Don't Go Into the Light

So every year I go to Lou's to put up his Christmas lights. I go to Lou's to do other random stuff, like blow all the leaves off his roof, or sit on his office floor and pick up all the mail he's thrown down there. Back in the DAY, Lou and I would work on bad Jaclyn Smith tv movies, and spend all our time on set, ordering people and cameras and crew around (he ordered, heir director. I just held the notebooks, got him tea, and drove him home while he drank scotch whiskey.) I also learned. Watching him on set, like I watched my dad on set all those years.

I haven't gone to Lou's in awhile because I got bucked off the horse back in April (all of you remember so well) and then summer came and that's a lot of tacos and trips to the beach and in all those months I was wondering hmm I haven't heard from Lou usually he calls me to do something. He's 84, so if I don't hear for awhile I get a little well worried he took the Great Glass Elevator Up or something.

But then here it's December and Lou is indeed alive, and I'm at his house but he had to run to Actor's Studio by Uber, which he still runs, doing scenes with actors and inspiring greatness, so I'm alone and I open his garage and then can't remember the code to his back gate and punch in about a billion numbers until I'm sure the police are going to come and then I remember it's basically the easiest code there is why do I have to complicate everything and then I get thru that door and to the back door and there's no key. I can in fact SEE the key thru the window, on the inside of the door, IN THE HOUSE where you don't NEED the key because you are IN. I need the key because in order to hang the lights I need the staple gun that is right THERE in the drawer UNDER THE KEY.

I think about all the murder shows I watch and how I could wrap my hand with a towel and bash in the little window and get the key but then I'd be the guy fixing that window and I don't really like fixing windows and also I'm not going to bash in the fucking window.

So I go back out to the garage and drag out all the Christmas lights and plug them in to see what is working and this is why I haven't even done the lights at my house because I actually hate doing the lights something is always breaking or needing something "run" or I have to climb on things and the only things I like to climb on are high stools so my feet can swing, where I don't have to do anything up there except sit and daydream. But dammit this is LOU man, and I love Lou.

So I start trying to hang the lights WITHOUT the staple gun which lasts for about 3 entire seconds because when you try to hang them on old staples sticking out of the roof from last year, each staple throws itself to the ground far below in a desperate act of ill support.

I realize with a burning feeling that I now have to get back in the CAR and drive to the do it center and BUY a staple gun. So far my job is costing me way more than I am making. I go to buy the staple gun and a few strings of lights which I'm sure I will need and some staples, and I am smart enough to make sure to take the packaging off AT the store in case I get home and there's no way to get the scissors in the house and that packaging is like the hard plastic that they package explosives in that you CANNOT GET OFF. I leave the packaging at the store because why would I ever need it, look how thrifty I am.

I plug in the lights and start stringing them and shoving the ladder in and around the bushes which you know they look good but they block the way like broad leafy hippos in hard round tutus and the ladder and I are not friends, he's a skinny angry metal clanky annoyance who never wants to stand where I want to, he just wants to be an ice skater or lean on a cool wall smoking cigarettes and I just want the damn lights up and the hippos just stick their fat leafy asses all around my metal ice skater and I'm finally at the end of two ultra LONG strands of lights that Lou has had since the first world war. I am at the VERY end of this VERY fragile strand when I discover that you shouldn't staple gun into a wire that is plugged in. On the last staple, I manage to 1. electrocute myself and B. blow the whole two strands of lights with a popping explosion.

First I feel my finger to see if I can still feel my finger, and I look at the two dark strings of lights, now satan's contribution to the Christmas spirit, lighting nothing, in fact antilighting.

I am so mad I just stand there yelling sailor words.

I take down those two strings of lights. Then I have to figure out where the fuse box is. There is nobody home. I can't find any fuse box. I barely know where MY fuse box is at home and I mostly look inside that one like someone looks at a books on a library shelf where all the books say Home Improvement or Construction. I stare, and my feet itch.

Then I have an idea. I think there is a fuse IN THE END of the strand of lights. I pry it open with a nail and there is a burned out tiny fuse, and a replacement one valiantly standing next to it, both the smallest size China could make. I use the nail (not plugged in now, OKAYIGETIT) and pop out the old fuse, immediately losing it, and then gently pop the good one out and put it back in where the groom had been standing. It's the Best Man's turn. I plug in. The lights light up.

I fixed something! She says. Without swearing. Momentarily feeling the way Custer felt when he saw his first indian that day, and he didn't know it was the last time he would feel good about anything. Then I'm pissed because I took the whole strands both down and now I have to PUT THEM BACK UP and Lou is gone so I could've left EARLY and gotten the same pay and now I will actually leave LATER for the same pay, with a side of electrocution and ladder anger.

I put the lights back up, I string everything exactly right, because when I put them away last year, Last Year Julie LABELED every strand with exactly WHERE to put the lights, like the world's most efficient, and yet most boring treasure map.

It's all lit up and except for one dead strand right at the end, it's just in time for Lou to be home. He's getting out of the car, and I celebrate by hugging him and then straightening his hair and deciding he needs a haircut, and not telling him how much I hate his ladder and his bushes. Instead I'm cheerfully following him into the house because he's here and he's walking slower than he used to and he's leaning a little bit to the right, and he's softer than he used to be, in the mind, not laser pinpointed, not wrestling with something like he always internally was. He doesn't seem to need to do that anymore, and he says as he's putting his stuff down, in his old puffy wintersnow vest, he just doesn't feel like doing really ANY of the stuff he used to do anymore, like writing or figuring things out. Not that he's sad, he says, thoughtfully. I just don't feel like I need to.

He's walking back to the office down the dark hallways like he's done here in his hippie Burbank ranch house for so many years, and I'm following him, and my eyes are filling up because he's Lou and he's smaller, he's kind and decent and built two daughters and Broadway shows, and this is why I was crying on the roof last time I blew the leaves off. Because why do things have to change, and why do you have to love people when they get old and that means they're wavering and that means you can't leave because your job when you love someone is to stay to the end. Even though the end is pain. Is pain just love all turned inside out? And why can't it feel more like flowers. Don't go into the light Lou, I feel like saying. I want to be electrocuted on your ladder a few more Christmases while you complain that I did the lights wrong. That's why I made that map. So I would make sure to do it right. Because I can always do better, you say I can do better I want you to see it, but then I will always blow a fuse or buy a staple gun and then forget the packaging so I can't then return it and get my money back. Now I own a staple gun. I'm doing it for you, Lou. Because you say can you help me and I say absolutely and then I end up learning something. Even not on Lou's set, in our "real" life, where we made movies. Just in Lou's garage.

Lou doesn't care this year if the lights are perfect. They're lit up, he's lit up, he's here. I did my job.

I'm giving you a haircut next time, I say. Free, for life, Lou Antonio.