October 18, 2018
Los Angeles, CA
When the Santa Anas hit, California dries me up and I turn into a big ol’ piece of beef jerky. My throat mummifies, my skin turns to sandpaper, and my nose bleeds. Today it happened in the shower when *someone* (me, dumb as hell) got overzealous blowing their nose under a hot tap of California’s hardest.
When I was finally clean and my right nostril was done, I turned off the shower to discover the hot water wouldn’t stop running. Already late for work, I closed it as tight as could and called my landlord on the way out.
The morning was slow so I made eggs and toast then retreated to my desk. I was dehydrated and out of water, but there were people in the kitchen so instead of dealing with it like an adult, I tweeted about how I’d rather be parched than interacting with people. I started on some boring accounting work.
My friend Nikki tweeted at me that she was Postmatesing me and I thought nothing of it. Ten minutes later a gentleman showed up with a green juice and a chlorophyll water. I texted Nikki a string of heart emojis and reformatted a hard drive.
Later that morning I left to go to a vault where our sister company stores reels and reels of film. I grabbed a few to take over to a post-production house in Burbank. There, I played with a poodle mix named Hunter while the staff took stock of the reels.
My coworker who lives in Burbank was having some family issues at the hospital and had been out for a few days. Since I was in Burbank, I thought it’d be nice to get some food for her, so I went to Joan’s on Third in Studio City and got a frozen lasagna, some salads, a baguette and an armful of ice cream sandwiches and dropped them off at her door. I didn’t want to bother her, so I thought about ding-dong-ditching and realized how poorly that could go because I’m not much of a runner, so I drove down the street and called my coworker instead. I texted her and drove for awhile until we stopped texting.
I hit Cahuenga and decided to call my mother as I hadn’t seen her in a week or so. We ended up talking about money and social issues in our broken mix of Korean and English, and after I told her I’d be fine giving away millions of dollars if I was rich, she told me I’d better buy her a condo before I did that and I told her she didn’t need a condo. After some back and forth she told me she was proud of the adult I’d become from the weird baby that she didn’t know what to do with, but that I should still make a lot of money to buy her a condo.
I dropped some processed reels off back at the vault then went to the Pavilion’s on Melrose and Vine to buy a bunch of pumpkins and candy for the office. When I parked in the lot, I noticed our velvet elephant ear tree was falling apart due to the recent influx of rats we’ve had from the alley. I dropped my water bottle and it shattered everywhere.
I went home and checked my phone to see my dismally Californian step count. I was hungry and I had some mail to drop off at a friend’s, so I walked to the Whole Foods on Santa Monica and Fairfax, too exhausted to make anything or go to a real restaurant, but still determined to get my steps in. I saw a famous skater whom I’d met a million times through mutual friends, but I just ignored him because he seemed on the brink of recognizing me or not, and I didn’t really want to do that to him. While he’s not really a celebrity outside of the skateboarding community, I have met many a star at Whole Foods. I have a selfie with Nick Cave at this Whole Foods where I’m flipping off the camera, and also have taken a selfie with MMA champion Nate Diaz at the Whole Foods on 3rd and Fairfax, where I am flipping off the camera.
I ate my salad full of peas and sat outdoors listening to Danzig and reading the tail end of “The Lonely City” by Olivia Laing.
I dropped the mail off then walked back home. 17,000 steps later, I watched The Red Shoes in bed on my Macbook and drifted off to sleep with the sound of a thin stream still running in the shower, because my landlord doesn’t care about California’s limited supply of water and forgot to send his guy out.
