Well i'm getting lazy in my old age so here's a rerun........
SATURDAY NIGHT REQUIEM.....
(sign reads)EXIT....................thank god. I push the door open with a sigh of relief, the music behind me escapes like it had been my cellmate the last 6 months. “Man I should of stayed home tonight”. But then again I tell myself that every Saturday night, so it’s becoming somewhat of a catch phrase these days. Glancing behind me I see Spencer still half-grinning from the past hour. I can picture him going over in his head the conversation he’s had with the hot Italian chick he sat next to all night. I wonder if he got her number.…..with all the time he spent there, he better have. GLO mutters out loud, “Man I’m still rolling...” Chuckling, I think to myself, lucky you, if only mine lasted me THAT long. Show me a pill that sets me straight for 5 hours and I’ll show you what “real love” is.......
As we finally get to the car, I realize that these nights out seemed to have worn on us. As the months have passed, our zeal for “partying” seems soured, our ranks have shrunk, not to mention the cash that goes buh bye along with it. And our health? Let’s just not even go there….. But hey, that’s what being a weekend warrior is all about , right? It’s a war of attrition folks, last man (fool) standing………
GLO starts his car and the music is instantly back, “hey old friend…… you just couldn’t stay away could ya? Fool….” I think there’s something to be said about riding in the back of a lowered import at 2 in the morning. Custom speakers making you deafer than you realize you are, I mean it’s a ritual, passage into manhood kind of thing. So down the 405 we go. I lay my head back and soon I can’t figure out whether my head is actually throbbing from the car itself or it just plain fucking hurts. But hey, that’s what running a 102 degree fever the day before and actually saying “YES” to a night at the clubs the next day will do. Man, I’m a retard. I need a mom, no wait a girlfriend, better yet a priest… something shit! Or maybe just more pills. That would be classic wouldn’t it? Pills that make you sick so you take more pills to make you better only to found out you need more pills to be sick all over again.
10 minutes into my own self-pity, Spencer casually says, “Shit”. I look up and see a sea of brake lights and down the horizon…sirens, dozens of sirens fanned out all across the freeway.
We are completely stopped …….
“Are you kidding me?” GLO mutters. I look around and people slowly are getting out of their cars. About 200 hundred yards away, a bright dance of police sirens flash non-stop. “I think we might be here a while G. You might as well shut off your engine. “ 5 minutes later every car within eye distance is shut off and people are standing on the famed 405. I start to realize…….there’s a story to be told here.
“Hey, let me out Spencer, I wanna see what’s going on. “ That was the first time I ever set foot on a major freeway. I mean driving everyday on it is one thing. But to actually stand still in the middle of it was a completely different beast. It was like one of those dark dreams we all sometimes get, where the reality of your world gets twisted into something strange, suedo-like. None of the hundred or so people that were stuck there really knew what was going on. For the first 15 minutes or so everyone was left wondering, many aggravated with the delay. But as time pasted, something almost wonderful happened……..
Usually, strangers talking to each other is not all that uncommon, we do it all the time. You need to know the time? You ask the stranger next to you. You need a smoke? You ask the fine lady for a light. But given it was 3 in the morning, in the middle of the 405, in a sometimes very heartless, uncaring city we call LA, well…….
to be continued.
