My roommate was an impressive person and a hard worker, and within two weeks of moving to L.A. she got an internship at a production company as well as a full-time job to pay the bills. Before I had fully unpacked my bags, she was working 90 to 100 hours a week, and I hardly ever saw her. I spent my days sending query letters to production companies, trying to get internships, while also looking for work pretty much every place I could think of. The only job I could find was delivering apartment guides to 7-Elevens in the greater Los Angeles area. I’d show up in the morning at a warehouse, load up the back of my truck with the thin realty booklets, and then struggle with directions for the next eight hours, trying to find out where exactly I was supposed to drop them off. It was like taking the worst tour of Los Angeles imaginable, and the job was only freelance, so it didn’t even offer the opportunity to make much money.
I had only one real friend in L.A., my writing partner, Patrick, with whom I had directed my student film and written a screenplay for a feature film in college. Both were fairly poor attempts, but we had fun. We were learning and, most important, worked well together and had similar senses of humor. Patrick had lived in L.A. just a little longer than I had and was showing me the ropes as best he could. But except for him, the only people I saw on a regular basis were the transvestite prostitutes who hung out in front of my apartment complex. One of them approached me a few weeks into my stay, and part of me was actually excited by the prospect of having a conversation with someone new.
“Is this your car?” she asked, pointing to my white Ford Ranger.
“Yeah,” I said.
“My girlfriend accidentally threw up on it last night, but I washed it off. Just wanted to say sorry,” she said before walking away.
For the first time in my life, I was homesick. “How’s it going up there?” my dad asked me over the phone when I called home after about a month to say hello.
“Oh, you know. Pretty good,” I said, not wanting him to see what a sad sack I felt like.
“Bullshit, you’re lying. I can tell by your voice.”
“It’s not going so great, Dad.”
I told him everything that had been going on, just poured out all of the emotions that had been building up.
“From now on, when I ask you how you’re doing, I appreciate you being open, but don’t tell me stories about you jerking off to your gay neighbors,” he said, laughing. “Listen, you’ve only been up there a month. This shit takes time. Steven Spielberg didn’t become Steven Spielberg in a month. He was probably just some asshole who’s a lot fucking uglier than you, I might add.”
He talked to me for a few more minutes about the Padres and the Chargers, how my brothers and my mom were doing, and afterward I felt a lot better. So I plugged away, and a couple months later I got a job waiting tables at a place called Crocodile Cafe in Old Town Pasadena. It was basically a lower-key T.G.I. Friday’s. Landing the job was a minor victory, but my dad thought otherwise.
“Bullshit, you done good. It’s hard to get a waiter job in L.A. All these fucking actors, they got all the jobs. Your mom and I are proud of you. We’re gonna come up and take you out to celebrate,” he said.
“That’s really not necessary, Dad.”
“Bullshit.” (My dad loves the word
My parents wanted me to feel good about myself, and they knew that I wasn’t going to have a shot at being successful unless I did. I wasn’t Charles Bukowski; my misery was not going to translate to literary genius and royalty checks. My dad ended the phone call with one emphatic sentence.
“I’m taking you to Lawry’s Prime Beef!”
Lawry’s is mostly known for its seasoned salt, which you can purchase in almost any large grocery store, but they also have a famous steak house, Lawry’s The Prime Rib Restaurant, in Los Angeles, which my dad loves. Shortly after our phone call, he had my mom (who had broken him down and gotten Internet on her computer in the house) create an e-mail address for him just so he could send me an e-mail with a link to the Lawry’s Web site. The subject heading was “Lawry’s” and the body simply said, “This is fucking prime beef!” with the link to their menu.
The next Friday, my parents picked me up in my brother’s Chevy Blazer, which he had left with them since venturing to Hawaii to start his scuba diving career.
“Who’s ready for some fucking prime beef?!” Dad said as I stepped into the car.
