------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Martini That Saved My Life ©Stephen Allen It was a typical summer morning in Hollywood: overcast, cynical and heartless. My beat du jour: traffic school. I crawled into my vintage Stutz Bearcat and mashed the button on the garage door opener. Nothing. The bus got me to the Hollywood Palms Hotel about a half hour late. The instructor was a hard bitten ex-cop carrying 70 pounds of poison fat. He looked like he had a 20 year hangover. This was gonna be no picnic. The class was packed with the flotsam and jetsam of central Hollywood, no type unturned. There are about a couple of dozen stories in the Naked City....this wasn't any of them. The seats were too close together and there weren't any tables or desks to slouch on, just straight wooden chairs with slats missing from the backs making comfort a complete impossibility. The only seat left was right in front. On my left was what once must have been a man. My guess was one day about 4 years ago, he left home with no money or clothes and hadn't changed, eaten or showered since. On my right was another story. Legs. Like the Indy 500. And only a drag strip's worth of skirt. She kept shifting them and shifting them. And every time she shifted, the skirt got closer to the finish line. Let's just say I'd like to lay rubber all over the road. I was afraid to look at her face, I was doing so well with my racetrack metaphors. I had 7 and a half hours to work my way up. The instructor's name was Duane Downs. He had each of us traffic criminals step up to the podium and bear our violator's souls before our fellow sinners. This is Hollywood and every last violator thought he was a comedian. It was a painful hour. With each "entertainer" my spine tried a little more to collapse on itself like an accordion. It's hard to disappear when you're 6-4 and 190 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. At least I imagine it would be. I'm 5-8 and three quarters, an out of shape 175. 2. |