Patience

Patience. I love being patient in front of impatient people. 

Friday March 24 - I coughed up blood on the way home from work and rushed to change into my dress and heels i set aside for dinner. In the process of escaping San Fernando Valley, flashing red lights of five firetrucks passed us and so did a couple playing cat and mouse and weaving in-between rush hour as the girlfriend stepped out of the car and the boyfriend swerved his truck onto the crosswalk two lanes away for an impromptu drive-in show for everyone frozen in fire smoke and homebound traffic. By the time we made it to the hotel to drop off our luggage, we had to deal with the mean middle-aged man who tends the desk during the night shift at my favorite hotel and by the time we headed to dinner without a reservation we were mellowing our patience with beautiful espresso martinis and discomfort of mafiosos drifting around the bar and makeshift waiting area resembling an Erewhon on a Sunday - majority white,  all pretentious in their own ways. Nearing midnight we finally got sat down in a corner booth that Catalina, the host who should have been a supermodel, saved me as a birthday gift. Tiramisu with a sparkler candle came to the table and all I could think was that good things take time.

Saturday March 25 - Coughed up blood on the floor of the pretty blue blue blue tiling of the bathroom at 8, rough IV at 10, Lunch at 12, High at an art exhibition at 3, Lucid dreaming comedown nap at 4. None of this day felt real and I was cold and hot and happy and confused all at once. I wore the floral Rouje dress I originally wore for my graduation party held at a family friend's cantina a couple years back because that night when I wore it for the first time, I was surrounded by people who would in a few months time show me that they were evil bastards. Now I was wearing this dress by myself for the first time and everything was floating by me rather calmly. I changed into my Yohji Yamamoto Real Madrid warm-up at night and enjoyed feeling nothing and everything all at once.

Sunday March 26 - Check out is always at 11 AM. We said farewell to Jennie as we dropped her off for her bon voyage back to the Valley and the rest of the dolls went to Brain Dead Studios for some café and then walked to Tu Madre for some yummy food. At this point, I was at my third sashimi salad of the weekend and I didn't care about my greed for raw fish, I was happy. I don't even remember if I coughed up blood or not.

I forgot to mention all of the lovely things that happened in between all of the other lovely things. Beverly Laurel, my favorite little motel centric to most of my young adulthood ego deaths, has always been somewhat of a chamber of reflection for me. Although not the most luxurious or spacious boutique hotel available around the area, I've always opted for the comfort it brought me and how it always makes me reminiscent of the days when my parents would take us to Vegas and how I used to hate the gaudy hotels and how much I love the gaudiness but just hate Vegas now. On the third floor staring into the blue blue blue of the pool and the moonlight that swims in it while waiting for the shoebox of an elevator to come up to reach me again for the nth time of my life, I could not have asked for more. 

I was too busy being a sick puppy for the entirety of March that I didn't realize how stupid it was to walk into a place like Jones on a Friday night without a reservation. I feared my friends would stumble into sighs of despair as soon as they heard pretty Catalina smoothly mention the hour and a half wait, but they didn't. They held on for birthday girl and Luz and I hung by fringe lamps nursing the darling martini glasses that we wanted to take home with us while the others got stoned with the wind out front.

I had gotten an IV treatment the morning after, wanting to move on from being a sick puppy and onto being a precious lapdog. I wasn't hungover, it was something I wanted for a while now and even if the not-blonde blonde secretary with her dumb jacket and her dumb sneer at the front dogged me as I greeted her, I was still okay with the idea of letting them plunge a needle into my veins for the sake of health.

We dawdled around Chevalier's while waiting for a table to be open at lunch and after Jennie and I failed to find Kafka's Letters to Milena, we stepped outside and a girl with a green typewriter had a table set-up with a sign indicating that she could type you a poem up and that the cost for such a sweet thing was up to you. I mentioned that it was my birthday soon and after a lucky 7 was sent her way, I received a letter so kind that I wondered why I couldn't forgive myself much earlier. Afterwards, Jennie asked for a poem about love that feels like a breath of fresh air and I couldn't help but love the cooling wind that I had cursed the night before.

At lunch, my friends mentioned that the handsome waiter that we passed earlier would be nursing our table back to life and suddenly my brain was wired to think that we were soulmates. Just kidding. I started to doubt myself and how he thought the hot matcha was better than the iced, so we left without much thought.

The biggest mistake was probably choosing the never easing path of an edible and in the middle of the Refik Anadol exhibition sitting alone on a bench in front of blue blue blue, I soon found myself stepping outside crying of laughter. We didn't even know how we ended up with our car at valet and all of us in pot-induced comas at the hotel room, but we're glad we could subconsciously figure it out. Later that night, one of the guys that worked on the exhibit would be my friend's plus one at dinner, explaining how he didn't get why people got so emotional over art he generated on his computer.

At dinner, I was still unable to process time and evidently so because we pulled up to El Coyote like I had wanted, reassuring everyone that I had read somewhere that they stayed open until 2 am. By the time we were there, it was 8:50 and ten minutes to closing so we had to quietly recalibrate elsewhere. No Sharon Tatery for me. Soon after, we were in awkwardly spacious karaoke room and I was wondering why I thought it was a good idea to bring all my friends to sing Drake off-key but it happened and although I couldn't tell if I was uncomfortable because my untrained body was still coming down from my high or from having to be surrounded by men, but somehow I don't regret it. We ended with Jimmy Cooks.

Coming down. Trying to remember and re-plan on the spot. All I know now is patience and whether I wanted to or not, I had learned my lesson over and over again.

I couldn't have asked for anything better. Exactly one year ago from this weekend, I remember crying, upset from being a victim of my impulsive tendencies and yearning for something that wasn't meant for me at the time and trying to force it. I ran on. I let myself get hurt because I wanted someone to have reflected the heart I had and have always cherished, but ever since then the bouts of pain and rest made me so patient with myself that I don't even mind anymore. Every year is a coming of age renaissance.

I was waiting to hear specific words pour out of specific people's hearts and it never happened. Patience. My prophetic best friend of eight or so years couldn't make it, as she was driving up from Texas. More patience. While waiting, I sent my parents photos I took throughout the weekend and thanked them for raising me well and then I moved on.

Passed by dark green and baby blue Porsches, the older man in a beret who sits at the furthest patio table from the peace-signed entrance of Swingers every weekend, by the newsstand ran by Vladimir right across from my friends' favorite smoke shop, beautiful trees that lived to tell amazing stories by the way their long elaborate branches entwined in the sky, Lana Del Rey, the blue blue blue of the Beverly pool that was even more lucid without the neon sign flashing above it, sunlight interrupted by bursts of chilling wind, mean looking kids who were yet to tango with the pains of life yet by the way they flaunted their parents' money through the same polyester clothing, palm tree fronds covering the sidewalk that we had to play hopscotch with the pavement, everything I wanted and more. I was surrounded by flowers and smoke all weekend. I drowned in subtle love and let it consume my body until I became it.

First photo is artwork by Piero Guccione Beach after dark, 1993