Pico Boulevard is golden in its dustiness. Mel Gibson mugs from a billboard; Joe Camel grins from another. Bongos are bopping from behind an open window; I feel the sway, the elements are harmonizing.

"Mota?" a Mexican inquires.

"Mota, my friend," I answer, the permagrin not yet having worn off.

"How much you want?" Guy looks okay.

"Four dimes."

"Start walking."

We cup a handshake and he u-turns. I slide the baggie into my pocket.

Tower Records on Sunset. Tunes; need evening, early night, late night, sex, and all must sound good baked. They also must go with the scenery we'll be viewing. Evening on the Strip, so need something bouncy and fun. Has to be new--something I heard on K-Rock, what was that one yesterday? Early night speeding up PCH, need something California-ey, late night ought to be seductive and get her juices flowing, no vocals for sex, maybe Miles Davis? Rock Star, tattooed, leathered, chained, monopolizing the D's; can't get at Davis. Coltrane? Or something she'd recognize? Not Billie Holiday, tired of her.

A toke up at the Farmer's Market parking lot. Park LaBrea towers across the street and reflects the same golden dust I saw on Pico. $480 in my wallet, and it bulges against my ass; last time when we were hiking the San Gabriels, she told me I had a cute one. I could've done it that night, obviously, but there was no time. All the better, it gave me another week to fantasize. 'A cute one.' She's got a nice one too. I'd imagine her to be serpentine in bed.

Sometimes the world gives a little ripple, and if you're attuned you can feel its soupy, warm wash when it reaches you. I'm sure most people can't, but I can. It shivers me sweetly. Nature's little orgasm. The cars are bright and glint rainbows; the tourists look both kind and ridiculous at the same time. I keep my pipe low, under the dash.

She said something, and I completely don't remember what it was, but no matter. Her carpet looks soft and lush, a charcoal grey that matches the artwork on the walls. Swedish furniture, probably Ikea, not expensive, but very nice. Not ready yet, so I turn on MTV, Beavis and Butthead, suitable in my state. Funny, really. I'm giddy and tuned in. Life has only just begun.

Butthead makes a crack and he's right. "I like your perfume," I voice over towards the bathroom, where she's making up. "Hmmm?" she says, not having heard me either.

"Ever listen to Nigerian pop music?" I ask.

"What time does the show start at the Comedy Store?" she says coming in, closing her lipstick holder.

"Eight, but the first few guys aren't funny."

"How do I look?"

Like the kind of woman I never thought I'd get. Like a woman hot enough to walk in LA on display for the tourists. Tanned, trim, were it only summer she'd have her navel exposed. Jeans were invented for her. Tits neither large nor small, but wholly inviting. Long brown hair that would look wild at night. Brown eyes neither sympathetic nor mean; just wide. And fun to look at; you knew she saw you too.

"Fine."

The hecklers outfunnied the first comic, but the rest weren't bad. The first guy really blew it though, because he lost his cool. He got rattled. The hecklers got to him. The others got heckled but they let the rough current propel them; they wove around the obstacles. This guy smashed on the rocks. His face got red. He had brought them on himself, and he was too stupid to see it. I thought he would wet his pants. The wimp.

"Put the top down," she said.

That's what I bought it for. A good deal on it. A black and gold '90 Porsche 944 for thirteen grand. Bose CD changer. Unless you're an expert, and I never met a woman who was, it could easily appear brand new. Fresh car wash, in and out; I won't go on a date without getting a deluxe car wash. I love the air freshener they use; the evergreen is sharp and crisp and wakes up your senses. It's a cool night, March after all, but not too cold to drive with no top.

Taking curves is a sensual experience. It is there where you really feel the sway. Of course driving and making love are the same. Anything and making love are the same, when you're in sway.

The view from Mulholland looks great, as always. My secret spot is an abandoned missile silo just past where Mulholland turns into a dirt road. From a platform, hexagon in shape, atop an eighteen foot tower, you have a complete view of both the Los Angeles basin and San Fernando Valley side of the mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. In the daytime, when it's not smoggy, you can see Catalina Island. The stars are bright and vast there at night, and the twinkling lights below, in LA and the Valley, represent ten million people at your feet. It's always the spot where eventually one sly, silent touch confirms the unspoken assumption that the night will conclude at one or the other's house. Never fails. It's that beautiful there.

We take Dead Man's Curve easily, since she's nibbling on my ear, and we're both stoned. I forget who it was who crashed there, James Dean or the Jan and Dean guy, but it's a wind. I've chosen the perfect gear, though, and the turn fills me up, the tires grip the road and I can feel them through my feet. She turns up the music; it's Davis, and it's sassy; his trumpet bobs and weaves like a boxer. It cajoles and it smirks. It delivers knock out punches. I don't remember getting on the 110, but we must have because we're on Third just blocks from her apartment, and Davis is off because she's found something better on a college station. Some kind of trippy world beat.

"I've got some coke," she says, she says by the light of a dozen candles, the world beat now on her stereo.

"No thanks." I tell her, lighting my pipe. "I'm keeping a mellow buzz."

"Maybe I'll show you another use for it later," she says mysteriously, and heads towards her room. "Wait there; I want to change."

I turn up the music; it sounds like an electric jungle, full of birdcalls and rhythm. The shadows from the candles dance to it on the wall. The elements are in harmony.

She undresses in her bedroom, which is also candlelit, and leaves her door open. I can see everything, and from the slight smile I glimpse on her lips, she knows I can see her too. It's 2AM, but my energy is only just beginning to peak. She does a line in her room, and comes back in a sheer nightgown, settles down next to me on the floor. A sultry-voiced deejay comes on, identifies the music as Senegalese, tells us they'll be playing in San Pedro, and introduces another.

"Why don't you take a shower and get comfortable," she asks.

"After this song," I say, letting the rhythm decide for me. It's a polyrhythm; two or three distinct patterns at once, and I find the thread that weaves them together and ride its wave. She finds it too and we are in sync. A bird outside starts tweeting, completely attuned.

"That bird always sings at 2:10AM. I've timed him," she tells me.

The shower is hot and steamy, another candle glows through the curtain. Her body is slick with soap and reflects the dim light. Her touch is bold; no small town girl. We spend half an hour in there before moving to her room. The sheets of her bed are a stark, pleasant contrast; cool and crisp. Neither of us takes the lead; we're on autopilot, which is a lot sexier than it sounds. She sits facing me on my lap while we're enjoined and we sway gently together. It's easy, once you know how; all of this is preprogrammed from the start, none of it a surprise. You just have to think sensually, live sensually, inhale the sensual from the air, understand where it will take you, and it will get you there.

I have a photographic memory for women, and I take at least a dozen snapshots in my head at her sexiest moments for future reference. They'll still be there in technicolor fifty years from now. I'm tempted to buy a vidcam and tripod it by the bed someday, perhaps I will.

As she sleeps I see an image of a young man alone by her side. He lost his mother at 13 and didn't mourn; his father at 23 and didn't shed a tear. He's in an enviable position; he's young, handsome, flush with cash, living in the City of Angels. The world is his paraphernalia. He's found the answers; they're so simple he can only laugh. He has no enemies, he has no friends, he needs neither. He has no debt, he has no responsibility, he can do what he wants whenever and wherever. He's free; aloft on the breeze, plugged in and turned on. For this he is amply rewarded. He holds his still erect manhood beneath the sheets. He knows the sway.

And then, like a spider in the night, comes other thoughts. The eighty thousand spent in just under a year. An uncertainty; where is the current taking him next? No job; anything but that. He considers writing a screenplay; he's in Los Angeles after all. He'd like to make a classy hardcore sex movie; one that could win an Academy Award, and still be a turn on. Should he keep spending $2000 a month for that apartment, or downgrade? Maybe a few classes at UCLA extension might not be such a bad idea. Why has he no friends?

He had a name once. He still has a name and it's the same one he had before. But they belong to different people now. One as dead as his parents, one fully alive.

Aware that his thoughts have become discordant with the elements, he reaches for a pipe and fills his lungs. He knows he's young and wants to enjoy it. He wakens the woman gently; she has a name too, although it's irrelevant now. She smiles, and he shows her his erection. She's not sleepy, and they recommence, but he's playing catch-up; when you've lost the rhythm it's a bitch to get it back.

"You're gonna have to clear out," she says, as I lay groggy in her bed; a lazy morning sunlight coming trough the window. "I've got work today," she adds.

"Can't I just let myself out?" I say, making no attempt to rouse myself, but knowing I'll have to.

"No. I only have one key."

She still looks good in the morning, but she is in a rush. She pulls on a pair of panties without any ritual to it, and was fully dressed in three minutes.

"Come on," she snaps. "You're gonna make me late."

I sit up and stretch. I check my memory for the snapshots; they're all there, good.

"What are you doing tonight?" I say, not truly caring because I've got a different one lined up.

"Extra work. Oliver Stone needs a crowd shot."

"At night?"

"It's a night shoot."

I pull on my clothes and we ride the elevator down. We engage in a perfunctory kiss, and I slide into my car, she into hers. She exits Park LaBrea via Sixth; I use the Third Street exit. The guard salutes me as he opens the gate.

The days are samey; no reference points. Easy, I know the routines; I know the angle at which the sun will set on any given day. Yesterday, I laid three different girls at three different times. Tune-up the senses a bit more, and I'll get at least two at the same time one of these days. Had a bumpy ride with the last one; she's too hung up on the movies, and thought the missile silo was too chilly. I was cold too, despite it being May; for there was a Santa Ana blowing. She didn't like it when I said I wasn't working on any projects. She fucked me, but I found her base and vulgar. She threw my rhythm, and I found her boring. No imagination, no pizzazz. No clue how to ride her life, and I didn't see any point in telling her. She also kept trying to tell me about her aunt or somebody, but I can't for the life of me remember what she said.

Clutch trouble, the timing is off. I had to take the car into the shop. I'm tempted to rent another, a Caddy, just to feel it, but it's a hundred a day, and the Porsche guy, a Mexican, promised me he'd have it fixed by evening. I had to switch six grand from savings to checking because I'm behind on the rent, and I have to get the landlord off my back. I've got money, but I just got lazy about paying. I've got other things to think about.

I spend the day at Santa Monica Pier. I tipped the cab driver ten bucks, even though I shouldn't keep doing things like that. There's some pelicans hanging around and I watch them longer than I should, wondering why they don't look as they do in cartoons. I try to imagine a screenplay, but my mind is blank. Some tanned, shaggy-looking surfer dude comes over. I thought he'd say something about the waves, but instead he asks me for change so he can get a sandwich.

"Get a job," I tell him.

"Asshole," he tells me and starts to walk away. I'm worried that I might have just jinxed myself--I'm a firm believer in karma--and I call him back.

"I was only kidding with you," I tell him, fishing out two crumpled dollars from my denim jacket's breast pocket. "That should hold you," I add for no reason whatsoever.

He takes it without thanks and walks off. I look back at the pelicans but now they bore me.

In June, I took an acting class in Venice. I went three times and dropped it, writing off the five hundred bucks I dropped for tuition. Actors bug the hell out of me. They're all looking for a sugar daddy to fork over bucks they don't deserve and then they expect people to kiss their ass. A puny guy made a crack, and I took a swing at him, completely justified. Three of his acting buddies grabbed me and tried to hustle me out. The squirt was popular in that class, a great comedian.

A bunch of losers; real actors don't go to acting school, do they? They got me in such a mood that I was stewing for hours; bad move.

"How much you want?"

The Pico corner was vacant; the cops must've done a sweep. So I had gone to MacArthur Park with its crackheads to score my weed. Only guy I could find was on the ratty, Salvadoran, Alvarado St. side.

"Five dimes."

"Too hot here," he told me, a scarfaced Salvadoran. "Follow me."

We ducked up an alleyway into a slummy courtyard. Next thing I knew, he and another guy were pounding on me, I felt my wallet go, a stick cracked me in the head, and I hit the pavement. I was a fool for following him into his lair, and even dumber for doing so with six hundred in my wallet. Jackpot for those guys, but of course, they'll be dead or in jail someday. I was more pissed about losing my driver's license than my money, since it had been suspended for an unpaid violation. Now I would have to cough up for the violation before getting a replacement license. And if I got carded somewhere, I'd be screwed. Fortunately, I still had thirty in another pocket and scored a baggie on Wilshire. I smoked it up at the silo alone; it turned out to be a kind of all right day.

The CD player in the Porsche is busted; it keeps skipping. Nothing more jarring than that, it's like bad turbulence on an airplane. The gearbox is still fucked too. The Mexican fixed it, but it's still grinding. I'll need a new clutch most likely. I could sell the damn thing, and downgrade to a Miata, but it's my lucky car.

I want to go to Tower, but what's the point with a busted player? I'm up to twenty discs a week; I don't know why. It adds up; I figure my row of CD racks represent ten thousand dollars. I tried chatting up a Thai girl at Bangkok Market at lunchtime, but she wouldn't talk to me. A different rhythm, I guess. Maybe it was just her English.

I think I'll hang out at the Formosa Cafe. It's an actor bar, but I can pass. I'll pick up an Armani knockoff on Wilshire to go with my jeans, and a new pair of Wayfarers. I want to get a new CD player for the car before going though, I can't drive a babe with no music. I still haven't gotten my driver's license back, but I've got my California ID, so carding won't be a problem.

Details. I'm not in sway, I'm luffing, and it screws me up. I have to remind myself that I've still got 140 G's in the bank, I'm young and good-looking, I drive a Porsche, and I know my way around town. I grind the gears entering the Farmers' Market's lot. I can see Park LaBrea, and think about that girl; what was her name? I can't call her because her number was in my wallet when it got taken. I'd knock on her door, but that's a loser move. I pull over to the far end of the lot, and toke up, but either the weed is ragged or I am; I don't feel a buzz.

I turn on the CD player and it skips right through an entire disc. The car needs a wash.

Formosa Cafe. No real actors in here tonight, at least none I can recognize. I'm drinking cranberry-and-vodkas and I've had four. There's two women in here that look good; but all of a sudden I can't remember if I'm a tit-man or an ass-man, and any moves require my making up my mind in a hurry, because I'm going to have to decide on one or the other before they're both taken. I never used to suffer from indecision; I focus on the music for clues. Depeche Mode, the faggots.

The nice ass woman has a biggish nose, and the nice tit one has protruding ears.

Someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around. It's three guys, one of them looking vaguely familiar, the other two poorer clones of the first. "Mind sliding down a seat?" one of them asks.

For some reason his request irritates me, but I comply, heaving a sigh to convey my displeasure.

"You got a problem with that?" he says, like he's already juiced for a fight. I reconsider my response and feel stupidly adrift for a moment.

"No, man. It's yours," I tell him, but he's already turned back to his friends. The three of them sit at the counter, blocking my view of the biggish nose, nice ass girl, and I wave the bartender over.

"Another Cranberry Vodka," I tell him. He looks at me with utter contempt, and I wonder what the hell is wrong, why is everyone against me all of a sudden, isn't it his job to serve drinks? He sets me up again, though.

The big-nose girl recognizes one of the guys, which is a pity because I had decided that her ass made up for her nose. The big ear nice tit girl is still drinking alone, and she looks like an easier fish to hook anyway, so I shoot a smile her way. She sends me one back, a tired, shopworn, jaded one, but not unwelcoming. I go over, carrying my drink. She really doesn't look all that great close up.

"What's that noise?" she whines, as I grind the gears again. I can't keep the car in third; it keeps popping into neutral. I've got to choose between second or fourth, which kills me because it plays havoc with my senses. Going 40 miles per, second revs too high, and fourth too low, so I speed. We take a turn on Sepulveda too fast, the tires screech and we bang a curb, and she lets out a wail.

She's thoroughly not worth it, but I'm still bummed the Thai girl blew me off, and I've got something to prove. I had to work on her big time at Formosa, and told her so many lies I can't keep track. Fortunately, I got her good and drunk. I had to promise her coke to get her to come back with me, which is all right because I filched some from a guest's purse a few weeks back, figuring it might come in handy.

"I'm gonna be sick" she announces as we pull up to my parking space. She pukes all over the ground, splashing my fender. I'm feeling dizzy and queasy myself, having downed seven cranberry vodkas on an empty stomach. She can't stand straight and I half walk her and half drag her to the elevator.

I have no idea what happened at my apartment. I dimly recall pulling clothes off her semi-conscious body, I half remember searching for the coke, we may have fucked, because a condom wrapper lay on the carpet beside my head, but beyond that I don't know. I get up and survey the apartment. She's gone; when she left I can't say. The medicine cabinet is ransacked, but I'm not sure if I did it or if she did. I must not have made too much of a bad impression, which both surprises me and disgusts me, since she's left a note beside my wallet that says she borrowed a twenty for a taxi and it has her phone number on it. I look in the wallet and there's forty inside; I thought I had more --maybe a couple hundred-- , but again, I'm not really sure. Idly, I dial her number and it turns out to be bogus; this gladdens me. Her name, what did she say? It sounded fake too, and now I can't remember. My head is splitting, so I go back to bed even though it is approaching noon.

Still in bed, with dusk coming on, I see a young man, nameless, holed up alone. His parents are dead, and he's glad. He tries to make sense of his existence and finds it senseless. He thinks of what he's not: not an actor, not a writer, not a rich man, not an Angeleno. He's standing behind a strange ugly woman who vomits on his car --the memory convinces him that he bent a rim when he rounded Sepulveda, he now recalls his tire looking flat-- and he looks gaunt and pale. He tries to find a philosophy; life is sway, life is rhythm, life is timing; and keeps coming to the conclusion that life is mere illusion and fakery. He rolls over to find some warmth, but his bed is empty. He can recall no childhood and see no adulthood. He checks his memory for stored photographs. Undated, uncataloged hardcore images come back to him, but they're bleached looking; somehow they've been damaged. He doesn't pity himself, doesn't wish any pity, is disgusted by pity. He sees that he's bleeding life, but he can't staunch the flow. He longs for something, but what or why or how are riddles, and they give him a headache. He tries to jerk off, and can't get an erection.

And the future had passed.

The Mexican couldn't fix the car, so I took it to a second. He couldn't fix it either, so I sold it to him for $1400. I got a new car, brand new since I wanted it to last. I chose a Buick, eschewing both speed and luxury, but it still set me back 23 grand. Two months later I downgraded from Studio City to Park LaBrea, chopping a thousand off my rent. I should have done it sooner, but now I had to; I was down to five digits in savings. I kept an eye out for that girl, the one who had the sway; it had seemed a lifetime since I had seen her, and was no longer sure what she looked like. She lived in another building; Park LaBrea has twelve identical twelve-story buildings. Which one and which floor were lost to me; I had photographed them mentally too, but just like the titshots and comeshots they had been bleached; I still had them but could no longer see them. I thought maybe I'd know her if I saw her. I also knew that people in LA move on an annual basis.

I took to spending each morning at the Farmers' Market, sitting among the tourists under the awning in the food court; watching the vidcam toting transients shoveling sandwiches into their round faces. I tried reading the LA Times all morning, thinking I should become informed, while drinking espressos. The want ads started calling at me from inside though, so I stopped. I began reading the Star and the Enquirer, buying them furtively like porno, taking a macabre interest in celebrity divorces, detoxes, and deaths. But soon the ads began getting to me, the ads promising riches and love to purchasers of gold-plated medallions. I turned twenty-six. I took up smoking cigarettes for the first time, first menthols, then Pall Mall.

I stopped hitting up the bars for chicks. They can smell it when your gears have slipped, when you're in a spiral, no matter how well you dress. I got kicked out of the Whiskey; I couldn't remember what happened, but I do remember getting laughed at, really laughed at, and also getting a sock on the jaw. It loosened a tooth that stayed loose. Too much to drink that night, and my wallet was gone once again; I thought I had left it on the bar counter, but nobody would let me in to check. I started sticking to beer, which I'd drink at the Pier, sometimes for hours, watching the ocean. I started to develop a stomach. I watched my savings dwindle like an altimeter; 87,000; 81,000; 77,000; 73,000. I thought up new names for myself, figuring I could call myself anything, and spoke to no one.

Then, inexplicably, I felt the air brakes kick in at 31,000, stopping the aircraft in midair like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

A gull hangs in the air over Zuma; motionless at first glance. He is poised on the air currents so perfectly he drifts neither forwards nor backwards. With the slightest adjustment of a wingtip, a sure touch into the wind, he elevates himself and lowers himself, not once going too far, not once making a false move. He utters a cry, plaintive but strong, and a call comes from the distance. He's joined by another, who glides with unmoving wings into position beside him. They hover, and their heads tilt; they gaze down upon the beach inquisitively.

"A couple, I think," comes a voice from behind me.

I turn and she's there; it's no woman I've seen before, but I know who she is. Her face is freckled from the sun, nicely, and she smiles. "The gulls. I think they're a couple."

I look up at the gulls and they look back down.

"They're watching us," I say, surprised by the sound of my own voice.

"I feed them every day. They remember me. Here, you can help." She hands me an apple and smiles again.

"What do I do with this?"

"Like this." She bites off a piece of apple and tosses it into the air. One of the gulls, waiting patiently above juts out a beak and nabs it.

"Now you."

I bite off a piece of apple, it tastes sweet. I lob it to the second gull who catches it as effortlessly as the first. "They're very graceful," I murmur.

"Gulls keep the same mate for life, did you know that?"

"Really?"

She laughs. "Actually, I don't know. But it's nice to think so."

At last the gulls are fed, and the first one gives a cry, and they cowl their heads, bring their wings in, and cut a rapid wide arc over the sea. I watch them until they are specks down the coast, and turn back to the woman, and see she's watching them also.

And I imagine myself a gull looking down on Zuma Beach, barren and empty but for two strangers, a man and a woman. Nothing graceful in their motion, nothing smooth to their movements, nothing in sync with the sway in the breeze. Their gestures are jerky and random; they're clumsy and unbalanced. The very footprints behind them show neither design nor direction. I look at the man, and see a smile come tentatively to his lips, see a cloud lift from his eyes. He thinks of the words he had scrawled for the screenplay he no longer needs to write. His smile broadens as he thinks how he believed his story was a tragicomedy about losing a quarter of a million dollars entrusted to him by his father. He laughs at his discarded melodrama of death by dissipation. He is relieved and fascinated both by the strange, fragrant lotus of hope that begins to unfold in the dark quagmire within him. He's no actor and wouldn't be. The woman laughs too, and he giddily skips a stone across the ocean's surface.

Back on the earth again, I hear music from the elements, but they play a different tune than they did once; a more somber but a melodious one.

I feel a defrosting in my veins, and skip another stone, and she does too, stumbling a little. "It's a matter of balance," I tell her, and she sends one skipping in twelve distinct hops across the backwash, before the next wave crashes in. I think of my parents, and let the tears well up quickly. Then I blink, thanking them both, reach into my pocket, and crush the package of cigarettes in it as a shorthand promise. The woman hands me a stone. "This one's perfect," she says. I send it across the backwash in a shimmering string of skips.

"What's your name?" she asks and I tell her gratefully.