i <3 l.a.

I love L.A. I'm fascinated by the looks people give me when I say this. Something like disbelief, sometimes even a little pity, as if they suddenly realize I must not have traveled outside of Southern California in my life. I smile back, sometimes a little vapidly, just for the hell of it. I don't care. I love L.A. I'm about as L.A. as you can get, which we all know  means I'm a hypocrite. I'm against gas-guzzling SUVs, but nothing smells like home more than the smog coming in over LAX. I gaze out through watering eyes at those dreamy purple sunsets knowing exactly where they come from and I still adore them. I try not to be flakey, but I'm sure I am sometimes. Who isn't these days, when the lure of killing an hour on Facebook with a homemade mojito in hand is more appealing than having to dig out something trendy to wear and hit the be-seen eateries on Hollywood. I like driving in L.A. I love the freeways, the way they wind about, the pace of traffic like a stretched-out heartbeat. It's my river. I slid on in from the edge and float across the lanes to find the right current, the one that's going to send me flying across the cities, little neighborhoods smooshed together like a handful of marshmallows in a toddler's sticky hand. In twenty-eight minutes, I've cruised over hills faded brown and green from summer and through several clustered highrise downtowns of puffed-up cities. Every city in L.A. has it's own downtown. I had one of  those days today. I thought about calling up my best friend that I haven't talked to in a year and tried calling her old number, but she wasn't home. I drove by my father's old house, the house I grew up with, just to see if anything had changed, which it hadn't. I had left a DHL box I'd meant to mail at home and a store I'd wanted to check out was closed. I came home four hours later feeling as if I'd just taken an aimless drive on a Monday afternoon.. oh, wait, that's exactly what I did do. But at least this was all here. People are so beautiful in L.A. Hell, I don't care if it comes across as shallow, I love beautiful people and to me, they're everywhere here. The most gorgeous latina girl served me up a burrito bol at Chipotle last week and it was all I could do to keep from leaning across the sneezebar, smiling shyly and asking her if she'd take her clothes off for me, her skin was such that perfect creamy porcelain kind. That's the funny thing, though, you can't just get away with being ethnic and beautiful here to stand out. You have to be African and American and you'd better be able to flip between the two in talk, dress, culture and aspirations on the flip of a dime. Flaky, plastic Tinseltown demands nothing less than the most perfect sacrifice for her hellish flames, you know.

Tags: losangeles, freeways, people, beauty, life