Money Can't Buy You Love

Unless you go down to Hollywood and Vine after midnight. But I digress.

Plato once said, “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” I disagree. (I know, what nerve, huh? Disagreeing with the guy who helped lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science?)

A good financial decision is based on numbers – your numbers, i.e. what you have in the bank. Because if you don’t know how much money you have, you’re likely to overspend and find yourself with a couple of crazy overdraft fees, which may put you in the red (this is for the 99 percenters only; you one percenters can take a coffee break here*) and thus ensure that you bounce a few checks.

Keeping track of your outgoing numbers is another way to get clarity on your financial situation. I got into the habit about a year ago of writing down everything I spent: rent, green tea lattés, library fines for Think and Grow Rich, Top Ramen noodles, half-ply toilet paper, waterproof mascara, therapist, 12-Step groups, flat of chocolate cupcakes…. Then at the end of each I month I total it all up and call the suicide hotline. But only when my expenses exceed my income.

by Larry Vazeos

Someone once said, “I have enough money to last me the rest of my life – unless I buy something.” Okay, I just looked it up. It was the comedian Jackie Mason. It’s a funny quote, but the thing is, I don’t want to live in a joke, I want to live an abundant life. And one simple, daily thing I can do to achieve this is to keep my numbers, as they say. Stay clear on exactly how much comes in each month, and how much goes out. At the very least I can be specific about what I’m crying about on my (state assisted) psychiatrist’s couch.

 

So, no, money can’t buy you love, but if you keep your numbers carefully, you can probably budget in renting it for an hour.

* of course I realize the one percenters aren’t reading this blog (and yes, I realize that most of the 99 percenters aren’t either. Don’t make me cry. I can’t afford the tissues.)

Traveling On a Dime

What’s a 99 percenter to do when she wants to travel to another country for her grandparents’ 65^th wedding anniversary but is living paycheck to paycheck? Sell everything she owns on eBay? Collect soda bottles for three and a half years for the cash deposit? Learn how to hotwire cars and then sell them for their parts? No, no, and…hmm…wait, no.

My grandparents were celebrating their nearly three quarters of a century together and I desperately wanted to be there to eat, drink and pepper them with questions about how they stayed together for so long. I had the very strong intention of going, and now the rest of the plan simply needed to fall into place.

First I tried going on a diet just to save the cash, but that didn’t work out too well when I realized that it meant giving up food. Then I tried donating blood, but it turns out you have to give it over time; they don’t take ten pints in one sitting. Finally, I tried doing it the old fashioned way: putting aside some money from every paycheck right off the bat.

Turns out if you put ten percent away as soon as you receive money, a little magic happens. Because I have been squeezing by from one paycheck to another, the idea of putting aside any portion, no matter how small, filled me with anger and defiance. “I need every penny of that check just to cover my basic needs! And that’s not even including toilet paper!” I did the math and the numbers always showed me that lopping off eighty, fifty or even twenty bucks a week would leave me living in a cardboard box in the alley and eating my shoes for breakfast.

But I really wanted to take this trip back home. My grandparents weren’t getting any younger, and I certainly wasn’t getting any richer. So I took a leap of faith. Ok, a baby step of faith. I started putting ten percent of each paycheck into my savings account as soon as I received it, and inexplicably I managed to get by on what was left. So voila! within a couple of months I had saved up…oh, only $230? That wasn’t going to get me to Vancouver.

Apparently, my intention to get my ass up to the Great White North was so strong it altered the very molecules of expedia.com, and when I checked the fares that day, I found that they had dropped one hundred and fifty dollars, making a plane ticket to Canuckland exactly…$230. Holy crikey! But now what was I going to use for funds during my week-long trip? Beaver pelts and hand-crafted axes?

The magic continued. Meals were consumed at friends’ and families’ homes, old pals took me out for coffee, and the toque-ful* of loonies and toonies** my boyfriend gave me covered even the most atrocious parking meter costs (five bucks an hour?? Does that at least come with a wash and wax?).

So, I don’t know how this all worked out. The numbers told me it wouldn’t. But my deep desire told me it had to. And in the end, I was able to travel to another country for a week on a dime (ok, more like $295, but still…).

* “knitted woolen cap” to my American friends

** Canadian one- and two-dollar coins

Cell Phone Excommunication

I used to hate cell phones, but now I see the error of my ways. It's cell phone users that I hate. Though I can't deny the convenience of having one of these handy little contraptions, I have grown to despise the unspoken ‘Cell Phone User Manual' that most people abide by. 

Rule Number One: No matter how many times you see that ‘Please Turn Off All Cell Phones and Pagers' ad before a movie, never turn it off. Bonus marks if you are talking on your cell as this ad plays. 

Rule Number Two: Talk or text on your phone as often as possible, preferably in crowded or quiet public places, and always about personal matters. 

Rule Number Three: If you're not lucky enough to be talking or texting on your cell, compulsively check your phone for any possibility of missed messages. And if you can do this in an obvious manner while your in-person companion is telling you about their recently deceased mother, all the better. 

I can still remember life pre-cellular phone and, if you can believe this, pre-answering machine. If someone called and you weren't there to pick up, they let the phone ring a dozen or so times and then finally hung up with nothing more than a shrug of their shoulders. These days Cell Phone Babies have no concept of not being able to get a hold of someone ASAP, a matter they seem to feel is their God-given right. 

A year and a half ago I made the decision not to own a cell phone anymore. Or rather, all the zeros in my bank account made the decision for me not to own a cell phone (or any other luxuries, like shampoo) anymore. I was actually happy at the thought, as it had gotten to the point, just prior to excommunicating myself from the ecclesiastical world of mobiles, where my phone was ringing and beeping and vibrating all day long, and the more it cried out for my attention, the more stubbornly I resisted. Finally, it just got too expensive to ignore people and I gave it up. I wasn't some Wall Street broker whose livelihood depended on time-sensitive information, so I figured that anyone who wanted to reach me could leave a message on my home answering machine and wait until I was good and ready to return their call. 

The freedom from being tethered to a communication device was unbelievable, but what I hadn't anticipated was everyone else's reaction to my choice. Friends, family, colleagues and even the receptionist in my doctor's office constantly harassed me about why in God's name I didn't take their call. ‘I thought you were dead!' ‘Did someone kidnap you?' ‘What have I done to make you hate me so?' were some of the exclamations I had to put up with. Explaining to someone that I did not own a cell phone was usually met with blank stares or outright hostility, as though it were a personal attack on them.

True, I once entirely missed a lunch date because my friend and I accidentally went to separate restaurants and she couldn't get hold of me until it was too late. And on another occasion I ran out of gas and had to trudge the six blocks to and from the gas station in heels instead of being able to call for help. But I understood that freedom was not without its sacrifice, and for me this was worth it. 

Until my 83 year-old grandmother called me one day from her garden with her new cell phone. Holding my rotary phone, I suddenly felt foolish and outdated. The day a woman who was born prior to the invention of penicillin, computers and bubble gum - bubble gum for crying out loud! - made me look like the cantankerous old woman, was the day my cell phone and I renewed our vows. The shampoo could wait.

This article originally posted on In The Powder Room, a website written by and for women like you and me who live real lives, not the lives the entertainment industry insists we strive for.

Daypass Date

As Woody Allen so wisely put it, "Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons." Hear, hear!

I blogged a few days ago about Dating Without Money and how it is, in fact, possible, provided you don’t go anywhere or do anything. Kidding. I provided an example of how my boyfriend and I went on our first date for under twenty bucks and had the best date ever. It was memorable, creative, and allowed us to get to know each other, not each other’s net worth.

So, just to prove that our debt-free first date was not an anomaly, here’s another example of how to date without money, one that I like to call our Daypass Date. No, not daypass from a mental institution, daypass as in the metro. (“What? L.A. has a subway system?” A native Los Angelean actually said that to me. I kid you not.)

                                         

My boyfriend, whom I’ll call Larry (especially fitting since his name is Larry), and I walked four blocks to the Metro Office where we purchased five-dollar day passes, which allow you to ride all modes of public transportation as much as you want until midnight whereupon you turn back into a pumpkin. Before leaving we popped into the photo booth they had and took a series of silly shots. For documentation purposes, of course.

We got on the Purple Line at Western and Wilshire and were immediately treated to some artwork – a mural by a local artist. The great thing about the subway here is the unique art in every station. It was like going to several galleries that night, except no one ever stands in the corner and urinates on the art at LACMA.

At Union Station we switched to the Pasadena-bound Gold Line. Unlike the Purple and Red Lines which run underground, this one travels above ground, which allows you see neighborhoods you would not otherwise see. And lest this post read too much like a dry travelogue, I will let you in on a little secret: when the setting sun casts a golden light into the train and you can see palm trees and interesting houses flash by the windows, it’s the perfect romantic setting to kiss the person you’re with. Unless of course you’re sitting next to a guy with two sets of glasses talking to himself.

We spontaneously got off at Highland Park and wandered around the neighborhood, exploring the streets, little local stores, and the best places to kiss (hey, this was our second date; what did you expect, bible study?). The best part about adventures is being forced to go outside your familiar bubble, so by the time we were getting hungry (for your information, kissing burns up to 90 calories per hour), a cute little Mexican restaurant appeared before us. The food was great, the atmosphere cozy, and given all the new parts of L.A. we had seen, there was no shortage of conversation. They say that couples who have adventures together create a bond of trust which helps you get to know the other person much better.

Finally we rode the train back to Union Station and walked up to Olvera Street, the oldest part of downtown Los Angeles, a very colorful Mexican marketplace with historic buildings. It was closed by this time, but we walked down the deserted alleyway and soaked up the flavor anyway. After sharing a beso in El Pueblo, we walked through the empty moonlit streets of downtown, coming to rest on the steps of a building which turned out to be the police station. It was especially fitting since we were sharing stories of illicit substances and other dubious activities.

By the time we returned to my place, we were worn out but our wallets were not. Once again, we went on a date without having to visit a loan shark.

Genius Is Relative

One of my previous posts, Scrambling For Jobs, brought back memories of all the temp work I’ve taken over the years and now I’m going to have to get counseling for PTSD. Kidding. Actually, some of them were ridiculous jobs, but some of them were ridiculously easy. I mean, I'm no genius, not by a long shot, but in some matters, being viewed as the resident genius is purely relative. 

As a temp worker, I go from office to office filling in for employees who are out sick or on vacation. Presumably they've kept their jobs for all those years based on a modicum of skill, but when I come in with only one motive in mind - do my (simple) job, get my paycheck, and move on - I am made to feel like the Einstein of the business world. 

For example, when I answer a five-line switchboard without breaking a sweat, I often have co-workers stop at my desk and stare like the Cirque du Soleil has just come to town. When I do a ‘day's worth' of filing in three hours my supervisor double checks and then seems amazed that I know the alphabet by heart. When I figure out not only how to copy a stack of double-sided documents but collate and staple them on color-coded paper, word gets around that I am the Xerox Whisperer. 

I'm always surprised at how quick to call the IT department most people are: for printing errors, paper jams and the inability to make phone calls. ‘Let me take a look,' I offer and then simply connect to the correct printer, yank out the rumpled paper, and get on my hands and knees to plug in the inadvertently kicked loose phone line.

The IT guys always give me the stink eye and I realize: I am dangerously close to blowing their cover and thus their job security. If most people knew more than how to turn their computers on and off, those guys would be out of a job. 

And I am constantly being told that I am too fast, too efficient, and make the regular receptionist/office manager/executive assistant look like Forrest Gump. In fact, I've been offered (and on one occasion begged to take) some of these jobs, or even new positions that would be created for me, but I've always turned them down. I tell them that I am a free spirit, a clerical hippie, and I prefer the variety and flexibility of temping.

While this is certainly all true, I also cannot help but fear that once I settled into the job, they would see me for the technological simpleton that I am. The last time I held a regular office job I managed to accidentally shut down the entire computer system for two days, causing my colleagues to miss deadlines, write reports by hand and neglect their computer Solitaire. After that I couldn't pick up a stapler without the IT guy hovering over me.

So I figure as long as I swoop in and out on a temporary basis, I will never resort to being the tiresome and unskilled receptionist/office manager/executive assistant whom they can't wait to replace. I enjoy my image of Office Genius, arriving in the nick of time to save the paper tray, while keeping my real identity, that of bumbling, glasses-wearing Jane Average, quite separate.

Dating Without Money

I know a lot of guys who are timid about jumping into the dating pool because of lack of money. They figure why bother even asking a woman out because they can’t afford a nice dinner, dancing, movie with requisite wallet-depleting goodies, or anything else that you’re supposed to do on a date. And the one activity you can do with someone of the opposite sex that doesn’t cost money, well, it’s just not good form to broach that as the evening’s plan.

So what’s a guy to do? Eschew getting to know a woman he’s interested in for a TV marathon of Three Stooges movies? God help us all if that’s what it comes down to.

My boyfriend and I are both currently on the lower end of the wealth scale, and all I can say is I’m so glad he didn’t let that discourage him from asking me out. He was concerned, as society has trained him to be, that I might turn him down when I found out that he didn’t drive a car or wouldn’t be taking me out for $26 drinks at The Ivy. But lucky for him I am a self-professed recovering deprivation addict. I think two-ply toilet paper is heart-stoppingly extravagant and my idea of a shopping spree involves twenty bucks and an afternoon at Payless Shoes.

Our first date was incredible and no loan officers were present! He picked me up at my place on a Sunday afternoon and we walked to a nearby park for a picnic. I brought the blanket and water, he brought the sandwiches and fruit. We kicked off our shoes and enjoyed a tasty lunch in between invigorating, non-stop conversation, punctuated only by the occasional scream from a group of nearby kids (who I assume were playing, but to be honest I didn’t even check).

He showed me his book of art that he’s been working on and I got to know him better through his passion. I showed him my legs that I’ve been working out and he got to know me better through our passion. Oh relax, it was just a few kisses. I also regaled him with my storytelling and made him laugh. Ah, there’s nothing like shared hysterical laughter with a side order of snot and tears to speed up the falling in love process. It felt like we were just a couple of fun-loving, in-the-moment kids rather than a couple of self-conscious adults on a first date.

Speaking of children, we allowed our inner kids to come out and play and scaled a nearby tree that was just begging to be climbed. As we sat up in the limbs, our bare feet dangling freely, we told each other stories of our childhoods, tried to kiss without falling out of the tree, and surveyed the rest of the park – especially our belongings – from our vantage point.

After he climbed down and I pretty much fell out of the tree, we packed up our stuff and hit the nearby Starbucks, then sauntered home through a neighborhood filled with old ‘30s buildings. We sat on stoops, smelled flowers, tripped over monstrous tree roots, laughed, and got to know each other.

All this on a first date—for the low price of just $20!

So with a little creativity and a real interest in getting to know the person, not the person’s FICO score, you most certainly can date without money.

Scrambling For Jobs

I was walking down the street this morning and had to side-step a guy rockin’ out with a Cash for Gold sign. You know the guy – he’s the one on the street corner trying to get your attention by waving around a sign that, ironically, you can’t read because he’s moving around too much. He had his earphones on and was clearly enjoying his music, but as I passed him I saw him stop everything, just for a moment, and exhale a big, discouraged, shameful sigh. At least this is how I interpreted it. He may have just been passing gas or waiting for the next tune to begin playing in his ears.

And that got me thinking about all the jobs I’ve taken just to pay the rent or put food on the coffee table (I actually rarely eat at my kitchen table). When you’re a 99 percenter, it’s uncommon for your savings account to have more than a two-digit number, so when one job ends, especially unexpectedly, you scramble to earn in any way you can. And scrambling, my friends, is a verb that is best left to eggs.

The last time I scrambled for a job, it looked a little something like this:

Me: “Oh my god all my glamorous temp work dried up, what do I do?!”

Friend: “Hey, I just took a job petitioning for the upcoming municipal election. Come work with me.”

Me: “What does that entail?”

Friend: “Standing outside of supermarkets in the rain or blazing sun all day begging passers-by for their signature while trying not to get booted off the property by management. Sometimes for fun complete strangers will swear at you.”

Me: “Fuck that shit. I’d rather get a job at Starbucks.”

A week later…

Me: “Starbucks says I’m not qualified to steam milk and write on cups. Is that petitioning job still open?”

And speaking of glamorous temp jobs, I’ve got enough stories about these to write a War and Peace*-length anthology. Some highlights include:

·         - a boss who insisted that every morning I purchase and then cut his croissant into four pieces, discard all the crumbs, and serve him at his desk

·         - a reception job where I was forbidden to turn on the computer, read a magazine or have my cell phone on the desk so as not to distract from the work – work being answering the phone that rang about five times over the course of eight hours (I got in a looooot of meditating that week)

·         - a CEO who told me part of my job was to turn on the lights in his office and water his plants every morning; one day I forgot and this grown man left his office, walked down the hall, and confronted me about my terrible work ethic rather than fling his arm out two feet to the left and flip the switch on himself 

·         - the company that had me come in one day early to train with the employee I’d be filling in for; she spent the entire day instructing me how to use the phone (“This is the phone. When it makes that noise, you pick up the receiver and speak into it. Upon completion of the conversation, you hang up the phone.”)

·         - working at an onsite property management company where a homeowner yelled at me, the doe-eyed temp on her first day, “If you were president of the United States this country would go down the shitter!” My response: “You really think I could be president?”

Other jobs I’ve taken out of desperation are: traveling salesperson (if you knew my shy, sensitive, writer’s personality, you’d understand why this job made this list), dog walker (I have a fear of dogs), film and TV extra (my favorite role was Scantily-clad Slave on Flash Gordon which was filmed in Canada during the winter; if you know anything about extra work, you can imagine the heatless tents they had us huddling in during downtime), writing marketing articles about adult diapers (I don’t mean to judge, but I was seriously sad/depressed for three days afterward), and I was actually offered money to have sex with someone (I turned it down, but only because it didn’t pay enough. Kidding.).

So, these days I try to limit my scrambling to eggs or transmission frequencies. But if I find myself in a spot o’ desperation, at least I have accumulated enough experience to be jack of all trades, because these days it doesn’t seem to pay to be master of one.

* a 1475-paged novel, for those of you who failed/skipped/didn’t care about English Lit (which, by the way, shame on you!)

PG 39

Once upon a time, parents would raise their kids to grow up and be self-sufficient adults in a world where sufficiency really was enough. And the unspoken (or, depending on the guilt-factor in your family, very spoken) agreement was that when the parents got old, the roles would be reversed and ma and pa would retire early and be forced to listen to their kids lecture, “When I'm your age...” Add a few dragons and princesses and you've got yourself a fairy tale, because that is not a reality that I'm familiar with. 

These days it seems to be quite common for the parents to continue to take care of their adult kids, minus the high-chairs and rubber pants, of course (in most cases). People of my age group are not getting The Job for life the way previous generations did. We're flitting from post to post and field to field, either out of dissatisfaction, not knowing what we want to do, or because we've been laid off and replaced with a computer or a pimply-faced kid. How can I take care of my parents financially when I can't even afford two-ply toilet paper? The choice to eschew a regular paycheck for an irregular writing career was mine, and it's one I'm glad I made, but sometimes I can't help wondering about my place in the family tree, and therefore my worth as a daughter. Not to mention my mental state. 

Considering that the world around me insists on luxury cars, flat-screen plasma TVs, and constantly upgraded cell phones that do everything but change a flat tire for you, I sometimes feel like there’s something wrong me. I’m materialistically-challenged. In fact, I hear the AMA has just diagnosed that as an actual disorder.  I walk or take the bus everywhere (or just don’t go if the trip is too late, too far, or too many transfers). I've had to cancel all my magazine subscriptions—though it's easy enough to catch up on my reading at the doctor's office. When I have friends over for lunch, it's BYOMD&C: Bring Your Own Meal, Drinks & Cutlery. If I were born in the Renaissance, I'd have hooked up with a patron of the arts who would be happy and privileged to fund my life as an artist. In 2011, however, that's just a euphemism for high-class prostitution. Not that I'm judging. I may have to look into that career path soon enough…

So, my mom supports me whenever I am in danger of being evicted (i.e., the first of every month), while my dad supports my feelings of inadequacy. You know, I may not be able to pay off my parents' mortgage, fund their badly needed dental work, or even pay for their groceries, but at least I am able  to draw from my wealth of good-heartedness and shower them with love, call them (and not from prison or Mexico), and offer to mow their lawn. It doesn't matter if they don't have a lawn - it's the thought that counts, as Hallmark has taught us. 

And until thoughts require a payment plan, I’ll keep countin’ ‘em! 

This article originally posted on In The Powder Room, a website written by and for women like you and me who live real lives, not the lives the entertainment industry insists we strive for.

Public Transportation...To Hell!

Los Angeles is affectionately referred to as ‘the city of angels' and not-so affectionately as ‘the city of carbon monoxide.'

This is a place where everyone, no matter how financially-challenged, owns a car to travel from one end to the other of an expansive town criss-crossed by freeways. And now city officials are beseeching us to take public transit, carpool, cycle (hang on while I pick myself up off the floor from a laughing fit; cyclists become mysteriously invisible on the streets of a city where Car is God) - anything to save the environment.

So the other day I took the bus downtown to visit a friend. It was a 30-minute, one-bus ride and I had a window seat and a good book. Not bad, I thought. Maybe I could even do this on a regular—

What the fuck?

Someone had turned on their radio so loud that I jumped in my seat. I looked around for the offender, couldn't pinpoint him, opened my book, couldn't concentrate, gazed out the window, couldn't relax, tried to eavesdrop on the man wearing two sets of glasses talking to himself, couldn't hear him, surveyed the other passengers like a sniper peering through a riflescope and then realized: the noise was coming from the television suspended behind the driver.

A television on a bus?

The news was playing - LOUDLY, did I mention that? - and I was forced to listen to reports of murder, violence, betrayal and hundreds of thousands of newly-lost jobs. In my life I choose not to watch the news because it is chock full o' tragedies and negativity, and all that does is permeate my mind and ferment like pickled ginger. (Honestly, how is knowing all the grim details of a man dismembering and eating his family on the other side of the country useful to me?) But, trapped on a moving, public vehicle, I was stripped of that choice. I couldn't read, I couldn't daydream, and if I'd been with a friend, conversation would've been difficult. That's how loud and obnoxious the metro idiot box was.

And to make matters worse, every 5-8 blocks the computerized voice announcing the next stop blared over the top of the news report, so that it sounded like a screaming match between sports commentators trying to out-do each other. The TV distracted me from clearly hearing the next stop, and the stop announcer prevented me from clearly hearing just how many women a certain celebrity has cheated on his wife with (wait, was that fifteen or fifty? My life depends on that detail, goddammit!).

Not only were my senses of sight and sound violated, but with the shock-absorber-free wheels hitting potholes every few yards, my spine was collapsing and expanding like an accordion. I got up to give my seat to an older woman with several bags but I felt like I was betraying her warm thanks as I rubbed my freshly bruised ass and stretched my neck.

As I stood there, one hand on the bar above me, the other keeping my purse strap on my shoulder, being flung to and fro like knickers on a clothesline, I couldn't help but shake my head (which was actually quite involuntary) in wonder. The whole ride had been jarring, loud, distracting, unnerving and totally unpleasant.

And they want us to abandon our cars for this?

This article originally posted on In The Powder Room, a website written by and for women like you and me who live real lives, not the lives the entertainment industry insists we strive for.

Pants Off To Public Transit!

Crazy Bus

I was on the bus the other day, and grabbed a seat right up front so as not to miss my stop. Happiness is… getting to sit down on public transportation, I thought with a mental smile (an internal smile, that is, not a psychologically disordered smile). A few stops later a rather disheveled and pungently scented man got on and fumbled to put his bus fare into the machine. He dropped a few coins, bent down to retrieve them, and that’s when his pants slid right down to his ankles. And he wasn’t wearing any underwear. Let’s just say I saw more of him than his proctologist ever did.

“My eyes! My eyes!” I screamed as I clapped a hand over my eyes.

No, I didn’t actually do that. But I thought it, I really did. I turned away as fast as I could, but it was too late. The image was burned into my retinas, black hole, swinging sac and all. (Sorry, now the image is burned into your brain, too.)

Without a shred of self-consciousness, he pulled his pants up, held them up with his free hand, and sat down a few seats behind me. At that moment the bus driver nabbed a young woman trying to slip past him without paying.

“Pay or get off,” the driver told her.

She shrugged. “I don’t have any money,” she said, not making any move to disembark.

“I gotcha.”

I did a double take. It was Mr Pantsless getting up from his seat (oh god, please don’t let his pants fall down again!) and handing the girl a buck fifty. She paid, and then as she passed him, he said, as cocky (yes, pun intended) as can be, “So does a dollar fifty get me some pussy?”

“Not even,” she said without batting an eye. To be fair, she looked pretty hopped up on crack and I don’t think her eyes could’ve batted if she’d wanted them to.  

Before this incident I had believed that my eight-block bus ride sitting next to a man wearing full-sized deer antlers on his head and staring at me unblinking was about the creepiest public transit experience I’ve ever had. But no, this one definitely takes the pants.

Three Lefts Make It All Right

You can’t live in Los Angeles and not have a car!! 

This might as well be L.A.’s official anthem, people chant it so often. The truth is, you can live in this city without a car; you just can’t go anywhere. Kidding. L.A. Public Transit may not be the award-winning transportation system it’s cracked up to be (well of course it’s ranked #1 when there’s no other public transit system to compete against), but it does exist and it can be useful. 

Having said that, however, I did not choose to be without a car. Rather, being without a car chose me. In March of this year my beloved Altima died of natural causes and I did not have the cash to buy another car. I also choose not to carry debt, even of the secured kind, so making car payments is not an option for me (I know – what era am I from, right?). I have to admit, though, when people ask, I usually mumble something about saving the environment and all. I still have a smidgeon of pride left.

When I’m standing on a jam-packed bus for one hour or waiting for a tardy bus at 10 p.m., I like to remind myself that having a car was not all that it was cracked up to be. My Altima was a ’95 and, frankly, was starting to show its age. One time while my car was parked, someone drove into the front right side of it, leaving it with a large dent and the inability to turn right. The anonymous perpetrator did not leave a note, apparently subscribing to the belief that if you don’t get caught, you’re not guilty. My mechanic said it would cost in the neighborhood of $1000 to fix it, since the dent had messed with the alignment, and being about $999 short, I declined the repair. Being the martyr* that I am, I figured, what the hell, turning right was overrated anyway. So everywhere I went, if I needed to go right, I would make three lefts instead. 

Tolerating this kind of nonsense seems normal when you’re alone. After all, no one ever needs to impress themselves. But when someone else was sitting in my passenger seat, suddenly I saw the craziness of my behavior and would make up excuses like, “Oh, right? I thought you said left. No matter, I’ll just make three lefts here and we’ll get back on track lickety-split.” I could feel my pride slipping through my fingers like sand.

Also, my rear speakers had shorted out a while back, so once every two or three songs the speakers would pop. And by pop, I mean sound like a firecracker going off. It was disconcerting to anyone else in the car – “Oh my god, we’re being shot at!” – but I just kept bopping in my seat, pretending it was part of the song. 

In addition, my car alarm had a mind of its own and would go off whenever I locked the front driver’s side door.  Having taken Logic 101 in college, I decided that if the alarm went off when I locked the door, I just wouldn’t lock it anymore. For three years that door remained unlocked, and not once did anyone break into or steal it (I’ve had previous – locked – cars broken into a total of ten times. Just sayin’…).

So now picture this: I pull up in my ’95 Altima to the Beverly Hilton Hotel to cover an event. I hand my keys to the valet guy and say, “Ok, don’t lock the door or the alarm will go off, you can’t turn right in this thing, and no one’s shooting at you, it’s just the radio shorting out.” I then turn and run away so as not to see his look of despair that he didn’t approach the Jag behind me.

So three wrongs may not make a right, but three lefts sure do.

* martyr: a person who undergoes severe or constant suffering

Carless In L.A.

“If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.” -Earl Wilson

That’s a great quote. But what if you don’t have car payments? How can you tell if anybody cares that you’re alive?? Worse yet – what if you don’t have a car? If you don’t have a car in Los Angeles – nobody wants to know if you’re alive. Not because they’re mean; because they simply can’t compute the idea of living without a car. Ergo, you cease to exist.

“Wait, what? You don’t have a car? What’s that mean? But how do you get around? Public what?” At this point if my captive audience doesn’t blatantly walk away, I change the subject just to relieve the panicked look in their eyes. 

I know someone who offered a co-worker a ride home in Hollywood and when she found out he drove an Accord she declined. So what’s worse in this town, taking public transit or driving a car that costs less than $50,000?

I tell you, at this point I would  gladly subject myself to the disgrace of driving a $20,000 Altima if it would mean getting me off the street. No, I’m not homeless. I’m carless. My modes of transportation are: bus, feet (mine, naturally), bumming a ride or not showing up. 

Last week I promised a friend I would attend her one-woman show which she had worked hard at putting on, and I was really excited about it. According to Google Maps it was a 20-minute, 2-bus ride. Being the public transit expert I am, I gave myself one hour and filled my pocket with extra tokens. Just in case. You never know, right? Well, one hour into my journey I was still waiting at the bus stop for the second bus.

First, two “Not In Service” buses went by. Then another bus stopped but was only letting people off, not taking any new riders since it was jammed like a phone booth full of college students. Then a bus finally stopped and picked up the arena-sized crowd that had amassed during this time, turning this bus into a tin of sardines. For 15 minutes I did my best to avoid the unflinching ogle of the guy standing next to me who took every pothole as an excuse to rub up against me. And if you’re asking why I didn’t move, don’t. There wasn’t a free inch on that bus. Which is how I nearly missed my stop. I rang the bell and then tried to squeeze my way to the backdoor, but it was like trying to walk through a non-English speaking brick wall.

I jumped to my freedom, crossed the street, and waited 30 minutes for a bus that promised, like my ex-boyfriend, to come every 10-12 minutes. When I realized that only a time machine could get me to the theater punctually, I let loose a string of curses and caught the next bus back home, missing my friend’s show. 

The worse part about explaining why I didn’t get to her show was trying to make the phrase “I take the bus” sound like a fun decision.