I had never been to Los Angeles before, I’d never even been on an airplane, but booking that one way ticket without so much as a blink of my eye was the best decision I ever made.
I was supposed to move to New York City. That was why I left my job, the one where I stuffed flyers into the center of the local newspaper. $7.15 an hour to stand in a dirty room where I argued about politics, the radio station, and had rubber bands shot at my ass. I stayed quiet, allowing just a slight smile across my face the day after Obama won the 2008 election. The liberal in a sea of rednecks.
New York City was closer, but Los Angeles was home. It was always home. I’d known that since I’d learned of its existence. I remember the drive to the airport, four a.m, sipping hot tea in the backseat, while my stomach turned against me. I didn’t know anybody in Los Angeles. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t even have a place to live. I just didn’t care. And why would I? I had a couple weeks booked at a motel. So what if it didn’t work out? So what if I ran out of money? I was going to California! Ah, to be nineteen and starry-eyed.
I flew from Buffalo to D.C. to San Francisco and then finally down to Burbank, all for less than a hundred bucks. What a deal, I thought. What a way to start my new life. My memory of Bob Hope Airport that day, April 15, 2009, is almost blank, but I do remember the Safari Inn. I dragged my two suitcases into my first California home, a nice two-story motel on Olive Ave, in a numbed daze. I didn’t know what I was doing, but there I was. I still assume that’s where I lost my dreamcatcher, the one I’d had since childhood. What a grueling metaphor. I stayed there until a new friend saved me from life in a Valley motel, freeing me from the pool area I had unwittingly locked myself in. She used to say I could defuse a nuclear bomb but couldn’t work a microwave. I’d catch a fire in ours some years later, so she wasn’t far off with that assumption.
We lived in Mid-City on the corner of Westchester Place and Pico Blvd. We had a small apartment on the second floor on a tall blue building. She’d move to the penthouse on the day I moved to Santa Barbara in the August of 2010. I’d join her the next year. I could never stay away for too long. We could see the Los Angeles skyline from our bathroom in that apartment. We could see the Hollywood sign. The Griffith Observatory. We could see everything.
And that’s what I remember about Los Angeles. Everything. My two apartments off Pico Blvd; the pigeons in the hallway outside of our door. They were frequent visitors, but still we were never prepared for their presence. I remember the goths outside of Catch One, the mariachi music on Sunday mornings, and catching the tourists take pictures of the American Horror Story house. I just smiled at the guy who pretended he was taking a picture of the tree stretching its branches above him.
I remember my apartment on the edge of Marina del Rey, how I’d skateboard in the parking garage and smoke joints on my balcony. Thursday night drag shows, Saturday afternoons at Amoeba, and long trips up the 405.
And then of course there was my return to the Valley, the great-one-eight. Runs by the wash, hikes at Fryman, and stoned strolls down Ventura Blvd. I could drive back and forth on Mulholland all hours of the night. I still didn’t know what I was doing, but life was happening. It was strange and overwhelming, but my God, it was happening.
But then again, isn’t it always?
