A POCKET VAGINA IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE: Kinda Interviewing Kinda Famous Women Who Kinda Read Blogs...

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, Calif. (ZP) -- "Lacy" has no problem with public displays of affection.

The moment she stepped out of her car, I knew I was in for it.

The click-click-click of high heels across asphalt, legs moving so fast that she kept one hand on her mini-skirt (not a panties kinda gal) as she dodged Saturday night traffic. The million-dollar smile, devilish and wide. The outstretched arms and lack of response to my usual Hey, chica! greeting.

For a tiny little thing, she hit me like a brick-filled semi, full speed, almost knocking me over in the process. Her handbag, one of those miniature cocktail-party things held to the shoulder by a spaghetti-thin strap, swung free and with equal force...

Right into the ol' scrotum.

"Lacy" is definitely a full-contact kinda gal.

* * * *

Actually, pretty much anyone who's ever seen her work knows how full-contact she can be.

And, well, you'll just have to trust me here, millions of adults, men and women alike, have seen her doing what many say she does best. When she retired, in her mid-20s, she was known for being completely uninhibited - men, women, even self-pleasuring PDA, complete with toys and other props.

Not almost famous. In her own words, kinda famous.

You know - the kinda fame that goes along with working the one legal job in the United States that earns the scorn of certain radical feminists and the goddamn Christian Coalition, even dirtier than those dirty rock albums the two sides tried to censor back in the 1980s, the multibillion-dollar industry that helped birth so many information and communication technologies, like DVDs and VHS tapes, even the World Wide Web itself...

Yup. That kinda famous.

* * * *

As we hugged, as she apologized profusely for capping me in the family jewels, three guys, old Hell's Angels looking dudes, walked up.

One of the men, a 60ish Latino, a mountain of a man, covered in indigo-blue tats and road leather, cleared his throat and stammered like a 15-year-old asking a supermodel to a high school dance.

He told her, point-blank, that he'd jerked off to her pictorials in various magazines back in his Soledad days - an accidental slip of the tongue. The Chicano's eyes hit the deck as he started to mumble an apology...

"Lacy" didn't hesitate. Out came her trusty silver-ink magic marker. A quick squiggle of her former nom d'erotique with a heart on the end, right across the skull-and-snake print, on the back of the man's shirt. She did the same for the other two guys, both of whom had also indicated they were fans of her work.

Three grown men. Life hardened and street weathered.

Scared to ask a woman they'd once seen naked in a magazine for an autograph.

* * * *

There was a miscommunication somewhere.

Apparently, "Lacy" thought we were to have dinner together. I'd eaten a scant two hours before, a monstrous spread at an Italian bistro, a bellyful of spinach walnut salad, stuffed yellow squash, and linguine tutto mare, enough to fuel me for a week.

So she ate. And I watched, sipping on coffee, at a late-night diner.

And we talked about everything under the sun. She'd dumped her most recent ex, a wannabe music mogul without a single "hot prospect" to sell to the real Slavemasters of the Pop Music Plantation. After four years of propping his sorry ass up with her g-strings and high heels and her residuals, she'd kicked him to the curb.

He'd promised her substance when they first met, but by substance he'd only meant dumb and cute. And she saw right through it, knew he was a bum from the first day he'd offered to move in with her (she never asked). He was a charmer, a snake-oil salesman covered in diamond-encrusted jewelry, someone who could spin records and ...

"So you're done with that chick?"

"What chick?"

"Tonya or whatever her name is."

"You read my stupid blog... today?"

It's been a while since I've actually been embarrassed by a blog post.

"Every day, dude. Not like I have anything else to do."

Honestly, I knew she read occasionally. We've chatted online several times - part of the reason we were meeting was, well, because she didn't believe I was who I said I was, and I had serious doubts about her authenticity.

Sadly, I'm just as weird in person, and she's, well, the face I found on way too many web sites. And, for the record, yes, I have a nasty slouching habit and, yes, her boobs are real.

But every day?

I don't know if I should be honored or scared to death.

* * * *

According to "Lacy," there are quite a few kinda famous people that she knows of that read this silly blog - actors and other entertainers, musicians and strippers and club regulars, and even some drag queens.

And I guess I should be flattered to learn that my friggin' online journal has been discussed, in detail, at The Viper Room and other nightspots, that somebody who was once nominated for a major film award listed this blog as her guilty pleasure in a radio interview somewhere out West a few months ago.

Hell, I'm still amazed that anybody reads this silly thing, that Australians and French and British folks lurk, that college undergrads and faculty and janitors and researchers browse through the HTML, even in passing.

And, hell, I was excited when I finally heard back from that Canadian grad student, this cat who I helped find chick flicks with Mandarin subtitles, simply so he could figure out how to ask a 21-year-old out on a date and have something to discuss. Turned out the date went well.

I dunno. I guess I find that more rewarding somehow.

Maybe it's because even kinda famous people, though nerdy, tend to have an easier time getting dates.

Um. Scratch that.

At the end of the day, we're all just like the Canadian guy, trying to figure out who we are and how to get where we want to go. Even kinda famous people.

* * * *

At one point, "Lacy" asked me if I was going to write about she and I hanging out, if I was going to turn braggart, start dropping real names, quit masking over some of my personal experiences behind layers upon layers of innuendo and euphemism.

She had some ground rules.

I could tell the whole thing made her nervous. I told her that, well, she'd have to do something that peaked my interest. And, no, I reassured her, no real names are ever used when they overlap with my personal life.

"Does this mean we're personal?"

"Yup. Honestly, I could give a rat's ass about names."

"Good, 'cause my agent thinks you're shady, and I'm not risking my fucking future."

My first successful, planned blogger interview negotiation. Went very well, I think.

And I guess I have to prove to her agent that I really have no interest in playing the gossip-rag blogger.

Vultures, in my opinion, should stick with eating roadkill, help keep the Blogosphere a personal experience or leave it to people more humane.

* * * *

"Lacy" shoved her hand into her purse, asked me to close my eyes and hold out my hands.

It had the texture of one of those keyboard wrist pads, squishy yet able to hold its odd mushroom shape. It had what felt like grooves for fingers, almost like a handle.

I opened my eyes.

"Dude, that's my pussy! Isn't it cool?"

A silicone vagina, one of those male masturbation devices found in sex boutiques. "Lacy" was so excited, proud. And I could sense that she was sizing me up, too, waiting for me to express shock or to lecture her or to toss the thing across the room and feign ignorance.

* * * *

And I think she was worried that I'd judge her, that the oh-so-educated librarian guy from the Public Ivy town would go all high-brow on her, that I was waiting to call her what so many oh-so-educated people call women who've done what she's done in her life.

In Higher Education, you see, there are way too many Academics who've earned tenure by figuring out new ways to package women like Lacy into clean, sterile, omnipotent research, to find scholarly synonyms for words like whore and victim.

Women in her industry are curio exhibits in theses and student newspaper columns, in rabid faculty commentary and seminary-rocking sermons...

C'mon. As if.

If I ever become that kinda Ivory Tower puppeteer, please shoot me for the sake of my immortal soul.

People are people. Why judge someone because they've been in dirty movies, or because they know some pretty important Hollywood types, or, well, because someone once thought it'd be profitable to market an exact, molded copy of their genitals?

* * * *

Realizing that, yes, this did indeed spark my interest, I shoved the latex toy, faux labia down, into the remnants of her Grand Slam breakfast, swirled it around...

And proceeded to lick leftover pancake syrup off of an artificial clitoris. There's a first time, indeed, for everything.

"Funny. It doesn't taste right. Like eating out Aunt Jemima or something."

I didn't think it was possible to make Lacy blush. Offline and away from the ol' blog, I'm much more crass, downright imbecilic, at times. Trust me, it catches a lot of people off-guard. I'm really a foul-mouthed motherfucker.

Apparently, even a librarian can make kinda famous people blush, make them duck and hide and laugh and almost choke to death on Diet Coke.

That's something to write about.

Being kinda famous, or even famous-famous, doesn't do anything for me. But tossing me a sex toy, based on your own body, in the middle of a wholesome American family restaurant, does wonders for writer's block.

* * * *

Now where's that fucking Ivory Tower?

I think somebody needs to turn that thing into The Ivory Dildo, complete with university logos and overpriced mortarboard tassels. It would go over like gangbusters, especially amongst alumni who feel their alma maters really fucked 'em hard in the cost and bullshit departments.

Hmm. I'm filing a patent tomorrow.

* * * *

By the time we hit the bars, she was all a-twitter, chatty, not some kinda famous woman who sometimes reads my blog but an honest-to-God human being.

After my kinda break-up with "Tonya," and her rather difficult break-up with Mr. Kinda Record Producer, I think we both enjoyed the downtime, the freedom that goes along with kinda not caring what other people think about one's own personal choices.

And for the record, there was no sex involved. Even if there were, dear reader, I'm not sure if I'd discuss it. Kinda not caring is not the same as being stupid.

But there was a lot of flirting. I really think I'm getting the hang of it, actually. And it didn't take "Lacy" long to figure out, well, there are certain places I kinda like to be touched while dancing close, not out of some desire to get laid but to feel more comfortable with myself, who I am as a human being. I think I'm a shitty dancer, really, but "Lacy" just wouldn't let me play wallflower.

And she said she was kinda interested in how I'd write the whole thing up on The Zenformation Professional, interested to see if I'd have the balls to say something open and positive about myself.

I'm supposed to say, I guess, somewhere, that she thinks I'm a very good kisser, seductive and charming. And not even for a librarian. Just as a guy.

And in all honesty, I still don't know how they managed to fit my head into the plane when I left California two days later.

- # # # -

WINE COUNTRY CONFIDENTIAL: Bizarre Cocktails and Nostalgia, Not So Classic Beauty, and the Ohio Library Veterans Association

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (ZP) -- The bartender looked at me as if I were crazy, downright fucking nuts, bonkers, completely off my rocker.

"Yeah, it's called a Napa Valley Handjob. I learned to drink 'em from older Poly alums back in the day."

It's one of the most insane undergraduate cocktails of all time, a perfect mixture of the often unrealistic perception of life in California Wine Country, of 1980s Falcon Crest pipe dreams, and the typical American college kid's very real need to get completely shitfaced.

Basically, the cocktail is merely a high octane version of a wine spritzer, the kind of pussy cocktail served at teetotaler weddings, Rich White People (RWP) parties in places like the Hamptons and Connecticut, and artsy-fartsy gallery openings along the East Coast.

Instead of the stereotypical white-and-club mixture, however, one adds a shot of vodka and a dash of black pepper to cheap Cabernet, gently mixes with ice, pours the whole thing into a highball glass.

In college, the wine was, well, usually a jug of Carlo Rossi, and vodka usually referred to any cheap, clear liquor, usually with that cheap-booze rubbing alcohol flavor.

Even better with Everclear.

"The drink's a Myra without the vermouth, dude. Calling it a Napa Valley Handjob used to make the Aggie girls laugh, think you were high class and crude simultaneously.

"Much more appropriate name. And sometimes, guys did actually get handjobs from girls from Napa, especially the sorority chicks..."

The doubting barkeep laughed, saying he had no idea how to ring up a Napa Valley Handjob. But, well, a Poly student himself, he made a point of writing down the drink recipe.

Older alumni know best, after all.

An older couple at the bar, yuppie tourist types, probably from wherever Land's End actually ends, some plane of hell reserved for old men in penny loafers and tennis shorts, got up and left.

They didn't even finish their bottle of Zinfandel.

Oh well. Can't blame 'em. They chose a shitty vintage. Horrible bouquet. One of those fly-by-night retiree wineries. Smelled like rancid goat semen.

Like Carlo Rossi, except for the $40, tourist-ready price tag and $20 corking fee.

Would've been perfect Napa Valley Handjob wine.

* * * *

ATASCADERO, Calif. (ZP) -- Busted lip and all, the young girl picked herself up and brushed the dust off her baggy shorts.

Even from 20 feet away, along El Camino Real, I could make out the road rash from her failed feeble grind, the ground-in concrete from the sidewalk buried in her shins. She'd landed almost face first; if her knees and palms hadn't absorbed the brunt of the impact, her bloody lip probably would've been a busted nose or worse.

The skater shoved a finger into her mouth, checking for missing teeth or loosened fillings. Satisfied, she kicked her board back up to her side and sat down on a bench, right in the heart of Sunken Gardens park.

She peered from side to side, watching cars as they passed, looking out for the dreaded Po-Po, the ones who, sadly, are now responsible for citing those who refuse to practice the California State Sport within the sanitized confines of the local skate park.

The young fugitive from city-ordinance justice gingerly picked stone from her knees, spitting on her hands to wipe away the blood.

Another kid, a raven-haired Lancelot on his own banned wooden horse, pulled up beside her. He whipped off his shirt, stripped down to his own over-sized Dickies and his Vans and his broad, studded leather belt and his wallet chain. He tossed it at the young skater's lean, bloody shins, striking his best teenage, cock-sure skatepunk pose as the wifebeater fell into the girl's waiting hands.

And then he sat down beside her, put his arm around her, wiped the blood away from her busted lip. He kissed her gently on the cheek, and she put her head on his shoulder, pink liquid dripping onto his chest, their sweat and blood and teenage love perfect.

And to think - a woman recently told me, back in Oxford Fucking Ohio, that I wouldn't know true beauty if it stared me in the face.

* * * *

PASO ROBLES, Calif. (ZP) -- War stories.

That's the best way to describe conversations with "El Guapo," my former Oxford Fucking Ohio colleague.

We bellied up to the bar at the Crooked Kilt, right off the town square, less than a hundred yards away from one of the old Carnegie Library, the one the 2003 San Simeon earthquake didn't have the heart to bring down with many of the other historic downtown structures.

Eight drinks into our Association of Badass Fucking Librarians Conference, I realized something.

One does not simply leave Oxford Fucking Ohio.

One escapes.

Looking around the crowded bar, I also noticed something else, something that I've been missing for going on three full years.

Diversity. Real, organic diversity.

And we're not talking the complete horseshit, let's - substitute - Affirmative - Action - with - politically - correct - statistical - quota- building, either.

Blonde Barbie-doll looking women, hanging off the arms of tattooed Latino bikers. Goth girl waitresses getting hit on by middle-aged golfers. Bodybuilder bouncers discussing ska concerts with skinny dudes, popped-collars mingling with plaid pants and straw fedoras. Old alkies at the bar, too, ogling the Asian girl in the micro-mini, the probably fifth - generation Japanese - American woman whispering to friends.

And two gay guys on a date, out in the open, holding hands, next to the old rancher-looking guy. I know gay men and women in Ohio who can't get a date, who can't go anywhere, even when attached, in the NeoCon Disneyland that is the Greater Cincinnati Area, without worrying about some Bible-thumping zealot or some homophobic idiot ruining their evening.

"El Guapo" just bought a house, moved his family here, into the heart of Wine Country.

And I'm so jealous I could scream, downright envious.

"You know, California is really full of a lot of cool people," El Guapo said, as he returned from the pisser. "A lot of arrogant assholes, but, yeah, cool people."

After I dropped El Guapo off back at his house, I returned to downtown Paso Robles, a town I once called home, a hick town I once despised, back when all the old buildings were still standing and before the wrecked Carnegie was closed to visitors.

I wanted to cry.

Instead, I pissed through the safety fence, right into the manicured landscape surrounding the busted ol' Carnegie Library.

A young woman who I'd seen at the Crooked Kilt earlier in the evening, a woman El Guapo thought I was talking up every time he got up to hit the head, walked past, said hi, and asked if I had an extra cigarette - while I'm taking a piss.

"I heard you talking at the bar. You guys were cracking me up."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I was born in Cincinnati. I thought it was so funny, because I probably know people that go to [Local U.]."

We spent two hours talking in that downtown park.

And her advice?

"Run."

- # # # -

MORE DISPATCHES FROM THE ROAD: On the Central Coast, The Shit Always Hits The Fan After the Wine...

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (ZP) -- It started out as a hug, innocent and casual, two friends greeting each other outside of an upscale cafe.

And then I felt my arms around her close a bit tighter, felt her hands run up my spine. My left cheek slid down her right, my lips down to the nape of her neck as she buried her face into shoulder.

It was the sheer black sundress that did me in, that allowed old passions to flare back up, cinders for the forest fire. I'd seen her in skater garb, in stereotypical punker gear, even completely nude on top of me. But I'd never seen her in a dress.

Ravishing. Simply ravishing.

She mumbled into my shirt collar, mumbled in that innocent, almost childlike voice so many women are able to harness during times of heightened emotion.

"I hope you don't hate me. I didn't know if I could do this. I know you don't drink wine, but I wanted a place we could, like, just talk in private."

"Chica, I didn't know if you'd show up. I lied to my dad, told him I was going to Pismo Beach."

"Tonya" laughed.

She'd lied to her parents, too. Her father's still planning on putting me six feet in the ground, still blames me for ruining his daughter and granddaughter's financial security. Never mind that his daughter wasn't happy with her ex-husband, or that the ex-husband was really in love with someone else...

* * * *

By the time she looked up, my hand was on the back of her neck, fingers electric and fluid along the back of her skull.

"It's been hella evil, dude. Everybody knows. I so fucking sorry."

"S'okay, hon. It took two to tango, and we tangoed ourselves into a fucking mess."

Though "Tonya" and her ex-husband are on decent terms following their divorce, the upheaval - the failure of a supposedly perfect marriage - has led certain gossipy elements to conclude that, well, Tonya really is the trailer trash her ex mother-in-law always said she was, behind her back, and that I really was the cold, manipulating, womanizing bastard many of my former radio listeners thought I was.

Fucking each other's brains out back in December, back when she was still married, probably didn't help much. Cost me quite a few California friends, including almost all of the college friends I'd made while a student at Cal Poly back in the late 1990s. Cost her a whole hell of a lot more.

The last thing in the world either of us needed - she needed - was a very public kiss on a very public street, in broad daylight.

A peck on the cheek would have to do.

No need to give anybody anything else to gossip about.

* * * *

There would be no trip to a cheap motel this time. No six male orgasms, 12 female orgasms, no torn clothes, no dislocated shoulders or wedding bands on the nightstand.

The kid stuff was over. Fun, but reckless. Things could've gone much worse. Reality, sadly, creates its own rules, dictating things like maturity and decency like overpaid company presidents dictate cold memos to underpaid secretaries.

Six months removed from our fling, the time had come for the two of us to behave, at least for an afternoon, like stereotypical Central Coast 20-somethings - to take in a late lunch at a trendy bistro and split bottles of good Edna Valley chardonnay, cell phones laid out on the white tablecloth like gunslingers at a card game.

We racked up a $136 tab in just under two hours. I winced as I signed the credit card receipt, winced as I realized that I'm no longer in a position, as a librarian, to blow such fundage on a simple lunch. "Tonya" offered to go dutch, but I wouldn't go for it.

She'd bought the sheer, overpriced sundress - the second one she's ever owned, the other being her wedding dress - simply to hang out before she flew back to her home in the American Southwest. It was also an excuse to spend a bit of money, to go all girlie-girl and relieve stress through shopping.

When she again protested, I reminded her that, no, this wasn't a date, and, well, she'd invited me out for lunch - the guest always gets to choose who pays. Besides...

Wow.

That dress.

She just looked so, well, damned perfect in that damned Vera Wang getup (correction: I guess it's called a Mini Tank Dress, not a true sundress), and I looked so schmuckish in the first wrinkled polo I could dig out of my travel bag...

* * * *

"Goddamn it, dude. I'm walking in the water. Quit being such a fucking pussy. Cops don't care."

You know, women wearing $500 dresses tend to go diva after stereotypical Central Coast lunches, especially after sucking down $60 worth of chardonnay.

"Tonya" slipped off her heels and, as nimbly as a former skateboarding goddess can be, slid her feet beneath the bronze, grizzly-shaped fountain.

She once told me she used to rack up citations for riding her board through the park, that one of her old boyfriends had been nailed for meth back in 2002, right beside the fountain. For me, Mission Plaza brings back nothing but drunken undergrad memories - of puking on Higuera Street and pissing in the long-gone parking lot across from Woodstock's Pizza, of sleeping off Irish Car Bombs and Kamikazes and Gin and Tonics.

For both of us, the plaza represents a lot of juvenile things, California war stories. A beautiful city park, beneath a gorgeous Spanish Mission, in a quiet little town full of hypocrites and secrets.

"Ya know, I thought you were gonna kiss me back there."

"Back where, chica?"

"Before we ate, outside of ______. You had that look. That squinty thing."

"Squinty thing?"

"Like, you squint your left eye when you're, like, thinking of trying to get away with something."

"So... could I have gotten away with it?"

"I dunno. Christ. But _____'s mom has a lot of pull in SLO, a lot of nosey fucking friends, shrivelled old cuntbags."

"Do you care? I mean, you're not married anymore."

"____ is my ex-husband. His mom knows about the motel room, everything. And we just finalized custody. I have to care. I don't want to give the bitch any more ammo. Ya know?"

"Tonya" stared at her ankles, tip-toeing across the tiled bottom of the fountain.

"Yeah, I know."

Being an adult fucking sucks.

* * * *

Walking "Tonya" back to her rental car, we chatted away about all sorts of completely batshit random things - her unhealthy crush on Nomar Garciaparra, my weird food allergies, her famous customers, and my sorta famous adult performer exes.

She still had four hours until her flight back home, back to her world full of purchase orders and sales reports and payroll issues. We sat in the parking garage for at least an hour talking, perched up on the hood of the compact rental, like we had all the time in the world.

At one point, she had her head in my lap, feet propped up on the windshield, twisted in ways that would make a yoga instructor envious. I put one hand on her shoulder and one on her hip, just in case she started to fall.

I guess she thought my hand placement meant something more.

"Jason."

"Yeah, chica?"

"You can get away with whatever."

"Whatever what?"

You know, I'm dense. Really dense.

"Yeah, but we're just friends. Friendly."

"If that. You're a dangerous fucking guy, dude."

"Tell me about it. Ya ever have mono?"

"Tonya" laughed and sat up, sharp elbows digging into my thigh, eye sockets pierced by that flirty stare thing she does.

* * * *

One hand slid from shoulder to breast, the other from hip to stomach.

Things went downhill from there.

I felt every corner of her tongue as we kissed, felt that tongue barbell of hers clicking against my teeth, felt every goosebump on the back of her neck.

It's amazing how easy it is to get lost in a moment, for me at least, to forget that one is actually in a crowded parking garage, that a true stereotypical San Luis Obispan rarely runs his hand up a $500 dress in public or slides her hand down the front of jeans...

As we slid into the back seat, adulthood - that stupid, goddamn reason-outweighs-lust part of it - kicked back into gear.

Something, well, just didn't seem right.

My brakes ground to a halt first; I was working my way south, down past her navel, my tongue an inch above her tan line. The c-section scar, barely noticeable, jumped out at me.

Hadn't noticed it back in December, and it didn't really turn me off. It did, however, remind me that if any one of her ex's family members walked by...

I looked back up at "Tonya." She was still into everything, physically (some poor shmoe at the rental place had one hell of a stain on his hands), but she seemed distant, her eyes filled not with any sort of pleasure but with what looked like... guilt.

"Hey, um, maybe we should..."

I couldn't get the STOP word out. Just wasn't happening.

"No, dude, it's cool. I want to..."

"Want? No. But maybe we need to..."

Again, unable to simply say STOP. Feeling just a tad uncomfortable, I came up for air, slid right beside her, between her back and the fabric.

"Tonya," I guess, figured I was just positioning myself; she reached back and guided me inside, pushing hard, to the point of causing her to wince.

Now I was more than just a little freaked out. "Tonya" was thrusting back, hard and deep, almost as if she was intentionally trying to cause herself pain, to use my flesh as a torture device.

I pulled out.

"Nah. I think this violates the whole 'Let's just be friends' thing, chica."

She couldn't make eye-contact.

I heard that childish voice again, too. She said that she, yep, needed to stop, that she wanted to just fuck away an afternoon in a car, but fear paralyzed her, fear that I wanted something more, fear that she wanted more...

And then she started to tear up, her face flushed, almost angry.

She said she wanted to throw up, felt as if she was on the verge of ruining my life, of dragging me back down into the pit with her... Even just being friends wasn't going to work, it was hurting both of us... we were being immature and only one of us could afford it...

A complete, screeching halt.

I just held her for about an hour, until her cell phone started to ring, until her mother called to ask why, exactly, her daughter used the word fuck so often.

* * * *

No long, dramatic goodbyes. The whole thing ended as it began back when she was just a high school kid with a skateboard, and I was a 21-year-old reporter: awkward silences and strange glances, a quick catch ya later, as if being 2,000 miles apart was somehow the same as living a few cities away from one another.

C'est la vie.

* * * *

I kept looking into the rear view mirror as my borrowed convertible crawled up the Cuesta Grade.

I'm not sure what I was looking for, exactly, but I saw something I hadn't seen before, something buried in the ever growing lines in my face, beneath the increasing numbers of gray hairs.

I saw an old man, a terrified old bastard, staring back at me.

Whoa.

Where the fuck did he come from?

- END -

DISPATCHES FROM THE ROAD: Of Navajo Girls and the Great White Wannabes, Sixty Acres in Paradise, I-40's Culinary Treasures, and Other Things

PINE HILL, RAMAH NAVAJO RESERVATION, NM (ZP) -- It took me a few seconds to figure out who, exactly, was yelling at me, a few seconds longer to figure out why they were yelling in the first place.

A young Navajo woman, a Ramah Band local, wanted to know if I had an extra cigarette. As I sat on the hood of my mother's jeep, waiting for my father to return from the inside of the reservation market (yes, a regular ol' quickie market, smack dab in the middle of one of the most independent states in the Navajo Nation), the woman waved me over to what was apparently her older brother's pickup.

At the window, she said that Big Brother didn't mind her smoking, but, well, he didn't like her talking to Anglo boys.

And she didn't want just a cigarette - she wanted information. I was a strange, white face in a land reserved, in theory, for her people - she just wanted to know if I was new to the area, if I was looking for things to do...

Besides, she added, I somehow looked cool, in cowboy boots, Levi's, and my white tee shirt, almost like a character from Grease - Grease, as in the John Travolta film, her favorite movie...

...And she wanted to know what the hell I was doing in the middle of nowhere New Mexico, on a tiny little reservation, far from anything remotely cool.

I bummed her a fresh Marlboro, lit the tobacco for her, and asked her what she did for fun, what local folks her age (we're talking high school kid here) did during the summer, while school was out and the New Mexico sun burned holes into the asphalt.

Just hang out, She said. We, ya know, watch movies, play video games, go to parties, drive to Gallup (70 miles away, the closest town of more than 20,000 people)...

Before she could finish, the sound of Brad Paisley's hit song, "Ticks," bellowed from inside her shirt. She politely excused herself, reached down the front of her white tank top, and pulled a mobile phone from between her breasts.

The sucker was held in place by the tautness of cotton stretched across boobs - an ancient Navajo trick.

God. It's _____. I don't want to talk to him right now. He's, oh my God, such a hick...

The Ramah Navajo teenager hit the End button on her mobile, sending the caller, poor Hick Boy, plummeting towards Voicemail Oblivion.

Another ancient Navajo trick.

The woman thanked me for the tobacco, wished me well on the rest of my trip, and politely excused herself once again, this time to call some female friend and to tell her that, yes, the Hick Boy had just called her and left a voicemail...

And, yes, some Navajo teenagers have cell phones, just like their non-Navajo counterparts.

* * * *

I returned to my perch on the jeep, watching as others, mostly tourists like myself, entered and exited the mini-mart.

An older white woman, clad in a monstrosity of a Easter-style hat, climbed out of an SUV with a Kokopelli bumper sticker in the back glass. A sandal-clad, bearded gentleman strolled the parking lot on WASPish white legs, truckstop turquoise dangling from his neck, along with one of those "Made in China" medicine bags, the kind more likely to be found in a Head Shop than around the neck of an actual shaman.

I even spotted one of those notorious Fake Indians, a regular Ward Churchill type, sunburned lobster pink, obviously dyed black hair, reading some guide to Navajo spirituality.

The bumper sticker on the back of his sedan? Yep. Another Kokopelli, this one blowing its flute next to a marijuana leaf and "tribal" artwork, inscribed with the phrase Rocking Primitive. And beside it? An Ivy League window decal.

Fascinating, this Native American magic.

A whole group of white people, through some sort of sorcery, turned into Indians - just like the ones they'd seen in the movies, the ones played by all of those Italian and Greek actors in all of those John Ford westerns, like ol' Sicilian-American Iron Eyes Cody, the famed "Crying Indian" anti-litter pitchman.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that I was the only Anglo tourist to talk to an honest-to-God, bona fide American Indian at that mini-mart that day, to ask about things more substantial than Do you have any organic cornmeal? or Do you know where I can get buy real Navajo blankets? or Do you sell magic crystals like they do out in Sedona?, to simply have a conversation with a actual Ramah Navajo teenager about nothing in particular.

The mysticism just doesn't seem to work on me. I was just glad to see a Navajo-owned business thriving, to see a rural teen with access to mobile technology and being, well, a teenager and not some Hollywood stereotype.

I dunno. Maybe I've just known too many Indians, good people from all sorts of tribal backgrounds.

Nothing in the United States screams Culture War quite like a trip to an Indian Reservation.

- MORE -

NEAR EL MALPAIS NATIONAL MONUMENT, NM (ZP) -- I flew into Albuquerque on the Fourth of July, at my parents' request, to visit their piece of paradise.

My father picked me up that afternoon, and we traveled long and hard across New Mexico, drove for three hours, down Interstate 40, down winding state highways, down red dust county roads, across cattle guards and over ancient, tire-shredding lava flows.

All so I could see sixty acres of land, sixty acres of paradise that my parents recently purchased, sixty acres that I may one day inherit.

Sixty below endless Western sky, land enveloped by fire ants and high desert fauna, bright red dust everywhere, nothing but the pines and afternoon thunderstorms to keep you entertained in the evening. Sixty below the stars and loaded with antelope and elk, home to a reclusive badger and a pair of wild horses.

And that sixty acres is, indeed, paradise.

- MORE -

SELIGMAN, Ariz. (ZP) -- Westside Lilo's Cafe is one of those hidden treasures of the Not-So-Old West, a throwback to the days when getting from almost anywhere in America to Los Angeles meant a trip down old U.S. Route 66.

A German-American diner in the middle of goddamn nowhere Arizona, in a town of less than 500 people, a place where even the BLT sandwiches surpass most urban five-star restaurants in terms of excellence.

I've stopped in every time I've passed through Seligman - I've sucked down gallons of coffee there, put down at least a farm's worth of bacon-and-egg breakfasts, and savored every bite of their authentic, homemade German potato salad. The roadside diner has probably taken years off of my life, simply by offering delicious, artery-clogging fare.

For some reason, Lilo's makes just about any trip down I-40 bearable, more homey and hospitable.

And it's strange, too, the number of folks I've met in my life, from all parts of the country, who've savored the pancakes, who've chowed down on the biscuits and gravy or the bratwurst.

There's a secret society of us out there, the Lilo's Faithful, folks who'd rather drop a few extra dollars in a tiny, rural town than wait for the whizzbang discounts offered by the fast-food chains in cities like Kingman or Flagstaff. And there's a rival group out there, somewhere, tourist regulars of the cross-the-road competition - the original, almost infamous Roadkill Cafe.

One day, we'll have to rumble, old school, right in the middle of o' Route 66, getting our kicks in below the belt and above the knees, once-a-year road trippers and senior citizen RVers, truckers and bus passengers and occasional celebrities. It'll be a ferocious battle, I'm sure, a western Arizona version of West Side Story...

There's a reason folks are willing to pull off a desolate stretch of interstate and wait, at times, as long as 20 minutes for a table.

And I think it has something to do with what the folks at Lilo's (and, yes, the Roadkill folks, too) put into the food, their secret, addictive preservative -

Love.

- MORE... LATER... -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Shocking Tales From Dreamland! Murder! Drugs! Anal Sex! Librarian Attacks Hair Care Product!

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The walls melted away as the sky outside turned dark purple, the sunlight replaced with the gloom of an afternoon thunderstorm.

And then the breeze kicked up, pushing through the windows, scattering everything in its path.

I was standing at the bathroom door, somewhere, in some strange old house.

As I stared from my omnipotent vantage point, the toilet came right up off of the mounting, the wooden seat and the porcelain flapping in the breeze like a wet shirt on a clothesline, laughing.

I heard her voice behind me, the sound of someone familiar, someone long gone from my life and almost forgotten.

Last I'd heard, she was wanted for all sorts of things out in Colorado, warrants issued and probation violated. I guess I'd heard wrong, since I could hear her voice behind me, garbled and soft.

I turned just as her knife dug a hole in my chest, down between the ribs, right into my beating heart. I waited for her to say something, anything, but she quit speaking as soon as she put the knife through me.

Instead, as I watched, helpless and at the moment of death, she pulled the blade from my chest and cut out her own eyes.

I used to stare into those brown Cherokee-Creole eyes at night, used to run my hands up from her cafe au lait skin... DON'T DO IT!

Terror.

Pure terror as I collapsed to the floor, blood squirting from my chest and blood shooting from her eye sockets, the toilet still flapping in the breeze.

Death had caught me. A creepy, floating toilet laughed at me as the world ended, pitch-black and whimpering nothing.

* * * *

The alarm clock went off just as I hit the floor, just as I was murdered.

Dream. Another stupid, goddamn nightmare.

Got up, went to the kitchen, and put on the coffee. Powered up the laptop and turned on the television. Adjusted the rabbit ears, compensated for the various atmospheric phenomena that usually interfere with good ol' airwave broadcasts.

"... A robbery turns deadly in Over-the-Rhine ..."

Great. Fucking great.

I have a nightmare about my ex-fiancee cutting out her own eyes after murdering my sorry ass, and the first thing I hear on the morning news is something about another murder down in Cincinnati.

At least there wasn't a floating toilet involved, I tell myself.

And I think the house in the dream was that old abandoned place out in Ault, Colorado, the one "Jada" and I once broke into during that hail storm, on the way back from Cheyenne...

I hop in the shower. The water's lukewarm, the building's boiler tapped out by my neighbors and still reheating. I debate hopping back out, letting the shower run empty for a few more minutes, to allow the old furnace time to recuperate.

Instead, I lather up quickly, wash my hair, and put in some conditioner....

Suddenly, I realize why I'd had the nightmare in the first place. And it wasn't the butternut squash ravioli or the cup of yogurt I'd had for dinner the previous night, either.

* * * *

The conditioner was the same brand that "Jada" used to use. The same kind we used, back when I was strung out, back when we lived in that renovated former sorority house, back on 8th Avenue in 1997.

By accident, I'd picked it up from the grocery store. I saw a sale tag and grabbed the sucker without looking, in the here and now, 2007.

Ten years ago. Ten years? I've been drug-free for ten years?

And ten fucking years ago, my fiancee tried to kill me, tried to stab me in the heart with a very real steak knife. And back then, the toilet bowl didn't come up off its pedestal, and the wind didn't blow through that stagnant apartment, either.

But that smell was there, the smell of honey extract fragrance. Unmistakable. And that smell had filled my apartment as I'd slept.

I literally jumped out of the shower, ran to the window, pulled open the screen, and flung the whole bottle out onto the street below. I hung out the window, naked and gloating, as the plastic container exploded on impact.

A college kid, in flip-flops, preppy white shorts and Green Beer Day tee shirt, looked up and yelled something profane, something about the bottle almost ruining his pristine Rich Kid outfit.

"Kid," I yelled back. "Ask me if I give a shit!"

* * * *

We used to shower together, every morning, after that first taste of angel dust pulled us out of our hangovers, at the asscrack of noon.

And sometimes we'd get caught up, white dicks slapping against black asses in that shower, reaching for that conditioner...

Every time I smell that smell, that honey-flowery smell, I think of two things: fucking my ex-fiancee in the ass (she hated vaginal sex in the shower and liked the "feel" of the conditioner inside her), and the fact that the only things we had in common were sex, drugs, and malt liquor.

Both thoughts are but two sides of the same coin, different versions of the same memory. I was, yes, a junkie ten years ago, a reporter by night and a dope fiend college student by day. I did more blow than half of Colombia, smoked more PCP-laced weed than half of San Francisco.

Who you were in 1997 almost got you killed, you ugly sonofabitch! I told the mirror as I shaved that morning. Next time, read the fuckin' labels on the Suave bottles.

I don't need the perfume from some haircare product taking me back to that place, or filling my nostrils as I sleep.

* * * *

A friend of a different ex called last night from Los Angeles.

Some former boyfriend of hers was stalking her. He'd sent her flowers, despite a warning that she'd file a restraining order against him if he ever made contact again, ever so much as sent her a text message.

Her manager had called the cops on the guy a while back, after an altercation at a nightclub, after he'd left bruises on her arm and shoulders because he loved her. Her publicist had told her to just slap him with the order anyway.

She resisted, because, well, part of her liked the attention, the excitement.

When the flowers showed up, she freaked. The guy wasn't just love-sick. All of those nights when he'd stagger with her into clubs drunk, those nights after she'd gone to rehab, when he'd literally squatted in her house, all of those times when he'd just wanted her to go back to being a cokehead ...

He never hit me until I went clean. Fuck! I can't believe I just said that...

She's been holed up in her house for two weeks, sleeping on her couch, watching old movies that I'd recommended, her registered 10 millimeter next to the stacks of books and copies of various fashion magazines.

And last night, she just called to talk. She was lonely. She wanted to hear a bedtime story.

Against better judgment, I told her about my nightmare, about the ten-year anniversary of my attempted murder, about the bottle of conditioner I'd sent rocketing, accidentally, towards a preppy undergrad.

I expected my tale to go over badly. It was a horrible story to tell, a horrible PTSD flashback to share with someone coming to grips with their own domestic violence issues.

Los Angeles Girl just went quiet. And then she laughed.

Dude, right now, I just want to kiss you, just want you here. You or Lee Blanchard. I think you may be the only guys who get where I'm comin' from...

It took me a while to figure out who Lee Blanchard is - had to actually look the guy up on Google. Should've figured he'd be a character from James Ellroy's novels.

She's a huge Ellroy fan, loves noir literature and film. And she has a similar, sordid past to mine, too. I think that's why she likes to call when she's lonely - nice just to have somebody to talk to, somebody who gets the references to L.A. Confidential and Shaun of the Dead.

I figured I'd give her something else to read, a more print-ready version of the story I told her last night. It'll give her something to do, keep her off the streets.

Nothing like two former addicts swapping stories to make for one hell of a conversation.

This is the sanitized version.

Yep.

Ripped out eyeballs and anal sex. Cocaine. Even me describing my actual, almost murder at the hands of my ex.

Sanitized version.

- # # # -

* For those who've been there.
And for those trying to go clean.
Don't try. Just do. It's worth it.