A Trip To the ATM (Mom, Please Don’t Read)

“Man, today was so fucked up.”

I glance to my right to see that the stoner with the long black hair tied in a ponytail is talking to me. He’s wearing a shirt listing about two-dozen different types of cannabis. I don’t know this guy. We’re staying at the same hostel. I live on the second floor; he lives on the first. Our only contact we’ve had with each other is in passing.

“Oh, yeah?” I think to myself—because my day has been pretty erratic, too. It started when I went to the ATM this morning to withdraw money out of my dwindling bank account so I could pay for another week’s hospitality at the hostel. While I was there, punching in my PIN number with one hand and covering the keypad with my other hand (as is suggested by a sign on the machine), a man walked down the sidewalk.

No, walked isn’t the right past tense verb. Limped is more like it. This man limped down the sidewalk. But that wasn’t what caught my eye. It was the man’s hair. It was very blonde, sticking straight up off his head in all directions, and it looked as though the front half had been shaved. To get a better idea of this image, look at yourself in the mirror. Now, imagine all of your hair missing from the front of your left ear all the way over to the front of your right ear in a clean-cut line. That was what was going on with the limping man. But it didn’t stop there. The man was also wearing a pink and black nylon jump suit—the kind Susanne Somers would wear in a Thigh Master commercial. But clearly, this man had made some alterations to his workout ensemble, as his number also sported pink frills like you would find on a traditional ballerina costume.

I watched as this hybrid fashionista clomped past me and into the bank. Having dealt with people like that in the past at previous jobs, I wished the good people at the bank the best of luck in dealing with this character and scampered off to my hostel.

After paying my rent, it was time to get ready for the second round of the interview that I’m dangerously under-qualified for. Another trip to Santa Monica later, and I was back in the Internet savvy, hipster bordello. I snuck a quick peak at Paul’s super cool office and then took a crash course on how to load information onto a website. It had something to do with modules and string theory and table making—all things I’m either a little rusty on or know nothing about. Eventually, they set me loose to try doing it on my own. It took a long time, but I think I finished doing what they told me to do. I’m left to assume if I did finish I did it wrong, because as of this writing, it’s been over a week and they have yet to call me back. But I was pretty confident I wasn’t going to get the job as I left the parking garage, so I’d already decided to hop back on Craigslist and apply for more jobs as soon as I got back to the hostel for the second time today.

Even the best laid out plans go awry. The first thing I did when I got back to the hostel was check out my email. In my inbox there was a message from the good people at Weezer HQ with more info on the music video I’m trying to get involved with. This one was asking for people to specify what they wanted to take part in. I could be in either Weezer’s World Record Hootenanny, Weezer’s World Record Dodgeball Game, Weezer’s World Record Custard Pie Fight, Weezer’s World Record Air Guitar Performance, or ALL EVENTS. Seeing as how I don’t have anything better to do, and because I’m a whore, I signed up for ALL EVENTS. Hopefully, they get the details all ironed out soon—the shoot is in two days.

Another sweltering hot California day was complimented by an easy, breezy California night. I went outside to enjoy the cool calm. For whatever reason, I walked past Sait, Marko, and Hiro, and sat down at a picnic table next to Gweat’s who was smoking a blunt. Baked out of his mind, he started telling me about raccoons or something. Not being able to follow his train of thought, I just listened and occasionally did a head nod.

Our one sided conversation was interrupted by the stoner with the long black ponytail. This pot dumpster’s radar must’ve been set off by the Grape Ape smoke wafting through the air. He approached Gweat’s and I, asking, “Would either of you happen to be California Medical Card carrying members?”

This is slang for, “Do you have any weed?” Gweat’s knew where this was going. The stoner wanted a hookup. Gweats, being an actual California Medical Card carrying member, is always asked to share his stash by everyone that gets a whiff of him. Understandably, Gweat’s hates being the go-to guy, so he headed for the hills. Not the Hollywood Hills, mind you. Rather, back upstairs to our room.

Everyone knows a stoner’s vision is based on movement, so I decided to sit perfectly still and silent, waiting for him to go away. After all, I don’t know this guy, and I don’t have weed, so there’s no reason he’ll wait around. He’s got pot to find, dammit!

“Man, today was so fucked up.”

Shit. It didn’t work. “Oh, yeah?” I thought to myself.

“Yeah, man. Oh, man. I can’t believe what I did today.”

Wait, what? Did this stoner just read my mind? Are they evolving? How can I avoid them if they can pick up my brain patterns? This is not good. My paranoia eventually subsided and I realized I said, “Oh yeah?” out loud. The stoner continued:

“Dude, I was in a porno today.”

Had I of been drinking a Gatorade the way I am recollecting this encounter in my memory, I would have done a spit take. As it were, I was not.

“What?” I asked to make sure I heard clearly, even though I very much knew that I had, because porno doesn’t sound like too many other words. “Dude, I was in a borno today,” or “Dude, I was in a norno,” are rarely uttered sentences and even if they were, they would mean nothing.

The stoner with the black ponytail put his porno face in his porno hands and muttered, “Oh man, I can’t believe I did a porno today.”

Without asking, he started telling me all about how it happened. Apparently, this ugly, greasy, overweight stoner with long black hair’s old girlfriend is an up-and-coming porn star, and she got him the gig. Before he could do the shoot, he had to get checked to make sure he had a clean bill of health. This process involves going to a special porno clinic where they check for STDs, which I’ve heard is a painful process to go through. If you are clean, you state your name to someone on the set of the shoot. That person calls in your name and gets confirmation the talent has been given the go-ahead. With everything in the clear, the talent halts their conversation on how Dostoevsky resonates in a postmodern society, shake hands, and get to fucking!

From what I gathered from the stoner, it didn’t sound as though this were a high profile shoot. It was probably done on a Circuit City-bought DV camera, and outside of the talent, consisting of the stoner, his ex-girlfriend, and some other girl, and possibly a director, the only other crew on hand were probably unpaid interns getting college credit for their time. Chances are, if it shows up anywhere, it’ll probably be on some obscure South Korean website. One thing’s for certain, though—wherever it ends up, Dallas will find it.

Continuing on, he told me he got paid $450 to do it. Not a bad haul for a day’s work. Personally, I charge twice that, but this was his first day. You’ve gotta start somewhere, right?

I could tell something was nagging him. Maybe it was a new strain of the herpes simplex virus that went undetected at the clinic. I egged him on, and eventually he admitted he went ATM.

ATM? Not knowing what ATM was, I inquired further. The stoner dropped his face back into his hands, obviously embarrassed of going ATM. Come on, man. Earlier today you were in a porno—you’re a little long in the tooth now to be getting bashful.

“It’s Ass To Mouth.”

Then time stopped. I tried to hold back a laugh. I don’t know if I was successful. This asshole had eaten out of someone else’s asshole. And it’s on film. Do you think he’s brushed his teeth since?

From a distance, I tried to console him in his time of grief, reminding him that he got paid $450 to wear a shit-eating grin around for the rest of the day, and that sometimes, in order to get money, you’ve got to hit up an ATM. He didn’t get the joke. That’s okay. It wasn’t funny.

Then the guy insisted I could do porn. “Dude, you could totally do it, you could totally do it,” he said. “If you want, I could hook you up.”

I tossed the idea around in my head. This might be my only chance in life to have intercourse with someone that is conscious or of age of consent (that’s a joke. I just wanted to go there before Jay did). Then I thought of my heroes—John Holmes, Ron Jeremy, and Dustin “Dirty Sanchez” Diamond—and how I would be carrying on their legacy. Then it occurred to me those three porn stars aren’t my heroes at all—my heroes are Martin Van Buren, the FDNY, and Batman. Then I reviewed my lifelong dreams, which are to fly into outer space, coach a little league team to a championship, and to not be in a porno. I could never accomplish the last one on the list if ever I appeared in a porno. Trying to be polite, I told the stoner I’d have to get back to him on that one.

It was time to put the kibosh on this conversation, so I bid the stoner adieu, and wished him the best of luck on finding pot and a guiltless conscious. He’ll probably find one of them, but not the other. This is California after all.