I land in LA on the 32nd birthday of my best friend from Governor's School. We are completely different people from who we were in high school, but we are the exact same as how we were together as teenagers. Emily's best friend from college picks me up. I’ve been friends with Gabi through Emily and through the internet but this is the first time getting a face to voice. Gabi's as kind and generous and nerdy as I could hope for my best friend's best friend. This is my first time visiting California (in my memory) but who cares. This is the first time I've seen Emily in person in 6 years. Thank god we reconnected online after college. Thank god we've changed and stayed the same.
I meet many of Emily's friends over birthday sushi, but importantly I meet Ben, waxed mustache and impeccable outfit. Me and Emily and Gabi and Ben. One more would make our full DnD group, but she's home in Arizona.
Wednesday: Critter Squad, Cave of Munits, Wi Spa
Emily and I visit one of Emily's old workplaces. Emily her entire life has been the group expert on animals. For a time she was paid for it.
Once I'd held as many animals as I could, we drive out to the Cave of Munits. After a dramatic retelling of the time Emily took Gabi and Gabi, raised on the dependably flat lands of Illinois, froze halfway down the cliffside exiting the cave, I want to see this cliff for myself. Two Carolina kids, raised on boulders and fallen trees and rock scrambles, reunited. Emily tells me I'm still her adventure buddy.
The trek to the cliff is short and technically easy, but ‘the sun is a deadly laser’ and makes the 30 minute walk horribly hot and dusty. We bemoan not bringing enough water. We rest in every patch of shade we can.
This was in fact steeper than the rock scrambles Emily and I grew up on. And Emily concedes that in Gabi's infamous attempt of the Cave of Munits, there was no climbing wire.
With the rope the climb was more bark than bite and once we haul ourselves over the edge back onto something mostly horizontal, Emily grins at me a wasn't this worth it.
We rest and snack and ration our remaining water. There's an adolescent pigeon screaming at his parents, unaware of his privilege of being a rock dove raised on actual rock cliffs. There's a bee hive high high above us, in three perfect combs.
The sun has moved, more shade and more atmosphere temper the heat. As we trek back we wearily repeat back to each other, "The Korean spa tonight is gonna hit." It does indeed hit.
Thursday: La Jolla Cove
Emily and I drove out 3 hours to snorkel at La Jolla Cove. This was one of the most beautiful days and I have neither photos nor sufficient words to share it with you. Here are some seals but not even as many as were out at low tide when I didn't have my phone.
Snorkeling we saw bright orange fish (Emily knows the name) and schools of small thin fish and black fish with one white spot on each side and big fearless fish that always swam alone. We saw so much swirling green sea grass. We made a friend diving alone with a go pro on a stick who joined our duo. We swam in caves. I wish I could show you. I don't even have the poetry for it.
Friday: Book Star, Illiad
Today Emily has to work. Gabi's kind and generous and lends me her car for my solo day; she has her usual WFH work day. I'm looking for Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Emily's recommended two bookstores, a Barnes and Nobles disguised in an old theater and cool local name, and a used bookstore where I will have difficulty finding anything specific but an easier time finding something else interesting.
I go to Book Star first.
They don't have the title I want, same as Books-a-Million in Rock Hill. The clerk pulls up a list of other B&Ns that purport to have it in stock and as she rattles off the list I ask if she could print the page for me. None of the locations I call end up having it, but the clerk tells me where to find Lorde's other titles in this store. They only have two, in two separate sections: Poetry and "L..GBTqwhatever" which is a general arm sweep area in the more officially labeled "Social Sciences." I find both and choose one and end up with another Ada Limon poetry book.
On my way out I'm tentatively stopped by a college-age-looking kid holding up a laminated picture of a grizzly bear with the words "Sierra Club," asking if I have a moment to talk. We talk about national parks and environmental human rights and their Rhode Island chapter. Back in the car I follow them on Instagram.
The Iliad is much more overwhelming. I wish I had taken any photos of how the books stacked and piled on the ground on the ends of the shelves and in the center of the room.
I don't find any Audre Lorde but I do get some technical photography books.
Ben, Gabi, Emily, and I all reunite and go out to a game store and for Japanese barbecue.
Saturday: The Temple, Leo Carrillo State Beach
There's a Thai temple that hosts Thai food vendors every weekend. So many of my Discord calls to these friends have ended because they're going out to this temple food market. Again I have no words, I didn't even take a picture of my crispy pork with Chinese broccoli on rice.
That was breakfast, energy for a full beach day. I drive Gabi's car. It's all four of us today.
We look along the ocean cliff for Emily's memory - somewhere there's a cave. Emily talks with a lifeguard and we end up crossing over rocks to a sandy cove the tide is already creeping into. Emily and I go ahead to search for the cave she remembers so certainly. Gabi and Ben stay behind, watching the tide for when it inevitably blocks our exit out of the cove. Emily and I have found our way into caves every day we've been out together.
Ben's right though, we'd have to split our vision and mental calculations and anxiety on when the tide make the rocks we climbed over to get to this cove too treacherous. We move slowly back to the beach proper.
Alvvays and The Strokes and the rest of my college playlist drift faintly from a stranger's speaker farther down the beach, mixing without competition with the dull roar and crash of the waves. The gentle tinkle of the bell of a two-wheel ice cream cart. Everything sounds far away. I'm reading Audre Lorde's Notes from a Trip to Russia, her own travel log and navigation of another culture, the first essay in Sister Outsider, what I got yesterday on my solo outing. Seagulls just opened and ate an entire bag of Cheetos in the time it took for our beach neighbors to run back yelling and waving their arms. I get hot enough to go down to the water but it's all rocks and kelp. I complain as I always do that nothing compares to the easy warm softness of Southern beaches. I return to bask; in the 6 years post top surgery this is the first summer I've felt comfortable and confident shirtless in public. I finally get hot enough to brave the rocks, they eat me up but once I'm past them and the break the swim is perfect. I get chewed up on the way back in to shore.
Back home we cook together and finish the second half of Japanese lesbian Dracula the musical. I spent 10 years looking for the pro-shot in its entirety and months editing and synchronizing the subtitles once I did finally find it. I've watched it so many times, as a full film and in days worth of 30 second scrubs and it's still SO good.
Tomorrow I visit another friend, a different form of best friend. I have clothes to return to them and a gift I finally finished. Tomorrow evening I go back to LAX. Tomorrow night I fly out to Japan.