EARTHQUAKES

We have earthquakes in California. We have the temperate climate, yes, that's the best, we have Melrose, Paladinos and the Rainbow, hot chicks and the beach; we also have earthquakes. The Drawback no one wants to talk about. If you live in Cali and you talk about earthquakes people think you're a pussy, we're all supposed to carry this macho attitude of "if it happens, it happens." Well, take it from me, it happens, I've been through a lot of them. 99% of earthquakes are benign, almost pleasant little tumblers, hardly threatening enough for you to get up out of your seat. A gentle rolling motion, sometimes a light jolt, nothing more. After it happens you switch on your TV to the local news and check out the epicenter etc., also every L.A. news show has the obligatory seismo-cam and the cylinder with the jagged needle so you'll feel more informed, whatever that means; it's a hoot. However I also have experienced what could be called 'major' quakes, one in 1971 and the latest one in 1994.

I lived in a two-story house in 1971, me, my parents and my brother. I had the upstairs bedroom. At 6:30 in the morning my bed started shaking and I woke up thinking that my mother was shaking me awake to get ready for school. Imagine my surprise when I realized the bed was shaking all by itself. I felt like Regan from the Exorcist, my bed was literally moving up and down and I mean moving, violently. I tried to get up and out but the floor was moving too and I felt like a drunk weaving from side to side. I saw my step-dad burst out of the opposite bedroom and run past me down the stairs; apparently this was his first quake because in his terror he conveniently left me and my mother behind. This was also the first time I saw my stepfather completely naked, all I remember was his face white as a sheet and his bouncing hairy balls, each one big as my head. The quake lasted for 30 seconds or so and then…stopped. Silence. Over as quickly as it had begun, chandeliers left swinging, swimming pools with water soaked over the sides, tired and frightened people left clutching each other in it's wake.

My parents were freaked out after this, my mother especially. We kept two large suitcases packed with clothes next to the front door for months and she vowed never to live in another two-story. I was just a little kid and had no immediate sense of my own mortality, after the quake happened I just went outside and played with my friends, the consensus among us being that earthquakes were cool. Hell, school was out for a week, we got to stay home.

This quake became known as the Sylmar quake because the city of Sylmar north of the Valley was it's epicenter and therefore the hardest hit. It so happened that my parents had friends in Sylmar and although our house suffered little or no damage theirs was completely ruined. That's one of the weird things, like a tornado one house can be ruined and another a few miles away can be untouched. So a few days after the quake our family took the freeway and headed up to Sylmar to assess the damage. It was considerable, our friend's house was demolished, huge cracks down the side, chimney gone. Apparently the father had been on the shitter at the precise time the quake happened; anybody can tell you this is the number one Fear. Morning paper in hand, just finishing off a smooth satisfying log when KABOOM! Your sphincter snaps shut like a trap and you hit the ground running with your pants still at your ankles like the world is going to end. In their haste to leave the crumbling house they unfortunately left the family dog behind and I remember it's unearthly howling and screeching from inside the darkened interior. It was not a friendly dog to begin with so we sadly let it be.

Near the Sylmar house was a hospital called Olive View, the quake took down both sides of the 8 -story hospital like a can of Spam. From the street you could see inside where the wards used to be and I can't imagine the terror of bedridden patients watching their neighbors falling into the abyss while they lay helpless clutching their beds and looking over the side 100 feet down. That quake was in 1971 and for a while people in Cali took appropriate measures for earthquake safety, such as strapping the water heater to the wall and making earthquake preparedness kits and keeping them in the front hall closet. First aid kit, $200 in small bills, flashlights and candles etc. Then…as is often the case with human nature, we just forgot. Enough time goes by and you get to thinking that it's just not gonna happen again. Sorta like the AIDS thing, people used to be careful but a majority of us just don't hassle the condoms anymore….Fuck it, if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. There's a term for this, cognitive dissonance. Chain smokers rely heavily on cognitive dissonance.

So let's go to 1994. I lived in Hollywood in a two-bedroom apartment with Skid but that night I was spending the night over at a girlfriend's house. I call her my girlfriend but that is of course a euphemism, I was fucking her and she was fucking me. At 4:30 in the morning I got shaken awake by a violent tumbler, this was no gentle rocking motion, this was a series of loud jerking jolts and the girl next to me started screaming bloody murder like she was getting raped. Then she went for my eyes, an instinctive reaction -my guess is that she wanted to be held but those designer nails nearly ripped out my sockets. I remember holding her arms away from me and thinking " it's gonna end soon, it's gonna end soon" bit IT DIDN'T, it kept pitching and shaking and I finally started to get a little scared, me the veteran of a hundred after shocks. The girl had three dogs outside her locked bedroom door and the combination of the earthquake and her screeching freaked them out and the three of them started pissing all over the hard wood floor in front of the door. I opened up the bedroom door and immediately slipped in this huge lake of piss, landing right on my tailbone with all three dogs snapping at me like it was MY fault the world was ending. And then as suddenly as it begun…it stopped. Silence. There is always an eerie silence after a quake, like everyone and everything is holding it's breath. I got up off the floor, covered in piss, the girl is crying hysterically, the dogs are still barking like devils and God knows what's going on Out There, in the World, the rest of the Valley, L.A. Who got it worst? What fell down? The girl and her roommate and I sat in the darkened living room for a while, saying nothing. Her house wasn't damaged, we'd just had a damn good scare. I felt weird hanging around so I cleaned up, said my goodbyes and decided to go home. I got on the freeway going north towards Hollywood which was a good thing because if I had gone south I would have surely died. On the southern half of the freeway four miles ahead was a collapsed off ramp and a yawning chasm 50 feet off the ground which I, speeding in the dark would surely not have seen. The entire Valley was without power and it was like driving down a dark desert road and the thought of a freeway collapsing hadn't obviously occurred to me. Neither did it occur to a CHP officer who sailed his motorcycle off that same off ramp and fell to his death not one half hour later. So I cheated the hangman, I'm driving north and I turn on the radio and whose voice do I hear but RICKI RACHTMAN'S. He was a local DJ at the time at KLSX and he had called in from his house and I remember how surreal it was to hear his voice all alone on a darkened freeway. Of all people…Ricki Rachtman.

I drove back to Hollywood and parked my car, everyone in the apt. was up and outside, talking and smoking. Even though the Valley was hit very hard Hollywood was virtually unscathed, I think a dish fell off our sink that was about it. My mother's house was 3 miles from the epicenter and it was ruined, I remember a huge horizontal crack down the whole side of the house like a zipper. It was 1971 all over again but this time we got it. The experience is hard to describe, a feeling of utter helplessness in the face of awesome Mother Nature, God heaping his wrath on all us lesser mortals, letting us know who's Boss.

As I said we had suffered minimal damage in Hollywood but the ATM's were down for a day so people naturally panicked. Greedy motherfuckers buying every loaf of bread on the shelf for themselves, carts packed with drinking water like the Rapture was coming, people fighting over batteries and Twinkies just like scared mice in a cage. Once again, Human Nature. I'm reminded how great people were in New York after 9-11, the community rose up and helped it's fellow men, here in L.A. however it was 1992 all over again complete with looting, crime, and ugliness--it kinda made me sick.