countessian

welcome to socal

Hannah was in town from London on the start of her epic journey (you can read her LA adventures—bar shaking and country songs at Little Joy, Spindrift at the Roxy followed by her not-very-good first burrito, choosing her favourite member of Blitzen Trapper at Spaceland, being bored at the Short Stop, eating pear tart at Elf, buying new Havaianas in Venice, sacrificing sunglasses to the Pacific and more—on her travel stories blog) so we did what I haven’t done for years, went to the beach.

In my first Californian year (2003—officially the best year ever, in retrospect) I laid out on the Venetian sand rereading Salinger short stories over and over in only red flip flops, red bikini bottoms and red lipstick, very 21 and 22, every weekend. Now I’m almost 26 and the Havaianas have been in the boot of an ex boyfriend’s car for years and the bikini bottoms still fit but my bones don’t stick out like they used to. The lipstick still looks good, though (”Vinnie” by Delux).

I had few friends and was still a westsider—on week nights I’d stroll to the Santa Monica pier after work and only ride the seven back to my bare little flat behind the strip club once the sun was well and truly down. In those strange sun-bleached days, the highlight of the week was making it to the library in time to type up the novel I was so earnestly writing. How times change. Having no money, no computer at home and no one to talk to makes one quite productive, in silly ways. It wasn’t like I was curing cancer, or anything, but I sure did write and draw a lot.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 4:50 pm. It is filed under documentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.