Let me begin by saying every word of the following story is true. Only the name of the other guy has been changed, and that’s not to protect his innocence, but rather to protect my life. You’ll see why soon enough.
(MY TRADEMARK SHOULD BE STARTING WITH “SO”) So it all started Sunday night. I was at the Comedy Store, waiting to see if I made the list to be on the night’s open mike show. It was there that I met Kelly, another comic, way younger than me, but with the unjaded eagerness that I once had way too many Hollywood days ago.
We started talking about comedy and the scene, where to perform and when, how and why. Soon enough, we found we both had been left off the list. So I asked him if he knew another place to perform that night, and he invited me to come along to an open mike at a place called Rusty’s Surf Shack out on Santa Monica Pier. I love the ocean, really love the Pier, and was jonesing to perform. So I went. He seemed innocent enough, and had an SUV while I was dependent on a series of buses to get anywhere. I hopped in, thinking ‘no problem!’
Well, about two minutes into our drive, Kelly has something to tell me.
“Don’t take this wrong. You seem like a nice guy, but if you hurt me, I will kill you.”
“What?!” I gasped.
“I’m a sociopath. I’m being treated for it because I almost became a serial killer. My dad would want me to tell you that.”
Right about now, I’m thinking that this has GOT to be a setup for a reality show. There had to be a hidden camera in this car and Ashton Kutcher waiting in a control booth in the back of a van somewhere on Sunset, waiting to give Kelly the sign to tell me I’d been “Punk’d.” But after five seconds or so of silence, nothing happened. And I started to think “Holy shit, this guy’s for real.”
So I asked him “Why” his dad would want him to make that kind of comment to a stranger.
“To get that out there.” He was quiet, eyes focused on the road, but still appeared a bit nervous. But hell, I was the one who needed to be nervous!
“So…” I asked him, “You mean, you’ve KILLED someone?”
“No, but I’ve thought about it. Thank God for therapy.”
Right about now, I’m realizing this guy’s for real and I’m assessing my options. No, actually, I’m thinking to myself “You are so EFFing stupid! You just stumbled your way into getting picked up by a GUY in West Hollywood! But instead of being gay (or so I HOPED) he’s a killer!”
I asked him if I should get out of the car. He replied calmly, LIKE THE KIND OF COLD-BLOODED, STONE-FACED KILLER YOU SEE IN A HITCHCOCK MOVIE OR, SAY, HANNIBAL LECTER – “Do you want to get out of the car?”
Now talk about the most loaded question of all time. If I say “Yes! Let me out now!” would that piss him off and make him want to kill me in utter defiance of my wishes? Or should I stay, acknowledging both my pathetic need for a ride to Santa Monica and trying to be supportive and friendly of this young guy’s efforts to fix his urges in therapy. Surely even prospective serial killers need friends, right? And just like I wouldn’t want to be racist or homophobic, I certainly wouldn’t want to be killer-phobic either.
So I stay in. I do make one vow to myself: I’m getting a car as soon as freakin’ possible.
But for now, I’m here, stuck in an SUV with a teenage comedian who’s prone to fits of homicidal rage. And I’m always too curious for my own good. I’m drawn to weirdness and weird people, and though I’m scared to walk in the fire myself, I’m more than willing to watch or ask about what it’s like.
“Actually, can I ASK you about it?” I ask.
“About what?” he replies. Oh, I don’t know. The weather. Hollywood. The stock market. What the hell was he THINKING I wanted to ask him about?! Killing! Oh, wait, calm down, I don’t want to be sarcastic and enrage him. THAT would be a shame – to have a perfectly nice conversation going with a sociopath and THEN piss him off with a joke, of all things.
“Um, who do you want to kill? I’m not your type or anything, am I?”
There’s a question I never expected to ask a guy. Especially one I just met in West Hollywood.
“And besides, you’re not my type.”
I have never been so happy to be rejected in my entire life. Yet I ask him what IS his type for killing?
“Gangbangers.”
Now, this kid is WHITEBREAD and driving an SUV. He still lives at home and has his parents supervising his incredible regimen of psychological therapy, and he admits to me that he lives in Manhattan Beach.
“Dude, you live in Manhattan Beach. No offense, but have you even MET a gangbanger before?”
He pauses…”No. I guess that’s why I haven’t killed anyone yet. The people I think about killing don’t live anywhere near me.”
And besides, since most gangbangers are black and Latino, does that make you a racist? I ask. Is it about that?
“No,” he replies. “I’d kill the heads of Enron too. Basically, anyone of any type who destroys people’s lives and doesn’t even care about it. It’s sort of a vigilante thing.”
“You ever watch ‘Dexter’?” I ask, referring to the R-rated cable show that follows the exploits of a vigilante serial killer.
“No, my parents won’t let me.”
Amazing! This guy has the capacity to KILL people, but he still worries about what his parents think is appropriate television programming!
“How old ARE you?!” I ask.
“19.” He looks 25, easy.
So we get into Rusty’s Surf Shack, grab a table and wait for the open mike to start. It’s at this time I ask him how he got into comedy.
“Come on, man. It’s substitute behavior. Where else do you get to kill strangers every night? And that’s the whole GOAL!”
Just then, I KID YOU NOT, the old song “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads starts playing on the Surf Shack’s sound system. I don’t point this out to him. No need to accentuate the moment.
Besides, he’s excitedly telling me about his job now.
“I just got hired as a sushi chef. I’m working with Ginsu knives.” He says this with relish. I nearly spit out my drink.
“They give you knives and teach you how to use them,” he adds.
“So it’s not just a job then. It’s practice, in a way…” I say, joking darkly.
“I know.” He replies, a little too excitedly.
About this time I notice the sweatshirt he’s wearing. It says “Psych Ward.” And has a serial number on it. It was designed as a joke, and for most people it is. But Kelly helpfully points out, “Oh, I’ve been there, dude. UCLA. Three different times.”
There’s still time to kill before the show – no pun intended. I decide to scare him in return.
“I’d like to talk to you about my faith.”
“Oh, you a Jesus freak?”
“No. I’m a Scientologist.”
“You are?!” he says. Now HE looks nervous. Leave it to Scientology to be the religion that freaks out serial killers.
“No, not really,” I say. “I’m Catholic.”
“Then I’m sorry about your childhood,” he jokes.
Wait a minute. YOU’RE the killer, I’m thinking. What happened in YOUR childhood? But I’m, again, afraid to ask, instead soaking in the irony of a serial killer and a Christian sharing the same table. Which is scarier?
I tell him I admitted to my faith because I have trust in God that I’ll be OK and that he won’t let me get hurt.
“”Isn’t that the way it always works?” he replied. “Trust God, then bam! A hurricane comes along, or a car accident and bam! They’re just as dead as the rest of us,” he says.
Dark but true. I admit I have no reply to offer.
“I’m just sayin,’” he says.
So he went on that night and indeed killed. From the stage. And thankfully, so did I. We were a regular team, only I was afraid he’d try to take it further and make me his accomplice, like we were the two weirdos in “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.”
I thought, maybe I can be his friend at the open mikes, see him ‘round the scene. But I’m not gonna get in his car again.
Then I realize it’s almost midnight. It’s gonna be a bitch getting home on the bus. Guess who I hitched a ride back to Hollywood with?
He dropped me off at a bus stop on Sunset near La Cienega.
I turned to say thanks. He said he had to hurry home ‘cause of curfew.
“Oh, strict parents?”
“No. Legally enforced. The state wants to know where I am after midnight.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You have got to be shitting me?! Leave it to you to run into some psycho!! LOL
Post a Comment