The scenario: Horton Plaza, late at night, when you are a bit drunk, spaced out from the late hour, lost, trying to “get validated” (for parking, not psychologically), needing to take a pee with no restroom to be found, and trying to focus on finding your car, going up and down levels that look the same… is an experience straight out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil movie.

Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" movie

How it came about: “Just for that, I’m gonna fuck you up, bitch”, chided the bartender, pouring tequila and triple sec with both hands into my glass. The bartenders remarks were all – or mostly – in fun: him playing up his role, and dealing with my complaint. He didn’t do it in a mean way, and he didn’t charge me – but his pride was hurt that I insulted his margarita-making. He even showed me his ingredients, pulling a large white container of margarita mix from under the bar. What inspired this defense? When he’d asked me if I wanted another drink I’d said, “No – that margarita you made me was watery. I paid eleven dollars for a watery margarita!” (I was already buzzed from margarita number one, and feeling less inhibited by this time). And I said this in earshot of Kristine – the woman I was sitting next to, chatting with.

The occasion: A “meetup”. The Meetup.com website is a way for people with similar interests to get together – in real life. A friend mentioned that this particular meetup – “Cocktails in Historic Places” – would be a good place to share something about the work I’d been doing preserving my father’s architecture work. And indeed, the organizer, Kristine – an affable woman – who I contacted via email, was eager to meet me and even mentioned The Pearl Hotel (which my father designed in 1959) as a candidate site before I did. This meetup location was the lounge in the front of a very fancy downtown Mexican restaurant called Candela’s in an historic building – The Quong Building (1913) no less – that used to be an opium den and place of prostitution, to name some of the formerly profitable ventures there.

Well, I’m not a big drinker, and don’t weigh a lot, being one of those ectomorphic skinny high-strung cerebral-artistic types. So by the time I walked out of there – at 11pm, three hours after driving around and around trying to find parking, and finally giving up and parking in Horton Plaza – I was pretty high – “tight” as they used to say, in historic times (as far as driving – fortunately I’m a controlled drunk – you generally can’t tell I’ve been drinking – partly because I don’t’ drink enough so that you could tell!).

So after sucking back this potent second margarita, and jabbering some more with the delightful characters in the dark lounge, trying to compete with thumping music that shook my body and head, we walked from the restaurant straight down Third Avenue to Horton Plaza.

Horton Plaza by day

After climbing over a cable barrier to our car, I decided in my condition and tired as I was, it wasn’t worth it to try and go to the upper level and get the ticket validated from the free machine (I remembered using last time I was there). I then drove down the chute to the exit. But I was living in a dreamland apparently, because I was told by the man that because I didn’t validate my ticket when I got there, it will be twenty dollars!! “I thought maybe it would be three dollars”, I said, calmly proclaiming my innocence in the face of this obvious absurdity. Surely he will see that it was a simple misunderstanding, a mistake, and let us go for a reasonable amount. No such luck. After he explains various facts of the matter to me, not budging an inch or really caring or having any hope for me (or a soul come to think of it) and me sitting there in the car pondering what to do – he says the only thing open is Long’s Drugs, on the other end of the mall, and they are probably closed, and they can only validate you for an hour in any case.” Cars are going to start coming in behind you pretty soon” he says. Time for a decision: I’m not paying $20! So I back up out of the exit chute, make a backwards U-turn, and drive up a couple of floors and park by an mall entrance.

I was a bit miffed at this point, to say the least – determined and stubborn – and I didn’t think to memorize what vegetable or fruit my car was by. I was going to get validated if it was the last thing I did, dizzy and woozy and spaced out or not. Not knowing what (same-looking) exit my car was near became problem number three in the Terry Gilliam multi-level maze of Horton Plaza.

Surely dear reader you can understand: you just want find a goddamn restroom for a badly needed pee, which seems to be hidden from mortal eyes, and no one cares that you are an innocent drunk and lost person in the nearly abandoned man-made structure, no one around except the young partyers here and there coming and going, laughing it up, or buying cigarettes at the Long’s Drugs. It’s like a man-made maze, a trap to get your money, and you want to get out of this crazy dream, and you have faith in yourself to do things, and in the goodness of people. It is a surreal experience. It was like being in the movie Brazil, for real. Is there no mercy? You are alone, pitting your wits and resources against The Machine. The artificial environment, the people that work there part of The Machine, the Game, the smoke coming from the loud workman’s saw doing God knows what at this hour. He is in his own world and doesn’t respond to your girlfriend asking him about where the button is to call security.

I thought I’d remembered from past experienced at Horton Plaza there being restrooms in the hallways by the large exit tunnels (the ones with phones and some other vending type machines vending who-knows-what). But there were none there. A security person said there was a restroom up by the Panda Express, way the hell up on the fourth level – he said in passing, not really caring about this strange drunk man. I noticed a fountain – hmm, too many people around to risk peeing in it.

Standing in line, after finally finding the Long’s Drug store, spaced out, still needing to micturate badly, but absolute in my determination to get VALIDATED and not let them get the best of me and take my hard-earned money, with the night flowing with bimbos and party kids wanting cigarettes, an older black man wanting some kind of booze bottle, the stressed heavyset young blond clerk had to talk on the mike to another clerk somewhere to find it. I tried to ask her if I could get validated amidst all this but she gave me an expression like “are you kidding? can’t you see this is insane?” and said nothing. I felt for her and the stress. What kind of life did she have, to be working in this God-forsaken concrete jungle at 11 somethign at night. Finally getting to the counter after much self-control and saying I’d like to get validated, she said it’s only for an hour and you have to buy something that’s at least three dollars. Fortunately my girlfriend was hungry, and she quickly grabbed some bags of white chocolate pretzels and dried fruit bits by the counter that, if it had been me, in my state of mind, looked way too scary to spend my (what felt like extortion) money on, but actually turned out to be pretty good tasting after all this exertion, up and down and trudging the hallways and shiny grey concrete parking levels and colorful shops – I walk fast, especially when I’m angry and stubborn and determined. A good way to work off enough of the alcohol buzz to be able to drive in a more relaxed fashion.

My girlfriend also, bless her heart, had the suggestion of going out through a different exit. This turned out to be a gift from heaven – the young black woman somehow intuiting our plight and heroic adventures to validate (or perhaps we were just another couple of poor schmucks, like she’d seen so many times before, caught in the vicious maze), only charged us two dollars, saying this time is your learning experience, or however she put it. Indeed.

We drive out, smiling, escaping from the rat tunnel, free humans once again, into the downtown night …