Going to California

 “The cars hiss by my window/Like the waves down on the beach.” –The Doors

 

 I came to California in order to live. I arrived in the San Fernando Valley at the end of July, by way of Las Vegas, NV, Park City, UT, Fort Collins, CO, Wichita, KS, and my home for the last 38 years, Louisville, KY.

 

I quit my job, got an apartment where friends of mine also lived, ordered the wrong size POD container (probably should have been sober), and had to hire movers anyway, packed up my shit and I was gone. It was finally the right time to make myself happy. 

 

As I am almost four decades into living and uninterested in settling down (“as long as there’s a honky tonk she’ll never settle down”) if not now, when? I have told people who asked me why I moved here. I had been unhappy in my hometown for a long time and it’s weird how you don’t notice until the day you finally say it out loud. Acknowledging the melancholy so it doesn’t turn into an infinite sadness.

 

My father joined me in my cross-country adventure in Colorado. Sometimes we listened to stand-up comedy—Mitch Hedberg, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Robin Williams—and sometimes we listened to the Tom Petty SiriusXM channel, not to mention Outlaw Country. 

 

Over a week, the highway lanes gradually spread out, and we were slipping between strings on the endless neck of a guitar. The literary manifestations of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz became goosebumps on my body as we made our way closer to the destination. The shine of the fast cars weaving through traffic made it feel like being extras in a minor chase scene from a Fast and the Furious film. Here, without a blink of an eye, motorcyclists rode between marked lanes, also known as lane splitting, as a tool to decrease traffic congestion. 

 

But before Los Angeles, it was my first time in Vegas. We stayed at the Cosmopolitan hotel, which despite the questionable hotel service and sex toys in a soda can I made the curious mistake of picking up (in my father’s room…) which led to an automatic room charge, had THE view. The fountain show at the Bellagio made rude noises and, at night, glowed next to the fake Eiffel Tower in fake Paris, where I had made dinner reservations at Vanderpump Paris (obviously.)

 

There was Cirque du Soleil, an impossible effort to describe the fever dream of clowns and Water World where I, sadly, was not on mushrooms (Knocked Up), but should have been. There was a show called Absinthe, apparently the #1 show in Vegas, a raunchy, intoxicating burlesque experience I did not have on my bingo card as a father-daughter bonding experience. I’m an adult, I’m an adult, I’m an adult the voices in my head repeating during an onslaught of sex jokes while tricking myself that it was not my father sitting next to me.

 

Two days later, shameless and a couple of hundred dollars down from slot machines and roulette tables, we left the dry 112-degree heat and headed to Los Angeles. 

 

 

My apartment would become the first space I’ve inhabited without my beloved dog, Gigi, in over 10 years. God, am I heartsick for the unconditional love of a furry, 80-pound animal. The ways they immediately make a place feel like home, the soft popcorn smell of their greetings. While this has been an adjustment, I receive countless photos of my golden retriever nephew Wally to fill said heartsickness.

 

While my father was staying at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood, we ate dinner at the hotel twice. That guy with the weird beard from the band Anthrax? I think his name is Ian. He was my first celebrity sighting. Later, waiting for the valet to bring my car around, I recognized the drunk buffoon standing beside the curb with his hands rolling up his wrinkled white button-down as the guy who just dated Taylor Swift. Yes, my second celebrity sighting was Matt Healy and I immediately felt like showering. 

 

Suddenly, it was the week before Halloween, which turned into the week of Lisa’s. I met a friend for lunch at the Bel Air Hotel and sat in a cozy booth diagonal from Lisa Kudrow, aka MICHELE FUCKING WEINBERGER. If you don’t know who that character is, please stop reading. The day before, I got coffee in WeHo and walked around Robertson Row (IYKYK). I walked past Sur Restaurant a couple of times because I could, and then I got back in my car and when I went past the restaurant again, there she was. Former Real Housewife and Bravo Queen, Lisa Vanderpump, was standing outside talking with a shiny young man. I guess this is what my life is like now, I told myself. Two Lisa’s in two days! As long as it’s not the one back home who told me I looked like Elon Musk, I could get used to this.

 

Heading back north on the 405, the golden hour glow glided down the hill and hung over the surrounding mountains hugging the San Fernando Valley as I tapped my fingers to the music playing in the car I had driven across the country in search of freedom. Somehow, I had made it.