How We Met

Here's a little snippet from my summer 2007 travel blog. Delia and I met during the final lap of my 2 1/2 month trip across the country from Brooklyn to San Francisco.

Read on carefully. This happens fast.

While staying in Redondo Beach with good friends Eva, Preet and their little boy, Soren, I was invited to a gathering up in Santa Monica. It was going to be at Eva’s sister, Thea and fiancé-in-law Duane’s condo. Conveniently, they’re using their house-guest’s birthday as an excuse for a dinner party. Thea and Duane love a good party. The birthday girl, Delia, is fresh from nursing school at the University of Texas in Houston and has returned to the area to finish a degree in acupuncture/Chinese medicine.

Duane’s books cover an entire wall. Smart healthy people fill the room and tree covered deck eating delicious vegan food. I meet a chap campaigning for a Republican candidate named Ron Paul—if I was a Republican I would certainly vote for Mr. Paul. I meet a couple who know good friends of mine in New York City and who belong to the Burning Man tribe. Liz, a friend from New York in LA for work, cabs it from the airport to join the party. A fiery Latina named Tita gets the cake lit with Thea, brings out the presents, and announces that she’s taking Delia out dancing for her birthday. Liz and I decide to join them and say goodbye to Preet, Eva and Soren who are off in Eva’s Saab Station wagon. We follow Tita and Delia in Preet’s Saab Convertible I’ve borrowed knowing we’d be out later than our host family.

We go to King King in Hollywood to dance. Fat Buddhas look down from their perches at the care-free people. Chinese blessings are printed on the walls. This is positive house music at its best. As the night moves towards morning b-boys and b-girls show off taking turns pop’n and lock’n in the middle of circles. A kiss on Delia’s cheek gives me away and inspires Liz to come up with a change of plans with Tita while I’m distracted dancing with the birthday girl. We dance until the club closes. As we say goodbye, with Tita and Liz’s permission, I steal Delia and before she knows it she’s sitting next to me in a convertible turbo Saab as we climb up through the fog to Mulholland Drive, into Laurel Canyon, talking our way back down through Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills out to Santa Monica to look at her new apartment and then back to Thea and Duane’s where we talk and laugh until the sun comes up. Before she retires, she tucks me in on the couch. As I fall asleep I realize that I’m in no hurry to get to San Francisco.

The next day the two of us walk around the neighborhood. The vegetation explodes with color in the bright daylight. Delia names each of the different flowers in countless gardens. She tells tales of making flower arrangements for the rich and famous of New York City. She mentions being a comedic actor who’s done skits on TV, acted in movies and produced guerrilla films on the streets of Los Angeles. She has a degree in spiritual psychology (or something like that) from the University of Santa Monica where she met Thea. She’s super cute, direct, funny, smart and gets my humor like no one else. We were born in the same year and she’s just the right height. If nothing else happens I’ve made a great new friend.

Later that day I drive Preet’s Saab (thanks Preet!) to meet Liz and Tita at an outdoor restaurant in Los Felis where I keep over hearing the word “screenplay.” They’ve bonded over Kate Bush and agree to meet up at Burning Man. We say goodbye to Tita and are off to meet our new Santa Monica friends for Thea’s improv comedy class’s performance at the Upright Citizen Brigade theater in Hollywood. Duane is in great spirits and buys our tickets for his fiancé’s gig. In the front row we all laugh hard. Thea is brilliant, a natural outstanding performer. Afterward, in the bar next door where we salute Thea and trade talk of celebrity encounters. Duane is a couple’s counselor and says we would be floored by his client list if he were allowed to name names.

Afterward Delia agrees to show Liz and me Hollywood Boulevard. We become tourists snapping pictures of our heroes’ stars on the sidewalks and shoe and hand imprints of our heroes. Liz is amazed—she didn’t think LA would as cheesy and plastic as Times Square. Later we drop Delia back off in Santa Monica and head to back to Redondo to Preet and Eva’s. The next day we brunch and Preet drops me off at the bus station on the 110 and I blissfully ride to Union station where I get a cab to Silverlake to stay with Chris and Sarah friends I’ve met at various weddings in SF and New York.

The weather remains utterly perfect.

My new hosts live in the hills of Silverlake on a street lined with towering palms. Their front yard is a sloping garden dense with trees, bushes and succulents. The house is charmingly filled with antiques and the back porch has a hot tub that needs fixing. In the back yard is Chris’ Man Shack where he writes novels, plays, screenplays and magazine articles. I nap while he finishes up his day job, done at the kitchen table to separate it from his preferred vocation. That night he is off to work at the Staple Center documenting a pro-basketball game by taking notes on the action and capturing video for the league. While I wait for Delia to arrive for our first official date, I watch violent movies with Sarah who claims that this is not the only kind of movie she watches but that these just came up in the Netflix queue. Sure.

Sarah, who is just as welcoming and chill as Chris, works as a set designer. Currently she’s working on the set of a reality TV show and is close to having enough hours to join the union.

Delia and I explore Silverlake, the 99 cent store (where everything is actually 99 cents), eat fish tacos, look at exotic furniture and spy on a dance class. I drive her back to Duane and Thea’s and she lends me her truck so, over the next few days, I can pick her up in Santa Monica after she gets back from her job where she develops marketing materials for her friend’s spa store.

I bring her back to Silverlake so we can go out with my friends there. Chris and I are both friends with Reuben who is in town working on a story about being a studio audience member for a San Francisco TV news show. He and his wife, Alicia, come over and we all go out as a group to a hip tiny nightclub with huge chandeliers over the bar and book cases filled with volumes of legal books for a variety show that Reuben’s crazy screen-writing uncle’s girlfriend produces. I ask Chris later what he thinks of my new lady friend. “Good job,” he says impressed as I am at my good fortune.

The next night Chris brings me to a launch party in Hollywood for the new Reno 911 movie hosted by Rock Star magazine for which he writes articles occasionally. This is the industry side of Los Angeles that I remember from my West Coast rock band days. The magazine was founded as a vehicle to promote the owner’s sex chat lines which number in the hundreds in the back pages of the mag. Chris’ editor arrives just as we do and we are whisked passed the velvet rope without having to pay. People are dressed to be seen. Young, outspoken adults working in magazine world network their way to the top of their professions. I have relaxed conversations in the VIP area about Amy Sedaris and ask people what they like about living in Los Angeles. Chris and I head back to Silverlake when the music gets too loud to hold a decent conversation.

The next day I show up in Santa Monica with all of my bags in Delia’s truck and help her move into her new place. I hand her truck keys over to her glad to be done commuting hours a day from her place through downtown to Silverlake and back to Santa Monica by the Pacific Ocean. Delia takes a couple days off of work and we explore the ultra-post-modern Cathedral downtown and the boldly-designed Disney Symphony Hall. We laugh at everything and each other. Time passes.

She shows me the mini-mansions on the canals of Venice, we dance at the huge Sunday drum circle on the beach, meet one her musician friends, watch a juggler endanger the lives of people with large knives and eat at my new favorite: Real Food Daily. The restaurant seats us next to a friend of Delia’s that couldn’t make her party. Minutes later other friends of hers are seated on the other side of us. The food makes me even happier than I am—to the point of ridiculousness. She goes back to work and I explore Santa Monica and read a book at the beach. We cook meals, move boxes and three days in a row I post-pone my trip up to San Francisco until beyond the last possible minute. I schedule a morning flight the day I’m supposed to start work as a free-lance project manager at a fancy ad agency in San Francisco.

We sit under the moon and stars on perfectly clear night on a jetty surrounded by waves.

More time passes. Somehow I miss my flight and have to take a later one.