2001-04-03 || 9:06 a.m.

|| sunday, april first. ||

driving to silverlake in the impala, all of us a little tipsy from a dinner full of sangria, we were split up: boys in the front seat, girls in the back. i think it has something to do with the impala: the chrome, the smell of the vinyl interior, the dated font of the numbers on the odometer, the churning of the engine, boat-like, breaking up intersections and movie sets and the hum of sunday night in los angeles. it is 1965. the girls are chattering in the backseat, talking about julie's being married, her father's health, what she's teaching her second grade class this week. my job. my family. the boys are talking about german hip hop. driving in LA. every once in a while a bit of the girls' conversation floats over the front seat and they take it and run. why are women always in love with their doctors? what is up with martha stewart? we in the backseat grumble a bit, grab each other's hands, blink our eyes genie-style and will ourselves back to 2001.

we drink german beer at the red lion inn. we smoke cigarette after cigarette. chris and andreas are switching from german to english to german again at a dizzying pace and i cannot follow. i am drunk and trying to get julie's attention- blinking hard, making funny faces, craning my neck so that i can catch her eye. we sit in the beer garden and tell stories, pound the table emphatically, laugh very loud, look for movie stars when there is a lull in the conversation.

i feel very adult in the beer garden. i am in LA. i am sitting next to my boyfriend, whom i have dragged across the length of the state only to subject him to all kinds of kids, my mum and dad, home movie after home movie featuring me as an incorrigible brat with a goddamn mullet, and he is impressing me to no end with his conversational skills, his stories, the way he is able to make such a fast solid connection with other people. i am sitting across from my childhood best friend, the girl who sang 'somewhere over the rainbow' in the talent show in the fourth grade, the girl who played house with me, who camped out in countless backyards with me growing up. her husband is seated beside her. and for some reason this is all very natural. for some reason the world is still revolving, gravity is still working, i am twenty-four and this is the way things have worked out.

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