealing cleavage dresses up in a Playboy Bunny costume and turns into an instant seductress.

  The dignified teacher and father of two who listens to classical music and never stays up past eleven dons his disco suit and boogies like John Travolta.

  Oscar Wilde once said: Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

  Truth is, we’re all just looking for the right mask.

  CHAPTER 45

  “You wanna be someone else?” says the Ego hustler, looking up and down the sidewalk in the dim glow of the streetlights, talking to me fast and low, his hands shoved into his pockets. “I can get you what you’re looking for.”

  I’m at the corner of Hollywood and Wilcox just past midnight, two weeks before Santa comes calling, wearing my hunter green Italian suit and standing in front of Lady Studio Exotic Shoes near three graffiti-covered newspaper dispensers. The stores are all closed for the night, their metal security gates pulled shut and covered with black and white paintings of movie stars like Bob Hope, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ann-Margret.

  For some reason, this makes me think of my mother.

  Just down Wilcox on the other side of the street, a prostitute who looks like Doris Day propositions two men in a Volvo who decide they’re not interested in what she has to offer and drive off.

  “Where does the product come from?” I ask.

  “A reliable source,” says the hustler. “My guy guarantees top quality. None of these other losers out here selling can compete.”

  On Hollywood Boulevard, Chevy Chase approaches us pushing a shopping cart filled with aluminum cans, talking to himself. He stops at a garbage can and starts digging through it.

  “How do I know it’s not one of those black market Egos I’ve read about that kills people?” I ask.

  “Hey pal, if I sell something that kills my customers, then I got no customers and I’m out of business. And that ain’t good business.”

  A black BMW drives down Wilcox, another potential client for Doris Day, but it passes her by without any interest as she yells and gives the driver both middle fingers.

  “How do I know you’re not giving me the business?” I ask.

  “Look pal, if you don’t want to buy nothin’, don’t waste my time. I’ve got plenty of customers lining up to get what I’ve got.”

  I look around at the other people sharing the street with us, mostly homeless people and addicts looking for their next fix, and I wonder where the line starts.

  Across Wilcox, next to an exotic women’s lingerie store, is the You Are the Star mural of a movie theater filled with Hollywood legends and characters from the silent films to the 1980s, all of them sitting in their seats and looking out at the street as if we were the film being projected onto the movie screen.

  We are the stars.

  Bogart and Bacall sit in the front row with Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin, while W. C. Fields babysits Shirley Temple and James Dean points to Antony and Cleopatra. In the remaining rows sit another five dozen, two-dimensional movie s
tars and fictional characters from James Cagney to Superman, all painted in color on the side of a building.

  Woody Allen, Laurence of Arabia, and John Wayne.

  Rhett Butler, Katharine Hepburn, and Robin Hood.

  The Marx Brothers and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

  It’s like seeing my life flash before my eyes, only without the near-death experience.

  All of these famous and fictional Hollywood icons are looking out at me in my fitted green suit with my matching tie and the street hustler in his baggy jeans and sweatshirt with his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up to his ears.

  “Suppose I’m interested,” I say. “What do you have?”

  “Ain’t no supposin’. You’re either interested or you’re not.”

  A siren wails out on Hollywood Boulevard and the hustler looks ready to split. Seconds later, a fire engine blows through the intersection heading east toward Vine, red lights flashing across the buildings. Then it’s gone.

  “Okay,” I say. “Then I’m interested.”

  “Now we’re talkin’.” He takes his hands out of his pockets and pulls out his cell phone. “Give me a couple of minutes.”

  The hustler walks to the other side of the street and stands by the mural, right in front of Bogart and Bacall, blocking their view. If I were Bogart, I’d get up and kick his ass.

  A half block down on Wilcox, across from Doris Day, Paul Newman and Audrey Hepburn walk out of Cabana, a new Cuban restaurant, and head my way. Newman is dressed up like he just walked off the set of The Sting while Hepburn is in full Eliza Doolittle mode, complete with black and white touring hat. They’re the second 1930s Newman and My Fair Lady Hepburn I’ve seen tonight. Not to mention the two Butch Cassidys and the Holly Golightly I saw earlier out in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

  That’s what you get when you come down to Hollywood Boulevard: a bunch of overexposed Egos and superfluous personas out trying to be fashionable. Everyone picking the same personality, the hottest Big Egos fashion, the latest trendy pick on Entertainment Tonight’s Top Egos segment.

  On the most recent episode, the picks of the week were Newman and Hepburn. The week before that it was Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, so you saw a bunch of Vito Corleones and General Kurtzes on the golf course. And every time you walked into a Starbucks you were standing in line behind Cleopatra.

  But that’s the thing about people. Everybody wants to have the latest fad so they can feel like they belong. So they can feel like they’re hip. No one wants to be original, an individual, make a statement. They’d rather let someone dictate their fashion trend and follow the masses.

  These wannabe stars.

  These part-time celebrities.

  These walking clichés.

  If you’re going to jump on the Brando bandwagon, at least pick a character like Sky Masterson or Terry Malloy. Or better yet, just be Brando. He was cool enough on his own.

  But the Godfather? That’s about as original as a major network television sitcom.

  As Paul and Audrey walk past, Newman gives me a subtle brush of his index finger across his nose, while Audrey offers a demure smile and a nod of her head. Once they pass, Newman whispers something and Audrey glances back at me and bursts out laughing.

  I think Eliza Doolittle needs a good spanking.

  The Ego hustler walks back over and motions with his head for me to follow. From across the street, Doris Day makes him an offer but he ignores her sexual advances, so she turns her attention to me.

  “How about you, honey?!” she shouts, flashing a leg covered with fishnets and varicose veins. “Feel like having some fun?”

  “Maybe another time,” I say.

  “Come on,” she says. “What does a girl have to do to turn an honest trick?”

  CHAPTER 46

  “The trick,” says my father, “is to always take advantage of your opportunities. That’s how you build a successful life.”

  I nod with enthusiasm. Or at least with as much of it as I can muster, considering the circumstances.

  Where we are is the Los Angeles National Cemetery on South Sepulveda Boulevard near the 405 freeway on a Saturday morning in July 2003, about a month before my ninth birthday. When my father told me he wanted to take me someplace, I was thinking Venice Beach or Hollywood Boulevard or Universal Studios. Maybe even Magic Mountain. Instead, my father takes me to the cemetery.

  “Carpe diem,” says my father. “It means to seize the day. To take life’s moments and act upon them while you have the chance.”

  Why my father brought me to a cemetery to teach me about life, I have no idea.

  I glance up and watch the Saturday-morning traffic driving north and south on the 405 and wonder how many of them are going to the beach or to an amusement park or someplace else that’s fun. I’d even settle for catching a movie at the Cinerama Dome. Instead, I get to spend half of my weekend hanging out in a graveyard.

  I guess I shouldn’t complain. I usually only see my father for an hour or so at night during the week when he comes home from work and sits down to eat dinner, and most of that time he spends reading the news or talking to my mother, so we don’t get a lot of quality father-son time. And seldom do we hang out together on the weekends. At least two weekends each month my father’s on a business trip and on the weekends when he is home, he and my mother spend a lot of time together in their bedroom with the door closed.

  “What do they do in there?” Nat asked me one time.

  I told him I didn’t know, so I put my ear up to their bedroom door one Sunday afternoon when my father was home to see if I could hear what he and my mother were doing. I could hear them whispering, almost as if they knew I was right outside the door, sometimes making sounds of exertion like they were wrestling or building a fort. When Nat asked me what I heard, I told him I couldn’t understand what my father was saying but whatever it was, my mother kept agreeing with him.

  “You need to embrace the opportunities that are given to you if you want to get what you want out of life,” says my father, here in the cemetery. “You need to remember that, son. It’s an important lesson.”

  My father is always teaching me important life lessons.

  Like radical self-reliance, how to tie a tourniquet, and which direction to head in case of an EMP strike.

  “South, son. Always head south.”

  Somehow, after the collapse of society, I have a hard time believing things would be any better in Mexico.

  But right now, we’re talking about the secret of success.

  He sweeps his hand toward the tombstones. “How many of these people do you think got what they wanted out of life? How many do you think grasped their moments and made the most of them?”

  I stand and look at the hundreds of identical tombstones stretching away from us and wonder if my father would be willing to make this a multiple-choice question.

  “Maybe all of them, maybe none of them,” he says, saving me from having to answer. “But my guess is most of them didn’t finish on top of the podium.”

  I just nod. It seems to work more often than not, especially when I’m not really sure what my father’s trying to teach me.

  “Remember, son, being the runner-up isn’t anything to celebrate. It just means you’re the first one to lose the race.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I almost always call my father “Sir.” Sometimes I call him “Dad” or “Father.” When I was younger I used to call him “Daddy,” but he told me I needed to grow out of that. My father rarely calls me by my name. Sometimes he calls me “son” or “kid.” Most of the time he just points his face and talks.

  “And another thing you need to remember, son. To succeed in life, you have to pretend to be the person the situation calls for rather than the person you are.”

  I nod, but not because I can conceptualize what my father’s talking about. It’s a little out of my range of personal experience. Mostly I nod because I don
’t want my father to think I’m not paying attention.

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” he says, as if he can read my thoughts.

  I nod again. My father nods back, seemingly satisfied. That’s about the extent of the fun we’re having today.

  The traffic flows past on the 405 and I wish I were in one of the cars going anywhere but here.

  “But win or lose, success or failure,” says my father, picking up where he left off and gesturing once more toward the acres of tombstones, “eventually, everyone ends up here.”

  That’s a cheerful thought. I wonder if the other kids are having this much fun at Disneyland or Universal Studios.

  I look around at all of the graves and markers, not because I want to, but because I know it’s what my father expects me to do. He wants me to think about his words. To equate what he’s told me with the reality of our surroundings. So I act like I’m concentrating and hope he doesn’t quiz me on anything.

  “Seize the moment, son,” says my father. “Don’t let it pass you by, because chances are it won’t come your way again. So do what needs to be done and do it now.”

  CHAPTER 47

  My father’s words echo in my head and for a moment I think I see him standing in front of me, surrounded by headstones, then he vanishes and instead there’s Doris Day trying to flag down another potential client with a squeeze of a breast and a flash of a pale, fishnet-clad thigh. Just up the street, Chevy Chase pushes his shopping cart up to a garbage can to dig for more treasures.

  I follow the hustler down an alley between Cabana and a fenced parking lot, past the back entrance for Wilcox Tattoo, to an open space out behind Hollywood Hookah and the old Fox Theater, which is now a nightclub called the Playhouse.

  A car horn blares on Hollywood Boulevard, followed by someone shouting, “Fuck off   !  ” From out on Wilcox Avenue, I hear Doris Day offering her services to any paying customer who will have her, though it doesn’t sound like she’s having any luck.

  Que sera, sera.

  “Here’s the guy,” says the hustler when we reach the back of the open lot, his hands still shoved down into the pockets of his baggy pants. Whether he’s talking to me or to the tall guy smoking a cigarette near a Dumpster by the back door to the Playhouse, I don’t know. But I figure I’ll make the first move.