So I decided to surprise my mother on Mother’s Day by making a spontaneous trip to Los Angeles. After all, not only was it Mother’s Day but this year as it occasionally does, Mother’s Day also fell on her birthday. So really I had two reasons to want to surprise her. I live in New York City and host a radio show, so dropping by the left coast is no easy feat. And it is not exactly the kind of job where keeping a secret happens naturally. But somehow I managed to keep my big mouth shut and headed to the airport with a reasonable level of confidence that I could sneak into town unbeknownst to her.
I lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years, starting with my sophomore year of high school. In many ways, LA feels like home. Well, as much as the city not known for its hominess can feel. Sometimes I miss the constant barrage of sunshine and the chalk-like air that you can practically taste in the back of your dry throat. Having lived for the last three years in the rustic wilds north of New York City, I am now used to a kind of Technicolor green in the spring that might remind one of an early MGM color spectacle of the late 1930s. To juxtapose that with the perennially dusty muted tones of nature in Southern California, the pallid greens always thwarted by sandy yellows and nutrient-starved browns in the background, can be jarring.
Three days is all the time you need to be in Los Angeles for it to hold its magic spell over you. Anything more than three days and quickly the traffic, the smog, the people all conspire against you to generate hatred and resentment. Originally, this was supposed to be a four day journey, because I like having that extra day to remind me why I left. But for some reason I inadvertently booked my return ticket a week later than I meant and in order to correct it, I had to cut my intended trip short by a day. As it turned out, my long Hollywood weekend would last almost exactly seventy-two hours. The spell would remain intact.
For the many years I spent living there, I didn’t mind the city that much, I suppose in the way that people in war torn countries just get used to car bombs or machine gun fire. It helped that I had many wonderful friends and LA is a great place to be young. It is no wonder then that it is also the place that people are most likely to want to hold so rigorously onto their youth even as it slips through their wrinkled fingers. I confess that I share that desire for eternal youth so as much as I complain about LA, you can’t live in it for a long time without it becoming a real part of who you are.
New Yorkers often make the mistake of thinking that I am “so LA” just because I have a terrible attitude problem, a youth obsession, and a love of popcorn movies. But you should know that LA people think I belong in NY because neither the sun, nor the sand hold any appeal to me, I am grumpy all the time, and I don’t mind walking. The truth is somewhere in between. In my head, I imagine myself a very glamorous character, twirling around in a fashion ad that never seems to end, an unheard pop beat blasting in my ears setting the tone for my sassy walk about town. The reality of me is quite different of course.
The plane had barely pulled into the gate and I already had my giant sunglasses on. Somewhere over Arizona, I dragged by LA attitude out of storage, blew the moth balls off it, and slipped into it like a beloved pair of loafers. I sauntered off to wait for the Hertz rental bus and struck a Sears catalog pose on the median as I waited for the bus or an agent to discover me. While on the bus, I was struck by a handsome blond man standing near me talking jovially with a less attractive friend.
He was the kind of man that flocks to Los Angeles. No doubt he was a star high school baseball player or captain of the football team. Clearly, the most attractive man at his school, if not in his town. He probably had a name like Drake or Skyler since he was clearly straight. If he had been gay, his name would have been Nick or Jason. He was in that coveted LA age range of 28 to 31, snugly packed into a pair of jeans wearing a loose rock and roll t-shirt over what was clearly a really nice body that he wasn’t trying to show off. The whole thing said, “I want you to notice me but I don’t want it to look like this all happened on purpose.” But of course it had.
Drake probably came to town to front a band or be the next James Franco or both and was likely living in a small one bedroom near the beach in Santa Monica, perhaps in a guest house tucked away in a narrow nook of Venice Beach. I presume he likes to sleep with cocktail waitresses who think he is cool and get lost in his eyes when he describes his sound as Chet Baker meets Pink Floyd or tells the story of the time he opened for a now hot band at the Viper Room years before they were famous, as if his continued obscurity is at all impressive. In between auditions and gigs he does odd contractor jobs shirtless in the sun to pay for his gym membership and pot.
Thirty years from now when none of his dreams come true, he will probably be sitting, sunburned and bedraggled with a paint bucket full of tips on a street corner holding a dirty guitar, his only companion a three legged dog named Bo that really doesn’t like to be touched, man! And inside he will still think he is that cool guy in his late twenties or maybe The Big Lebowski and he will tell Bo how certain he is that his record deal will close soon, now that the world is finally ready for his sound.
But in the meantime, there on the Hertz bus, I just thought he was hot with nice arms, sandy blond hair and green eyes as I let my imagination run away with me. This is much of how I occupy my time in LA. In many ways he just personified every cliché I believe to be true about Los Angeles in general and Hollywood in particular. It is a land filled with dreamers and dreams that never come true. And most of those dreamers are really very attractive. And the problem with these clichés (the overly tight Beverly Hills wife, the actor/waiter with the perfect posture and no talent, the drug addicted porn star, the coffee house girl in the thrift store clothes and the self-made purse she is selling on the side) is that you can spot them a mile away and you hardly need to look over at your crystal ball to see their future.
Of course I am smug. I lived in LA for fifteen years. But my attitude is my own. It has always been there. From the time I was a little boy and I strutted through the living room dressed only in a sheet. “Derek, where are you going?” my mother asked, looking up from her book. “Please! I’m in character.” And to this day, I am still in character. And now, also back in LA.
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