Richard Gowen on drums and bongos. Aaron Otheim on Rhodes keyboard.
Where you come from you shimmer. A golden child. But on the northeast side of Los Angeles you’re as ordinary as golden arches.
You don’t plan your outfit to wait online for diazepam at CVS, do you?
That Little Caesar’s drive-thru seems to be of no concern to the heiress across the street. Her dog may be licking Buttery Garlic film from the plastic ramekin on the sidewalk while she closes an Etsy sale on her Android, but her world is a juice bar, a coffee shop, a small cactus boutique once written up in the New York Times.
This place will chew you up and spit you out as quickly as any town Old Blue Eyes ever crooned over.
You’re not too virtuous to spend $16 on a wellness blend that promises to soothe your smoldering sinus, but more than anything, you can’t believe your luck that the local scratch ticket donut shop sells hot dogs and cigarettes, too.
The grey heel on your Kirkland Signature tube sock is visible. It’s interrupting the flow from sock to shoe.
You feel outclassed at every turn.
You go to meet some friends at the cocktail bar. The one that serves Moroccan eggs and bottomless mimosas every weekend. Seems to be another one of those nights with no eye contact. You slink to the table and cram in next to some poor fucker who can’t conceive of a way to squeeze a single drop of clout out of you. Maybe a name drop is in order. Something for him to gnaw on, to sharpen his teeth. He’s damn near laid himself out across the table to get back into the transaction. His Carhartt remains immaculate.
You try to assume the countenance of a behind the scenes impresario. Maybe you make 100k per trap beat. That warbly bass sound you hear in drill music… that’s all you. Maybe you’re the libertine who burns palo santo beneath tapestries while gassed up goddesses sing songs of love and longing into front-facing cameras.
Nobody is talking to you. There’s just no capital in it. They don’t recognize you from church. It seems they were all part of a beautiful world that died the day you touched down.
Maybe a peacoat. Maybe a classic calfskin motorcycle jacket. Maybe you could lose 5… maybe 30 pounds. Shit, maybe… and you can’t believe it’s come to this… but maybe you should slip into a pair of those little black shoes and step in line.