Total Fabrication

Peace is overrated

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Despite the fact that we’re in the first week of January, my extended family decided to have a Hanukah party yesterday.

As always, there was a fair bit of drama. But we’ll get to that in a second.

Yesterday was Saturday, which meant that I got to sleep in a bit. Nice because I know I’ll always get a good workout. You’d be surprised what an extra hour of sleep can do for your energy level.

Saturday mornings are PRIME TIME at Equinox. Everyone’s rested and feeling good because of the weekend.

On most days I’ll just wear whatever ratty t-shirt I happen to pull out of my drawer, but on Saturdays I wear my tight-fitting Punisher shirt. Amazing how spandex can make you look like you’re in better shape than you really are.

So I’m at the gym working out. Stretching and whatnot trying to get ready for Maeve’s 11:15 yoga class.

This hot trainer, Stephanie, grabs a spot on the stretching mat next to me with one of her clients. We say hi, and then after a few minutes I decide to get cheeky.

I said to her client, “Is it hard for you to focus on working out when you have such a hot trainer?”

They both got quiet for a second like they were thinking, “Did he really just say that?”

“Um, no,” the guy mumbled. “I focus on working out.”

Stephanie smiled.

I go, “I mean, if she was my trainer I’d do whatever she said. She could be like, ‘Okay, now we’re going to jump off the lower level six times,’ and I’d be like, ‘Okay.’”

I thought it was pretty funny. They didn’t laugh.

She’s pretty fucking hot, though. Long black hair, nice muscles and huge double D rack that is probably surgically enhanced.

I’ve always wished that I had enough balls to hook up with the REALLY attractive women. Most of the time I just tend to go for the less attractive easy targets.

A few minutes later it was time to go to Maeve’s class. I noticed that her boyfriend was wandering around holding a yoga mat. In the six months I’ve been going to her classes, I never once noticed him going to her class.

I really kind of feel bad for this fucking guy. He’s this tall, fit, good looking black guy who could probably have just about any woman he wanted in that place. The guy is even an Olympic gold medalist.

Yet I can’t help recognize in him the same sense of despair I felt with multiple “girlfriends” who I could tell were only staying in a relationship with me out of habit and were obviously attracted to other guys.

When I saw this, I would always try to change my look/behavior to model these other guys.

Never worked.

There’s something called the “Coolidge Effect,” which says that once two animals have sex with each other, they quickly lose interest in having sex with each other again. But if you introduce a NEW partner into the environment, they’re ready to go.

In biology and psychology, the Coolidge effect is a phenomenon seen in animal species whereby males (and to a lesser extent females) exhibit renewed sexual interest if introduced to new receptive sexual partners, even after cessation of sex with prior but still available sexual partners.

Anyway, I may totally be imagining things but I can’t help but get the feeling that’s what’s happening here. Maeve is infatuated with me and this guy is going to yoga to try and be more like me because he thinks she likes guys who are into yoga or some shit.

That sounds so weird now that I say it. I mean, it’s one of these things that nobody would ever admit publicly. And if you called them on it they’d make up some rationalization like, “Nah, I just want to do my girlfriend’s yoga class. No biggie.”

That said, the class was pretty fucking awesome.

Saturday classes are always packed to the point where you barely have any room to lay down your yoga mat. This was no exception.

After the class, my plan was to go home, get high and play Dota until I hated my life.

That said, the day before my cousin Zach had texted me and asked if I was going to the Hanukah party today.

My extended family normally has a Hanukah party in late December, but because they were on vacation in Hawaii they had to put it off until January. I wasn’t planning on going, but the Jewish guilt overwhelmed me when I got the text and replied that I’d stop by for a bit.

This is the same family I used to live with when I did lots of drugs. We had a rough patch after that for sure, but over the years I’ve made an effort to rebuild our relationship and now it’s like it never happened.

I like going to see them. No awkwardness at all, except for when they ask me what I’m doing with my life and I have to reply that I’m a fucking Uber driver.

Speaking of which, on the ride over I was trying to figure out what the fuck to say when they’d ask me what I’m doing.

Although the “current” plan is to go to Australia in the next month or two, I knew that if I said that to anyone at the party it would 1) require a long explanation that I didn’t want to get into, and 2) eventually get back to my parents which meant that I’d have to endure long uncomfortable conversations.

So I decided to omit that detail and just tell them that I was studying for my real estate exam. Which is technically not untrue.

ANYWAY.

By the time I got there, everyone was already eating. When I walked in the door, I started doing the hi-hello-howareyou thing.

Every time I go to these parties, I always have a good time. I always think on how fun it was, and that I should spend time with them more often.

Never works out that way.

Tiffany, who is married to my cousin Zach (my cousin closest in age), came up to me and gave me a hug.

“Hey, how are you!” she said happily. “Did they tell you Zach and I are having a baby?”

“Wowwww!” I replied. “That’s great!”

Tiffany is very attractive. She’s one of these overachieving types who competed in beauty pageants.

Normally very skinny, she was already showing a little bit.

Despite the fact that I had just had a huge workout and should have kept my mouth shut, I said:

“Is this your way of telling me you’re not just getting fat?”

She gave me a stern look and was like, “You better not be saying I’m getting fat.”

It was nice to see everyone. My grandma Marsha was there too.

“Hey Marsha, how are you doing?” I said as I made the rounds.

“Not good,” she replied. “You know I had a stroke, right?”

I nodded somberly. “I did.”

“I need to get better,” she said, slightly slurring her speech.

“Well, you look fantastic!” I said cheerfully.

Pity is overrated.

It’s funny, when I used to sell hair straighteners in the mall, every once in a while I’d stop someone who would tell me that they’d just come from the hospital, or that a close relative had died.

Now, when you’re a commission only salesperson working in a mall, the first thing you learn is that everyone is a fucking liar. Never believe the customer.

People will say shit like, “Oh yeah, I totally want to buy it. Let me just go to the ATM…”

And then you never see them again.

So you get into the habit of not really listening to what people say. I mean, you hear them and acknowledge them as if you believed them, but you continue to act as if they had not said anything.

So when I would ask someone how they’re doing and they’d say some shit like, “My husband was in a car accident. I was in the hospital all night,” I handled it a bit differently.

Most people would do the natural thing and be like, “Oh my god that’s terrible…” blah blah blah.

But all that does is remind people of their problems and get them back in a cycle of bad feelings and self pity.

My solution to this problem would be to say, “Oh really? Well I’m going to show you something right now that’s going to make you forget ALL about that!”

They always ended up buying.

Speaking of Marsha, about an hour later we ran into each other again.

“So where are you living now?” she asked.

“Brentwood,” I told her. “What about you?”

She goes, “Wilshire.”

I nodded. “Wilshire and…?” Wilshire is a big street.

She goes, “Wilshire and… there.”

Stroke must have been pretty bad. I go, “Oh, that’s cool.”

Then she goes, “We should get together. Do I have your number?”

I go, “I don’t know. Why don’t I give it to you?”

She was like, “Good idea. Come. Let me get my phone.”

I followed her into the bedroom where they were keeping the coats and purses. Just happened to be the room I used to sleep in when I lived there. Looked like they had converted it into storage now.

She grabbed her phone and I put my number in. As I get up to leave, she goes, “Here. I’m giving this to all my grandchildren.”

She pulls out a $50 bill and says, “Fifty dollars.”

I hadn’t gotten a gift from Marsha in years. In fact, since her first husband (my mom’s dad) died, she had been spending less time at these family things. She would come for fifteen minutes and leave, much less give gifts.

I go, “Awww, thank you Marsha! I’ll buy you a gift.”

She goes, “What? No no, don’t do that. Buy yourself something nice.”

That was kind of heartbreaking.

Instead of being a sap, I said, “That’s going to cost you $100.”

Fortunately she got the joke.

It was good to see my family.

This uncle whose house it was at is my mom’s brother. They haven’t been on the greatest terms for a while now. In fact, my mom and her brother haven’t really had a relationship for a few years.

Sad. They used to be extremely close.

There are a lot of reasons, but the differences in political opinion don’t help. My parents are hardcore Republicans and the rest of my family is further to the left.

My dad can handle it just fine by simply choosing not to talk about politics. My mom on the other hand… well, let’s just say she finds it harder to do so.

Plus there’s all kinds of other family drama in there. My mom holds a grudge for all kinds of perceived slights to her character over the years. Not saying they didn’t happen. But she tends to dwell on them when the subject of my extended family comes up, whereas I doubt they pay it much mind.

The fact that they’re somewhat isolated in La Quinta definitely doesn’t help. Nothing bonds people together like repeated exposure.

I don’t want to say that my mom is a celebrity around there, but she definitely has a presence. She also knows my uncle better than anyone, and since he’s effectively the “leader” of the family, that gives her kind of a high status. And since I’m HER favorite family member, that status kind of transfers over to me.

Once again, I could totally be imagining this whole family dynamic, just like the thing with Maeve and her poor boyfriend.

In fact, I’m probably just a fucking narcissist who thinks the world revolves around him. But just pretend I’m right for a second.

Anyway, we’re all sitting around outside shooting the shit. At one point I hear my uncle whisper to my aunt, “Yalla reminds me so much of Joy. I miss her.”

That made me kind of sad. I don’t think I was supposed to overhear it. Or maybe I was.

The rest of the party was pretty fun. Everyone is having fucking kids now, so there were all these little people running around making noise and shit. It’s definitely a different vibe from when my generation was the one who used to sit at the kid’s table.

As is normally the case at family get-togethers, people go through the normal conversations of, “So, what are you doing with your life these days?”

Every single time, I had to grudgingly admit that I was a FUCKING UBER DRIVER and studying to take my real estate exam. They were very nice and supportive though.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. But whatever.

After three and a half hours of good old family banter I was ready to go. I made the rounds, said my goodbyes, and grabbed a big bag of food that my aunt had packed up for me.

As I was saying goodbye to everyone, my aunt pulls me aside and says, “Honey, we need to do an intervention for your mom and Scotty.”

That caught me kind of off guard. Sure, it’s not exactly a secret that my mom has turned into somewhat of a black sheep in the family. But I didn’t expect my aunt to initiate a conversation about repairing their relationship. My mom is kind of a bitch at these get togethers.

Still, I agreed.

Then she goes, “Did you know Scotty got very sick a few weeks ago?”

I shook my head. “Nope. What happened?”

She goes, “He had streptococcus something something.”

I was like, “I have no idea what any of that is, but it sounds bad.”

She rattled off some other medical terms and goes, “He had a blood infection.”

I go, “Ew. That’s not good. I had no idea.”

My uncle is a doctor and my aunt is a nurse, so they know all about this kind of shit.

My aunt was like, “Yeah. It was really bad. I think that if I hadn’t come home in the middle of the day to take him to the hospital, I would have come home to a dead body.”

I go, “JESUS. That’s crazy.”

My other aunt (her sister) walked by, and my first aunt pulled her aside and said, “How sick was Scotty?”

My other aunt says, “Oh my GOD,” and shook her head. “We didn’t know if he was going to make it.”

My first aunt turns back to me and says, “So you see what I’m saying, right? I know they had their differences but… life is precious.”

“Okay,” I said, interrupting. “I get it.”

“YOU need to talk to your mom,” she said.

I told her I would.

I’m kind of the only one my mom listens to. I suppose my dad also. And she’s kind of close with my cousin Zach. But I’m probably the only one crafty enough to get her to patch things up with her brother.

With my food in hand, I walked back out to my car. By then it was 5 PM and I was practically dead on my feet. The combination of the workout, the yoga class and nearly 4 hours of socializing with my family had wiped me out.

Still, I had a few hours of driving ahead of me in order to get my bonuses.

I had other plans that night as well. Well, I don’t know if we could call them “plans.” I basically just needed to get more weed.

I had been texting back and forth with this girl Nicole who I went to high school with. Now, I literally had not talked to this bitch since graduating high school, but after a rare post on Facebook last week, she reached out and we started talking again.

We were reasonably close in high school, always gossiping about different people in our social circle. We passed notes in class. We were friends with the same people.

Still, I hadn’t seen her in over.. well, a lot of years. I don’t want to think about how many because then I’ll feel old.

But last week during a particularly trying day of driving, I felt compelled to post on Facebook.

Now, I RARELY post unless something particularly life-changing happens to me. I used to post all the time, but for some reason getting into serious relationships removes any desire for me to post things on there. I should probably explore that connection at some point.

Anyway, the point is that I post on there maybe once every three months.

This post took place right around the time where I was spending a lot of time thinking about how to live my ideal life.

So I posted the following:

“All I want is lots of money, to be in great shape and be surrounded by beautiful women. Is that too much to ask?”

I got a bunch of replies, ranging from, “Yes it is too much to ask,” to the “No! I believe in you…”

So this Nicole chick randomly reaches out and asks me how I’ve been. Says she didn’t remember who Yalla Papi was, thinking it was some chick from high school.

We chat for a while and eventually exchange phone numbers. I got the impression that she REALLY wanted to hang out, possibly because of some shirtless selfies I have up there from when I was hardcore into Crossfit.

Nicole was always a horny little girl. Not exactly my type in terms of looks, but nice I suppose.

Anyway, I can tell she REALLY wants to chill. She asks me what I’m doing the next few days, and I tell her the truth: that all I do is work and do yoga.

She invites me over that night for dinner and a joint. I accept.

That night, I head over there not really knowing what to expect. But I figure that since I’m probably going to Australia soon, what’s the worst that could happen?

So I go to her apartment and she meets me downstairs. She still looked the same, I guess, except for the fact that she’s probably gained about 50 pounds.

Seriously, what happens to women when they hit 30? Do they just give up?

Anyway I shouldn’t say that because she’s very nice, but still.

So we go up and start chatting. Well, SHE starts chatting.

You know those people who, when you have a conversation with them, will start telling you stories about everything in their life? They talk the whole time, go out of their way to show you pictures on their phone, and tell stories using people’s first names without explaining who they are?

Yeah. She was like that.

Still, despite the fact that it was weird for me to hang out with her, I kind of had a good time. We smoked a fat joint of some stanky danky and I ended up spending about an hour there.

I also had a very profound experience before I left.

After coming back from college, Nicole had been living in LA for something like 9 years. On a whim, she decides to move to Oregon to live with a friend of hers who is trying to leave her husband. I suppose she needed emotional support or some shit, but Nicole gave up her apartment and moved all of her furniture to Oregon to live with this chick.

Unfortunately, he bitch and her husband ended up flipping out on her and kicking her out. She moved back to LA and has not been particularly thrilled with life since.

When we were talking about this, naturally the subject of living in LA came up. She said something that I’ve said many times.

“I mean, I don’t like living in LA. But I just don’t know if it will be better if I leave.”

I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like that. And I was like, “Holy fucking shit. If I stay here, am I going to end up like her?”

Sounds kind of mean, but I don’t envy her by any means.

Another weird thing happened when I was there.

This was maybe ten minutes after I got there. She takes a hit from the bong, and maybe five minutes later goes, “Oh my god… why am I getting deja vu?”

Her eyes roll back into her head for a second, and just as quickly she snaps forward and gets this glazed look in her eye. She’s staring straight ahead and her mouth starts making these weird movements. It was the same thing old people who have no teeth will do, where they like move their lips around like they’re gathering saliva.

Anyway, she moved her lips like that maybe 20 times without saying anything. She reaches over and grabs my wrist tightly, wiggling her lips non stop. I had no idea what the fuck was going on. Like, is this bitch having some kind of breakdown or something?

Wiggle wiggle wiggle. I asked her if she wanted water, or what the fuck. I was getting a little uncomfortable with her death grip on my arm, so I got up and told her I was going to get her water.

Finally she goes, “No, water won’t help.”

Then she says, “Damn, that was a crazy seizure.”

I was like, “That was a seizure? Holy shit. I’ve never seen one before. Don’t you like, fall on the ground and start twitching or something?”

She goes, “No no, that’s a grand mal. I get these ones called petit mals.”

Anyway, I guess she had a fucking seizure in front of me while we were just chilling. It was very weird.

So after spending about an hour there the first time, I left with a little more confidence in my plan to go to Australia.

A few hours later, I had the brilliant idea that I could give her money to buy me weed. I texted her with the proposition and she agreed.

So fast forward to last night. We’d been texting back and forth and she told me that she’d just gotten back from a dispensary. After I did a few hours of driving, I headed over to her place to go pick it up.

I told her that I would be driving all night in order to give myself an excuse to leave. Not that I don’t like hanging out with her, but I had a feeling she wanted to fuck me. I wasn’t particularly interested.

Sure enough, she sat a little too close to me while we were on the couch. I started to get uncomfortable.

All of a sudden, she flops down on her side and gives me a big hug.

“Ooooh!” she said as she squeezed me. “I can’t believe I’m hanging out with YALLA PAPI!”

“Haha, yep,” I said flatly.

I had already taken a puff of weed at this point and was pretty fucking high. I’m a total lightweight.

So I’m sitting there watching American Dad, feeling very uncomfortable as both of this girl’s arms are wrapped around my arm. She slowly sits up, leaving one of her arms curled around mine.

Her other hand floats into her mouth and she starts biting one of her fingernails. Then she’s sucking on her finger.

Now I started to get REALLY uncomfortable. I did not want to have sex with this girl. Not because I’m not attracted to her. I mean, I’ve definitely fucked my fair share of unattractive girls. And not because we used to be good friends. I didn’t really give a shit about that.

My sex drive has been literally zero lately. Not like I don’t have options. I don’t know why, just not into it I guess.

I think it may have something to do with not feeling confident about the way I’m living lately. I just feel like I have low status or something.

I mean, Nicole obviously didn’t give a shit. I actually think MOST girls don’t fucking care, either. It’s not about them though. It’s 100% in MY head.

Anyway, after a minute or so I excused myself to get up and go to the bathroom. I think she got the hint.

She didn’t seem to take it to heart either, which was a relief.

A few minutes later, she goes, “I’m trying really hard right now not go break open the old photo albums.”

I was like, “OMG, you have old pictures from Pali?”

She leaps off the couch and goes into her room. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

I only managed to look at about 10 pictures before getting kind of creeped out. Not because of her, but because of the pictures.

Looking through them I realized how YOUNG we were in high school. I mean sure, if I think about it logically, I KNOW what age we were back then. But for some reason when I think of my own memories, I don’t think about the age. I just think of myself as the same person as I am now.

Obviously I’m not, and seeing those pictures proved it. Everyone was so fucking YOUNG looking. It was just so damn weird.

I remember the things that happened in high school as being extremely meaningful, but when I saw how young we all were, it was almost like it took some of the legitimacy from those memories.

It’s like, how fucking meaningful can something be when you’re 15? You don’t know shit about the world. Yet there we were, all young as fuck thinking that what we were doing in school mattered on some level.

Anyway, after that I knew it was time to get the fuck out of there. I excused myself, saying that I had to get back on the road when I truth I was going to go home and destroy all the food my aunt had packed for me.

So that’s what I did. Went home. Played a game of Dota and ate a bunch of food.

I still had about 5 trips to do to hit my bonus for Uber, so I cranked them out early this morning.

My mom called me while I was on the road, so when I was done I called her back. She had emailed me a picture of this really hot Israeli girl that she had met at the mall. She’s always trying to fix me up with various skanks.

While we were on the phone, I knew I had to figure out a way to get her to make some kind of effort to patch things up with her brother.

At first I thought that I would just tell her that he had been sick and that she should talk to him.

The only problem with that was that she was still holding a grudge about some bullshit. She was of the, “he’s different now and we don’t get along like we used to” type of mentality. I was worried that if I just said he’s sick and you should talk to him, she would just feel OBLIGED to get in touch with him and not do it because she actually WANTED a relationship with him.

I also didn’t want to tell her that my aunt had brought up the intervention. She and my mom have had issues in the past, so I figured that if I invoked my aunt’s name then my mom would just switch off immediately.

So I decided to try a different tactic.

“Hey mom, I have to tell you something. It’s a little sad,” I said cautiously.

She goes, “Oh no. Okay. Tell me.”

“Well, when I was at the Hanukah party, we were all sitting outside and I hear Scotty whisper to Holly, ‘Yalla reminds me so much of Joy. I miss her.’”

Right away she goes, “Oh no! Okay. I’ll call him today!”

LOL. Problem solved.

She started to say something about how she felt like she was wronged, about how her feelings were hurt and blah blah blah. The problem is that her beef isn’t just with her brother. She had issues with other members in the family as well. My aunt, grandma, etc.

It’s kind of weird, but my mom’s family and my aunt’s family kind of married into one another. It’s hard to explain, but suffice to say that a few family members from one family married a few family members from another family.

So if there’s lots of gossip and drama in a normal family, then with ours it’s even more because people are related on different levels. Factions, drama, that kind of shit.

Anyway, I cut her off.

I go, “The vibe I got from there wasn’t that they hate you, or don’t like you or something. Scott was really sick and almost died. Marsha had a stroke. It all happened in a short period of time. I think people are really feeling their mortality and just want to bury the hatchet. They just want to be a family.”

She was still arguing. “No no no I’m hurt they hurt my feelings blah blah blah.”

I go, “Yeah, that may be, but I bet they don’t even remember what they said. It’s like if, you know, I was mad at you for like, taking my toy a long time ago. And every time I see you I’m really mean to you and you don’t know why, and I’m just thinking, ‘she took my toy and hurt me.’ Then finally one day I tell you and you’re like, ‘oh my god, I had no idea why you were so mad at me this whole time!’ Same shit.

“I mean, what if he actually died? How bad would you feel if you guys never patched things up?”

“I’d feel terrible,” she said quietly.

She started crying. I thought Oh fuck, did I go too far?

Then she goes, “Thank you, Yalla. You unblocked me.”

Good stuff.

We hung up and that was that.

You want to know the crazy part, though? I made it all up.

My uncle never said that he thought I reminded him of my mom. Total fabrication.

My mom is a hard-headed person and so is my uncle. Their beef has been dragged out for so long because neither of them want to be the one to admit fault and apologize, even if it means shit will get patched up between them.

Brother sister bullshit and all that.

But I knew that if word got to her that HE missed HER, then that would be all the logical justification she would need to pick up the phone and do the rest. And she would have no reason to think that I would make something like that up.

After all, it IS plausible.

So we’ll see. She’s got such a short fuse that I’m sure she’s still capable of fucking it up. Hopefully not though, because good karma and shit.

Anyway… I know I was going to write about that black chick I dated because she was in with all the drug dealers. I’ll do it eventually, I promise. Didn’t want to let this one slip through the cracks though.

Peace.