I woke up today and drove to get coffee. My sunday treat, a 20 minute crawl to the edge of WeHo for a mocha from Verve. I get two. “to make it worth the trip.” While I sat sipping my coffee on the side of the road, I suddenly had a craving for fougasse. I probably haven’t had any for… maybe 5 years? Maybe longer. After two hours of searching, I finally found a spot in LA, at Platform, that sells it. Dreading a pointless drive, I confirmed several times with John that I was reading it right. Decided to call ahead and check, which proved fruitless, because after repeating myself several times, the bewildered clerk who answered my call said “Sorry I can’t hear you.” Decided to risk at and make another 30 minute drive.

When I got to Platform I stopped in at Monocle for the latest issue, and quickly got annoyed with the other shoppers. Platform is a special blend of LA entitlement, Brooklyn posturing, and high school loitering that has so far made every visit absolutely blood-boiling. People walk right into you as they pose midstride for a instagram post to show off their boba tea. Moms scowl at you after they’ve rammed their $1,200 Cybex stroller into your cafe table while digging around in their purse. Dozens of extremely annoyed delivery drivers crowd over-extended eatery kiosk doorways waiting for orders promised ready-for-pickup that have yet to be started. Platform does, however, deliver on having one of kind shops, often the only spot within an hours drive to fetch the hyper-specific goods a modern idiot like myself desires.

I got to Bianca, went to the bakery counter, and tried to find the fougasse, but seeing it nowhere. Peering into the kitchen area, I saw a large loaf of what looked like fougasse, but wanting to avoid the predictably fruitless exchange with an adamantly helpless* clerk in person, decided to try the phone again. Went outside to the bench, called Bianca again and asked after the fougasse. “The fugazzetta pizza?” “No, it’s like a French bread” “Oh, we do have baguettes!” “Oh, sur — sorry, do you have fougasse? not baguette.” “Uh… if you’re looking for French bread we have it.” I’m watching the clerk take my call from outside the restaurant, and can see their patience evaporate and their confusion plain. Frustrated, I have an idea to simply order the fougasse listed on their menu on Postmates, and just set it for pick-up. It’s $12, but I order two, again “to make it worth the trip,” and sit down to wait. 5 minutes later my phone chirps, a text message from Postmates: “sorry, one of the items you ordered isn’t available. Please make another selection.” I text John the screenshot, insane with frustration. I’m about to leave when I see that same massive fougasse-like loaf in the window. I walk into the restaurant, and flag down a clerk. He’s busy, so he sends over… the same clerk I just spoke to on the phone. “Hey, can you tell me what this bread in the window is?” “Oh it’s… I can’t remember what it’s called, but it has like garlic and onion in it?” “Great, yes, can I get some? How much is the loaf.” She retrieves the bread, and punches it into the computer. “It’s called… fougasse? it’s $10 for the loaf, or I can weigh a slice out.”

I took the whole thing, and left absolutely baffled.

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*This is one of my biggest frustrations today, and I fully understand this is pushing me firmly into “back in my day” territory, but. When I worked in the mall where I was constantly beset by random requests from strangers who had no idea how to articulate what they want, my attitude was nevertheless one of ‘I’m sure I can figure this out.’ By which I mean that when approached with baffling requests or confused patrons, my posture towards them was one of an intent-to-help.

More and more I encounter customer service that seems to be adamantly helpless. I.e I can tell often before I even begin my question that the clerk has decided there’s nothing they can do. They reflexively respond in the negative before they’ve even considered what I’m asking. In some cases I have had to repeat my question with a tone of overt incredulity before I watch the clerk literalyl snap out of it and realize “oh wait. I can do that.” or “oh wait, we do have those.” It makes me feel like an absolute ass, because I know they’re probably replying out of a practiced response to terrible customers making insane requests, but that’s really NOT ever what I’m doing, I promise.

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I’m three weeks into my new job, and absolutely loving it. It’s… insane how different it is working at a company where things are fully-functional, fully staffed by competent people who know how to do their job. It’s been very weird starting at a new spot during a quarantine: I have never met anyone I work with. I have no idea how tall anyone is. But, it’s remarkable how much stress has totally evaporated — heavy friction suddenly gone, like suddenly finding yourself swimming with the current, after spending years fighting up stream.

While I was reading Jaganath Carrera’s commentary of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, there was section where the image of Peter Pan trying to reattach his shadow jumped out at me. After 20 minutes of drawing it and posting it here, I can’t remember the point. “Almost like an allegory for something.”

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Last week was a doozy. I’m down to myself and one other designer at work, my six-person team destroyed by burn-out, attrition and furlough. After MK and MQ left last week, I knew it was time to start looking. Or rather, after nothing changed in ask volume or scope from the rest of my co-workers, I knew it was time to start looking. I applied at a couple spots, and another reached out to me. This place that reached out to me is sort of dream gig, while a place I applied to that replied eagerly is a perfect fit. I spent last week in over 8 hours of interviews at both, and have as many this week. I’m… on a fast track to burn out myself. But if I can get away from my current place… it would be a dream come true.

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We spent this last weekend in Idyllwild, hoping to escape for a minute, and get out of the heat of the city. As we drove away they announced we were in for a record heat wave: 114 F in Los Angeles, 104 in Idyllwild. Our cabin didn’t have A/C, so while it was nice to get away, I felt like I was painted on the air: a papery and kiln-dried husk. I woke up nightly with blood in my nose, my feet and hands felt like sand paper, my mouth like fly trap.

Each night, after it finally cooled off, we piled into the hot tub, turned down to a balmy 96 F — warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to bring the heat out of our bodies. The cabin came with a telescope and I busied myself nightly with dialing in Jupiter, its moons faintly visible; or the face of the moon, its details razor sharp. Jon and Danny sat with us, our necks relaxed back against the rim of the tub, scanning the sky for satellites, tracing the cloud of the milky-way.

On our last night, John said “I just want to see a shooting star — not some little flash but one that streaks across the whole sky.” We saw plenty of the former, hairline slashes of moon-white lasting a split-second, gone if you blinked. We saw the occasional space-x orbiter, marching purposefully, if dimly, through our field of view. We saw, from time to time, too low and too close, the frenetic, silent silhouette of a bat dipping towards the water. And suddenly, just past 10, starting at the horizon and blazing across the whole span, forcing us to turn our heads as we gasped aloud, we saw a golden, snufffed-wick and still-smoldering ember of a meteor break up in the dark above the trees.

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This week I start a year long certificate program in the philosophy of Yoga, a gnarly series of courses taught by a handful of PhDs and professors of religion from around the country. I’m excited, already exhausted at the thought, but eager to get going.

Day… 128 of Covid Isolation / Quarantine / Lockdown / Whatever. It is probably safe to say, in a non-hyperbolic way, that America is rapidly deteriorating. Like, to the point where I’m engaging immigration attorneys in the antipodes to see what the likelihood is that John and I can get out of here. There is no way this country survives another four years of this administration, it’s barely survived the first.

I’ve been on a yoyo of habits and laziness, focus and neglect since all this began. It’s amazing to me that I rowed a half marathon the last day of February this year. I could probably not row 2000m right now without major chest pain. We’ve been in this limbo for long enough that whole initiatives have risen and fallen. For a while there, John and I were hiking the stairs around our neighborhood. For a while I was hiking the trails myself. For a while I was running/sunning on the river trail.

I’m cancelling my gym memberships this week. I held on for the first 100 days on a maintenance membership to stay enrolled, assuming that re-opening was feasible in the near future. We re-opened, sloppily, irresponsibly, and our COVID cases shot through the roof. Everything is closed again.

I’m seeing my body change quickly. Too much solace in food. Too much take out. For a while there I was taking refuge in mixing my way through the Smugglers Cove cocktail book, learning to make tiki drinks. Did I mention that already? I don’t remember.

So I’m cancelling my gym memberships, and doubling down on what I know best: just walking more often to places, yoga, and Kalari. I’m really tucking into these virtual Kalari get togethers based out of Thailand, taught by one of the colleagues of my former teacher in Utah. The meypayattu exercises are more challenging than ever, but but I find them as mentally stimulating as they are physically. It’s a strange sensation to feel something… deeper change in tandem with your body. The energy is different.

So yeah, taking Kalari 3-4 times a week, with yoga and yogic stretching/skill sets in between. I have a silly goal to get into the splits before the end of the year. It’ll help with my kalugal kicks, but I’m hoping it’ll also just loosen my knees up, and get rid of the pain there. I want to be able to jog a day or two a week without being essentially immobilized with knee pain for the rest of the week.

I’ve been digging into the “theory” of the body as I get back into practice. Just another step deeper into my LA hallucinations.

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A few weeks ago we established a “bubble” with some close friends who all tested negative the same weekend as us, and who observe the same rigor when it comes to distancing, hygiene and covid avoidance practices as us. Having people to be around has literally saved our sanity if not our relationship. Just being able to touch another body, embrace another person, talk to someone from outside your own walls is… amazing.

Last week we rented a house in Palm Springs together to get out of the city. We did nothing but hang out in the pool — it was record breaking heat, well over 120F. Tomorrow they’re coming over for drag race, we’ll see them again on Saturday, and then John and I are re-isolating for two weeks in preparation to visit friends in Sea Ranch. These new patterns of isolation, testing, bubbling. How crazy this all would have seemed in January.

Day 60 under shelter-in-place/quarantine/isolation whatever. Today they announced we’ll be in for another 90 days… at least. Like, at this point, it’s like… will we ever go back to normal. Is this the point in the novel where the protagonist starts to understand? That we’re in a fully-fledged dystopia? It’s just so wild.

Since this started we have watched a TON of documentaries, including Wild, Wild Country, Spaceship Earth, and Heavenly Bodies. All these docs that begin with people saying “we were at a point where we no longer trusted or believed in what America was, we were ready for new forms of community.” And honey… I’m there. Put me on the commune. Put me on an island. Give me a garden. Like I am done.

I, at this point, cannot go back to thinking that what I do for work matters. at. all. Like whooooo caaaaaares. This has really turned into the crisis where you really, really feel the clarity of the statement: you have one life. I just… cannot imagine that I spend the rest of it ONLY designing learning management software for fucking taco fucking bell.

I started volunteering at the LGBT Center. I started volunteering with this queer cartography website. I started drawing a LOT more. I am fully thinking like… how do I pull the ‘chute on this trajectory.

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Oh, also I started therapy. Let’s just say it: my tarot teacher recommended a Jungian dream analyst who moonlights as a shaman who also founded several global queer radical organizations. He is 82 years old. It’s maybe the best thing that has ever happened to me. He is like an editor, for my subconscious? I tell him my dreams, which are like an essay composed of my thoughts, all out of order, but there’s some good shit there; anyway, he takes them, rearranges them and hands them back and it’s like “oh yeah, that’s what I meant.” And it’s profound, and meaningful, and he just encourages me to do good, and be my best, and to decide what what I want to do and be.

Which is very frustrating when there’s nothing I am allowed to do.

It is… day 28 of isolation during the Covid-19 hullaballoo and I am climbing the walls. Lucky to still have a job, unlucky to have this brain that will never just do a little less. I have given my self a full panic attack at twice, one at 4 in the morning 10 days in, and one 5 days later when they announced that we would be sequestered for at least another 50 days.

We’ve learned not to burn through our serotonin on the weekends, as that leads to truly disastrous Mondays, when, disbelieving we have to go back to work and pretend like ANYTHING is normal. We’ve learned to work in the same house, at the same time, and somehow stagger our bandwidth consumption so we’re not both stutter stepping our way through the 50th Zoom meeting of the day.

We’ve learned that we can handle each other at our absolute most frazzled. We’ve learned to wait.

In the divine parade of the Tarot, the 12th arcanum is that of the Hanged One:

This card indicates a moment of suspension we can turn to our advantage for refining our plans in greater detail, self-knowledge, and inner work. It can also refer to a block or an inability to take action. Often this card will let us know that the time is not right for making a decision, that the situation or our own view needs to ripen further. If the Hanged One spoke they would say “Without abandoning the world, I have retired from it. With me you will find the will to enter the state where the will no longer exists, where words, emotions, relations, desires, needs no longer bind you.”

So yeah, this is the season of Le Pendu. It’s been a while since I checked in. At my last writing I was wondering what the fuck I am doing with my life, trying to figure out where I want to be going, what I want to be doing, how I want to be feeling. So yeah, NOTHING has really changed on that front — But I’m taking this time to work towards transformation and change. I’ve found a creative spark that I’m patiently fanning. I started going to therapy. I’ve been diligent in introspection. I’ve been breathing.

Over the last year Los Angeles has steadily gotten into me, and I am steadily, still, into it.

Thirty Seven.

Went to my first group breathwork session last night, after a bunch of self guided/follow-along with audio sessions. Sort of knew what to expect going in, but ultimately just resolved to “go with it” and “surrender” to whatever happens.

These bullshit hippie phrases. Jason says “oh boy. LA has ENTERED YOU.” And that is… fair and true and real and I’m fine with it. Vibes, or whatever. LA is a place where everyone has largely made peace with the fact that most of its expertise is completely self-claimed, made up, and ephemeral — that everyone is just throwing shit at the wall hoping something sticks. I wish the rest of the world, especially SF, would own up to it.

But yeah, so here I am. I moved from SF where I’d been listening to a whole bunch of hippie shit podcasts, and then when I settled here and realized I was living four blocks from everyone who I knew from these hippie shit podcasts. That felt like something. Started going to classes with them, and vibed. That felt like something. Was looking for something to do that was IN my body, for my body, and out of the blue options present themselves. That felt like something.

The last couple months have been about figuring out that I need to be honest with myself. With my Self. I’m making peace with the fact that my job, the day to day UX and management of it all will not, cannot, has not fulfilled me in the way that drawing and design did. It’s quietly devastating that the people I spend 40 hours a week with do not know that I have like… a rich history with art and design. Not knowing what brings me joy. That their perception of me is colored almost solely with one crayon: tech management. A factotum. How did I fuuUUuuucKKinnnGG get here? Doesn’t the rest of my life, everything before whatever I’m doing now, count for something? How do I keep that fresh?

Spent time with Brandon, my tarot teacher, talking about the year ahead, as it pertained to What I Do. Two of Wands, 9 of Swords (reversed). Always the fucking 9 of Swords when it comes to work, followed closely by the 5 of Wands. My stalker cards. I laughed out loud. Spent the last two weeks thinking about it a lot. Last night, before we got to the studio to do breathwork, Ryan, our teacher, told us the theme of the night’s session would be “Your life is your curriculum.” And… that felt like something. So yeah, spent the session in the dark just really being open with myself about what I want. What I’m supposed to be doing. What’s important.

In the past I’ve done 15 minutes or so of breathwork, last night I did 30 minutes straight, followed by 20 minutes of come down. Some big moments in there, very, very intense.

Weird moments of clarity: your fucked up teeth are fine, and you have to decide between being embarrassed and swallowing your smile or choosing to laugh, openly — both literally, and figuratively. You need to have a practice that ties you to tradition, rich inheritance, a lineage.

I felt reaffirmed over and over again that the stuff I’ve been focusing on in my off time: drawing, drawing, drawing was important, and worth while. That there is there there.

This month I started Crossfit, tarot classes, and creating comics. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

My oh my, a month gone by. And what do I have to show for it? Surprisingly… a lot. Since my last little rant, I’ve invested a lot of time into more creative endeavors, and while little is visible above the surface, I’ve accomplished a lot: a dozen or so drawings, some wood carvings, a linocut or two, and too many preliminary sketches to count, all pointing to something…new. Spiritual developments, an adjective that makes truly everyone uncomfortable, abound, as does growth across almost all areas of my life and it’s both too much and desperately needed. Be careful what you ask for.

Maybe the biggest development, a new job, a major change at work. After a year laboring under one of the most aggressive, bellicose managers in my life, I suddenly find him terminated, swiftly and cleanly, his desk vacated in the first hour of work last Tuesday, and just as decisively I have filled his role. Everyone asks if I knew it was happening, everyone wants to know what I knew when, as if this was some sort of covert military coup. I knew it was happening 45 working minutes before it did. Was I “in” on it?? Well, the week prior I had spent all my free time putting together my portfolio in what I felt was a for-sure career change in the very near feature: indeed, I had several calls scheduled.

But god, how long has it been a problem that I needed to be addressed? For me it was 7 days into my position, 18 months ago, a very real Arrested Development “I’ve made a huge mistake” moment. 18 months of just dreading every meeting, every one-on-one, every review. A year and a half of everyone on our team sitting scattered across the office, anywhere but the desks in our team area.

So it’s a welcome change, but one that comes with a LOT of new challenges. This is the second time this has happened to me, where I am the proverbial greener grass on the other side of a grisly fence. Last time, I built my dream team and in a short year found myself walking away from them after a shit show of corporate machinations, turn over and broken promises. A year doing the job of the man I replaced, and never having his title or pay conferred to me. A year of treading water, trying to make head way but ultimately failing my team and myself. A dead spot on my resume with nothing to account for my time.

With any luck that experience prevents a replay here, but who knows? So many of us had a foot or two out the door, and that inertia is very difficult to reverse.

However, I’m excited, and I know the team is too, and hopefully that buoys us through the change.

At home, a routine finally manifests. My coffee rotation is a know commodity. Go Get Em Tiger knows my order, while Maru studiously does not: their faces a rehearsed tabula rasa with every regular who enters — they’ve never seen me in my life.

Nearly every day in Los Feliz begins gray and cool, just the way I like it, and by noon I’ve been forced to change into the shortest shorts, so often taking videocalls in a nice shirt and next to nothing below the waist, beads of sweat rolling down my back: the air conditioner is too loud to run while on call.

Last Friday, renewed with a sense of purpose after a team meeting and fully assuming the mantle of team manager, I got back from San Francisco and decided that the current set up of living room was not only all wrong, but actively preventing me from doing anything productive. I pulled everything into the kitchen, and rearranged the whole thing. The end result is 1,000,000% better, according to everyone who walks in: me, and John. The space feels activated, welcoming, and wide open. We love it.

No drawing today because it’s just One More Thing. Lately I have felt such a surge of creative drive, and it’s gotten to the point where I feel like I am going to burst for the lack of ability to just Do It All. As I type this I feel like I am going to puke, I’m so overwhelmed.

There is absolutely no one pushing me to do this, really, but suddenly it feels as if a great amount of time has escaped me, and I need to make up. Everyone in my field is expected to be a jack of all trades, and yet everyone wants a succinct, no frills portfolio to prove it. I want to show that I can draw, that I can design graphics, that I am more than capable of launching new products, that I am a competent leader, and comfortable speaking to both business needs and emotional drives. I want a portfolio that is bursting with capabilities. I want my creative self presented in its entirety.

For who? Who else wants that? Who else cares? I have no idea, but it seems so dumb at this point to have coworkers who don’t know that I like to draw. That I have over a decade of successful, award winning, internationally know design stuff under my belt. I hate this winnowing of a personality that happens as you progress through your career.

I dunno. I’ve been drawing more, designing more, making things more, pushing myself more. And I have nothing to show for it if anyone asks.

It’s dumb.

My first order of business at my new place — like, day one, waking up after 3 hours of sleep, before having to move the nightmare uhaul to the aformentioned costco parking lot — was finding a new coffee spot. My coffee spot. In the past couple of year, I’ve become, to my chagrin, a creature of habit. In San Francisco I was a morning regular at Verve. Day in, day out, every morning, sometimes after work. I always ordered the same mocha, no whip; I always tipped. Everyone knew my name, and on days when Alejandro was working, I would be greeted, in the mode of Norm on Cheers, with him shouting “J-J-J-Jory!” to the tune of the Chia Pet jingle. I got free coffee, A LOT. Often my drink would be ready before I’d even gotten through the line, because Christine would start it when I walked in. I think I used to be embarrassed to be predictable? But having your needs anticipated and met is actually very nice, it turns out. I like having a routine — on days when I’m reluctant to get out of bed, there’s nothing like a habit and a gentle addiction to get me moving.

Beyond that, the number one counsel I got from everyone re: working from home was “give yourself a routine, a ritual, to get you into work mode.”

Anyway, here Maru has won out for my morning spot. I get up, listen to The Briefing as I get dressed — we got one of those Google Home Hubs and it starts up automatically when I get up — and then head out to grab a cup. It’s a good walk, and it’s a pretty little spot to sit and get my head together before work: all blonde wood, wabi sabi aesthetic and a twee soundtrack. 3rd wave, restrained menu, a courteous, but largely silent staff. It’s close to the supermarket, too, so if I want to grab something to prep for dinner, it’s on the way.

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In the afternoon, if I need a pick me up, I head the opposite direction, both geographically and spiritually to Caffe Vita. It’s boisterous, more of a second wave vibe, cheerful and talkative staff, and seasonal drinks. Right now they’re offering a Sevilla, described as an orange peel mocha. It’s delicious, but the distance between your expectations when ordering an “orange peel mocha” and then receiving a mocha with... actual orange peels in it is both infinitely small and also impossibly vast. But what did I expect? In any event, I’ve had three since Wednesday.

Well, we’ve been settled in LA for eight days now, and it has been a… ride. Moving itself was harrowing; with a too big truck delivered to the wrong address at the wrong time by U-Haul, late arrivals from tweaked out movers, terrible driving conditions, a sketchy, pornotel abandoned at the last minute, and culminating with me sitting in said truck for six straight hours in a costco parking lot? I don’t want to move again for a long time.

Working from home has taken some real adjusting on my part. I wasn’t prepared for how lonely I would get, what an island the apartment, even in the heart of one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Los Angeles, could feel like. I wasn’t prepared for the disparity between moods at the end of the workday between John and I. He arrives home exhausted from commuting, interacting with a office of over 100 people, and just wanting to decompress — I, on the other hand just want to talk talk talk, go somewhere, anywhere, after being cooped up all day. It’s take some doing to get used to things, and to figure out our strategies going forward. Jason wisely (hi, Jason) counseled finding a way to be out of the house when John got home, to just give us both some space in those liminal moments.

I joined a rock climbing gym on Tuesday, in a fit of work related rage. I’d been meaning to join a gym anyway, as I hadn’t been in any real capacity since January, and it’s begun to show (gained 15lbs, pants are tighter). But honestly, the chief benefit of going to the gym for me has mainly been one of stress relief. I burn through so much anxiety, anger and tension during physical exercise, and on Tuesday I had all three in spades. I’ve…never climbed anything before, so that’ll be interesting, but they offer yoga 16 times a week, HIIT classes, climbing clinics, lifting and kettlebell classes. I signed up for the latter that day, and attended my first class shortly after. It felt great, if absolutely punishing. Wild swings between unwieldy and heavy burdens ? Oh honey, I’m familiar!

For the past week I’ve been hitting up my favorite tiki bars in SF and Oakland, one final lap through each, snagging all the commemorative mugs on my way out. On Monday I ran over to Kon-Tiki and picked up their enormous Muntiki mug, on Tuesday I ran to Pagan Idol and completed my collection with their skull and leviathan 12 ouncer, last night I hit up Smugglers Cove and got their matte brown Ku, and tonight I rode the cable car up to the Tonga Lounge to pick up the Tangaroa and green lantern mugs.

The Tonga room is… so special to me. The height of kitsch, a tiki paradise; it weirdly marries the most disparate parts of my life — my childhood love of the Tiki Room at Disneyland, my mission to Hawaii, the earliest days of falling in love with San Francisco’s weird neverland magic on work trips, John meeting my dad for the first time — it holds so many memories for me. Utah, San Francisco and Hawaii are linked in real life, a side effect of Mormons’ westward exodus and Polynesian colonial schemes, but with me, here in this colossal basement bar, the dreamy fantasy versions of all three came together. It’s a castle in the fog, a place that never quite materialized, that exists in ideals and scuttles on the rocks of grim reality.

A side effect of collecting these mugs, as they all come filled with very heavy pours of overproofed rum cocktails, is me getting pretty tanked at 5:30 in the afternoon, and having all my emotions bubble right to the top.

On my way home on the Muni, an older woman nervously tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you know which stop the big Safeway is at?” I told her it was at Church, where I was getting off, and that she could follow me out. I watched her hobble across the crosswalk with a wave and got teary real quick. This is my city! I know it like the back of my hand. I can answer any of those questions here! How long will it be before I can do that in Los Angeles?

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Aloha ahiahi, my pu’uhonua.

Back in the Tonga Room I stood by myself overlooking the pool while the fake lightning flashed and “rain” gushed down, texting John. I can’t believe my time in San Francisco is over. This was the first place where I really felt like I could unfold and build the life I truly wanted. I’m so excited for this next chapter, and like John responded, I think we’ll be surprised at all LA has to offer us, but this will always be my spiritual nativity and leaving her is brutal.

The thing I’m most… apprehensive? unsure? about moving to Los Angeles is rebooting the tiny communities, hobbies and familiarities that I’ve had to build from scratch here. My rowing group, my trivia team, the guys in my figure drawing groups. I know I can find that stuff in LA, but it all happened so organically here, and developed over time. I’m bummed about leaving it.

Live figure drawing is still something I struggle with, but I’ve really loved meeting up with folx and drawing together. I know I’ve improved, and it’s been really… affirming and rewarding to center drawing in my identity, and to have a skill/talent be affixed to how others know me, rather than just… like, bar persona, party person, etc. Ground breaking revelations: friendships based on shared passions, interests and hobbies are… good?

Last night we drew my friend Lukas and it was such a treat. They’re formally trained as a dancer, and working with that skill set as a figure model? They know their shapes, they know their lines, they know their space. Lukas knows how to just add a little twist, a little tension, and flex to make things a little more dynamic.

I keep thinking… should I just start something new? I keep joking that it’s going to be aerial aerobics or like… juicing. Just really leaning into a Silverlake sensibility. I recently did a kalari intensive with a choreographer from the UK, and it was just… so galvanizing. I’ve missed kalari so much since leaving SLC, so I think that might be something to really dig back into. It’s such a fulfilling practice, and it really challenges my body, my mind, etc. There’s a kalari group in LA that I could sync up with, so that might become a reality. I might spend some time digging into a more focused yoga practice as well to support that.

A whirl wind trip to LA. John and I fly down at 6am on Saturday morning. Before we even get to drop our bags off at his folks’ home, we have looked at two apartments. One in Los Feliz, another down near Koreatown. One is cute, but too small; the other grand, with a sketchy management firm. Both are too far from everyone we know. Who do we know? Do we know anyone? I feel fully dizzy and the polar opposite of grounded. We swing over to John’s folks’ place in Altadena, say hey to his sister who we are officially in town to celebrate — she’s just turned 30. We have light drinks, walk Hex, and then jet back down to Westlake to look at another place. Huge, incredible architecture from the early 20s, in a wreck of a neighborhood, and a potential nightmare to maintain. I cannot get over this one towering window in the entryway: two stories, multi-pane, french-door style, opening inward. All I can picturing is my climbing monstera and passion vine up and over the molding and I am in love, but I know better: there is not a square angle in the whole place.

Westlake, Pico Union, Arlington Heights. These too-precise and unknown names that seem to exist on every internet mapping service and in the mouths of precisely no one. We reference these, we get blank stares, and with comical swiftness we are in a Californians sketch again: it’s south of the 5 but not quite over to Glendale, if you’ve gone past the 101 you’ve gone too far. My eyes glaze over.

Back home we have ribs, chicken, rolls and cake for Em’s birthday. Wine. Beer. Champagne. Fresca. I fall asleep on the couch holding Hex, 10 Things I Hate About You in the background.

We have a miserable sleep in a too-soft memory foam bed in the guest bedroom, and we are up early for the first of 10 more apartment viewings the next morning. My back hurts. I’ve had too much to drink the day before, and worry it’s actually kidney pain. Maybe it is? I’m not sure. It is hot in a way I forgot days could be, and I need water. We zig zag across the city for five hours seeing place after place after place. We put good vibes out and we get them back.

We see potential. We see pitfalls. We see actual pits dug in the floor of the kitchen of one unit: “Before we go in, there are holes in the floor, they’re doing some work, they will NOT be there when you move in.” I assume we’re going to see some pilot holes drilled to fix wiring. Instead they are two 3x3x3’ enormous trenches dug in the floor down to the water main, with corresponding mountains of soil and concrete ejecta in the kitchen next to them taking up roughly 80% of the floor plan. “They will NOT be there when you move in.” As if we’d otherwise have been like “… gosh the location is nice, and a parking spot to boot… I’m just not sure about those gaping cavities in the kitchen, should we ask about that?” We meet property managers named Paizley, Jeizel, and Gwendolyn. We meet a certified so-cal hunk of a realtor with two first names as his whole name, whose pecs look like they’ve never lost a sale. We see an endless parade of kitchen arches, pedestal sinks, open floorplans, dimly-lit bedrooms, and subway tile subway tile subway tile.

We regroup at Pine and Crane. Learning my lesson from last time, I caution us both to order one thing each, as the portions are huge, and maybe a veggie to share (peashoots). We leave uncomfortably and catastrophically full. Waddling. Belching. Naturally, the next stop on our agenda is a house party overlooking a leather kink festival in Silverlake where most of the men, amply muscled and suitably bronze, are wearing nothing but singlets and harnesses. We are both struggling to suck our guts in behind generous t-shirts. This is a mess. This is wonderful. This is a wonderful mess. I’m able to rally, be sparkling for a second, and then before I know it we’re on our way back to Altadena, I’m asleep on the couch with Hex on my chest again, and then it’s time to leave. For me. John stays behind. He is officially an Angeleno again, and I am vagabond back in the bay, in a city that no longer feels like mine, but still feels like home. We’ll see each other again in nine days, hopefully with an apartment to call home, and all my stuff in boxes, ready to go.

This finally feels real.

Earlier last week, Sam tweeted “If you’re not using [some app] to know when to water your plants, what are you even doing?” To which I replied, only half snarkily, “Paying attention.” Sam took this jab in stride and responded “You mean ‘asking your boyfriend.’”

While John is the undisputed plant king in the relationship, I can confidently regard myself the queen. I laughed and replied that I had houseplants today that watched my marriage end and this relationship grow and it is wild to me that that is a true statement. I now have four plants (a monstera obliqua, a philodendron hederaceum, a strelitzia nicolai and three monstera deliciosa that began as a single plant) that I got well before moving to San Francisco, that have miraculously survived, the latter even thriving as cuttings in new pots. This wasn’t always the case, but I can’t quite trace back to how this all started. One day, it just was. At 30 years old it’s as if that bird of paradise just materializes in my home; three years later to the day after and I’m moving to San Francisco with a small nursery in tow.

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I grew up with a mom that joked she had a black thumb: every plant she turned her attention to withered in no time. Kitchen window herbs blighted in a single day, cactuses turning to mush in a month. Then, we moved back to Utah and seemingly overnight, my mom decided this identity no longer suited her and that she would have a garden. Everything flourished in her gaze. Sprawling flower-beds bursting with blossoms, trellises that sagged and shuddered under the weight of explosive growth, vegetable harvests that were truly baffling. In her mid 30’s my mom suddenly decided plants were her thing, and every growing thing bloomed for her, and she for them.

I realized the other day that I had somehow done the exact same thing, at the same age, almost 20 years later; and that were I her, I’d have, in addition to a large number of plants in my care, a 16 year-old son and three daughters to boot.

This past weekend was the first Daytime Realness of the season at El Rio. Paul and I lyfted over, planning to arrive 40 minutes or so after opening, figuring we’d beat the line that inevitably forms as the day goes on. We were greeted by easily 150 people in the queue already, and we joined Tyler and Colin midway through. Once inside we were greeted by essentially every masc-of-center queer in the city, crammed shoulder to shoulder from front to back, filling the space well past capacity.

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By the time we’d been there for an hour or so, I truly felt like I had run into or caught glimpses of every person I’d hooked up with, chatted with, had cruised or been cruised by in the city since moving out here in 2016. It felt like a fitting bookend to my time here, like an insipid allegory: people who I’d engaged in the briefest of dark-corner fantasies, twilight encounters, night-time rendezvous, all dragged out into the harsh midday sun at 2pm on a Sunday. Look at them! Some were people I’d hoped to meet up with again — that rarest of birds, the NSA serial hook-up — some I’d hope to become friends with, here they all were, crammed on the patio next to the realization that none of that would ever come to pass. Time is up, time to go.

I’m not trying to read too much into it, but it’s definitely informing how I want to approach trysts in Los Angeles. John laughed when I told him that, but I was being serious. More intent, less chaff… a more careful curation.

Last week Carson, a friend from Utah, was chatting me up on Grindr. He was 32 miles away in San Jose for a work thing, and wanted my advice on the best cruising spots in the city. We’d served our church missions together 15 years ago — both of us desperately horny, closeted fags, (literally and metaphorically on an island) but neither of us realizing there was a kindred spirit in the other (an archipelago!) nor brave enough to do anything had we recognized one another. After some some recommendation from my go-tos, a pause, and then “why didn’t we ever have sex?” He means when I was in town last, not on our missions, but I still don’t have a ready answer. Who knows? The attraction was there, as was the hotel room, the willingness ; nevertheless the timing hadn’t ever worked out in that precisely right, exactly correct, literally perfect way required for two friends with the metric tons of religio-societal traumas we share, separately, to relax into a sexual encounter without tainting it with the anxiety of the aftermath. And here I was, on the exact opposite side of things at El Rio: “why didn’t we become friends?” I mentally telegraph to all of them. With the same answer, and for probably the same reasons: Who knows?

Lately I’ve been wanting to draw my hookups, portraits. Not in some sort of black book way, not a score sheet — but maybe just as a… memorial? A way to say: I knew this person, however briefly, and I think I saw them, too. Boys, men, theybies, all. We were the same, we shared something, and it both was and was not enough.

It’s bright out, and from my office window I’m tricked into thinking the walk to coffee will not require a jacket. Familiar with San Francisco for almost a decade, living here full time for three years and I still fall for this trick, a nerd offered a handshake only to have the cool kid snatch their hand away: obvious and humiliating.

I need to escape work for a second, need to clear my head. The tech kids on meet and greets, amply padded in their puffer vests, sit on the shady side of Cafe Reveille, while I’m soaking up the sun at the bar in the window, almost sweating. I draw a house from my walk to kalari in Berkeley, a simple cracker box with stunning topiary. Outside the window, willowy North Beach girls fresh from yoga stalk shivering in the shade of Mr. Bings, off to who knows where.

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.” “Yes! It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.”

— Less, Andrew Sean Greer

I recently finished reading Less, and wow… the first time in a long time that I felt so connected to a character in a book. There’s a part where a character is taking the protagonist, a writer, to task and he says “You’re a bad gay — It’s our duty to show something beautiful from our world.” After reading so many books filled with queer men who were made to suffer by their authors — Barbie dolls in a tortured melodrama, pain writ large, book award bait — it was startling to see a life I could recognize on the page. I laughed a lot, I was startled by the beauty of the writing, and more than once I cried. The book felt like the last days of summer, like the sun going down and casting long purple palm tree shadows on a wall — inevitable.

I’ve been thinking so much about growing old. Wincing over it. Panicking about it. Paul is in town from Toronto. He’s nearly 5 years my senior, in his early 40s, gray at his temples and beard, fine lines annotating his face. He is handsome, and my friends (younger than me) all say so. We go to El Rio, we go to the Stud. I see myself standing next to him, and wonder if this makes more sense to others. The older guys together. Do they see me standing next to Tyler or Colin, in their perpetual 20 something youth, and think me tragic? My friends as incongruous as cargo shorts and bleached tips would be; a desperate clawing at youth as I slide over the cliff?

I’m 36 and my body is determined to make me look 10 years older. My beard, chest hair, and now even my arms are going gray, quickly. I’ve been bald since 20. I look at my dad’s dad, his brothers — catastrophic heart failures at 65, all. Is it in me? Am I more than half way done? Who knows.

24 years ago, in Clueless, Cher asserts that legs crossed towards another was an unequivocal sex-invite. My 12 year old brain took that as gospel truth, and I spent the next… well, 24 years being careful about how I cross my legs. The statement ensconced itself as a text-book truth. Recently, a friend told me that a 60 year old told him that at 20 you think your 30s are going to be the time of your life, but at 60, you realize it was your 40s. My brain has taken this as a hard fact, and good god, I hope it’s true.