Gram Parsons – East Hollywood Blues

Another day another deranged shooter in East Hollywood.

This time I found out from the LAPD themselves, not an alert popping up on my phone. It seems a knucklehead barricaded himself in an apartment in the SRO next to my building. So after my workout when I was at my most sweaty and slimy the Cops won’t let anyone on the block.

“It’s an active shooter situation,” the Cop says.

“When will it be over,” I asked.

“It will be over when it’s over. No more questions. Go that way,” he pointed down toward K-Town. I was in no mood to argue with the guy about needing a shower, especially with the SWAT team staging what looked like a raid behind him so off I went to the Local to wait out.

There is no place better to wait out an active shooter than at the Local. Jack the Albino behind the bar and our three Russian gun nut pals agreed and thus we waited drinking and trying to figure out what sort of rifle does one use to hold off the LAPD in an East Hollywood SRO when A Line and Man Bun came in with their dog complaining about the Tear Gas in the air.

They had never been in the Local but it was the closest clean well lit place to go. Man Bun gripped his dog tightly.

“Those Cops poisoned my dog! She’s choking,” he cried while A Line tried to remain composed as she called her Mother.

“Oh my Gawd can you believe it Mother? Gun violence is finally here. In East Hollywood! I’ll never be safe again.”

The refused all drinks and water for their dog from Jack the Albino while they waited with the rest of us for the all clear go back to your homes to sound out.

While walking outside to catch a whiff of the CS gas wafting up Beverly towards Silver Lake because hey wouldn’t Hunter S. Thompson do the same thing, I overheard two cops talking and was able to piece together the events of the day in my corner of East Hollywood. It seems the LAPD had been looking for this Guy in the SRO for three weeks because he shot at and hit his soon to be ex wife and her new boy toy outside a movie theater near the Miracle Mile.

Although no status had been offered vis a vie the condition of the boy toy and soon to be ex it appears that the LAPD takes attempted divorce by public shooting very seriously. Therefore they tracked said knucklehead to the SRO next to my apartment and surrounded the place. They only evacuated the block when he pulled out a gun and shot the door frame. SWAT had been called and had occupied an apartment with a clear line of sight into the domicile now being used as a bunker. Negotiations were continuing but had been pushed into overdrive by the emergence of a mirror, a credit card, some white powder and what appeared to be a rolled up $20. Hence the Tear Gas.

Two hours later the neighborhood was given the all clear to return to their homes sans the SRO residents who would have to wait until the LA CSI unit finished their work. It seems our knucklehead had brandished a weapon and fired in the VERY general direction of SWAT team member who in turn gave him Suicide by SWAT which was over 6 hours in the making.

I walked back to my joint with great determination and relief. I stunk so much I was beginning to offend myself and a shower would surely be a welcome relief for everyone in a three mile radius. I walked up the stairs and found the apartment SWAT had occupied during the siege was mine. It was also readily apparent from various marking in the dust on my fire escape that the fatal shots had been fired from three feet outside my kitchen thus allowing the stench of gun powder and involuntary death to permeate and hang over everything in my home.

I walked outside, down the stairs and into the street in an attempt to get away from legal side of the crime scene where I found a righteously indignant almost to the point of being WASP’s from Greenwich, Connecticut A Line and Man Bun arguing with a plain clothed member of the LAPD demanding reparations for their inconvenience and now poisoned dog who in true Chihuahua fashion was biting at the LAPD plain clothes cop.

This was the last bit of weirdness I could stand. It was time to go to the same desert where Phil Kaufman took Gram Parson’s corpse and burned it.

Everyone talks about the weather in Los Angeles, how great it is, sun all the time et al. That’s why they are willing to pay the sunshine tax. What they don’t tell you about is the humidity. It’s over 50% every day. So when my eyes open at 7:30 sharp every day – it’s been that way since I turned 40 eight years back almost to the day who needs an alarm clock anymore – I’m in a pool of my own sweat. Great weather my ass.

Looking out over the tops of what passes for tenement apartment houses in East Hollywood towards Culver City, I reflect every morning on what I’ve lost and gained, view wise, since I left Gramercy Park for Los Angeles. Gone are the blue curtain blocked windows and a/c units across the roof top. Now I have a view of roof tops and Palm trees that remind me of Michael Mann movies. And it’s always sunny, gone is my indirect semi-shade.

Just behind the fence that separates my parking lot from the three unit building on the next street over that appears to be rapidly sinking in the Los Angeles basin beneath it, three bearded hipster types are shirtless and firing up the BBQ, cans of PBR in hand and auto tuned rap on the box. It’s just a reminder that I’ve traded in my 492 square foot Co-op on the southeast corner of the only private park in Manhattan for an 800 square foot one bedroom in a rapidly gentrifying central Los Angeles neighborhood.

“Jesus H Christ,” I mumble, drinking my black coffee, “how the fuck did I get here?”

She sat in my red chair, staring at me while I looked out over the roof tops.

“What are you looking at,” I asked.

“You.”

I rubbed my chin and drank the coffee she handed me moments before. That’s when it hit me, she’d slept over every night for the last week.

“How long have we been seeing each other,” I asked.

“Eight months now.”

I looked over at this gorgeous leggy 30 year old brunette. “What do you see in a middle aged guy like me?”

“You had me when we first started talking at that bar we went to after work “Heart of the Matter” by Don Henley came on and you started crying,” she said.

“I miss Gram Parsons.”

“Who?”

“You know that song I play for you “The New Soft Shoe,” I asked.

“Did he record with that Captain Beefheart guy?”

“No he discovered Emmylou Harris.”

“Who is she?”

“I’ll play him for you later,” I mumbled and sipped my coffee.

“When you cried at that song I knew you are a wonderful man who is horribly broken and needs to be fixed,” she said.

“Jesus H. Christ, what romance novel are you reading now?”

“Here,” she said handing me a copy of 50 Shades of Gray. “It’s not as bad as everyone thinks.”

I took the book and flung it out the window. I walked over to my bookcase and grabbed Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Philosophy in the Bedroom. “If you’re going to read that crap it should at least have literary value.”

She flipped through the pages. “The classics,” she exclaimed. “I can’t wait to read these at the beach today with Nats and Erin!” Her phone went off. A text from one of “her girls.” “And I’m late. I have to run. I’ll see you tonight!” She grabbed her purse and flip flops and ran out of the apartment.

You know I miss the way the New York women say ‘Tootles’ when they leave.