Landis, Jonathan
JOURNAL ENTRY 03

Guys with guns are lining the streets outside of the UCLA Division Of Laboratory Animal Medicine. It's hot in Los Angeles when I get there; without my phone I can't really keep track of the time. A vague haze of excitement sticks to the latent suicidal depression that must be somewhere in the recesses of my brain. The thrill of the unknown. All I have is my wallet and the clothes on my back. Contents of my wallet won't make it much further.

When I first arrived in the city, following the creature's "trail" was as easy as eavesdropping on casual gas station conversations. Everyone and his mother talking about "that dragon on the news" and where the government is keeping it in LA. The process is simple and fairly efficient outside of my suspicious lingering in service station aisles in my office clothes and never buying anything.

The search concludes at the animal lab at the University Of California. After a few laps and one-way conversations with military grunts, I suddenly wonder what in the world is going on inside. I can't imagine that the animal that just led a small uprising in the desert via motivational speech could be strapped to an iron table having an anal probe. My luck, the government will kill the thing with all the answers before anyone can ask a single question.

A few miles away, nestled beneath a layer of smog, lies the legendary Sunset Boulevard. Hollywood. I spend an hour or so traversing the street, staring blankly at tourists and a fat guy yelling into a portable karaoke machine, making raps about the tourists passing by who in turn throw him spare change. My meandering brings about the realization that money has suddenly become surprisingly irrelevant to me. I can find no desire to return to work, no need to provide for anyone, and no motivation to ensure my own survival. I use my credit card to check into a four hundreddollar room at the Andaz hotel on Sunset Boulevard. For two or three days (time has also become seamless and untraceable), I languish on the sundeck that overlooks the city and in front of in-room porno movies. The latter I do in a vain attempt to solidify my independence from my wife. Instead the effort mostly amplifies my self-loathing and perpetual nausea.

I manage to drag myself from the hotel to scour the street for information about the benevolent reptile. Outside of an expensive outdoor restaurant, a dozen women that remind me of my wife are captivated by a television mounted beneath an awning. Following their stare, I find exactly what I was looking for.