jesters and douche bags

it's been almost a month since i posted something, which is really a very good indication of what my life's been like recently. there haven't really been any good crazy stories (until this past week, hence the blog), and i haven't felt like sharing all the mundane details of life as a terribly boring busy college student. however, last night i was inspired:

i went home for my mom's democratic club halloween party, only because the great-aunts wanted me to keep them company, and because i wanted to see what my house looked like this year (as my dad goes all-out with fan motors and monster masks). the party was a fundraiser for a new show the club has on the local public access channel, and each person was asked to sign in and make a donation at the front door. a man taking the donations actually stopped me from entering the house until i said, "i live here," and barrelled past him. that immediately put me in a super bizarre mood. it's strange enough to come home from LA every once and a while and see how tall clay's gotten and how well life continues there now that i'm not really a part of it, but it was even more insane to be physically denied entrance to the place i grew up. i was, however, about forty years younger than everyone and wasn't wearing a costume, so maybe he just assumed i was there for the booze (i was).

the aunts and i didn't spend much time at the party, because it was crowded and someone fainted and had to be taken away in an ambulance (after much screaming about finding the landline and calling 911), but the time i was there was like something out of the twilight zone. my house was packed with elderly women* in jester costumes, and no one knew who the hell i was, so i kept getting "why are you here?" looks from ninjas and flappers. i was literally a stranger in my own (very, very creepy) house. there were also many leers from older men, which are super fantastic and which tie nicely with my next story.

the other night, lina and i went to study at a coffee bean in westwood, where we ended up talking outside for about an hour and a half, and being intermittently gased by some ass in a diesel volvo who periodically decided he needed to back his car into his spot just a little more. then, just as we'd shut up and started to read, a man in his late fifties came over to our table and began to ask us what we were studying, if we needed his lawyer expertise, if we would do him the favor of going out to coffee (again, i suppose) with him, because it would be really important to him. i just sat laughing about how ludricious life can be while lina tried to make him go away, until a man sitting at a table behind us called out, "maybe you should stop being such a douche." this was the first time in recorded history that another man had stuck up for us as we were being hassled by douches, and while it later proved to be a bad idea for the second dude to get involved, it made my heart glow a little. it was as if the universe finally told me that not every man, given no shame, would get into my personal space and make me hugely uncomfortable just to feel like a badass. it is here that this story becomes a long one, so i'll pare it down. let's suffice to say that the older man called security and lina and i and our unassuming textbooks were sucked into a petty fight between two guys who had nothing better to do on a tuesday night than be skeevy and start arguments. it's hard to explain, i suppose, the sheer unbelievability of that situation, but take it from me: it was pretty unbelievable.


*the one very obvious thing i've learned from all these democractic club gatherings i'm forced by my family to attend is that young people are either incredibly apathetic or totally denied membership - every single person there was at least ten years older than my mother. that's not at all a bad thing (until they start collapsing at parties), but it reflects badly on my generation, i think, for not giving enough of a damn.