Day Eleven of the Unseasonably Warm Shorts and Penetrating Sunsets Road Trip of Affable Reconsidering
Silver Lake, CA
Today, I opened a window. Now, that may not seem like such a big goddamn deal to any of you out there in the warmer climes, but we have been unable to open a window for about four months back where we live the fall and winter has been unseasonably miserable, and the last few days on the open plains of America have been blindingly cold. Not here. It was 77 degrees today, and I was hot in shorts. Not "hot" like "hot," "hot" like... oh, forget it.
As Tessa went off on a hike with Jason, I trucked over to the old Beachwood house, still sitting mere furlongs from the Hollywood sign, empty as a old skull. Everyone's car was there, but no humans were inside, so I snuck around back and broke in the usual way: the kitchen window never closed properly.
Inside, it was downright ghoulish. I'm not sure how that house manages to dissipate heat, but it must have been 45 degrees in there, with the smell of an ancient locker room from a turn-of-the-century YMCA. It was fascinating to see what kind of effect I had on that house, how few things still linger from my three years there. It has been two years since I left, and all the remains of my presence is a couple of light fixtures, cable TV into perpetuity, the green ceramic tile floors, and an old project attached to the fridge with a magnet.
I went into lugubrious detail last year about my problems with the place, but all I felt this year was just plain old sadness. That house could have been an intense creative center for people alighting on the West Coast and it may have been, for about six months - but my 1997 plans for LA never materialized. Sure, most of that was due to the oppressive horseshit we endured from various peoples' moron friends, but there's something about LA that seems like a failed experiment. Plenty of people went through Beachwood Manor, but nobody had the right mix of talent, gregariousness and loyalty. As I was driving up Carmen Ave. a group of fresh-out-of-college kids were sitting on their stoop and raised their drinks to me - and I felt like they were doing it right.
Posted by at January 2, 2003 1:51 AM