He took my hand and put it on his jeans. “New girl in town gotta learn what’s what.” He giggled.
We arrived in front of the cafeteria area. Arash stole a small carton of chocolate milk from a tray on a table and opened it. He said I looked like a sorry ass walking around not knowing what to do. There was no Greek-Sicilian section in school, but I might get along with Jewish Israelis. They were peaceful and hung out under the only trees in the school yard. “They listen to Dylan and dye their hair green,” he said. I could also become friends with Chris. He pointed him out. He was a kind of stoner-looking dude with a beanie, bloodshot almond-shaped eyes, and beautiful long brown hair partly tied back with hemp string and beads. He was playing hacky sack alone. He was always alone, Arash said. He’d grown up in some kind of hippie situation in Topanga Canyon and had no social skills. But the good thing about that was that he had access to incredible weed. He was a superb pot dealer and if I wanted to purchase anything I should always go to him. His stuff came from a commune up in the canyon. It was the best in the Valley.
Arash led the way out of the cafeteria toward an abandoned baseball field where he dropped me off. A group of Mexican punk rockers with bags under their eyes were smoking cigarettes.
“For now hang out with these guys. They are anarchists. They don’t give a fuck who you are or where you come from.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey! Don’t you fucking say ‘hi’ to me when you see me with my friends, though. I only like you ’cause I went to Greece that one time.”
He came close to me and gave me a hug.
“And don’t look so scared all the time. It’s a sign of weakness.”
I forced a confident smirk and wiped a chocolate-milk stain from his lips. “So is milk on your lips.”
He had long lashes and dark eyes that were more profound than he thought. He also had a boxy, fat chin. It was manly and square with a deep dimple in the center that made me think he was courageous, like Kirk Douglas. A chin that was ready for fatherhood or gladiatorhood. A chin that made me trust him. I now had a PE buddy and a protector in school. I was moving up.
—
The Mexicans on the field all looked younger than me. Many didn’t speak English. They barely said hello, but it was true, they did not mind having me there. I sat on the ground, smoked cigarettes, and read my feminist tract. At the edge of the field I noticed the girl who had snuck out of the tardy hall on the first day of school. She was a roamer, never remaining in one place. Every time I saw her, a door was opening before or closing behind her. She walked swiftly alongside the school fence. She threw her backpack over it, climbed up, and jumped off, disappearing down a residential street—long copper hair bouncing off her shoulders. In just a few seconds she was free.
When school was out I emulated her. Wandering and meandering across the grids that formed the San Fernando Valley became part of my daily ritual. I picked Sepulveda. It was the longest road in Los Angeles and the closest big boulevard to my house. Nobody walked there, but I did. It happened naturally. At first I thought it was the ugliest street I’d ever seen. Every parking lot was fenced with barbed wire and there were often rags and bibs stuck in the metal spikes. There was a series of dismal strip malls featuring obscure Mexican fast-food chains, cycles of used-car lots, and Jenny Craigs. But day after day, the street began to transform in my eyes. The more I walked, the more the ugliness became part of my everyday life and those barbed-wire fences and strip malls became what I began to recognize as my neighborhood. A local reality. It didn’t smell like freshly baked pizza from Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, but it was familiar. A new form of familiar. I knew, for example, that when I saw the neon sombrero of the Mexican fast-food restaurant or the golden crown from the Crown Car Wash sign, it meant I was approaching my house. I started to look forward to those little landmarks and creating my own mythological stories about the place I inhabited. I stumbled on Sound City Studios, a crumbling recording studio just a few blocks from my house. It was a former Vox music-equipment factory nestled in front of a Budweiser Brewery that spouted nauseating fumes from its chimneys. From the parking lot it looked like another desolate Van Nuys store, but one day I saw Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine leaning on a car outside, smoking a cigarette. I came closer and since the studio door was open, I peeked inside. It smelled like cat urine. It was dark and dirty, but the walls were lined with rows of gold and platinum records: Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Dead had all recorded their most iconic albums there. The place had almost gone bankrupt in the eighties until Nirvana decided it would be where they would record Nevermind. That had happened just a year earlier. On the walls I saw intimate snapshots pinned to a corkboard of Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl playfully grappling each other. As for many people my age, Nirvana was the fuel to deal with pain and anxiety. Kurt’s deep blue eyes seemed to reassure me. If he had turned Van Nuys in his favor, I could too.
Walking in LA meant crossing paths with people you wouldn’t normally mix with. If you were a girl it also meant getting honked at. On Sepulveda a car passenger rolled down the window and screamed at me once. I didn’t understand anything except for “Baby,” but a tall Hispanic girl wearing a sequined minidress and slouched against a streetlight in front of a Food 4 Less stared me down, thinking I was trying to steal her job. She was as big as a man, with broad shoulders and a faint beard stubble. “It’s my block, girl,” she hissed and I kept going. I’d cross paths with her again and always made sure she understood I was just a pedestrian, one of the few.
During one of my treks down Sepulveda I ended up on Ventura Boulevard—the only Valley street that did not have a cookie-cutter suburban feel. A sign in front of a shop called Archstone Vintage and Rentals read: “Welcome to the world’s longest avenue of contiguous businesses. We apologize for not living up to your expectations.” The place seemed closed. The storefront was a dusty display of antique dolls in Western costumes, some with no eyes or hair. A scarecrow sat in a wheelchair holding on its lap a pile of lunch boxes from the eighties. I pushed the door open. A guy with long hair and a Metallica T-shirt sat on a swivel chair with his feet up on a counter.
“What’s up?” he greeted me.
“Can I come in?”
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “You sure this is what you were looking for? Nobody comes in here.”
“The storefront seemed interesting.”
“Oh, the broken dolls? Phoebe says they’re antique.”
I made my way into the dusty alcove.
“Which they are if you consider that this one”—he got up and pulled a doll with a half-shut glass eye from a shelf—“was the initial tester for Chucky.”
“Who’s Chucky?”