To Fall in Love in Angeles
I can’t express how hard I have I tried to avoid writing about this subject. It is, after all, a subject that should only be written about by those who feel with the utmost empathy and compassion. And though those feelings come in certain waves for me, they are not constant. Love is strange and I’ve always been in the opinion that since misery loves company, it’s better to write about sadness/being alone instead. Because who gives a shit that another schmuck is happy in the world?
But a few months ago, a close friend recently told me that it was ingrained in the DNA of my writing that I was secretly looking for a companion to spend more time with in Los Angeles. After all, he said, it’s always nice to say good morning and good night to someone everyday.
That could be true. It could also be true that being independent in your 20’s is one of the greatest privileges growing up has to offer. And if you were to add an LA Wonderland into that equation, you’d have your very own sentimental coming-of-age story that you could make your own.
It’s been that way from the beginning. Embrace this city for every euphoric feeling and tragic story it has to offer. Sometimes I nearly implode while doing it, mind you. I run all over this place like a coked up road runner on speed using Tequila as an IV drip. And why not? There is plenty of time to rest in the later years anyway when I am more patient for things to happen as they come. Yes, the weekend parties are endless and the drugs are easier to get than gatorade at a gas station, but if these are mistakes I’m going to make, I’m going to make them now and not later. I want to write about it all because that’s the only way it will stay remembered, that it will stay real. With the exception of missing a girl who is 3000 miles away (and one who I don’t speak too anymore), I never believed in the possibility of finding love here because it honestly seemed like a ridiculous punchline. Besides, who do you know that falls in love in LA that doesn’t use a dating app?
But one day I woke up. I went to work. And then I met someone. It wasn’t online. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t on the make, like so many things are in Hollywood. It happened in a very small cafe, actually. I thought she was cute, so I left my number for her on a small yellow post it. I went up to her table and put it in front of her and said, “This is for you. Because fuck Bumble.” And I walked away.
I said one thing, she said another. And the next thing I knew we were drinking wine in the late hours of the evening. We went out so much after that, I lost count of the dates. It didn’t seem to matter. And now every morning that I wake up next to her is better than the one before it. What if I were to tell you I never thought I deserved this kind of happiness, because I never really believed it existed in this city?
Now we’re here. It wasn’t easy, of course. These things are hardly the cake-walk that their romantic comedy counterparts make them out to be. But now we‘re together. And this once cynical writer has found himself beaten once again.
In simplistic terms, falling in love with someone who makes your days better is the key. Even when the sadness sinks into my bones and I wonder just what the hell I’m supposed to be doing in my 20’s, she’s there. Sometimes when we’re out on a date or on the beach somewhere and I’m acting like a giddy child running across the sand and jumping up and down, and shouting, “Till the fucking wheels come off!” she usually comes over to me, pulls me in close, and whispers, “You really need to get a new tagline babe.”
I remember awhile ago we grabbed a bottle of red and snuck into the abandoned apartment next to mine and sat on the balcony outside, overlooking the entire city. I didn’t have my contacts in, so the city just looked like a huge blur of blinding lights, but I saw the palm trees swinging in the dark in front of a massive moon and I thought how there would always be a Los Angeles with her.
Because this life will most certainly fade away from us in later years. We will grow up and grow old and our bones will ache (mine already do, honestly) and the hangovers will become heavier and our savings accounts may have to amount to something. And falling in love may not seem like such an important thing in retrospect.
But man, does it feel so grand to feel this again.
