My accomplice and I brushed the sand of our feet and wiped the salt off our skin long enough to endure some silly conversations at a Malibuite gathering.
The house looked more like the lounge of a five-star hotel than anything else, nestled in the hills of Malibu and walking distance from a private wave. Chumash-old trees littered their rolling backyard, standing guard of the toys laying about for their over-privileged children. It was strange to me that any child that hasn't done anything with their life could call this orgasm of location and design "home." And even beyond that, almost every child who attends Malibu High School has a ridiculous house like this one to call "home," I realized at that moment. All those kids that stroll into the shop and ask for a discount live in places like this...
I was still trying to comprehend the amount of artwork and glass walls when my attention shifted to the people that were filling the place. It was a photographer's slideshow that had been supported by the man I had some some work for and listened to. It was a gathering of social masturbation and contrived artistic knowledgeability that wasn't nearly as bad as I just made it sound.
My accomplice lives in Malibu and actually knew some of the faces that were hovering about the bar and patio, looking beautiful and streamlined. With her help of introduction, I morphed into an amoeba of conversing women. I was introduced to each with a handshake and a smile.
I started off talking to a woman named Jill who wasn't sure about my "You can call me whatever you want" joke when she asked if I preferred being called Pati or Patricia.
Next I met her goofy looking husband Matt, who I found out was Matt Rapf, the most successful Malibu/Topanga real estate agent in the area. I had just read an excerpt of his book that my boss had helped him with in Surfer's Journal. I complemented him on it and made the millionaire smile. The face of a man who knows no economic hardships, who was raised in the Malibu Colony, the stoic face of luxury that I've always blamed my own hardships as well as the hardships of all suffering peoples, (the fat cats that don't donate the cost of their fifth Hummer to a charity) smiled at my compliment.
I was surrounded by glistening the faces that walk into Becker and that I have never said anything to other than "Can I help you find anything today?" Now here I was, with brushed hair, make up, and a cute dress, making Matt Rapf smile.
My accomplice disappeared into some other amoebic conversation glob. It was just me and Mrs.Rapf (Jill). The some bitchy emaciated woman walked over and stole the conversation we were having about how she raises her own children in a land of nanny-reared brats. She started talking about people and places I didn't know. Jill introduced me, but the skinny lady's face blatantly let me know she didn't care. As the bitch drawled on and on about acquaintances, Jill's eyes drifted about like that of a disengaged drunk.
Oh my gosh! Then the lady whose name I can't remember walked up. First I found out she lived in China, then I found out she lived in West Africa before that, then it came out her husband was in the oil industry, and then I found out this very nice woman's husband was the ecologist for Chevron. Whether she realizes it or not, her husband is supposed to protect the environment and population of the places his company drills in. But Chevron did such a poor job in West Africa I read about it in Don Cheadle's book. She wanted to talk more about her new female driver in China than her husbands job, but I pried...
She seemed to disregard the environment argument as irrelevant, since it takes oil to manufacture alternative energy. And the oil preserves in the earth are almost tapped out. She told me everything capitalist society provides for us would collapse and we would all have to do our own farming. Lets not even think about the countries that make their money by feeding other countries. She spoke of all this with a sway, swinging her glass of wine around and waving her finger, finding each conversational point on some invisible outline in front of her. She had wide eyes and a small voice that was funny in comparison to her massive fake breasts. She and I went on and on, excluding the skinny bitch. The the slide show started and I didn't speak to her again.
After the show I was introduced to John Stockwell, director of Blue Crush. He had the same drunken eye-wandering as he swayed, cocked his head back, and told me a thing or two about college, careers, and life. Most people would write down whatever a Harvard graduate and successful movie director had to say about life, but at the moment, he was just a drunk kook that was hitting on every little girl in the place. (When I asked him where he went to school, he said "Oh, I went to Harvard" quickly, like I already knew and he was just reminding me.) I found out the skinny bitch was his wife and The Chevron ecologist was his brother. What an interwoven community of exceeding wealth!
I was seeing the side of Malibu I had always heard existed, the faces behind the tinted windows of the Escalades, and the parents of the children that come into the shop with their Asian nannies. Malibu suddenly changed. It was more than a sun-bleached point, a surf shop, and a Jack N The Box. I felt like my career was hiding somewhere in this economically over-stimulated community where millionaires readily blush when some one complements them on their book that some one else wrote for them. Why, I can be that some one else! And every kook looks up to some one that can noseride! Shit, I can con them all! I'm that blond they see at Becker that surfs the point. Oh, she's a journalist? Well, I've always wanted to write a book about how rich I am!
Yes, somewhere in the land of mansions of hills and coast and money, my career is hiding.
So many kooks to take advantage of!
Bloggers Note: I'm sure all the wealthy people I just spoke of are very nice people. But I couldn't tell you, I didn't really meet them; I shmoozed with them.
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