How polite. What a weird moment. I was walking down the block this morning, enjoying the summery morning vanilla air, when I bumped into Armie Hammer. I had run out of beans and had to do a coffee run, which is a coffee walk down to Venice's Groundworks Coffee Roasters. They've got the right roasts and the right beans and the baristas which will either be a cranky old jazzophile, a mustachio'd quixotic latino man in their fifties, or a truculent short republican Oaxacan guy that won't stop polishing the steel countertops, a diverse crew that I like spending time with, but the coffee, that too. Dark beans and velvety horchata, both recently prepped, just in case you need to sweeten up your dreary pattern of bitter self sensationalism. Kenrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" keeps running through my head more than it runs through my phone or computer speakers. I want to celebrate this song, I wanna dance to this song, I wanna join the community with this song, the community of Los Angeles hip-hop, the black community, even though it's very much a 'black people only' song, or maybe it's just a 'anybody but Drake' song. It's not so simple. He a fan, he a fan, he a fan...
As I was walking down my street, out of the Gargoyle-sculpture-army apartment building we here call "The Bordello", out came Armie Hammer. Looking like a tall white rich beachy, I dunno, statue of a white beach guy that was coming out of the an apartment building that is guarded by petrified centaurs, goyles, and other witchy demons, eternally stoned. So out he walks. Very out of place and in place and near my place and sharing the same space, breathing the same vanilla mist as me. It took me for a moment to realize who he was, but his beach trunks and faded shirt communicated one thing as the Bordello building communicated another thing. This guy is caught in between two worlds. One that's optically white, and a very rich white, grossly affluenct and an overall lack or grasp on shared reality. The other world from which he emerged, a dungeon of his own making he self diagnosed darkside seemingly accepting his distrurbing truths that he now no longer had to hide from and the public doesn't tolerate. He's leaning into it, as it's all he most likely cares about when what are others so convinced of? Being diabolical. It's easier running hell than serving in heaven. So it was really no shock to me he found himself here at the Bordello but what confused me is where I had found myself? I was neighbor to this building for ten years, twelver years, thirteen years now. I've seen all the characters that go in and out of it, the permanet residence that call it home, and those that are passing through. Armie's one that's passing through. What will he do here while he's just, passing through? That's the problem with passerby's. They usually don't have to live in the mess they made, especailly when they know they'll never return. They buy a maid or a new house if the old one is, well just a little old and messy. New houses don't have any messy stories to remind you how much you crave the oil that comes out of your mouth when you do your misdeeds. This was now my second time seeing him and this the time that confirmed what I saw. Armie Hammer is all too casually living in Venice Beach's hauntiest of apartment buildings and he's making it look somehow whiter, richer, and somehow filthier than ever. Like, he assumed because he has rape allegations, cannibal quotes, or has been rejected by society, he now finds himself here in Venice wanting to what? Fit in? You don't fit in with us sir. Just because we call this bohemia home doesn't mean we need living Gargoyles to move in and do the same.
Turned out we were both walking to the coffee roasters. I didn't think he was, becuase he was already holding one of their cups. So we both then shared one of those weird walks where you're going in the same direction of someone that you don't want to be, but there's no avoiding that your destination is similar so your route therefore is the same and it will be shared even at some peculiar distance. Anyway, whatever, however, bleh, trying to scrape my tongue of the awkwardness, so he opened the door and held it open for me, making eye contact longer than I was wanting, knowing this guy had a seedy past, I then said, "Thanks". He was being polite. I was being polite. He looked as deep as he could into my eyes for the moment they met, so I did the same, fascinated by people who are ostracized or do weird stuff that seems foreign and cautionary to my otherwise more coquettish or sensitive instincts. I haven't released the beast that I am, so I really don't have anything to say on the matter. He has. Apparently from what I have heard, has been quite the beast. So, I knew to keep my distance knowing my beast was a less evolved match up to this much more nuanced demon character traits that found their reflection in my shimmering eyes, trying to understand how this much purity still existed in the hazel forrest. He needed to re-order another almond milk latté. I was behind him, reading my pulitzer prize winning novel I adore called, "The Sympathizer" by Viet Thanh Nguyen, definitely reading in line, definitely not thinking about Armie Hammer in front of me, ordering another almond latté, trying to remember what were the allegations made or the details of his publicized scandal? He wanted to eat people or something else perhaps taken out of context. But weren't there sexual misconduct allegations? Rape allegations? Other types of more sinister allegations that despite their fetish are a bit more believable than him actually eating people? However, him living in "The Bordello" is a bit peculiar. As if he's appropriating it to fit his image when he doesn't know that the people that live there are quite salubrious and interestingly tame people. Their darkness not so buried, more or less worn like a tattoo. On his back right arm he had a faded tattoo or a lightly written one in cursive "Chaos". I looked on his left tricep for "Order", the natural counterweight to chaos, there was no order to be found. His almond milk latté was ready. My turn.
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