Weekend Catch-Ups

Last week I met with a Canadian lawyer and started working towards getting child support from my ex-husband.
Six and a half years without it, three kids to raise alone as a for-hire writer and director in Los Angeles has been near impossible to do without drowning and he knows this.

Got an email that my landlord raised the rent.

What can I fucking do?
Write one pledge drive newsletter a month for rent money?

I saw Meryl, Jenna and Laura this weekend.

Meryl is a writer from Michigan in her mid-twenties that I often date.

Look, I know it isn’t 1995, but this is Meryl’s vibe. She looks more like Zoey Deutch, but vibe matters more. Also, this lipstick is the best.

Jenna, a Dutch woman who is a few years older than me. She makes movies, a newly single lesbian actor.

Kristen Wiig with a Dutch accent.

Laura is almost forty, straight and single producer as well. She’s lived in Los Angeles for twenty years by way of Louisiana.

Only Laura can really play Laura, the same way Billie Piper has to play Billie Piper. No one will play a funnier Laura, than Laura.

It’s eleven p.m. and Meryl texts:
Going to a club, have a table, can get you in.

Jenna and Laura go with the flow.

I put on a t-shirt, black tights, vintage tap shorts, and combat boots.

Jenna is wearing a Lucy from Peanuts shirt and jeans with black Vans.

Laura is wearing a bodycon floral dress and a leather jacket.

We spend thirty minutes in the club. Tops.

It’s a beautiful space but it’s full and hectic at this moment.
Dressed like a 1980’s Bret Easton Ellis set, Jenna sits herself down on the edge of a tiled and mirrored corner of the dance floor with Laura and Meryl’s friends.

Meryl and I are dancing and kissing. I know tomorrow I will text her and she will ignore me until she wants to see me again. I don’t really care.

I’ve been lonely.

We all go home and we talk until Meryl realizes it’s four a.m. and she leaves.

Jenna, Laura and I fall asleep. They leave.

It’s now Saturday and Rachel calls,
”I need a reset.”

I nod, holding my phone, Rachel on speaker. “I need a reset too. I’ve already texted Meryl.”

”You can’t text Meryl.”

”I know. I love Meryl.”

“Let’s go to Topanga.”

And I know what this means. It means we are going to meet the ancient woman name May who grows mushrooms in the canyon.

hehehe, obvi not this boi

I have the perfect playlist for the 101.
Songs Leonardo Dicpario listens to when he fucks.
It was Michelle Branch’s request, but I know Rachel will appreciate.

Rachel picks me up in her red sports car, wearing a belt buckle that reads, “Eat Shit.”

Rachel will be played by Rachel, but here’s the vibe.

We drive twenty-five minutes listening to fuck music before we stop outside of May’s dusty driveway.

Hillsides that are usually brown, hillsides that M.A.S.H. used as backdrop, they are green from all the rains.

May was born in 1939.
She moves quickly.

Wai Ching Ho. Chef’s kiss.

I see May coming up the hill from her garden.
Three loping German Shepherds in tow.

”Heroes dose is eighty.”

”We need four heroes doses.”

Rachel looks at me and mouths, “Four?”

May gives Rachel the four tins. I hear the mushroom capsules rolling around inside.

“Thanks”

On the drive back, I take two of the twelve capsules per tin. I need elation. I need a reset.

Rachel drops me back off.

I crawl on top of my pillows on my stomach and turn on David Lynch’s Inland Empire on Criterion Channel.

I saved you the image of Laura Dern’s distorted face.

I fall in and out of sleep and Lynch images.

And I wonder how the fuck I’m going to pay my rent this month.. and I count the months I have left until a contract comes in.
And I stare.

I open my computer and write this entire newsletter.

Dear Overlords,
I need what I’m owed for these children, sirs and ma’ams.

Meryl just texted. She’s good.