Let’s sit at the crest of Griffith Park and watch LA’s blue expanse recede into a hazy pink. Enjoy the sweet glaze shattered by breaklights. This city wants nothing more than to be seen and I love to make her happy. I dare the mundane to surprise me. I could sit in the same rush hour five times a week and still hope for a quick drive. So many of us hope for the same thing in the stacked sprawl. When I remember the waves of love I’ve had across this city—both real and fake, received and unrequited—I am just a tiny blood cell running along LA’s arms and legs. My fate courses through her soft elusive heart.
When I followed my feelings for that one boy, I’d drive from Brentwood to Silverlake through a clogged 10 freeway. I lived 15 minutes from work, but I commuted 70 minutes for love. My radio tuned to NPR so I could have something interesting to tell him when I arrived. I wound across the 110 to the 101 while he unpacked the Blue Apron boxes: unsealing the vacuumed plastic that clung to the salmon. I’d inch along, bumper to bumper. He played records and smoked joints so when I got there he was high and happy.
A fuzzy web spun around those evenings. We’d have three or four hours in the cocoon before I had to sleep. I’d wake up before him so I could sit the morning traffic. Retracing my steps back to the Brentwood, my unwashed hair in a sloppy bun. I could feel myself forcing a path through the city, but I couldn’t resist. Those pockets of time playing house in his house were stained glass bliss.
Until he started second guessing the concept of us. I’d call him from the curb outside my work to tell him why he was wrong about his feelings. I tap danced until Christmas, when we had a trip planned to Costa Rica. It would be my second time traveling out of the country. I thought it would solve everything and prove our love. The trip went ok and I kept dancing till March, when my father got cancer. With my time sucked into a whole new vortex, I could no longer distract him from feeling unsure.
I take every loss with a hint of a thrill. It smoothes the edge. After we split, I first missed him, not his three-story hillside house. Then I missed the promise of a life he never offered me. Finally I had to admit I’d seen what I wanted to see.
Going cold turkey was easy when we broke up because I had the beach. When I stopped forcing my motions, LA embraced me once again. He got Sunset Junction, but I won the west side and ocean proximity. I walked to the waves everyday. I’d fall to my knees, worshipping eternity in the sand grains. Becoming aware of infinity really puts heartbreak into perspective.
I sat with the truth: if you have to convince someone that your love is destiny, it probably isn’t written in the stars.
Los Angeles rallied around me with sparkling opportunities. Places to dance and feel like a wet diamond on the wrist of a shimmying deity. After the parties, I would cry for no good reason—watching the downtown skyline from the backseat of an uber. When I was lucky, the blue skies would succumb to grey pepper with puffs of smog: the city’s void elements made my yawning loneliness less vast.
To my own surprise I found love in the hot blades of grass in the park, the overstuffed racks of clothing at goodwill. I found lust in the crowded warehouses with too loud music and misty glances. I found love again in the headlights of my old red truck and the dense cold of marine layer mornings.
A little bit later I fell in love with a new someone and moved into his shoebox Silverlake apartment perched above a garage. At first, I wondered if I’d cross paths with my old Silverlake flame, like exes do in the movies. Was this his territory? Was I overstepping? I’d go to the farmer’s market looking over my shoulder. Holding an orange and glancing side to side. But I am the one from LA. She made me. Not his big house or the terraced garden with the jacaranda casting purple confetti in every direction.
As I carved out a life with real round love, I got tired of tiptoeing around the past. I yielded to the destiny in LA’s present moment.
And then one day the city was mine all mine: some force descended, pushing the old flame back across the country to tell a new story to old faces. We never overlapped before he left LA. Half a mile away and yet.
I’m always surprised by LA’s anonymous nature. I blame it on all the grocery stores. If we only had one market, Silverlake would be a true small town. But with so many options, your next door neighbor can catch cling-wrapped fish from an entirely different stream.
I swear this city expands and contracts for its own pleasure. One year it’s beating down sun, the next it’s sloshing wet, suddenly snow on the Hollywood Sign. That’s when I remember the old faces. Did you see it? Are you happy? Do you know that I am?
It’s a happiness that flows forth in many shades. I still cry for no good reason when I see the downtown skyline. But every crash restarts to a baseline joy. It’s all I ever wanted for us, but somehow I welcomed it for myself. I blame it on LA. My first love, my constant, living beating flowing within me. Loving a city this big will only teach you to expand.
beautiful