Big Sur, 2005

At first Curtis mentioned Big Sur as an obvious setting he had spent a lot of time in, which he assumed I knew about all the references to. I hadn’t been to Big Sur since I was a kid and remembered almost nothing about it except a hike with my family when I was 9. I couldn’t get into that Kerouac book, either. I liked that Curtis knew places like Big Sur well, even though he had been in New York for the better part of the past 5 years.

Curtis said he and Amy would drive to Big Sur all the time when they lived in LA. Sometimes even for the day. Curtis told me way too much about his ex-girlfriend, usually employing the words “fucked up,” “controlling” and “unhealthy.” I asked if it was somewhere he had only spent time with her and he associated with her, but he said he took all the girls he had ever dated to Big Sur, and that it felt like the Central Coast was home, he had spent so much time in Monterey and Carmel as a kid, and he’d frequently drive through Big Sur for the day and crash at his parents’ house by himself. Wow, I said. It wasn’t very far, he said. A couple of hours. I couldn’t imagine driving several hours to somewhere beautiful by myself. There were so many things I was conditioned not to do (waste gas, hang out at the forest by myself, spend multiple hours driving for no reason). Maybe that’s why I’m not a writer and he is, I thought. I was too ultra-practical.

Driving down Highway 1 was magical, he told me. You whipped in and out of redwood forest and onto the blinding big blue coast, across rickety wooden bridges, past purple sand beaches scattered with white driftwood, right up to the edge of plunging cliffs you could look down and see sea otters playing or maybe even whales in the distance. And you couldn’t get too fixated on anything you saw – once he said he though the saw out of his periphery a field of tulips, but he couldn’t be sure, and knew he shouldn’t turn back and look for it, you just keep driving in Big Sur.

At first he said he wanted to take me there, but didn’t want to take me there because he had spent so much time there and he wanted to go somewhere new with me. But then he wanted to take me. I wanted to go camping there. He said he had never been camping there (How is that possible? I don’t know, it just never happened). We planned a weekend in September, while I was still looking for work and living with my parents. I had found a no-reservations hike-in campsite at Andrew Molera that we could show up at on Friday morning and set up for the weekend. Curtis’s parents helped us get some of their camping gear together – an old Coleman tent and a heavy Coleman propane stove, a metal mess kit his dad had used in the army. We were set, with our shitty Costco sleeping bags. A couple of bags of food from Trader Joe’s.

I asked if he had hiked there a lot. Not really, he said. Usually it was just driving up and down Highway 1, walking into the forest to sit somewhere and write or play guitar, going to the Henry Miller Library or the Esalen Institute, which he calmly informed me was not only of literary and countercultural significance, but also a big free love colony where you can still sit in the hot springs at night (naked, potentially) and free love-type activities might still be occurring in the hot tub next to you. I should have known better than to ask if he and Amy had gone to the hot springs together (fooling around in front of other couples who were fooling around), but of course they had, she was into that sort of thing and he was stupid enough to tell me, and anyway he had clearly wanted out of that relationship.

The giddiness of our relationship had not faded since the summer, and my wariness of his freakout (abrupt breakup, tedious adolescent dramatics, begging for another shot, etc.) a month into dating was only vaguely present in the back of my mind. He may not have had everything I thought I was looking for or wanted long-term, but for the first time in my life I actually realized I was young (22!) and he made me feel like I never had (so glamorous and interesting!), and nobody had more fun than we did (nobody!). He had been communicating his mood swings well, and beyond just being passionate and feeding off each other, we seemed to be growing into something really good, maybe healthy. But I was young (so young!), and having such a nice time, what did it matter anyway? The sense of possibility was palpable – we wanted the same things (really seeing and being in Northern California, and going places, being creative but also having a job, reading and writing and talking! and having sex, a lot!).

We were so excited about camping. He called me at 8 that morning while I was sleeping. I sent him an e-mail when I woke up.

hey darling, what’s with the 8 am wakeup call?
can’t wait to see you.
have you packed yet?
I have, everything’s good to go. my dad lost one can of tomato soup somehow. (?)
xo

i Wanted to find out if you were excited about going camping.
i can’t wait to see you either. I haven’t packed. will you help me pack? you are smart and remember things.

Driving down 101, we looked at each other periodically, giddy, inhaling audibly as we passed the eucalyptus grove on 101. I noted every landmark he had told me about as we passed it. Bixby bridge. He’d shown me the Wikipedia page. Wow.

On the drive, Curtis told me he had been born in Big Sur. What? I said disbelievingly. That’s Impossible. He laughed and sheepishly explained that his father was driving his mother through Big Sur when she went into labor, and that they drove to the hospital in Monterey, where she gave birth, so technically he was born in Monterey, but that he liked the idea of wanting to burst forth from the womb into Big Sur. Wow, I said, still processing the bizarre story he took so much pride in. About 15 minutes later he told me he was full of shit and none of it was true, he was born in San Jose, California as I had thought, but that a creative writing teacher in college had encouraged this kind of mythology-making about oneself. It was strange he wanted to do this with his girlfriend, I thought, but it was just one of many crazy, harmless things about Curtis I took as they came.

We were tremendously ill-prepared for the half-mile hike-in with our canned food and giant stove. It took 3 trips back and forth to the car, and by the time we had set up the tent we were exhausted, but the exhilaration of our first camping trip together hadn’t worn off. We walked down past the campsites, through a grove and onto the beach and both gasped. The white driftwood was strewn everywhere. Bulbous seaweed the size of a motorcycle, streaks of purple sand, enormous waves crashing. We giggled, kissed, ran around, wrapped arms around each other. When we walked back to camp it was getting dark. We heard bats in the roof of the grove.

While walking in a redwood grove, Curtis told me he sometimes would talk to the redwood trees, that they were smart, and electric. I told myself silently to let myself go. My uptightness was the reason I wasn’t a writer. I should roll with this. I put my hands up against the bark. “I feel like I can feel it buzzing,” I said. “Yes!” he said. We walked up to trees, feeling them buzzing.

 

 

some kind of scene

Whenever I go to Avi’s house on Friday nights I get to have it all – bouldering by myself, a quick shower, a short bike ride, dinner with friends who happen to be three doors down before the party.
Riding my bicycle home always makes me appreciate getting home more than taking a taxi. It was some party, made me think of Jawbreaker songs from 10 years ago, god, has it been that long since I’ve felt that way about music?
The guitarist from my favorite band in high school was celebrating his 34th birthday. He played in two bands at the party. The second band was made up of all members who had grown up Mormon, singing hardcore renditions of bible study songs from their youth such as “I want to go on a Mission.”
Two guys I met afterwards were hilarious, playing this game where two people would pair up, each grab someone’s two hands, and each write a four-letter word on the person’s knuckles without consulting the other. One person ended up with “gods” and “sins” by sheer coincidence. It was exciting and seemed overly meaningful to see what words you inspired in other people. I let them write on my knuckles, despite my irrational fear of being drawn on (especially in sharpie!) and ended up with ‘bird pimp.’ Not bad.
Avi introduced me to a girl who was at his parents’ Hanukkah party in December, where everyone else was 30 years older. “I bet she knows your family!” he said.
“What’s your last name?” she asked.
I told her.
“Oh! I totally used to hang out with your sister,” she said. “I haven’t talked to her in months.”
“You should see how she’s doing,” I said. “She apparently is in town but didn’t tell me and wouldn’t respond to my text to see if she wanted to hang out,” I said.
Her friends remembered my sister too.
“Yeah, she was cool. Totally free spirit.”
“Yeah, I said. Kind of different from me. I’m so…rigid,” I said, making that gesture with my straight knuckles from my ears straight ahead.
“Yeah, she was a go-go dancer,” the girl said. “Did you know that?”
Uh, no. But anything is possible.
The shorter of the knuckle-drawers led me in the main room in the basement and danced up a storm. He only had maybe 8 moves, but they were good moves. Spinning, dipping, hands switching behind his back.
“Where’d you learn to dance like that?” I asked.
“College,” he said.
“Me too!” I said.
Upstairs Devin and Jules were dancing to electronic music. They were brilliant. She was a mostly-lesbian with a shaved head and a sturdy, curvy body, every guy uncontrollably drawn to her.
“They’re making history, they’re so good,” I said.
The taller of the knuckle-drawers said, “but if no one’s there to write down history, it’s like it never happened.”
Suddenly I feel so bad for not writing anymore. Not so much a conscious decision anymore, just that I’m too busy living life and prioritizing quality of life and adventure, and not really sure what I’m giving up, I was never that great of a writer. This guy was telling us about his work doing environmental impact research on sound around a quarry in the neighborhood where Avi grew up, but the more we tried to get him to talk about this project, the more he mumbled about how terrible it was and the less coherent he became.
I went from intense enthusiasm about how much fun I was having and fear that it would have to end at 12:30 to it’s definitely time to leave immediately at 1:30.

October in London

(recovered from my now defunct iphone 3G)

Saturday afternoon in London. The clouds came and the drizzle came and went. Dim Sum was leisurely, but painfully short the way a long-anticipated evening is fragile and quick. Seeing long-missed friends is always fond, carries one away.
Walking through the shopping alleys in the center of town felt like Paris or Tokyo, the backdrop glittering behind our conversation, blurred details that added to the magic.
It occurred to me that Maya had that quality of making conversation something that swept you away. You stopped noticing time and place and were just carried by her like a daydream. I wanted this afternoon and did not leave without it. Tea at the Wolsey didn’t disappoint. They brought a 3-story tray of treats- finger sandwiches on the bottom, scones on top, cakes in the center. The most raspberry-like raspberry tart I’d ever tasted. Pistacio cake, coffee eclair, passionfruit macaroon with chocolate. Ohhhh. It spoiled dinner in the best possible way.

september

Summer in San Francisco comes in tiny tastes, in an evening after work, a warmer night walk home, a sunny morning before the afternoon fog. It requires work, and a little bit of luck. I’ve been chasing summer on days in the mountains and riding up hills, the water peeking through behind houses and trees.

team bride

I met up with the bachelorette party late, after dinner and a mini-reunion with my relatives in the south bay.

My future sister-in-law wasn’t answering her phone, but I assumed they’d still be at the drag show at 11:30, so I just walked down to the Tenderloin.

She greeted me with stumbling-drunk surprise and a huge hug. I had never seen her this drunk. I didn’t know any of the girls except one of her sisters-in-law at the far table, who I’d met in our initial meeting over dinner the day after last Christmas. I compensated with maximum bubbliness, which won me immediate friendliness from the California girl. The other girls seemed slightly East Coast-reserved, but I was determined to make the most of it.

Her ‘Jersey-Shore’ friend (as she was introduced) had procured a penis-shotglass necklass, penis-fairy wand, penis-veil and penis-ringpop, none of which the no-jewelry bride-to-be could tolerate wearing without alcohol and a notable amount of fidgeting. The rest of the guests had been given pink Team-Bride buttons. They dubbed her “Queen of Tchach,” and I had to admire her resourcefulness.

Shortly after midnight, after the best drag queens had already lip-sung and the mostly East Coast guests’ eyes were falling shut, and they asked who would make sure she got home okay. I said I lived 3 blocks from her and I would take care of it.

“I want to drink more,” she said, and 2 of her East Coast friends (troopers) and one of her local friends were in for the ride. Her hand was sticky from the penis-pop and she kept licking her hand, which her friend was trying to stop. Finally she threw the ring-pop in the street and kept licking her hand clean and turning on and off the disco-lights on her penis-shotglass necklace.

“I just realized that you’re wearing all of these penis-related accessories and you’re marrying my brother, and got weirded out,” I said. She laughed.
“All we do is hold hands,” she said.
“I should be more mature given the sexually open environment we were brought up in.”
“What?” she said.
“You didn’t know?” I said. “My mom used to buy condoms at the store with us when we were like, nine.”
“He doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“I hear everything through the man-filter. He leaves out all the details.”
“We’ve actually had a very interesting upbringing that he’s probably given you a horribly abridged version of.”
“You know what I love, is how your parents are so in love.”
“It’s true, they really are.”
“I can tell they’re really comfortable being affectionate with each other and with you guys.”
“My dad follows my mom around the house kissing her and giving her compliments,” I told the others. “My brother’s kind of weird about physical affection with us, so I hope he’s not weird about it with you,” I said.
“No, he’s not,” she said. “He always says I’m not romantic enough, because he’s so romantic.”
“My brother is romantic,” I said.

At the next bar, we talk her out of “Shots!”
“Beer!” we say, (“I sense a conspiracy!” she says) and I buy her a cocktail and force her to drink water. Through her drunkenly tearful yet highly analytical discussion of some family drama, I realize I’m getting one of those rare glimpses of her I’ve only seen a few times.

After forcing her to eat some late-night food and steadying her stumbling into a minivan-cab, I dropped her and her best friend off and rode 3 blocks down the street back home. My brother had to be woken up to carry her in from the hallway. She was hung over through the evening before the wedding.

on connecting

One of the new hires at work is a bright-eyed fortysomething with a bad goatee. He tries to conduct business on the phone in 20-min calls that should take two minutes over e-mail. After the first time, I stopped taking his calls. I’m so heartless.

He’s apparently really religious, and gets worked up over department happy hours talking about how the “south will rise again.”

One day one of my newer coworkers was getting into the elevator to go home for the day as he was heading back up to the office. She casually asked how he was doing, and he started telling her about the rough divorce he was going through. Ten minutes later she was still stuck listening to him with the elevator doors open. Only when others started filling the elevator, also stuck listening to him discuss the loneliness of his trial separation, was she able to end the conversation.

He wrote an 8-page typed, stapled document of haikus and distributed them around the office. I swear, you can’t make this stuff up. One was about ants in his house, called “our bachelor lifestyle.” Some of them were about God. A lot of them were about loneliness.  He gave one to my counterpart in New York, but he didn’t offer me one. I guess I must be learning how to deflect insanity.

emulating

Years ago, when I studied in France, I met a friend of a friend – an American girl, a few years older, confident, Harvard grad, fluent, part-French, had a grant to write her novel, and other things I was intimidated by. We spent a weekend together with two mutual friends that spanned the Ardeche, Provence and Cassis (all a few hours’ drive from one another). She said a few things to me that deeply affected me at the time. In particular, I remember her saying I was very sensitive to people – that my anxiety with people in positions of authority was a response to a deep imbalance that was truly there and real. That I’d learn to harness my sensitivity to people that was valuable. I’m sure she said it better than that. Maybe she didn’t, and it was about the way she said it, or who she was. I never saw her again. Five years later I sent her a note before I had a layover in Paris, and she invited me and my boyfriend at the time to meet her and her husband for dinner the night we arrived. I tried to suggest it to my feverishly jetlagged, half-sleeping now-ex, who incoherently groaned a negative. Warm as she was, I knew that would be the only chance – sure enough, she never returned my call the next few days I was in town.

When I was 23, the year she was when I knew her, I got 20 or so pages into writing a novel about the experience of that weekend, and hit a massive wall that stopped me and I couldn’t pick it back up. Anyone I told the story to agreed it would make a great novella, film, whatever. I obsessed about being unable to recreate the dialogue, was paralyzed by it. I wasn’t as confident as she was at 23. I sometimes wonder if now I’m finally confident/cocky enough to give it another go, still dabbling in thoughts of self-doubt but not owned by them in while adrenaline-chasing, talking a good talk. (And sometimes I’ve even wondered if that confidence is what a private education buys you – a few extra years of poise and connections as opposed to my less direct, more introverted pedagogy).

I realized over the years that I’m happier when not trying to be serious about writing. Despite brief flirtations with talk therapy in which it was addressed but never resolved (and I’m probably the happier for it), I know something comes out when I sit down ‘to write something serious’ that makes me incapable of writing anything I don’t want to tear up immediately. But it’s not that simple – when I’m really happy there are constantly things I want to write about, but when I sit down to it falls apart. I have ideas I’m dying to explore but they turn out to be just ideas (If only I were a painter?). I’m terrible at fiction, and my real stories are too close and would destroy careers/personal relationships/lives (is this cockiness?). So I dabble, blog, craft elaborate e-mails, agonize over text messages, attempt to perfect my social networking face to the world.

Chasing experiences like I do now seems like the antithesis to writing. And sometimes, like tonight, when talking to a friend makes me crave writing, it makes me want to leave mid-conversation and bolt for my computer. Usually I head hone and start getting all practical.

This time last year I was losing that feeling of wanting to do so many things there wasn’t enough time. Now I have it back more than ever, with the addition of time-consuming sports, dating, work, an active and diverse social life.

I’ve already come to terms with things like maybe the way I think isn’t the way novelists think, maybe I’ll never be a writer or do more than dabble. I’m accepting. Ambition is a funny thing. Oddly lasting. And life is long, I’ve said. Though life is better when I live it like it’s terrifyingly short. And does that allow the time to write at all?

you can’t pay with tears

We drove Al to the pawn shop so we could take the car. On the way he gets a call from his friend at the shop.

Al: Take his number and tell him I’ll call him when I get in.

He hangs up.

Al: This guy thinks his ex wife took her engagement ring. I can’t really show him papers because it’s confidential. 90% of my job is just dealing with people’s stupid shit. It’s like if you’re a cop you get to help people and all that but most of your job is dealing with domestic disputes. Some of the time my job is cool and I get cool shit and hang out with my best friends, but most of the time I just deal with people’s stupid bullshit and mediate their domestic disputes, and usually it’s like, a husband and wife, saying he stole my stuff, it’s my stuff, not his stuff.

N: One day Lee’s going to publish a book and I bet there will be a chapter inspired by you and your friends’ stories about the pawn shop.

Al: I’m writing a book. It’s a book of excuses. I’ve spent the last ten years listening to excuses. Your book should include my book as an insert.

Me: What kinds of excuses do people make to you?

Al: “I can’t pay my loan back today because somebody broke into my house and pepper sprayed my baby.” Or, “I have an infection in my elbow that spread to my knee. And I have to go to St. Joseph’s hospital.” And it was the name of a hospital that doesn’t exist.

N: Did you give it to him?

Al: He never even came back to get it. I get other ridiculous excuses. “I need you to loan me 30 bucks to buy a present for my parents’ birthday today.” I knew that guy actually. He used to come around almost every day. His parents were filthy rich. My book is going to be called “You can’t pay with tears.” With the subtitle, “There’s no crying in Pawn Shop.”

Vancouver

The weather here is abysmal, but it doesn’t matter terribly because all my friend and I do when we hang out is go from cafe to restaurant to cafe and talk at length at each location. By afternoon we are overcaffeinated, privy to each other’s highly detailed descriptions of thoughts, events and hypothetical events. We order 4 kinds of seafood for lunch and justify it because we are ‘on vacation’ and ‘make a good living.’ Scallops, raw oysters, cooked oysters, squid. Mmmmm.

The weather is so bad even locals are complaining about it. I try to tell myself I find the gray, steady mist refreshing. On the way in and out of the seaside restaurant, she makes kisses and baby talk at the crabs in the tank, robotically awaiting their life’s conclusion. We drive around the city, walk through the public market, buy fresh produce, candied salmon, cooked prawns, local gruyere and honey.

Her boyfriend runs a highly lucrative pawn shop he bought his father out of at 22 years old. God can this guy throw around money. He eyes rolexes he wears the ‘older brother’ of, sizing up their value instantaneously. He keeps filling our wine glasses until three bottles are empty. Then he picks up dinner for the three of us after we’ve eaten a medium-sized marine community at the best sushi restaurant downtown, and shrugs his shoulders and laughs when I offer to help pay. She met him on a new year’s eve trip to Victoria at 19, when he was a shipyard worker without a high school degree and she was beginning college. They reconnected recently, and now she tosses around the idea of relocating, even though she’s never loved a city the way she loves New York, and she craves the hot summer nights that recently arrived.

San Francisco in May

I’ve been riding my bicycle a lot lately. The goal is to get somewhere that feels very different, quickly, without relying on someone else’s availability and without the guilt of driving, gas, payments, parking. The goal is getting to the trees and coast, where a magnet always seems to be pulling me, and I’ve never felt more free.

When life allows the leisure and availability to do things you love but didn’t do before and can’t figure out of why you didn’t, your identity feels more certain. Riding my bike far, up hills and along water, and climbing, are the few times my body and mind are both doing what they want to be doing. I can’t think of a time I’ve been happier than now, even if I can think of many times when I’ve been as happy.

I often think I’m happier when I don’t do what my body wants me to do. Like getting out of bed early on a weekend morning. I think I’ve never looked better, either. I just realized I’m coming up on what Elaine once told me would be my prime. Scary to think, of it, but it feels true. I’m so inclined to plan ahead for contingencies I already worry about it slipping away in several years. I know it’s stupid. I don’t worry now about being okay. I feel like I’ve gotten a new life made up of the best parts of my previous lives.

The poignancy of sobriety after daytime drunkenness  makes me feel vulnerability that is thankfully not nostalgia. The pacific northwest sun and the air off the sea feel like the best kind of home. I want to keep this feeling. In control of the sinking in my chest and twists of stinging pleasure in the back of my neck and skull like a painful, beautiful song.