Los Angeles, Modern Town Without Pity (or, Don't Be Old and Need a Restroom Fast)

 I am sure I am going to hear the argument contra. No need. I know what it is, or what they are. It's because of Covid and it's unsafe to allow. It's because of the homeless. It's unsanitary. 

What am I talking about? I took a very old friend out for lunch this week. 93. Had a stroke last March. Uses a walker. Want to make her life a little like the days when she could go out on her own. When she was independent. When she wasn't invisible to the world that claims its great woke-ness, but lacks even the most basic common sense or decency. 

We were on our way, in an area near the Hollywood Bowl where alas there aren't a lot of choices for the bladder emergency of anyone, let alone an old person. I slipped into the one mall that I immediately saw. It had several well known entities, one independent restaurant and a mini mart. All have to have restrooms for the people who work there. And yes, I know, those bathrooms are not generally open to the public. That's fine. But in this strip mall there apparently was not one available place to pee. In one, a major chain, the sole employee, with my elderly friend standing on her floor holding it in as best as she could, said no, it's not open to the public. "I understand," I said, "but this is an old person with an emergency." "I can't," she said, "I'd get fired". This was already my third place. We got back into my new leased car, and tried two other places I found along the way. Same answer. I made a turn on Cahuenga that other drivers found offensive in order to try to make it to the Starbucks down the way that the two clerks told me really did have a public restroom. 

My friend made it. As you may recall Starbucks that HAVE restrooms (many don't) got zapped a while ago for not making their restrooms open based on claimed racial bias, so happily this one did and it was open. 

Let us look at the choices in this situation where we are protecting restrooms from the homeless and Covid infection. My friend could have lost control, easily, or anyone in this situation could lose control in this situation, and just let it flow. How is that sanitary? How is that a protection against Covid? And about those homeless? They are right outside your local establishment peeing and pooping on the sidewalk. And we cannot say a word about that because our wise leaders claim we are giving the homeless their dignity. Now before you say that I don't care about the homeless, over the years I have done my share to try to help. And I know it's a complicated problem. But trying to treat everyone exactly the same has resulted in treated many people, including the homeless, badly.  The dignity of my older lady friend be d---ed. And common sense, that's in another universe.

If a homeless person pees in public, nothing generally happens. I know nothing generally happens because I've seen plenty of homeless people with their pants down pooping and not out of sight.  But if my friend had to find an. . . .emergency place, an unauthorized place because finding an authorized place if you are a regular citizen is impossible, you could get arrested. And given what I have seen these last few years who gets arrested for what in this nation, I would almost expect it. Oh, yes, there are defenses. But it isn't going to help in the moment of need, is it?

I wonder what I would have done if I were that employee in that fast food place with a little old lady and a panicking friend on the edge of her own dotage before me one of whom really had to pee. Lord, I hope I would have taken the pity that the society will not. Would anyone have known if she had helped? Probably. Because there are cameras all over the place these days. So a good deed would be considered a bad deed, and thus we find the reality of our world. 

In some states, there is a law, called Ally's Law, which applies mostly to people with Irritable Bowel Sydrome. Like old people, they never know when they will have to go. In those states that have this law---California, the wokest state outside of New York does not--your doctor provides a card which you present (assuming you have the time) in order to be allowed into a bathroom. 

So, here are the choices when you are old.

Never go out again.

Go out and hope you don't need to pee or poop in an emergency. In legal terms we call that impossibility.

Always carry a small portable potty (a bucket with accoutrements to help you break down and carry away the remants) in your car when you are driving an old person around. Of course, even if in a bucket it would probably still be considered public indecency if not public urination. 

Hope your family doesn't believe in euthanasia when you get old and your body starts inconveniently to break down and things get a little. . . .unsanitary. 

You think I'm exaggerating? There is current talk of "rational suicide". There has been such talk for years, usually in relation to the elderly. If you get to old age, in 99 percent of cases, there will be health and other problems. It comes with the territory of life and death. I know and you know for a fact how many children refuse to take care of their elderly parents. So do you think in a world where an old person is refused the bathroom that I am exaggerating?

I don't think Orwell himself adequately predicted the insanity of our modern world. 

My view? I got a dose of reality about our state, our nation, our world without pity, the other day that should make all of us sick. 

But the most important thing in the world here in California is wearing a mask and getting a Covid vaccine. You will be happy to know then that my friend and I are both properly vaxed. That and 1.75 I think it is will get us a ride on a Metro. I wonder how they view it if an old person can't hold it in on the bus? 

https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2020-07-25/public-restrooms-are-disappearing-here-are-survival-strategies

Shatner's Crossing of the Karman Line to Space, the Final Frontier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6S0ykPrxKE

I have always loved Star Trek, in pretty much all of its iterations on the big and little screens. I was probably more a Spock fan than a Kirk fan, and definitely more a Leonard Nimoy fan than a William Shatner fan. You hear the Hollywood talk of who is nice and not so nice, and, Mr. Shatner is not known for his warmth and generosity to his co-stars of the Original Series. Whether there is truth or not to these stories, alas, they have an effect on one's perception. And sometimes, as in my case living in the vestiges of the Dream Factory,  you know people who know people who reside near the "stars" and the reputation for getting along with neighbors is not exactly pristine. 

But you cannot help respect a man who has reinvented himself multiple times in making his living in the industry from his youth to 90 years old. Well, I can't anyway. To me, also, there is always a bit of a pleasure in the meeting of fiction (Captain Kirk) with reality (a trip to the edge of outer space, some 62 miles ABOVE the earth) with non-fiction, that is, the short but dramatic ride of the actor who played a Star Ship Captain in a rocket seeing the earth below and the darkness of space above. 

I hadn't really planned to watch any of it as it was occurring at 8 thirty or so Texas time, and 7 thirty mine, and I am not an early morning riser. But I just happened to wake up, and thought I'd watch. You Tube had a couple of channels devoted to the event live. What first caught my attention and to me was a mark of our rather dismal if not horrible times were the live comments being made by those with their feet on terra firma, mostly cracks about Shatner, about Jeff Bezos, about space, about the earth, nearly almost all smug and snide. Lots of talk about how this wasn't really a big deal, since it really wasn't space that Mr. Shatner was going to, and of course, lots of talk about his feuds that have become so public over the years. The usual comments about billionaires and the waste of time and money to think about outer space---that's a spirit that wouldn't have taken us out of the age before fire was invented.

We wouln't have all those darn space shows if people didn't look to the wonders of the universe outside of our own and seek to discover and coexist with them.

Lots of talk included his appearance. He's got a stomach, Mr. Shatner. He always battled his weight. Don't you? Don't I? And I don't know, how many 90 year olds do you think look as well as he does, or still rides horses, and shows them, and still works? And seems to enjoy it? Whatever else he is, he is one of the most alive people I have ever observed from afar. 

And to do what he did, at any age, particularly as the nay sayers were insisting that the rocket ship (which like five year olds people like to note is phallic) and process might be compromised, was extraordinary. I barely can fly in an airplane 30,000 feet up. I can't imagine being shot into space 62 miles up! I'd be dead just hearing about it. 

To me, and I know that my opinion doesn't matter, though I hope it is kinder than so much of what I saw this morning, this ordinary an, an actor, is to be admired for this thing he did. Now, I know, in this society, unless other human beings denominate that you are perfect, as they are perfect, you get torn down, both literally, if you are imaged in a statue, or figuratively, if you are a flawed person who happens to be in the public eye. 

I would love to have the courage that this man had to grab a piece of space and time that few men have or will ever do. This man has voyaged well. And it tickles my imagination. It's a nice moment in a really difficult time. 

Panache

 I think it must be that I am either in, or close to, my own dotage, that I feel a certain urgency to get as many stories of my father's on the ether here. Will it last? Will it get seen 50 years from now, or beyond? I don't know. When I am gone it won't matter. It only matters now, and I do what I can do, albeit not much to give my father (and at some level me) a bit of earthly immortality. So, yesterday I posted one. Today I post an even shorter one.

Panache

I recognize him immediately as he descends the stairs of my building to greet me. It is my old street-bum friend Diogenes, who I have not encountered for more than a year. He is greatly changed. I sense this immediately since he does not extend his palm and ask for spare change immediately.  I am concerned for my old friend.

"Diogenes," I sy warmly ". . . it is more than a year since your last visit. I sense there has been some travail in your life."

"Indeed," he replies, "I just return from New York, where I spend the last eleven months in the pokey.  I get one month off for good behavior."

"How horrendous," I say, "does the IRS get you for tax evasion?"

"I will tell you, but first, can you advance me a few bob, as you are the first friendly face I see in these warm environs.  I get a chill in New York one January night and have not felt warm since."

I hasten to accommodate my old friend as he continues.

"I get caught in a blizzard in Washington Heights so I seek shelter in a posh apartment house lobby. It is one o'clock in the morning.  I am wearing an old pair of Italian shoes which I find and is no protection in snow. I notice that the tenants leave their galoshes and rubber boots in front of their doors, as they do not wish to track in the snow. I find a pair of Western boots that seem my size, so, I appropriate them. The long and the short of it is that I get a twelve month stretch."

He recites his tale with a kind of humility. Diogenes seems chastened. I am curious as the Diogenes I know is a real bum, but he is honest.

"What makes you do such a thing?" I ask.

"I do it because I could," he answers, looking me directly in the eye, though I am almost sure there is a tear breaking in the corner of his left eye.

I feel that a little more spare change is in order. Somehow, there is something heroic about the act and the manner in which he faces up to sin. I watch him depart, his shoulders bent, disconsolate but courageous. There will be no memorial library for him, but he does have an air of greatness, a kind of panache of great rogues.

Written May 2004.

Diary by Constantine Gochis

My dad was an early perspicacious observer of the evolution of too much government, particularly of the administrative kind, at among its earliest iterations, back in the 1960s. Not merely was it of "too much government" but government claiming conscience and having none. 

Where are we today? Lots of money has been thrown at helping the communities purportedly served, like education. Has education gotten better in the last over 50 years in any big city? Much has been thrown at homelessness and now homelessness is out of control. Where did the money go? What is it always about? The feudal fiefdoms of too many professing concern for the citizenry but in truth and in fact shoring up their wealth while taxing the rest of us. That's what lots of us think. 

Dad's subject, his story revealed in a few fictional diary entries, is a neophyte New York City manager in the early halcyon days of the superagencies that now populate multiple cities in which death and destruction and poverty reign. This particular man might not exist, but he could be any one of the leaders of a certain age, who dismiss the populace with their multi versions of truth. Dad has been dead over 12 years. Even he could not imagine how bad things could become and how bad they are, except that he knew something was coming. 

The short short story is called "Diary". Dad wrote it over 25 years ago.

You must not ask who he is or how I came to have access to his diary. You see, he is currently among us, very active in his chosen profession of politics.  In fact, he occupies a seat in the current Congress--much older, though still unregenerate, opportunistic, a mountebank and a scoundrel.

I have decide to share with you some pages from his almost daily recollections, assiduously and unreservedly recorded.  The copy I have is a part of a set, though it covers a period in which we were both employed in the first years of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"--in fact at one of the first social agencies to be funded to distribute aid to the poor, circa late 1965, to begin with.

There is probably no story here.  Some of the entries are banal, perhaps even uninteresting. I selected them probably because the settings and the incidents are largely within the ambience of the times and places and the ritualistic universality of the activities described.

December ---, 1965

I finally got my interview today. Deputy Commissioner Long said, "Read your application with great interest. We need men like you in these revolutionary times." I smiled modestly and thanked him. Privately, I felt it was the extra 100.00 I had to pass on to the "Man" in City Hall.  Thankfully, it was the last of several expensive paving stones.

I don't recall that he told me what my job would be, but the salary arrangements were as promised.  Anyway, the "manna" came in the nick of time.  My last year was the seventh of those scriptural lean ones.  Now, I have a job, an office and am the head of a Department. 

January ---, 1966

It has been a pleasant holiday season. There isn't much direction or organization. I have a Secretary, named "Deelores", an unusual spelling of a familiar name.  I call her "Dee". She has a maximum output of perhaps two letters a day, or three memos, with never less than three misspellings per sentence.  I am constrained by the proprieties of the time to accept this minor impediment. If the matter is important enough I retype it myself.  Dee does have a placard on her desk that announces her name, and her title, Executive Secretary.  It seems to fulfill her aspirations at the moment.

October---, 1966

The Agency is growing. We now occupy several floors of a city-block skyscraper. My windows look down ten floors to a very busy Church Street. I can see the turn of the century watering hole, Bar, to the uninformed, where I generally stop for a quickie, before the long subway ride back to Queens, and the walk up I share with the mother of my children.

It never ends up just one, as I am usually joined by Kevin Rauch from Public Relations and Sam Starns whose function is locating new Federal Grants.  Sam is tolerable, though his drinks magically appear on my monthly tab. I don't like Kevin, though, till today, I had no tangible reason for my dislike.

There's always a story to tell.  Today it was my turn.  I relate my adventures rarely. But after two martinis I become very voluble.

"It was right there on the top of a very full in-box. A check for seven million dollars from Washington, no note, no explanation, nothing indicated on the check, except "Office of the Mayor" and an address.  I spent the day going from Commissioner to Commissioner trying to get someone to take responsibility for the item.  It's kind of revelatory--and a little discouraging. One of those New York Post reporters that eavesdrop on our dialogue--see--there's a hot shot reporter from the Daily News. Boy would he like to get a whiff of how the Agency administers government money. Don't look now, but if he leans any more toward us, he'll fall off the bar stool."

Kevin asked if I had solved the problem. I said I hadn't, and the check was still in my box. He said, "Bring it over to my office". I knew immediately why I didn't like him.  Arrogance? Some advantage of angle? I'll have to watch this bum.

December --, 1968

There won't be a Christmas Tree in the East side home of my Boss, Commissioner Rawlings.  At our first conference together, I had the feeling he should never have come East for this job.  First of all, most appointees don't know anything about the jobs they inhabit. Rawlings knew less than most.  What he khew least about is the insidious virus originated by the serpent in that famous garden.

Her name was Sheba, as apt a name as is possible to describe her. I can imagine the throes old Solomon  might have suffered at her blandishments.  The original Sheba, I mean, of the Book.  

It was not an affair. Sheba did not believe in long term associations.  From what she told me, it was a series of intermittent meetings for appropriate consideration, from which Rawlings ultimately tired.

Whether she was invited to the party he threw for his staff last month, or not, she was there. She came, wearing a satiny white garment that clung to her body like natural skin. It was sheer enough--I suppose not sufficiently woven by a modest Arachne to obscure the triangular shape of her very black underpants.

Rawlings resigned today.

I do not know if he will rejoin his family whose transport West I arranged last week.

January --, 1969

Replacing a Commissioner is no problem. They are lined up like ticket seekers at the Roxy for any available spot. Rawlings' replacement was on board before the fizz left the champagne of last week's party. He came with an entourage. How to describe him? Anti-civil service type might be appropriate. His Administrative Assistant is an exemplary specimen. Rose. She is married to an author, who has just published a paper back called "Street Corner Pimp".  She is proud of her literary spouse and has distributed many copies of the book.  Her assigned office has achieved notoriety as a result of the banner that occupies the wall behind her desk wth its pithy challenge to the Patriarchy, "F---- housework!"

I met my new boss and his acolytes at a party in Soho, which is nothing more than "South of Houston Street". This once industrial center of New York and its empty warehouses now house the avant-garde who convert the expanses into bizarre living quarters.

It is in one of these apartments that Seymour Barber, my new boss, introduced me to his dependants--one of whom he announced would be my deputy. 

He said I would find her interesting. "Very cooperative and forthcoming", as I recall, were the exact words. 

It's Here. . . .!

Well, I was a little ahead of myself in September when I said that a new mandate was rolling out. As you know, if you read this blog, I live in Los Angeles. I was vaccinated, early and fully. And Los Angeles, the City, has indeed made it a mandate that the unvaccinated may not enjoy indoor activities. If you don't have proof at the door of a restaurant or any indoor venue of your proper status, you cannot enter. In that this mandate is to protect the health of the populace, it is not considered, by the Garcetti gang, to be a restriction of freedom or a form of segregation based on a power enforced category. It will go into official effect November 4. As I  (and far more well known people) have been Cassandra-ing since last year when masks became the new delightful (not!) accessory of the hip and elite, it is precisely another lasso to assure the corraling of every one of us and complete control of every aspect of our daily lives. It has been the classic use of an opportunity of which the Democrat party had long promoted. You take a real situation and you mold dealing with it in a way that has profound, and disastrous ramifications on the very nature of the society in which we used to live in an illusory comfort. It was perfect. How can anyone argue against public protection? The hook. And the net to reel us all in. Do you note that now any objection to anything being imposed arbitrarily and inconsistently is being compared and then identified with domestic terrorism? 

I have had a battle within myself. I am not young. My sojourn in the work world ended a long time ago. I have no children or grandchildren about whose fate I must worry as did my father about me when he predicted years and years ago the crumbling of this society. From a practical point of view, I do not need to care about any of this. I have neither power nor given my age and life expectancy statistically, a stake in the long term corruption of the nation and the world. I could take the "So what?" position. Who cares if the government restricts my freedom as life itself is more toward the end than toward the beginning. I have enough to get along in my little space, with my cats, my music, my books, my television, my pretty terrace with hummingbirds. I can talk to people on Zoom or some other app. What's the big deal in showing my vaccination status and proving that I am among the clean and safe? What's the big deal at having to wear a mask for five, six, or ten hours to travel in a plane? What's the big deal to pay 25 dollars for a movie where I have to have a mask? As my friends who try to tell me it's not so bad say, "When you sit down you can eat the whole time so you can get away without wearing it." Unless you get one of those flight attendants or movie ushers who will have you arrested if you don't keep the mask on between bites. So, what's the big deal? 

I found and find wearing the accepted mask unbearable over anything more than a short period. I could get by wearing a plastic mask that covers nose and mouth.  I was told that it isn't as effective. This makes me laugh, with irony, as the accepted masks do not prevent the small droplets of infectious germs from getting in, in addition to how much the masks are handled in the average passing conversation. In the early days of the pandemic lockdown, my wearing the tolerable plastic mask was rejected nearly everywhere. Apparently, the business and local powers that be have forgotten about that, and lately I can wear it mostly everywhere. So, it is less for me a big deal to wear the plastic mask. To the extent I might want to get out and about, I probably could tolerate that kind of mask, and maybe shoot out to the occasional movie or show. 

So what we are losing our freedoms? So what that in every part of your life you and I are being tracked and mandated by technocrats and unelected administrators? I am a less than a grain of sand in history. 

But, on the other hand, I have loved and love my country. I have loved and love my Church. I see both crashing out of the usual human hubris that always seems to corrupt civilizations. I am here. I sense in some deep place that I, that you, are here for more than just passing through and taking no stands. This country had the answer in hand, the very principles on which it was founded. If human beings understood that it was the best we humans could do given our inherent imperfections, we would not be so eager to destroy it. Our pride caused the fall. And our pride makes us deny the fall and to insist we can be perfect without the principles of Eden. The way I see it I have an obligation to blow on the embers of the God and Country. Now, all that means for me, at this moment in time is that  as best I can, I don't collude with the morally wrong if I can avoid it. So, I will not participate in the segregation of those who have made the health determination or the moral determination that they will not be vaccinated. The covid numbers have been going down, so what is this about? Do you not know that a large percentage of the unvaccinated are in the minority community? Do you not remember what happens when people are segregated according to some physical reality about them? 

There are some things I cannot avoid. I cannot always avoid a store, as much as I have done, and try. But I can avoid my pleasures in solidarity with those who are being segregated. If most of us did that, I believe the mandate would end, because alas, it would affect some decent small business owners as much as the earlier lockdown did. I am not the kind of person, at this point in my life, who recommends that groups go to restaurants and entertainment places demanding to be let in. The business owner cannot overturn anything. But if we withhold our attendance under the terms proffered, I think the fall out would immediately cause a reversal. At least that is my hope. 

Do not collude with the segregation to the extent that you can. My entertainment and yours is not worth the continuing encroachment and the new serfdom. 

That's the big deal.