“This is where River Phoenix died,” my father said, told me to pull the car over. “The Viper Room. We’re in West Hollywood now. He was twenty-three.” He paused, glared at it, 8552 on the black awning. “That kind of thing happened all the time.” I put the car in drive again, kept on going down Sunset Boulevard. This was the long way home; the better drive.
I was born only a mile from The Viper Room, at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. Three weeks early. I looked like an alien for the first few weeks of my being but at least I wasn’t in the incubator. Cedars Sinai is right across the street from a mall, the Beverly Center, where I bought the shoes I wore to my middle school graduation–Doc Martens I still have, still wear, have scuffed. Didn’t really wear them in high school.
We pass Chateau Marmont. Girl From Work told me she saw Keanu Reeves there, in the dining room. I tell Girl From Work, ah, my parents used to know him. Quiet guy, mom says. Didn’t change with the fame.
My parents moved to rural New York last year. Big house, lots of land, quiet. Different. Police car chases would go up onto narrow Silver Lake Terrace. Don’t know how they didn’t catch the guy. When I go home now, it’s to New York. The town is called Katonah, where some of the buildings are older than the country. They look newer than the Sunset Strip sometimes. Sunset Strip. Paint chipping, wood stripping, not the girls, not anymore. The buildings are beige like khaki like sand. Some old shops, an Erewhon. The old Vista theater. Quentin Tarantino bought it and shut it down for a while. Reopened when I left, not because I left. Hate to see this place change, thought I was important. Crossroads Trading Company where Sunset and Hollywood collide. Big palm tree in a potter outside, next to Curtis the security guard taking his smoke break from behind the black cement bollards. I worked there in high school. Bought all the clothes I’m wearing right now there. Allie told me on my training shift that she’d be my manager one day. I graduated before that ever happened. I passed by a year ago, saw her through the window. Wondered if she’s manager, now.
I am from L.A., from the East Side. I don’t know anyone from the East Side here, just the West Siders that come to Echo Park for the Silver Lake Flea Market. Can anyone tell me why the Silver Lake Flea is in Echo Park? Los Feliz Flea was at my high school. Left when I left, is somewhere else now. That was where to hang, on Saturdays. We had a break between Academic Decathlon exams one time, went down to the flea and bought a vest and some churros, went back up and aced the Econ.
John Marshall Senior High. Andy Reid went there. They shot the final scene of Grease on the bleachers, bleachers where we watched our football team lose the homecoming game 47-0. Who am I kidding? I didn’t go to the game. Pretty picturesque bell tower. We had alumni that fought in World War II. That is old for an L.A. institution. High school makes me laugh, when I think about it. So many drugs. What are you kids doing? Harry did meth once at the gas station, just to try. Calliope had some kind of opioid addiction, past tense. Kicked it before their senior year. They came into school one day with a big blotch of burgundy on their neck – that would be from Nikolai. Nikolai goes to Vassar, now. Drove me to school in his mom’s orange box car sometimes. I could have walked. So many vapes. So much cool smoke. I never did that, don’t worry Mom. Just watched, just laughed. Look at all these kids. L.A. teaches you things. Teaches you, best of all, how to self-sabotage.
Green smoothies and pilates. A far cry from the death wish everyone I knew seemed to have. Drug deals at the Starbucks right next to the Pressed Juicery. I watched Annie Hall last summer. That is L.A., yesiree. L.A. is where Annie Hall goes to live and die.
Watched the fires from the couch in Katonah. Knew a girl from Altadena. Namiye, and her sister Momoko. We did AcaDeca together. All this talk about the Palisades, so I think about Malibu, how the drive up there from Silver Lake along the canyons made my sister cry. Scared of heights, she is, I am. Reel Inn burnt down, how sad, I mean that. Had a birthday there once or twice. Thought about the stupidity of buying a house on a cliff along the Pacific Ocean, thought about how the ultra-rich are exempt from almost every rule in life except natural disaster. My driving instructor took me straight to the canyons for our first lesson. Thought about driving right off the road. Didn’t do it, but thought about it.
4:16 AM, June 8, we all are on the hill. Can see the whole fucking city from here. Yellow stream of light, a river of cars on the freeway. Sky is purple already, sun can’t wait to rise. Chaparral brush tickles my back. June Gloom and here I am amongst the daffodils and everything is quiet in its own way. There’s the hum of the 5. We’re looking at it, East from some Griffith Park peak. There’s the shutter. Kian’s taking pictures he will never share. I only have this one: my sweater, striped grey and blue, against the now violet sky. My newsboy cap, head of curls, blooming. Three hours of sleep last night, I don’t mind. Will sleep through Calc, I don’t mind. Won’t know these guys forever, I don’t mind. Don’t know them now, I realize.
Our old house’s valuation went up, nowhere near the fires. The real concrete jungle. I think about moving back there. Miss the old stomping grounds. Nostalgia, or maybe it is just the place to be. An old romance, calling back. Longest way round, clearest way home. Come back to me, come back to me. Remember how it used to be.
Monday night, ten of us stockpiled in the car, two kids kissing out the window. All these people are bad people, I thought. This is the most I have ever loved anything. Love how imperfect you are, love how I can’t expect anything from you except that you will try, god fucking dammit you will try, and you will hate yourself for fucking up when you do. Turn to cigarettes, turn to smoke. Los Angeles tries, Los Angeles apologies. Just like the kids, it self-sabotages. Fires keep growing and growing. I think L.A. is sorry. When it rains for weeks in the Spring it says, I couldn’t help it, it says, forgive me.
Don’t know where you got the idea about the glamour. Toxic, maybe. Toxic friends, toxic air. Read contemporary books in English class. No sense of the old here. Growing up just to die, die young, end your life before it’s started. I got out. Got clean. Sun is an addictive thing.