Magenta, 2009

Teddy, 2009

When I moved to Shanghai that May, I was distinctly struck by several observations. I remember my first night out in the Bund with strangers. I was washed in neon magenta light. I could not stop taking pictures of the city. There was nothing like this in the United States. New York was provincial. If New York was the city that never slept then Shanghai was in an endless state of mania.

We were drinking Lychee martinis and smoking Chungwa cigarettes. I didn’t go home until the following afternoon, something I had never done in New York. I found Shanghai, I could live impossibly. I somehow had energy to work like a dog and party like an animal, frequently I was partaking in these activities all at once. Frequently drinking in the office during lunch and then ending up at a bar as soon as Tuesday was technically finished. My coworkers and I lived like we were in 1960s Manhattan. Americans could only find freedom in the east.

My apartment sat in bins without furniture for the entire summer. My bed was lucky to have sheets on it. The door to my highrise balcony was always open, even when I left for hours on end. I would frequently find Spotted Doves resting atop my kitchen cabinets. I would lay on the carpet with my hand hanging off the small terrace with a Chungwa ashing down the tall building. My Pudong apartment looked like a hellscape, but I was 23 with a six figure salary. I was free to live like an animal. I knew that this bridge between youth and adulthood would end soon. I had to embrace these moments as I knew childhood would end soon.

By the end of summer, my bins were unloaded and furniture was purchased and I was serving Sha Cha Chicken with Sauvignon Blanc to individuals I didn’t know well. Childhood was officially behind me. I remember the moment when the childhood distinctly ended to the point the hairs on the back of my neck constricted.

It wasn’t a sexual experience. It wasn’t a success at work. It was choosing a tie. I picked a stoic black one with the thought that it made me look more like a man. Johnny Cash. A walking gun. It’s inexplicable. A mystery to me, but I remember feeling a ping in my abdomen that I can only explain as a final bit of childlike whimsy flying away from me and into the Bund.

Choosing the tie was not just an action, but a question. I started to experience daily self inquiries that had no real answers. What type of man should I portray for my guests, my boss, the girl across the bar? I was succeeding at work. I was building authentic rapport with my peers. I was seeking and finding hot girls in clubs and bars. Girls to bring back to the Pudong apartment. However, these acts were all walking inquiries. The inquiries of manhood that would in the end crush the strongest spirit.

After closing endless business deals and sleeping with a slew of women across the city, I met a woman with familiar red hair that only wore slips as dresses and wore a fragrance with a cherry scent. Campbell Kaplan was a failed actress from London who traded in the West End Theater for the frivolous and toxic international banking scene in Shanghai.

“Don’t you miss London?”

“What’s to miss?”

“Do you think you want to seek out acting opportunities in China?”

“I don’t dream about that anymore.”

Campbell and everyone else I was surrounding myself with at the time had given up on some sort of dream to be here, and I found that eerily liberating. New York was a city of maybe not dreamers but ambitious folk who are seeking lofty goals. Every little thing mattered from Canal to 140th. In Shanghai, nothing mattered. Personal futures were doomed. We were aware. We didn’t care. We had money. We had the Bund. We had the magenta light. We were considered safe from whimsy dreams. In hindsight, this freedom almost always turns out to be a mental prison.

Reckless behavior was not imminent, it was present and unavoidable. It seemed like the office was increasingly becoming a playground. By the end of my second year, it became clear that business was suffering but nobody really cared. Our bosses were just trying to find a way to sell and get out. I was doing ketamine in the men’s room on Wednesdays.

“Wanna meet me at the Chanel by your office?” was a frequent text from Campbell. We’d fuck in the dressing room, I’d buy her a dress. We’d get cocktails. I’d never return to the office. I wasn’t the only one doing this. We were acting like big shots, but we were collectively tanking every resource. I was privy to the fact that days were numbered, but too pithy to face the end of line until it arrived.

It had arrived. Office closed. Visa ended. Leaving Shanghai felt like a death sentence. I asked Campbell if she could get me a job with a Visa. That’s when I found out her connection to International Banking was that she was sleeping with a banker who was one of the many men paying for her lifestyle. I hit her across the face when the pieces came together. We fucked one last time and I never spoke to her again. I stole a watch from her, knowing that the money I had would soon run out.

My close friend provided me with an out that would save me.

“I need an assistant in my LA office. If you do well and with your credentials, we will move you up quickly.”

I didn’t want to take it, but I did. I left most of my stuff on a curb outside of the Pudong high rise. I took suits and clothes. Two suitcase. In my carry-on I had six books, several postcards, money from the pawnshop, an iPod, and the nude polaroid in a frame.

I moved into a slummy apartment in North Hollywood and bought a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. May 2009, three years in Shanghai, obliterated. Magenta light would never grace my eyes again. I squandered the light, my soul didn’t deserve to see it again. However, while leaving for dinner with a work colleague in Chinatown, there she was. With blonde hair in a tight bun and a white silk slip dress. Carole was outside a frozen yogurt shop with other college girls. She looked at me. The front pieces of her hair were dyed magenta pink.

Carole, 2009

“You only have one life,” is a sentence my father used to always tell Catherine and me when we were growing up. Catherine always heard it. She ran with it. I didn’t find any particular use for it until he was gone. Eventually, I went into complete overdrive with it.

Catherine was writing poetry, sonnets, and short stories and getting published in small magazines and literary websites when we were still in middle school. She was reading Dostoevsky, Raymond Chandler, and Susan Sontag in early high school. I was stealing my father’s cigarettes and listening to punk music, mistaking aesthetics for making a difference. I was putting my fingers down my throat and wearing black chokers from Hot Topic. I shoplifted an entire homecoming dress from Macy’s department store.

“You have one life,” initially meant that I needed to constantly chase the highest high - an amusement park of insanity, a creation all of my own making. When daddy died, Catherine was getting ready to attend NYU for a creative writing BFA. She almost decided against it, in order to help care for my mother and I. I told her there was nothing to fix, and so she fled from Akron, and it made me want to flee too. I had some years before I could leave. There were no cigarettes left to steal and I left the scissors I used for cutting security clothing tags on the kitchen counter. I started looking at my stolen goods and decided to really dive into fashion. I didn’t think I could write, but I knew I could dress. I had a semblance of taste.

I started reading designer biographies. That’s when I ran into Teddy Shand. Right in the public library. I hadn’t seen him since Catherine ended things with him. He held her at Daddy’s funeral and then she cut him loose.

“I don’t love him and I don’t want him to be there for me.” an icy sentence she would repeat and rehearse when his name would come up. Teddy was home for the holiday break and we sat in the library for hours. He kissed me in the parking lot. The rest was history. I was in love with him. I never told Catherine, but she found out all on her own.

“I never loved him, Carole,” she said. “It’s not cool of you, but it’s worth exploring.”

A begrudging blessing was given, despite my lack of honor. We were in love for my seventeenth summer and then he left. Ran from me. When he asked me to come back to his apartment when I was nineteen years old, I remember thinking about how this was my one life. Catherine knew to not get distracted, I had to stay focused. I couldn’t go back to a man who gave me love and bolted. A man’s heart will only hurt mine. A career built from the ground up would satiate my appetites.

So when I saw Teddy standing across the street from me in an expensive yet disheveled suit in the middle of South Hill Street, I couldn’t help but turn my head from him. That Zegna suit and black tie in the LA sun. When he looked at me, I was certain he saw a phantom. Stopped in the middle of rush hour traffic. My strawberry ice cream cone was rapidly melting. With my finals over and my graduation approaching - I was standing there once again, feeling like an anonymous version of the girl he once knew. I could say the same for him, I didn’t know him at all.

He looked ten years older. He was gaunt, incredibly exhausted. A cigarette was in his fingers and I couldn’t tell if it was holding him up or trying to pull him down. That is when I looked down, undecided if I would address him or move on with my life completely. That’s when he shouted my name.

Before I knew it, I was in my apartment. I was slipping on a red dress, preparing for cocktails in Little Tokyo with a man I used to love. I meticulously curled my hair. I strapped the red heels. The magenta streak in my hair clashed with the dress, but I couldn’t change that - the dress was otherwise perfect. I packed a leather tote bag filled with notes and materials for my three job interviews the following week. I left my legs stubbly to ensure that I would not let him inside of my bed. Stay focused on the work, don’t get distracted - I chanted this as I drove. I chanted this as I arrived at the front door. I whispered it like a spell as I handed the keys to the valet.

He was sitting at a table in the same weary suit. The words in my mind stopped. I did not call him by any other name than the city that he belonged to.

“Shanghai?”

“L.A. Woman.”

The server followed me to the table and I instantly ordered us two vodka dry martinis before he could speak. We looked at each other for a moment in silence. Assessing the other. Taking each other in. I don’t know what he saw, but I saw a downtrodden man. Sure, designer clothes - but he didn’t know how to iron a shirt. He didn’t know when it was time to visit the dry cleaners. He didn’t know how to style his hair. He was a boy, unable to conform to the customs of adulthood. I broke the silence in hopes the pity in my eyes would subside.

“How long have you been in LA?”

“Actually, I just got here”

“And you just found me?”

“Right outside an ice cream parlor. You can take the girl out of Akron.”

I subtly laughed in resentment. I looked down to ensure my chest was properly perked.

“I was tired of Shanghai and I wanted better opportunities. I had to come back here.” I knew he was lying to me. I knew the company branch went under. I followed his company’s online presence. I knew he wanted to seem strong and successful in front of me, and I wouldn’t break that image for him. However, I looked around. Dim lights with martinis and a dishonest conversation wavering - I felt almost instinctually that I needed to get him out of here.

“Want to come over and play a video game?”

His body loosened and his shoulders dropped at the words. I smiled. He grabbed the check.

He followed me back to my apartment right off campus. I gave him my ex-boyfriend’s sweat pants and a T-shirt. I took the suit and put it in a bag in my bedroom. I took off my dress and put on shorts and a tank top. We played Crash Bandicoot into the night with a bottle of wine. The tote bag with disorganized career notes sat idle.

“Tell me what I have missed.”

I tried to find answers, but there’s nothing to miss when you’re a college student in Los Angeles getting a degree in fashion merchandising. An internship with Chanel in Paris. An internship with L’Oréal in New York. Learning color theory and fabric composition. Learning how to arrange handbags in a store window. Trend forecasting. Having a boyfriend I wanted to like but just couldn’t. Wasting time with him for two years. Walking a runway show in NYFW for Sacai. I resented his commentary in the ice cream parlor, insinuating that I was still a girl from Akron. I wasn’t a girl from Akron anymore. I was a girl in LA. Both could be true, but I didn’t want them to be. I rejected a fact in favor of identity. He looked around the apartment and could see I was an individual on-the-go and on-the-run. Projects, posterboards, fabric swatches, and fashion accessories were on the walls in lieu of photos.

“What’s next?”

“I’m staying in LA. That’s all I know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I just feel connected to this place.”

He asked about Catherine.

“Would you believe she left New York?”

“No!”

“Yep. She’s married in Akron with a baby on the way.”

“Married with a baby? When did she leave New York?”

“A year after you. She met a guy from high school who lived in Jersey City. They got married and moved back. It was a whirlwind, but they’re very happy.”

“Is she still writing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who did she marry?”

“Remember Quinn Fields?”

“Oh, fuck that faggot!”

“He’s a good guy. Don’t say that.”

He apologized immediately, but the comment made me angry.

“You fumbled not one, but both Evans Girls. Maybe you’re the faggot.”

He stayed quiet for a second. I apologized for being tactless. I asked him to stay the night. We finished the wine and smoked some weed and we snuggled in bed. The leg stubble wasn’t a strong enough barrier, but it did spare us the intimacy that I wanted to avoid.

The next morning we woke up and I asked him to leave before my sister and family arrived. He asked me if my sister ever knew about our night in New York. I declined to answer, which was an answer in and of itself. He asked me to stay in touch and I told him to take me to dinner next week. He did.

Teddy, 2009

Within a month of dating, I got out of North Hollywood and found an apartment in West Hollywood. Carole was in the process of finding a new apartment, but I didn’t see a reason for us to be separate. I asked her to move in with me. She was hesitant but she loved WeHo. We didn’t know what we were doing, but I knew I wanted to spend every second with her that I could. By mid-June we were unpacking bins and deciding what to keep and what to toss.

The magenta in her hair was gone. The magenta of the Bund was out of my line of sight. Shanghai never existed when Carole was opening boxes and unpacking books on our Ikea kitchen table. Those rushes to the store together are the highlight of this time period for me.

We need a colander. We need kitchen staples. We need collard greens. We need a new bookshelf. We need to agree on a unisex body wash. We could’ve made a list, but we didn’t. We’d notice we needed one thing and several times a week we’d get in the car with very little direction. We’d drive down the freeway in my jeep blasting either Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, or Biggie Smalls. I remember her hair blowing in the wind while she was belting lyrics.

Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis

When I was dead broke, man, I couldn’t picture this

She knew every word. I wondered where she learned these song lyrics. She didn’t know them in high school. I wanted to know every inch of her. I wanted to find out everything I missed. I wanted every memory recited to me to the point that I remembered them myself. I wanted to live in that little head of hers. At red lights I would just glance over at her while she sang and smoked her cigarette out the window.

When we dated that summer before my junior year of college, I thought I loved her - but now I know. I never wanted to be away from her. I wanted to apologize for running away. I wanted to show her that I was not going to go anywhere again. She could depend on me. I would stand by her forever. I remember her picking out paint swatches for accent walls. That’s when I saw her real creativity spring. She named the swatches not by their name, but by specific colors that I had never heard of before. Fashion phrases that meant nothing to me.

“Babe, I know nothing. If you get it down to two colors I’ll be the deciding vote.” It’s not that I didn’t have an opinion. I wanted that bungalow to look like her. She had this warmth that emanated in everything she touched. I never felt safe or content in that Shanghai apartment or any of my apartments in New York. In her presence alone, I felt like I could conquer the world. As humiliating as it is to admit, she made me feel like a man.

The accent wall was coral red. It had a different name, but that was never going to be something I could retain. The paint dried and we had a housewarming. My colleagues, her college friends, her colleagues, customers and baristas she met at the coffee shop, people she knew from the boardwalk in Venice, a family she used to babysit for in Marina Del Rey.

Carole was a people person. She loved talking to anyone and everyone. She could strike up a conversation with a wall, and the consequences of that was having 80 people coming and going from our bungalow for seven hours. Three kegs were not enough. The potato salad was gone before sunset. By the time everyone left our fridge was empty.

The way she could work a room, it made me proud that she chose me again. The most beautiful girl in the world in an orange designer dress from the 1980s. As I grilled hot dogs in the backyard, I could see her through the open windows. I could hear her laugh. I never felt this way about Michelle. I never felt this way about Catherine. I never felt this way about Campbell. She was the girl I was going to marry.

I looked at her and thought, maybe I could buy a house in Akron. Drop everything and move home. Come home heroes.

Carole, 2009

Teddy was sitting at our kitchen table with furrowed brows looking at tax documents for work. He was focused, his button-down shirt was draped over the back of the chair. His trousers were unbuttoned, unzipped. It was 10 o’clock in the evening. The windows were open and the front door was open with the screen door locked. I could hear the cicadas outside. It was a cool early night in late summer, maybe it was late August or early September. I was sitting on the floor on my belly with my legs curled. I was reading a novel by Toni Morrison. Our life had swiftly become so domestic. It was as if nothing had happened before this despite the fact I ran into him four months prior. Then we were living in this bungalow in West Hollywood. We had a full gallery wall with art and photographs we liked, that we agreed upon.

I remember looking at him and specifically feeling alarmed. I was unsure of him but I was sure that I was more sure of him than I had ever been on anyone else. I went all the way in with him. I chose to dive feet first. I think when I saw him on the street my instincts to veer my eyes was not because of his clumsy positioning, but because in the core of my being I knew that acknowledging him alone was sealing my fate. I was saying goodbye to open ended questions. I was choosing a complete life. I threw my cap in the air and fell into a relationship all in one second. I accepted a job in my field.

My friends were confused. Asking me if I was sure of this guy. Do you even know him? Are you having a manic episode? Are you okay? Blink twice. The questions were valid. I had only dated one guy in college and when we were together I didn’t like him at all and everyone knew it. Then Teddy reappeared and I signed a lease and I acted with a reverence that appeared to be misplaced.

They didn’t know him, nor did they know our history - but did I? Or was I just creating a narrative in my head? Was this narrative even something that was rooted in love? Or was it rooted in velocity and symmetry? Was I asking everyone to look at our love story like it was made of neon light?

I said yes to moving in, not only because it was convenient, but because we were acting like two people who had nowhere else to be. It made sense. We were inseparable. Why not move in together? We were both making good money. He was making significantly more than me, but nonetheless we could afford to live in the bungalow together. I looked at him and I was unsure if I wanted to marry him, but I was certain I wanted to get a cat with him. I wanted to go to the movies with him and get on planes together. I knew I wanted to see what he looked like in a beach chair at a resort in the Maldives.

Teddy looked up at me and we locked eyes. He gently pushed the papers aside and stood up. He walked toward me and got down on the floor. He pulled me into his arms. Yes, I was unsure of him - but I was sure of this life we shared. I loved this moment. I loved being held in his arms while the cicadas sang and danced outside amongst the tall trees. When I didn’t look up, I completely forgot they had palm fronds sprouting from the tops. I forgot where I was.