HOLLYWOODS-Chapter 1 The Beginning

“Today is the first day of another day of everyday of the rest of my life”

Welcome to confusion




CHAPTER 1 THE BEGINNING

BEEP BEEP BEEP. Oh shit where’s the snooze, (I smack my alarm clock) no wrong button. I should just hit all of them so I can go back to bed. My eyelids shut for what seems exactly five eights of a second. BEEP BEEP BEEP. God damn this alarm. Fuck it I might as well wake up. What time is it? Must be like eleven or maybe noon. I glance over at my cable box but everything is still a blur. I rub my eyes, which feel like they need to be taken out and polished. After a few seconds of stabilizing my sight I notice it’s not eleven or noon its 3:45 p.m.

Why am I up so late? When did I go to sleep? Why is my alarm going off right now? I hit the rewind in my brain but the button seems to be broken. I sit up in my bed and realize I’m naked. The last thing I remember is taking that third Xanax….DAMN. See when you turn 18 you are legally an adult, so you get drunk. When you turn 21 you are allowed to drink legally so you get extremely drunk. The point is yesterday was my 25th birthday. But 25 is not special, there is really nothing to celebrate except another year of life. So I drank till I forgot about it all and blew Hollywood’s until I remembered again. In the DC area a Hollywood is what they call long thick lines of cocaine. All this of course was chased down with lots of scotch and pills. Being intoxicated with an upper and a downer is like a threesome with a blond and a brunette, everyone has a preference but together they are always better.

Ok time to start putting the puzzle, that is last night, together. We were at club Luv (I still call it Dream). I remember a bottle of Grey Goose and a Johnny Walker Black also about five bottles of champagne. Definitely not Crystol or anything close just some cheap stuff because it was all for show anyway. Damn I remember that Brazilian chic I believe she was an Au pair. I hope I got her number. Guess I’ll just check my phone when I get out of bed. Besides who knows if she’s even as hot as I remember. See cocaine is the devil’s dandruff but it’s not really an aphrodisiac. Only coke whores want to hookup the night of a yeyeo fest, and when you’re blown out of your mind nothing is less attractive than some coke fen, because unlike the movies they’re usually not that hot.

Ok so I remember Paola but after that is a blank. It will probably take a while to figure out what happened; anyways what’s the point in cramming my mind over it now, it was a great b-day bash regardless. As I reminisce a more powerful force enters my mind. Damn I’m 25 soon it’s 26, after that comes 30, then 40 and by then life is over, or so I thought at the time. Twenty-five may not seem like a crisis to most but to my generation it’s a very intimidating period.

15 to 20 years ago a man that was 25 or near that age was very situated and set in his ways. The people of that generation were either comfortable with their career or almost there. As far as relationships go you were either married or totally committed to someone and really all you’re waiting for is to be financially stable enough to support a family. Well this is a new era and tides have turned. Maybe for the better but probably for the worse. They say 25 is the new 18 and I don’t know who “they” are but “they're” usually right, and in this case they hit the bull’s eye. Before I go any further I need to go back, a long time.

Now the best place to start is usually the beginning, so why not? I want to explain just how I got here physically, financially, spiritually and emotionally. This is a story that is one of a kind and at the same time very common; the path to my quarter life crisis. This is a story I must tell, no matter what the repercussions.

This path started January, 4th, 1994. What’s so special about that date is that as a man this is when everything changed for me. I was a freshman in high school and she was a senior. Natalie and I were dating for about a month. I had stayed home sick on the fourth and Natalie decided to stop by because I was home alone. Then I had the most frightening and thrilling experience of my life: I had sex and it was amazing. Of course it was a little awkward because your first time all you can really think of is how the hell does this work. But nevertheless I got laid and little did I know my whole world was about to change. Sex has entered my life and there are things to be done to insure future sex. Now I have to work out because a built body is impressive. I have to have ambition because to women its sexy. I’ve got to figure out how to be a nice guy and an asshole that doesn’t care all at the same time because for some reason that is what girls seem to want. Basically I just became a man and like most men my whole life revolved around women how to get them, how to keep them, how to get rid of them and most importantly how to please them. Remember that these are all thoughts I had at the time, as an older and wiser man I know there is more to life and women than those shallow ideas, but back then this is where both my heads were.

Natalie didn’t even believe it was my first time, which was actually a great sign. She made me feel like Dirk Diggler, well except for the fact I wasn’t hung like a mule. Natalie and I stayed together for a couple of months and as an older woman (when your 14 and you’re dating an 18 year old she is definitely much older and wiser than you) she taught me everything and she was not shy about divulging her lustful needs. When to go fast, when to go slow, when to flip positions, how exactly to pull her hair to the point that it hurt but was not too painful. It was like I was training to become some sort of sexual Jedi. Well needless to say this was very fun training for a 14 year old. So you’re probably wondering how all of this is a start to any kind of crisis but like a simple puzzle it will all come together. Eventually Natalie told me that she was going away to college and that was when I realized we would be over soon. It’s funny when your girl leaves town. It’s like your buddy going away to jail, if it’s longer than a few months they never come back the same. We had a pretty good last summer together; she definitely continued my training and taught me a few things for the road. I spent the end of that summer visiting my aunt in London and by the time I got back everything changed. Between the rumors and empty promises on both ends we were done. But this was not the last I would see of Natalie like most of my relationships she will find her way back in my journey.

Now I’m 15 going on 30. I’ve had sex so I feel like a completely grown man. Like most teenagers I knew very little about this world but felt like I knew it all. Another thing I discovered around this time was my love for pot. I took my first puff at 14 and was a weekend pot smoker within a few months. But my friends and I were just crazy we had no inhibitions we never worried about any of our actions, so we started selling some pot not heavy weight but enough that we could smoke for free all the time, besides it’s not like we had jobs or anyway to pay for the smoke. Soon enough I was blazing up almost every day. Also I was still getting over Natalie and the silver lining in all breakups is the rebound and I was ready to meet new girls and lots of them.

CHAPTER 2 THE WRENCH IN MY GAME