I've Had A Weird Week (In No Order At All)

1) I only have one wisdom tooth, I'm 29, and two weeks ago it started moving. Out of nowhere, it exerted pressure on my jaw, a pressure that felt like a spoon wedged between two of my molars. A large Turkish man named Dr. Beni removed the tooth last Friday with a ballpeen and hammer. He shattered the tooth, which was attached to my jawbone, after he had shot me up with TONS O' NOVACAINE. Right before he shattered it, he said, "Are you ready to party?" in his Turkish accent, and then laughed, low and sleazy. Later on, after the removal, his cel phone rang and he had one of those musical rings that was all Turkish-disco and shit. Yeah. He seemed really embarrassed when it rang, and his eyes darted back at me as he turned it off. But the thing was, I already could tell he does coke and dances to bad music. I could tell by his arm hair and bad back-alley-Rolex-ripoff wristwatch.

2) Tuesday night I went to this networking party. I've been to one of these things before in Chicago but never in LA. Basically, it's this society for writers/journalists and they host get-togethers every few months or so. All the journos gather and bitch about how little money they make, how no one lets them write their big dream opus about Band X or Politician A or Social Phenomenon B and this is supposed to show how vapid the media industry is. And the media industry is vapid, but not for these reasons. Anyway, this party was kind of pathetic--did I say that already? I met the lowliest bunch of freelance writers, including one dude who lied to me about who published his novel. "Oh, Random House published it." Turns out dude self-published it. Nothing wrong with that, but why lie about it? Now it makes *everything* he told me suspicious, including his little story about being hired at a bigshot music mag and then laid off two weeks later. "Oh well," he sighed, brushing aside his too-long bangs, "they wouldn't have let me publish what i wanted anyway."

3) At this same party, towards the end, I decided to sit down with an intense-looking bunch of people just for the hell of it. Thing is, at these parties, no one is supposed to know each other, and blind networking/socializing is encouraged. So I was following directions. But the moment I sat down at this table, I felt like "Uh-oh." I clearly was the nerd sitting down at the cheerleaders table. One chick, the Sally alpha-female of the crew, immediately gave me this look like "Whatthefuck?" But I ignored that and turned on the best of my Margaret Louise charms. Soon enough, I had half the table on my side, while Sally and her friend continued to give me the cold shoulder. I got drunker, and so did two other guys sitting with me. By the end of the night, it was me, these two guys and a bunch of half-drunken glasses of wine. One of the guys, Stephen, drank all of everyone's dregs. The bar decided to close the back patio and kicked us out. I asked Stephen, "Hey, do you want to go to the beach?"

4) To the right of me is the dead ring of the Santa Monica ferris wheel, with only a thread of lights blinking in the dark. In front, the Pacific, mounting and roaring, lapping at my toes. To the left, a swooping crescent of maligned Los Angeles shapes--houses and palm trees and myriad hotels. Stephen has already waded in, and he's pretty far out there, so far that his head is only a bobbing sphere of black curls. I'm wearing a dress and black tights, but I run in anyway, screaming and laughing, loudly not only because I'm excited but because it's comforting to hear myself, to have my voice as some sort of center in the dark blurriness of the beach. The water is cold and delicious, and the smell of salt and strangers' garbage wafts up and pinches my nose, stings my eyes. And then the surf overtakes me and for a second I'm very scared, as I always am when the first wave hits me. I'm not a good swimmer but my legs kick up anyway and make the appropriate shapes in the water. I forget everything, including Stephen's name. When I loose track of him, I yell out, "Hey!" and then struggle to remember who the hell he is.

5) I ate chicken at the Burritto King that was suspiciously pink. Like, fucking carnation pink. Wha??

That's all for now...