Topanga Canyon.

The grey-haired woman looked startled like a young boy caught checking out porn. She had a short grandma haircut, which led me to immediately distrust her, was wearing a bastardized version of the tribal garb from somewhere she’d surely never visited and nondescript world music blared softly throughout the office.

A friend had surprised me with a visit earlier that day, and we had taken a drive into Topanga Canyon. Brandon had posited the idea simply: “Fuck it. We’ve got nothing better to do. I’ve heard it’s cool, but that was coming from hippies. We might be screwed.” I couldn’t argue with that.

We had entered the office of the New Age faith healer because of her large “ACUPUNCTURE” sign. We were both curious about the rates she had to charge to afford such incongruously blunt advertising. If it was cheap, I figured I might even go ahead and have her jab some needles in my ass.

Our interest waned quickly when she acted skittish upon our arrival. I didn’t give a shit if she was passing a slow day at work with her drug of choice, but I wasn’t going sticking pins in my stomach to cure the beer shits while her whole body was vibrating because I was convinced she’d misfire and impale my penis.

“What can I do for you?” Her eyes darted back and forth between Brandon and me. Right as she asked, an embarrassed-looking bald man with a tool box rushed out of the back room and out the front door without so much as a word. Brandon and I held back laughs. Smoking meth and fucking the local handyman on a massage table at noon on a Tuesday would make anyone act sketchy.

Brandon took the lead. “Well, we’re not really sure what you offer, but we’re interested in your acupuncture services.”

“Hmm. Do you have health insurance it’s usually one hundred dollars a session I usually do different parts of your body to target your ailments but I can do a comprehensive treatment it depends on what you want.” The woman had completely given up the use of periods. She kept wringing her hands and shifting back and forth.

Brandon got a pamphlet and we left. I couldn’t stop thinking about the look on the guy’s face.

“Do you think we interrupted the local midday nookie right there?”

He grabbed my shoulder. “No chance in hell were they getting down. Did you see that guy’s face? He was legitimately frightened. He was running out of there.”

“Shit, that would explain why she was acting so nervous. Probably was about to steal his organs or something. And it looks like he’s not local, the company listed on his truck is from Venice.” This last point was hard to confirm as the man was racing out of the parking lot.

We wandered into a bunch of shops, all with the same tourist Bohemian feel, same music and same overpowering scent of old incense. Groundhog Day at the hippie retirement home is a truly special kind of hell.

“You know what I just realized?” Brandon said as we left yet another “One Earth Shoppe.” “There hasn’t been a single item on sale for a man. Come to think of it, I haven’t even seen another man since we’ve been here.”

“Aside from that guy with the tool box. No wonder he was scared as shit. They don’t like men in this town. That crazy old bird was probably trying to kill him right as we walked in.”

“This is basically The Wicker Man. Hang on, I’m going to use the bathroom.” The door was locked. “Damn, should have seen that coming.”

“No shit. That’s where they hide all of the bodies. I bet there’s a hundred guys in there shivering completely naked, waiting to be eaten.”

Suddenly we realized that the little man on the bathroom sign had his head ripped clean off.

We walked by a pair of teenagers on a bench sharing a pair of headphones. They sat there catatonically, unblinking and unmoving with the tinny shrill of pop metal leaking into the silence of the parking lot.

We came across an old house converted into a costume shop. The inside lit solely by cobweb-covered Christmas lights. The house was soaked with the unmistakable musty smell off the throwaway clothes that lined every open space. We walked through a few rooms and couldn’t find anyone else.

“Can a help you guys?” We both jumped as a marginally attractive tall blond appeared seemingly from behind a rack of pleather pants. She was wearing a porn star’s clear plastic heels, oddly shaped green satin spandex shorts that made her ass look it had given up on life and a gold sequin tube top that still managed to be tight despite her gaunt frame. Her protruding hip bones wiggled at us menacingly.

“Do you have any men’s clothing?”

“We might have some stuff over there.” She waved in the vague direction of coats hanging next to a rusty suit of armor and disappeared.

The coats were mostly fur-rimmed and all buttoned the wrong way. Neither of us was interested in looking like a fat mob wife, and thus decided to continue our search for any sign of manhood somewhere else. In the front room we found the girl laughing while she dressed a giggling 16 year old boy in a silver cocktail dress. Figuring he was already a goner, we hurried out, jumped in the car and sped off.

“Hot flying fuck! All the jokes are true! There’s no men in this town, they’ve killed them all! Drive, you sonofabitch, drive!”

“I’m trying! Oh man, this is the male apocalypse! Did you see that girl licking her chops staring at that poor kid in the god damned dress?”

Speeding upward through the canyon, we eventually calmed down and started laughing. We were obviously being jackasses. Surely we hadn’t just narrowly escaped the clutches of a man-hating cult of female cannibals that rivals the floppy-titted Italian women in the ‘70s soft-core Vampiros Lesbos. Our point was proven when we passed a sign advertising “Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum.”

“Hey, look! Will!  That’s a guy’s name! There’s a dude in this God forsaken hell hole. Let’s go say hi.”

After flipping around and cutting off yet another crazy-eyed old woman – this time with blond dreadlocks – in a VW camper van, we drove down a narrow brush- and tree-lined path. The road suddenly opened up into a large dirt parking lot. Surrounding a run-down wooden building were numerous water-starved decorative gardens.

We parked and stayed in the car to see if anyone would appear. When everything was still quiet after a few minutes, I started to get out. Brandon grabbed my arm.

“Wait a second. Look at this woman.”

I turned around and watched a pale brunette slowly walk barefoot across the grounds in a long white cotton dress. As she passed behind our car she turned her head slowly to give us a long, unmoving stare. She didn’t say a word.

I’m pretty sure she blinked when she was sprayed with gravel as we hauled ass out of there.

Cresting a mountain as we exited the canyon, we descended into the comforting cloud of smut that permanently hangs over the Valley. Passing the mansions and sports cars paid for with porn profits, we cheered and high fived. Somehow we had escaped the acrylic-nailed claws of bloodthirsty women. Finally, thankfully, we were back in a land that appreciates men.