Leaving LA
a letter to a lost home
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So we leave town in total silence
New Year’s Day, it’s six o’clock AM
I’ve never seen a sunset this abandoned
Reminds me predictably of the world’s endIt’ll be good to get more space
God knows what all these suckers pay
I can stop drinking and you can write your script
But what we both think now is…-‘Leaving LA’ by Father John Misty
I spent years running around LA in $15 thrifted shorts and mesh crop tops in an eternal cloudless springwinter. It’s huge here, endless. Meridians of miles of Birds of Paradise, orange blossom persian ice cream, tongue kisses in cooling evenings on wide boulevards. It was the first place I ever went that had enough space for me.
I got my first parking ticket before I knew how to pay my bills. My last outside the yoga studio I half-assed practice in for ten years. If you’ve never had Jacaranda petals glued to your windshield you’re missing out on a kind of consciousness perfume that spreads over the self serve car washes: wet asphalt and suds caking the route of your morning commute. I saw a car t-bone another the moment the first drop fell in a minor storm. I screamed to Mitski engulfed in rain as the gutters overflowed. I sat in my apartment that overlooked the 5 and all of Glendale watching the fireworks, knowing I was cracking open to the second love that would change my life.
LA taught me how to be big enough to love myself. I bought thigh-highs in the Hustler store on Sunset Boulevard, never questioning that I deserved to dance in the neon and explore anything I wanted and duck in and out of the same apartments in different shapes to laugh and ask questions on couches until the roads were empty enough to coast home on an empty gas tank. I loved running on fumes. Accumulating debt. Smoking from dirty bongs before gorging on Korean barbecue, having favorite banchan the marker that I was so far from my suburban upbringing.
I still have dreams of taking selfies in the Soho House bathroom after seeing Tara Reid and Andy Dick placing themselves on full view. I took pride in making the valets deal with my shitty car. From job interviews to vibey sapphic pool parties to the photo booth at 4100 bar, I belonged everywhere I went.
It’s a town of schizophrenic talismans, of standing orders at Jewish delis, of modifications, adjustments, and needles. In college I consumed every second of LA ink, later lying under the buzz of permanence wincing with freedom. The go-West spirit, the new builds, the mid mod facades I track my life by, they all taught me to grow until my consciousness was a manic lucid dream hovering over a dozen zip codes. In the womb of an acupuncture office, I got pinned into myself, caught my breath, needles delineating my actual outline. A tangible thing.
Leaving LA comes from an instinct to protect all this, to put an egg shell around it. In my thirties, I spend more time at the borders of myself than becoming glitter fog at the edges. I want to build a pond for myself rather than letting all this run through my fingers. I’m writing this on my cracked iPhone at the intersection of Sunset and Holloway, Japanese Breakfast mingling with the sound of buses and near-miss car accidents and the chatter of young women trying to be more, more, more. I fear them. I want to mother them. I want to know how big they’re letting themselves become. I smell my own perfume wafting back to me from three different tables. It’s January and 73 degrees. I’m eating a breakfast burrito. I have always instinctually run towards what is best for me. I’m leaving this place that I love.
LA turns into a broken promise on a dime. Standing outside Formosa Bar next to the smoking New Yorkers, a young man starts chatting with me and tells me he’s a magician. He’s covered with sparkles and bursting with self-promotional flyers. He is longing, longing, longing. I am holding on. No amount of makeup will give me The Face everyone has west of La Brea. I don’t go that way anymore. It was around the time that Muay Thai wrestling shorts and Nascar jackets crossed over from the lesbians to the straight women that I lost the plot. It’s not a good place in which to be plotless. It’s a place where you realize you’re reaching the end of the beat sheet for your three-act episode. You can’t do anything forever. Even be home.
I’m a fierce defender of LA as a real place. Heritage nights at Dodger Stadium. Ranchera and street corner erhu and the sediment of dreams settled into the canyons and flats alike. I was born here a thousand times. I photosynthesized here. I was watered by Matcha and Jarritos and free La Croix. At the same time, reality has a way of becoming intangible here; losing touch with it is not a good habit for a girl prone to mania.
I don’t want any more Botox. I’m tired of trying and failing to freeze myself. I want to forget my lust for the $20 strawberries. I don’t want to know the latest thing and the thing on its heels. I want my white knuckles to re-color, release. I want to fall in love with bodies of water I don’t yet know. I want my parched skin to get to know the rain.
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If you’re in the U.S. and want a convenient time for you please take advantage before I’m on the other side of the globe!
i love this ‘It’s a town of schizophrenic talismans, of standing orders at Jewish delis, of modifications, adjustments, and needles.’
This list is everything … still sad to see you go!