34.2628° N, 118.6123° W
plot point 1988/1989
K, S, and I packed blankets, snacks, wine coolers, a bong, weed, shrooms, and presumably someone’s cassette player and assorted tapes. The afternoon was carved out of our various other lives as high school students at prep schools and workers in ice cream shops and selling the L.A. Times door-to-door.
The afternoon was time spent away from boys and men. At 15 and 16 too much of my own time was spent observing the boy-men I often hung out with in the dank garage as they played their instruments on whiny amps while guzzling beer, or in the company of my former junior high English teacher, usually at his rented house in another part of the Valley. Chatsworth Park felt very far away from everything but close to other parks we lost ourselves in, usually at night, exploring ourselves and the rocks and our tolerances to whatever alcohol we’d obtained, or the little squares of paper we’d put on our tongues and photograph, but in this instance, it was a baggie of shrooms.