ADVENT 1.12: VITALI & I
The sweet smell of crack smoke wafted through the otherass miasma of the train car, hurtling downtown along the Los Angeles Metro Red Line1 —
sharp squeal on the tracks, layered sensoria revealed:
Spanish, spoken. Nervous.
The agonized screams of the damned, in what English the damned can manage.
A bald man with red drug eyes frenetically strums a guitar, occupying the MIDS and highs, taking up space, tenor-singing, economically working his way through Beatles cuts in a lilting performance that is entirely at odds with the keep-it-moving straightforwardness of the “c’mon y’all help me out” beg-spiel that follows,
offered to averted eyes.
These contradictions and idiosyncrasies manifest as charisma in their proper application, but the airless ass-to-elbows jam of the train car CRUNCH is not a target rich environment2 for the Mersey-minded busker.
Few are masked3.
I know the poisoned confectionery plumehiss of crack-cocaine from common walls and under doors in childhood, and it is coiled,
now, in the cheapo clear glass-stem of a pipe held aloft by the man whose entire back-body rubs mine as the train jostles and the hangers jockey — he is swaying in his own slow time to the weeping guitar.
It’s time for an intermission — the player must collect.
The BUSKER side-slide-steps his way through the sardine frottagerie assembled:
“A quarter. Anything, man! A quarter! Anything!”
It’s not working out.
My cracksmoking slow dance partner’s become irritated in the absence of the music, and picks a fight with a bald-goateed fellow in an ill-fitting shiny black leather car-coat, about a standing-person-and-a-half’s distance away:
well within reach.
They’d previously been VIBING together, the crack smoker’s wisps joining the exhaled cigarette puffs of The Jacketeer as they danced the rush hour blues to the infectious harmonies. The Jacketeer sees an US that the cracksmoker does not see:
a micro-party on the train! AH, fellowship —
I’d watched The Jacketeer as he’d spread broad lips, full teeth smiling — so much whiter than imagination’d had it, are they real? — as he beheld his front-facing dance partner,
WHO BEHELD NO ONE.
Looking around, looking around, looking around:
the dance of eyes full-faced, unsanctioned as the smoke.
Taking hits in tandem, allowing the bolder smoker to lead him — his eyes are all goddamn red, too, behind little dorky rectangular glasses, and that ain’t weed red, what is that?, who knows, maybe we find out — he was ecstatic in the moment, lost in the music, full teeth, full teeth, all around, everybody, ALL MOUTH, a little kid! — he’d found a brother, he’d found a friend, he’d found entertainment —
this is life, this is life.
AND THIS IS DEATH:
“MOTHERFUCKER I WILL KILL YOU, THEY AIN’T EVEN GONNA FIND YOUR BODY, I’M GONNA STAB YOU SO MANY FUCKIN TIMES,”
shit.
The Jacketeer’s smile closes, fades.
The child is gone.
The scared adult is here — cracksmoker’s got chaos and fire and momentum.
This goes poorly for the Jacketeer, should it GO.
Lower lip tremble, slight.
He remains silent.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
“FUCK OUT MY FACE BOY, I’MA FUCKING STAB YOU, BITCH ASS MOTHERFUCKING HO ASS SISSY ASS BITCH MOTHER FUCKER,”
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
This dude’s insults are circular, redundant, and of questionable coherence,
but his followthrough seems imminent.
FROM LEFT, UNDER: “No quiere sentir?”
A short woman catches my eye to the extent possible, being as I am green-glassed in (as it turns out!) Correctly Cynical Fuck Off Sunglasses — I am not a human being, I am not available, I am masked-and-glassed, I’m Mil Mascaras, I’m Cien Caras, I’m Marcello fucking Mastroianni — I am no one and I am elsewhere.
I wordlessly sweep an arm rightward and she follows its arc to her new seat, front row:
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
“I’M GONNA SHOOT YOU AND THEN I’M GONE STAB YOU AND THEN—”
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
[guitar]
Busker’s back. A new calm.
She loves you. She loves you.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Crisis fucking averted, the boys are back in sway, though the loving trust of new fast friendship has left the Jacketeer’s reddened eyes, and his features have sunk and receded, ever so slightly. He wears new invisible restraints in his joy and in his acts.
He is controlled.
He still puts on. He’s just looking for a good time. Trying to eke something out of something.
I understand.
The seated woman talks with a standing companion, and scribbles notes in marker-felt about the two men nearly-altercated, as the standee relays the “See Something, Say Something
I don’t know who the hell they think is going to do something about this, exactly, and would never conceive of doing such a thing myself — I have long since accepted brutality as corpse-cold factual, and “society
Shared values? What values?
My mind races with scenarios of late-arriving detectives.
I’d had an awful hour-or-so-long panic attack prior to leaving my house — in the full thrall of the thing I’d found myself stamping my feet and banging rhythms on myself, attempting to locate.
I am going, today, to Santa Monica, to meet someone, and to watch a film, in that order.
I have a mission.
Eyes Wide Shut on 35 mm: presented by Kubrick’s long-standing assistant,
whose own mission has exceeded death.
I love the film but I’m here for him.
His name is Leon Vitali, and if you want to find out about him, you should watch a documentary called Filmworker from 2018. He has a very particular disposition and manner that I will not describe to you, other than to let you in on the shameful narcissistic conceit at the core of today’s journey:
A woman, you see,
(heeeeeeeere WEEEeee gggGGGGGGO)
had approached me in the street one day,
as I’d been walking one of the dogs.
She wore silver boots and curls, and spoke a low purred close-singers’ alien calm.
Introductory nothingtalk of careers or local proximity or what-the-fuck-ever gave way to the revelation that I am, in some way, LIKE Leon Vitali, and that furthermore — she grew up with him as a part of her life, and that it’s a relationship she cares for and maintains. This person’s got deep knowledge. Must be onto something.
GOOD GOD. An opportunity to find out what it is people are seeing.
And such a SPECIFIC reference, just, just, utterly:
AMBROSIA
But what does it mean?
I’d previously known of him, in the shallowest anonymous sense, without immediate name recall or any kind of deep understanding, and absolutely no mental picture, no model — I’d known Stanley’d had a GUY, but I knew nothing of his trials.
I mindbanked his name like a creep, and on exiting the interaction made my way back home, where I’d left my “phone”5 with a Mind to Google: a curious cat looking for its next life.
I’d had to look him up, to see if I looked up, to see what’s up —
What’s it about? Who am I now? Another one? Again? Shit.
ON VISUAL:
ah, I can see it.
And I’m not at all insulted. In fact I think I’m pleased.
Telling anyone they look like anyone else is a Deadly Game.
I’ll spare you the specifics of comparisons drawn —
(two exceptions made)
I have had my throat slit with compliments, many times over.
They meant well.
AND YET—
but Leon, here:
Lands on me a hell of a lot better than the Brian Jones6 a glossy-haired slickblack leather jacketed woman’d tried to hang on me in an adjacent observation some coffee shop morn of yore, to which I’d replied — ever the charmer-cooperator, ever a mind to assist people to pleasure —
“you’re right, we’ve both been dead and rotting for a long time.”
narcissistic solipsistic self-suck of the
WHAT DOES ANYONE WANT?
The Jacketress’d been hitting on a person not in the mood, and pulled the wrong card.
You can’t always get what you want. (“There it is. Take it.”)
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME —
I —
I said enough about me!
I — Oh hell.
The film was fantastic. You’ve seen it. If you haven’t, you might want to prioritize that.
If you’re here, I feel it’s likely you’ve seen it. But have you SEEN it? I saw it.
In all my gathered nervousness —the first train’d been live-action Hogarth, the second train’d featured a racially-motivated fistfight7 that got just close enough for me to wonder at the appropriateness of intervention, and the Expo Line trains, which are difficult to visually identify8 beyond their prominent GLACEAU VITAMIN WATER livery, apparently no longer call out the stops, so I was near-late for the showing — I found myself headbanging to the soundtrack, at points.
I made note of the sleek black boots Vitali wore in his role as ‘Red Cloak’ in the film’s most famous scene, and admired the expressiveness and control of his posture, gait, and movement.
At the film’s conclusion, Leon took the stage and answered some basic questions. He’d be available for questions and commentary after. He speaks low ciggy rumble, gently aristocratic — his casting in Barry Lyndon seems obvious, now.
He’s in a red cloak again, though this go ‘round’s a much more conventional buttoned affair, rendered in what looks like melton wool, with sharpy angled flapover pockets, intercut with a pale red scarf. The jacket’s brightness balances atop tapered cinders, close-fitting black jeans, which cut an unmistakeable silhouette punctuated by black suede Wallabees. A Gucci headwrap secures his silver-red hair.
A cosmic hunter.
As to that jacket —
I am not of the mind to believe that a person who assisted Stanley Kubrick for several decades is prone to accidental decision-making.
I prevision asking as to the coat’s manufacture while the house lights come up and the audience collects its arousal and confusion, humming Ligeti or liturgy for the exits.
LEON’S OUT QUICK, cigarette lit about the time he hits the doorstep.
Several people make small talk with him. I lie in wait, with all my strange questions. He’s asked all manner of things about the making of films, technical specifications, his career — all the shit I have no intention of talking about.
An opportunity presents itself, and I attempt an interjection:
“I really liked your shoes in the film.”
Tragically, I’d spoken simultaneously, and the other speaker had the wide-eyed gaze of the Film Enthusiast With a Whole Lot of Questions. I was fucked.
Leon gave me an odd look and offered his thanks — though in seeking photos for this writing I found an odd story about those shoes, and now I’m left to wonder if I’ve accidentally hung a Brian Jones albatross of my own — and he turned to volunteer himself to the enthusiast’s onslaught of technical questions, the dedicated Filmworker.
I took my own busted boots — Gucci9 here too — (they’re underwriting this) — (I’m over writing this) — anyway, I, I, I —
I left the neighborhoody section of Santa Monica that houses the Aero Theater, hooked it to the ocean-front, and then turned around for a march from the sea to my own home in Los Feliz, a journey that culminated at 6 o’clock in the morning; spanning Westwood, Century City, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and its feral eastern double.
I’d type it all up now, but I fear we’re running out of electrons, and I wonder at anyone’s continued reading.
I’ll just have to tell you some other time.
LA Metro has assigned new names to the train system that have made this more confusing. Among the Noble Elect who choose to ride LA public transit, the old nomenclature prevails.
It’s important to remember that all audiences are not “equal,” and that there is no moral element to this statement.
If there’s ever an after:
This is being written during a global pandemic that is currently functioning as planetary suicide.
It’s all Jonestown now.
Interpret this in the orthodox Thatcherite sense at your peril.
I say what I say, not what other people do or did.
Not my first rodeo, not my last misadventure.
The fight everyone who has ever lived in any American city and taken transit has seen play out in various formats a million times over.
This iteration’s inciting event was the entry of a a boombox-wielder playing “My Prerogative” at a volume that did not sit well with the slur-thrower to be.
If you’ve ever been on a bus or a train here:
You’ve seen this one before, and you know just how it plays out, and it did play out in full obviousness.
Genuinely:
Whoever designed the informational arrays for the Los Angeles Metro is a war criminal.
A man with a bantam wedge haircut and chiseltoe black leather harness boots shaped similarly to mine kept dangling his boots at me with intent on train #2.
I think he wanted briefly to be my boyfriend.
I wonder who he thought I looked like.