My apartment has mice. I think it has mice. I actually hope it has mice. It might just have
mouse! And that would be frightening. One incredibly prolific mouse. If it is just one
mouse, he’s toured my apartment like the Grateful Dead. He’s left his little calling cards in
about four places in my studio. And what production! I’ve gone on long steak-eating beer-
bingeing weekends and not evacuated on Sunday what this little guy has left behind. If he
were my friend and not some vermin invading my spot, I’d shake his hand. By the way, it
seems mice love corn bread mix.
It’s times like these that I wish more than ever that life was like the movies. Not to live in a
mansion or sleep with two strippers, although that would be nice, and is still in the long-term
plan. Movie life just seems so much easier.
I can’t remember the name of the movie, but in it, Christian Slater was a mute busboy and Marisa
Tomei a waitress. He reluctantly takes her back to his apartment. A fantastically quaint place in
the basement of a house. Does this busboy have mice? Oh of course not, he just has a lovely
record collection that causes Marisa to fall deeply in love with him.
He has the best apartment a bus boy, or a mute, ever rented. Some day when I’m rich and
famous, I want to own a loft like an unemployed artist from the movies. I used to tend bar and
the dishwasher worked 20 hours a day, everyday. He was from Nigeria and he worked at the bar
all night and a steak house all day. He lived in the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium with a bunch of
other guys. I can guarantee you he and the fellas didn’t have the Shangri-La that he would have
had if he was a movie dishwasher near Yankee Stadium.
Movie women are so easy to meet. You just stare at them long enough and then one will walk
over with a coquettish smile and a Margarita and say, “if you’re going to stare at me all night,
you’d better introduce yourself.” In real life the “introduce yourself” part sounds a lot more like,
“quit staring at me you red-haired freak.” In Good Will Hunting, Minnie Driver angrily calls
Matt Damon an idiot for not coming over to talk to her. When has that ever happened to in real
life? Never. I could be standing in a bar drowning in quicksand, juggling chain saws, with the
roof collapsing from the fire I started with the flame-thrower strapped to my back and still no
woman would be intrigued enough to speak first.
Nowhere is the dichotomy of real life and movie life more apparent than when it comes to
prostitution. Julia Roberts made street hooking look like a pretty nice way to spend an evening.
The closest Julia got to cock in Pretty Woman was in the buffet tent at the polo match the next
day. I saw a special on real life hookers near Port Authority in New York. The hooker looked
like she’d seen a mallet up close and she was wearing glasses. She had on broken horn rim
glasses. What’s the old aphorism, “men like to make passes at hookers who wear glasses?” No.
Real life hookers are too broke to buy contacts. Or even to buy glasses that are still in style. And,
I’ll bet she hadn’t had a Glaucoma test in years.
I have to stop now. There’s no time for more examples. I have to go and buy more rat poison and
a nice bottle of Merlot. The first for reality, the second in case a movie babe stops by my
comfortable, offbeat, eclectic apartment.