City of Angels

Somehow the party lit up the entire street, even though it was held in a single apartment. It was a large apartment, the kind found only in the canyons in Los Angeles. It had a pool in the back, and several polished cars in the front. A girl in a leather dress lounged against one, posed with one high-heeled foot crossed over the other, shoulder tilted down, eyelids heavy with shadow.

Isabel had been to her fair share of parties. But she’d never understood what lured people to these sorts of parties, to places that boasted liquor, music that violated the law, and making out with someone you would likely regret in the morning.

Someone had once called it “chaos without consequence”. That someone obviously never read the papers and saw the endless stories about pretty, glamorous boys OD-ing on the pavement, or rock stars who got behind the wheel with beer on their breath.

But she wanted to see the appeal; she wanted to see how far she could push herself.

The interior of the apartment was a riot of people with drinks in hand swaying to slow EDM. It was absolutely full of people, some who abandoned the music to follow others out to the pool. She looked at them all. How could she ever fit in? Why would she- anyone – want to?

Ultra violet lights flashed. Someone was going around with scissors, cutting everyone’s glow sticks in half. Dancers waved them frantically. The entire apartment looked like a scene from Avatar.

There was an indoor pool as well. A girl lounged on the edge, in a bikini, wearing enough makeup that it was clear she had no intention of actually swimming. She was leaning against a boy in the pool, a hand on his wet shoulder, smiling and nodding. Isabel wondered what kind of person she would have been if she hadn’t left California for Minnesota.

Someone offered her a drink and a glow stick on her way to the patio. She shook her head, hesitated, and then took the proffered cup. It smelled rank and tasted it too. She handed it back after the first sip. The boy holding it looked abashed and slid back into the mass of dancers. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or glad. Someone had told her that alcohol could either make you very sad, very happy, or very angry. The world needed her to be absolutely none of those things.

Something blocked the doors to the patio. It took Isabel a moment to realize that it was a group of girls, rather than an art installation. They had taken their glow sticks and deliberately swiped neon paint onto their lips and eyes. A couple had gone so far as to paint every single nail with the stuff. They looked like the fairies in a child’s fantasy brought to life. Beneath the paint nearly every girl had a mouth as shiny as glass. She hated it-

Why couldn’t she just forget it and be as neon-bright as them?

One of the girls looked up at Isabel and made such a high-pitched noise that it could have attracted attentive dogs. Isabel was not a dog, but beneath the phosphorescence and the makeup she recognized Clementine. Celementine leapt from the group of girls – there went the perfect composition of the art piece – and grabbed Isabel’s arm. “Isabel, sweetie! I’m so glad you came. Isn’t this party a dream?”

Isabel made her mouth perform an approximation of a smile. She knew from experience that it made her look a little amused, a little cynical, and sometimes drew men’s attentions to her lips. 

Clementine only beamed back. She pulled Isabel into the group and rattled off several names. Isabel only assumed that they were almost all the same thing, since the girls they belonged to looked like different versions of the same Barbie.

When she was done she held up a glow stick. Isabel didn’t take it, but Clementine only wiped her finger across its tip and ordered Isabel to part her lips. Isabel let her pat the glowing paint onto them.

Isabel caught her reflection in Clementine’s eyes. With her lips painted she almost looked like one of them. It was the biggest lie.

Clementine acted as though they had all been waiting for her. They absorbed her into their conversation as though she wasn’t made of Teflon, as though the words wouldn’t just bounce off her. When the patio door opened she smelled oranges and chlorine and the dusty perfume of the canyon.

She was glad not to be alone; L.A. was not a place to be alone. It was all about connections, a city of freeways that connected downtown and suburbs and beaches, and people who knew the cousin of this celebrity or this producer. People around her held her hand and did little shimmies, air kissed her cheek. It was something you did with strangers in L.A. If you did not do those things it had nothing to do with the fact that you were surrounded by strangers. The point was to not be alone.

After some indeterminable amount of time – how long ago had she arrived? How long ago had she had that drink? – a couple of the girls became genuinely curious about her.

“Where are you from?” Sierra asked.

“Minnesota,” she said.

Sierra’s eyes went as wide as the eyes of a cartoon animal.

A bevy of boys appeared. Most of them were fresh out of the pool. They shook their hair, sprinkling everyone with shining drops. One of them slid down Isabel’s dress. “Where have you been?” Clementine asked one, pulling one down by the shoulder to speak right in his ear.

“Looking for you,” he replied.

Clementine smiled. She kissed him and he let her. For a moment his eyes were closed. They blinked open and focused on Isabel before he pulled away from the kiss.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Isabel,” she said. She didn’t ask who he was.

Apparently she didn’t have to. “Jasper,” he said. He was tanned, the sort of tanned that came from days on these beaches, or hours on ones in Costa Rica. He flashed pearly white teeth when she gave him an almost-smile.

“Darling.” Clementine was at her side again. “Enjoy yourself. I’m going to find Candace.” It was a dismissal, but Clementine was the one that left.

“Anything I can get you?” Jasper asked.

“Ross brought a couple mickey’s,” one of his friends offered. He scratched his buzz cut.

“Water,” Isabel said. She got a feeling from Jasper, almost like a challenge, or a chase. It left her stomach buzzing.

“Ha!” said Buzz Cut. “It’s too late for water.”

She aimed her cool gaze at him. She parted her lips slowly. “Does that mean you won’t get it for me?”

In an instant he’d disappeared to find a bottle of water. Jasper laughed and wiped at his hair with a towel. His eyes didn’t leave hers.

She didn’t know quite how to do this. There were only so many steps she could take before she needed someone else to lead. She tried to think of a signal. She parted her lips and nudged his calf with the toe of her enormous heels.

It was all he needed.

He led her up the stairs, where it was only marginally quieter. She’d never known the point of parties, so she’d never known when she had accomplished what she’d come to do: when did she leave?

Maybe this was the point. Everyone did it for a reason, didn’t they?

Jasper pulled her into a dark bedroom. It was full of mirrors, maybe made for someone who didn’t intend to have someone else in the room with them, or maybe it was entirely for that.

Jasper closed the door and spun. He grasped her around the waist, slid his hands down to her hips, and kissed her.

He was taller than her, but not by much in the heels. The heels had been an impulse buy. She bought them because that was apparently what you did in Mel Rose, though she couldn’t remember why.

They were still kissing. She didn’t try to keep track of his hands. She kept waiting to feel like this was wrong. It didn’t.

It was one of those stories that was neither particularly bad, nor good. Just a story of one’s youth that was almost chic in L.A.

His mouth was urgent. She’d been kissed like this, but not by a stranger. He pressed against her like she would only be here for a moment, like he needed to get all of her before she was gone. Ah, so this was what it was like. Passion without affection.

He pulled back, just far enough she saw the corner of his mouth, his dark eyes, his wet collarbone. He laughed, quietly.

She kissed him to keep him quiet. His fingers found the zipper of her dress. Nothing in her head told her to stop. Stopping was as pointless as continuing. But if she stopped he might ask her name. She wanted to objectify, to be objectified. If his name was Jasper or something else entirely, how did it change anything? Even his face didn’t matter. She could reduce him to his hands-

Which were on her bare back and pulling down the shoulders of her dress. This seemed like a very grown-up experience to have. Like saying Last night, in the canyon, I- and it was another story that blended into hundreds of almost identical stories in Los Angeles. It would be distinct and hardly memorable, because these stories hardly ever were.

He tugged the front of her dress down. The thrill of the chase – the one she assumed attracted everyone to this kind of action – was gone. There was no challenge now. His intent was clear. She was fine. Everything was fine.

He pulled her to the bed and leaned back for a second. “Shit,” he said, looking down.

She wasn’t sure if people said anything while they did this. What did they say? What could they possibly have to talk about? Whatever it was, she didn’t want him to say anything. It would only blur lines.

“Shut up,” she said, and kissed him.

In the second between kisses he said, “beautiful.”

She pulled away. Her lipstick had bled cherry across his mouth. “No,” she said. She said it like she said no to her parents when they asked if she’d been the one to break the glass in the sink. It tasted like a lie.

“No?” His voice didn’t sound different at all.

She wasn’t sure if, at the moment, she hated him, or herself, or the city for trying to show her what it had to offer and her attempt to see it and not being able to look at the drugs and the sex and the drinks without seeing past them to the unplanned pregnancies and heroin tracks and rehab stints. Why couldn’t she just turn her brain off?

“No.” She pushed his hands away and pulled up the straps of her dress. He stopped looking at her bra as she reached behind her for the zipper. She tasted the neon on her lips, smudged with her lipstick.

He chuckled under his breath. “You not drunk enough?”

Maybe this would be easier if she was drunk. But alcohol left a taste in her mouth almost as bad as this moment.

“Clementine is probably wondering where you are,” she said, voice like ice.

He looked at her. He clearly couldn’t see beyond her raccoon mask of eyeliner. She’d put it on heavily enough to discourage any emotional guesswork.

She wet to the room’s add-on bathroom and fixed the wrinkles in her dress. She ran a hand through her hair and wiped the lipstick off the side of her mouth. She did not look like a more grown-up version of herself. She did not look like the girls that loitered in boutiques, talking about their surfer boyfriends while they tried on large sunglasses. She looked like those people who had come into the city with screenplays or demo CDs and wound up in bars. No- she didn’t even look like them. She looked like a girl with so many sins that if you took them all away she’d be nothing but her eyeliner and a pair of heels. Everyone in L.A. was nothing but sins.

How stupid she had been to reduce L.A. to the stories of those on the decline, when it was the collection of those who were already fallen.

She emerged from the bathroom. Jasper had disappeared; when she went down the stairs she couldn’t see him or Clementine. Someone offered her a hit of something. There was sweat at his temples. The veins in his arm were dark as bruises. He smiled the smile of someone who was so low he didn’t see there wasn’t anywhere else to go.

None of the people in this party would ever drive through Los Angeles and see more than the grey pavement in front of them. They may not all have been born here, but they were made out of – into – this imaginary kingdom, this hipster nirvana. This place where dreams came true if you made them come true, and destiny was for the wealthy and luck was for the poor. This dry, dustbowl. This glowing, glittering metropolis. This city. This city.

Isabel left the party. She did know it had ended. It had ended and there was nothing accomplished. That was the appeal, she decided. They had nothing to accomplish, and therefore nothing to distract them from the non-reality that was all of Los Angeles.

It didn’t matter if you’d come here to make it big in the industry. It didn’t matter if you’d come here to surf. It didn’t matter if you’d come here to forget an ex boyfriend, or to find one. The moment you entered the city, you were dead.

Art by Cara Delevingne

Text by Lucie MacAulay