Photo by Matt OttoFormer Costa Mesa mayor Peter Buffawas bloviating again. Surprise!
Sitting on the panel with Buffa, Republican Mimi Walters (running for the 73rd) and local Dem kingmaker Wylie Aitken on former Assemblywoman Marilyn Brewer's cable show, I expected nothing less. Last time, he was shouting about the aluminum tubes as WMD (which he's yet to retract, by the way, hewing close to the White House's favorite play, Operation Admit Nothing). This time, the topic was the sainted Ronald Reagan, who not only ended the Cold War (I'm sure tearing down The Wall had nothing to do with Mr. Gorbachev) but also ended Welfare As We Know It. (Pause for applause.)
Shell-shocked by Buffa's blathering, I didn't say a word about welfare. (Neither did Wylie, but at least he didn't join in the public hummer for the dead president.) I didn't say we got welfare when I was a little girl. And I didn't say I receive welfare now. I mean, who defends welfare? It'd be like defending the Jews!
I should have, and I'm sorry.
But Commie Girl! you're thinking. Don't they pay you at that porn-riddled rag? Nicely!
And even so, until my small buttercup of a son reaches what will be a very fine manhood, the feds will help me out every month with a very nice sum. It's the contract between the state and my son's late mother, and I'll be goddamned if there's any moral distinction between me and the women people have told me (really very piously) are lazy sluts pumping out more kids for bigger checks. I would be a lazy slut, too—when you're rich, we call you ladies of leisure—if anyone ever took me up on it.
Those lazy sluts? In 10 years, they and their children wouldn't receive the $100,000 you just got to write off because you bought a Hummer H-1. How about feeling proud we were so wealthy we could ensure social safety for everyone, and how about feeling ashamed we've become so greedy now? There was welfare in the Massachusetts Bay Colony; men have always left their families or flat gone off and died. It's just that sometimes we listen to our better angels and John Locke and Jesus (and the first book of James), and sometimes we listen to Gordon Gekko and Ayn Rand and the people who fixed the tax code for your Hummer but who declined proposed tax credits for a Prius because they'd be “social engineering.” You can take your choice: it's a free country, at least for now.
Just keep in mind you're going to Hell, and then I'm going to laugh and laugh.
It was a really depressing weekend, even with three of my most beautiful girls playing princess to my prom queen. We had usual suspects Suparna the rocket scientist and tall drink of water Cher Greenleaf, but the foxy former OC Democratic Foundation executive director Sandra Ramos was in town, too! Foxy!
And we had five tickets to go see X!
After many grown-up and respectable things that I don't have space to tell you about, Cher took us all for a drink at Downtown Disney's Grand Californianhotel, a surprising oasis of dark wood and tall trees and a menu that boasted The Rose. I tried to order it, but the keep said they weren't allowed to serve it anymore, as too many people had sent the drink—a gin martini laced with cherry brandy—back. Which mixologist was high when he concocted that? Or the drink that swirled together bourbon, Pernod, and sweet-and-sour?
Gack!
We weren't at the House of Blues two minutes before the fight started—face punches and bodies getting thrown into cocktail tables and a guy getting hog-carried down the stairs—while people shouted, “He's in the band!” It was two Smut Peddlers (one of the opening acts), and they had come to blows about which of them would get the all-access pass for his friends. Poor things: Waxapples almost had to play a double set, as Smut Peddlers almost got thrown out on their smut asses. But booker Sean Striegel relented; they could play their set, but they had to leave right after. “Aw, man, we really wanted to see X,” they whined, but Sean put the hammer down.
“Are you going to have two guys waiting for them to get offstage?” I asked him, “'Cuz otherwise they're just gonna melt into the crowd.”
“We're not Nazis,” Sean said. The guy from the Smut Peddlers sat in front of us in the VIP section for the length of the show.
After the show, which was very X-y and wonderful (although Sandra took a quick catnap in her chair and they neglected to play “4th of July”), Great Guy Mike Rousecame to take us backstage. And there, in all his X-y glory, was John Doe.
I happily introduced myself: we'd met years ago at Linda's Doll Hut, where he'd kindly bought me a beer, and everyone I ever mentioned it to also had a charming story to tell of him. He said some non sequitur about me making him famous. I joked that he should stick with me and I'd take him places. He got very, very quiet.
“Uh, you know I'm married, right?” he asked.
Gack!
I fled to a corner to tell my girls and Waxapple Brian Coakley, and they all laughed and laughed (and yes, I knew that, and no, I wasn't trying to sleep with him). “Brian, hold my hand when we leave so John Doe doesn't think I'm trying to sleep with him,” I said, and Brian did. Then I asked him if he wanted to make out; I assured him it was okay with his wife, who'd tried to pimp him out to me just an hour before, but I guess he thought I was joking because he just laughed and laughed.
The night before, I'd been grown-up and respectable and gone to the Arizona State University film festival at the Santora, put on by Rat Powered Films; afterward, one of my dearest gays and I went on to a local dive where the darling bartender bought me a shot and did a little dance behind the bar and let old ladies pretend to take his pants down. He was cute and friendly and unpretentiously well-educated, and I loved him. But when he did the little dance, I turned to my gay. “Are you sure he's not gay?” I asked quietly. “He's not gay,” my gay said. My gay mentioned the gay bar where he used to work, and our bartender said he'd been there once. Huh? “My friend dragged me there,” he said smiling. “Are you sure he's not gay?” I asked my gay. “No, he's gay-friendly,” my gay replied. I love men who are gay-friendly! I loved him, and my gay approved. I flashed back to my bartender salad days. I would make him mine, in a really respectable, unslutty way.
It totally didn't work. So when we left at closing time, I called back to the bar. I didn't mean to be stalky or slutty, but would the bartender like to go for a cup of coffee?
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “A) I have to drive home, and B) . . . I have a partner. But please come back for a drink any time—as friends. Is that all right?”
“Of course!” I trilled. Because if there's one thing I don't have enough of, it's people who've rejected me. I called my gay. “Is there ever a time when a straight man calls his girlfriend his 'partner'?” I asked. “Like maybe if she's superfeminist?”
“No,” my gay answered, and then he laughed and laughed.
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