June 1
Midlife crisis? Bright yellow hair? Tattoo? Smirky face? Green skin?
Note: Spelling errors abound. Read at your own risk, and send me snotty email only if you want to send a message to me that says "Dana, I am an anal retentive asshole!"
Right, so California. The flight was endless. Luckily, we were all a little drunk (which, I must confess definitely helped even in the face of my new found love of flying. We'd hit turbulence and instead of clutching the seat in front of me, which I do even though I'm not afraid to fly. Did I mention that? Not afraid to fly! Very cool. Will be helpful to me in the future, I am sure, so instead of clutching the seat in front of me, I just grinned stupidly out the window, somewhere over the darkened United States sipping my horrible, nasty 4 dollar for a split (boozy question: I always called the little bottles you get "wine splits" I don't quite know why or where I picked up this lingo, but that's what I call them. Do you call them something else? Is there a real word for them other than "Tiny little bottle of wine"?) bottle of chardonnet. Which I couldn't figure out how to spell, at all, when I tried to write it down in my journal. "Shardonay" was one of the attempts. (yes, I know it's wrong, thanks for the insight, there, genius.)
My journal. Yeah. I don't know why, but this trip, I just wasn't into writing stuff down. California was such a visual mind-fuck for me that any time I tried to pick up the pen to write what I was seeing or what we were doing, I drew a blank. I'd gotten a lot of mail beforehand, telling me where to go and what to do and see and stuff, but no one, not one single person out there said "Dana, you will see Sea Lions (seals?) in the water!" Not one of you warned me, so there I am, first time in California, all by myself because Nick and Al went off to do actual work type stuff, still digesting my breakfast burrito (breakfast burrito and a BEER, god bless America!), wandering around some empty boardwalk type place, when I hear this NOISE in the distance. I pause. The noise, as Turdmonster described is a bellowing "ORP!! ORP!!". I lose my shit and tear off down the beach.
The beach, by the way, is crawling with high school students, which strikes me as being an incredibly half-assed, end of the year type of trip that some really uninspired teachers cooked up to get themselves out of the school on a sunny day: "Yeah, yeah..no, you can go play with that jagged glass. Making out with Juanita is cool, but keep your hand out of her pants. I don't care, just don't make me put out my cigarette*". There I am, standing at the water's edge, staring around at this absolute clusterfuck of birds (no shit, there were thousands of them, all eating: there was a unfortunate school of fish that probably regretted their choice of places to stop) and there are seals, honest to god, not on TV, not at the zoo or the aquarium SEALS (or sea lions).
(*This is not to say that teachers, who are underpaid and underappreciated and mostly deserve sainthood do not deserve a break at the end of the school year. They do. Yes sirree. Teachers, I salute thee!)
They're swimming and jumping and doing that shit that seals (or sea lions) do. I am so freaked out and excited by this that I take out my cell phone, right there on the beach. I take out my cell phone, and I call Nick's cell phone. He answers, and I scream "SEAL!!!! SEALLLL!!! THERE ARE SEALS ON THE BEACH!!" (note: at this point, the fact that they might or might not have been sea lions didn't occur to me) may have impressed him a little more if he hadn't been on a work related conference call. Heh. Seals! I am standing there at the water's edge (New England Dana: "It's CALIFORNIA!! The water will be warm like the women! Yow! It's the Pacific! Warm!" Reality Check Dana: "Jumping jesus, this water is freaking freezing!") with my mouth hanging open, and high school students around me, laughing at me because I'm standing there with my mouth hanging open, but also because I am talking to myself ("seals!! fucking SEALS!! that is SO COOL!!") and I am holding onto my digital camera, my backpack and my cell phone, all in the same hand. I am a Dork.
I leave the beach and decide to drive around and see what Santa Cruz is all about. It is, in fact, all about Hippies. If one out of every 3 cars in Mexico is a VW Bug, one out of ever 7 cars is a Bug in Santa Cruz. Damn hippies. It is at that point I notice that there's a tattoo parlor directly across the street from our hotel. I make a mental note of this, and continue driving. By some divine intervention, I find myself on a street! full of stores! Cool looking stores! Toy stores! Pottery stores! I find a parking spot (a 20 minute commercial parking spot, which almost leads me to a world of tickets and sorrow later on, but, as it turns out, traffic cops in California are polite as hell!) get my shit together, and spend the next hour or so (running back to the meter every 20 minutes) in and out. I decide, right then and there, that I am in love with California and that I want to live in Santa Cruz. Forever. And be a hippy. And play a lute or a harpsichord or a digederoo down on the sidewalk for quarters and dollars which I will use to parlay myself into the artist known simply as "Dana". It's an amazing, likely scenario, one that fills me with an immediate goodwill towards everyone bustling (or the Santa Cruz equivalent to bustling which, at best, is kind of a shuffle) around me. Until I see the police guy starting to write me a ticket. I grab the shit I've bought (a Julius backpack) and take off. He stops writing when he sees me, and actually apologizes. Wow.
The next day, Nick and I leave for the Mystery Spot. I'll not ruin the mystery for those who are still unsure of what it's all about, and will just say that there's the part, where you go into the crooked house. I walked into the crooked house and thought I was going to vomit. It was awful. Nick was all climbing on the walls and looming overhead, crookedly, and all I could do was clutch the handrails and feel sorry for myself. It was extremely, uh, Mysterious. And very cool. The guy giving the tour was a freak. "So, why don't YOU step over HERE and YOU step over here, now YOU step over here and YOU step into where she was?! See that!!? It's a mystery!! Look how tall you are!! Bet you really like it there!! Har! Har! HAR!!!" By nature, I'm not the most suspicious person there is (shut up, I'm not. It's called being guardedly TRUSTING, okay?), but I couldn't and still can not figure out what the trick was. Or is. And that's all I'll say about that. Probably the funniest thing about the whole place was the sign over the entrance. (I have a photo, but am far too lazy to deal with it):
"WE ASK YOUR PERMISSION TO PLACE A FREE BUMPERSTICKER ON YOUR CAR!! THANK YOU!!"
When we noticed the sign, Nick and I looked at one another. "You don't think they'd...?" I started "Heh, I'm sure the rental car people would love that!" As it turned out, the tour guide simply handed them to us as we left. The gift shop was a bitter disappointment. I mean, I figured that that, above any other place would be the motherlode of tacky, kitchy Mystery Spot goods. It was tacky and kitchy, for sure, but practically deviod of any Mystery or Mystery-related items. It was all feathery dreamcatchers and "does your face hurt because it's killing me*" buttons. (Note: not actual button sold at the Mystery Spot giftshop. Author is excersicing dramatic license) We left with no cool shit other than the bumper sticker not placed on our bumper. Man, if I'd gone there in my truck or something and someone had slapped a bumpersticker on it, I would have gone bullshit. Anyhow, moving on.
We went to get some lunch before Nick needed to return to work. It was then, I really gave the getting at tattoo some real thought. I went with him to the company, I found the picture I wanted. I bid Nick a fond adieu and went off to see if they'd be able to fit me in. Okay. The place was extremely clean and playing tattoo parlor music (no shit, I think they were playing the same thing they played at The Edge when Louise and Lisa got their tattoos, and I was having my always infected 6th and soon to be removed 7th ear piercings) and there were fish and the normal horrible tattoo example photos up on the walls. The one I became fixated on was particularly fucked; two monkeys, one behind the other. The front monkey was on all fours. The uh..rear monkey was holding up the tail of the front monkey and STICKING HIS (her? i didn't notice gender) FINGER UP THE OTHER MONKEY'S BUTT.
Okay. I know people get tattoos for a lot of reasons. I know that the tattoos are usually of something near and dear to one's heart. And I know that I'm known for being something of a monkey fanatic. But people, people. Who is the person out there who stumbled into a tattoo parlor, unsure of what they wanted, looked through the books, looked around the walls all like "Hmm..the flaming skull with the snake coming out of the eye socket is cool, but not exactly the message I'm trying to send out. The naked chick with the gigantic bosoms and the spread legs with the words "Let's Eat!" is pretty classy, sure, but it's a little tame. Wait. WAIT! Hold the fucking phone!! Look at those MONKEYS!! Look what they're DOING!!! HAH! HAH! Isn't that great?!! Wait till the guys see THIS one!!" and then actually go to the person doing the tattooing, slapping the picture down in front of him or her, "THIS!! THIS IS THE ONE I CHOOSE!!"
Who IS this person? THIS is a person with balls the size of melons. This is the person I want to meet. To get an unapologetically fucked up tattoo like that shows strength of character.In any case, I show the (extremely tattooed, but not not a monkey in sight...) tattoo artist lady ("Bonnie" she said, as an introduction. It was to be one of about 3 words she had for me, the entire time.) what I want done. She looks at it and looks at the actual thing (see the other day's comments about "That's YELLOW?") and disappears off into the back. She emerges twice. Once to ask "Is this really the size you want it?" the other to summon me to her lair. I do the Santa Cruz Shuffle to where she's indicating I half lie down, I remove my sandal, I worry briefly (okay, not so briefly) about how bad my feet must smell (note: I have these brown Sketcher sandals. I love them dearly, but they are made of something that make my feet smell like I've got gangrene. If indeed something with gangrene has a smell, which I'll bet it does) waving in her face. She mixes the colors, and I'm all nervous and sweaty and shaking and freaking out and I've got this internal dialogue going "It's not going to hurt! How bad can it be? I mean, it's a tiny little tattoo. It can't even take that long!" She presses the doober ow thingy to my leg for a nanosecond and says "There. That's how much it hurts." I relax. Then, it actually starts.
Newsflash: Getting a tattoo hurts. If you are one of the people out there who was like "It doesn't hurt! Especially if you have a little extra meat on your bones, which you do, there, fatty fatty two by four" to me, I have only two words for you: fucking liar. It hurts. I was trying to liken the pain to something else, and oddly enough, it is just as it seems. Someone dragging a needle in your flesh. Pound for pound and minute for minute, it hurts less than getting your ear pierced, but only because the immediate "Holy shit, someone just shot something through my fucking ear!" is much less than "Ow, fuck, someone is scraping me with a needle!" I was trying to be in my happy place in my little mind because Bonnie had nothing to say to me. Not one word during the whole thing. She did her work in utter silence. I never found my happy place, so I sat there wondering to myself "Does she think that I'm having some kind of bonding mind over body experience with the pain? Does she think I need to be left alone with it? Is the silence supposed to be cathartic? Does my foot smell? Ow, that shit hurts! I wonder how I take care of this thing? This is a statement. A statement that I will have for the rest of my life. Someday, when Im 90, if I make it that long (which we all know is really unlikely) I will have this tattoo, of this Tamagotchi, of the Little Dude Who Lives in My Truck, or spaceship or whatever I happen to have at the time, and I will always remember exactly when and where and how and why I got it. Wait. Why AM I getting this? Is this a stupi--" Then it was over. No shit, 5 or 7 minutes, tops. She kind of smirked and said "that's it." and shoved a sheet of directions at me. I paid. I didn't tip her, for the following reasons: 1.) I didn't have the slightest idea you were supposed to tip the tattoo people and 2.) I had no cash.
I leave. I go immediately to the liquor store. I buy Hooch. This is more because I feel like I've had a rite of passage in my life than because I am in any kind of pain requiring Hooch medication. What I am, however, is pissed off to learn that I'm not supposed to soak it, which means there will be no outdoor hotel jacuzzi time. Alas.
The next day, we all hop into the Focus (buy one at your own great peril, it was underpowered and awful) to go to the Winchester Mystery House, in San Jose. The story, for those of you who don't know, is thusly: Winchester is a big gun manufacturer. The company was formed here in New Haven, and I do believe they are, to some extent, still around. Okay, so they packed up and moved, or Mrs. Winchester packed up and moved, after Mister Winchester shit the bed. Somewhere in the meantime, she went nuts. She moved into this house, and decided that she had to keep working on it and building additions onto it to keep the souls of the people who'd been killed by Winchester rifles at rest. The end result is this gigantic, ugly, freakishly spooky house that's spooky more because I kept picturing this sort of midgety woman (4'11". If you are 4'11" too, you are most certainly very tall looking for your height, and not even a little bit dwarfy) alone with her servants in this 149 (I believe, give or take a room or two) room place. Maybe she has like one scruffy cat that she talks to. Imagine all of the creaking doors and leaky, howling windows. Imagine the earthquakes ripping through (she was actually trapped in one of the rooms during one. "And HERE" intoned the exceptionally flat affect tour guide, who sounded like Wednesday Adams on downers, "If you LOOK CLOSELY, you MIGHT SEE THE CROWBAR marks FROM where they tried to PRY her out!").
It seemed to me that the house wasn't so much a mystery as a series of really shitty architectural decisions. Again, the tour guide would go on and on about the most retarded things. "You MAY have gotten used to the LITTLE RISER STAIRS Mrs. Winchester had PUT IN. She had them PUT IN because she HAD ARTHRITIS. It SEEMS like you aren't going UP at all, and IN REALITY you have to climb 400 LITTLE STAIRS to get up only THREE FEET. Be CAREFUL now that we're ON REAL STAIRS." "This is a CLOSET that OPENS TO NOTHING." "THIS closet OPENS to the REST OF THE HOUSE. How truly BIZARRE. No one knows WHY she did it. It's part of the MYSTERY."
Part of the mystery, for me was definitely that we'd spent 16 dollars each to take the tour. We definitely could have walked around and and read plaques on the wall or whatever for 5 dollars. Mystery House, Feh. The truly exciting part of the day came when we went searching for the Texas Barbecue in Castroville, the Artichoke Capital of The World. The barbecue was good. It was meat. There was lots of it. There's definitely not a lot to say about meat. But Castroville itself fascinated me. Maybe it was the time of day that made everything grey. Maybe the town itself used up all of its color on the artichokes, who knows. In any case, there was nothing there. Some gas stations. A club I really wanted to go into. The hot hot artichokes sign. We had driven through the entire town in a minute, and it was a minute only because we hit three red lights.
Sunday, our last day, we packed it in and went to San Francisco. It was both exactly and nothing like what I imagined it to be. We didn't do much--Japantown, sushi off a boat. Looked for Turdmonster related merchandise, only to be met with "what the fuck IS that thing" looks from people in stores. Some youngish guys in a video store proclaimed they had no idea what he was, that I needed to come back at 3:30 because then, some guy who "knew everything" would be there. As we were walking out, both Nick and Al were molested with Linux questions from the guys behind the counter and someone shopping in the store. I skipped away, thankful that I have no practical knowledge whatsoever that anyone other than myself might ever give a shit about.
After Japantown, we took the bus back to Ghiradelli square, where we fucked around and looked at stores and stuck our toes in the water and decided that we wanted to drive across the Golden Gate bridge before the sun went down. 30 clusterfuck trying to get out of the parking lot minutes later, we are free and head off in the direction of the bridge. We pass the Presidio. The PRESIDIO. Good jesus, it's the Presidio. I have a little freakout inside (the same way I did when I looked off into the water and saw Alcatraz. ALCATRAZ!!) but nothing like I did when we started going over the bridge. Understand. The Golden Gate bridge is an American Icon. The way the Brooklyn Bridge is. I imagine that if I had never seen the Brooklyn Bridge before, I'd be just blown away the first time. I was blown away the first time by he Golden Gate. I did get a little weepy, but because I was with boys and they would have teased me, I just shut up and enjoyed the scenery. We went into Sausolito (I am unsure of the spelling) and made too many cookie jokes. We drove up and down winding roads. We headed back for the bridge but made an abrupt right turn and wound up driving up an amazing road (called, funnily enough The Road I Didn't Check the Name Of Way) and wound up at some abandoned military place (Fort Whatsitsname. No really, that's what it's called. Look it up.) The view was lovely, but it was tittyass cold and windy (and from a New Englander? That's cold. For May.)
Our last meal in California was back at the Santa Cruz diner. That place is fucked up.
I loved it there. More than I expected. Much more than I expected. And, as always, coming back to Connecticut was a little bit of a drag.
the other day | home | email | soon | last day.
Fool enough to almost be it
And cool enough to not quite see it
And old enough to always feel this
Always old, I'll always feel thisNo more promise no more sorrow
No longer will I follow
Can anybody hear me
I just want to be me
When I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will