It was quite a night. Los Angeles is fueled on two substances. One legitimate – Red Bull, one illegitimate – methamphetamine. While I can’t speak to the latter I can speak to the Red Bull. It truly was the only thing that kept me moving last evening. It was a brutal exercise of the mind and body getting out here and making it through the first night. My flight was at 7:00 CDT and I had to be awake by 4:50 CDT to make it on time. I didn’t sleep at all Wednesday night before the flight…worried that I would sleep through the alarm clock I woke up at 3:50 in a panic, trying to decide if I should just go to the airport. It is amazing how logic completely fails you when you are in your unconscious mind.

As soon as the wheels touched the ground I was mobile. I got my baggage we jumped in the car and were off. As soon as we got to Zac’s apartment we downed a couple of Newy Browns (Newcastles) and headed out onto the streets for a culture shock. We walked all day, stopping to get a massive burrito from a seemingly shady street vendor. We sat on the torn and tattered green and red tables outside the stand, which is probably the size of a closet, and chatted. It was good to see my best friend. It had been a long time since we’d really hung out for any decent amount of time. One has to realize that everything that was ever in excess of partying was done between the two of us, so we weren’t strangers to pushing the limits.

We stopped back at the apartment after being in streets, baking in the sun, taking in the smells (mostly bad), and not drinking any water. We downed a couple more brews and decided we were stir crazy and hit the streets again, heading to the more legitimate areas of LA. We went past Grant street in the financial district and stopped in at a seafood restaurant with a happy hour. Chicken wings, potato skins, fried zucchini, and quesidillas for a mere 8 dollars. It was an upscale seafood restaurant and most of the menu started at 30 dollars. So, getting appetizers for 1.95/ea. was a hell of deal. We quickly offset the bill by ordering round after round of Guiness…We jumped the bill in a hurry, thats for sure.

It was back to the apartment to rest for a while and get Zac sobered enough to drive out to the beach. It was nice to take a break and I took a short nap…It reminded me of high school. Taking short naps here and there between parties and moments of exhausting motions. It was short, and bittersweet as it made me feel kinda horrible. I downed a Red Bull fueling myself up to get ready to go out again and we hit the road. A few Red Bulls, a few brewskis later we were sitting veranda-style looking out on the town. A sea of lights it is always a neat experience to look out on the valley and see all the life. However at this time it was nearly 2:00 in the morning, which is 4:00 in the morning back home. We made our way back to the apartment and I could barely think anymore.

Pretending that it didn’t bother me, I kept pressing on. We boarded the elevator the elevator and made our journey to the twelfth floor. In the apartment I could barely think anymore, my mind had shut down. My god…I thought, I used to be able to go for hours on minutes of sleep and party all night with no major issues. Dammit. I’ve grown up…Ah well…for the better I thought. We started watching a movie but I couldn’t even begin to process what was going on. Blissfully for a moment, I fell asleep on the concrete floor. You see, this entire damn apartment is concrete. The walls, the floors…Hell even the window feels concrete.

At some point this must have become unacceptable. This morning I woke up on a fouton, which I have no idea how to spell and am not going to take the time to figure out, next to my best friend. I laughed inside at how gay it probably looked that two dudes were crashed out on this fouton. But hey, this apartment is tiny…so it makes sense. I mean, if two dudes were crashed out on a queen bed in a two bed hotel room, that’d be totally worse, right? I had built a “wall of heterosexuality” in between us with the sleeping bag. Too damn hot to even possibly think about having any cover out here in LA, it was freaking useless to me anyway. I was laying on my side probably defending myself in case of any accidental spoon attempts in the middle of the night. Zac is a lover, that is for sure. I wouldn’t go as far as to say “manwhore” but I’d probably think that. So it wouldn’t surprise me if at six in the morning he thought I was one of his ladies and went in for an affectionate unconscious spoon…no freaking way, I thought to myself.

To answer your question in your head, nothing happened, of course. It was all quite funny, really. I thought about how worse off I would have been sleeping on concrete. I mean, this concrete is like super duper concrete…Man it is relentlessly hard and would probably have destroyed any normal man. Check out the picture I’ve attached…that is the room we are existing in. If I had to guess it’s probably 10 feet wide and12 feet deep, maybe. That is the entire apartment…not much room for luxury, anyway. Though, I did realize that my awkward homophobic sleep patterns had caused the entire right side of my body to go numb. That, and I was sleeping so far off the back edge of the damn thing that I had pushed the whole fouton a few feet away from the wall and was now balancing myself from falling into a concrete hole. I had to make some clever, ninja-like maneuvers to keep everything legit. It was tough, indeed.

I started to wonder if this is what youth hostiles would be like. Granted you save tons of money on your trip to Europe with your backpack trying to convince your parents that they’ve messed you up. But is all the awkward moment really worth it? If I was in Italy crashing at a youth hostile would I have to sleep in a fouton with fifteen sketchy people, just to pay 8 dollars a night? I laughed inside as I realized that the apartment building I am staying in used to be a hotel. In fact portions of it still remain to be. Last night, I had to give a guy my ID otherwise he wouldn’t let me come in. You see, homeless people try to live inside the building. They get in and its all downhill from there. So their idea of controlling who is here, requires that you cough up an ID. Really? I thought. As I sifted through my wallet full of credit cards and cash (not a shameless plug, just a point), I thought to myself, how the hell could this guy think I’m up to something shady? I’m with my friend who has a key for the front door, and obviously lives here. I’m nothing like the street dwelling vegabonds coming in hoping to urinate in the hallways…What’s the deal?

I guess in a way that all made me feel humble. Take away the usual privilege that a middle-class chap usually gets and it makes you get a bit of reality. Perhaps we should all be so fortunate to be humbled now and then. However, back to the original point…it was just like a hostile and this isn’t much different. This morning Zac asked me if I wanted breakfast. I should have responded yes and we should have walked over to one of the shady street vendors to get some breakfast fare, but instead we decided to stay in. Zac rolled up some cheese in a burrito. He doesn’t own a microwave, only a college sized refrigerator without ice trays. On top of the fridge sits two empty shakers where salt and pepper will someday, hopefully, populate the glass inside.

I sat there chewing my cold cheese burrito thinking to myself, holy hell, this is why my friend manages to stay around 120 pounds, or whatever he weighs. Perhaps I should move to the city and live like this for a while…Who needs a Gym when you are forced to walk street level all day long and take public transit? Who would be tempted to eat when you can only store a few cold items and some cheese. We literally had a breakfast fit for a homeless man this morning, and I’m seriously thinking about designing a diet program based around this idea. wow…why am I sharing it with you? If you do end up making money with this, you owe me four dollars, you damn blog patron.

Well, I suppose that is enough for today. S-Nizzle was kind enough to set up this blog for me, and I think I’ve abused it enough for the moment. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing today. I’m thinking about getting a transit pass and riding the trains around the entire city. Much like London you can ride the subways quite a ways around this town. I remembered how great that was in London to be able to hop in the tube and cruise around to different places, effortlessly. Great fun. That shall be what I do today. For now, I’m headed up the street to get some food from some shady vendors, I might pick up a pair of shoes too…Out here you can get 10 shoes for 2 dollars if you know the right people. Instead of Vans, Sketchers, and Airwalk, they’re “Fans, Sketchies, and Air-ride.” :->

Clever are the ones who have no idea what is happening around them. Call me a clever bastard.