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.