Shutters

Shutters for lunch. First time I ever went to Shutters I was trailing some paparazzi photographers I'd met on a Hello magazine shoot, when I'd been interviewing Sean Brosnan and Brawley Nolte. I thought it'd make a great story to follow the paps for a week and write about it - it was a great story, but sadly none that the mags wanted. However, I did get the privilege of lurking outside Shutters for four hours waiting for Noel Gallagher and his wife.

So I'm in Shutters for lunch, look up, and see two old actor friends of mine who I haven't seen in a while, turn around and bump into director friend who I knew was in town from London, but had completely failed to catch up with. Then I get home, and have an email from old journalist acquaintance asking me to write for her - just as I thought I was quitting journalism for good.

Strange how things turn out.

I'm such a great believer in signs, and signs, and signs. When I first stopped drinking, I was waiting for The Promises. I was holding out desperately for those fucking Promises. If things got better, I was meant to be doing this - the not drinking thing. If they didn't, screw it. I was drinking.

Well, things didn't get better. They got worse, improved a little, stayed level for a while, then went tits up. But I couldn't jump off the edge again - hell, I drank a couple times, but I couldn't jump off the edge. And then suddenly after two years those damn Promises keep showing up. Work in London. Work in LA. Slowly, not so well paid, but opportunities, and suddenly I think I'm kind of meant to be doing it this way.

Besty and I are driving along Stinkin Lincoln, after picking up a bunch of DVD's from Vidiots (which incidentally, needs your support Angelenos, else it's going out of business, so quit netflix) - so we're driving, and we're laughing about bumping into English actors and Brit director in Shutters.

"They're always so fresh faced and nice aren't they? R, N and D." says Besty wistfully, and something that my friend Tristan the gay STD doctor said to me came back.

"There are people in this world who never have a shitty thing happen to them, you know. Not many, but there are."

"I'm not one of them."

"Me neither."

"But it's quite comforting to know that, isn't it?" says Besty. "Maybe they got good karma in a past life."

It never really occurred to me that life's pointless daily pain, life's big daily bullshit, is doled out as unequally as wealth, as privilege, as luck, as opportunity. It never really occurred to me that some people never have a bad thing happen to them. And by bad, I don't mean lose your job. Have a loved one pass away. We all have that stuff. I mean - bad. The kind of bad you glimpse at here on this blog, or in Besty's face, or in the stories of Venice Beach and its people. I mean some people never have a bad thing happen to them, and Tristan pointed this out to me. I find it comforting, for some reason. I find it comforting that staring at R, N and D, wondering how they manage to quiet the crazy - it's probably because they don't have it, not on the same level. Nothing ever happened, real or imagined, to push them there.

"You realize of course," says Besty grandly. "That that cock R will probably sell a screenplay to Scott Rudin now."

And then we laugh, and drive on, and it's a beautiful, bright, cold sunny day in Venice Beach, and for this day only, nothing shitty happens to either of us, and we can smile, knowing it's not forever, but as long as days like this exist, we'll be OK.