Barbarella Cools Down at Air Conditioned

Two years ago I became one of those people, you know, the kind that gets involved in a new relationship and virtually disappears from the face of the earth. Before that, I lived in Hollywood, where I became a fixture at many hip clubs with names like Perversion, Sinamatic (previously Club Fuck), Clockwork Orange, and trendy places like the Sky Bar. I was on the list, I brought the drugs, and I organized the after parties. I was a queen among ravers, clubbers, and addicts (or maybe I just remember it that way). Then I moved back to San Diego. After another year or so of partying HARD, I met my boyfriend, quit smoking, and called my psycho phase of inebriation to a halt. I became complacent with “staying in.” Partying bored me, people annoyed me, so I just stopped going out.

But I became antsy. I began to crave the energy that socializing in the scene, any scene had created for me. Stuck in hiatus, I was losing touch with my city, and I began to panic. I may have tossed my vices (ahem, most of them), but that doesn’t mean I have to curl up and die of boredom with the rest of my born-again, newly sober ex-raver friends. Oh no. I will go OUT. I will find out what’s what and who’s who in San Diego, and get my ass back into the middle of the scene, so help me Oprah. Which leads me here.

I have packed my calendar tighter than a two-dollar DP porn-star with plans to explore the San Diego scene and what it includes (namely the music, the people, the places). As I embark on new adventures, I will document every dirty detail right here for your reading enjoyment, and my telling pleasure.

I caught wind of a new place that opened just a few weeks ago. Saturday night the DJs of Truffle Records would be breaking the beats. Having acquired my moves from the rave scene, this sort of music – fast – is the only kind I can dance to. I dressed David in leather pants, dusted off my black platform lace-ups, put on my red lips, and we were ready to go! David grabbed the camera and we took the elevator down, a much safer route than the stairs when one is wearing tall shoes. When we got to the bottom floor, we realized we had forgotten the case for the camera. No problem, we’ll just go back up and get it, right? Wrong. When we reached the second floor, something horrible happened.

You know that little gap between the elevator and the floor? Yeah, that’s the one. As I proceeded to step over it, ever so carefully from my elevated position, I dropped my keys. My keys are HUGE, I have over a dozen on three rings, and if I was anywhere but the Twilight Zone, they couldn’t possibly fit in that crevice. I looked down, as for a split second they rested precariously across the gap. Then, as if in slow motion -- while I was in a shocked state of paralysis -- one key slipped into the chasm and the rest of them followed, like lemmings leaping to an unknown death in single file after the first. I looked up at David. “That did NOT JUST HAPPEN!” I screeched at him. Keys under the elevator shaft, locked out of our home, no spare for the car… fuck.