January 11, Los Angeles. We took the red line downtown and got off at
7th street, wandered aimlessly through the tepid drizzle to Hill
street, had a few beers at a cute little taco stand. Fortified with
Mexican beer, we climbed up to the Bonavenure hotel; a very "Logan's
Run-esque" architectural molloch that survived the 70's. Think of 5
thick rolls of smoked glass lifesavers, clutched in a fist and planted
on the edge of the 110 freeway, 30 stories tall. We took the pedestrian
bridge in and passed by a rail-thin, bottle blonde mother and daughter.
The daughter wore a badge with a four digit number, and rebecca
remarked that we might have stumbled into a stockyard for trophy wives.
Once inside tower one, we crossed a cosway to get to the hotel's liquor
store and passed more skinny girls in the same uniform as the first
sighting: red snakeskin pants, napkin halter top, Britney hair. And
more beer for us. I attempted to postulate some sort of explanation at
this point, as to exactly what kind of ontological maze we had wandered
into. The retro science fiction setting only further pushed my buttons,
feeble little monkey brain reeling through numerous worst case
scenarios. Could this be a convention for for people with "Good" DNA?
Did the hotel's utopian architecture mask spotless white surgical
machines behind the curtains in the lavish convention rooms, poised to
harvest the contents of these tender beauties' ovaries and sell them
to the highest bidder? If so I was determined to have a couple more
beers and then acquaint myself with the machine for the boys.
We passed a nubile boy on the escalator and Rebecca inquired as to the origins of his badge. He waved his proudly (number 4362), told us that this was a teen modeling convention. The boy was handsome, framed by a millimeter of baby fat and the same Ashton Kutcher as all the other boys spilling into the foyer like orderly aryan semen, Sadly, his forehead was speckled by a delicate sheen of acne scars like the ones on my own face. I winced, thinking that either he or his folks have paid the exorbitant entrance fee to have a line of agents critique his face, a chipped vase on the Antiques Roadshow.
A lean pair of fourteen year old boys jostle past us on the escalator, oblivious to their own deficit of grace. I looked back down the surging incline and saw a barrel shaped sixty year old man framed by a pair of of pretty latin girls who look alike but are not sisters (5467, 2278). The trio reflected into infinity as they passed through an arch of mirrors. I caught something very reptilian in the way the old man was pawing at the twin's bare shoulders. The barrel shaped man did not have a number, he had a pink badge. He didn't strike me as a male model type, so we have to surmise that the pink badges were reserved for adults in a professional position to make use of exceptional talent.
The escalator hit it's apex and jerked us back into reality. Rebecca and I found ourselves wading through a sea of orthodontically straightened teeth (5320, 7789) and ribcages poking through tanned young skin (3867, 5768, 2234) hot topic tank dresses (units 5615 through 6120); menstrual cycles interrupted by malnutrition (check #3478 on your order card).
A comely ten year old girl with caramel skin and curly auburn hair slammed into my leg, fell down and picked herself up, then ran off in search of a pink badge. She had been stuffed into a tiny black patent skirt, childhood paunch spilling out from under a silver metallic halter top. (We are proud to introduce series 8000 in the Jonbenet Ramsey catalogue.)
Rebecca and I strode confidently onto the catwalk of this perfect world, tanned and manicured and plastic wrapped for freshness, our images projected onto the massive Sony mega screen that dominated the proscenium. The pink badges in the audience had already made note of our flawless white smiles and slender, androgynous waists. We never expected the power surge that the dimmed the fresnel lights and caused the pre-recorded soundtrack to skip; in the crumbling static, you could almost catch a glimpse on the screen of Rebecca's darkening eyetooth, neglected yearly for want of a dental plan. The cameras zoomed in on the deep, pink, star shaped scar that split my forehead and meandered down into my left eyebrow, one eye drooping just slightly lower than the other. Our numbers were crossed off of a whole lot of cards.
