The Battle of Los Angeles Part 2: Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

My Dad was 27 when my parents got divorced in April 1985. I can’t imagine how strange it must have been for a California Boy who intended to play baseball or be a sports broadcaster for a living to find himself in Virginia mowing lawns, separated from his wife and family, struggling to figure out what to do with himself and how to stay in his albino kids’ lives with the obstacles he’d made a mess of the marriage, had no emotional skill set and his entire family – sisters, parents, grandparents, closest friends – were all back in Southern California. It must have been so lonely. No wonder he had so many girlfriends.  

He also took us back to LA regularly. Every single summer from as early as I can remember, we flew to LA for 10 days or two weeks of fun in (spite of) the sun. I can remember the joy I felt on these flights as we approached Los Angeles. We descended below the cloud line and the enormous, sprawling city became visible – the hills, the concrete freeways, all the cars. The colors were so different than Virginia. Though I had lived there only a year as an infant, it was a place that felt like home. Long before Phantom Planet used the classic line from an old tune in the theme song for THE OC, I can remember humming to myself, “California here I come, right back where I started from,” and fighting back tears almost every single time we touched down at LAX. Landing was immediately followed by spending two hours in LA traffic as we drove up to Reseda, Sylmar or Thousand Oaks. But I didn’t mind. There was something in Los Angeles that always excited me and the warm, dry air felt like a hug from someone familiar and loving. 

The great thing about vacations in LA was we had family with whom we could stay. My Dad is the oldest of four and his three younger sisters were elated to see and spoil my sister and me. My Aunt Jana dated a guy who I thought owned a candy store. I would later learn it was a liquor store, but it was all the same to me with my mouth full of Sugar Babies. She had a house with a pool and a BMW with a sunroof, and she ran her own business with my Aunt Julie. The two of them were 1980s Valley Girls and I thought they were the coolest. They took us everywhere. Disneyland. Magic Mountain. Universal Studios. I remember we drove down to Sea World in San Diego while I sat in the back of Julie’s Suzuki Sidekick, hiding under a blanket the whole time to avoid sunburn. My Aunt Caren was studying at UCLA at the time, so we saw her more sparingly until she graduated and we got older, but when she was a contestant on the game show PRESS YOUR LUCK she gave a shout out to my sister and me (though we didn’t call it that back then), which felt very Hollywood and glamorous. My grandparents were divorced, but we managed to spend at least a night at my Grandma’s apartment complex, which had a pool, or my Grandpa’s house with his hot tub and guns. On these trips it was also pretty standard for my dad to take a day to go hang out with his buddies.  On these days he’d drive down to Newport Beach to spend time with his friends (cold beers and women in and out of bikinis) and we’d spend time with my Aunts or Grandparents alone. From these parentless moments, the idea grew for me to visit LA by myself sometime.  

I know I went to LA two different times during the summer by myself, one in 1992 and one for sure in 1993. But it was 25 years ago and somehow these two separate trips as an unaccompanied minor have blurred into one experience in my memory. These trips were my first ever experience flying alone and the first time I got a taste of Los Angeles without my parents. Flying alone as a child with albinism was not much different from flying alone as a child without albinism. I had to register as an Unaccompanied Minor, wear a red and white striped button so people knew I was a kid by myself, and the airline employees took special care in looking after me. I flew from Dulles to LAX and was scheduled to stay with my Aunt Jana. During my time with Jana, I got to look after her daughters and take us all to Universal Studios. I was basically babysitting, but it didn’t really feel like work. One of my Dad’s best friends had two sons who were about my age. Their Dad had gone to high school with my Dad and, in fact, their Grandmother had gone to high school with my Grandmother.  Their Grandma graciously invited me to stay with them in San Diego. They had an enormous beach house, the backyard of which backed up to the Pacific Ocean. We ate sushi, I rode in a Benz and sat on the balcony watching the sunset over the ocean and Southern California felt like anything but a hellscape.  

The young lady who regularly babysat my cousins was named Jerry Lee.  She had a Honda, a brother with special needs and, to that point, she was the coolest chick I’d ever met.  She was 16, she wore flannel, had piercings and she listened to KROQ.  She was edgy and funny and bore a striking resemblance to all the women I would later fall in love with (and the woman I’d marry). We heard a brand new song called “Cherub Rock” on KROQ and I told her I liked it so she played me Gish.  Turned out The Smashing Pumpkins were her favorite band and she was excited for their new record, Siamese Dream, which was released on July 27, 1993, two days after I returned to Virginia from that trip. I rode my bike to the Kemp Mill Records and bought the CD the day it came out. (I liked it, but never as much as that first time I heard that song with that girl).  I was all awkward and gawky with Jerry Lee (and pretty much every girl after).  With no experience talking to girls, I dressed up nicely the last night I knew I’d see her and tried to make things feel like what dates looked like in movies. I think I even cooked her dinner to the extent I was able when I was 13 (ramen).  She was sweet about it and made it a point to call me on the day I left town to say goodbye to me and tell me she thought I was cool. I’ve always wondered what happened to her.  My Grandmother, who knew Jerry Lee’s parents, said she ‘stopped listening to her parents and became a real jerk,’ which Grandma probably thought was a bad thing but kinda sounded awesome to me. Though we’d return to LA again a few times when I was in high school, I never saw Jerry Lee again. 

As I got older, these trips changed.  I wanted to do more adult things, like drive with the music loud or go see rock shows, but my little brothers and sisters and my younger cousins meant we continued to do family friendly stuff on our trips out West. When I was 17 and looking at colleges, we toured Pepperdine in Malibu and my dad basically laughed at the idea of my attending, even though my paternal Grandfather got his MBA there. While the drive to attend Pepperdine was by no means pressing, my desire to return to Los Angeles was beginning to grow.  

“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the West and my spirit is crying for leaving” is a line from Led Zeppelin, but it also applies to me and Los Angeles. By the time I was 17, Los Angeles was a magical place. Any of the dangers the environment posed for me as a person with albinism seemed inconsequential to me. Besides, I was 17, so bravado like 99% of my identity.  Plus, I kinda made it point to not think about my albinism. LA was a place of boundless possibility, of optimism, of opulence. The term “Lifestyle” was invented in California and I can understand why. The people who hosted me had swimming pools, marble showers, gyms in their homes and drove German cars. Their neighbors were Janet Jackson or I was babysitting while they went to the premiere of THE FUGITIVE.  My aunt’s lighting company did installations at Disneyland and at theaters throughout the country. Los Angeles was glamorous. It was a place that became an idea: a glimmering beacon of possibility.  Los Angeles became a Promised Land.  Never mind the earthquakes and smog, the scorching sun the drought or the traffic, Los Angeles was a place for limitless optimism in the face of objective reality.  I knew at some point I’d eventually live there. I didn't know how hard living there would be. 

Continue to The Battle of Los Angeles Part 3: California Knows How to Party.