Never My Love

It was too ferocious to be sustainable, although when we asked him if there'd come a time when he'd grow tired of us, he replied, merely, 'never'. As different as we all were, we all came together for a reason. We were in this because we lived a life that was fierce and unrelenting, passionate and farcical, tragic and clownish, and in that second when we replied 'Never my love', we meant it, experiencing in that moment a purity and truthfulness that was curiously sustained by the illusions and deceit which fueled us. We lived each moment in its entirety, to completion, beyond that even - to the point where we were stretching liminality, eliminating boundaries, literally gorging ourselves on life until we burst into flames, and what was left was not a phoenix, but merely charred, bitter embers.

The Godfather worried me that week, dabbling on the dark side with Lola and Princess Stephanie. The girls had moved into his West Hollywood house and their supine bodies gently sizzling in the afternoon sun had become permanent poolside fixtures, while he had called in sick far too often, given that he had at least four big-budget movies with demanding A-list stars about to roll into production. I watched it all unfold over emails and photographs popping up online, only to be swiftly deleted by the Godfather, fearing his facebook-phobic partner's suspicions might overcome his aversion to social networking sites. The Godfather had fallen hard for Lola, was still intrigued by this little creature permanently doused in alcohol and a comedown.

He called me up one sultry, cool, Los Angeles evening, and I could imagine him standing there staring across the city from poolside, a drink in hand, worry etched into his face, raw, slapped skin basking in the emollient of a tranquil evening. Lola, he said, was cooking him dinner - Chicken Stew and Dumplings, a traditional Texan dish. She was from Texas. Everyone in Los Angeles is from somewhere else, particularly the most fucked up. That American Dream all over again. His voice sounded tired.

"She's the strangest mixture of sweet and adorable and tough and abrasive and abused and abusive...and she doesn't sleep until during the day, so she is exhausting to have around, late at night - but its so nice to come back to what feels like a "home", with someone so affectionate and loving there...."

I hung up, turned to accept another glass of rose from Declan, and we watched the waves break onto the shore of Malibu, and talked in low, calm voices about what to do if The Godfather didn't break out of his obsession soon. "You coming on Friday?" asked Declan hopefully as he walked me out to the Merc after we'd dined on octopus and shrimp. "I can't deal with them alone."

I was coming on Friday. I drove up to the hills as the sun was setting and found Lola and Princess Stephanie looking spent and exhausted with smudges of kohl around their haunted, beautiful eyes. Their skin was ashen and white, and they sighed an unenthusiastic hello, embraced me laconically. They both smelt slightly stale, as if they'd just woken up, which, it turned out, they had. The Godfather stepped out of the house in a blast of a/c looking unusually perky, given the excesses of the week (X and shrooms on Tuesday, five girls in the hot tub on Wednesday, the arrival of the Prince on Thursday). He greeted me with a kiss and MDMA, a glass of Veuve to wash it down, and I left the girls swooning, and we sat in the back and talked, staring blankly at the movie screen, our words starting to flow a little faster, a little easier, until with a delicious rush I said, surprised, "Oh, I think I just came up."

The night and the talking, the dancing and the hugging, the sweet caress of a touch and the gentle, delectable high of the drug smudged us messily into one mismatched psychedelic shared dream, and the Prince arrived with some paintings he hung outside for us to see, and the sun set quickly and it was night and we boiled in the hot tub like lobsters, eyes rolling in the back of our heads and mouths gurning, and Princess Stephanie squealed; "How can you not dance? You guys don't wanna dance? I have to dance on this!" Lola had been quiet and affectionate on the drug, as if all the darkness in her had leaked out, or been suppressed and tamed and squished into some deeper, darker place. She took Stephanie's hand and flitted down the hills to a club, and The Godfather and I talked some garbage, blinking and sighing as if we couldn't quite take the serotonin overload, but of course we could, and it seemed as good a time as any to do more, and we wandered into the movie theater to watch a Korean movie and curled into a labyrinthine innocent hug, and the pitter-patter of wet feet broke our stupor and who should turn up but Lola, fierce and insane, demanding love from us both. We lay on the cushions wrapped in blankets until 7am and some lines of coke broke the dream sufficiently for me to be able to move, and when The Godfather made hints that I join them in bed I slipped out, drove home with my jaw meshing frantically up and down, staring grimly at the road ahead for fear it might suddenly slip out from under me. When I got back to Silverlake I felt like the bottom was falling out of my world and the colors of everything looked too intense in the morning sun, and I sat and smoked alone at 7am, unwilling to commit to sleep, unwilling to let the night go, unwilling.

It was too ferocious to be sustainable. The next day I bailed as everyone else drove to Malibu on shrooms. Instead I sat on the stoop with C and Dustin and played poker and drank PBR and felt almost normal again, although when I thought of Lola and Princess Stephanie I shivered and gave in to an overwhelming tide of sadness. I drove to Malibu the following afternoon. The Godfather had texted me in a panic saying he couldn't control Lola, she had gone crazy. They had spent the evening staring at the log fire on shrooms, she snapping at him, growling like a small vicious dog, by turns morose, then violent, abusive and witchlike. She was sitting gazing blankly at the sea in an oversize sweatshirt when I arrived, and The Godfather handed me some tea and said, "That's it. I can't take anymore. I told her to leave."

We played on the beach with Declan's children and a labrador and Lola seemed happy, seemed... normal. Almost as if the horrors the Godfather had whispered of to me were merely the product of a psilocybin induced nightmare, insubstantial will o' the wisps, driven away, shrieking, when the sun rose. Prince and Princess Stephanie arrived, distant and noble like two sphinxes, and The Godfather said, "D'you know one of my neighbors told me Lola moved in with his friend for two and a half months a while back?"

I drove her to Venice. She said she was going to see Radiohead with her boyfriend, the rehab kid who was son of the famous sixties folk singer. Apparently the kid and his dad used to do acid and coke together growing up. She smiled wanely when I dropped her off, kissed the tips of her fingers and blew them to me as if the kiss might float through tinted glass and touch my skin, as if that casual gesture would say more aptly than she could, never my love. Never my love. She didn't seem upset by the Godfather's firm request for her to leave, and perhaps she wasn't. Perhaps she knew, like me, there's no such thing as never, and once we had healed sufficiently, we would tumble right back into that rabbit hole again, start tearing shreds in our smooth skin, as if the scars and the accompanying ache were the only things that made us feel properly alive.

Lola

Declan met her at a party down in Malibu, where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola, and he asked her name and she cocked her head as a song came on, looked around and said, Lola, El – Oh – El – Ay, Lola.

They left the party. He took her (in his BMW convertible) to the Producer’s house in West Hollywood, in the hills above the Chateau Marmont, and there Lola realized that Declan probably wasn’t the best, the most profitable bet for the evening, and so she latched onto the Producer, who was. You know The Producer? The dude you may know as The Godfather. Before The Godfather knew it, 24 hours had passed and Lola and Stephanie, her best friend, had moved into the place. And his regular existence - which was a pleasant 9-6, few drinks at the Chateau, take-out meals delivered from the fancy celeb restaurant off Sunset, various forays abroad on location shoots and some weekends away in New York or Paris or London with his partner or an expensive hooker - suddenly became subsumed beneath the barrage of Lola, El – Oh – El – Ay, Lola.

The Godfather invited me around one morning to old WeHo after I’d taken too much Adderall (it tastes just like…) and had been awake until 6am painfully listening to C flirt and laugh with his Colombian bint next door. But when I arrived the pool was clear and serene and quiet, and there was no sign of Lola. The Godfather looked a little sad.

“She disappeared on Monday morning, and then Tuesday at 3.30am both Lola and Stephanie drove up in the Hummer, dragged me out of bed and we started drinking again, but I think she’s left for good this time. I’ll pay for her booze and her drugs but nothing else, and she probably wants someone who will buy her clothes at Fred Segal and give her a credit card. But we have a real connection, you know? She feels safe with me. It’s like her haven here. And I love having her around and being part of their screwed up, weird little world.”

I slipped into a bikini and grabbed a Corona, and who should turn up but La la la la Lola and Stephanie, dainty and sweet in their huge aviators and billowing dresses draped over teeny bikinis. They had been back to Warren’s Bel Air Mansion for the night – the rap producer they lived with as part of his harem of gorgeous hangers on, girls that were all models and assistants and divinely beautiful and young, but didn’t put out, no - not to Warren at any rate. “Though he wouldn’t say no,” sang Lola airily, and leaned over me with an exquisite smile, a cigarette dangling from one side of that luscious mouth. “Hi I’m Lola.” “We met.” “We did?” “I was with my friend Callum, the photographer who looks like Heath Ledger,” “Oh yeah, I remember. A bit. I think I remember. Is there champagne?”

Lola and Stephanie de-robed and spread those heavenly bodies onto hot concrete and the Godfather grinned sheepishly and returned with a bottle of Belle Epoque. The atmosphere was hostile and tense because I was there and they were not yet sure of me and whether I would accept the rules of the game, because there are rules in this game, and break them and you’re out. Would the girls like more Champagne? I went to fetch some more, took pictures of them splashing like little seals together, watched Lola as she wandered over with that little girl body covered in bruises, and coiled up against the vivid whiteness of The Godfather’s round indoor body. “Shall we have a party?” he announced. Lola and Stephanie clapped and eyed me to see what I would say, and phone calls were made, and they drove off to buy cigarettes, but not before they hugged me because I’d adhered to the rules (whatever they were) and I was part of this surreal trip now.

I switched from Corona to Veuve, just as the pretty boys arrived, three beautiful, chiselled surfers with big egos and curiously sexless attitudes strolling through the door, followed by a tan model type (actress) with electrifying amber eyes, a ruthless ambition. “They’re just decorative, you won’t be intimidated by them,” giggled Lola as she threw her arms around the Godfather and winked at me. “How long have you known them for?” he asked conversationally. “We met them last night.” Even Stephanie, her friend whom she shared with the Godfather, Lola’d known for merely two weeks, and Kristin for less, but time, time’s irrelevant, it wasn’t about time and depth and lasting enduring BFF’s, it was about the here and the now and finding those people who, with their peculiar chemistry, could somehow spark off your night, coalesce into something beautiful and hedonistic and debauched and indulgent. If they didn’t, they drifted off before you could bring it all down, my darling, my sweet, my little girl.

Declan drove over from Malibu just as the sun started to set, and Lola and Stephanie discarded their bikinis and danced together naked like statuesque nymphs as the three decorative boys ignored them and sank into the hot tub, and the ruthless girl, Kristin, zoned in on Cash, the one with long sun-bleached hair, who was Stephanie’s boy, and Lola and Stephanie clucked and gathered me to them in reprehension, and we disappeared to the bathroom with the Godfather. Stephanie chopped up some pills, and, well, I’m not the world’s most physical girl, and when Lola squeezed me tight I heard a snap and she broke my goddamn finger. I took four aspirin and some Adderall and washed it down with Veuve, and Lola padded wetly through the house holding hands with Stephanie and they jumped, little nude seals, into the pool and turned to me with model poses, lips pursed, beckoning for the lens.

Lola was a model until she got ditched by her agency for going in and out of rehab, and now she lived with Warren in Bel Air, and Stephanie was starting out on her model career, and the boys just did it part-time, one had just graduated, and the other wanted a job with The Godfather, who had already granted it indulgently when he saw they had no interest in Lola, la la la la Lola. Lola had a boyfriend, the junkie son of a famous sixties folk singer, but it was a dangerous relationship, abusive and filthy, ecstatic and chemical with coke and brown and X. So she was here while he was in rehab. She would sometimes disappear in the middle of our conversation, would Lola, lead the Godfather, blinking and astounded, into his large, cool, white bedroom, close the door, emerge a little later looking naughty and seraphic, while he, with a new spliff in his hand and a smile, appeared somehow replete, somehow awed.

Lola and Stephanie, Lola and Stephanie, Lola and Stephanie are having a conversation and you are not invited to join in, but I am. There are still concerns about Kristin, who is still talking to Cash, and still seems oblivious to the looks and the hints and the whispers that she has crossed a fucking line, and to defuse the situation the Godfather led us all to his outdoor cinema to watch a Polanski movie. It was a hint that talking and schmoozing and decadence might have calmed, subsided after a picturesque peak, evaporated like that yellow dust through a rolled up twenty, so the rest of the crowd vaporized into Hummers and BMW’s and a new Merc and drove back down to the Chateau, on toward a different party, and it was just Lola and the Godfather and Declan and I, and Lola smiled and took me by the hand and led me to the hot tub, and we curled up next to it as it bubbled like witches broth and stared at the full moon.

“The moon is very important to women you know. The moon gives us energy and power and cares for women. It deserves some thanks. It’s good just to be grateful for it, you know? Oh sweetie, you’re so special. I love you.”

She curled up next to me and gave me a hug, jumped up to watch the rest of the movie. I left toward the end, drove back in the morning to pick up my car, and Stephanie and Lola waved at me from the sun loungers. “I just woke up at 7am and Stephanie crawled into bed with Lola and me,” The Godfather grinned, and Lola and Stephanie disappeared to take a shower together, floated away to find more parties and people and money and decadence, promising to meet us in Malibu later.

Well, the Godfather’s not the most passionate guy, but over morning drinks he looked me in the eye, and said he’d almost fallen for her, Lola, despite the drinking, the insanity, the manipulation, the trips to rehab, the promiscuity and fuck knows what else. I could see why because I loved her for it too, this exquisitely damaged and ruthless creature with an absence of morality, an abundance of unspoken rules, carefully monitored shots of affection, a personality both poisonous, and helplessly ambrosiac.

“I woke up this morning and she’d drank a bottle of rose, half a Jack Daniels and more champagne while I slept,” The Godfather mused. “And she said she wanted to have a baby with me, and something in me said, ‘Why not?’ but God, how would I explain that to my partner? He’s already furious and convinced I’m fucking you.”

The Mexican landscapers turned up and gaped at me in my bikini and the Godfather loftily pointed them through to the backyard to landscape the orange trees and water the bamboo and plant the little speedwell around the fountain. He returned looking happy. “Some Japanese tea perhaps?”

Lola and Stephanie sent me effusive fbook messages of love the next day, next to their artfully posed professional profile pics, lifted from a L'oreal shoot they both did.

miss u well cum back soon prmise

An extract pertaining to me

From Paul Carr's excellent new book Bringing Nothing To The Party.


I had arranged to meet Mimi in a coffee bar down the road from her club. Obviously as she was anonymous I had no idea what she looked like, so we'd swapped descriptions by email a few days earlier. I found this almost impossibly difficult: describing myself in purely objective terms without sounding either arrogant or pig-ugly. 'Erm . . . I'm sort of average height, brownish hair . . . erm . . . I'll probably be wearing trainers.' She, on the other hand, didn't need to say anything. I was meeting her just before she started work: she'd be the one who looked like a stripper. I suppose the mental image I had in my head was of a dyed-blonde giant of a woman, with enormous fake tits, wearing a thong and perhaps some kind of plumage in her hair. Sitting in a bar, drinking a cocktail with an umbrella.

On walking in, there was no sign of anyone looking even remotely like a stripper. A bored looking barman wiped down his bar while a busboy scooted around trying to look busy. Perhaps Mimi was in the toilet adjusting her feathers or doing coke off the top of the cistern or something. I did a quick lap of the bar but still no sign of anyone stripperish – just the barman, the busboy and a tiny girl in sweatpants sitting in ayoga pose on a sofa in the corner, sipping a coffee.

'Hey!' shouted the yoga girl, seeing me looking around and apparently without appreciating that the cafe´ was empty and that shouting was completely unnecessary. I turned round, as did every-one else. 'Are you Paul ?' Her accent sounded as if a Welsh girl and a New Yorker had been in an accident and had been chopped in half and welded back together again, half and half. A linguistic cut and shut.

'You must be Mimi,' I said, feeling ashamed of myself for making such tacky assumptions. Turns out strippers don't look anything like strippers when they're not at work.

'Ruth,' said Mimi.

We talked for an hour or so, with Mimi – Ruth – filling me in on her bizarre back story. How she'd lied about being able to cook in order to get a job as a chef on a boat sailing to New York; how she'd gone through immigration pretending she was on holiday; the trials and tribulations of getting fake documentation; the community of 'illegals' she'd become part of – a community which could only get work in kitchens and strip clubs and who at any moment could find themselves rounded up and deported.

Then there was her Mafia clientele, the perverts who assumed stripper was simply a euphemism for prostitute (as the song goes: just cos she dances go-go, that don't make her a ho, no) and the time she had hidden a wrap of cocaine in her thong and ended the evening bouncing off the walls having ingested the entire contents through her vagina. Finishing her coffee Mimi – Ruth – apologised for having to cut the meeting short but she had to go to work. 'But hey!' she yelled from no more than two feet away, 'why don't you come and watch me dance later. I'll get you in to the VI P room. You can have champagne and I'll introduce you to some people.'

I can honestly say, in the years I was writing about dot com millionaires not one of them had ever closed the meeting by inviting me to come and watch them take their clothes off for money. Oh, brave new world !

down the rabbit hole

My sister called. She had a friend in town, Callum, a photographer from the UK who specialized in celebrity behind-the-scenes shots - Clooney, Jude Law, Leona Lewis etc. Would I take him out? He was a little lonely after breaking up with his B-list celebrity girlfriend and could do with some beers.

I was reluctant at first, for no greater reason than because I'm lazy and too-comfortable in my happy little LA bubble, but I emailed him, invited him round to Silverlake, and even drove down to WeHo to pick him up in the Merc. The Merc, my new fucking Merc, bought from fucking cowboys in Glendale, one shiny-ass car with big fucking insurance. I pulled up outside the address, and Callum bounced over like a friendly labrador puppy. He had a nice face.

"You know," he said thoughtfully as we drove down Sunset, "I snogged your sister once."

"Dude, you fucked my sister."

"Ah, yes. It was shit, actually. Really bad sex."

"She said that too."

We smiled happily together and drove on. I stopped at TJ's on Hyperion to buy some meat and booze, and he laughed when I spoke to the dude who always serves me, the kid who used to be an unemployed actor and gave it up for a 401k at Trader Fucking Joe's. When I took him to the apartment he talked easily to Jim and Robin and S and J. I gave him a spot by the rusted washing machine, while J wielded a large fork and systematically burnt every piece of meat on the goddamn grill with a charming smile and a laugh, removing them carefully, only to place the offending items on top of the stinking garbage cans. It was an uneventful night but pleasant, though aggravated when one of S's friends, David, decided to follow me around all evening.

We rocked up at Medusa's come midnight, and David pattered after me like a faithful puppy, and Callum started to kiss J, and I felt a long, sickening lurch in my heart for that might-have-been, and it hurt so much that when we left at 2am I went straight to bed, while the rest of the group rolled on home and set up camp on the balcony, drinking wine until the sun rose. I woke up in J's room. That was wrong, it should have been C's room, but even though he was away I didn't want to sleep in his bed, it just felt wrong. I woke up wretched and broken, and didn't register, at first, Callum's feet sticking out the bottom of J's bed, and then I did, so I sat on his belly until he woke up, and grinned as I asked:

"Did you guys have sex in front of me you sick fucks?"

People started to slink away, vanishing like vampires as the sun rose, until it was J and S and Callum and I, the three girls together, as always, as usual. We went to CJ's for breakfast and Callum and J held hands and my heart lurched a little more. "That guy Dave was really into you last night," said Callum conversationally.

"Fucking tell me about it."

"He was a bit creepy following you around all night."

"Yup."

I sipped a Bloody Mary and felt even sicker. Los Angeles was starting to hit me hard. Nothing ever went wrong in this city, or if it did it was somehow obliterated by a smile and a Margarita, a cigarette under velveteen skies, a joint, a shot, a beer. Even the longing and the lurch was beaten into submission by the alcohol, by the laughter every day.

I invited Callum to come visit the Godfather that afternoon, and we drove up to his house in WeHo and sat by the pool sipping Coronas and talking movies, and he invited us over later for a drink.

I had a party to go to first, for Trix's birthday. The party was pleasant, chill. A relief, perhaps, from our outspoken, crude, debaucherous incessant, fevered partying. I spoke to Jonny, Trix, Diablo, Gabe, and Prince, hung out the front with a bunch of assistant producers I didn't know but liked anyway, and then Callum meandered up, did his London loving with the crowd, and we drove back to The Godfather's at around midnight.

I buzzed the front door, listening to the music rolling from the house in waves, tinny laughter, unfamiliar voices. I buzzed again. No answer. We crept around the side and waved at The Godfather as he emerged from the house wielding a bottle of Veuve. He did not look pleased to see us, and the reason why was paddling her feet in the emerald pool with an empty bottle of champagne next to her, a fucked, vacant look on childish features.

"I thought you said he was gay," muttered Callum.

"No, I think he fucks anything. Well, evidently. I wonder if his boyfriend knows..."

I smiled charmingly and whispered in the Godfather's ear, "Sorry dude, we'll have a glass of champers and fuck off so you can get your end away." He nodded happily in agreement. Declan, his best friend from Ireland, appeared from the garage with a leggy young colt with too much make-up and a nervous horsey face. The girls sat and petted each other with faux lesbian strip-club moves and eyed Callum and I briefly with wide-eyed disinterest, before turning their charm back to the Godfather.

"Fuck! Should we leave?" Callum whispered.

"Nah, take pics, down the Veuve and we'll go in twenty."

The girls started to dance lackadaisically around the hot tub, then the blond went to the bathroom to snort more drugs, and the brunette simpered at Declan who smiled grimly and beckoned me over.

"Not into this shit Ruth"

"Really? I think the Godfather wants us to leave."

"He's into it. I'm not. Might go home. Bored."

He crossed his arm and his shoulders came up to his ears defensively, and he leaned over to grab a glass of water which steamed up with the heat rising from the hot tub. Callum snapped away with a shitty little camera he found under a chair. I located the Veuve and drank some more.

"Callum, time to leave?"

We waved goodbye and walked down to the Merc. Next to it sat a huge 2008 Hummer.

"She drives a fucking Hummer? What the fuck is that about?"

"They're essentially hookers dude. I bet her 60 year old skanky boyfriend bought it for her."

"They're hookers? No fucking way!"

"Well, they may not have websites and deal with regular punters, but they find rich guys, flirt with them, fuck 'em, and get cash from them."

"Fuck! Fuck. Fuck. Really? You were so fucking cool in there! When you walked round the pool to talk to Declan, you were so in control, like you've seen this shit all your life."

I raised an eyebrow and gave Callum a look.

"I kind of have."

"Imagine if we emailed our friends back in London, and said we just hung out at the Godfather's house with two 21 year old whores. No one would fucking believe us! I'm totally moving to LA!"

We drove down Sunset and got to the Cat and Fiddle in time for last orders, perched on the edge of a fountain, sipped beers and talked.

"Promise me something," said Callum as he downed the last beer. "Always fuck with condoms Ruth. Always fuck with condoms."

Several days and Margaritas and joints and dances later, I had an email from The Godfather. The blond chick had moved into his house.

Honestly, it's like falling down the rabbit hole going into the world of these chicks. When you see any of their pix on Facebook or whatever, you enter another universe. They all do some modeling or "personal assisting" or even some regular shop and office work, but they mostly lig from mansion to mansion and yacht to yacht and party to party and house to house and hang out in vast groups of like minded, sexy pretty girls and have a great time (when they're not in rehab) ruthlessly exploiting fat, stupid, horny, successful men, before moving on to the next party - I fucking love it....

But the bottom line is - it's getting messy....

rosemary's baby

He woke at 5am when the heat of California had chilled so that our sweating bodies had somehow cleaved together in the night into one long, firm embrace, a hug that somehow obliterated past and future and, warm and secure, fixed us perfectly in a moment of quietly universal proportions. We unfurled, and he went to shower, and when he came back he kissed me quietly and made to leave. It was only when his hand was on the door that I suddenly leaped up from tangled sheets for one last fierce touch, and he laughed softly. "No goodbyes, you said," he murmured.

An hour later I drove to LAX and checked in for a flight to New York.

The intervening time and place was melancholy and tired, a month of tortured dreams, ash raining down, Brooklyn sticky and hot and filthy, long, long, lonely days of staring at the screen as I typed, only half-present. Always I had a beer in hand, a glass of wine, a vodka-soda, a cocktail, a wrap of something on the desk, some shrooms in my purse, maybe some weed on the bookshelf - as if self-destruction, this soggy, whispered world - would keep at bay fears and worries and the reality that since I had left, we had not spoken at all. J called every day. One time she was quiet and uncomfortable. Eventually she said: "I didn't want to tell you but he's been seeing that girl again. I thought you should know. I'm sorry. She's nice and all but, well, she brings nothing to the goddamn table. I don't know what he gets out of it." I sighed. "It's OK. I knew it anyway." And I did.

In the Brooklyn studio - a gray, anonymous, dingy cell - there was only one piece of furniture, a faded, stinking, velveteen olive armchair placed in the 12 noon sun-spot. I sat there for a long while in dappled, restless sunbeams and thought. New York felt like it was expiring, submitting to the poison with barely a murmur. I knew it was over, that I could not live here for much longer. I wanted to go back west, hit that frontier again, see if I felt that alien calm once more, that contentment. I realized, curiously, that for the first time in a while instinct was dictating that I stop running, abandon the plans for India, for South America, for more new people, experience, places. I just wanted to return to California where that constant, painful thrashing in my heart was soothed. I didn't want to admit it, but I also knew I wanted to return for him, just to touch once more that timeless place, that hug of epic proportions, secure and dry - blissful, in a way.

I sensed that contentment had an expiration date. I had to return before it was up. I flew back on a Thursday evening with barely a backward glance at selfish New York, drank vodka-cranberries on the plane with a tiny, unhappy lesbian who had just left her girlfriend, and J picked me up from LAX at midnight and drove me back to Silverlake where we sat on the balcony and drank foul, syrupy pink wine until our heads pounded.

At 4am I left the girls and slipped into his room, and fell back into that embrace. He left for work and I didn't see him for three days, but when he came back we were shy and awkward, and it made me sad because I knew there was something, I knew there was. That night I slipped into his room and it happened again - a softening of something, edges melted, life liquid and ambrosiac, giddy and pleasurable, and we lay like we were one person for what felt like hours. He slept and I wanted to leave, but every time I moved his arms would grip me tighter, and enjoying the sensation of security, of being grounded and held when my instinct is always flight, I stayed.

There was something, I knew there was something. It came when I was cooking for the roommates, my face damp with steam, boiling potatoes and marinating meat, stinking of garlic and herbs. He leaned on the countertop and was awkward and tense, but I knew there was something so I expected it. I just smiled like nothing mattered, kissed him lightly on the lips, and gibbered inane and dismissive words that wouldn't give away too much of what was in my heart. J and S left and I stayed at home to work, sitting on the balcony with my laptop and books, a bottle of wine, some music, and when he came back from seeing her he found me there, and we chatted pleasantly like two acquaintances with nothing much in common and nothing really to say, but desperate to keep up the illusion of something - propriety perhaps. He went to bed. I stayed outside. And then it came bubbling up. Rejection? Anger? I don't know. Something, some loathing deep in my soul for whatever I had become from all this life, all this travel, a strange, transient will-o-the-wisp whom no one would take a chance on. I love the world I live in, but it's different to other people's I know, and it felt like I had made it ridiculously impenetrable. That I'd cut myself off from everything I ever wanted because I had become impossible to be with in anything other than a fleeting, impermanent way.

I slept uneasily. I heard Jim, the other roommate, singing softly to himself until the early hours of the morning and it comforted me a little, until I woke up dry and ratty. Jim seemed to know something was wrong because in the midst of the melancholy he suddenly bounded up to me and wrapped me in his arms, then ran off again before I could even taste its sweetness.

I drove up to WeHo to see The Godfather that night, marginally better, not stinging so much, practical and smiling, ready to move the fuck on with some smartass comment and that goddamn 'lust for life' people keep telling me I have. We sat by the pool, looking down at Hollywood twinkling in its foul, saccharine beauty.

"It sounds to me like he was pretty honest with you. You're a very transient person, poised for flight all the time. It's hard for someone to contemplate being with someone like you, with the blog and the newspaper articles and the back story... it's intimidating! It's why you and J are such good friends - she grounds you, you give her energy. But it's hard for a man to take you seriously, see that beneath all that dazzle is a lot of emotion. Like the tarot said, there's a lot going on underneath the surface you don't reveal, a lot of fear too. The book as well. It's a very honest book. I get the feeling you don't say things, you write them."

"I'm not that transient. I lived in New York for three years. And I did just buy a car here. I may travel occasionally but I want somewhere to come home to. You ever heard that Steinbeck quote? 'I have homes everywhere, many I have not see yet. That's perhaps why I am restless. I haven't seen all my homes'. I've seen a lot of my homes. I still have a lust for travel, but I want to unpack too."

The Godfather paused contemplatively with a spliff dangling from his mouth. He removed it and exhaled a cloud of perfumed smoke.

"But you have this air about you that you're going to run all the time."

"I'm freelance! My finger hovers over the 'panic' button constantly because if I don't make money, no fucker's going to bail me out. I'm screwed. And I feel kind of alone in that."

"Well, stick around. I have a Zen Fatalism when it comes to relationships. Maybe he'll figure out he wants to be with you when he sees you're not going anywhere."

"Probably not, but anyway. I'd rather be the ex-gumar than the girlfriend that gets cheated on, so that's one consolation."

I smiled wryly. The Godfather moved inside to cook risotto and I cradled a cup of tea in my hands, perched on the kitchen stool like a child, watching him intently. He leaned over conversationally as I rolled him a spliff.

"Did I tell you about the time Benicio Del Toro turned up here to watch a movie in my private cinema?" he said happily, wielding a steaming wooden spoon, gluey with arborio.

We sat and ate in the cool of the night, and I drove home down Sunset in a quiet, thoughtful mood. J and S were already sitting outside when I arrived. He was in bed. I sat and thought for a long time, a lot of stuff. Stuff about how it bothers me I've never had a normal relationship. Stuff about how I wish I wasn't bright, and mouthy, and blunt, and, well, weird and was just a little more normal. Stuff about how I long to be a little more like the pretty, dumb girl who never answers back and always says and does the right thing. Stuff about how people seem to think I'm this hard-ass bitch who never wants kids or a normal life or a set of friends in one place, a home I come back to, a real home, not a place that's just a lonely room I sleep and work in. I felt sad, sure. I felt sadder than I can ever let you know. But this time I didn't leave. I just went to bed, and woke up in the same place. It really wasn't so hard. I could get used to it.