Liminal Spaces

ONE

I often find myself in liminal spaces. The places where it feels like the earth has stopped turning, it feels like you have stepped into another reality. Places like an Arizona gas station you fill up at 3:00 am while you're road tripping across the country. The air is cool but you can feel the heat radiate from the asphalt, and the streetlights illuminate the otherwise empty highway. You hear nothing but the sound of your own breathing and the buzz of electricity lighting up the sign in the store window, the one that reads 'OPEN 24/7.' These are transitional places. Places between you are going, and where you have been. Places for us to reflect and feel nostalgic, places where we prepare for the moments to come.

I find myself at the bottom of the indoor pool at The Orchidea in West LA. I close my eyes tightly, trying to grip onto the floor tiles, but they slip against my fingertips and I float to the surface. As my head breaks through the water, I hear myself gasp for air. I sit on the steps and while I dry my eyes with my fingertips. Frankie Goes to Hollywood plays at a low volume through the ceiling speakers, the champagne I poured, but never drank, bubbles in its glass, and the whites of my eyes burn after hours of exposure to chlorine and cannabis.

I met a Korean girl in a karaoke bar a few blocks away from my favourite Kaitenzushi restaurant, the one on Sawtelle Boulevard. She jokingly told me she knew me from somewhere, as to which I just shrugged. She slid me a glass of plum wine she had ordered when I wasn't paying attention. Her father was the owner of the club, and many others across Southern California, she told me he was a fan of my work. I raised my eyebrows and hid a smirk behind my glass, I told her that flattered me. Her name was Sunny, I asked if that was her real name and she jokingly told me that was racist, I seriously told her I was half Japanese.

The intimacy of our interaction sent a wave of goosebumps across my skin, although not visible under the purple LEDs, my face still tensed, as I was confronted with an emotion somewhere between embarrassment and anxiety. In my life, I often found myself in the company of beautiful women, but the interactions didn't get easier. I still carried the timidness and reservation of a adolescent civilian, and I still couldn't decide if that was a blessing or a curse. Of all the things I inherited once I made in big in LA, charisma was never one of them.

Sunny has me cheers my plum wine glass with hers, I force a smile and look into her eyes. She has had that eyelid surgery that is common in Korea, where they make the eyes appear more European. I only noticed when she complimented me on my own eyes.
"Your eyes look like Greenland," she had said
I feel back the temptation to tell her my eyes were blue. "Thank you," I replied.
"What are your plans for tonight?' Sunny asked me over the muffled screams of patrons trying to hit impossible notes in the songs they are singing.

I finished the last of my wine in a large gulp. "I want room service." I said candidly. Awkward small talk never gets anywhere until you find someone willing to tell it like it is. If Sunny wanted romance, she could find it two doors down, all I wanted on this miserable night were strawberries in white chocolate.

She smirks at me. "Well, I don't think you can eat all that food by yourself." She says in a way that is somewhat seductive. I feel my stomach tighten with the thought that Sunny was making a dig at my appearance. 2014 had been a year of bipolar morale, the downs in which often manifested themselves as periods of low nutrition. That summer, I couldn't have been more than 130lbs.

At that point, I was starting to sweat under the club lights. Although I had my doubts, perhaps fucking and binge eating with this woman in a high-end LA hotel would give me the serotonin boost I desperately needed. "Would you like to see me try," I replied through gritted teeth.