Siete Años Aquí

Seven years ago, on January 27, my flight from snowy New York landed at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.

I was still wearing my winter boots, which I promptly tore off and threw in the trunk of my rental car.

The first place I drove to? Target. I bought a bikini there.

Later, I arrived to my new apartment in Beverly Hills, the lease for which I'd only signed a couple weeks before.

Seven years later, I still live in that same apartment. And I have no intention on leaving anytime soon.

If I've got to live in any apartment in the LA area—if I can't yet afford to buy a house—then I might as well just stay here.

But seven-plus years is a long time. It's the longest I've lived anywhere as an adult, just now surpassing the seven years I spent in my Manhattan apartment.

And I can't believe some of the things I haven't done in seven years—the things I haven't unpacked, the household items I haven't bought.

For example, it's taken me seven years to frame a limited edition poster of a live concert screening of Dracula I attended in 2011 in Big Sur. I'll be picking that up from the framer soon.

It took me seven years to find a bookshelf that I could use to display my tiki mugs. I liked the first one so much that I just bought another one to make a pair.

Of course, I moved to LA in a hurry, and I'd sold or given away many of my possessions back in New York so as to not have to pay movers to transport them across the country, so that forced me to start anew in LA.

When I got here, I bought a new couch, new rug, new coffee table (my first!), new chair, new shelves and tables and bedding and whatnot.

Some of it was a rush job and didn't quite fit in my small Art Deco studio. I've gotten rid of some of those items since.

Some of what I moved from New York turned out to be dead weight, unneeded for my new California life.

The jury's still out on some of it.

And now, after seven years, it's finally time to get a new quilt for my bed, a new trash can for my bathroom, and a new table for my bedside. It's amazing how such little changes can make an old apartment feel completely refreshed.

I'm not much for New Year's Resolutions, but the start of a new year is a good time to gather a "to do" list—and at the top of mine were three critical tasks:

1. Go to the car wash. (Done New Year's Day, ✓)
2. Take my cat to the vet. (Done two weeks ago, ✓)
3. Hire a crew to "deep clean" my kitchen and bathroom. (Done this week, ✓)

After all, seven years is a long time to live in one place. And I'd dirtied up this place enough to require some professionals to come in.

When one of the crew members—who didn't speak much English—finished in the bathroom and came to check on me in the living room, I fumbled through some Spanish to explain to her how long it had been since the place had gotten "a big clean."

"Siete años aquí," I said.

"Siete años?!" she exclaimed, acknowledging what I meant.

"Sí!"

And we need to say nothing more. The looks on our faces said it all. 

When she had me inspect her work in the bathroom, all I could say was, "It's so clean!" 

I hadn't seen it that clean in seven years.

But I didn't know how to say that in Spanish.

Maybe I will in another seven years.

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Only Time Will Tell

Being born three weeks late seems to have established a behavioral pattern that I cannot avoid or change: I've always run late in my life. My tardiness has made an awareness of the current time – a measure of exactly how late I am – an absolute necessity. For years, I would even sleep with a watch on, so I would know what time I fell asleep, what time I woke from nightmares, and how long I overslept.

I'd always keep my eyes on the clock, watching time pass, waiting for then to be now.

When I started to come out to LA to drum up some business and scout out the possibility of actually moving here, I'd adjust to the local time on my watch on the plane when the pilot announced it, and when I returned to Eastern Time, I would not adjust it back. I'd just leave it on Pacific Time and add three hours to determine what time it was in New York, so that when I was in New York, I would always know, without calculation, what time it was in LA.

If I found myself grounded on the East Coast for any extended period of time, I'd eventually turn my watch back for local accuracy, but in that summer of 2010, when I was coming out here every six to eight weeks, I'd just leave it.

I liked being on West Coast Time.

I'm still glad that I'm out on the Best Coast, but when my watch battery died a few weeks ago and I decided not to spend the money to replace it, I stopped caring what time it was altogether.

Sure, I have appointments to keep, places to be, people to see, but I don't arrive any later now that I ever did while depending on my wrist to tell time.

In fact, I might actually be more punctual now.

Maybe it's because I generally have less to do, am pressuring myself less to fill the time. I'm not booked solid from day to night. I'm biding my time. Passing time. Letting time pass me by.

They say that the days go by so much more quickly as you get older, but the days feel long to me in my advancing years. Maybe it's the laid back pace of Southern California, a lack of urgency in a town devoid of Type A personalities. It's OK to be late here. It's OK if it doesn't happen right now, even if that means it never happens, because hey, the sun shines another day. As long as I may keep other people waiting, they keep me waiting even longer.

So while I wait for something to happen, for my brain to heal, for life to get better (or worse), for days to pass into night, I still set my alarm, if only to give me a perfectly sufficient amount of sleep, but I don't check the time in between. I am surrounded by manmade clocks keeping me in check – on my laptop, cell phone, and car dashboard – but if I could, I would live again on a schedule dictated by the sun, awaking at its rise and settling down at its set.

I don't know if there's enough time in the world to heal my wounds.

I guess only time will tell.

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Approaching Three Years

I always said that it took me three years until New York City really felt like home, until I wasn't afraid to go out at night by myself. (It turns out, that fear was warranted, even 14 years in.)

I'm now approaching my three year anniversary in Los Angeles, and I can hardly believe it.

I can hardly believe that I had the cojones to quit a successful job as a Vice President and rely on $40,000 I'd saved up, originally intended to put towards the down payment on an apartment in New York. Once it became very clear that not only did I not want to buy in New York, much less even stay there, I decided to live off that money while I figured out what my next move would be - and, most importantly, where.

At the time, living claustrophobically and catatonically in New York, I set my destination as "anywhere but here." I applied for jobs in Boston, DC, Vegas, Minneapolis, London, San Diego, Los Angeles, even going so far as to apply for Peace Corps, which might've placed me in Central Asia to teach English.

That's OK, I thought, as long as it's not New York.

Luckily, the company that wanted to relocate me somewhere else ended up being located in LA, a second choice to San Diego for me, but close enough, and ecstatically in Southern California, about as far from New York as you could get.

It sure is different here. Good different, I always tell people.

Since moving to LA, I've considered two different job opportunities which would've required me to move elsewhere - one to Florida for a dream job in a new career, and one back to New York for a lateral move within my own career. Unfortunately, the dream job didn't choose me (though I admit being relieved not to have to move to Florida), but if I'd wanted the other job, the one in New York - even if I'd just said I wanted that job - it probably could've been mine.

In both cases, despite the very strong feeling that I do not want to leave Los Angeles right now, I had to consider the job itself and not the location. I didn't think I could dismiss either just because they were located in a place I didn't want to be.

Would I move back to New York?

Ugh, I don't want to. But yeah, for the right opportunity, I would. It wouldn't have to be forever. I would have to have a car, or make enough money to take taxis and car services everywhere. And soon enough, I'd probably be itching to leave again.

While I was back in New York for the holidays, part of me was trying to determine if I could live there again. And the thing is, sure, I could. It's easy to fall back into old routines - even bad ones. Familiarity has a powerful pull. Better the devil you know, and I know lots of devils in New York, including my own demons which would inevitably resurface upon my return.

But I don't want to. I love my friends, and the family that has adopted me. I wish I could bring them all with me, wherever I go. But as much as I miss them throughout the year, I don't want to go back to be with them.

And when I was in New York, I missed LA.

I missed my car.

I missed my apartment.

I missed my street.

I missed my new routines.

I missed unfamiliarity.

And I couldn't wait to get back to it all.

I think that's the first time that LA has felt like home to me. When I said it was good to be home, it was when I landed at LAX at 10 p.m. and balmy breezes brushed against my face and through my hair, relaxing every muscle.

As I waited for the shuttle to take me home to my apartment, I sat on the sidewalk in the dark and cried. I cried because I was tired after a six hour flight. I cried because, having adjusted to a time zone three hours ahead, it was my bedtime.

I cried because there was no loved one to pick me up from the airport, as there always is in Upstate New York.

But I also cried because I was glad to be back home.

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Another Year, Another Anniversary

Two years ago today, I escaped being buried alive in a snowstorm and moved to LA. It was sunny and hot in Burbank when I landed, and as soon as I retrieved my rental car, I threw off my winter boots and coat, headed to Target, and bought a bikini.

Two years later, it's rainy and cold, but I'm still going to Target.

I don't think anyone remembers today's date but me. There was no celebration today. There was no ceremony. There was no commemoration.

Only brunch alone, shopping alone, dinner and a beer alone.  A big night in featuring two loads of wet, drying laundry hanging with me in my studio apartment where I reside alone, and a Dustbuster full of pine needles.

Sure, I've settled into some routines, some of which have changed over the last two years with my ever-changing employment status, but I do still feel new in town.

I still love LA. I would say we're still in the honeymoon phase, except I know that when I moved here, I did not marry LA, nor did LA marry me. We are not newlyweds. We are still just getting to know each other.

I might not be here forever, but I don't see myself leaving anytime soon. A friend recently asked me what it would take for me to move back to New York, and I responded flatly, "A marriage proposal from Ryan Gosling."

Though, I suppose, a marriage proposal from any number of people would also apply.

Do I have friends yet in LA? Not really. I'm trying, but I could probably try harder. I still feel very alone.

Do I have a boyfriend yet in LA? Not even close, but I keep trying. I've kissed a lot of frogs. Even the frogs aren't much interested in me.

Do I have a job yet in LA? I had one when I moved here, but it wasn't the right one. Panicked, I took another job and stayed there for a year, but it wasn't the right one either. Bankrupt, I took a job back in retail and have worked as many hours as I could get, bearing cuts and callouses on my hands, blisters on my feet, and bags under my eyes. I've been dressed to the nines but feeling less than a 10.

What have I done with my two years here, if not having settled in?

And what will the next two years bring? What will my time in LA mean?

I think it's impossible for me to know any of this now, while it's happening. But hopefully I'll figure it out, and be able to discuss it intelligently, with insight and wisdom and perspective, one day.

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Nowhere Woman

After spending six nights in New York City, on two different couches and one bed, and two more nights in Syracuse in a bed I visit twice a year, I have come to the definitive conclusion that I am as much in Limbo now as I was for the five months I spent in Ryan’s spare bedroom in Queens, with most of my possessions packed up in storage, on my way to moving to California, just uncertain of exactly when.

Back then, when I would spend a week or two or even just a few days in LA, I would miss it terribly upon my return to New York.

When I came back to New York this time, for the first time since Christmas, I didn’t miss LA so much.

I didn’t miss New York, either. It felt like a stranger to me, like a place I’d visited in a dream. I got lost on the subway and took the wrong train, twice in one evening. I became befuddled at Penn Station. I asked for directions. I took a cab both to and from the airport instead of struggling to lug my bags up and down staircases and escalators, across the gap and off of curbs.

I was neither a tourist nor a resident.

I kept my watch on West Coast time, but I didn’t think about the West Coast very much. I didn’t miss anyone there. After all, I was with the people that I’ve been missing for over a year since moving.

I did miss my car. I missed my bed. But those don’t have much to do with where I live.

I managed to feel my heart break for the second time for a person for whom I would probably stay in New York if he wanted me to.

When everyone asks me, “How’s LA?” – or, more likely, when New Yorkers ask me, “Really? You like it there?” – I say, “It’s great,” and I mean it. But what I really mean is, “It’s great, for now.” I don’t know that I’ll spend the rest of my life in LA. I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle the loneliness. I’m not sure it’ll ever get better. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find a job there that I love.

“Are you there for the rest of your life?”

“I have no idea. I mean, I would certainly move somewhere else for love…”

But what I would do and what I would ever have the chance to do are two totally different things. You have to be given the opportunity to make a choice before you choose.

And I’ve already chosen to leave my life behind and start a new one from scratch somewhere else. I’m not about to do that again anytime soon. At least, not by myself. And I’m not about to move back to New York anytime soon. At least, not by myself. There are only a few things I won’t do alone, and those are amongst them.

At least, for now.

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Not What I Moved to California For

When it rains in LA, which is not that often and far less often this year than this time last year, I find myself saying things like, "This is not what I moved to California for."

My tone is akin to Paul Giamatti's character in Sideways when he says, "I am not drinking any f-ing Merlot."

But my refusal to accept the inevitable - that sometimes it will rain, even in the desert - begs the question, What did I move to California for?

The easy and most obvious answer is that I moved here for a job, one that ultimately didn't work out. And now I have a different job.

The deeper answer is that I really needed to leave New York City, and that it was driving me away so powerfully that I would have moved away to live anywhere but there.

But while I was trying to move, I really wanted to run towards something rather than away from the drama and damage I'd sustained during my last few years in New York.

So did I move to California for the weather then? Not really, but it is nice, most of the time.

Did I move to California to become a different person? Not really, but I think it's happening.

Did I move to California to forget my past? A little bit, and it's working.

I did move to California to have a better life. And, on the surface, between my apartment and my car, I do.

But I didn't move to California to be heartbroken, yet I am.

I didn't move to California to be alone, yet I am.

I didn't move to California to wake up hung over and dread getting up, yet I do. (Though, admittedly, far less than in New York.)

I didn't move to California to stay in bed all day, even while the sun shines, though I have, three times in the last nine days.

I didn't move to California to sit at a desk all day while the world passes me by and doesn't even notice that I have arrived.

When people ask me how I'm doing, how LA is treating me, how I'm enjoying myself, I usually say, "Great." And I mean it, I think.

But I'm not happy. I don't know what I'm doing here. At night, I don't have anyone to tell how my day went. In the morning, I don't have anyone to tell how my night went. I'm just fumbling around in the dark, exploring and learning on my own, with very few shared experiences to validate my existence.

Am I really even here?

It's not the best life, but it's certainly not the worst. It has been much worse for me in the past. But I think it could be better.

After all, at some point I've got to be able to say that withstanding the trauma of uprooting myself from the East Coast, which I called "home" my whole life, no matter how bad it was in the end, and separating myself from all of my close friends, was worth it.

I hope one day it will be.

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Retracing My Steps

About four months late, I finally hunkered down and started tackling my 2010 taxes so I can file them before the deadline of my six-month extension. Although my taxes seem to be annually complicated ever since 2001 when I won a game show and got laid off, last year was particularly complicated considering the amount of traveling I did back and forth from NY to LA to try to find (either freelance or fulltime) work.

Going through my receipts - especially my travel-related ones - was like reexperiencing the entire year in one night. It was a tough year, but I was happy when I was in California, which was a lot.

Tonight, logging all of my expenses, from hotels to car rentals to food and drinks, I retraced the steps that brought me here to California to stay: my first trip to LA with Edith before touring California City for Obscura Day in March, my first stint housesitting in May (and the subsequent weekend holiday at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs), my stint catsitting for two weeks over the Fourth of July holiday, finding any excuse to return, procuring oddball crashpads and never wanting to leave...

Those were happy times, losing weight, spending money I didn't have, meeting people, trying to find love, trying to find myself...

Last year, I had a sense that I was on a mission, on a path to something, somewhere, but I just had no idea what or where it was.

This year, I am certain I am supposed to be here, where I am, in LA. I still don't really know why.

I found a job. (Actually, so far, three jobs.)

I still haven't found a love that loves me back.

I still haven't found myself.

Maybe next year, as I account the financial traces of where I've been and what I've done in 2011, I'll be able to piece some more of it together.

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Life Goes On

Sometimes I find it surprising to see that New York City, and all my friends I left behind there, have gone on without me.

It's not that I thought that the city itself would cease to exist after I moved to LA, but being away from the place that I called home for 14 years, I wonder whether I ever had any impact on it at all.

Parties still go on, whether or not I'm invited to them anymore.

Bars open and close.

Restaurants come and go.

My friends still chug along with their lives, making new friends, hanging out with people I've never heard of at places I've never heard of.

I haven't missed much of New York since I've been gone, besides my friends. Everything else has been more of the food and drink variety. I wish I had a good local bar to frequent in LA. I wish I could find a good frozen margarita. I wish I could find a (non-obnoxious, non-table service, non-Valley and OC-frequented) place to dance. I wish it were easier to find someone to make out with. Otherwise, I'm kind of all set.

But I can't shake the sense of rejection I feel when I realize that New York is kind of all set without me there too. As much as I don't need New York anymore, I wish it needed me.

Since it doesn't, I've pulled back even more. I've unsubscribed from email lists. I've hidden Facebook posts from my newsfeed, unliked pages and unfollowed Twitter accounts.

When people ask me where I'm from, I say "L.A." When they persist, "But you're not from L.A..." I smile and say, "Well, I moved here from New York in January."

"New York City?"

"I grew up in Syracuse, and lived in New York City for 14 years."

I am not from New York City. I lived there for 14 years.

I didn't go back to NYC for Edith's birthday. I didn't go back for the 4th of July. I didn't go back for Bastille Day. I'm not going back for Labor Day, my birthday, business trips, or any other reason. I have no plans to return to New York until October, over nine months after moving to LA, and even then only for purely selfish and touristic reasons: Open House New York, the architectural tour weekend that only happens once a year.

My imminent NYC return is still three months away, but I'm already wondering what I'll do there, who I'll see, where I'll go.... Do I revisit my favorite places, or try someplace new? Will my favorite places still be there? Who shall I invite to join me? Who will want to see me?

Am I allowed to still pine for those I left behind, no matter how brief our time together in NYC was?

Does anyone pine for me?

Most certainly, the City of New York does not pine for me. It's doing just fine without me.

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Settling In

I feel like I've had an endless To-Do List ever since I realized I was moving to LA.

I somehow managed to get all the packing and moving done, but the unpacking and moving-in has taken me a bit longer.

My first few days (ok, weeks) in LA were monopolized by car-shopping, Target-visiting, errand-running, bartender-flirting and furniture-assembling, most of which have thankfully subsided.

But as much furniture as I've bought (making up for everything I threw out or gave away in New York), now comes the real settling in:

• I applied for my California state driver's license, and registered to vote.
• I am finally getting my annual exam with a Santa Monica doctor after nearly two years without healthcare.
• I got new headshots done, the first that show me 45 pounds lighter.
• I've started driving without the aid of my GPS. Some of the time.

People keep asking me where I'm from, and I only respond, "I just moved from New York three months ago." I don't feel like I'm from New York. I don't feel like I'm from Syracuse. And when I travel now, when people ask me where I'm from, I say, "L.A."

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What I Can't Get Out of My Head

How do you know when something's right? Upon first glance, it may seem right, feel right, look right, sound right, even taste right, but how do you know if it is, in fact, right?

I mean, we humans are sometimes dazzled and distracted by shiny things. We see a pretty face and think it's love. We're willing to sacrifice ourselves for something that seems like a really good idea.

When I was looking for a NYC sublet in August, I almost moved into a 5 bedroom apartment for $1200/month where the main tenant taught drums for a living. In the apartment. At night. All because it was situated in a converted smokehouse (adaptive reuse!) and on one of the nicest blocks of Williamsburg's North Side.

Thank God I came to my senses.

Sometimes, you can trust your first instinct, your gut impulses. When I walked into the building in which I now live - even when I first saw its listing online - I knew it was the one. Then again, I had over 20 other apartments in LA to compare it to.

But in the case of my Astoria apartment, where I camped out for five months, I forced myself to trudge all around the city looking for something that might be better, cheaper, newer, hipper, more conveniently located, include a pet, not include a roommate, etc. And after I did all that, I realized I had to make a decision, and return to the first apartment I saw.

I'm all about taking opportunities as they come my way, but in order to make a decision I was really comfortable with, I had to know what I was missing out on. I had to shop around.

In setting up my new life in LA - furnishing my new apartment, buying a car - I've tried to manage my own impulsiveness in the same way, even if that means hitting dealership after dealership, furniture store after department store after thrift shop, and Target about 17 times. So far. Most of the time, I've chosen nothing. I've spent hours online each night, scrolling through the same thumbnails of curtains and clocks and chairs and pillows and rugs and tables over and over again. I have bookmarked tons of items, added them to my wishlist and emailed links to friends. And then I've waited.

Ultimately, the right choice is eventually revealed to me, because I can't get the image of certain items out of my head. If I can't stop thinking about it, and I can afford it, I should go get it.

While I was car shopping - a rushed endeavor, like my apartment hunt, that I only gave myself two days to accomplish - I couldn't stop thinking about the first dealership I'd visited, Miller Honda in Culver City. Even though I'd visited two other Honda dealerships around LA, had looked at Hondas at various other used car lots, and was told I could not afford a brand new Honda Fit, I returned to Miller Honda at the end of my last car shopping day. I didn't know why I was there. I didn't know what I would be asking Ruben, the salesman who'd impressed me so much the day before, for. I just couldn't get the place out of my mind, so I went back, and told Ruben my story.

Like any good salesman, he assured me that we could work something out, and in a couple of hours, I paid the down payment I asked for and set up the monthly payments I could afford. I left my rental car with them and drove my new car (lease) home.

Likewise...

After all the frogs I've kissed, which is the prince who makes all others pale?

After all the pillows I've squished, which is the one I can't help but bring home?

After all the places I've lived, which is the one that feels most like home, and that I can't wait to get back to? (Hint: it's not New York.)

Sure, for people like my mother, it's easy to become fixated on minor things that don't matter - a spill on the carpet, a stain on the shirt, a rip in the curtains, a germ in the air - but for someone like me, who's a little bit more than distracted by shiny things, and falls too easily in "like," I need to be able to dismiss the passing fancies, or accept them for what they are. Although that may slow me down in the process - 14 years in New York, 35 years of being single - so far, I've done a pretty good job of putting my new life together in Los Angeles on a pretty tight schedule.

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Diving Right In

I had four and a half days in LA before I started my new job.

That’s not much time.

I had a lot to do.

Day One

• Escape NYC snowstorm
• Arrive Burbank airport, haul winter coat, Trader Joe’s shopping bag with the broken handle, and two heavy rolling suitcases (one ripped) while wearing winter boots to pick up rental car
• Drive to Target, spent $300 on bikinis, sundries, and housewares
• Meet with leasing agent, get keys to furnished room to sleep in until mattress arrives
• Unload car
• Drive to El Carmen, find parking
• Eat tacos. Drink margaritas.
• Sleep. Very little.

Day Two

• Wake up with the birds
• Meet new employees. Drink too much coffee.
• Eat amazing lunch at Huckleberry. Get a blueberry ciabatta to go.
• Go furniture shopping in the Valley.
• Return to Target.
• Home Depot.
• Wander around Carmax to get a feel for used cars.
• Agonize over Friday night traffic from Burbank to Beverly Hills.
• Shower, change, makeup, get back in car.
• Date night. Dresden Room, Tiki Ti.
• Drink.
• Sober up.
• Kiss goodnight.
• Sleep. Much too little.

Day Three

• Wake up with the birds.
• Starbucks for wifi. Forget to order decaf. Only 30 minute parking. Onsite security alerts me to almost flat tire.
• Free air from mechanic at gas station.
• Starbucks for more wifi. Order second cup, decaf this time.
• Wait for friend to wake up for car shopping.
• Get really hungry.
• Brunch at Royal T Café. Squirt sausage juice all over t-shirt. Order cookie, but there are no cookies to be had.
• Miller Honda. Great.
• Miller Toyota. What?
• Carmax Inglewood. Not as good as Burbank.
• VW Santa Monica. Test drive pre-owned Jetta. Not for me.
• Marathon drive to Burbank. Past Burbank. Way past Burbank. Backtrack on the 5.
• Carmax Burbank. Test drive Nissan Sentra and Toyota Yaris. Both too wonky, but hard to tell circling the parking lot.
• Honda North Hollywood. Wait, those are motorcycles.
• Robertson Honda. Test drive Fit. Love it. Salesman tells me I’ve picked the wrong car because I can’t afford it.
• In-N-Out Burger across the street for dinner, protein-style. Nearly lose it waiting for the food to arrive in the cold.
• Worry my car, left in the Starbucks parking lot, has been towed.
• Reunite with my car in Culver City, drive home to Beverly Hills.
• Shower, wash hair, change.
• Sparkly sweater, walk uphill 1.2 miles to the Sunset Strip.
• Mache salad and divine cocktails at The Eveleigh.
• Get mistaken for Zoe Deschanel.
• Make eyes at the bartender.
• Meet the off-duty staff from BLT Steak next door, chat, charm.
• Get walked home partway by one, all the way by another.
• Kiss goodnight. Fireworks.
• Sleep.

Day Four

• Wake with the rain.
• Starbucks.
• Movers.
• Unpacking.
• Shower.
• Honda Hollywood. Leave after only a brief conversation, without test-driving anything.
• Drive aimlessly
• Return to Miller Honda.
• Negotiate lease for the Fit, the car I was told I couldn’t afford.
• Call friends for positive reinforcement.
• Sign papers.
• Freak out.
• Burger, mushrooms and Albariño at Father’s Office.
• Sleep. Kinda.

Day Five

• Wake with the birds, clean up crash pad and head to my own apartment for good.
• Unpack. Break down boxes. Wonder where the recycling goes.
• Pay rent, return key to furnished crash pad.
• Beverly Hills City Hall for parking permit. Marvel at how amazing my hometown is.
• Sneak into Beverly Hills Public Library to use free internet. Realize it’s only free if you carry a library card. Sign up for one. Feel giddy.
• Drive 100 miles into and throughout the Valley furniture shopping, from Westlake Village to Burbank to North Hollywood back to Woodland Hills, hitting three Macy’s along the way.
• Settle on the first couch I saw that day, at the third Macy’s I visited.
• Hair did in Studio City.
• Crap. Nail salon across the street closes at 7.
• Home. Change. No time for shower.
• Walk to the Sunset Strip for drinks and lobster salad at BLT Steak, where the bartender invited me to come visit him. Wonder if it’s a date if one of us is working. Hang around like a groupie til closing time.
• Head next door to The Eveleigh and wait for bartender to finish closing. Flirt with another bartender. Snack on truffle fries from the guys sitting next to me. Give them my card.
• Feel drunk and abandoned, decide to go home alone.
• Meet first bartender on the way and walk home together.
• Kiss goodnight against wall in empty apartment, over the stairwell railing.
• Panic I’ll start my new job sleep-deprived and hung over.
• Collapse into the Murphy bed for what little sleep I can get.

And so begins my new life…

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A Sliver of Romance

I don’t know what I expected to happen. After all, I’d moved to a temporary apartment in Queens in anticipation of possibly leaving New York. But that August day I moved in, by some strange twist of fate, I became the most popular girl in school.

Starting that night, the night of the day I moved into my new apartment, I began collecting new Facebook friends, cell phone numbers, text messages and dinner invitations like every night was my last night on earth.

Had moving to Astoria somehow hit the reset button on my New York City experience, reinvigorating a confidence, attractiveness, and sex appeal that had been dormant for over two years before?

It helped that I had new places to hang out, populated by gregarious guys ten years my junior who mistook me for their age. If they ever found out I wasn’t, it usually didn’t matter (though I did field some strange, backhanded compliments like “Wow, you’re the most gorgeous older woman I’ve ever met,” other observations like “Wow you’re the oldest woman I’ve ever kissed,” and oddball questions like “So what was the world like when I still had a tail?”). Unlike all the guys before who took my number and never used it, they texted me later that night, the next morning, and for weeks later. They left missed calls on my phone, even after failed dates with no love connection. And instead of asking me to go home with them, they declared, “I would love to take you out some time.”

Jackpot.

Inevitably, though, the conversation would turn to my career and my job search, and I’d mention having just returned from LA, or having just booked another trip there. Their faces would fall, and they would ask, “You leavin’ me?”

“Sorry, I need to go where the job is…”

But that didn’t stop me from pursuing them, or more importantly, letting them pursue me. “I’ve earned it…” I would tell my friends, noting my tremendous weight loss, numerous heartbreaks, and years of celibacy. I seized the dates, trying to forget those I’d lost, who never returned my text messages or calls. But no one person really stood out. When one date turned ever so slightly apathetic, I dove back into my pool of candidates, fished back into my cell phone for another number of a suitor whose name had not been programmed in, but whose identity I had to try to memorize based on the context of his message.

Unfortunately, they all read like some Mad Lib for the Gentleman Caller: “Hi, it was great to meet you last night at __________. I would like to take you out for _________ at ____________ sometime this _____________.” And they rarely included their names.

My time in New York seemed to be urgently ticking away, but it was less about the job prospects I’d had out of town and more about the lack of job prospects anywhere. I was convinced I’d have to move back to Syracuse into Mike and Maria’s attic, or pick any small town with a low cost of living and get a job at Old Navy or Target – places that refused to hire me in Queens. And despite knowing that my residency in New York was very much temporary – or maybe because of it – I replied to every message, went on every date, and drank every drink.

I didn’t think anything serious would ever come of it. I mean, it never had before. Why would it start now?

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t or shouldn’t go to dinner. After all, girl’s gotta eat.

In the third week of November, I spotted a tall, serious-looking guy across the room at a party and grabbed my friend Michelle to ask, “Who. Is. That?”

“Oh yeah, that’s my friend’s ex-boyfriend but they’re just friends now. Do you want me to introduce you?”

“Are you sure they’re not dating?”

“Oh no, they’re totally just friends now.”

“Gimme a minute. I’ll let you know.”

I then made a beeline over to him, introducing myself, flirting, joking, and bouncing around a scatter of topics that ranged from bourbon to architecture to pizza. We went out a couple of times over the next month, each date making my heart pound harder and head spin faster. He was busier at work than most of the other guys, and not as effusive, but I was pretty sure he felt the same way about me, even though we only got to see each other every few weeks. And I could live with that, because I didn’t really want to date anybody else. I’d kissed all the frogs a person could possibly withstand.

And then, a month later, right before Christmas, I received a job offer in LA. It made me recall dating my first boyfriend (and pretty much my only one ever), who I met about six weeks before flying to London for a study abroad program, and how we spent nearly every night together to maximize our precious time together. I was anxious to tell my new guy about the offer, and desperate to tell him in person rather than in an abbreviated written message, but he couldn’t fit another date in before I left for Christmas in Syracuse. So while I negotiated and counter-offered, I agonized. I didn’t want to stay in New York for a relationship – and financially I couldn’t afford to – but I didn’t want to cut our time short, either.

Because of the holiday, negotiations took a couple of weeks, but right after New Year’s – a New Year’s Eve spent apart, bafflingly and heartbreakingly to me – I was finally ready to accept the job offer, and I still hadn’t told him what was going on. I fired off a text message, and received a much-anticipated, nearly-immediate reply: “Will I get to see you before you leave?”

“I hope so.”

I don’t know what I expected. We went out again, resulting in more spinning and swooning. I confessed that I wanted to find a way to still see each other even after I left – not exclusively, and only as long as we were both available to do so – and he responded with an answer that surpassed my expectations: “I can’t make any promises, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

I didn’t have any right to ask for anything. But I couldn’t not say anything. I had to tell him. I had no choice.

In the days that followed, the silence was deafening. No morning after text message. No replies to my messages, save for a couple of terse responses like “Thank you” and “Can’t make it.” Two months after meeting a nice, smart, professional, handsome, age-appropriate guy who shared my interests and sent my heart aflutter, and less than two weeks before I was going out of town, I knew I’d lost him.

I waited an ample amount of time to be sure, but my time was running out, and I couldn’t let another guy fade away like that. I confronted him. He gave me reasons of work and time and needing to take care of himself and needing to not worry about making someone else happy. All these reasons I’m sure are true, though I would have loved to try to make him. Yet I cannot understand: what is the point of dumping me for those reasons when I’m moving out of town? With only a week left together, why couldn’t he just say a proper goodbye, leave me with a romantic wave from the train platform, and then let me go? I would think the leaving was enough reason for us to stop seeing each other, and if not a good enough reason, certainly a good enough excuse.

I was really dreading saying goodbye to him. And now it’s broken my heart to not say goodbye to him.

But what else did I expect?

I wanted any sliver of romance I could get, and I’m so grateful for what I did get. I blame my departure for creating a sense of urgency on my part which likely freaked him out and made him run away. But maybe my leaving only accelerated the inevitable departure from him in my life, the leaving I have been on the receiving end of so many times before.

I don’t blame him, but he will remain in my heart as the one that got away…

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My God, What Have I Done?

Ever since I started to tell people about my new job and move to LA, I’ve dodged one repeated question: “Are you excited?”

I’m not. I haven’t been.

Ever since I got the job, I’ve felt an enormous sense of trepidation.

It doesn’t make any sense. I should be happy. But the relief I feel about ending a two-year consulting stint and job search has been offset by the anxiety of starting a new job, with new coworkers, new employees; of waking up in a new bed, embarking on a new commute, sitting at a new desk in a new office; of finding a new apartment (again), buying a new car, and finally getting some new furniture.

All of these are good things. But I haven’t allowed myself to enjoy the newness of it all. My older self sees the newness as a threat, an act of aggression, even though I don’t want what’s being taken away from me, and I do want what’s been given to me as a gift. For the last two years I have not had a job, and I have missed working with other people; and for the last five months I have not gotten a good night’s sleep, and I have been living on bare-bones possessions.

I know myself pretty well, though. I recognize this feeling I have. I press the palms of my hands against my newly-emerged cheekbones, and I interrogate myself, “My God, what have I done? What am I getting myself into?”

I did the same thing on the drive from San Diego to Joshua Tree in June 2009.

I did the same thing on the way to JFK for my flight to Tunisia a year ago.

Both turned out to be some of the biggest landmark experiences of my life.

So I have to ignore those trepidations, those inward inquisitions that keep most people from jumping out of planes and from getting nude mud-scrubbed by a Russian woman.

I know what I have to do.

Book a flight and give myself a couple of days to find an apartment. See as many apartments as possible. Pick one.

Once I have an address, hire movers.

Once I have a move date, book my final, one-way flight to LA.

Once I have an arrival date and time, book a rental car.

Pack. Laundry. Dry cleaning. Goodwill. Pack.

Movers arrive and depart.

Pack.

Eat.

Say goodbye.

Drink.

Eat.

Don’t cry.

Finish packing.

Get to airport.

Get on plane.

Sit and wait.

And so here I am on the plane, making lists of groceries, sundries and supplies I need to put in the trunk of my rental car and drive to my new apartment. I know how to do that.

I don’t know how to buy a used car. I don’t know how to get a parking permit. I don’t know how to maintain a car. All this I must figure out in the few short days before I start my new job.

I know how to start a new job, but it’s never fun.

So one thing at a time.

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The Things I Left Behind: LA Edition

I left my Astoria apartment this morning for the last time, with two rolling suitcases, a purse, and a big Trader Joe's shopping bag in tow.

I'm bringing a lot with me on the flight to Burbank.

But I left a few things behind.

I left the cheap full-length mirror.

I left the white plywood shelves that once housed my LPs.

I left the hot pink plastic hangers that have become so brittle, they often break under the weight of the clothes that hang on them.

I left the plastic shelves I'd bought for the bathroom, because there was no room in the medicine cabinet for my makeup, bandages, medicine, and other essentials. I left the plastic shelves I'd bought for the bedroom. I don't want to live in a dorm room anymore. I'm leaving plastic behind.

I left the white metal shelf that's designed to go over the toilet, but I'd fashioned into an office since I bought it in 2001.

I left the box spring and the bed frame. I'll be sleeping on a murphy bed from now on.

I left two rolls of packing tape. I hope to not need them anytime soon.

I left the lilac-colored towel that smells of smoke.

I left the bath mat, bathroom and kitchen towels, paper towel holder, and cleaning supplies I'd bought for the apartment.

I left an old skillet.

I left a dirty pan in the stove.

I left a wine glass, and a few bottles of vodka and bourbon that only had a little bit left in them.

I left a mostly-eaten container of hummus, a half-full tub of Fresh Direct peanut butter, and various cheeses, condiments and spices.

I left both sets of keys, though I worried I would forget something and would need to return, and climb through the window again.

I left without saying goodbye to some.

I left kisses planted on others.

I left a crying friend, a worried friend, and many excited friends.

I left behind men who I could have loved, but they would not let me.

But I don't think I forgot anything, and I left behind nothing that I could have taken with me to my new life in Los Angeles...

Related Reading:
The Things I Left Behind
To Leave, and Not Be Left Behind
Leave No Trace: Workplace Edition
Leave No Trace

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My Time in Queens, Calculated

I thought I would need about four months after moving to Astoria to get my life together, find a job, and move back into my own place - either elsewhere in New York City, or elsewhere in the world.

Turns out I needed an extra month.

Here's how my life in my third borough breaks down since August:

• 5 months
• 1 roommate 
• 1 bottle Moroccan rose wine
• 1 broken wine glass
• 1 teacup
• 3 plates
• 3 bowls
• 1 pot
• 1 flood
• 1 set of lost keys, 1 Good Samaritan, 1 fire escape and 1 living room window climb
• 1 bellydancer costume, thrice worn
• 5 trips to LA
• 1 canoe 
• 2 tours
• numerous pickle martinis and picklebacks at Sweet Afton
• 2 packages of pita
• 19 new Facebook friends
• 1 computer crash
• 6 loads of laundry
• 10 brunches
• 3 bagels
• 1 peanut butter hot chocolate
• 1 visit to the taco truck, 2 tacos
• the endless clanging of heat pipes

I really loved my time in Astoria. I'll miss it here. But now that I'm sleeping on an air mattress with no sheets, on pillows with no cases, in an apartment that never stops smelling of my roommate's near-empty beer bottles and smoke of various substances, I'm ready to go.

There are still tons of bars and restaurants I never got to visit, drinks and meals I never got to have, faces I never got to kiss, and bridges I never got to cross. But it was impossible to do everything in five months.

I feel satisfied that I did a lot.

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Casting My Fears Aside

I like to push my boundaries, but what I did yesterday challenged me nearly as much as - maybe more than - skydiving.

I went to the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village.

I'd heard stories of its steam rooms, saunas, and scrubs, and the opportunity to be beaten by sticks, so I decided to give it a try before I left New York. Although I had spent a full day in the hot and cold pools of Rudas in Buda, I hadn't been brave enough to experience the Turkish hammams in Morocco or Tunisia, where a fellow bather, I was warned, might turn to me and give me a good scrub with a brown bar of soap. (Instead, I opted for a more European-style argan oil massage conducted by a young, beautiful Moroccan girl who seemed disaffected by her unlimited access to my nakedness.)

I had some making up to do.

For an obsessive planner and researcher, my arrival was baffling. The counter clerk asked me if it was my first time, and then asked a fellow client who was checking out to explain to me how it works. I was pointed to the women's locker room, given a key, and assured that "someone" would offer me services. I could do what I want, and then pay upon exiting.

Wait, where are the towels?

Wait, what am I supposed to wear?

Wait, where do I go?

Sure enough, a tall, tan, Russian man in the equivalent of a black cotton hospital gown greeted me, handed me a towel and a gown for myself. When I told him I wanted "the mud thing" (the Black Mud Treatment), he pointed to a short, curvy, black-haired woman who could have been 40 or 60, and said, "Then she will take care of you."

Her eyes lit up. "You want mud?!"

I nodded and stuttered.

She grabbed my arm, brought me to my locker, and told me to take everything off. "Do I wear my bathing suit?" I asked her.

"Bring it."

"So I wear...nothing?" I persisted.

"Take everything off."

"OK but...." I stammered. She then started taking my pants off for me.

When I got the gown on. its armholes were so huge that each of my breasts popped right through them. My mud consultant looked at me tsking and sprung into action with a "no no no," pulling the gown off of me, turning it around, and replacing it on me backwards, rolling and tying various pieces of it until it fit me perfectly and tightly.

She once again grabbed me and led me downstairs to a metal chamber and what appeared to be a metal surgical table with a rubber mat on it. She hosed everything down, laid clean dry towels down, hung my bathing suit on a hook, and once again instructed me to strip and lie face up.

"My head here?" I asked.

She nodded and pointed and scurried out, while I tried to unravel the black gown from my body and hang it on the hook, dropping it in a puddle on the floor several times in the process. When she returned, I was naked, bending over, and never more confused.

"I get new one. Never mind," she said, and then guided me over to the table, gingerly and strategically placing a towel between my legs, though my modesty had already been thrown onto the floor along with my gown.

She dipped her hand into a small plastic cup full of mud, and began to quickly and roughly spread it over every inch of my body, gently bending and lifting my legs to get behind them. I gave myself over to her and to the mud, closing my eyes and listening to the echo of voices from outside of my stall, in languages and accents familiar but foreign. She was muttering to me in Russian, sweet nothings in my ear as she proceeded with her work, diligently, clinically, but tenderly. When she got to my face, my smile must've transformed into a scowl, because she switched to English and said, "Don't be afraid..."

She soon finished and laid towels over my limbs, midriff, chest, and eyes, leaving me alone to ponder, dry, and harden. My face froze in a mud-caked smile. It was nice to just let her take care of me, to go with it instead of fighting against it.

I heard her return marked by the slam of a metal door, and felt the rush of cold air as the towels were removed one by one. Then the sound of water rushing, the burn of it as it hit my legs, rushed over my feet. I sat up, as instructed, and squeezed my eyes shut as the water cascaded over the top of my head and down my face, gasping for air as it collected around my nose and mouth. "Don't be afraid..." I heard again, and I tried not to be.

I laid back down and the entire process was repeated, this time with a soap that felt and smelled like powdered laundry detergent. I've never been so scrubbed. I have no recollection of being bathed as a child - I always remember washing myself, even if in the tub with my sister or mother - but I felt as though newborn, the age scrubbed off of me, under the care of a maternal figure who wanted nothing in return. She only asked me, "Are you comfortable?" and, once, "Are you happy?" I was.

In the final stage of my treatment, though I was still lying on the table, she washed my hair, scrubbing the scalp, investigating behind and inside the ears. Turning my head from side to side, she conditioned and rinsed, silently but for the steady stream of water into my ears, which emptied when I turned my head the other way.

I probably should have done the mud thing last, because it seemed like a shame to go in for a schvitz in the steam room or sauna after I'd gotten so clean, but I did anyway. The rooms and hallways were littered with bikini-clad girls and hairy-chested men in shorts, their heads sometimes wrapped in towels, all young and hip as you'd expect in the East Village. In the Turkish sauna, the second-hottest room, I doused myself with cold water from an overhead shower head, its freezing cold rainfall released with the pull of a handle. But after an hour or so, with no one to talk to and plenty more to do in New York before I leave, I was ready to go.

This is a spa experience not for the faint of heart, and one that makes Spa Castle in Whitestone, Queens seem like a corporate dreamland. But there's something really genuine, honest, accepting, and welcoming about it - a no-frills approach to satisfying basic medical and emotional needs. It's as much about exfoliation as it is about human contact.

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The Countdown to Closure

I'm embarking on my last week in New York.

Now that the movers have come to collect everything I own and truck it across the country to my new apartment, all I really need to do while I'm in New York is squeeze in a few good last meals, and say goodbye to a few friends and loved ones.

Not surprisingly, my imminent departure has precipitated some long-overdue reunions. Last week, after I bade adieu to all my boxes, I finally went on a second date I'd waited seven years for. In 2004, my date - a friend I'd known and been interested in already for seven years - took me out once, and then promptly faded away as though our encounter had been random, foreign, blind, impaired. Seven years later, back across the dinner table from me, my date asked me, "So all those years ago, after we went out the one time, I never invited you out to dinner again?"

"No, you didn't."

"Did I say why?"

"Nope."

And then, the kicker: "I'm sorry."

He rattled off reasons of insecurity, instability, stupidity, and immaturity. He told me he was glad he'd spared me the trauma that he'd put his other dates through at the time. He told me how beautiful I am, how beautiful I've always been. And then he told me all about the girlfriend who he's dated for six years, with whom he's lived for three years.

I didn't really feel like I got the whole story from him - it was too easy for him to dismiss the breaking of my heart as the whim of a typical male - but I still felt a sense of closure, not because I heard everything I'd wanted to hear from him, but because I said everything I'd wanted to say to him. I can't explain why I'd waited so long.

I do know that I've spent too much time in my life not telling my romances how I really feel. I tell them what I think they want to hear. I desperately try not to appear desperate. I feign apathy, casualness, and spontaneity, and that's exactly what I get in return. I do not cling, for fear of pushing them away, and they do not cling to me.

I'm leaving New York now, so it doesn't really matter. I shouldn't really care about the carnage of my dating life over the last 14 years, the rotten carcasses, the empty encasements that litter my path like discarded exoskeletons. I shouldn't need to witness them, examine them, goodbye them or revitalize them.

Of course, I shouldn't need to add to their tally either, but I've foolishly tried to love and be loved right up until the very last moment that I'm in town. I've hoped a sliver of romance would be enough to satiate me and quell the loneliness, but, God help me, I need more than a date every seven years.

How can I keep wanting those who clearly don't want me? Isn't my biggest turn-on the powerlessness that a person feels against their burning attraction for me? Doesn't desire beget desire?

There are legions of men who have disappeared on me over the years, many of whom cannot be tracked down to the bar they work in or the band they play in. Maybe I'll see one or two more of the others before I leave. But once I go, I have to hope that my new dates, from now on, will stop fading away without a trace - if only I can express my feelings openly, honestly, and confidently.

You have to ask for the right thing in order to get what you want. If you don't ask for what you want, it's your fault if you don't get it.

Let me never again regret the things I've left unsaid.

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Low Visibility

It's amazing that the government - or the Department of Motor Vehicles - allows people behind the wheel in weather like this.

I mean, you absolutely cannot see a thing.

You're driving behind some kind of truck on the New Jersey Turnpike South, even though you thought you selected the "Cars Only" ramp, and its rear tires are kicking up a killer mist onto your windshield, which does not shield you from the wind that carries water from above, below, and straight out in front of you.

To make matters worse, your windshield wipers are ticking frenetically back and forth like a metronome, clicking off the beat of your heart as its rate increases with the intensity of your blindness. It's daytime but it's dark, the water and wind casting a gray film in front of your eyes, as though driving in shadow, a shadow cast so widely that you cannot find any light source.

A momentary short stop and an entire sheet of ice slides off the roof of your car and descends upon your windshield, completely intact in one solid piece. The wipers cast it aside, with some difficulty, and if you're lucky, they don't get stuck.

Your eyes want to follow the wipers back and forth across the windshield, distracting you from where the real action is: the truck in front of you, and now the one sidling up to your right. Mist rises and scatters everywhere. The lines on the road disappear. You have no sense of lane and little sense of direction.

Yet you keep driving. You cannot see anything, but what else is there to do but keep driving?

You somehow have a sense of the road, whether you've ever driven on it before or not. You catch fortunate glimpses of road, shoulder, exit, sign, pylon, toll booth - anything that helps guide your way while you keep pressuring the gas pedal, despite your better judgment.

If you dozed off behind the wheel, you'd probably drive just as well.

But you are very much awake, and aware that some things are happening around you, yet you're not quite sure what. You hope that others can see you, that your clouded vision is an anomaly exclusive to you. If the other drivers know where they're going, how to get there and what's happening along the way, then maybe they'll let you amble past them, swerving and straddling lanes, scrambling for toll money, leaning forward over the steering wheel and squinting, as though that would help. You try following them, but their shifts in position don't make any sense, passing on the right, neglecting to signal and foregoing the use of headlights.

Who lets anyone behind the wheel in those conditions?

What makes anyone want to drive when they can't see where they're going?

Is this wet winter blindness no worse, no different than driving a convertible with the top up, peering through a tiny slit of a rear windshield, casting perfunctory looks over your shoulder to check a blind spot that has grown to encompass your entire rear field of vision?

Or crossing an intersection in the rain and snow, eyeglasses fogged and wet-speckled, with no idea whether the light is red or green or whether cars are coming or going? In New York, we walk with our heads down anyway, black umbrellas hoisted in front of us (rather than above) as a shield against blowing rain, with no regard of what other umbrella-toting pedestrian is about to crash headfirst into us.

Once after getting my pupils dilated, I walked home once from the eye doctor's office with my eyes shut tightly nearly the entire way. I would occasionally crack them open just enough to let some light in through my lash line, but I witnessed no more than the ground in front of me and the entropy of feet around me. Otherwise, I relied on the sounds of footsteps, engines, tires, whistles, and the sense of activity around me.

Who let me do that? And how in the world did I get home OK?

In the dark, your eyes can adjust, your pupils dilating naturally to let in as much light as possible. Your eyes can't adjust to being closed.

Your eyes can't adjust to the countless slings, arrows, distractions, debris, floods, storms, and other acts of God that are cast before them.

So you have to rely on that which you cannot see - only that which you can feel.

But that never feels like a very good idea.

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California, Here I Come

This week, I took my last trip to LA before I officially move there.

I had to find an apartment.

I gave myself less than three days to do it.

I suppose other people just show up in Los Angeles with no place to live and figure it out from there. They crash on a friend’s couch. They housesit. They secure a sublet or some temporary furnished apartment, and then take their time finding a place they’ll make into a more permanent home. That’s essentially how I moved to New York City: I brought a few of my things into a furnished NYU dorm room, and once Terry found our first Greenpoint apartment three months later, retrieved the rest of it from my parents’ house.

But I’ve already been living temporarily for the last five months. I’ve been camping out in Queens with most of my possessions in storage, preparing for a speculated move out of New York. I can’t move into another temporary space in LA. I’ve got stuff, and I want to put it somewhere, and keep it there for a while.

So even before the offer letter was signed, I scheduled my apartment search for this week. Despite eyebrow raises from my friends, I was determined to arrive, hunt, evaluate, and sign by the close of business Thursday. If I prepared enough ahead of time – with new listings emailed to me daily, prospects plotted out on a Google Map, blocks investigated on Google Street View, a GPS on hand and a full cell phone battery – I should be able to pick a place.

Right?

All I had to do was pick a place.

I landed on Tuesday at 1 p.m. and saw my first apartment by 2, kicking off a string of unsuitable residences throughout the Westside of Los Angeles. They were too small. They smelled weird. Their “stoves” were glorified hot plates. Their entryways were too locked, facades too foreboding. Their signs warned of too many carcinogenic elements in their 1970s building materials. They were downright…depressing.

I was moving to California, for this?

By Tuesday night, I’d already seen a dozen apartments, though I’d driven by half of them without visiting, making snap judgments based on their exteriors, their residents emerging from their front doors, and their driveways littered with shopping carts. I found one apartment at the end of the day that, although similar in layout to many of the others, stood out as being remotely acceptable. It had pink tile in the kitchen! A dishwasher! Ceiling fans! A bedroom! A courtyard…with plants!

Despite the resounding failure of my first day, I felt great Tuesday night. It’s easy to turn away from terrible things.

Wednesday morning became more complicated.

I found another apartment that was even more acceptable than that from the night before. Although it featured no ceiling fan and no dishwasher, and allowed no pets, everything in it was new, newly painted, or otherwise newly renovated. And despite an unimpressive exterior, its building was situated on a nice, quiet, residential block with trees and birds and sunlight. Compared to the offerings of the day before, I was so impressed that I applied on the spot.

But always hoping for something better to come along, I left the owner behind in the apartment with a promise to call if I decided to sign the lease. “Wait, you’re still looking?” he asked me.

Well, yes, of course. I had appointments to keep, and another day and a half in town.

My next stop might have been a mistake. I drove around the corner and visited a friend of a friend, who was looking to fill a vacant spot in her Mediterranean-style house once her roommate moved out. Even though I wasn’t looking to share with anyone, I was curious to meet her and see this house she’d talked up to me so much, and when I walked in, my stomach fell and eyes widened. The stucco walls and arches were part adobe, part Kasbah, recalling my love for the Moorish influence on architecture in the Middle East. Mosaic-framed mirrors hung on the walls. Perfume-scented air! Stainless steel appliances! A back patio and…gasp…a pool!

This is how the other half lives. I’d seen it. I couldn’t go back. I’d seen too much.

I spent the next couple of hours agonizing over my choices, weighing the pro’s and con’s of quality of life, trying to decide whether that quality was determined by the place I was living in, who I was living with (or not living with), the neighborhood, or the control I had over my own living space. I saw more unsuitable apartments, and I started to think I couldn’t live a good life in LA if I wanted to live alone. I kept reminding myself that despite my good (future) salary, I had a lot of debt to pay off, and undetermined (future) car payments and insurance to anticipate. If I was going to stick to my budget, maybe I couldn’t do it by myself.

I could live in that house. I could totally swim in that pool. I could sleep in that room and cook in that kitchen and pay that rent and smile those smiles. Closing out another day of apartment hunting, I left a voicemail: “I’d love to apply. Please connect me with your landlord so she can run a credit check on me. I’d love to live with you, if you’ll have me.”

Relief.

Except major life changes are never that easy.

A couple of hours later, I received a return voicemail: “Yeah, so there’s this other girl we’ve been talking to, and it looks like her transfer to LA is going to work out, so we kind of feel like we promised the place to her, and we kind of feel like we need to keep that promise. But good luck and let me know what happens! Sorry…”

Crap.

Panic.

I’d already crossed off nearly every apartment on my list of 25, and the only ones left were those for which my inquiries went unanswered.

I only had one hope left, found in a last minute listing generated by a last ditch effort of desperation: I’d increased my budget by $1000, expanded my geographic search to a couple of additional neighborhoods, and made a call for one final appointment, on my last day of my hunting trip.

And so, contrary to my summertime apartment search, the last apartment I saw turned out to be “the one,” the one that spoke to me, charmed me with its character, seduced me with its age and wisdom, and wanted me as much as I wanted it.

It’s clean.

It’s gorgeous.

It’s historic.

It’s quiet.

It’s affordable.

It’s sunny.

It’s on a palm tree-lined street.

What a reversal of fortune from just two days prior!

And it’s in the one LA community I could never imagine being fortunate enough to live in: Beverly Hills.

I am moving to California.

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Off the Top of My Head

The roots of my hair are white. The ends are red, especially when they catch the rays of the sun, or the unforgiving glow of fluorescent light in an airplane lavatory. Somewhere between the roots and the ends lies the real color of my hair, the color I was born with. All black and cowlicked, my hair sprung out of my head in every direction. My head was full of that hair, after the three extra weeks of incubation I’d had in my mother’s womb, and that hair grew too quickly for the strength of its roots. It weighed down on them so hard that it fell out, in comb, on pillow, in bathroom sink, and down drain. It fell out when I slept. It fell out when I walked, or ate, or talked, or breathed.

But somehow, I’ve always managed to maintain a full head of hair.

My mother couldn’t stand the shedding. She’d refused to let us have any pets for fear of the fur, the rampant molting, dust, dander associated with a dog or a cat. At first, my sister and I managed to keep our hair long, as evidenced by early Sears Portrait Studio poses. I remember setting my hair in curlers and, once taken out, leaning my head against the wall behind me – much to my mother’s horror – while we waited for my turn at the camera. I don’t remember having long hair much after that. A punishment befitting the crime, I suffered a childhood of short hair, cowlicks blazing, gender baffling.

Even short, my hair still fell out.

I started to notice my black hairs turning white around seventh grade. Maybe whoever sat behind me in English class pointed it out. Or maybe the shocking stark sprouts revealed themselves to me during agonizing bathroom mirror sessions of squeezing pimples and brushing teeth. My classmates debated whether or not I should pull them out, whether one pulled white hair would beget fifty more, or whether I should just wait for the fifty more to sprout on their own, as they inevitably would.

I chose not to pull them out, knowing that I’d eventually see their rotten little carcasses somewhere around the house, after they’d joined their fellow black-colored soldiers in kamikaze missions off my scalp. I got a gruesome pleasure out of discovering those white wires glistening in the sinkwater, until I discovered a new, terrifying breed: a stark white tip shining from the end of a once-black strand. The white was spreading, and behind it, this hair had left a new, white root, ready to grow back entirely absent of pigment, likely to stick straight out of the top of my head.

Sometime in high school, when it was the thing to do amongst all foolish youths, I convinced my mother to let me grow my hair out a bit and get a perm. It was a genius solution, because although it forever changed the texture of my hair and exposed my scalp to searing, eye-stinging chemicals, the curls not only masked the ever-increasing whiteness, but they held onto the hairs on my head, refusing to let go of the ones that had let go of their roots. With a perm, my hairs came out in great big clumps all at one time, released from the curls only when I washed or combed, and not during meals or a healthy sneeze.

In college, the contrast of my two colonies of hairs had become stark enough that I allowed Maria to dye my hair with a drug store bottle, which cast a burgundy glow on my entire head and rendered my white hairs almost…purple. I quite liked it and continued the practice on and off, but in my final years at Colgate, working three jobs and still not saving up enough money to move to New York, I sacrificed vanity and beauty and let all my white hairs grow out, all the way.

And then I dyed them blue.

I remember standing in the shared bathroom of my senior year suite, a bathroom which always oddly smelled like cat pee, staring at the newly-washed roots of my hair. The legion of white had certainly turned blue, but the blacks looked paler, stripped of their inky pallor. Had my hair experienced its final straw and finally succumbed to the multiple chemical treatments I’d subjected it to?

In panic, I washed my hair again, and upon reexamination, decided the second wash had redistributed the dye enough to render my head an appropriately blue tint, with raging streaks of a bright, digital, electric, gas flame blue where the white once was.

At the time, coloring my hair was still a novelty, an elective procedure that allowed for experimentation with tone and style.

Years later, and for years now, it is very much of a necessity.

But even some necessities have been necessarily sacrificed in the two years since I left my last job. So, I have made do. I have let my white roots advance inches from my scalp, waiting as many as six to eight weeks for a retouch and refresh (as opposed to the normal three to four). Lured by cost-free services, I have subjected my head to the hands of beauty school students. I have even returned to the drug store bottle, touching up the roots myself, a practice for which I seem to have lost all skill and finesse, repeatedly dyeing my forehead and missing obvious white outcroppings at the front of my widow’s peak. And I have allowed the white to peek out of the once-dyed ends of my hair, giving the appearance of red but, upon closer examination, revealing a shade that’s closer to orange, blonde, or even…beige, a close cousin to off-white, which is dangerously closely related to white.

Sadly, when I got my new job, negotiated my new salary, and withdrew some funds from my retirement plan to help me relocate, one of my first thoughts was, “Oh thank God, I can start getting my hair done again.”

So in these last few days in New York, as I tie up loose ends and get my affairs in order, I look forward to enacting my revenge on the red and white invasion on my still-full head of hair, which still sheds if I think too hard. Whether it’s still in New York or immediately upon arriving in LA, I will march into a hair salon, and I will announce, “Single process please. And this time, pull it through.”

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