It was a beautiful sunny day as I walked off the airplane at LAX's Gate 9. There were only a couple of grass fires blazing within the San Fernando Valley, causing smoke to mix with the haze and the smog of the city, creating an atmosphere that would have required a Surgeon General's Warning to be labelled upon the whole damn city, saying that just breathing in this town would cause lung cancer further on down the road of life. The gang members of the city were "chillin'" and not having any gang wars in Compton. And there was only a forty percent chance of "the Big One" striking the San Andreas, causing all of SoCal to fall into the Pacific.
Man, I am gonna love living HERE!
My name is John Watson, M.D. I am a pediatrician that has moved here to WeHo to start my practice of helping take care of the kids in this part of the American gay community. Thanks to the pogress of equal rights for us homos, many more gay couples are adopting children, making the face of West Hollywood look more like Mayberry and less like a Folsom Street leather parade. As you can already see, I am gay as a Judy Garland soundtrack. However, since I am from Iowa, I am more of a "straight-acting" farmboy than some lisping drama queen that likes to dress up like Barbara Streisand...giant nose and all.
I was once in the military and saw combat duty in Operation: Desert Storm (hey, George W., why didn't your daddy have us shoot the sorry Iraqi bastard when we had him in our sites the FIRST time?), but had to leave because of being shot in the leg during a battle, causing me to retire from my military career with honors. Which was, believe it or not, a good thing because my superior officer was beginning to suspect the reason why I wasn't going out too often to the strip clubs not too far from the base. The being shot in the leg gave me the perfect opportunity to leave the military, but keep my benefits as a veteran. After I had my honorary discharge AND my purple heart pinned on me, I walked right up to my commander and asked him out for a date.
To my surprise...he accepted! He was GREAT in bed...
As I was getting into the taxi, I told the driver to take me to my new doctor's office in WeHo. With a curteous yessir, this Muslim (whose name, I swear, had absolutely NO VOWELS within it whatsoever) began to pull away from the noisy Hare Krishnas, who was banging away at their drums, and handing out flowers to others...who wished that they could take those flowers and SHOVE them into the lower back parts of the knuckle-heads' anatomy. The traffic, if you wish to call an endless sea of non-moving chrome and metal that, was nearly at a standstill, but after an hour of stop-move an inch-stop-move another inch, we finally got to West Hollywood.
I LOVE being in the gay parts of cities! Not because of the less probability of being bashed from some Phelps-wannabe, but just because I can hang around more with other guys like me. In Iowa, you don't have too many gay bars or coffee houses...I don't even think that we have HILLS there!..but I just don't like feeling like I'm the only gay guy on the PLANET. In a gay section of town, I feel like I am more within a happy and welcoming place where you can walk out to your mailbox butt naked and the only harassment that you'll get from "the man" will be from the elderly gay postman, asking you if you're into "silverfoxes".
I pulled out my bags after we got to my new clinic. It was a nice little stucco building, looking like a cozy little Mexican hacienda. Bright red brick walkway that led to the small arched entranceway. Beautiful red brick roof. It was nice! My female nurse (I made sure that I would NEVER again make the mistake of hiring a MALE nurse to work with me...especially after how the last one left me heart-broken for a fellow gynecologist) welcomed me at the door and told me of the changes that had already been made to my office.
"Everything is going along just FINE," my nurse, Edna Riley, told me. "The computers are just now getting hooked up to the net. It won't be long before the new medical software from Cedars-Sinai will be installed and you will be up and running!"
"GOOD!" I said as I looked around the freshly painted and furnished waiting room. "It will be just a couple more days before we open shop."
"There are a list of patients waiting for you, already," Riley added. "You will have your hands full with twisted ankles and baseball injuries in NO TIME."
"Great...But I was wondering," I replied. "Do you know of any good apartments for rent around here? I just got into town and I haven't found me decent and CHEAP enough place for me to live. Any suggestions?"
She thought for a minute, "Oh, yes! There is this one place...The owner is an old lady that has already sold one half of the pad to some guy with a funny sounding name...I can't remember what it was again..."
I rolled my eyes and sighed, "Half of a pad is better than NONE...Where is it?"
"Just halfway down Bakersfield Street...221B."
"Thanks," I replied. "I'll see ya tomorrow morning, then. Bye-bye!"
And with that I picked up my two suitcases and medical bag and began walking over to the new place with the old lady and the man with the funny name.
Little did I know what the lords of fate and destiny had in store for me...
221B Bakersfield was an okay place as far as apartments went. The outside was a remodeled throwback to the days when Hollywood wasn't so "Holly-WEIRD". The building was built in the early fifties, with a nice little yard in the front and a modest garden in the back. Time, the elements, and the occasional mild earthquake had made cracks appear in the white stucco. There was nothing really odd about the outside of the building; it looked mostly like the others on the street, but rusty brown in color. I was welcomed at the door by a nice old lady that appeared around sixty in age.
"Oh, hello!" I was greeted with. "I'm Nana Hartley. I am the owner of three of the buildings on this street. Are you here for the extra bedroom?"
"I'm Dr. John Watson, " I shook her hand. "I am the new pediatrician down at the clinic. And yes, I am here for the spare bedroom. It's just temporary. I will be looking for another place to stay real soon."
"Well, you can stay as long as you like," she replied. "I don't take to throwing people out...at least not until they have paid any rent within the last three months. But you look like the sort that is more reliable than that. Come...Let me show you to the room."
As we started to go around the building to a stairway that wrapped around to the back, she began to tell me about my "roomie" that I will be sharing the place with.
"Your co-renter is a bit of a queer duck, he is. And no, I don't mean that by just him being gay...He is a rather strange person."
OH, BOY! I thought. I bet you anything that he's one of these tofu-eating, planet-saving, New-Age crystals-wearing FREAK that your mother warns you about when you tell her that you're moving to Southern California...
"When I first met Sherlock Holmes, it was about two months ago," she began. "I had just got done with waxing the floors up in the apartment when I opened the front door to go back down to mine...and there he was, ready to push his finger on the buzzer. He took one look at me, sizing me up and down for a few seconds, and said, 'Great! I was hoping to find an apartment whose landlord was a LESBIAN!'"
She stopped me at the landing that was at the corner of the building, "I was shocked. I had kept my secret about who I was until only several years ago. I was DEEP within the closet throughout the worst part of the MacArthy years, through the Sixties, and Women's Lib, and I most definitely tried to go straight when AIDS had people in this town ready to make everyone that lived within this neighborhood be 'shipped off' to who-knows-where in order to prevent the spread of the disease. NOT even the most flamboyant of the men and butch of the women had me pegged as one...But in walks this Sherlock guy and WHAMO! he pegs me to the wall within a second!"
We continue to go back up the steps to the entrance. "Well, I was aghast. But he just smiled and said, 'So sorry, my dear woman! I have a very bad practice of stating in the open that which I find MOST OBVIOUS to me...I, myself, am a fellow "fag" from London, England. So I assure you that your secret is safe with me!' The only thing that I could read from off the guy was that British accent of his. I asked him how he could tell just by looking at me and he just said, 'From the way you are holding that floor mop. Can't you tell?' And he just waltzes right into the place without so much as an invitation. He tells me his name and I say something about British humor and, just like any other pansy in this part of town, he starts asking me if he could 'redecorate' the apartment that I just had fixed up.
"I was about to protest, but then he opens up this envelope that is filled with NOTHING but hundred dollar bills! He hands me THREE MONTH'S RENT right up front and just like that, as if he were just buying from me the morning paper! Well, with money being as hard to find on your own within this town...I grabbed it up and told him that he could even redecorate ALL of the other apartments that I have in WHATEVER way that he wants to. Over the next few days, moving men come up and down these steps almost non-stop. When I finally get up enough courage to come up here-" she pauses to put the key into the door and turns the knob "-THIS is what I find..."
The door swings open to a site that I swear was a life-size photo of a Victorian-era smoking room. There were three old chairs sitting at a round, covered table sitting in front of a fireplace WITH an actual small fire going within it. The walls are mostly covered with shelves and shelves of books. There was an old antique couch that sat in front of the small terrace that opens out into the front. Old lamps that, if it wasn't for the electrical cord that was sticking out of the back of them, I would have sworn were lit by kerosene. The ONLY things within the front area that was from the past 100 years were the TV with the VCR/DVD player built into it, a small stereo with a collection of CD's, and the laptop computer sitting idly within a corner, with those stupid flying toasters playing on its screensaver. The kitchen, thank God, was pretty modern, but I noticed that one plate and fork that was left upon the countertop was another something that heralded from a time long forgotten.
"Is the bathroom..." I began to ask.
"Yes, it's NORMAL," she replied quickly. "But only after I put my foot down that day and declared that I wasn't going to have an OUTHOUSE put into the backyard!"
She showed me to my room, which thankfully had a phone jack to plug in my own laptop, a cable outlet for me to get LOGO, and a small color TV to watch it on. The bed was pretty normal, but I was going to have it gotten rid of...just to have even MORE "modernity" put into the place! There was a window that opened to a literally breathtaking view of a smog-covered Los Angeles. I asked about the rent. She told me. I asked if she knew of any OTHER places that were for rent. She just looked at me sourly. I said okay and wrote out a check.
"Ms. Hartley!" I heard a British voice coming from through both the open bedroom and front doors. "I'd say, Ms. Hartley! Are you showing the room to a new tenant? How long do you think that THIS ONE will stay before I 'bother' him from out of here?"
We had both just come into the front room just as Mister Sherlock Holmes walked through the front door.
Chapter One It was a beautiful sunny day as I walked off the airplane at LAX's Gate 9. There were only a couple of grass fires blazing within the San Fernando Valley, causing smoke to mix with the haze and the smog of the city, creating an atmosphere that would have required a Surgeon General's Warning to be labelled upon the whole damn city, saying that just breathing in this town would cause lung cancer further on down the road of life. The gang members of the city were "chillin'" and not having any gang wars in Compton. And there was only a forty percent chance of "the Big One" striking the San Andreas, causing all of SoCal to fall into the Pacific.
Well that sums it up... Shake and bake and burn. Actually we are going to become the next Island state. Although you have not been here, you are capturing the essence of SoCal
Dressed in a brown suit that harkened back to the late Nineteenth Century, was a British gentlemen; holding the latest copy of the "gay-pages" in one hand, and a very fashionable walking stick in the other. On his head was a hat that, for some odd reason, made me think of Oscar Wilde: black with a large brim. His shoes were brown and leathery, with a black shoelace tied in a bow upon them. I didn't know that they still made outfits like this anymore.
"If you must know, my good doctor," Sherlock Holmes said to me as he noticed my gawking at him. "I get all of my clothes from the movie lots around town. I had a veritable 'field day' when United Artists went under. I like to wear the 'classics' of long ago. I find them very breatheable in this warm climate. I hardly wear anything from this day and age...unless, of course, I am in disguise. And, I must say, there are times that I just walk around the house without anything upon my person...Will this bother you?"
"N-No," I finally stammered out, with my bottom lip lying on the floor. "I sometimes like to do that, myself. But how did you know that I'm a doctor?"
"Elementary!" Holmes began his reasoning. "You have sticking partway out of your shirt pocket a card that says 'WeHo Medical Clinic'. Since you have a medical bag sitting on top of your stack of luggage, the only conclusion that I can come to is that you are the new doctor for that facility. Also, since that bag has a couple of 'Blue's Clues' stickers upon it, you must be a pediatrician...graduated from the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington. I can tell that from the UK college ring on your left hand. You are originally from Iowa, though. This is from the Des Moines High School diploma that I saw sitting atop your Marines' backpack from your short time in the service, where...from the black box that I know holds your Purple Heart...I can surmise that you were in Desert Storm."
I was aghast! He was able to tell me my life story from what little luggage that I had brought with me on the plane trip. I stepped forward to get a better look at this walking enigma. He stood almost six-foot-one, thin, but somewhat muscular, had a very sanguine nose and blue eyes that showed an intellect that was YEARS beyond his age. He looked like a cross between Jude Law and that old guy from "The Lord of the Rings" movies. I could tell already that I was beginning to fall for this guy...
"Ah!" he said. "I can tell that I am right from all of my deductions! It isn't really hard to make deductions. People make WRONG deductions all of the time...Especially, in this town. But it is knowing what to look for that will enable one to make the RIGHT deductions. Many a peace officer have pulled over a black person in the name of 'racial profiling'. But with the proper training, an officer can tell just from the way that the suspect is driving his car that the driver is guilty about something. You just have to realize that whatever your final resolution is, no matter how 'unrealistic', must be the TRUTH."
"Yes," I replied with a smile. "I see your point. On the battlefield, I had to make snap judgments about how serious a wounded patient was, and wether I should risk my time with him, taking time from another wounded patient...or to just let him go."
"Very well then," Miss Hartley interjected, bringing me back from my mental drooling over my new roomie. "If you will follow me to my offoce, Doctor Watson, we can sign you in and get the matters and rules settled. This will only take a few minutes. The moving van with the rest of your things will be here shortly."
As we stepped outside and was walking down the steps to her office, she confided, "I think that he LIKES you!"
"What?!"
"He likes you," she repeated. "That is the MOST that he has taught to ANYONE about his personal assessments. He has been very reserved about his communicating with his past room-mates. I believe that he has spoken more to you in the last five minutes than he has ever done with the others...You have really opened him up!"
"You think?" I asked.
"Of course!" she replied as she opened the door to her own apartment/office. "I am a Wiccan priestess...of a family of gypsy women. I KNOW about these things and I can tell from MY observations that there is a good kind of 'energy' that flows between the two of you. You two will make a good couple in the future."
With that idea playing in my head, I listened to the rules and signed the papers. After handling her my deposit, I asked her if there were any "negatives" about living here.
"Well," she said as she looked up at the ceiling. "There is this ONE little thing...Your roommate THINKS that he can play the violin."
"Excuse me?" I asked as I was getting ready to leave her pad.
"Holmes believes that he is good at playing that beautiful instrument that you saw sitting on the mantle above the fireplace. He often plays it on rainy days, and late at night...much to the displeasing of some of the neighbors here. I don't want to be critical about the man, but...the very first night that he played the cops came knocking on my door, asking me which of my neighbors was trying to kill a CAT!"
I laughed heartily as the moving van with my stuff in it pulled up, and two movers jumped out. I began to help them taking stuff up the steps to my new apartment...and to the "observations" of my new, and very strange, roomie.
I was just getting to the landing in front of the door, when the moving van with the rest of my stuff drove up and two men got out. I had packed only a few things for my new home, wanting to start my life all over again on the West Coast, but had to bring a few things that I wasn't ready to depart with because of the sentiment behind them...like my Harley Davidson that my dad bought me as a graduation present from med school. It was rolled off the truck, and Mrs. Hartley said that it can be parked into the downstairs garage that she said that she doesn't use much anymore because she only uses a bicycle for transportation. Somehow...the mental image of a "witch" riding around town on a ten-speed sort of "clicked" in my head. It has to be the climate out here, I thought, that made people act a little "odd".
As I was paying the moving guys for their help (and trying to get the phone number of one really cute muscular one), Sherlock called down to me from one of the windows, "I hope that you don't mind if I put up some of your stuff for you...I have a client coming by real soon, and I need the place to look in tip-top shape!" I said back that it was okay, hoping that the man didn't break my laptop computer, my iPod, or any of my CD's. After giving the muscular man my check (as well as my cell phone number), I put up my Harley into Hartley's garage, asked her for an extra key to it, and sped back up the stairs to my bedroom, hoping against hope that Holmes didn't destroy anything important.
Instead, what I found in my room took my breath away!
Everything that I had was put in almost the EXACT same spot as they were when I lived in my room back home in Iowa! The desk that I worked at ever since my high school days was in it's right spot by the window, and had everything that was on it in it's right place. The dresser was filled with my clothes, almost in the exact same drawers, and had my pins and pennants and awards and medals pinned in their right spots. Even the full-length mirror was in it's right spot between the bedroom door and the closet! I just couldn't believe it! And there...sitting on my bed...going through my old high school yearbook...was Sherlock himself, flipping through the pages of my old life back in the Midwest.
"I took at liberty," he began. "to where the mirror would be to your liking. I knew from the small holes in your dresser where you had pinned your adolescent accomplishments. And from the different shades of the wood stains, I guessed where all of your desktop instruments were. I hope that it is all to your liking...Oh, my! You were even on the school swim team...nice 'package', if I do say so!"
Quickly grabbing the yearbook (before my face could be completely drained of all color...and dignity), I said, "Thanks...er...I mean about what you did about the room."
"No bother at all, my dear Watson!" Holmes replied, taking my hand into his and shaking it. "As a young lad, I too know what it is like to have to move from one place from another, trying to keep some sense of 'familiarity' about me. My father worked for the British military, too. My mum was a good woman, God rest her soul, and tried to keep things about us lads as 'normal' as possible. I only have one brother, Mycroft. He chose to stay back home across the pond. We try to keep in touch...all things considered."
"Oh, really?" I asked, becoming interested about my new friend's background. "And are you 'out' to any of them?"
Holmes' eyes looked up at the ceiling and he said, "I knew that I was, as you Americans would say, 'queer' ever since I was a child. My father was too busy to ever notice anything like that, but my mother suspected that I was a little 'off' for quite some time. I wasn't interested in sports, except for the ones I played in when I was at priory school. I wasn't much interested in hanging out around my family's church. And even at a very young age, I knew that the male anatomy held me more at interest than anything within the females of the human species." He let out a small sigh, "I spent most of my childhood reading and studying EVERYTHING that I could. But not about 'normal' stuff, but about things that most people don't ever notice. Things like the way a woman puts on her coat when she's in a hurry...or the way a nobleman holds his walking stick in his hand...or even how a child feeds himself when he is trying to watch the telly. It's those little things that I notice and catalog up here in my gray matter-" he pointed to his head "-and I am using those things quite well in my career of being a private investigator. I have always been captivated by the study of criminology, especially about the study of the criminal mind...how it works...how it thinks...how it feels!"
"Fascinating!" I said as I sat down on the opposite end of the bed from him, wondering what kind of man is this.
"Oh, yes, it is fascinating!" he began again. "The mind of the criminal is not like many others. It seems to have a 'genius' behind it. It thinks very independently of most other people; making it a most amazing 'foe' to come up against. What is the old saying? 'Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive'? The criminal mind is a 'spider' that this 'zoologist' loves to study when it's in the center of its 'web'. I often go disguised as a homeless drunk for DAYS at a time, studying my 'subject' in its natural habitat. I have taken notes that can fill VOLUMES of books that the FBI would benefit from. I have thought about becoming a teacher for the police academy, but then I would have to give up my own studies...and my subjects change their 'webs' much too fast for most police to stay up to date with. No. No...I MUST stay where I am at to be of any service to mankind...as well as to fulfilling my DESTINY!"
"Which is?"
He looked at me dead in the eye and said rather coldly, "To make sure that whenever one of these 'spiders' catches a little 'fly' within it's web...to set the little fly free...and SMASH the web with it's creator with it!"
At that moment, there came a buzz from the doorbell.
"AH!" exclaimed Holmes as he jumped off the bed, scaring me to death. "There is my client now! Come, Watson! You shall learn what it takes to catch a spider and set a fly free!"
And with that, I set down the yearbook, and followed Holmes into the living room. I sat down at the small circular dining table, grabbed my small notebook that I use to write down my patient's notes in, and had just grabbed a nearby pen when Holmes opened the front door and let his client in.
Although you have not been here, you are capturing the essence of SoCal 
