Just Along for the Ride.

Went out last night with some friends, Chase and Marie and Sha-hid. We were at the rapily declining Les Deux, it was very young and high school, maybe college aged. We had fun unto ourselves, but the place seems done.

Anyway, a friend, Ari was outside, trying to get in, so Chase went out to try to get him in. Things got confused and we thought Chase and Ari had rolled to Winstons. Chase’s phone was dead so we couldn’t reach him. Turns out that Ari had rolled to Winstons and that Chase ended up being left behind. I thought Ari told me that they were together but the club was loud and I must have misheard. So upon getting to Winston’s and seeing no Chase, we immediately left back to Les Deux to go look for him.

Now, Chase and crew had been out since 2PM (I joined them at 1030 or so) so they were, shall we say, well on their way. Chase went back in the club, couldn’t find us, got pissed off that we bounced on him and left him before we got back to Les Deux, perhaps forty minutes after we left. He had already gotten a cab home, was cranky, etc. I was the only sober one in the bunch, so I drove the others back to Chase’s place. We got there, squared stories, dealt with Chase’s crankiness with some herbicological assistance (is that a word) and then I want to go home. By this time, it was 4AM. I had no cash, but called a cab and requested one that could accept a credit card.

While I was in the cab, I found a purse of a young lady. A phone. A digital camera. Thirty dollars wadded in a corner. Nothing else. I called her entry “Home”, spoke to her mom, who much have tracked her down. The girl called me forty minutes later. Her name is Candice.

Candice thanked me for finding her purse and offering to return it. She then told me where she was and asked me to meet her at the Roosevelt hotel, where its clear she is drunk, again. In fact, on the phone of a friend, Ahmed, whose name she had to ask (so maybe they just met), I heard her say to a girlfriend, I cannot believe I am drunk again. It was perhaps 1:30PM.

I don’t know whether I was more taken aback by the fact that this girl was drunk again, with a strange dude, or that she was presumptuous enough to ask me to deliver her purse to her instead of coming to get it on her own. She did confide that none of her group was sober, which was why she asked me to deliver it to her. Fair enough, at least she is being responsible enough not to ask Ahmed to drive drunk.

Anyway, this is just a little slice of life, and while I like LA, this is so typically Los Angeles (the girl is from a suburb called Gardenia, her mother told me when we talked). Its one of the things that does annoy me about this town, and perhaps something that scares me about the generation that follows mine.

Of course, my generation was the one that had these folks drinking from 2PM on a Saturday through the nite, and they drove to the club. I was a sober participant, just along for the ride.

Grumps

UPDATE:
Went to drop off the wallet at the Roosevelt hotel, and Candice came out to meet me. She was in all respects very gracious and appreciative. Perhaps we're not all doomed to anything worse than being frequently inebriated.