Working in New York hours in Los Angeles has one major advantage: I leave the office at 2:30pm.

But working New York hours in Los Angeles has one major disadvantage: I leave the office at 2:30pm, go straight back to my hotel room, and masturbate like a mental patient for hours and hours.

(And hours.)

You see, I don’t really know what to do with myself when I get out of work that early. I know a few people in LA, sure, but they’re all still working when I knock off, so I can’t exactly meet up with them for a drink. I suppose I could go sightseeing or something, but why would I drive around in horrendous midday LA traffic to see the Chinese theater or the Strip? In NYC, I walk around a lot, exploring the nooks and crannies of the Village, Soho and the Lower East Side, but in LA walking consists of a) walking to the car in the morning; b) walking from the car in the afternoon. I’m staying in Westwood, a neighborhood around UCLA, but aside from a strip of cafes, there ain’t much going on.

(Also, one of you warned me that UCLA has a lot of programs for high school students going on right now, so it’s in my best interest to stay away from the area, or at least always look down on focus on baseball stats while there, lest something regrettable and/or awesome happen.)

What I should be doing is work. Not the 9-to-5 kind, but the "I’m trying to write poop jokes for a living" kind. But the problem is that I’m a night person. There’s no way my ass is sitting down at a computer to "write" when it’s the middle of the afternoon and the city is teeming with life. I find inspiration not when the sun is shining and people are out and about, but when it’s dark, when it’s quiet, when it’s lonely; I like being awake when most everyone else is asleep. In a related story, I like to strangle and be strangled when I have sex. So there’s that.

(The other problem with doing work is that I’m a drunk. Like most things in life – fighting, sexing, robbing – I’m better at "writing" when I’ve had a few (or more than a few) in me. Last night, I went out and bought a bottle of white wine and a 12 pack of Natty Light, hoping to set up a proper boozing and writing session, which would hopefully last well into the night. Instead, I had two beers and fell asleep in my bed with my laptop on my lap and my lights on. Welcome to my Thursday night in Los Angeles, Party Capital.)

So faced with no other options, I get home from work around 3pm and play with myself with extreme prejudice, stopping only when it’s dinner time. Between the porn I can order on TV (to compliment the porn in my laptop), the freedom of being completely nude in a fully air-conditioned room, and the gloriousness of climaxing into a hotel towel with the curtains open wide and looking out onto Los Angeles, I mean…I don’t even know how to end this sentence.

(Seriously, there is enough semen in the towels strewn about my hotel room to create an entire race of half-human/half-towel children that could possibly conquer civilization as we know it.)

Needless to say, it’s been an uneventful first week in LA (though I hesitate to call the way I masturbate "uneventful," what with the yelping and teeth gnashing and kicking and all). But I have high hopes for the weekend that do not involve being ashamed to make eye contact with the hotel maids. Wish me luck.