Escaping Los Angeles Down The 405 of Shattered Dreams

Escaping Los Angeles Down The 405 of Broken Dreams

"I left my laptop at home, we gotta go back."

"Goddammit. Hang on..." my Mom said as she executed a no-point turn on a local street.

I had a plane to catch tonight. This evening's trip was different from previous plane trips. I had a one-way ticket and no intention of coming back to Los Angeles.

I'd packed two huge suitcases to their limit. My chihuahua was in a carrier able to fit under the seat in front of me. But I'd forgotten my personal carry-on item and likely a few other critical items back home.

After retrieving my laptop bag, we still had 3 hours before my plane took off. In Los Angeles, a three-hour time gap is no guarantee of getting anywhere on time. It was Friday and we still had to go over The Hill.

The Hill's proper name is the Hollywood Hills. It separates the San Fernando Valley from the metropolitan Los Angeles. It's where all the new rich live. When the onshore winds blow the smog inland, it's beautiful.

For people in Los Angeles who live in the valley and work in LA, it's the bane of our existence. There's only one highway over it. The 405.

﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋

Before we started driving up The Hill, we had to drive across the valley.

Off the first exit was my high school, where I learned the difference between a dime and a nickel bag of weed.

We drove across the overpass that fell in the 1992 Northridge Earthquake. The damage to our house was enough that our family moved to a house a few miles away while it was being repaired for the next two years.

My Mom drove past the Northridge Hospital exit, where my father passed away twenty years ago. I remembered being a lifeguard at a waterslide park during summer. When they called me off the stand, I was told by the park director I needed to go to the hospital now. My father was in a coma for over three months before he mercifully passed. I resolved if I was ever diagnosed with brain cancer, I would off myself.

The next exit was where my weed supplier, Deicide Damien, lived. We called him Deicide Damien because his name was Damien and he was in the band Deicide.

﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋

"Does her family know you're Jewish?"

"Yeah."

"And how do they feel about that?" asked my Mom.

"Beats me," I said. "Probably about the same as you feel about her not being Jewish."

﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋

The Hill was visible on the horizon. There were no red brake lights in sight and the traffic reports were all quiet. Too quiet...

Off the next exit was my first meth dealer's apartment. Her roommate was Joseph Gordon Levitt's brother. We called him Burning Dan. For his name was Dan and he liked to go to Burning Man. He died by asphyxiating in a sleeping bag.

Making a left instead off the same exit will bring you to the apartment building where I met my first wife. She slid into my DM's on Myspace back in 2004 and asked if I had Xanax. Of course I did. She moved in about a month later. The first day I came home from work, the front door was open, all the lights were on, and the stereo was blasting some terrible twangy pop-country song. She was in the bathroom worshiping the porcelain god buck naked with a bag of BBQ Baked Lay's and an empty community size bottle of Ten High whiskey beside her. Five years later, I would marry her. Six years later our relationship was dead and over.