‘It’s the foreign pigs. They steal the girls for harems.’ : And Hold the Diet Pepsi Too

I have been cleaning off the top of my desk in order to bring a sense of organization into my career. Debris has been piling up to such an extent that, while unstacking some papers the other day, I came across a half-eaten roast beef sandwich that had turned green.

It may have been left there by one of the sports writers who use my word processor at night. I didn’t throw it away because sometimes they return the next morning and ask if anyone has seen their green roast beef sandwich.

That isn’t all they leave lying around. I find chicken bones scattered over my keyboard, and once there was a pair of panty hose draped across my 1986 Thomas Guide for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Someone, a baseball writer perhaps, was trying to find a new route and decided a map might help.

Often, many of my research books disappear, but since few of them have pictures, I don’t believe it was a sports writer who took them.

For instance, missing at the present is my Roget’s Thesaurus. The last place I would look for it is in that portion of the office occupied by sports writers. What the hell would a sports writer want with a thesaurus?

They have already mastered most of the terms in the language required to perform their duties. Terms like designated hitter and screen pass , and even a few of the more challenging ones like out of the slot.

In plowing through the debris on my desk I have also come across column ideas that, for many reasons, never got further than a line or two in my life.

Here is a notebook page, for instance, that I have labeled “Crazy Lady.”

It had to do with a woman I met in front of a Van Nuys thrift store. I had stopped to study a sign in the window about a missing teen-age girl.

I suddenly became aware of someone standing behind me, breathing hard. I turned to look directly into the crazy yellow eyes of a woman who had been staring at the back of my head.

“It’s the foreign pigs,” she said, in a fury.

Under normal circumstances, I would simply walk away, but I had never seen anyone with yellow eyes before.

“What foreign pigs?” I asked.

“They steal the girls for harems,” she said.

“Who does?”

“The foreign pigs,” she said, becoming annoyed.

I suppose I could have asked again who the foreign pigs were, but since she was talking about harems, I suspected she meant Arabs.

“They like white meat,” she said.

“Oh, uh, is that so?”

“They’ve offered me $1,000.”

“For what?”

“To be their lovers.”

She was maybe in her late 30s, overweight and had bad skin.

“Take it,” I said.

She glared at me with her yellow eyes and said, “Foreign pig!” and walked away.

I liked that encounter but never knew what to do with it. Here’s another one. I wrote “Diet Pepsi” on the back of a takeout menu for Anne Chinese Deli in Chatsworth. Not Anne’s Chinese Deli, but Anne Chinese Deli.

I go there because I like their food, but one of the women who serves the food doesn’t appear to speak English. Everything, to her, is Diet Pepsi.

I say, “Szechwan chicken, please,” and she says, “Diet Pepsi?”

I say, “No, no Diet Pepsi.”

“Oh,” she says, seeming to understand.

“I want Szechwan chicken,” I say, and then, in order to help her understand, I speak louder: “HOT CHICKEN.”

She smiles and says, “Diet Pepsi?”

At that point, I reach over the counter and put my finger in the Szechwan chicken.

“I want that,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “No Diet Pepsi.”

Right.

Here’s another restaurant encounter. I describe it as “Tortilla Trouble” in my notes. It happened at a bowling alley. I asked the waitress if I could substitute tortillas for my white bread. It’s an ethnic thing with me.

“No substitutions,” she said.

“All right,” I said, “then I’ll pay for a side order of tortillas. But hold the bread.”

She sighed wearily. “We’ve heard that old trick before.”

She called the manager, a tall, skinny old man with a sour expression.

“The dude here wants to substitute tortillas for white bread,” she said to him. “He’s giving me a hard time.”

“That’s the trouble with people,” the old man said. “You and everyone else!”

“We all want tortillas?”

“You all want something you can’t have! There are no substitutions!”

He stomped away.

“Just bring me an order of tacos,” I said to the waitress.

“Fine,” she said.

“Empty,” I added.

I don’t remember what happened next. I think she said they didn’t sell empty tacos. Since I will not dine at a restaurant that doesn’t sell empty tacos, I left.

There are many more similarly awesome ideas on my cluttered desk, but I am beginning to understand why I didn’t use them.

So, into the wastebasket they went, including an idea to pose in the nude as a “gift of love” for my wife, a chart of my biorhythms, a half-written review of a porno movie, two rotting apples and a series of handwritten words that a sports writer was saving for future use. Words likes clobbered, zapped and dumped.

I don’t need any of them anymore. You can hold the Diet Pepsi, too.