For fun, I’m sharing a couple of snippets of a short I’m working on called The Halloween Office Party in Heaven…Ganesh AKA my sister is my guide through a Halloween office party in heaven based on a real evening at Live Nation Hollywood.
Hollywood Blvd spelled along a wall, its letters dripping with blood, we arrived at a wasteland of cubicles and lone shopping carts overflowing with trash. Zombies paced with fluorescent jelly in plastic shot glasses. The room glowed like a television on pause. They made a ghastly sound: office chatter, blah blah blah. Beer cans crushed beneath my feet along with plastic bags, plastic shot glasses, newspapers, and bubble wrap. Tents pitched on the floor, in a conference room, overflowing with trash. No inch of space was spared. Zombies smashed pinatas to bits with bats. Refuse exploded like bombs, fireworks. SIA was there. The tech team was singular, unmistakable, ironic cross-dressers. Ganesh and I charged on.
We passed a conference room behind glass spic and span as if we changed channels, suddenly.
Around a table, a group of maybe ten held poses that one might expect to find at a serious and civilized business meeting but their glasses were damaged in different ways. Some taped, crooked, cracked, their eyes glued to a woman at the front of the room…she pointed with a long stick determined and full of conviction to various parts of a panda bear who was visibly fed-up.
“What’s that?”
I asked.
“The environment,” Ganesh said.
She didn’t even look back.
*
I gotta go…
“DO NOT FORGET the cinnamon sticks!!”
Ganesh yells in a phone at Dominos.
I splatter onto the steps laughing.
“Cinnamon sticks? Cinnamon sticks!!”
“Cinnamonnnn stickkkksssss!!!”
In a crib, she texts the drummer from the roof, using inappropriate language.
Up the steps, this is a sentimental jaunt, a thing I don’t normally do. It’s not like I do this every night. Call it an experiment to prove that time isn’t linear. I don’t know what shape it is—cyclical doesn’t quite describe it—maybe like a drunk ice skater making figure eights. That’s a child’s sensation isn’t it? Limbs that don’t quite know how to work yet. It all keeps coming back ‘round but the two feet interceptions in circular patterns, I don’t know what object will unite them—they look the same, like skates, but in this case I might as well be wearing a peg and a shoe, a heel and ballet shoe, thematically the same but still very different. To maintain my balance—despite the booze—figure out a way to make them all support me together. We are never standing still, we’re always moving, we must keep it moving, forward, or fine…in whatever direction you choose, but keep it moving. Sharp blades cut through ice, we turn with grace into our biggest mistakes. Look at how fast we spin, how smooth we land, how our costumes and smiles sparkle. Then we get an award. No, it’s true, that is, if you’re lucky. Look at that agility, strength, and flexibility despite the obstacles, natural forces like gravity and frozen water — and did you know? Frozen, its molecules still move, move at such slow speeds but still everything keeps moving. Not to pretend I’m a physicist—but I liked science in school. Laughing, remembering. Old stories. Heaven: the hope that new stories can be written. I can’t seem to figure out why a different setting but the same story. Like a pinball machine, the memories are heavier now but I shoot them around. They travel faster, want to bang up against each other, measure them by a point system, the harder it is, the more rewards you get. What a stupid idea.
I jump to another memory, how strange they string together, Dr. Dave’s office in the east village.
I met him in a cocktail bar, a crusader for health insurance, gives restaurant workers affordable health care. He has more tattoos than a dude on a Harley-Davidson. I think he has a Harley. He does, he took me on a ride once, I can vaguely remember. The first time he met me, I told him I wanted to be tested for STDs—that’s what we called it back then before we changed the D to I. I’m terrified, shaking in my boots.
“Do you have anything to worry about, really?”
“No… I don’t think so…”
“Then what are you freaking out about. Let’s get some eggs.”
Ganesh wipes her mouth.
“Ok! Dance party on the 10th floor!”
“Dance party?”
A cheetah wiggles in her seat.