L.A. is a city of rats, beady-eyed scavengers lurking in dark alleyways and scampering up palm trees, occasionally finding a rotten lime or a bag of white powder to gnaw on for some sustenance. Brooding in the dark. When the rats grow bigger, as things tend to do under the California sun, they become weasels. When the weasels go out on the weekend, they spike their hair and put on shiny shirts and spray themselves thick with Drakkar Noir or Aqua di Gio or Ralph Lauren –a lot of those bastards are bathed in RL Polo cologne, yes – and hump their egos down Sunset to a decadent corner of Hollywood called Les Deux.
“Met her at Les Deux and she do like sex” – Ya Boy and Doc Hollywood, WE RUN L.A.
Les Deux isn’t my kind of place. I spent my first year in L.A. haunting eastside spots in Silverlake and Los Feliz and Echo Park, occasionally going to Sunset Junction haunts like 1408 and Tantra and finding them a little sceney. My new house is on the same street as Les Deux, though, and as we had a friend promising free, waitless entry and comped drinks, we decided to make a night of it. A quick hike down the block, road soda in hand and finished just in time to find our posse waiting to greet us outside the stanchions, the girls wearing slinky dresses, the guys in button downs and jeans as is the accepted uniform in such a place. The bouncers ushered us through ivy-covered corridors to a dance floor teeming with shiny-shirted weasels and fresh nubiles in the minimum amount of clothing legally allowed by the state of California for clubbing purposes, all bouncing around and craning their necks to see and be seen in full disport for just how much the world was their oyster.
Les Deux is an old faux-European plantation house, a strange SoCal craftsman hybrid situated on Las Palmas and Hollywood, just south of Graumann’s Chinese theater where all the freaks dress up like superheroes and dance around for tourists. The freak at this club is a different type of freak and their costumes aren’t aimed at getting fat housewives in khaki shorts from Kansas City to throw a few bucks into a hat on the ground. No, these freaks are geared towards one intoxicating, suffocating impulse that wafts through the air here, that’s splattered all over the walls and after the place is closed for the night the cleaning crews have to mop it up off the sticky floors. Sex, my friends, that’s the ticket. And this is where it all begins.
We walk past the fountain on the outside patio, pushing through the throbbing crowds with my right elbow pointed forward like a bowsprit parting the sea and rabble-rousers. We walk around the bar through a dank alleyway and inside a sitting room that’s open on all sides and strangely empty. Everybody’s outside, engaging in bacchanalian celebration of the night sky with smokes ablaze as Baz Luhrman’s ROMEO AND JULIET is plastered on a massive brick wall above the crowd.
“Look at this red wallpaper, all to give the look of royalty. These people really buy into this,” yells my mustachioed friend into my ear.
“Yeah, I haven’t seen such self-indulgent opulence since just before the fall of the Roman Empire,” I yell back.
We wait for free drinks from our friend’s friend. Scotch and sodas for me tonight. This is no place for beer. I don’t think I could handle it armed with nothing more than malted hops and barley.
“Gotta get get BOOM BOOM BOOM! Gotta get get BOOM BOOM BOOM” erupts through the air and everybody pulses with the Black Eyed Peas newest brainless pop monster, even those of us who have heard the song a few too many times on Power 106 (as well as the endless mash-ups and remixes haunting the airwaves).
The song ends as we disperse to the bathrooms, pleasantly disgusting, no sign of decorum in the linoleum receptacles for our human waste. The bathrooms are innocuous doorways stashed in the middle of a narrow hallway that empties into a claustrophobic room that’s empty and closed off to the general public. Maybe L.C.’s having a party here – those glitterati from THE HILLS always used to talked about this goddamn place, didn’t they?
The more I drink, the more this place makes sense, the more I can turn my brain off and just ogle the underage debutantes, inhale the sex in the air and let down my guard against such ego. Why not?
“That party last night was awfully crazy, I wish we taped it, I danced my ass off and had this one girl completely naked. Drink my beer and smoke my weed but my good friends is all I need. Pass out at 3, wake up at 10, go out to eat then do it again. Man, I love college” Asher Roth proclaimed over the loudspeakers, possibly twice and therein lies the rub. This place is like one big frat party, extended past the years of acceptable Greek intoxication. It’s what I imagine Sigma Ki / Gamma Phi socials to be like, all primped and prospered and high-fives and the only way you can get in is by paying exorbitantly and knowing the right people.
Outside I duck into the smoker’s section, looking for some fresh air away from all that rotten cologne and pheromone-charged perfume. The air in Les Deux is odorous enough to keep wild lions and possibly an African elephant away.
Fire jugglers walk through the crowd and sometimes dance atop the small rooftop over the main bar. The most space is in the smoking section. All of these weasels and weaselettes are just dripping in coitus, with Red Bull vodkas seeping out of their pores. On the upstairs balconies that open to the courtyard girls lean against the railings with nervous scanning eyes. They wish they were Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton. Those two would walk out onto that balcony like the goddamn Pope and just by waving their hands work all the little sexpots below into a frenzy. Instead these celebutantes-for-a-night are trying to strike sexy poses, looking curvy and fishlike as average girls tend to do when they’re attempting to make sexy model poses. I watch the crowd and momentarily flash to the finale scene in GREMLINS 2 when all the little green bastards are congregated in the lobby, cavorting and carrying on, and while springing new kin off their smoking backs from the sprinklers an electric demon is sent into the room and turns them all into goo.
People hover around the place with faux antique cameras, flashbulbs and all. They’re supposed to make all the little girls feel like there’s somebody other than them taking their pictures – Twitter “OMG, paparazzi is so out of control at Les Deux, luckily I looked hot!” That’s the great con. They’re rolling solo with atavistic press cameras that remind one more of Fellini’s Paparazzo than TMZ’s paparazzi. That’s okay.
In the late hours the night invariably shifts into alcohol-induced strobe light vision. Dancing. Compromising positions. Strange blond girls grinding against you. Wild words. Talk of a latenight skinny dip. As the drinks flow and the neon lights strafe against palm trees tall shrubs stab skyward, hiding partygoers from the night, from prying eyes, from the reality that’s creeping in all around the den of ego and sexual juice.
Don’t remember the walk home. Remember being kicked out when they finish serving drinks. Remember exploding a champagne cork against our wall. We’re not done for the night. We’re fiends, creatures looking to eat and drink the finest and most twisted life has to offer, insatiable, unflinching. The debauchery of the night needs shots of champagne to finish it proper, even if we can’t remember the last hour and a half. To hell with bourgeoisie conventions of temperance. We cheers to a fine night hanging out with the beautiful and the rich of the ego capital of the world. What a rotten place is Les Deux. But anyplace with that much sex and stimuli will always breed an experience that is unforgettable to all but the most jaded of revelers.
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