Absolution

LA is a lonely place; despite what the media make out, nobody is truly happy. It’s all a production, one that nobody particularly cares for – a show, a spectacle, something that people can watch go by in the background while they do things far more important; a play put on for some pretentious purpose that makes the world go around.

Everybody there is sad, overwhelmingly sad. Well, it seemed that way to me. It appeared that even tourists picked up these vibrations that went around the city, a buzz of desperation, guilt and shame. I just wanted to leave the place, clean myself off, cheer myself up and get back to the long, winding roads I’d become accustomed to.

I often found myself wandering down seemingly never-ending streets and boulevards, going anywhere and everywhere, head lost in though whilst being sound tracked by mediocre buskers with dirty dreadlocks and a political message that applied to every man and woman – no unique selling point, only the voice of the people; a boring, dull voice that I didn’t want to hear preaching to me.

There was this one guy though – a kid from England with a thick accent and a messy Beatle haircut.

His music was fast and classic, a Bob Dylan voice, but with Leonard Cohen lyrics. Every time he popped up and I walked by, I’d stop and listen – he couldn’t have been any more than 19 years old. Still, I wanted to talk to him and he obliged, taking me to some grimy haunt with a marble stage, a flickering chandelier and a neon light proclaiming ‘JACK LIVES HERE’. The bar staff knew him by name and he knew them by name, telling them to change the record playing and to get him two drinks. He didn’t specify, but I was handed a whiskey, as was he. He unzipped his sports jacket and lit a cigarette, offering me one; I thought about it a while and pinched the unlit one from his dry fingertips.

I fished the Zippo out of my jacket pocket and set the end alight, inhaling and then exhaling. He gave me a sideways glance and smirked. I flicked away the ash in a grubby glass tray and rubbed my eyes until it hurt. He was still looking at me and asked me of my business in LA. I told him it was work related and he laughed incredulously, to which I scowled. He went on and explained how I struck him as a Marlon Brando James Dean type of method actor with a hatred for the real world.

I laughed into my glass, told him that I found the world surreal enough, thank you very much and then gave him my theories surrounding the city. He asked me if I’d seen it all and I nodded. He then nodded and agreed, adding that some of the saddest people he’d met were in LA. All of them worth more than anybody else – lost souls living in a fishbowl to quote Pink Floyd. He said the loneliness was almost inconceivable and world destroying, which was the reason for his plan to leave.

Leaving to do bigger and better things.

The kid was overjoyed at the prospect of university; new people, but the same people – home, no feelings of isolation, only solidarity and the familiar comfort of tradition. Things that normal people craved, things my inner child craved, but could not obtain – college was my brother’s achieved dream, not mine. I felt myself become increasingly bitter as he went on with a hopeful grin on his face.

I swallowed the lump growing in my throat and reminded myself to send my brother a postcard – I had his address written down somewhere in the car, surely. He wouldn’t reply. No matter how many times I put a reply address at the bottom, he never did. I just hoped he knew how much I cared. To be perfectly honest, the last two times I’d sent him a postcard, there was no real substance or subject to it – just song lyrics and/or the name of what I was hunting.

I liked to think he cared in return and truthfully, I longed for contact of some sort – trying to get something out of the boy was like attempting to have a conversation with somebody in a coma – one-sided and sad. It’d always been that way with him though; if someone had annoyed him or he thought he’d annoyed them, he would just give up trying to make the relationship work. He’d just stop and busy himself, cut himself off from them and continue with what he’d been doing before (or attempt to).

The kid picked up in my change in mood and inquired into my woes. I told him if I got another drink in me, then I might spill, he rolled his eyes. I threw back the remainder of my first drink and crushed my cigarette into the ashtray. He licked the corner of his mouth and leaned back in his chair, taping along to the end of the Rolling Stones track playing lowly through the speakers.

He nodded slowly whilst I spilled the censored version of my woes and played with the zip on his blue and white Adidas jacket. I picked at the grain of the wood on the bar as I told him the incomplete skeleton of my family troubles. He laughed and that confused me, but went on to describe how he felt his home life was bad when his mother almost refused him taking a year out to live in California. He said he felt like a spoilt little English boy around me, and despite his thick Liverpudlian accent, a really privileged, posh kind of boy. I reassured him that my childhood and upbringing made anybody look like they lived like a Hilton; he corrected me, saying for English people that I made them look like the Windsors. I stuck my middle finger up at him when I realised that they were the royal family. He cackled in reaction.

I finished my drink, tapped the end of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk out on the bar and informed the kid of my need to depart. He nodded, stubbed out his cigarette, dusted off his sleeves and held out a hand for me to shake. I accepted and shook firmly. As he grasped my hand, he went in close, his mouth to my ear and said that I must return shortly before nine, saying that I’d witness magic from a woman who could “only be a witch or some kind of enchantress”. That struck my interest immediately and I told him to save me a seat. He grinned widely and in a friendly gesture of solidarity, whacked me on my right shoulder blade.

I rolled my eyes at the gangly kid and despite him having at least an inch on me, mussed his already messy Beatle hair. He frowned, I laughed and then I left, cutting down a few short streets and finding where I’d parked my car. I turned on the engine, turned the volume of Led Zeppelin’s Tangerine up high and pressed my face onto the steering wheel, smiling dazedly and chuckling to myself about nothing in particular.