Lonely Love

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For my birthday last year, I was lucky enough to celebrate turning 38 at Chez Panisse with my best friend. She picked a nice bottle of red wine for us to share over baked goat cheese and melt-in-your-mouth halibut. For dessert, a handsome slice of apple sour cherry galette with vanilla ice cream came dancing towards our table with a honey-colored candle in the heart of the melting cream.

 

It’s almost a year later and I am living in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.  Two nights ago, I took myself to see the film version of Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays at the New Beverly Cinema, owned by acclaimed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. Because I was in public, I did not lick the butter-laced popcorn residue on my warm, greasy fingertips. I found the condensation on my medium Diet Coke to do the work for me until I could properly wash my hands. 

 

Looking around the dark, clean small theater with blue velvet seats, I spotted a handful of others who had brought books with them to read before the show. I had found my people. I once took a thick book of Bukowski’s poetry to the movies while my boyfriend went to see a horror film and I went to a romantic comedy.

 

How perfect this night felt, being in the right place at the right time with five-dollar White Castle sliders available at the cramped concession stand. By the end of the show, I had forgotten where I was. Next time, I told myself I would stay for the double billing and lose myself completely in the 35-millimeter magic. 

 

 

 

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There is a plastic bag outside the apartment of the tiny old woman who lives above me. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t melt.  Church music is easily heard in the afternoon. Edna, I think is her name. We met one day while I was doing laundry. She sounded Russian but did not claim to be from there. I helped take her groceries up the stairs and I didn’t ask about the lonely plastic bag. She’s a strong Christian—Catholic. Aren’t those different? She mentions praying and I’m still holding on to the rail. She’s been living here the longest. 

 

Earlier, I watched her cross the four-lane California street, moving as a cautious turtle might. This miniature woman with her grocery cart standing in the middle turning lane as traffic stopped for no one.  Don’t you want that kind of courage?

 

 

 

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Have you ever seen this much sky? I would ask my dog Gigi if she was still here. I am dancing in a haze of rose-colored angles and can’t believe I am in a new space without her. If I’m lucky, I see her face resting at the foot of the bed; can feel her ghost hop onto the bed in the middle of the night to let me know she is never far away.

 

I drove to Topanga Canyon to watch the sunset over the hills of the San Fernando Valley. The parking lot was nearly full, of fellow strangers with the same idea. It never occurred to me until this moment that this was something people did. It was mostly couples with their arms around each other, others sharing a joint. The Argentinian blue sky dipped into a lavender film. I was glad I had worn a sweater. When the sun was gone, so, too, were the couples and stragglers. 

 

 

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“When someone uses you and doesn’t respect you consistently, it makes sense to me that it would be very difficult to be truly intimate even when you logically know you’re emotionally safe,” a friend texted as we spoke about lingering trauma. 

 

It’s difficult because of bony fingers and a sharp collarbone. An Atlantic-ocean-coldness I no longer wish to place my naked feet. Because, years later, someone new said there had to be a way for me to be less afraid of him. He knew someone had treated me poorly and said so. I never made the connection until years after that. 

 

Every time the ocean called, my stomach grumbled into diarrhea, or as I like to think of it: anxiety sending a passive-aggressive bowel movement. What do I do for this girl who hadn’t yet learned to read the signs?

 

What does the lingering glitter of lonely love and human connection have to do with Los Angeles? 

 

Only everything.