we chatted for a bit and he told me where he worked and what he did. we reminisced about the past a bit, but he seemed hesitant to relive those memories. he asked me what i had been up to and i told him about a roadtrip i had recently taken down to la.
"how was it?" he asked.
"it wasn't too bad, work trip mostly."
"what for?"
"my friend got hired as production designer for a film so i got to hang out on set for a few days."
"what film?"
"something you'll never hear about, there was no glamour at all, mostly a lot of hard work and lots of arguing amongst the directors and producers. we had to be on set by 6:30 every morning and stayed on set til about 7."
"you didn't get to go out at all?"
"nah, i only saw my friend's apartment and the movie sets. just didn't have time, we were working 12-13 hour days."
we chatted for a little bit longer and promised to keep in touch although those were just said as social niceties.
i thought about how much he had changed over the years, how much we had both changed since we were young. i have taken several roadtrips to la, some good, some bad, but i have never felt an intrinsic connection to the city. driving down south usually meant vacation, debauchery and mayhem, but this last one was so different. i felt so old, so boring, so responsible and grown up.
the trip that i had taken with esmond and another friend mikey years back was memorable, not only because it was our first one, but because back then we had nothing to lose, no money to our names, living with a reckless abandon that we knew so well back then.
i met esmond in high school, tall and gangly for his age, constantly sporting a grimace, piercings, and always looking for a fight. i met mikey through esmond, they were childhood friends, they sold drugs together, got into fights together and lived a hectic gansteresque lifestyle fueled by aggression, alcohol, and korean comraderie. i was merely an accomplice.
we started the trip out on friday morning. i was meeting them up at mikey's house. i remember waking up hungover in a chick's bed. i was not feeling good, but remember being lucky enough to have gotten laid the night before. we got quickly on the road and talked about girls, our dreams, music, but honestly mostly about girls. we were pretty good on the way up besides digging into the herbal medicine bag. we were riding smooth until the 405 intersect off the 5 where we hit gridlock. tempers flared, we were not use to this type of traffic. some guy in a black truck cut us off and we spent the next 30 minutes chasing him through heavy traffic chucking batteries, change, and whatever else we could get or hands on at his car. it took us a record 8 hours to drive from sf to la.
we stayed over at one of mikey's friends apartments in the k town section of la. his friend let us crash in his room for the weekend where he lived with his dad. we probably only saw mikey's friend for about 20 minutes because he was busy playing cupcake face with his girlfriend.
we went to a rave somewhere downtown that night and it was the usual scene. i remember not being too impressed with the whole thing or maybe it just due to the lapse in memory.
on saturday we went down to malibu and hung out around the beach. we met some girls who were also filling up at a gas station and got their numbers. they promised to call us later because they were going to be going to some bars in ktown. it seemed like a good plan to us.
we drove back to k town and went to denny's for dinner. we ordered half the menu and then ditched on the bill. we walked around trying to get an adult to buy us alcohol. we ended up succeeding and started back to mikey's friends apartment with several 40s. some street kids started talking shit to us on the way back, but mikey flashed his baton and we kept on going without getting hassled.
we drank the 40s in the apartment and the girls called us. we met them up at some korean bar. it was my first time in a ktown bar, so i let the koreans do there thing. we had a good time and the girls loosened up a bit and esmond and mikey talked loudly with much machismo and boisterousness. we tried hard but couldn't get the girls to party more unless we drove out to thousand oaks. we said fuck all that noise.
we woke up the next morning to find that mikey's friend's dad had bought us all mcdonald's breakfast and we ate in silence with the tv on some korean news program. the dad wasn't much of a talker, but he probably thought that we were nice boys.
we said our thank yous and good byes, mikey's friend was still at this gf's place so we didn't even see him when we left.
driving back up north wasn't as bad as the drive down. we made signs that read "show us your boobs" and flashed them at any females of discerning taste. we played this game for most of the trip up and were actually able to get two girls to share. we even met them up at a cafe for a late lunch. they were both our age, one was a raver looking girl and the other was an average asian chick. they were nice and interesting, but had questionable judge of character in men.
nothing was accomplished, but we had done so much. i miss those days sometimes.
