I’m in a soulless, faux-deco apartment on the boardwalk in Venice. I drove my lesbaru downstate yesterday to pop into a client conference for a few hours. Last night, I slept in a pristine white bed in a perfectly climate controlled room in the Anaheim-Orange Hilton, like a princess, sans pea. But today, after the meeting, I changed course, packed up the car again, and drove west through mind-bending LA traffic to Venice, where for no particular reason I had decided to rent an apartment on the beach for a few days.
We all know that navigating the highway system in LA is not for sissies. At best it requires stellar senses of both direction and vision (the former I possess, but not, I’m afraid, the latter). LA traffic at its worst can arrest a craven heart. Dead stuck on the 5 yesterday during rush hour, I had to pee in an empty Diet Coke cup in my car (fitting, since the Diet Coke was the essence of the problem; back to whence it came). Today, I experienced PTSD as I drove from Orange/Anaheim/Santa Ana/wherever the hell I was—it doesn’t matter; it’s really all exactly the same over there anyway.
I arrived at the “Venice Breeze Apartments” around 5.
Conveniently/horrifyingly located right on the Venice Beach boardwalk, there was no place to park for even a moment, so I had to risk double parking (something a Virgo finds anathema) and scramble around trying to find the lockbox, the key, the code and the pass to the parking garage, several blocks down the street in a very narrow one-way alley called “Sunset.” Once I got the car squared away, there was absolutely no chance I was getting back in that thing for at least 24. So, my next mission was to get some healthy, grounding food. And for that, of course, I needed a Whole Foods*, but not to worry, we’re in California, where you can’t throw a duck without hitting a “Whole.”
Unfortunately, what should have been a short walk turned into a grueling 2-hour walkabout because I did not take good notes about where the Whole was (forget what I said above about my sense of direction), and while distracted, I ended up walking about 20 blocks in the wrong direction. I then had to recalibrate and spend another 45 minutes walking across around and about slummy Venice in my super cheap but really cute $3 tiger flip flips from Bangkok. In fact, I felt somewhat like I was back in Bangkok. 
The smells, for starters: stale pot and questionable barbeque and human urine and booze vomit and summer roses. And the congealing pools of liquid on the streets outside the bars. I could almost feel the germs crawling up my legs past my measly rubber soles. I get kind of drastic when I’m homesick. The blister quickly forming on my foot wasn’t helping.
By the time I finally found the Whole, I was feeling quite desperate for some soothing familiarity. But unfortunately, walking through those organic arches didn’t fix my problem. Yesterday, during my 9 ½ hours in the car, I listened to what can arguably be described as “too many” podcasts, and during one of them I heard a story about a guy who was carjacked in the Australian outback and, left for dead, ended up crawling out of a ditch and spending 100-something days lost and starving, evading wild dingos and eating frogs and sipping his own urine, which he caught by peeing in his underwear and then squeezing drops into his mouth in the harsh outback sun. When he finally was rescued by a couple of dingo hunters and brought back to civilization, his first visit to a shopping mall left him so overwhelmed that he went into shock. That’s how I felt—like that guy—when I finally got to the Whole after my long grueling journey through the Venice wasteland. In my overwhelm, I lacked focus. I ended up with only Greek yogurt and some pineapple juice.
Then I had to turn around and walk back to the apartment.
It was twelve blocks. I know it was twelve blocks because that’s what my iPhone GPS said. But it felt more like a hundred. I chugged my pineapple juice and helped time pass by taking a call from my Pops — something I normally wouldn’t do beyond a certain hour on the east coast. (That hour being happy hour.) My Pops entertained me with a story about his own experience on Venice Beach over 40 years ago, when he and a friend hitchhiked across the country on their own sort of walkabout. Their first night in California, they slept on the beach and busked with their guitars, watching the sun set over the Pacific and generally having the time of their young hippie lives.
To be young and free on Venice Beach in the late 60s. Contrast that with myself, decades later, homesick and anxious and whiny, making my slow crawl back up the long-debauched boardwalk, complaining because my pineapple juice is too heavy and my flip flops are giving me a blister. My, how times have changed.
In my funk, the back of a head caught my eye up ahead on the boardwalk. Black curly hair. A hint of a profile. Brown eyes. Long lashes. And I felt sad. That glimpse of a head reminded me of someone. Someone I used to live with, who once came to LA with me, and who made me incredibly miserable and also very happy. But who always, throughout, made me feel comforted, and safe. Until he didn’t, any more. And that’s when I knew it was over.
I felt lost, on the Venice boardwalk, wishing I was more like my Pops four decades ago— carefree and young and full of possibility and desire. But that’s not who I am. I’m a 40-year-old woman who rented a nice apartment with air conditioning and wireless internet and complimentary bath gel. I came here not to follow my dreams but to get away. Only to realize that I’m not away at all. I’m surrounded by artists and misfits just like myself, and junkies and drunks and latter-day hippies, and people whose back of their heads are redolent of someone I once loved and still think about, against my will, sometimes.
* I was talking to Vanessa while I walked to the Whole (and by talking, I mean texting) and we agreed that while Whole Foods is pretty overrated and, under normal circumstances, it’s best to find a local natural food market or, even better, farmers market, when traveling it’s a different matter. Any of you who have been really, really psyched to stumble upon a Starbucks in a third world country know exactly what I’m talking about. When I’m out of my element, there’s something so soothing about Whole Foods. I relish the opportunity to find comfort and solace in the familiar aisles of overpriced raw cacao nibs.
