Treats

Picking Rachel "Treats" up from LAX I am listening to pop rock on the radio. Because Ne-Yo got it right I'm so sick of love songs and I can't turn off the radio. So I just change the channel. I don't care: Korean rap- Mexican news- Brittney Spears- anything without connotation, is my jam these days.

Rachel produces the Canadian radio arts show Q on CBC. We've also been friends since before she had a clear queer consciousness- in other words since we were seven years old, trying to make our way on the playgrounds of Toronto. As we drive back from the airport, we talk, of course, about Jesse James and Sandra Bullock. There are some people I would drive across town from in order to avoid their opinions about health care reform - with Rachel I would fly across the country to ask her her thoughts on butter. She's my Dorothy Parker. In terms of Sandra and Jesse- she likes Sandra, she wants to remain on the correct side of history, but the man was married to an ex porn star...

I take us immediately to the 101 Coffee Shop. It's Thursday and I know the UCB show will be letting out around the time we get there. So there we are in hipster highschool heaven, Charlyne yi, Aziz Ansari, adjacent, sipping on decaf coffee and successfully avoiding my ex boyfriends.

Upon arriving at my apartment we immediately decide that the best action plan is to leave Los Angeles. Rachel has scored us some passes to the Dinah festival in Palm Springs. The Dinah Shore Festival is Disney Land for Lesbians across America and Salt 'n' Peppa is playing. Enough said.

We arrange to stay with her cousin, I put together a California mix, with Dr. Dre, Chili Peppers, and some Ani DiFranco (lest we forget our hippie, feminist, tortured, vegan roots in a sun drenched moment of bliss) and we hit the road.

Palm Springs comes and goes in a quick 24 hour blur. There are a lot of women. Salt n Peppa plays "Shoop". And interestingly enough "What a Mighty Good Man" to which Salt calls her husband on stage, and makes all the girls cheer. It was one of the most culturally confusing moments of my life. It was the 90's intersecting with Lilith Fair, with palm trees, and way too many Mojitos. Rachel's cousin took us out to eat at Spencers. An aptly fancy restaurant with beautiful California casual undertones.

I remember when I was a teenager, my cousin worked as a storyboard editor for Ren and Stimpy, and my best friend and I used to fly out to Los Angeles to visit her. She had connections with Woody Harrelson's drug dealer in Venice. We used to get really high and drive out to Palm Springs. We would sit in restaurants like Spencers, and I would try to imagine what it would be like to be famous, and to be loved. Two dangerous aspirations. As a teenager, in sleepy dreamy Palm Springs, the combination of the repose and the rich always made the hairs on my arm tingle.

Spencer's was perfect. A group of 60 year olds looking like teenagers were there for a disco themed birthday party. We ordered Mojitos which is definitely the drink of choice in Palm Springs. The dishes were farmers market fresh. And the molten chocolate cake was perfection.

It rivaled the molten chocolate cake at Pace. Pace, nestled in Laurel Canyon, is one of my favorite restaurants. It is Bohemian chic, softly lit, with the likes of Hilary Duff getting her Joni Mitchell on in the fairy lights of another era. At the beginning of the meal the waiter will ask you if you would like the Molten Chocolate cake. The only answer to that question is: yes.

They begin cooking the cake at the start of your meal, so that when it arrives it is baked at a temperature that feels personal to your palette. A temperature that is sexy and loving. Who needs a boyfriend when you can have warm chocolate in the canyon? However if you can eat that cake in Laurel Canyon when in love, (which I have been lucky enough to do) well then, the temperature will feel even more personal, even more sensual, even more calculated to your own DNA, as everything does, when in love.

We drove back from Palm Springs directly to Downtown L.A. It was Easter and we stopped in at Royal Clayton's for some fish and chips. Rachel had one of the best Bloody Mary's I have ever tasted.

Then we met our friends at the Basketball game at The Staples Center. We were watching from a suite: the Clippers play the Knicks. Two teams that were sure to lose. Nick and I have a running contest to see who will be signed by CAA first. Again, two teams that are sure to lose. In the middle of the game, Nick leaned over to inform me that his manager was pitching his (excellent) script at CAA that week, and that it looked like it would be me who would be buying him dinner at AOC, as I was undoubtedly going to lose the bet.

This sent me on a downward spiral of questioning how every decision I'd made in both love and career had brought me to this moment in time. This very well fed, losing moment in time, in both career and love.

During the game I couldn't decide which team to root for. Nick being from New York, is a die hard Knick's fan, and the rest of the suite was rooting for the Clippers. I kept switching teams. Because I wanted some sort of guarantee of winning. In the fourth quarter, I decided to cheer the Clippers on. Because here I am in L.A. Because in basketball, in love, in career, pick a side and fucking play your heart out. The side that you choose can be arbitrary or connected to some tribal pulse so deep within you that it seems to choose you. Play to Win. In the heat of the game, the moment of passion, you make choices, whether the crowd is cheering or booing. And sometimes you pay for those choices for years to come. But looking back on that moment you remember: there was a crowd, a cheer, a choice, and a play. And you played yours- no one can ever take that away. We're always made more interesting by the games that we lose anyway.

The Clipper's lose about 30 seconds after I make that realization.

With Molten Chocolate cake, and with love, with life, it's the heat that you apply that matters. It's the passion you bring to the moment that matters. The game is always losing, there is always the timer as we play, but somehow in the playing itself, we win. So as Juliet says when dreaming of her Romeo "learn me how to lose a winning match"

It's an old worn metaphor that love is a game. Two teams show up to the Staples Center ready to match each other. And two teams play. Same with career. I often find myself questioning choices. What would have happened if I'd gone this way rather than that? What if I had played that one game differently? What if I had let my guard down more? What if I had held it up? What if I had stayed with my manager even after he asked me to sit on his lap at the Rickie Lee Jones concert?


Driving Rachel back to the airport, I still have dust on me from our weekend of playing. I still have dust on me from our childhood days of running around in the playground. I still have the taste of chocolate in my mouth,from when I did have that chocolate cake at Pace, when it was the perfect temperature, when I was in love, and the night seemed to sing to us. I still have the red sharpened CAA pencil that someone, yes a special someone, stole for me at a meeting he was at, in my purse, because a bright red sharpened pencil says more to me about hope than a penthouse.

Remember being a kid and playing for hours out in the street? Playing so hard that you're only opponent was the night itself coming. Playing hard enough to over ride the sound of your mothers voice calling you in, playing hard enough to shake off all the cuts on the playground, the racial slurs, the pains of home, playing so hard that you shook it all off, until you kind of were the game. Until you were free.

I call Rachel "Treats" because she has the same insatiable taste for sweets that I do. We arrive at the airport, she grabs her bag out of the backseat. I tell her that her leaving is not helping my state of mind. She smiles her perfect smile at me. I can almost hear the streets of Toronto calling us back outside.

"Get home safe Treats" I call after her.

I drive away. Windows down. Listening to terrible music on the radio, which I still refuse to turn off, searching for a match for the cigarette I am trying to light, and being as much of a Juliet as I can muster, as the bill boards hustle past me. Please, learn me how to lose this winning match.

Pace'
www.peaceinthecanyon.com
2100 Laurel Canyon Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90046-2004
(323) 654-8583


101 Coffee Shop
www.the101coffeeshop.com
6145 Franklin Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90028-5220
(323) 467-1175

Spencers Restaurant
www.spencersrestaurant.com
701 West Baristo Road
Palm Springs, CA 92262-6325
(760) 327-3446

Royal Clayton's
1855 Industrial St
Los Angeles, CA 90021
(213) 622-0512
www.royalclaytonsenglishpub.com

Q
www.cbc.ca/q/


Dinah Shore Festival
www.dinahshoreweekend.com/media.html