Clareified

DAWN SUMMERS: NATIONAL TRAVELER

To think, just a week ago right this minute, I was hanging 31,000 feet in the air aboard Song Airlines 2030 on my way to L.A. for the weekend. For the second straight year, I made my birthday season a bi-coastal affair and headed West to stay with Mr. & Mrs. Pearatty.
First off, I highly, highly, highly recommend Song airlines. I managed to get a roundtrip ticket to LA LA Land for less than $300 roundtrip on one week’s notice! The seats were extremely comfortable (basically, what I imagine first class to be, should I ever be fortunate enough to travel first class…that reminds me, got to play Mega Millions today!) there was tons of leg room and…AND…I had my own personal TV!!
(Ok, and before anyone mentions blah blah blah Jet Blue…these televisions actually had channels with shows that I’d actually want to watch..not stupid Food Channel and Travel like Jet Blue…plus, Song was cheaper. And cleaner and nicer in every way…someone please forward the link to this post to the good people at Song!)
Anyway, I watched Murder She Wrote and the WSOP Circuit Game Final table, between naps all the way to Cali. It was sooo awesome, I didn’t once think about the fact that the plane was hovering in mid-air, supported by nothing and should the slightest thing go wrong, it would mean certain death for us all.
Pearatty, of course, not on the verge of leaving her job, was working on this random Friday morning, so I planned to head out to the Commerce Casino at the Crowne Plaza Hotel located, as Mike Sexton always says on the World Poker Tour “just minutes from Downtown L.A.”
I figured since I would touch down at noon, and pearatty would get out early (around 3) to come get me, it was just enough for me to have fun, but not long enough to lose too much money.
I planned to take an airport shuttle to the casino, but when I got to ground transport, the shuttle bus courtesy phone, instead of saying, ‘Dawn we will be out front in five minutes, please enter your credit card number,’ gave me some complicated directions to their “island’ in the airport under some red sign and a man in a blue vest who ‘would be happy to help me.’
Bah.
I went outside looking for a cab and saw a sign for ‘hotel courtesy shuttles.’ I remembered coming out here with Pyro and her mom on our way to China and taking the courtesy van to the Holiday Inn where we spent the night. (Interesting side note, I bought my mom a tea set on that aforementioned trip to China. I delicately carried it in my hands all the way from our Shanghai hotel to the China National Airport, through the 19 hour flight to L.A., all the way from the plane to the Holiday Inn courtesy van bus stop, where I rested it on top my luggage for a moment. And yes, a moment later, where I was picking it up off the concrete sidewalk where it had fallen. Sigh.)
Anyway, after sobbing from the memory of my shattered tea set, it dawned on me that if the Holiday Inn had a courtesy shuttle…so would the Crowne Plaza.
I called the number on my Commerce Casino print out and asked them if they had one.
I was transferred to the front desk, then to the concierge, then back to the front desk…in the interim, I saw a small distinctive maroon colored van heading toward me.
As it passed, I saw CROWNE PLAZA blazed across the side!
I hung up the phone and ran to catch it.
I grabbed a seat in the van and waited for assorted flight attendants and pilots to put their luggage in the back and fill in the rest of seats.
When we pulled away from the curb, I very proudly thought to myself:
“My goodness, Dawn, you are a resourceful genius.”
“Why thank you, Dawn. You’re not so bad yourself,” came the reply.
We drove for a few minutes when the van turned into the Crowne Plaza driveway.
We had not left the airport compound.
Uh oh.
Everyone else quickly disembarked and wheeled their luggage into the hotel.
I waited in my seat…maybe this is the first stop…
The bus driver poked his head in.
“You going back to the terminal, ma’am?”
“Uhmm…no…I’m going to the Crowne Plaza hotel in Commerce.” And don’t call me ma’am you son-of-a-bitch.
“Woo…I don’t go out there…we’re heading back to the terminals. This is it, ma’am.”
“Ok.” And seriously, I will smash your glasses and shove each shard into a different orifice in your body, if you ma’am me again.
I got off the van and walked into the lobby of this non-having-a-casino-Crowne Plaza. I went to the valet desk.
“Umm…how do I get to Commerce…I’m trying to go to the other Crowne Plaza…”
“I can call you a cab”
“How much will that be?”
“About 45-50 dollars,” he said as he picked up the phone to call a cab company,
WHAT? That’s half my poker playing stash…
“Wait! Umm…is there another way to get there? A subway or bus or something?”
“Yeah, we have a bus, but that’d take you two or three hours,” he said still holding the phone in his hand.
“Uhmm…I’m not in a rush. How do I take the bus?”
He stared at me incredulously and slowly put the phone back on the receiver.
“Well…the bus stop’s about a mile from here…why don’t you ask our concierge? He can give you more specific directions.”
I passed through the sliding automatic doors and headed for the desk toward the back.
There was a middle-aged African-American gentleman, in a business suit, sitting in the chair.
The concierge was a young Hispanic man in his twenties and he was calling a cab for the business suit guy.
“Ok, Sir, it’ll meet you outside in five minutes.”
“Thank you, son.”
They shook hands and I occupied the chair as soon as he left.
“Hi. I actually am trying to get to the Crowne Plaza in Commerce. Is there a shuttle bus that’ll take me there?” I asked taking one more shot at my original plan.
“Nah…too far. Why’d you make a reservation all the way out there?”
“Umm…” Damn you, Mike Sexton, Damn YOU!
“My secretary made the reservation, she didn’t realize there were two.”
He exhaled sharply and reached for the phone.
“Well, I can call you a cab.”
“No! The valet said there was a bus nearby…” my voice trailed off as he stared at me in alarm.
“Yeah, there is a bus, but it’ll take hours.”
“That’s ok…I’ve got time.”
He printed out directions for me and also gave me a map.
He spread the map out marking several locations with Xs. He circled one in yellow.
“That’s my house!”
Uhmm…terrif.
“Oh…great…”
I inched out of the chair and slowly backed away until I was safely on the sunny side of the automatic doors.
The directions seemed pretty simple.
Left, right, straight, bus terminal, Bus 42 to Bus 204.
I walked out of the driveway and made the first turn. I made the second turn, I walked straight for about ten minutes, but still didn’t see any of the streets on the maps or the directions.
I stopped a portly Latino man I saw walking toward me on the street.
“Excuse me, sir. I am looking for the City Bus Terminal.”
“Sorry, I don’t know where that is,” he said without stopping.
The sun was hot and there was nothing but vast expanses of cement and asphalt.
I thought about how I never learn my lessons about doing things cheaply.
Just the day before, I had decided to get a free meal “at” Tavern on the Green by signing up for the firmwide “Central Park scavenger hunt.”
And now, here I was again, not even 24 hours later…walking aimlessly in the hot sun.
The next person I saw was a street sweeper. She was in uniform and pulling a garbage pail and broom behind her.
I asked her for directions and she pointed me back in the direction I had just come from. Turns out I turned right when I should have turned left.
(See what happens when you don’t make the L shape with your thumb and pointer?)
I found the bus stop and waited for the 42 bus…I saw the 42A turning into the depot.
I sheepishly asked the driver if the bus went to Downtown LA even though the huge banner on the top of the bus said 42A-Downton LA.
Whatever, I’ll never see him again.
I picked a seat near the window and popped in my headphones.
No eye contact. At any time.
I e-mailed pearatty to let her know where I was and how sad I was to be there.
“Why are you sad, you could hook up with Keanu Reeves on that bus!”
A quick glance around confirmed my hunch that this was, in fact, not a possibility.
Two hours later, the bus pulled into the urban disaster area that is downtown L.A. (Hopefully, the new mayor will address why L.A.’s downtown looks like New Haven in the 80s?)
Pearatty e-mailed to say that a partner had hit her with an assignment that would prevent her from leaving early, so we decided to have lunch and I would go to the casino later and probably stay longer.
We ate at a food court near her job and I regaled her with the tale of my weekends of spite flight.
Afterwards, she walked me to the bus stop and I continued my attempt to get to the Commerce Casino located “minutes from Downtown L.A.”
The second bus took about forty minutes to come.
And as for the claim that Commerce was “minutes” away…I must say that while an hour and twelve minutes can technically be represented as 72 minutes, the spirit of the phrase “minutes away” was clearly violated.
Commerce was much danker than it appears on television.
The process of finding the low limit tables and getting one’s name on the board was also much more difficult than at the Tropicana or Borgata (the only other “brick and mortar” casinos I’ve played poker in). I finally found my way to the 1-2 HE table.
The main difference between playing at friends’ houses or from the comforts of your own home and playing at a casino table, is that you really have no control over the people seated next to you.
For instance, the table I joined consisted of an octogenarian on some kind of IV drip and his wife. She too was definitely in her 80s and would periodically push her dentures out of her mouth and suck them back in. I’m sure it was a tell, but I was way too grossed out to watch when she did it and what kinds of hands she played afterward.
At the ends of the table were two college students. To my right were a Mexican couple who kept telling each what cards they held in Spanish. And exclaiming to God whenever the old lady started to play denture hokey pokey. Finally, to my right was a Middle Eastern or south east Asian man who had not bathed in at least a year.
“I have Ace. I have Ace.” He would shout during every freaking hand.
But in terms of the game, I thought I would do pretty well against this group.
I was wrong.
The following hand was pretty indicative of my day.
I held AJ.
I raised.
Everybody called.
The flop came 3 3 A.
I bet.
Two people called.
The next card was a 9.
I bet. The old man checks his cards and bets.
The last card was a 4.
I bet.
The old man checks his cards.
He calls.
Turns over J 3.
The crazy “I got Ace” guy would raise and re-raise on double gut shot straight draws.
“Well, if I get jack and nine. I have straight.”
Yes, buddy, but in the meantime you’ve got seven high.
Karol has a saying for this which involves her grandma having balls.
I couldn’t put them on any hands and stayed in more than I should with just a pair because I kept thinking it might be good.
It’s a sad, sad thing when someone who has been playing poker for more than a year calls a twelve dollar bet with a pair of fives and a nine kicker, even though there are all kinds of straights and full house possibilities on the board.
But when you’ve folded three of kind because there is four to a flush on the board and two people are raising and re-raising, only to have two pair win the pot, you start doing crazy things.
Pearatty had e-mailed to see if I wanted to have dinner with a friend of ours from law school and the friend’s new “boyfriend.”
“Is ‘he’ really a girl?” I wrote back, wondering why the word boyfriend was in quotes.
“I’ve never met him, so I assume she made him up until proven otherwise.”
Ah.
The game continued to kick my ass, but thankfully, pearatty called to say that she was outside before I had gone completely broke.
I got in the car and she hurriedly says “I almost got arrested waiting for you out here!”
“What!?”
“Yeah, I pulled up out front and the security guard came up to the car and asked me if I wanted valet. I told him I was just here waiting for someone inside and then he walked away.”
I waited for the rest of the story. You know, the guard insisting that she move, her resisting, the guard pulling out his walkie talkie and calling for backup, sirens in the distance.
“And?”
“Oh, that’s it. It was very scary.”
Dude.
We met up with up Milicent at the restaurant. She was alone.
I looked at pearatty knowingly.
“Hey guys!
Pearatty and I exchanged looks again.
“What?” Millie asked.
“Nothing…you know, you don’t have to make up a boyfriend just to impress me. I’m sure someday, you’ll meet someone great and until then, you’re fabulous just the way you are.”
Pearatty laughed.
Millie smiled.
“What do you mean? Josh is right here,” she said gesturing to empty space, “I can’t believe you didn’t even say hi to him.”
We laughed.
I extended my hand to Josh.
“Pleasure to meet you. That’s a great tie you’re wearing.”
“DAWN! He’s not wearing a tie,” Mille protested.
Ahhh… actors turned lawyers, we could keep this up all day.
Fortunately, Josh was a real person and was just parking the car.
We had a great dinner and then went to see Charlie and the Factory of Cavities and Diabetes.
The movie was okay, but my obsession with Johnny Depp continues unabated. He did the best Michael Jackson impersonation since Amy Poehler on SNL last year.
When we got home, we settled into the living room to chat and watch the lavaness of the lava lamp.
Pearatty got up to go to the bathroom.
“So, nice designs with the toilet paper,” she said when she came back.
“What?”
“The toilet paper in the bathtub…that was you wasn’t it?”
“Umm…no.”
I followed her back to the bathroom and sure enough there was a long strand of toilet paper delicately draping across the soap dish.
“Dude…why on earth would I do that?”
“I don’t know…you thought it was funny?”
She looked worried now.
“Then who did it?”
I tried not to laugh.
“It was you!”
“No…dude…it wasn’t, but it’s just toilet paper…right?”
Now I was getting worried.
She went to check that the back door was locked…turning back only to grab the baseball bat by her bed.
Oh no…I’m going to be murdered by the Pasadena Toilet Paper Strangler!
The doors were secure.
We both stared at the strange décor again. The house was completely still, except for the whirring of the fan.
THE FAN!
Of course!
It had blown the last of the toilet paper off the roll and swept it up against the bathtub wall, where it stuck to the soap dish.
We looked at each other…yes…definitely the fan had done it and not the Pasadena toilet paper strangler.
Pearatty put the bat back in her room.
I went to sleep in the room they keep for me in the front of the house. As I stared at the ceiling, I couldn’t help but wish that she had put the bat back…in my room.
The next day, pearatty and I did the most California of things and hit the beach.
We walked along the Venice boardwalk looking at trinkets and wares.
“Ooh…they put your name on rice!!”
“Dawn…they have that everywhere. You go back to New York and show everyone that you got your name in rice on Venice Beach and they will laugh at you.”
“Oh. I knew that. I meant like ‘they put your name in rice…how lame is that!”
I think she bought it.
We stopped by someplace for ice cream because I saved pearatty’s life from a couple of dogs and she owed me.
As we sat outside licking our cones, a man with a huge potbelly and a serious case of male pattern baldness strolled by our table. Since he was shirtless, I could clearly see the tattoo covering his back (although portions were hidden in the fatty love handle folds and he had two piercings in each of his man boobs.
“I guess he got all that stuff when he was young and then let himself goooo,” I commented, mid-lick.
Mildly horrified, pearatty leaned in and said:
“You do know he speaks English?”
“Oh. Right.”
After checking that the guy wasn’t following us with a pickaxe of some kind, we decided to walk to the ocean and frolic in the waves.
As we trudged across the sand, in pain and out of breath, I realized it was time to integrate daily exercise into my life.
“How…..do…..peeee….pull….run…..on…..sand?” I wheezed to pearatty.
I looked out to the surf.
“If….we….go….all….the…way…out…there…we…have….to…just….live…on…the…ocean. Can’t….go….back.
But then I looked back at the boardwalk and realized we were already more than half-way across.
Pearatty agreed to our new life as beach people and we marched on.
The water was cold as hell.
Thus endeth the beach people life.
We had lunch at some former bookstore or nightclub on the boardwalk.
I decided I hate the beach.
“Look at these people with their dog walking, bike riding, bikini clad tanned bodies…they’re just trying to make the rest of us feel bad.”
“This is where F-Train lived when he was here,” she replied.
“How can you take your life seriously when you live here?” I said with resolve.
A few strawberry daiquiris later, though, B.I.G. Smalls (as interpreted by Karol Sheinin) was playing in my head.

If I got to choose a coast I got to choose the East
I live out there, so don’t go there
But that don’t mean a nigga can’t rest in the West
See some nice breasts in the West

Well…I could do without the breasts…but you get the idea.
Pearatty, who kept attempting to forget that she had volunteered to bake me a cake for my birthday, tried to distract me with all manners of yard sales and open houses.
We went inside a townhouse in Pasadena which was a duplex with like three bedrooms and 2 and a half baths. The couple who owned it, evidently only had one outfit each, which they wore everyday because on every wall, in every room was this woman in a long white dress and veil and the man in a tuxedo. By the time, we saw the ninth or tenth photo of the pair, again in the same clothes, I began to feel very sorry for them.
“Maybe they’ve got to sell this townhouse so they can buy some new clothes…either that or they are the most obnoxious married couple on the face of the entire earth.”
I peered into a life sized wedding portrait of the pair in the study…yeah…she is definitely sleeping with his brother.
The realtors swooped in as we tried to leave.
Hi, did you like what you saw? Are you interested?
Yes, very much. My company is transferring me to the L.A. office, so I’ve just started looking for a place.
His eyes widened.
Oh…wonderful…wonderful. This is my daughter Shirley. I am Alan. Here is our card.
Thanks, I’m Dawn and this is my friend Dawn (Pearatty’s real name is Dawn too…although for most of her life she, like Alceste, went by her middle name.)
The broker seemed skeptical.
“Well, I guess my name is Dawn too!”
Alrighty.
We managed to escape the father-daughter realtor clutches and head back to the car.
Pearatty tried to drive us home, but I was too quick for her.
“Shouldn’t we go to the store and get the stuff for the cake that you volunteered to bake?”
Grin.
We stopped at the Vons on the way home.
While she picked up all the ingredients for my cake that she voluntarily volunteered to bake, I perused the birthday card aisle.
There was a white card that simply said “Thirty” in block letters on the front.
I opened it up and found the truest of truths inside.
“It’s all a big joke until it happens to you.”
Sigh.
Anyway, the thing about my birthday cakes, is that I am completely flexible. I will take any cake as long as it’s yellow, with milk chocolate frosting. There was some initial crazy talk about a coconut cake or chocolate cake, but I cried and cried. She did, however, insist on regular chocolate instead of milk chocolate.
I was assigned the responsibility of greasing the pans. I was about to brag that really, the pan greasing was the most important job in the cake making process, when the stick of butter I was using slipped from the pan and hit the floor. Butter side down.
D’oh.
We were in the process of cleaning up the floor when Mr. Pearatty burst into the kitchen, scaring us both to death.
Republicans. Frightening.
We put the cakes in the oven, when I innocently suggested a game of scrabble.
My dear readers, I do not exaggerate one ounce when I tell you this was the first full contact Scrabble game I have ever been a party to.
There was bluffing, challenging, fouling, punching, kicking, threats of turning the board over…and the pearattys were out of control too! Husband and wife torn apart by “E-lawman.”
Oh, damn you Milton Bradley, how many more must die for you and your impossible tiles!
The next day, I went with pearatty to pick up a wedding shower present for a different girl we went to law school with.
“Oh, your name is Dawn!” The salesgirl cooed as she took pearatty’s credit card, “mine too!” She said, even though she was wearing a pin, on which was printed in capital, block letters: D A W N.
Pearatty smiled.
“And you spell it right!” The salesgirl added.
“Heeeey,” I protested….giving her the evil eye because while Dawn and I have the same name, we spell it differently..
“There are many acceptable spellings of the name Dawn.”
“Oh…sorry…I just meant….um…she spells it like mine.”
I kept glaring.
The salesgirl hurried off to gift wrap the present pearatty picked out for the bride-to-be.
I played with the store model of various Williams & Sonoma products and dreamed of the day when I too would need to buy a melon baller for my kitchen.
[Insert wistful look across the horizon]
But, it was Sunday and my weekend of spite was over, I flew back across the united states, again in the comfortable Song chairs and the familiar glow of my friend television.
Cali-for-ni-a in 48 hours! But…shhhh…don’t tell Rick Blaine.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Monday, August 1st, 2005 at 12:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.