Goodbye Big City

Posted on August 13, 2007

I decided to leave Los Angeles for all of the usual reasons that people leave hell. I had some money in the bank, much of it culled from dawdling debts I had finally seen to getting repaid. I had friends scattered across the country who wrote me short, insistent letters that I should come pay them a visit. They knew about my recent struggles and the strain which they had placed upon me. I’d recently battled a serious illness, of which the details aren’t important, except that it made me feel old and feeble well before my time. At its worst, it sucked the life straight out, forcing me toward indescribable moments when I wondered if I was going to die. But all of that was in the past. I’d taken lately to writing back that visits were starting to seem more plausible. They wrote that they would love to see me, and how was I feeling, and what was I planning to do for work now that I was getting better, and what were the happyhaps in LA? And so on, as it is with friends.

When I answered, they didn’t like my answer. Some responded with “???” While others rebutted with “!!!” Others wrote with awesome candor how they’d thought about my big idea, and though they wished me great success, and truly wanted to be supportive, if they were going to be completely honest, it didn’t make one lick of sense at all.

My friends are kind and decent people. Like patron saints, selflessly giving, they’ve welcomed moi into their lives with a measure of fidelity one rarely sees around these days. They’re like the golden-hearted grandmother who adopts the rangy, three-legged dog. I’m the dog in this analogy. And how do I repay such kindness? I piss on her rugs, and feast on her pillows, and drink from her toilets, and howl-ll at three o’clock in the morning. It’s a mystery why my friends keep me around. I guess to absolve their smallest of sins and assure their easy passage to heaven. Otherwise, it beats the crap out of me.

“It’ll be an adventure,” I had told them, after I ignored their warnings. “I’ll thumb my nose at wicked convention—that big, bullying eighteen wheeler hogging both lanes on life’s divine highway. I’ll make an end run, flip the bird, and find a better road to travel.” It occurs to me now that maybe I shouldn’t have broken the news in a mass-mailed text because that’s when my phone began constantly ringing, events extending beyond the lazy reach of slower moving email. They worked to play things calm and cool but I felt the panic in their voices. Their words were lean and softly clipped and very stiffly formed.

“It’s not so unusual,” I told them.

“Who are you, Tom Jones?” they said.

I saw their mood was drifting toward mockery. If they wanted to beat up on me, okay, fine, but don’t attack Velvet Tom. “C’mon, it’s not so bad,” I said. “People go out on the road everyday. I appreciate your concern, but there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. I’m young, single, the world is my oyster.”

“You’re not so young,” they curtly said.

Do you ever have those moments when you’re talking with your friends, and they say something that’s so latently hostile, you begin to rummage through your garage for yarn and buttons and that extra set of voodoo dolls the shaman next door gave you for Christmas? This was where I found myself. But then I took a step back and objectively looked at the situation. I was infallible, this much was obvious. But that didn’t necessarily mean my friends were sharp-tongued, miserable bastards. Hadn’t I compared them with grandmas and saints? How soon could I forget?

The hardest part about any relationship is knowing when to be quietly brave, and when a deeper, more intimate history allows you the luxury to share with others how you’re actually feeling. But even with good friends, the truth isn’t easy. I had a marble-sized lump in my throat. “Things aren’t good right now,” I said.

“What do you mean? Is it your health?”

“No. I’m doing fine with that. It’s this place. It’s waking up every morning and feeling like I’m going nowhere. There are no good jobs left in LA and none of the women I know want to date me. If this place succeeds at anything, it’s showing you where you don’t measure up. I’m not tall enough, or handsome enough, or rich enough, or famous enough. There’s a chance that maybe I’m smart enough, but nobody in a hundred miles honestly cares very much about that.”

“You have to keep the faith,” they said. “Things are going to get better.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Okay. Then tell me how the traffic will be tomorrow on the 405.”

I know this sounds a little glib. I understand the precepts of faith, but it’s easier when your object of yearning is something a tad more run-of-the mill. Like golf clubs, a Fendi bag, or a pony. Not when you’re staring at oodles of bills and a tauntingly finite bank account. To those ends, I was trying to ascertain whether my friends were secretly psychic. Maybe they actually could see the future. If yes, imagine the possibilities. If no, the far more likely scenario, why were they saying with such strong certainty that all of my troubles would turn around? Didn’t they realize that false hope was torture? I can be a contemptuous, cranky old sass when plied by empty platitudes.

“Someone didn’t love you enough,” they said.

“All I’m asking is how you’re so sure. You want me to bet my bottom dollar on a place that’s provided little more than disappointment. How is my life about to get better? If you really feel so bullish about it, regale me with the magic of now.”

I heard only a crackling silence and I knew they had no ready answer. I gazed out of my bedroom window. I lived in a tall apartment complex and all around were the shadows of buildings cast before a setting sun. My eyes fell on the streets below, every artery hopelessly clogged by syrupy streams of evening traffic. I watched an old man push a cart past a well-dressed woman as she laughed on her phone. It was the same old ugly parade. Life in LA: The ultimate buzzkill. But it hadn’t always been like this. There was a time when the glass was full. I wondered when Los Angeles had lost all of its magic.

At first, the city is something else: Bluntly electric during the day, brash and flush with boastful excitement, and cloaked in glamorous debauchery once the sun goes down. But then one morning, you wake up, and everything that once felt luminous has faded into stripmalls, billboards and other low-slung civic sprawl. Variety, that strongest of urban intoxicants, gives way to careful calculations of time surrendered slogging through traffic. Weathermen speak of inversion layers. Your friends change faster than your phone. On lonely nights, at first surprising, you wander into smokeless dives, far removed from the circular spotlights, and strike up fleeting conversations with toothless strangers across the bar. You entertain Gums with your usual stories, occasionally peppering them with lies. You’ll never see Gums again. Not by accident, not if you tried. Better to just sip your drink, shoot some pool, ogle girls while their boyfriends are peeing, then bumper home through midnight traffic to a flat as expensive as it is small.

The author, Raymond Chandler once said, “If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood. And if they had been any better, I should not have come.” For seven years, I’d been here, waiting for Chandler’s ‘trenchant lady’ to lovingly open up her arms. I’d come in search of opportunity, though lately it seemed my life had become like an endless hall of closing doors. I had gotten sick and the hospitals were always teeming. The doctors never learned my name. After awhile, I couldn’t help feeling there had to be a better place. Better than a town where most everybody’s true intentions were as soiled and cloudily opaque as the summer air.

“Why not move someplace else?” my friends asked.

“That’s the raison d’être for this trip.”

“The what?”

“The reason for doing it. I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t want to move anywhere that I’ve been. And I sure don’t want to live near you. So how else should I go about it? Pick a pretty dot on a map?”

“Wherever you go, you’ll be the meanest grouch in town.”

“You’re full of donkey parts,” I said.

“How about this?” my friends said hopefully. “Life has been really hard on you lately. You’ve had a run of bad luck. Why not give it one more year? One more year for good things to happen. You can last in LA a little bit longer. It’s just another few months.”

“You make it sound as quaint as San Quentin.”

“Enough with the smart talk,” they said impatiently. “You’re living in the center of the entertainment universe. Television, movies, all of that stuff. Why not drive over to NBC and fill out a job application? Those sitcoms don’t just write themselves.”

“That’s exactly how they hire writers.”

“You’re always doing this,” they said, with billowing exasperation. “Big ideas and oddball schemes. Isn’t it time to settle down?”

I considered it briefly so I wouldn’t hurt their feelings. Then I answered, “No.”

“But this trip doesn’t make any sense!”

“Talk to anyone in LA and they’ll say it makes all the sense in the world.”

“You have everything that you need right there. Nightclubs. Movie premieres. You can play volleyball on the beach in January! What more could you possibly want?”

The conversation hit a bump. The mood was becoming so frazzled and frayed that not only was I afraid of the future—of all the uncertainty my life had begotten, and all the things far beyond my control—but I wondered if I would lose my friends. Maybe they would finally give up. Most had built very orderly lives with steady jobs and comfortable homes. And here I was, a donnybrook of seismic schemes, reaping havoc on all that was normal. When it came to staying in LA, I understood their firm positions. My friends had a portrait of my life, one they’d gathered from getaway jaunts through Hollywood and Venice Beach. This was the city they passingly knew. They had never seen it without its makeup. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I’d never played volleyball in January.

“I know you’re trying to help. So for the millionth time, I’m sorry.”

“Save it for someone with ears,” they said.

“I know you think it’s nuts,” I told them, my voice shedding a few hard decibels. “And fine, I guess it’s a little crazy, packing up and running off like some kind of wild, barefooted hobo. But please, try to have some faith. I’ve been here long enough to know all this city has to offer. But it isn’t where I’m supposed to be. Not now, maybe never. When I first came here, I dreamed about staying. Now I only dream about leaving. All I can think of is packing my car and driving out of the Los Angeles basin. Of all those landmarks fluttering by until I reach that magic place where the road gradually starts to rise and the city disappears behind me.”

“Leading where?”

“People. Places. Possibilities. C’mon. Trust me. Can’t you try?”

They sighed and I knew their hearts were true. Like saints, and grandmas, and kindly sea captains who want nothing more than to keep your ship from hopelessly running aground. “You’re the writer,” they quietly said. “But if you’re going to act like a maniac, at least have the sense to write some of it down.”

And so it went, and so it is. My bed is in a storage locker, none too far from Downtown. I don’t know how much time will pass before I’ll sleep in it again. One Sunday morning, a few weeks back, I locked that steel door one last time. Then I skipped down a flight of stairs to my car and set off north on Interstate 5. “Goodbye Big City,” was all I said, as the highway rose up toward the Grapevine. Los Angeles became little more than a speck, and soon I found myself twisting and turning, tracing a path along mountainous roads. When I came out on the other end, I saw a great big world in front of me.

Photos: LA Nightscape: Hope Street skyscrapers, Downtown Los Angeles – Daytime Streetscape: Sunset Boulevard, East Hollywood – Classic Lamp: Old Bank District, Downtown Los Angeles – Window to the 101: Hollywood Freeway as seen from Little Tokyo.

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