L.A. Eventually (Patreon)

L.A. Eventually

               The key was doing numbers. Jokes or not. Not much could be done until you had a couple four digit tweets going around, some key celebrity followers or lesser checkies, and a minimum five digit follower count, no bots. 

               The water in the pot started to boil. The two hot dogs in the water started to lull and swing. They started spinning like those logs the lumberjacks run on during those outdoor games that are sponsored by chainsaw companies on ESPN2.

               “Maybe I can do something with that,” he thought. “It’s a good setting for a joke, at least. Inherently absurd. But it’s so specific. Eh, it’s too off the rails anyway. I just got the Andy Richter follow. Need to start doing some stuff he might be into. Plus, I don’t want anyone to know about my lunch.”

               The Midwest dares fools to think they are bigger than it. It raises children like grain, who then go east and west, chasing vague concepts like Authenticity. They will live in closets and call themselves successful. They are “here,” wherever here is, and others are still there.

               Missouri/LA Eventually. He went by @hoarseofcourse online.

               His apartment building was made out of that dusty, nuclear rust orange brick that seemed to have been all the rage in the fifties. Hoarse (as they called him online) poked the hot dogs aimlessly with a fork. The plate was ready for them. Two slices of wheat bread—with ketchup, mustard, and relish in lines down the center—sat on a plate commemorating the 1904 World’s Fair. 

               “World’s Fair… would that work? Something introduced at the World’s Fair, maybe? Explaining something modern at the 1904 World’s Fair maybe? So, uh, come one come all folks, look at my new invention! Texting! Send written messages to people you know instantly! How does it work? Well, here’s an example! Text your crush and constantly check your phone every minute for an hour until they respond! Amazing! There’s something there. Some nice filler stuff. I’ll draft it up and save it for the night crowd, I think. All the Xanax loving sadgirls dig texting-based humor. But it’s still not Andy Richter grade material. Fuck.”

               The sun was setting. One could hear the dull, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of a kid throwing a baseball against a brick wall repeatedly outside. Orange light drifted over a congested highway. Hoarse looked out the window while the hot dogs cooked in the water. He had to be at work at 10. The sunset was nothing but an alarm clock. 

               “The best bet on the Richter retweet is going to be about Trump. I just know it. A single Richter retweet will net me four digit followers, easy. Even from that, I might be able to get some of my writing out there. I hope Trump drops a softball soon.”

               A life unobserved. It seemed pointless. The hot dogs tasted good, but so what? They held no poignance, no poetry. It’s impossible to be ironic when you’re desperately alone.

               When the hot dogs split open, it meant they were ready. This was common knowledge. He had no idea where it came from or the logic behind it. He placed them into their seats and headed to his bed/living room. There was a dark gray futon against the wall adjacent to a small end table with a lamp on it that had never been plugged in. A coffee table that had three empty beer cans, a wadded up paper towel, and a Far Side anthology. In the corner of the room sat a twin-sized bed. Across from Hoarse sat a flat screen television. He turned on some sitcom, half paying attention. He finished his hot dogs in two minutes and turned the TV off. Then he got into bed.

               He worked the night shift, so he tried to get a little sleep before he went in at midnight. It was quiet, numbing work. His sleep schedule was all thrown off by it. When you sleep multiple times a day, for inconsistent stretches, days don’t really have a beginning or an end. They just bleed together. Life doesn’t appear in easy to digest statements. It just stretches on, forever, with no end in sight.

               He got most of his work done at work. Meaning, after the first hour of hotel front desk work, most of what you did was wait. Wait for people to wake up, for phone calls to come in. At 5 a.m. he had to run the total financial numbers of the rooms for the day in a large report that took about thirty minutes to print off, but other than that (and well, the morning got a little busy) he was free to do his own work on the computer behind the desk. 

               The best strategy he came up with was this idea of segmenting his jokes. He would come up with humorous settings, which would go in one column. Funny people or events in the next, followed by a column for things that were true or depressing, used to create a humorous dichotomy. It worked well with the sadsack crowd. If you came up with something that wasn’t quite a joke, you could throw it in a column to be used later.

               He began his night by reading the news. He usually got some material from this, but that’s not why he did it. Social awareness was important to him. The most important thing to Hoarse was empathy, followed by kindness, followed by social justice, followed by mental health, followed by comedy. That’s why he wanted to be a comedian and a writer. The dream of his was to write for a Netflix show, probably something relevant and new like a TV show about Bikers, but if they were all women. Or something like PoC superheroes who carried snark as well as a sense of duty. 

               It was at 3 a.m. he decided to figure out what kind of tweet he wanted to make to get Andy Richter to like it. He wouldn’t post it until the morning, of course, but he had plenty of time to get one in. 

               “Brett Kava-HELL NAH!”

               “I’m beginning to think that to be appointed by Trump, sexual assault isn’t as much a detriment but a REQUIREMENT.”

               “Wetting myself imagining how much Hillary would GO OFF on Kavanaugh if she was still in the Senate right now. Bye boy! THE rapist needs a THERAPIST! And that’s tea!”

               Hoarse stirred a hot chocolate packet into a styrofoam cup of coffee. A man called at 4 a.m. asking for a 4:30 wake-up call. He programmed it into the phone system. The clientele were mostly executives who flew in for the weekend. It was a small, fairly nice hotel near a prominent university. At around 5 a.m. the guests began to stir, drearily walking down in nicely pressed suits to eat cheap bagels and fill their thermoses with coffee. They regarded Hoarse with a curt nod as they passed him and headed to call a car.

               The day shift came in at 7. Hoarse went to file his paperwork for the night in the back room and waited staring at his phone until 8 in the morning when he could punch out. He drove home, laid down in bed, and set an alarm for 9:30 in the morning. He slept for an hour, woke up, and posted online: “I’m beginning to think that to be appointed by Trump, sexual assault isn’t as much a detriment but a REQUIREMENT.”

               He set an alarm for 10:30 and went back to sleep. He woke up and posted: “Brett Kava-NO to TOXIC BROS.”

               He set an alarm for noon and went back to sleep. He woke up and posted: “Wetting myself imagining how much Hillary would GO OFF on Kavanaugh if she was still in the Senate right now. Bye boy! THE rapist needs a THERAPIST! And that’s tea!”

               He sat in bed. He had a thin grey sheet that was a little cut up at the bottom because of his long toenails. His laptop was open, playing a playlist on YouTube called “Relaxing Songs to Sleep or Study To.” He tried to think about if he still had eggs or not for breakfast. He slept in too long for McDonald’s breakfast, and he didn’t want to have a McChicken for breakfast. 

               It was noon, and the sun cast no shadows in his room. Andy Richter was online. Hoarse had just gone through Andy’s likes and they were all from a few minutes ago. He wondered if Andy had seen his tweet.

               He hit refresh. He hit refresh. He hit refresh.

               The goal was L.A., eventually.