At the screenwriting seminar, me and this guy, Chris, are the only ones in the entire room who seem unable to guzzle the Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid that both of us wanted so badly to drink, seeing as how we both shelled out eight hundred fucking dollars for this weekend-long course. A course that promises to not only “hone your craft,” but also provide “insider tips” on how to “sell your masterpiece.” The instructor, Mark Zimmerman (a fittingly generic name), has forged a career not from screenwriting, but from giving screenwriting seminars. Which should have been yet another glaring clue that becoming a high-paid (or even nominally-paid) screenwriter is actually impossible. But people like Chris and me, people like the ones foolish enough to enroll in this seminar, don’t want to believe that. And by the time they finally do get around to believing (a.k.a. accepting reality) that, they’ve already funneled thousands of dollars into the booming “screenwriting education” industry.

It only took about ten minutes for me and Chris to understand that we’d been had. Which is exactly why we ended up “partnering” together for the many exercises that Mark Zimmerman would force his students to do as a means to fill the vast number of hours that could not otherwise be filled with his actual “teaching.” After all, he assured, the best way to learn was by “doing.” But the only thing we seemed to be “doing,” for the most part, was reading the dialogue from Jerry Maguire to each other. “Perfect scriptwriting” (as it was deemed by Mark Zimmerman) example or not, this wasn’t what me or Chris (or probably anyone else) had signed up for. Not what they had paid hundreds of dollars for. Because, obviously, they could have just stayed home and read the script online for free if this was going to be the core extent of Mark Zimmerman’s “wisdom” to offer.

During one of the fifteen-minute breaks (of which there were also many as a means to fill up the time), Chris and I found ourselves to be the lone “students” taking the opportunity to smoke a cigarette outside of the Los Angeles Airport Marriott. In fact, we seemed to be the only two beings in all of L.A. County who were smoking regular cigarettes at all. That’s probably how I knew that things between us were going to escalate. That much was confirmed when he approached me to say, “Should we just walk out on this bullshit or what?”

Of course, the thought was tempting. But, ultimately, as with most things, the very idea of wasted money kept us from pulling back. Forced us to continue down a path we really weren’t interested in. It was too late—there were “too many chips on the table” to fold. Vegas-related metaphor or not, it applied just as easily to Los Angeles and the filmic pursuits it was synonymous with. Even though we both knew the answer to his question already, I still told him, “I can’t bear to just give away money like that to someone. I have to stay and see it through.” I paused to exhale a plume of smoke before concluding, “Unfortunately.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I guess… Though honestly, I would probably leave if you weren’t staying.”

There it was. He had said the unspoken thing between us out loud. It was an instant turnoff to someone like me. Someone who needed to know “the thrill of the hunt” a.k.a. be treated like shit by a man in order to stay interested. He didn’t make matters any better by “jokingly” quoting the grossest line from Jerry Maguire: “You complete me.” Though he did save some face by adding, “At least as far as this screenwriting seminar is concerned.”

***

After another brutal four hours of absolutely useless “information” and partner/group “exercises,” Chris and I once again found ourselves alone outside the Los Angeles Airport Marriott. He asked me if I wanted to share another cigarette with him. When I told him no, he asked me if I wanted to “grab a drink somewhere.”

I replied, “Where?”

He shrugged. “It’s a surprise.”

The real reason I decided to go with him, in the end, was that I didn’t feel like taking the bus back home. Because, yes, I was among the few, the not so proud L.A. residents who got around the city without a car. The Big Blue Bus was my only “vehicle.” And it was a long way back to the room I was renting in Westwood via said “vehicle.” So I took Chris up on his offer. It meant, eventually, a ride home. However long that might take. Reflecting on it now, the roughly one-hour bus ride to Westwood would have taken far less time than the journey I ended up embarking on that night. Starting with the surprise being for him to take me to the Black Rabbit (or Black Rabbit Rose, or Black Rabbit Rose Magic, depending on who you asked).

It was there that he kept insisting on ordering me numerous doses of the cocktail they called the Zigzag Lady. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to tell me something by assuming a cocktail with this title was “so me,” but I suppose anything could be billed that way when it was free. Even though its primary ingredients of rum and black currant juice were not exactly what I would have called my “first choice.” The Smoke n Mirrors was actually way more my speed, rooted in an ingredient combo of gin, vermouth and Campari. And it was a dollar cheaper. But as the one not buying (or driving), what choice did I really have?

In a lot of ways, the trajectory of the night exhibited what Mark Zimmerman had taught us in the screenwriting seminar that day. Which is that one must allow themselves to simply “let themselves go” and “see where the narrative takes them.” The more you try to steer the narrative, the more unnatural the script will feel. So instead, I let the narrative steer me. And that’s how I ended up in Chris’ nearby bedroom after about five Zigzag Ladies (he didn’t feel obliged to get us into the actual magic show that the “lounge” is known for though). And when I say “nearby bedroom,” I mean he actually lived in the apartment building where Black Rabbit is located. The Hudson Apartments. Right at the corner of Hudson Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.

It looked like the sort of building that would be in a David Lynch movie. That Black Rabbit had a “speakeasy” sort of quality to it only seemed to fortify the legend that Rudolph Valentino owned a speakeasy of his own in this building, back in the 1920s, when it was called the Hillview Apartments. Back when the U.S. was in its Prohibition era, but Hollywood was not. Shit, it was still “pre-Code.” Anything went.

That’s what Chris proceeded to tell me as he lit a cigarette off one of the candles he had also lit as soon as we both tipsily stumbled into his abode. In the back of my mind somewhere, a part of me wanted to tell him that we shouldn’t light candles while we were this “in one’s cups,” but that part of me was suppressed by the “good-time girl” that had been unleashed by all those Zigzag Ladies.

We started talking wildly about everything…related to the screenwriting seminar. How we felt taken advantage of, used—as though we were being caught on some kind of candid camera that we would be mocked for later, when objective viewers watching the footage would laugh at our mistake and happily tell us how stupid we were if they could. After all, how could anyone fall for a seminar that freely admitted Freytag’s Pyramid was its “bible”? More to the point, how could anyone have the audacity to even call a shape on a piece of paper a “bible”?

That was a question for Mark Zimmerman, of course, and one that he would never answer. Chris and I both doubted that he could answer anything at all—related to screenwriting or otherwise—if asked. That’s probably why there was no “Q&A portion” of the seminar. Though, according to Mark Zimmerman, it was simply because there was “far too much ground to cover” to waste time on something like that.

So yeah, Chris and I just laughed and laughed at the seminar, at ourselves—for being so dumb. So effortlessly “had” by a huckster like Mark Zimmerman. In the midst of my own giggling, Chris stopped his abruptly. In this way that was undeniably eerie. The effect of which was probably further amplified by the way the candlelight was casting shadows on his face. It was enough to quickly kill the mood. Chris took note of my attunement to this “vibe kill” and said, “I have to tell you something.” Words that a girl is never fond of hearing…for it’s usually followed by some confession like, “I have a girlfriend” or “I’m actually a woman.” Even so, I feigned my calmest expression despite the fact that Chris had sobered me right up with his somber tone and aura.

I urged, “Go on. Tell me.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and prefaced his declaration with, “You might find this hard to believe…if you’re not in touch with your spiritual side.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m actually…” He sighed, unable to complete the sentence.

“Oh god, just say it. You’re married with three kids or some shit, right?”

Chris paused to think about this. “It’s much more permanent than all that…”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The truth is…I’m…dead.”

That’s when I could start laughing again. So that was the catch with Chris: he was psychotic. I might have known. Most aspiring screenwriters living in L.A. are. Or just most people living in L.A. full-stop. And then, the more I kept laughing, and the more he kept maintaining that same stoic expression, the more I started to realize he wasn’t putting me on. Either that, or he believed in his own delusion so strongly that, for all intents and purposes, what he said was true. If it wasn’t, he had willed it to be so.

When I asked him how he could touch me if he was a ghost, he said he had honed the skill over the past century. Because, yes, as Chris was sure to mention, he was among the first batch of tenants in this building when it was called the Hillview. Had, in fact, gone to Valentino’s speakeasy. A tidbit that prompted him to inform me, “I can tell you, with utter certainty, that things were far more interesting then compared to now.”

Maybe it was a combination of the Zigzag Ladies or an unabashed desire to believe in something beyond this physical plane, but, whatever the reason, I leaned in fully to this narrative. If nothing else, that’s what the screenwriting seminar had taught us to do. Thus, presently operating under the new reality that Chris was a ghost, I inquired with directness: “Why does a ghost need to go to a screenwriting seminar?”

“I always go to them. I’ve been searching for the perfect person.”

To me, that sounded much too foreboding. “The perfect person for what?”

It was then that he pressed two fingers against my lips and commanded, “Shhhh.”

I obeyed. Suddenly, this was feeling as fucked up as it was hot. I was ready to bone a ghost. Could finally put a stamp on that square of my “sexual encounters card.” I let him “take me,” as it was likely said in the 1920s. And it was in the midst of my spectral orgasm that I blacked out, I guess. I’ll never know if it was the alcohol or the “ghostly magic” of Chris that caused that “fade out,” to use screenwriting parlance. Whatever the case, I somehow woke up in my own apartment (or my own room, if you must) the next morning…much to my dismay. Because I did so want to hear more about what he meant when he said he was searching for the perfect person within these screenwriting “class” contexts.

When I arrived at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott for the last day of that goddamn seminar, I didn’t see Chris. Apparently, fucking me was all he needed to transition to the other side. I even went back to the Hudson Apartments that evening to try knocking on his door. But no one answered. I supposed that was better than the trope of an old woman opening the door and telling me in a creaky voice, “Chris has been dead for [however many] years.”

Over the next few weeks, as I wandered the streets of the Westside contemplating what the hell had happened, I started to grasp what he meant by meeting the perfect person. That it entailed passing on the story of who he was in some way to the right “steward.” I mean, he was talking a lot about his past that night at Black Rabbit. I just didn’t fathom at the time how far into the past he was referring to. Somewhere near the corner of Arizona and 5th (for I only stick to routes along the Big Blue Bus line), it dawned on me that he chose me because he knew I was a screenwriter, but not a schlocky one. Not the kind who would “deign” to write solely for the purpose of “hitting the big time” or becoming “filthy rich.” He needed to keep attending these shitty screenwriting seminars until he found a fellow non-cult joiner (which, it should go without saying, is like trying to find a Botox needle in a haystack in Los Angeles).

So it wasn’t, much to my ego’s chagrin, banging me that helped Chris “move on.” It was knowing that he had passed along his unrealized idea to me. The “idea” that was his life. And that I might one day, with any luck, be able to turn the script I made out of it into an actual movie. Even though I didn’t want it to, the notion of him continuing to be such an overtly hopeless dreamer despite everything—despite being dead—warmed my heart. Brought back some of my own lost naïveté and innocence. I’m sure if ever do sell a script though, these qualities will be blotted out all over again. In the meantime, I’ll always wonder if everyone else at the screenwriting seminar thought I was just talking to myself, The Sixth Sense-style. A script, sadly, not referenced at any point during Mark Zimmerman’s “teachings.”