A la recherche de Britney Spears

I lie in a bath of toilet-to-tap water, soothing my sunburned skin. I place my hands on my head, and chunks of fried orange hair break off onto my white acrylic nails. A French manicure, they call it. How ironic.

Later, I park my car and ride along all ten stops of the pathetic, peace-meal L.A. rail line to yet another fruitless job interview. I imagine the clanging of gypsy tambourines, violet scarves peaking out of woolen coats and hundreds of pairs of soulful eyes scanning the pages of Proust or Sartre.

But here, amongst the clamor of helado vendors, honking horns and blackberry banter, my intellect burrows deep within, like the black grit beneath my nail bed.

What exactly is a person with a Ph.D. in French literature qualified to do in Los Angeles if she doesn’t want to teach? Afraid that working as a T.V. extra was my lot, I rejoiced at the sight of a job posting for a French writer who was looking for an assistant. It seemed perfect for me. However, as I have learned many times before in L.A., appearances can be deceiving.

My first clue should have been that the Frenchman insisted on meeting me at a juice bar on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, the capital of Douchebagastan. The juice bar was located in front of the Saddle Ranch, a western themed bar where dozens of bimbos in sequined cowboy boots line up to ride a mechanical bull, hoping against hope that their designer breasts would burst out of their designer tops. They stared at me as I scurried past them in my cheap, black suit.

The French writer was a graying, soixante-huitard whom the police had gassed and beaten during the revolt. He had fallen from the heights of activism and landed in the abyss of Southern California. The writer explained to me that his new book would be an un-ironic work of autobiographical fiction about a French man’s quest to meet the jewel of Hollywood, Miss Britney Spears.

“I’m just fascinated by her,” he explained in French. “She’s so beautiful. Of course, she is a lot less attractive now that she’s gotten so old.” (She was 27, my age.

The Frenchman informed me that my duties as an assistant would be to drive him around Los Angeles to places where Britney might have gone. He would ask questions about Britney’s whereabouts, and I would translate them from French into English. For example, we would drive to Britney’s favorite fro-yo stand in West Hollywood, and I would translate questions like “Est-ce que Britney est venue aujourd’hui? A-t-elle commandé une grenade-myrtille?” (Did Britney come in today? Did she order a pomegranate-blueberry?”). Six years of French literature Ph.D. coursework to translate fro-yo flavors…

The writer asked me to accompany him along the Sunset Strip to scout out possible Britney sightings. I lagged behind him as he inspected the rear-ends of bleach-blonde women parading in nine-inch plastic heels. He waxed and waned about the poetic nature of L.A. parking lots, and I then frantically attempted to maneuver my iPhone to locate Britney’s preferred bar. We both stared at the phone, but we couldn’t see anything, due to my giant fake nails being in the way and the writer’s failing vision.

Exasperated, I told him that I wasn’t the right person for the job, and I trotted off into the glorious, pollution-filled sunset to the next metro stop.

Los Angeles

There is something vile and putrid about Los Angeles that taints every aspect of the city and every person who lives there. Maybe it’s the poisonous smog that leaves a thick brown layer of dust on the crooked and misspelled hand-painted signs and flashy film industry business cards. The rancid smoke blows out of ’74 pintos and brand new Mercedes alike.

And we imbibe this poison air. It trickles down into our lungs and pumps through our veins, into our hearts, into our minds. It rots our thoughts, feelings and desires. It putrefies our ability to love, to care and to smile genuinely.

I feel like a vampire from Brooklyn, dressed in a black dress and black seventies jacket, melting in the glaring sun. I’m somehow partially immune to this decaying air that everyone is breathing. But I see the foul Los Angeles spirit rotting everything it touches, and nobody else sees it.

OMG I like totally don’t understand what you are talking about. LA is awesome. There’s like celebrities, and blonde girls, and film, film, film. Screenplays and acting and award shows for film, film, film.

What are you working on there? A screenplay? For a film?

But the only film I care about is the layer of gray, dusty film on the coffee shop window in front of me. Traces of the evil, polluted winds that darken this sunny city.

Le transport

The French have a term to analyze poetry called "le transport", meaning that an excellent poem is one that transports you, taking yourself outside your own body that shivers with delight as the soul escapes it. The soul hops on the métro and rides paround la ville féerique to the tune of cliched accordion music. "Le transport" lifts me beyond this dusty grave of a library where beauty and passion go to die.

My soul is still moving through the city, a golden glowing flaneuse whose light merges with luminescent cafe windows and twinkling Christmas lights still shining in late January. While my eyes only uncover dead thoughts on the yellowing pages of antiquarian books.

The architecture of the BNF library in Paris is a perfect metaphor for academia. It's an iron-clad fortress containing decaying books In perfectly symmetrical rows. The hallways are identical so there is no way of knowing whether you are in the East wing or the West wing unless you pay attention to which one has a coffee counter and which one has coffee machines. The entire mile-long building is underground as if to accomodate the almost blind mole people who can no longer endure the sunlight of the outside world.

There is a square garden in the middle of the building, walled off by a cube of glass, so nobody has to taint themselves by being directly exposed to nature. The boring, manicured green trees and bushes look like parsley garnishes on a particularly bland meal of mashed potatoes and peas.

But at 8pm, closing time, I will join the Parisian carnival. The luminous, frivolous, playground where I, like a child, will swing from bar to bar. Summersalting, spinning, laughing under tafia and mech decorations and undulating art nouveau posters. Only to awaken tomorrow, buried underground.