release
My book came out yesterday. I woke up and it was gray in Los Angeles, drizzly. I lazed around in bed watching TV for a while before getting up and going out, driving east to a bookstore in Pasadena called Vroman's. At first I couldn't find my book on the shelves but then I saw it sitting on a cart, waiting to be put out, so I had to psych myself up to find someone who worked there and say that, like, I'd written this book, and they had it in stock, and like, would it be okay if I, like, I wanted to sign a couple of them? And this very nice very young girl said that of course it was, and loaned me a pen because I hadn't brought one.
After that I drove to a perfect, insane mall with the perfect, insane name of The Americana at Brand, where I could not bring myself to talk to a Barnes and Noble employee long enough to sign any books and instead went down to house a whole order of Michelin-starred dumplings at Din Tai Fung. I read Eve Babitz while I ate, Slow Days, Fast Company; I'm just so into it. Then because last time I was at the Americana I discovered that MAC still makes the lipgloss I was obsessed with when I was thirteen I went there and bought myself some, because it still looks pretty good on me, actually, and sometimes it's enough to know that something exists in the world, and sometimes you need it sitting on your own dresser, you know? They call it a "MAC Heritage Product" now. It might make me feel old if it wasn't so ridiculous.
I kept wondering if I should buy my book at these bookstores, which is insane because I'm broke and also I have like 30 copies that my publisher sent me sitting on the floor of my bedroom with nowhere to go, but also like, I sort of wanted to buy my book? I probably will at some point, for some reason. Just to do it, I guess. To have done it.
Anyway then I went home and watched more TV and did my nails and drank a glass of wine, and then I went to this book party and everyone I know and everyone my parents know came, and that's all I have to say about that, because if I think about it for too long I'll just start crying again. My old therapist came; she moved to Utah right after I moved to New Haven and we haven't seen each other in years, and it was as close I could have gotten to having my own self from 2009 show up, blinking, to remind me that actually things are just always fucking changing. After the reading and the signing-- after they'd sold out of my book!-- we walked down the street to a bar, where I discovered that N. & M. had called ahead from New York to pay my tab. Every time the waitress came by I asked for another glass of bourbon and another order of French fries. I got very extravagantly drunk.
-
During the reading's Q&A someone asked me about my relationship to Los Angeles and how it informed my work. I thought about earlier in the day when I'd been driving to Pasadena, taking the 2 and then the 134, my favorite set of freeways because they sit in the middle of so many mountains, and I said what had occurred to me then: "I find this place heart-rending." It's possible that I would have felt that way about somewhere else if I'd grown up there instead; I would have learned to be as hungry for its landscape as I am now for this one. I mean, I was looking at a scrubby, trash-covered hillside when I had that thought, this convulsion of longing to stay here forever-- it's just not normal, the way I feel about LA. This city is so beautiful, and it's such a fucking bitch. I drove and thought about what it means to live in a place where rain is so infrequent that you wake up to it in the morning and it feels like a good omen, something lucky, something magic. Almost everywhere else it would have been routine. Los Angeles looks like paradise but it teaches you not to take shit for granted: that the ground will stay steady under your feet, or that the sky will always open, that rain will choose to fall.