do this but, by the time it gets around to the cynical noir blonde in the advertising department I slept with, rumor has it that Shale is actually trying to get the pregnant fashion writer fired.
There’s no Cabal because none of us who are supposedly part of this Cabal—except Shale—gives enough of a fuck to even deny there’s a Cabal, let alone be in one. Dr. Billy O’Forte is the most popular guy on the staff, maybe the only person on the staff everyone likes. One night when he was drunk and just sober enough to hope I was too drunk myself to remember it the next day, he confessed to actually having a Ph.D., if you can imagine such a disgrace; he was even more chagrined to report he had written his doctorate on something called “Modern Thought in American Literature.” He swore me to secrecy and I assured him that of course I would tell no one. I didn’t, however, promise not to openly call him doctor, so now everyone calls him doctor. Besides working for the newspaper Dr. Billy is also trying to get financing for a film documentary he is making about sex addicts in Guatemala; this project follows his last, a documentary about sex addicts in Copenhagen, which followed his magnum opus, a documentary about sex addicts in Bombay. At one point a few years back he was awarded a grant by a mysterious millionaire in San Francisco, the terms of which were that he would tour the world for a year with his wife Jane and make a documentary about international sex addicts. Soon after the money came in, the millionaire died and Dr. Billy sort of forgot about making the documentary and just took the world tour. Rio de Janeiro was nice I hear. The newspaper seized on this freakish development to name Dr. Billy its “international” correspondent until, weary of all those tedious stops on the itinerary like Bangkok and Barcelona, he returned to America in a fit of ennui, whereupon the paper instantly named him its national correspondent. Now he drops into the office every once in a while to groan about the onerous task of traveling the world on a dead millionaire’s money. Dr. Billy is about five-and-a-half feet tall, which is only worth noting because everyone who reads his work thinks he’s six-and-a-half feet tall. His favorite scam is to always tell everyone what a bad writer he is and what a duff story he’s just written, and every single time I’m sucked in by this routine—there is, after all, no happier occasion for a writer than another writer writing something bad—until I read it and then I want to jam his fingers in a pencil sharpener. For someone who’s supposedly such a terrible writer he seems to be the guy all the paper’s other writers routinely steal their wittiest one-liners and most insightful observations from, as I’ve done myself many times.
Then there’s Ventura. Ventura started the newspaper when he first came to Los Angeles from Texas fifteen years ago. He’s written a column for it every week since day one and became one of the most famous writers in L.A. doing so; over the years he’s refused at least three serious offers to become the papers editor. In his spare time he’s written four or five books and three or four movies and tosses in a volume or two of poetry when he feels like he’s been under-productive. He is entirely self-educated and his working knowledge of everything from geology to the Chinese economy to the novels of Willa Cather and D. H. Lawrence is too intimidating to be around very long; I’ve long since given up on any possibility I will ever know or have read as much. He’s a seer and crank, the star of his own movie, writing all the dialogue and giving himself the best lines. He drives a puke-green Chevy he thinks is beautiful, with half a million miles on it, which he keeps rebuilding and restoring; his symbiosis with this piece of junk was born about the time he crossed the L.A. border, and has been getting more twisted ever since. He thinks his movie is a
There’s no Cabal because none of us who are supposedly part of this Cabal—except Shale—gives enough of a fuck to even deny there’s a Cabal, let alone be in one. Dr. Billy O’Forte is the most popular guy on the staff, maybe the only person on the staff everyone likes. One night when he was drunk and just sober enough to hope I was too drunk myself to remember it the next day, he confessed to actually having a Ph.D., if you can imagine such a disgrace; he was even more chagrined to report he had written his doctorate on something called “Modern Thought in American Literature.” He swore me to secrecy and I assured him that of course I would tell no one. I didn’t, however, promise not to openly call him doctor, so now everyone calls him doctor. Besides working for the newspaper Dr. Billy is also trying to get financing for a film documentary he is making about sex addicts in Guatemala; this project follows his last, a documentary about sex addicts in Copenhagen, which followed his magnum opus, a documentary about sex addicts in Bombay. At one point a few years back he was awarded a grant by a mysterious millionaire in San Francisco, the terms of which were that he would tour the world for a year with his wife Jane and make a documentary about international sex addicts. Soon after the money came in, the millionaire died and Dr. Billy sort of forgot about making the documentary and just took the world tour. Rio de Janeiro was nice I hear. The newspaper seized on this freakish development to name Dr. Billy its “international” correspondent until, weary of all those tedious stops on the itinerary like Bangkok and Barcelona, he returned to America in a fit of ennui, whereupon the paper instantly named him its national correspondent. Now he drops into the office every once in a while to groan about the onerous task of traveling the world on a dead millionaire’s money. Dr. Billy is about five-and-a-half feet tall, which is only worth noting because everyone who reads his work thinks he’s six-and-a-half feet tall. His favorite scam is to always tell everyone what a bad writer he is and what a duff story he’s just written, and every single time I’m sucked in by this routine—there is, after all, no happier occasion for a writer than another writer writing something bad—until I read it and then I want to jam his fingers in a pencil sharpener. For someone who’s supposedly such a terrible writer he seems to be the guy all the paper’s other writers routinely steal their wittiest one-liners and most insightful observations from, as I’ve done myself many times.
Then there’s Ventura. Ventura started the newspaper when he first came to Los Angeles from Texas fifteen years ago. He’s written a column for it every week since day one and became one of the most famous writers in L.A. doing so; over the years he’s refused at least three serious offers to become the papers editor. In his spare time he’s written four or five books and three or four movies and tosses in a volume or two of poetry when he feels like he’s been under-productive. He is entirely self-educated and his working knowledge of everything from geology to the Chinese economy to the novels of Willa Cather and D. H. Lawrence is too intimidating to be around very long; I’ve long since given up on any possibility I will ever know or have read as much. He’s a seer and crank, the star of his own movie, writing all the dialogue and giving himself the best lines. He drives a puke-green Chevy he thinks is beautiful, with half a million miles on it, which he keeps rebuilding and restoring; his symbiosis with this piece of junk was born about the time he crossed the L.A. border, and has been getting more twisted ever since. He thinks his movie is a
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