Roses

A short essay

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Roses

I woke up at around 2 a.m. on Saturday morning filled with all the dread that goes with this time of day. I thought about personal problems and failings and world problems and failings and wondered if I could go on, decided maybe I could not. 

I fell back asleep and woke up at around 7 in the same mood. I splashed my face a few times and dried it and applied a thick layer of moisturizer. I drank two glasses of water. Then I put on the clothes I’d worn the day before and the day before that and stepped outside.

Exercisers were panting on the long stairways connecting the streets terraced into the canyon. The palm fronds gleamed against a backdrop of light blue sky.

Everything is fine, I thought, I don’t know why I worry so much!

I was not at home. I was supposed to be, but on my way to the airport the previous evening, I discovered that my glasses had gone missing. Not wishing to drive home at night without glasses, and in fortunate possession of the same prescription in the sunglass variety, I changed my flight to the next morning and stayed an extra night with two friends.

One of my friends was awake, she asked if I wanted coffee, I said I was going to walk down the hill to get some, did she want me to bring some back? 

How relieved I was when she declined.

You see, last week I was going to the store and asked a neighbor if they wanted anything and they said — I can barely write the words! — they said they wanted a smoothie. Can you even imagine? I did not feel I could back out but I seethed the whole time, waiting in line, ordering the thing on a stupid machine, getting a slip, then attempting to pay for the smoothie with my slip, and also for my groceries, after waiting in another line, and being told that I had to have the smoothie in hand to do so.

Then driving home with the thing in a bag, grabbing it at every stop sign to keep it from tipping over.

At any rate, I told my coffee-refusing friend this story and she was kind enough to empathize, to see it, appropriately, as a tale of horrid indignities wrongly layered upon my person. “No one enjoys carrying a beverage for more than thirty seconds,” she said.

The walk to the coffee shop was quick and pleasant. I went down a few staircases. I passed the two identical Art Deco houses, one of which was used in a shoot for Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia. I wasn’t sure which, but one of the houses is beautifully landscaped, the other a bit stark. I always feel bad for the stark one and wonder if the owners have a to-do list where UGH STEP UP OUR GAME is always at the top.

In the coffee shop I told the cashier about my lost glasses, since I had seen him the day before. He seemed to enjoy having a laugh with a stranger or he was good at acting, the result, my delight, was the same. The next woman in line was wearing a cotton rust-colored jumpsuit. I admired it but I didn’t say so because if you have more than one rando conversation in a city coffee shop people smell trouble.

Waiting for their drinks were a man and a woman entertaining their baby with a to-go cup lid. They were both good looking and wearing slouchy cashmere and desert boots — I don’t actually remember but this is the vibe, a strong sense of Silver Lake “we’re not west side” money, people who clearly had New Wash, not Kevin Murphy or Oribe, in their tiled shower.

The mom mouthed all the words of the Norah Jones song playing to her baby. She was around 35 and I thought about how when Norah Jones came on the scene I was 30ish and this woman was maybe 15. This is silly but it blows my mind how the way time works means people first encounter music at different ages. It seems to me that Norah Jones is objectively music that comes out when you’re 30ish. Also, imagine being 15 in 2002 — who even does that?

Armed with my oat milk latte I ascended the two long flights of stairs back to my friends’ place. They asked me if I wanted more coffee. I did.

My friends drove me to the airport. I asked them which house was the movie house, oddly, it was the less-nice one. It was used in a dream sequence involving a bisected body on a lawn, and the less nice house had better light for dead body display. We talked about the movie and who was in it, Scarlett Johansson, and — “The actor,” one friend said. “Good looking, unsung.” We sat at a light. The light turned green. As the car turned right everyone shouted “Josh Hartnett.” On the way to the airport we talked about how strange the world was. One of my friends said “It kind of makes you think Adorno was right.” I didn’t know what she meant by that, or at least mostly I didn’t. Something about everything being complete garbage, but maybe more interesting and possibly slightly more complicated? But it was too late to find out, because we had arrived.

The 1992 hit Rhythm is a Dancer played over the airport sound system as I walked down an extremely grim hallway to use a bathroom which, in retrospect, might have only been for employees because sanitary products were free. It almost made me wish I still got my period.

A message popped up on my phone. “Are these your glasses?” They were! I bought a protein bar and ate it in a plastic chair, looking forward to today’s early afternoon drive: a hot coffee, a seat warmer, a semi-old Patreon episode of The Trillbillies with Noah Kulwin talking about cryptocurrency. Funny how the day had started out so bad. Everything was coming up roses.