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*****
For some reason, my review of the RB Inn was rejected by Trip Advisor so I just posted it here.

If you are interested in hiring me to write reviews of resorts in exotic locations or for travel writing to romantic cities for your publication, please send me a personal message through this website.

*****
Thanksgiving 2008 via email.

*****
Side Note to the side note in the text:
I miss my friend Justin being in the US.
With him anything is possible.
That's what friends are for anyways.
This is actually an email conversation between us.
*****

I went down to SD from Wednesday to Friday for Thanksgiving. Instead of crashing on people's floors or couches, I decided to get a room at the RB Inn. It was really Candice's idea but I was easily swayed.

When I worked there around 1995, the standard rooms were a minimum of $100 a night. Premium rooms were around $199 and the Deluxe rooms were usually $299 but they would come down a little when the hotel was empty. I actually do not know what the bungalows and condo 3 and 4 bedroom + rooms cost back then but I am sure they were a lot. Regardless, in 2008, the premium rooms were $50 and the side of the hotel with the standard rooms was closed the first night I got there. The deluxe rooms were $100. I got a premium room from Wednesday at 4pm to Friday at noon for $100 plus taxes.

When I got there, I checked to make sure the room had all nice amenities like a king sized bed, big screen plasma TVs and all that plus the restaurants, room service and pool. This is what they said on the website and a lot of the time, they pull an ebay kitteh on you and the TV is a 20” from 1950 and the bed spread is made out of pubes. Luckily, the room was as described and there was also a full service spa, tennis and golfing too. I am not really interested in any of that but it was nice to know that if any of the people who might come to visit me showed up and they were interested in those things, I could watch them do what people do when they do those things.

In essence, staying at the RB Inn over somewhere else gave me space from my family and friends, so when I was with people, I enjoyed it but at the same time, I could go chill by myself in luxury.

The first night I got drunk by myself at the bar. The bartender did not remember me from when I worked there because he has worked there himself since he was 18. Now he is semi retired and in his 70s but he gave me some free drinks and we chilled when he realized I was legit. He also gave me a run down of everything that has happened there in the last decade or so since I left.

The bartender told me that the bus boy who trained me is now homeless and collects cans in Escondido to buy crystal meth. The bartender has given him money a few times when he ran into him over on Escondido Blvd. He said he sees him pushing a shopping cart all up and down the street. Some of the other employees have given him money too. The bartender assumes that a lot of the people who used to work with him give him money when they see him. I thought about that for a minute. What would it be like to find him and give him some money after all this time? He probably would not remember me. No one else that I worked with does.

I remembered when I worked with him, about a month after my training, he didn’t show up for work. After a few days I went looking for him with a couple of the waiters. We found him on Escondido Blvd. He claimed the cops were after him because he had found out that it was the police that were behind all the baby disappearances. He whispered to us, “it’s the cops man, it is the fucking cops that are eating all the babies!” Luckily, one of the waiters, had the bus boy’s mom’s number programmed into his cell phone from when the bus boy was living with his mom. He called her. She had kicked him out the week before for drinking again. We sat with the bus boy for about two hours back in his rancid hotel room on Escondido blvd. while he freebased the rest of his crystal through an aluminum foil pipe fashioned with one of the waiter’s bic pens after we told him his mom was coming. He understood what was going on. It was the repetition of a theme. His mom picked him up and took him to rehab. After about a month, they hired him back but I had already transferred to another part of the hotel.

Next, the bartender gave me a run down on the owner of the hotel who gave up his CEO responsibilities but still owns the place. He divorced his Miss Texas bikini model wife and got another wife. The owner and his Miss Texas bikini model wife were always nice to me. The week that the bus boy was missing I had to cover the entire restaurant alone. We did 150 covers one night over four hours. My pomade failed me mid shift and my hair had fallen down into my face with gooey tres flores streaking down my cheeks. My shirt was a see through mess as I rushed from table to table just trying to keep things afloat. The manager saw how sweaty I was and got me a fresh uniform from the uniform closet and a comb. Three hours into my shift, he got up from eating and covered me as I changed into dry clothes and washed up in the sink. The detergent gave me a rash but you could only see it around my neck really. I tried not to scratch it. That always makes it more obvious.

I always had a crush on the owner’s wife from Texas. I wished that she would invite me to her room while I was working and that the rest of the staff would not be able to do anything about it because she was the owner’s wife. Whenever they would stay in town, she could keep a room just for me and I would be forced to stay in it and not work as a bus boy but instead I would just hang out with her still making my hourly salary. We could order sandwiches and go to the spa, or I could go shopping with her. She always had lots of shopping bags in her room but she shopped alone. I wanted to be her shopping friend, her confidant. She needed one of those.

When I was working in room service I brought her and her kids sandwiches after they had been swimming. She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit under some silky robe thingy. Very classy. I watched her as she got the table ready for me to put the tray down. I thought about how she would never ask me to hang out with her even as friends. Her kids helped set everything up. They seemed really cute and nice. Good kids. When I put down the tray, she asked me why I seemed sad. I told her I was just tired from covering someone else’s shift in valet. She gave me an extra cash tip. On my way back to room service, I thought about how the Miss Texas bikini model wife was so glamorous hanging out at the hotel being taken care of with their well behaved beautiful kids and all that. I could be glamorous and exciting too if I could just get the night off and not have to worry about rent and bills and homework for a night or two. Probably, at least.

Their world seemed so romantic to me at the time, like a J. Crew catalogue. The idea of inheriting a chain of exclusive resorts and jet setting around to them with a stylish beauty queen wife was so out of reach it was like a foreign film. Maybe something from the French New Wave or a Fellini film, like Satyricon but in Rancho Bernardo, or Band of Outsiders but just me. I really wanted an Austin Martin DB5 if I was going to be in one of those films. I thought about having one of those too while smoking a cigarette in the ice shack leaning against the ice machine to close to the vent with the hot air blowing on my neck.

The next person the bartender told me about was the guy who trained me in room service. He was only 2 years older than me. I remember that because he was in my high school and he was the Homecoming Prince one year. He had a heart attack. The bartender speculated that is was from doing to much coke for too long. “his heart just gave out” the bartender concluded while looking down and shaking his head, then he poured some more gin into my glass as a memorial.

I thought about the Homecoming Prince. He trained me in room service a lot after I quit working there because he taught me how to do wheelies in the golf carts. He could make them go on two side wheels off the sidewalk curb cuts like in the movies too. At night, he would take me out on the course and we would do 360 skids across the fairways. After a month of practicing alone, I one-upped his 360 with a 540 where I came out in reverse, jacked it back into drive and popped a wheelie spinning the wheel back around to bolt out driving forwards again. I learned from him fast and pretty soon, we were one-upping each other in every aspect. We even found secret golf cart jumps and created golf cart missions for each other. One mission was to get across the golf course to buy tacos at Alberto’s. His own personal mission was to make it across the other side of the golf course back to his apartment to take a shit. He couldn’t take a shit with clothes on and he couldn’t take a shit anywhere but in his own bathroom, so when he had to take a shit, this mission became necessary. We would cover for each other when the other was on a mission. Usually this meant me covering for him but I didn’t mind. I didn’t have any personal missions except smoking in the ice shed but everyone did that.

After that, the bartender told me about another guy that trained me as a waiter in the upstairs restaurant who died of cancer. He was the nicest guy out of all the people I worked with. He never said dirty things about the girls that worked there and he always treated me like I was an equal. When his cancer advanced, I was still working there. We all went to the Post Office to get a bone marrow test. I brought everyone I could get together to donate blood. I had about 10 people with me to do this bone marrow test at the Post Office. I had bribed them all with Wing Night at O’Callahan’s in Mira Mesa. No one was a match though. When the waiter lost his hair, I shaved my head because it made him feel insecure to not have hair. Then, I thought it was really corny that I did that, so I never told him. I was worried it might offend him. It was one of those spur of the moment things that seemd so original and amazing at the time but then, later, driving to work, I just felt like an asshole for doing something so trivial. When I got to work, the assistant Maitre D told me that shaving my head was not an acceptable haircut in fine dining. He told me that people wanted to be served by men and not boys. Later, the waiter told me my hair was cool.

Besides that, a lot of the people still work there, or work somewhere close by in related service industry type jobs. I got the run down on a few more people, So and So married So and So and had babies but moved to Arizona. So and So runs another restaurant but is an alcoholic. So and So became a golf pro.

Now, 15 years later, the idea of still working there seemed romantic to me. Some of my friends who worked there when I was there were not working because the fine dining room only had two covers the whole night. Everyone had gone home but one rookie team. They were all hanging around the hostess stand while the couple camped out at their table, probably enjoying a royal dinner with their own personal dining room and staff. When the rookie team found out I had worked there 10 years ago, they wanted to know what all the people were like when they were just bus boys. Then, one of the guys I went to high school with walked in. He started there about six months after me. He is the Wine Captain now. That is really called the Somiller but I wasn’t sure how to spell it, so I felt insecure writing it at first. For some reason, all of a sudden, I didn’t want to talk to him. Luckily, since he is a manager, the rookie team scattered when they saw him coming. I sat back in my chair and looked at all the old people there. I was training to be the somiller when I left there to go away to college.

After a few minutes of this, some older drunk dudes started talking to me about how one of them was 50 and bald and basically fucked now that he was divorced and single and staying in a hotel room with his sister for Thanksgiving. There was no chance he was ever going to get laid again according to his friend who still had all his hair, “except for that fat one Debbie but I wouldn’t even fuck her with your dick!” He tried to confer with me, looking me in the eyes clearly talking about my own dick.

I could tell they were trying to poke fun at me by bringing me into their stupid old man drunk conversation, so I let them have it. I went on this long loud uncomfortable rant about how being bald is a quintessential part of being a man and more manly than having hair. I told them that the real test of a man's power is to still be able to get laid when he is bald. Next, I made them justify their own arguments at length, which took the better part of an hour. Finally, after acting disgusted with their arguments, I told them that any man who tries to shave hair off his body parts or tries to put hair where it no longer grows is a pussy. I made sure to say the word pussy extra loud because the women they were with looked obviously offended any time I cursed. At my conclusion, some of the other old men playing pool cheered for me. The only other couple in my age range were staring at me frowning from the other end of the bar. The girl turned her back as if in protest. I knew this meant I was making an ass out of myself but fuck everyone. I had more to say. I said that losing the hair on your head and growing a massive beard was the essence of being a real man.

At this point the other men’s wives were all looking at me with discontent from the corner where they had been engaged in some wine drinking and board games. The dude with hair, who was 48 and freshly shaved, tried to argue with me some more but I was too drunk and too convinced of my own argument. I think he was also drunk enough that, at the moment, he was convinced of my argument and second-guessing himself and his initial hassling of his bald friend. He was also so drunk that he admitted to having had his chest and back waxed and that he even went to a tanning salon because he lived in Michigan. His only justification was, “Try living where there is no sun for the fucking winter!” His argument was not cogent and I acted disgusted at each of his assertions to the point of theatrics, which I am sure looked amazing from an outside perspective, seeing as how I had ordered a few Gin and Tonics as well as having been refilled only with Gin by the bartender, who was laughing at the whole scene from behind the bar.

I ended up telling the guy with the hair that his bald friend was more of a man than him simply for being bald, which got them to arguing, so I got bored and stopped paying attention long enough to order a last drink and get ask for my tab. Before I left, I told them that I was hoping to go bald on my head and to grow hair all over my body and face just to prove my thesis to them before leaving a 100 percent tip for the bartender and wandering off drunk with my last full gin and tonic in hand to explore the golf course until 3 or so in the morning in the rain.

*****
Your drunken rant in the RB Inn bar should be made into a short film. You've got a full head of hair and a beard and saying you hope you go bald because then you're a real man—fucking genius.

Also, the idea of you going back to that place you slaved away at 15 years ago and finding that everyone there is a wash-out and that the hotel itself has even dropped room rates is awesome.

That would be such a good short film. Your return to the place you worked 15 years ago, staying in the nice room being served and shit, then down to the bar to find out what happened to everyone, the drunken rant, and then you walking around drunk with a gin and tonic in hand until you show up at the breakfast buffet, gin and tonic still in hand, insisting that being hungover is part of being a man. I mean, there's a poetry to the whole thing. When you worked there, you were a kid. Now, you've grown up and you're a man. So you go on this drunken rant about manliness and the whole thing ends with you laughingly stating that having a hangover is part of being a man—genius
*****

I saw the bald guy and his friend with all his hair in the restaurant during breakfast with the women from the bar the next morning at 7am because I could not sleep. I could tell they were uncomfortable at the sight of me. I had been haunting the golf course until dawn in the rain, only to go back to my room unable to sleep. I was wearing my same rain soaked clothes and the fact that I hadn’t showered was fairly obvious. They asked me if I was hungover and just to be consistent, I told them that being hungover was part of being a man as well before leaving with a Bloody Mary. I thought I caught pneumonia or something from all that but I just had the worst hangover I had had in years. Luckily, no one punched me in the nose or the teeth.
*****
I don't drink very often. This is why.
This picture is how I look right now, so it all makes sense

If you are wondering where I have been, for the last couple months I have been working on my resume for J.Peterman and Co. through a series of succinct ebay auctions like this one:
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290234993407

Item Description:

1950s America

New York, San Francisco, Boise

You are in the back seat of an all black Chrysler with 2 of your closest friends and 3 complete strangers. This stop was necessary for getting gas, coffee and cigarettes. You have been up all night and the sun is just coming up. Come to think about it, you have seen 5 consecutive sunrises without pause. You close your eyes for a minute and smell the burnt black diner coffee steaming under your nose. Upon further reflection, you have forgotten if you were driving out west to North Beach or if you are on your way back to the East Village. All you know is that you are here in Boise at this diner eating cherry pie and drinking black coffee. You open your eyes again, one of your travel mates is staring intently at the rotating dessert rounder while writing furiously into an old spiral ring notebook. Outside, the maniac who considers himself the permanent driver on this dérive is yelling excitedly over the open hood of the Chrysler to a confused looking gas station attendant. You take off your glasses, these glasses, and rub your weary eyes. After another long drink of hot black coffee and a bite of cherry pie, you pull out your moleskine and the trusty pen that has been with you for the whole trip.

Your possibilities are limitless.

Real American Optical Glasses NEW and unlensed. These are the same frames Allen Ginsberg wore. Still with original soft clip case for the chest pocket of your red flannel shirt.

Shipped like Fort Knox, so relax.

These are the real deal.

NOS American Optical frames, never lensed (the 6 on the arm most likely denotes some measurement).

These look black in most lighting situations. This is especially the case in a bar somewhere in the Montana morning but imposing sunlight reveals that they are actually an opaque deep brown.

Perfect for road trips, readings in the East Village and exploring book stores in North Beach.

ultimately rejected book description written for Amazon while I was sick:

"Why does daddy get to keep his testicles if I have to give up mine?" Do questions like this keep you up at night analyzing the deepest corners of your own existential angst? Anne Welsh Guy takes on the tough questions with her seminal postmodernist novel "Good-Bye Testicles." You may remember Anne Welsh Guy from her groundbreaking symbolist novel, "By the Sea" and her antistructuralist masterpiece "Cub Scout Donny" but it will always be her canonical anti-enlightenment lacanian critique "Good-Bye Testicles" that she is most famous and well known for. Illustrated by graphic mastermind Frank Vaughn, illustrator of such greats as the surrealist nightmare novel "Tom and the Zoo" as well as the genre smashing psychedelic underground anti-cogito comic series "The Teenage Small Boat Stories."

thanks candice!!!!

JANGO FETT - Convention Sat and Sun - m4m
Reply to: pers-341548242@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-05-30, 4:17PM

You were dressed as Jango and your friend was Boba. You had dark hair and eyes and a small beard on your chin. Absolutely beautiful. Who knows if you're gay or not, but if you read this, you made one HOT Jango. Hit me back if you want.

Original URL: losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/mis/341548242.html
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this is from a poster Justin made to advertise his Free Swim Lessons. He did this all summer for his community service based on on a contest of speed/exhibition of speed/speeding and a plethora of unpaid parking/fixit tickets from his old racing days rather than staying in jail for a few days. They still repossessed his Starion with the EVO IX MR 6-speed engine swap. That thing was fully built. It was faster and cleaner than an EVO. I think it is a cop car now though.