Linner with Rodger!

We arrived late, a state of affairs that has become more and more of a norm as of late. I’d seen it happen to both of my diagnosed A.D.D. friends; once always prompt and timely and even a bit snippy about it, they’d slowly let the world get away from them, arriving hours late with a ‘what, me worry?’ attitude. I resolved, again, to not let my life get away from me so much.

We pulled into the driveway of the Days Inn with caution. We didn’t actually know which hotel Rodger was in per se, but the Days Inn at least sounded familiar and there weren’t any other Extended Stay locations in the area. I had always wanted to live in a hotel, for a year or maybe a season, with Julie and me off on a journey to some exotic locale - Japan, Ireland, Napa Valley, or places slightly northward. Heck, even someplace local and tony would work. The South Coast Plaza area, perhaps?

I noticed someone outside and slowed a bit; a hippie-ish fellow. Probably not Rodger, but then I didn’t know—he’d mentioned medical marijuana here and there, but still seemed too sharp to be some 60s warm over, not that that was the worst thing in the world—our (slightly faded but still active) goal was to move to Sonoma County, in the Petaluma area, a place where we’d live a very hippie-ish lifestyle. Granola and organic foods for us.

Then we reached the end of the parking lot, and I began to swing the Goldmobile around. Just then, a man limped out with the assistance of a cane; I waved to him, and he returned it, a bit awkwardly. He seemed old for Rodger, but I’d only seen a picture or two, so it was certainly possible. We idled there, but he looked away from us, opening a car door and rummaging inside, placing his cane on the passenger chair.

After a while, the ignoring and oldness began to really bother me, but it wasn’t until he clambered inside the car and fired up the ignition that I was sure. So, I pulled the car back over to the lobby—the place that would make the most sense, anyway—and then I noticed a man emerge from the lobby, his walk jaunty despite a cane, fairly sharp in a blazer and slacks, a notebook under his arm. It was Rodger, a fact confirmed when I realized he was wearing the same shirt he wore in the only picture I had ever seen of him.

I shoved the door open, realizing too late that a man with a cane might need help with a car door, but he got in without a problem. We cheerfully exchanged greetings, the awkwardness of meeting passing away very quickly. Rodger was a handsome fellow, I thought—he seemed both energetic and a bit tired, the skin around his face puffy in a way that I associated with sickness. He had a strong smell, but not a bad one: it reminded me of cigars, overlaid with a bit of cologne, powerful enough that I smelled it as soon as he sat down, but not powerful enough to overwhelm me, or set off my allergies.

Surprisingly, as we pulled away, Rodger and the Boo seemed to instantly hit it off. I had somewhat feared that the hard-drinking Real Author would have little child tolerance. But then, as I thought about that fear, I give myself a mental kick; Rodger had always spoken very affectionately of his own daughter, and thus it made sense that he would be friendly towards mine.

Rodger grinned. “Did you hear that Cheney shot somebody?”
I blinked at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, they were out quail hunting. They said it was an accident.”

We all laughed, uproariously, at this, something I was unable to understand when thinking about it later; what is it that is funny about someone being shot? Normally nothing, but somehow Dick Cheney doing it was some sort of confirmation of his cartoonish super-villainy, something even I was starting to believe in despite having once been a fan of his. Not necessarily in a real, world-view forming way, but just a sort of thing that I believed without really believing it, like thinking the best way to get people to call on the ad was to go to Burger King and leave no one to answer the phone.

It wasn’t long after this that the Goldmobile informed me that we were nearly out of gas. Just a little embarrassing—to finally meet up with Rodger and then strand us on the side of the road. Luckily, he was able to guide us to a station, though the delay was long enough that my teeth were gritted when he finally spotted it. Somewhere along the way, we passed the Galleria and the beginnings of an outdoor mall that Rodger thought was fated to put it out of business. He also mentioned that the area was becoming more and more Armenian, which I found interesting, though I could think of no useful stereotypes, supermodels, super-heroes or breakout entertainers to link the ethnicity to and thus the information’s utility was limited.

The pump refused my card, which was disappointing but somehow unsurprising. I wandered up and bought gas and a bottle of water before returning, fueling up the car and wondering what Rodger and Julie and the Boo were talking about. When I climbed in, it at least appeared that Boo was dominating the conversation; she talked to Rodger at great length about Disneyland and “The Nightmare Before Christmas”.

It wasn’t much further, and when we arrived Rodger pointed out the Tam O’ Shanter, a bar that has frequently been mentioned in his writing, though I could barely catch a glimpse while pulling in. The Sizzler’s parking lot was nearly full; I steered into one of the last spots. On the way in we passed a tall, beautiful, dark-haired and eyed girl of indeterminate ethnicity, almost Persian-looking but lacking the distinctive facial structures thereof. Given Rodger’s statements earlier, I decided to label her as Armenian and filed her away for a character somewhere, sometime.

Rodger grabbed the door, which made me feel a bit awkward, but then again I didn’t want to treat him like a cripple, obviously, so I refrained from taking the door, and instead waited for Julie and Boo to go first, as my dad always told me to do and I sometimes forget. There was no line, which was a relief after the crowded parking lot. They had a black and white photo of the original Sizzler’s, promising two sirloin steaks for $1.50, which bothered me enough that I tried to work out the inflation before deciding it was boring.

I was amused, then; the humble Malibu chicken had been upgraded to Sizzler’s World Famous Malibu Chicken. I laughed about that a bit, and then ordered. Rodger shook his head when I offered to let him attach to our order, which I found quite a relief after having to buy gas twice in one weekend, even if my easy acceptance did earn a mildly scornful look from Julie, who had insisted earlier in the car on us paying.

We meandered through the salad bar, and I found little of interest, grumbling at myself for shelling out the $4 more when my meal was fine on its own, and Boo made me smile by asking when ‘that boy Rodger’, who was still ordering, would join us; a fact which amused him appropriately when I recanted it. The meal was pleasant, with Boo taking up a bit too much of the conversational bandwidth until I shushed her, a fact that resulted in her pouting, silently, under the table lip.

Rodger was, more or less, what I had expected; he ordered a Modelo from the waitress, ate what looked like a fairly rare steak, had a notebook to jot down things of interest, and scratched occasionally at small reddish patches on his hands—patches I undoubtedly would’ve missed if I hadn’t already been aware of his psoriasis. Rodger seemed as if he was going to write in his notebook at some point, igniting a bit of a hope of our being featured in a Trace story; I was disappointed when he put it back away, but then he explained later that he had a nigh-photographic memory anyway.

As the night drew to a close, Rodger dished a bit about his friends and opponents in the L.A. blogsosphere, which was interesting stuff. For some reason, I generally preferred to keep the L.A. Press types at a distance, maybe to maintain their aura of mystique, maybe because I was afraid I would dislike them in person.

Rodger, on the other hand, seemed to be a very open person, and much like his various online personas; just before we left, he told us about his times as of late, personal complications and struggles with depression that he had been going through. Some of this I had garnered from certain blogposts or the lack thereof, but just hearing some of the things I had guessed at was interesting, and I was touched by being trusted.

I realized that was one thing I had liked about reading Luke Ford’s blogs; the feeling that Luke was some great mystery that could be solved by finding the right cross-references, the right slightly-changed story. I’d lost interest along the way, my discoveries seeming to point towards Luke Ford being someone I didn’t want to know. His de-linking me had helped that process, though the extent to which I thought that was mean versus being funny was very cloudy to me, as are many of my asperger-ish obsessions.

Soon enough, we had to leave, to cross back to our home county and start up a beach bonfire. Along the way, Rodger spoke of being tired, of being bludgeoned by magazine deadlines and just wanting to work on his blog and its success lately. I wondered vaguely, then, why Rodger didn’t see Pererro as worth a perma-link, but then again maybe Pererro didn’t deserve a perma-link from anyone—it is the static on the edges of my thoughts, a pre-writing exercise, more than anything. Rodger said, then, that Wonderland was more popular when it became more personal.

I nodded to him; his writing had been more heartfelt lately, it seemed. But, I didn’t interrupt him—he was still talking, thinking, and I was listening, wondering… Rodger seemed to live the dream, to a large extent; everything about him shouted ‘writer’, from the notebook to the blog to the demeanor. He was famous, at least within a certain culture, and he lived day to day by his wits and by his words. Which was not to say that his life was easy—I had known it wasn’t even before tonight. But apparently even Rodger’s life could become boring, could become a grind. That was somehow instructive to me.

We arrived soon after, and I insisted on pictures, having forgotten to take any since then. Rodger said something about ‘proof’, which confused me or made me feel defensive at the time, but later I realized it really was pretty accurate. It had been enjoyable to dine with Rodger, maybe even exciting or momentous, and I did want some sort of record, some sort of proof.

It was a beautiful night when we said goodbye; balmy and warm, a massive full moon so low as to light the street below. Moonlight has a certain magic to it, a glow that illuminates like no other, and it gave the night a fey feeling beyond the base oddness of coming up to L.A., of having dinner with Rodger, of being on the way back down to have a pit barbecue. I glanced back at the hotel as we left, knowing Rodger was returning to his high perch, to observe the city below and to chronicle it, and I wondered how much of myself I saw in him, how much of me he saw in himself.

Then, we were off.