I have a different story in every bar in Los Angeles. At least, the five or six in which anyone knows me. I don’t really know why, except to say that during the first few weeks of moving here, when I was exploring the area on foot and working up a thirst, I didn’t feel cool enough to walk into a bar by myself, hop onto a stool and order a drink. Somehow I needed to be someone a little more interesting.
In the Cinema Bar on Sepulveda, my latest find, I arrived from London three weeks ago and I do nothing but drive around the city all day. I don’t have a job or a visa and I don’t intend to attain either. I am somehow independently wealthy (I have been extremely vague on this point) and I aim to just stay in the country for as long as I can and if, when I leave, they decide never to let me back in, well, I just couldn’t care less. I am totally apathetic to almost everything. I live purely in the moment. The bargirl is gleefully appalled with my attitude and when the bands take a break and approach the bar for refreshment, she never fails to tell them all about me with an admiring shake of her head.
In the nearby Joxer Daly, I am a truck driver who, for some reason, has to drive right through Culver City every few days. I tell the staff and patrons tall tales of my life on the road, most of them involving loose women picked up in seedy roadhouses in Mid-American states followed by chases involving their husbands or pimps. I don’t think anyone believes these far-fetched stories, but they believe that I drive lorries. One time someone in the industry started asking me questions about my rig. I just told him that I didn’t like to talk about my job. It didn’t make much sense but it shut him up.
At the Backstage Bar and Grill behind Sony Studios I am a writer researching my new novel. My first book was a major success in Britain but wasn’t considered marketable in the US. The publicist, therefore, has sent me out to LA to gather inspiration for my second effort which either has to be set in America or feature an American in the lead role. I have a few ideas but I’m keeping them to myself because the publishers seem happy to bankroll my holiday indefinitely. I have wasted a good story here because, although I plead cash poverty and get drink after drink bought by locals and the staff, I don’t much like the bar itself.
In Saints and Sinners on Venice I am in a moderately successful band in Britain which is semi-permanently touring the States in an effort to crack the market. My band is called Men of the Cloth and the four of us dress up as priests, which can get hot under stage lights. We had a top thirty hit single in the UK charts called ‘The Fear’ because every band has a song called ‘The Fear’. The rest of my band is always too tired to come out drinking so I venture there alone.
In the Irish Times on Motor I am a man of mystery. Having failed to conjure up a decent story before first entering, I was coy about my occupation, suggesting that I wasn’t allowed to reveal details about myself. At first they were intrigued, then amused, and I am sure that I am now merely a figure of fun for them. They call me 008 and openly mock me by recreating the opening titles of a traditional Bond movie, but I just smile enigmatically and say things like ‘If you only knew…’
The truth, or at least a truth, is some combination of the lies I tell when drinking. Ten months ago I moved from London to Los Angeles with my American wife Lydia. She travels a lot with her job and I…do very little. Very occasionally I will work a freelance day as a camera operator somewhere or other in the city. Mostly, though, I get up late and laze about, reading books and playing with the garbage disposal unit, listening to music and watching terrible TV until the evening comes and I venture into the night.
I had a sci-fi novel published in Britain last year but it didn’t sell. I covered the process in a blog in which I hid behind my pen name Christopher Hardy and referred to my wife as Cheryl. In fact the only real name I used was my agent’s, Sid. He was always concerned by this, which in my view only added to the cowardice of the whole enterprise. But no more. It is time to stand up and be brave. This blog will use all real names. I just won’t tell Lydia.
My main motivation is to fill the time in front of my computer when I am pretending to finish my follow-up novel (vital in fooling Lydia into thinking I am still writing and therefore not forcing me to apply for jobs in supermarkets). The keen interest I’ve developed in Internet amateur pornography can only fill so may minutes a day. Writing is utterly pointless in this day and age, of course. No one reads anything longer than a hundred characters and certainly nothing printed on paper. Even the Queen doesn’t send telegrams on hundredth birthdays anymore. She just Tweets.
Anyway, maintaining these bar facades becomes increasingly challenging as the night wears on, especially if I decide to switch venues during the course of the evening. Several times I have taken my place at the bar, greeted whoever is on staff, then realised I haven’t the first idea of who I am meant to be or what I am meant to do, if anything. What should be fun, relaxing evenings have become quite stressful. Last week I couldn’t face any of it so I found a new bar where I could just have a quiet drink and switch off. When I found myself informing the barman that I was a trainee astronaut, I knew I had a problem.
It affects Lydia’s life too. When she is in town and I take her out, she is forced to go along with my awkward fabrications. Although she can see how popular I am as people other than myself, she likes them a lot less than the real me, even though the real me wouldn’t have made it through thirty seconds of conversation with the bar staff in any of these places without boring or alienating them.
She doesn’t come out with me very often, but when she does she has a role to play. In the Cinema Bar she is just some floozy I pick up occasionally. In Joxer Daly she is my wife and everyone is forced to tip-toe around her for fear of letting slip something about my endless infidelities (or my compulsion to make them up). In the Backstage she is a fellow writer, a poet. In Saints and Sinners she is my LA groupie and in the Irish Times she is an enigma.
And this, so far, is my life in Los Angeles.
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