It’s been two weeks since we arrived in Los Angeles. We’ve suffered days without Wi-Fi or furniture, mobile hot-spotting for Internet and eating dinner off the hardwood floors. I come to you from a laptop that’s slipping off my thighs as I type, a hot-spot that dies every hour, forcing me to walk to the Central Library and complete my work between sleeping homeless and an installation honoring Charles Bukowski — Poet Laureate of LA Lowlife.
Our apartment is coming together. We graduated from one pan to a nonstick wok. One and a half IKEA desks have been put together, and we even have a lava lamp. My plants (those I didn’t mercy kill) survived the trip, though one is in quarantine with a fungal infection. The branches that broke in transit sit atop our balcony, propagating in water bottles — a metaphor for this new chapter.
The past two weeks have given me emotional whiplash. One moment I feel blissful excitement, like moving was the greatest choice I ever made. Then I go outside and the smell of pee on the pavement drags me back to self-doubt.
I walk home, nose-pinched, thinking, Why did I move here? This isn’t home.
And then — surprise! — there’s a $7 shrimp taco truck parked outside my apartment, and the excitement ricochets back to me.
While studying in London, our class was given a brochure that read, Living abroad is like riding a semester-long roller coaster!
I may not need a passport to enter California, but LA might as well be a new country to me. And if London was one of those new-age roller coaster with the 3D screens, then LA is an old-timey wooden one.
Sure, I’m having a lot of fun riding, but I’m beginning to question the ride’s structural integrity. As the ground grows closer and closer, and the ride begins to shake, I can’t help but wonder who built this piece of shit in the first place.
Take the night we bought our dream couch.
After eating dinner off the floor for five nights, Maddee and I decided to make a splash on the used furniture market. When Facebook Marketplace offered us a beautiful sleeper sectional we’d ogled at IKEA for years, we signed our lives away, renting a van from a U-Haul in South Central LA and driving 80 miles for it.
By the time we arrived home and dumped its dismembered parts in our parking garage, we didn’t have enough time to haul it upstairs. The U-Haul was closing. Maddee guarded the couch from would-be furniture-nabbers while I drove the van back with dread in my heart.
You see, the South Central U-Haul is like Narnia… if only the lion and witch lived inside of a rundown textile warehouse and Uber scooter repair instead of some yuppie wardrobe.
When Joe, the overall-adorned mechanic, saw me swing the U-Haul onto the sidewalk, he cheered.
“You flew home, señor!”
I brushed my shoulders off as I dismounted the van. “I tried.”
He then explained through a thick Spanish accent that I would still be hit with a substantial late fee.
Ouch.
Inside the warehouse, Joe’s supervisor broke down the bill between a roll of broadloom and a banged up scooter.
“Just let us know next time you’re late,” he said. “Now Joe has to work late parking it.”
I wanted to ask what else Joe was doing at the Uber-scooter-carpet warehouse if not working, but I refrained. Perhaps some people did, in fact, have it worse than the guy with the new Dream Couch.
After I settled up and returned the keys, I shook Joe’s hand and apologized.
“Listen, man, I’m really sorry about keeping you late.”
Joe cringed at the accusation that I made him work late.
“Do not worry!” he said.
I tried to brush off his politeness, but the middle-aged mechanic was offended at the notion that he was working because of me.
“There is more time than life,” he said. “Do you understand?”
I didn’t.
But I wanted to.
I pretended I got it, but Joe’s piercing eyes saw right through me.
“People always say that they don’t have time for work or for family, but time is not real.”
The walls of the Uber-scooter-carpet warehouse seemed to crack and fall. The Earth slowed a millisecond.
“Time isn’t real,” I said.
“Mm-hm.” Joe nodded.
“It’s manmade!”
“Uh-huh.”
“An illusion!”
He smiled. “So, will that be cash or card today?”
The walls of the warehouse reassembled themselves. My phone’s clock ticked on as I paid for the U-Haul, exorbitant late fee and all, then exited the warehouse beneath a smear of smoggy stars, desperate for a ride home.
As if Space-Time was reminding me of the chokehold it had on my life, my phone battery leaked down to 10% as my first two Ubers canceled on me. I crouched low on the pavement, begging the Gods of rideshare automation for another ride.
The U-Haul guys locked up and drove away, leaving me in the darkness between two homeless encampments: one, a tailgate of old RVs under the I-10 overpass; the other, a corner-camp of tents. A few cockroaches skittered by my feet while two silhouetted figures exchanged either drugs or cash or maybe a Covid vaccine across the street.
Time seemed to slow again, but this time the joy of Joe’s Warehouse Philosophy had all but melted away into that familiar feeling of unbelonging. What was I doing there? I didn’t belong there. Not just on Crack Corner, USA, but in Los Angeles — chasing my dreams, writing and working and living and experiencing new things. I belonged huddled in my bed, playing PS4 in comfort, taking no risks but gaining no rewards.
A silhouetted man from the RV encampment approached slowly. I rounded a telephone pole to hide, but two figures from the tents opposite walked toward me, too.
I crouched down lower, making myself a cockroach. Fox News had warned me about this. Every drunk in every Florida bar had cautioned me likewise:
“You’ll get shot,” they said.
“Stabbed!”
“Robbed!”
“Mugged.”
I lowered the brightness on my phone, praying for my next Uber to save me from my inevitable shot-stabbing-rob-mugging.
But none of that happened.
The dark figures went about their business. The RVs closed up for the night; the tents zipped their doors up.
Then it was just me, the cockroaches, and the few visible stars shining above before the headlights of a Honda blurred them out of view.
My Uber was there. I’d done it.
I’d survived the streets of South Central Los Angeles.
And all I had to show for it was the steel gray IKEA sleeper sectional of my dreams.
Did I survive the milieu of red flags due to dumb luck? Or, did I simply judge the clamors of LA’s peaceful unhoused residents too harshly?
Those answers elude me.
I suspect they’ll come in time, after I feel more like a local. Once my CA driver’s license is acquired, or after I notch my first Kardashian sighting.
For now, I’m proud of myself.
Not for being an idiot and returning a U-Haul late in a foreign neighborhood, but for leaving my comfort zone; for accepting wisdom in warehouses, and moving cross-country to get them.
When I regaled my story to Maddee atop the Dream Couch upon my return, she had one thing to say:
“Welp, you wanted Bukowski-worthy stories. Here you go.”
I’m not certain that LA lowlife lore is mine to tell, but every trip outside our apartment brings a new snippet of story with it:
The homeless king stretched out on a curbside recliner on trash day.
The CVS security guard who holstered his taser to compliment my choice of cheapo Mexican cerveza.
The Hollywood hairdresser who lectured on the benefits of taking Adderall before playing Madden, all while trimming a red carpet mane.
One of my favorite authors, George Saunders, explained how such anecdotes enrich stories.
“Why am I bothering telling you this?” he wrote, after detailing a time when he saw eight Aussie shepherds sticking their heads out the window of a car parked at a hardware store.
“Well, it was funny. It seemed comically excessive. It made life seem more beautiful and mysterious for a few seconds – it felt, briefly, that life’s aim was to be delightful to us."
That’s what I’m getting every day here.
Joe’s Warehouse Wisdom has convinced me; there is more time than life — whatever the hell that means.
And I’m in no rush to close this newly opened chapter.
I’m taking my time and enjoying the comic excess, step-by-step, foot over pee puddle. Always rounding that extra block for the next seven buck taco truck.
A Bukowski briefing…
Shouts out to…
Geoff and Evan, who introduced us to the IKEA Dream Couch at their old apartment in DC.
Maddee, again, for the new logo.
My dad, whose birthday it is today. Happy birthday, Pops!