Under the Influence
of Doing Nothing
AUGUST 26, 2023An old friend invited us to his family’s house in the “hills.” I’m never sure which hill I’m on. He says that his house is the Hotel California. An Eagles member lived there and “wrote it in the backhouse.” I’m not sure that’s true, but I believed it wholeheartedly while I was there. We sat in his backhouse, smelling of cigars, Emmy’s scattered, and listened to the Beatles in silence for a few hours.
Don’t ask people how they are as a courtesy because they will tell you. They will tell you they're “feeling a little under the weather,” or “having a long day,” or have “big plans tonight.” It feels just awful to say “Nice, can I get an iced oat latte?” after that.
Ask people about rehab, a lot of LA people went to really nice rehabilitation centers and they would love to tell you about it. I asked this guy, whom I only know in passing, about his experience and he indulged me in stories of making out with a Euphoria actor in the halls, riding around in helicopters, and listening to the same five albums on a “Campfire Player,” a low-tech device designed “with summer camp in mind.” He’s eight months sober now, and of course, he wants to write a show about his time there.
I swam naked in someone's pool and by the time I got out my clothes were en route to the dry cleaners. “When will it come back? In a few hours?” “Monday.” “It’s Friday.” I was led by housekeepers to a closet full of fresh clothes which made me wonder what kind of party this was. I picked out Brandy Melville sweatpants and a Los Angeles Apparel baby tee, tags still on.
A man thought I was talking about penises when I told him that before laying my head to rest each night in Los Angeles, “I think about the big one.” When I least expected it I received the droning emergency alert “Earthquake Detected!” Hours later when I was finally calm, I wished I had been talking about penises. Another reason why I could never live in LA…
New Yorkers talk about LA people all the time, but LA people don’t care to talk about New Yorkers at all, I adore that. They like talking about themselves and I like talking about them too.
“He actually really gets around, you wouldn’t think it the way he plays that shy thing online,” one girl told me. I didn’t fly six hours to talk about Lower Manhattan or all the fun we used to have in Malibu. I flew six hours to feel like a teenager again and hear about who Vinnie Hacker is fucking over a $9.00 coffee.
The men aren’t brilliant. This place doesn’t ask much of them, nor do a lot of the women in it. They lack style and are extremely impressionable, like I could say “Jump” and they would ask “Okay, how high?” I found it refreshing because men in New York are so unwilling to change, and usually I’m the one asking “How high?”
The women are beautiful, like they have a four-digit overhead on their appearance and it is easy for them to remain in the business of being beautiful. They’re ditsy and fun and ethereal and happy to be alive. They refer to each other with “Hi Barbie” and “Bye Barbie” and I learned how to say it back without cringing. I learned how to love saying it.
People in LA are drinking and driving, enough for me to notice. They don’t seem ashamed of it. At any given time, half the people you know are on the 101, sober or drunk. In old cars, new cars, borrowed cars, full cars, and sometimes Ubers. I didn’t have a car in LA and I got halfway across the city for $18.00, while my car home from JFK was $86.75. Car services are dirt cheap, presumably to counter the drinking and driving, but driving is freedom manifested.
There are no repercussions in Los Angeles. There is enough space for wrongdoings to go entirely unnoticed. This is why everyone who is about to get canceled in New York hightails to LA.
If I wanted to avoid an introduction, I confidently said “Good to see you!” and every single person went along with it. Some even added, “Yeah, how have you been?” I did this with people I have never met in my life, just for fun.
At a house party in Beverly Hills, I watched a group of boys loosely admire a framed Klimt “The Kiss” print while in line for the bathroom. I sarcastically remarked, “Gustav Klimt!” and the boys looked at me like I was all-knowing. It was embarrassing, for everyone involved… I would have hoped to see some noteworthy art in any of these “mansion-sized,” casita-styled, modern interior-ed nightmares, but it was just this or NFT-adjacent stuff.
There is no urgency, unless it pertains to friendship. Like coffee takes fifteen minutes and there are lines for every good restaurant, but you can spend half a day with someone and hear I love you by the end of it. “We are physically slow and emotionally fast.” Sometimes I agreed, “I love you too!” Other times a simple “It was good to see you” or most concerningly, “It was nice to meet you,” fared fine.
When leaving a heavily inspired Japanese house in Brentwood, the sprinklers came on and began flooding the yard. I tripped up the wet stone stairs in Fendi kitten heels and sprained my ankle, but I was just drunk enough to not notice until the next morning. I spent my last three days limping around Los Angeles (I couldn’t find an ankle brace my New York friends would have approved of).
Everyone has a job, but nobody works. Everyone has free time, but nothing to do. I asked every person that I met, “What do you like to do for fun?” and was met with some combination of going to the beach, going hiking, going shopping, working out, cooking, eating, and “hanging out.”
I learned to like doing nothing around day ten. I got high on the beach, I sat in cars, and I ate In-N-Out three times. I drank cucumber lime Gatorade every day and I learned how to take naps. I smoked $11.00 cigarettes alone while observing the men, the women, and the palm trees engulfed in flames (nobody bats an eye at those, but they should).
When continuously asked, “How are you liking La?” I felt offended. I thought I had paid my dues back in 2017, by crying on the PCH and partaking in sex tourism. It’s fine, LA people are nice and it is a nice thing to ask. Neither hating nor liking LA, I responded, “I would never live here.”