In December 2022, I was at Zara in the Glendale Galleria, helping my sister find a suitable coat for a funeral, when she messaged me for the first time.
“How are you?”
It was a trick question. My 27-year-old brother went to sleep the week before and never woke up, and our family didn't know why. He was a mess, but he was browsing dating apps in search of a sense of normalcy. Among the suitors, one boy seemed special: artistic and attractive with empathetic eyes. So, I disclosed it.
“It's true that it's not great. “My brother died last week,” I responded.
“Well, I know we're almost strangers,” he wrote. “But if you want to talk to someone who isn't there, I'd be happy to do that.”
I was captivated by his kind response to my over-involvement and we established a long-distance relationship (he had just moved from Los Angeles to New Orleans after a relationship ended).
Three months later he arrived in the city. She was at a house party in Pacific Palisades when he texted me.
My phone screen showed the time as 11:09 p.m.
“Is this a booty call?” I texted him back.
“It is, yes. As adjacent.”
I reflected on the proposal. Still grieving, I was acutely aware of mortality and craved anything that would make me feel otherwise. I requested your location.
As I drove east on Highway 10, more text lit up on my dashboard.
“I took a lot of ecstasy. Fair warning.”
Apparently, he was also eager to feel something.
She got into my car outside the Prime Time Pub. She had her hair up and smelled like beer. We were matching gray thermals and black pants. I was relieved to be attracted to him.
“I'm in love with your face,” he said. It seemed like we were on the same page, or on the same MDMA.
Throughout the night his brazen statements continued. “I love your big eyes,” she commented. “How come you're not married?”
I was cautious of his molly-colored statements. Still, when he followed me to my apartment and leaned in to kiss me, I co-conspired, standing on tiptoe to greet him.
In the morning, his tone was more matter-of-fact. She shared her plans to sign a lease in New Orleans.
But before he left, he took me to dinner at Tsubaki in Echo Park. Later that night, back in my bed, she ran her fingers over the freckles between my ribs and said they looked like the Cassiopeia constellation, channeling a scene from “Serendipity.”
He had wanted to feel something and he was starting to feel it. However, she was afraid to feel joy.
The next night, I was bar hopping on the Sunset Block in Silver Lake when I ran into him at dinner. What were the possibilities? He kissed my forehead; I stepped on his foot.
Two days later, he ran into me at the reservoir. I slipped my headphones around my neck, dazed.
The coincidences humbled me; Suddenly, the clamp that was tightening my atrium loosened a little. However, she went to the Gulf Coast and we had an interactive dialogue, a JPEG of “Serendipity” here, photos of her new apartment there.
Then, one April night, I was having dinner at Greekman's when he happened to walk in. She couldn't believe it. Here, we had been planted in the same place without planning it a while ago. third time and he still hadn't told me he was in town.
He sent olive oil ice cream to my table, a stick of olive oil.
“It felt like you had seen a ghost,” he would later say, implying that he had stayed away because he needed to remain single.
I understood it even if my ego didn't, and I went back to dating apps. Then something extraordinary happened.
The first two men I dated had just vacationed in New Orleans. I dismissed it as a Baader-Meinhof frequency illusion, but the signals didn't stop. One day it was a Louisiana license plate, the next an LSU sweatshirt at Starbucks or Linda Ronstadt's “Blue Bayou.” on the radio.
After a month, I couldn't ignore the attack. I sent a text message.
“I was thinking about you earlier,” he replied.
That was all I needed to suggest he visit. He agreed and thus set plans in motion for our third date (if you counted the booty call, which I did).
I booked a plane ticket and checked the forecast: excessive heat warning. We barely left the hotel room. When we did, we walked through the French Quarter holding hands. We ate beignets on Bourbon Street and went swimming at night.
“How he died?” she asked as we simmered by the pool.
“Liver failure. Maybe because of alcohol or genetics. We really don't know. She was 27,” I shared, surprised by my vulnerability.
A few weeks after the trip, he invited me to his photography exhibition. I wasn't able to attend, but to show support, I purchased a nude that he took in front of the mirror with the proceeds going to Planned Parenthood.
The next time he flew to Los Angeles, I felt giddy about reuniting, but the feeling deflated when, in a post-coital moment, he put on his sneakers.
“Are you leaving?”
“We'll both sleep better this way,” he said in a tone I didn't recognize.
I did not sleep at all. The conversation continued until the morning, when he confirmed over the phone that my feelings had surpassed his.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“Yeah, I'm fine,” I lied.
But when we hung up, I sobbed. As the tears fell from my chin, I wondered how long it had taken them to come out.
In the days that followed, I moved through the world in a state of aggravated grief. Returning to the reservoir, the road seemed lackluster: a reminder that there was no divine order. I stopped seeing posters for New Orleans.
But after the dust settled, in its place came winks from another 6-foot-plus figure from my past, another ghost: turtles, Pokémon, and nameplates for my brother, JJ.
I realized that they had always been there; They were simply too painful to focus on. It was easier to get caught up in a blossoming love story than to face the endless horror of loss.
Weeks later, the front photo arrived via FedEx and I asked my friends for their opinion. “Return to sender” and “Gift the world's highest image to the Louvre,” they suggested.
I weighed their opinions until a new perspective crystallized. In life as in love, art and death, we can choose what we see and how we interpret it.
So I hung the photo on my wall.
Some days the image reminds me of when my heart was broken. In others, I remember my courage in being vulnerable and how I began to open my heart again.
The author is a screenwriter who lives in Silver Lake. She is working on a novel.
Los Angeles Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the Los Angeles area, and we want to hear your true story. We paid $400 for a published essay. Email [email protected]. You can find shipping guidelines. here. You can find previous columns. here.
