California Noir Dreaming, or maybe it's Pulp Dreaming–from the Courting Archives

§ May 7th, 2006 § Filed under Fiction § Tagged personal essays § 13 Comments

Originally posted 12/15/04.

The following story is the type of writing that I love to do, but don’t usually get a chance to. It’s partially true and partially fiction, hence it’s fiction.

Let other people dream of Morocco and Maui. I dream of Barstow and Bakersfield. As much as I’ve tried I’ve never been to fully realize my noir fantasy in Wildwood, Miami, Florida City or any place in the east including Manhattan, my home for most of the past 29 years come January.

In Sonoma in the ‘80’s when I was staying at Roger’s Yurt, with a group of French people I had first met at the Limelight, in New York one Christmas Eve, we went down the mountain to the biggest baddest club I’ve ever been to. People came from an 80 mile radius to listen to live good old rock & roll much like Bob Seger.

I was in dance hall heaven. I looked, then, like early Madonna or maybe she looked like me because I had been dressing in twirly skirts, fitted tops, tons of bracelets, lace socks under my red platform sandals, and lace in my long red curly hair, for longer than I had heard of her.

I began dancing by myself. Men looked at me and I smiled at one. He wanted to know what color my eyes really are. They have huge pupils that change color from Elizabeth Taylor lilac to deep blue to emerald green. We began dancing and finished dancing the next morning in his log cabin that had facilities unlike Roger’s Yurt where we had to go outside to pee and more. I would have liked him for that alone.

That night we went back to the club where a 25 piece brass rock orchestra played. I began to see infinite possibilities in staying in Sonoma. Real life beckoned the next week and I went back to New York and the corporate world.

There’s a saying that New York’s an island off Europe, and for years more I flew over the ocean to explore the lands of my forbears.

But the dream lingered and I flew to Oregon before traveling south. I dreamed of encounters by the sea, dusty desert scenarios, a world without a past and with a future for somebody who needed a fresh start. I dreamed of books written eons ago, and forgotten movies where the girl was as bad as the boy. I dreamed of flaming red lipstick that left huge circles on cigarette butts, glasses, and men; I dreamed of long flaming red matching nails that tore into skin sometimes gently and sometimes with abandon.

I dreamed of a world before my time where women were dames and men were rugged. I dreamed of love lost and then found; of encounters in honkytonks, and cheap beer places.

Sometimes I even dreamed of being a waitress with a sharp tart mouth or a sales clerk in a store in a small town. I knew that my dreams were a romantic illusion but I dreamed them anyway, and set out to explore them.

I dreamed of real nylon stockings with garter belt, silk or rayon summer dresses. I dreamed of being a character in a Coen Brothers movie that hasn’t yet been made; a sort of sequel or prequel to The Man Who wasn’t There.

I dreamed of being everything I a native New Yorker couldn’t be: impulsive, dangerous, exploring new roads and riding fast over sharp curves. I dreamed of men in sharp suits who tipped their hats as they said “morning, miss.”

I dreamed of wide open spaces and roadsters kicking dust. I dreamed of the west as most people do–to forge new starts and to forget painful pasts.

In the Sierra Nevada’s I found a motor court with bungalows overlooking a lake. One night I stood on my porch, and spotted a handsome cowboy with a mysterious past and a deep dark secret. He could see that I had my own. Soon after the high full moon passed, he ripped my lingerie, while I did nothing to stop him, and everything to encourage him.

I had turned into a Veronica Lake somewhat look-alike with platinum wavy ‘40’s hair that curled over one eye, redder than red lipstick, and vintage silk lingerie, in perfect condition that wouldn’t stay that way.

As we watched the sunrise in shades of pink over the lake, I thought that I should begin exploring again. He wasn’t the one. I stopped in town after town sometimes staying for a day, a week, a month—I wasn’t in a hurry. When I met him or found the place I would know. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for.

By the time I arrived in LA I was tired of shedding persona’s and skins. I rented an apartment in an old building on the boardwalk in Venice. My hair was just below the chin but longer looking, straightish chestnut. Somewhere on the road I had Lasik surgery on my eyes, but still they changed color; still the pupils were huge.

One day in town I saw a handsome stranger with thick brown blond hair just a bit too long and a perfect James Dean smoldering face. I knew that he was trouble, but my heart fell into my knees and I began to tremble.
“Think,” I instructed my rational side, but my desire took over. We drank vodka out of Mexican glass goblets and smoked hashish from a water pipe as stood on my balcony and watched the sunset over the Pacific.

Later long after he first unhooked my bra, and we had made passionate love, and learned each others secrets, I would find out if he was the one.

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