how to fall in love in los angeles

We went to 4100 on a Tuesday and towards the end of the night I was seated across from a guy named Seth who kept talking about how he had gone to Bennington and how he refused to read any book by anyone who had gone to Bennington. 

He said he was writing a collection of short stories and asked if I wanted to read them. Cole briefly tried to join the conversation because Cole was a good guy, one of the best, and thought he’d give the guy the benefit of the doubt in that he was hoping Seth wasn’t just talking a bunch of shit at me in the hopes of fucking me. Seth ignored Cole because he was really just interested in trying to fuck me. 

A girl named Bellatrix sat between my friend Simon and the kid whose birthday it was and who we were all presumably there for named Nick. She talked about how good Russian poetry was and Pushkin for a while and I later found out she was buying time talking to me while she tried to figure out if she wanted to fuck Simon or fuck Nick that night. She didn’t fuck either. 

Everyone was either vaping or smoking a cigarette. A girl seated at a different table with a bedazzled hat and grunge makeup rolled her eyes when someone presented her with Camel menthols. 

The only girl I actually enjoyed talking to showed me more pictures of her cats. Everyone was either working on a script or doing a flash tattoo pop up or curating vintage. 

I squeezed Cole’s hand and tried to remember I was happy. Sometimes I think maybe these are the things that become romantic or cool later, and sometimes I think maybe we have nothing romantic or cool left, that maybe we lost those things somewhere in the 80s, then I think again that maybe everyone all the time felt like they came into things a little too late, when all the cool and romantic stuff had gone. 

I squeezed Cole’s hand again. He rubbed his thumb upwards against my fingernails, something I hated and that he knew I hated. I asked him if he wanted to leave and he said yes. Simon went with us to the car and we drove back to their house in the valley. I got annoyed at Simon for not agreeing with me about how irritating one of the people at 4100 was and Cole gave me a look which implied I was being difficult. I was. Sometimes I got so sick of everything and I yelled at Simon to make myself feel like I was doing something about it. I wasn’t. We listened to a demo of one of their new songs and it sounded even better going through the canyon. This is how to fall in love in Los Angeles. 

I met Cole again at the tail-end of a pretty bad time. I met him for the first time at the beginning of a pretty bad time. He had band practice in my apartment building and was lugging an amp in through the outside gate when I was on my way out. He put the amp down and actually stuck out his hand, like to shake it, and I stared at it kind of confused and kind of annoyed because I knew for a fact he had a girlfriend and it didn’t seem like he was hitting on me. 

His eyes were really wide and really intense, like a cartoon character, and he held eye contact long enough to make me feel uncomfortable. I decided he annoyed me. 

When I met him again, we were both single and I was doing crosswords everyday. He came to my apartment looking for Simon, because Simon was often with me in my apartment in those days to make sure I wasn’t going to spontaneously combust every 10 minutes as was common at that time. Simon wasn’t there because I guess the combustion forecast was looking stable that morning, but Cole sat on the couch next to me and asked if I needed help with the crossword. I didn’t but I told him I did anyway because I liked the sound of his voice. It was friendly and boyish and had a tone I can only describe as being sort of sun-kissed, what I pictured guys sounded like in LA before I ever came out here. 

When Simon came back and they left for band practice or surfing Cole gave me his number “in case I ever needed more help with the crossword”. 

I thought that I’d do just about anything to see his hands type out answers to crossword clues again. 

Before our second date I had made some joke that he shouldn’t come over until he memorized the first passage of Lolita in Russian. He was 30 minutes late and when he came in I prepared to be charmingly irritated but he immediately kneeled down in front of me and began reciting the first page of Lolita in what I can only assume was perfect Russian. 

It sounds cheesy now but I think I almost cried. I always cry when I hear something beautiful. 

I have a rockstar boyfriend. He has perfect hands and he stares at you really hard when you speak. I work for a publishing house. I am so sick of reading sad stories.