Los Angeles is Just Fine, Thanks for Asking, and Other Notes on Navigating an Angry Age
There is a basic law about crisis: the further away you are from a city or region experiencing natural disaster or civil unrest, the more likely you are to be convinced that the damage and danger are far more widespread than they actually are.
Just before sunset last night, my mother – made anxious by scenes of tumult on her television – phoned me. When I answered, I spoke as loudly as I could, iPhone against my ear; you see, my son and I were at BMO Stadium just south of downtown Los Angeles, sitting among a crowd of some 18,000 to watch our Angel City FC take on the Chicago Stars in a women’s soccer match. The only disorder in sight was occasioned by some inexplicable decisions by the referee. (Unwarranted yellow cards leapt out of his pocket far too easily. I shouted the strongest thing I could: “Pull yourself together, man!”)
“It just looks so terrible,” my mother announced. “I’m worried.”
“I’m sure it looks absolutely dreadful, mama,” I yelled over the din. “But it is not terrible here.”
Father and son, safe.
It was Pride Night at BMO. Before the match began, an all-women’s professional skydiving team descended – four of them, one at a time, leaping from a chopper suspended a few thousand feet over the stadium. One carried an American flag, one a rainbow flag; the third carried a trans flag, and the last carried a flag for non-binary folks. (New to me. Wonders everywhere!) They each safely landed on the field to wild cheers. A leader of the trans community was in charge of the coin toss; a transman sang the national anthem. For the record, this crowd stood and sang along enthusiastically, the final “home of the brave” almost shouted by many around us. This is a community that feels itself under attack, in a city whose values and commitments are despised by the currently ascendant powers. Joyful defiance is probably the best possible response.
Some think that heartbroken repentance would be a better response.
I have written that I’ve gone back to church in recent months. My children, their mother, and I now attend a non-denominational Pentecostal church in Koreatown. Though the focus in this church is not particularly political, there is sometimes talk of sin – and warnings against the demonic. I take these warnings seriously, not because I believe in demons, but because people I like and respect tell me that demons may be real. I pray aloud, raise my hands in worship, weep.
“Do you believe everything pastor says?” My daughter is curious. “I believe some of it,” I tell her, “And what I don’t believe, I store in a little box in my mind for contemplation and consideration.” I tell her that sometimes my answer is “Yes,” and sometimes it is “No,” but most of the time, it’s “Hmmm.” Hmmm is a perfectly acceptable answer. I am too old to be badgered or guilted into certainties I do not feel. Heloise sighs. She might have liked a papa with just a few more certainties.
A religiously conservative friend who knew I was taking David to Angel City’s Pride Night was scandalized. “You’re normalizing things in his mind that shouldn’t be normalized,” she said. “You’re exposing him to the demonic.” (That again.) I replied to my friend, gently, that some of my queer acquaintances were appalled that I was now in regular attendance at a charismatic church, an outfit that regards sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage as falling short of a fairly important mark. “I’m raising my children to be able to go anywhere, enjoy anything, and at the same time, not feel as if they must go along with whatever they hear and see preached and promoted.”
My friend was exasperated. “If you hang around a barber shop long enough, you’re going to get a haircut.” I hit her back with the Terence line that “Nothing human is alien to me,” and declared I’d like it if nothing was alien to my children. As so often, we left it there. (My friends are so lovely to me. They always attribute my failings to unresolved trauma rather than malice.)
I cannot give my children my certainties, as I don’t have many of those to give. I can give them my curiosities, as I have those in great abundance. I want them to be at home at Pride Night – complete with the gyrating drag dancers at halftime. I want them to be at home in church, able to take in and really consider a message about love and sin and grace. I want them to consider what those terms mean for themselves, and to make decisions accordingly. I want them to feel at home in every neighborhood in this vast city.
After the match, as my son and I are sturdy of gut, I buy us each a bacon-wrapped hot dog from a street vendor. The doguera speaks no English. I use my ridiculously bad Spanish: No cebolla para el, pero mas para mi, por favor! She understands the assignment. There is no fear on her face, and there are no fewer vendors than usual on this tense weekend. Perhaps they are all US citizens or Green Card holders? More likely, even in the midst of a draconian crackdown, money must be made, risks must be taken, odds must be calculated.
The dogs (I think based on a Sonoran recipe) are delicious, and David and I munch and stroll up Figueroa on a cool June Saturday night. LAPD provides traffic services after the match; the fellow who waved us across one street has full kit, badge and gun and belt. “Thanks for being here, officer” I say; “Have a good night, sir,” comes the reply.
A police helicopter makes a lazy circle above and flies off. Our car is where we’d left it, in the private parking space of an elderly apartment owner. The fellow and his neighbors sell their spaces for $30 a pop when Angel City plays, $40 when the men’s squad (LAFC) is at home at BMO Stadium. He speaks very little English but is assiduous about guiding me in and out of the narrow space, using an orange flag in daytime and a flashlight when the sun is gone. “Gracias por todo,” I say as I drive off, and the man waves his light in the air, a feeble but sincere beam rising into the sky.
My son snorts. “Jesus, dad, your pronunciation sucks. You thanked him for the bull.” (My “todo” does sound like “toro,” I admit.) We laugh together, and drive the six miles back to the boy’s home, no sign of unrest anywhere along the way.
Come to the point, Hugo. Say something about immigration policy, about Trump, about ICE, about the limits of peaceful protest. Forgive me, readers, I have nothing. Nothing original or profound, that is. I have only sadness that people are afraid, and I have only bewilderment that a city that seems so safe to me seems so dangerous to so many. I fear no neighborhood, not because I am a fool (though I may be), but because my curiosity always wins out over my anxiety. And I find that when I let my curiosity lead me, I am rewarded by encountering kind and interesting people, the vast majority of whom are themselves curious and interested, given the chance.
“But it looks so terrible on TV,” mama declares, and I know it does, because I’ve seen those same broadcasts. It makes me think of the time I went to the set of a slasher film on which my friend was line producer. We sat off camera as a stabbing was rehearsed and then filmed, costume blood spattered about and then cleaned up over and over again. In between takes that required shrieks of agony, the “victim” made her way steadily through a very large Jamba Juice smoothie and at one point, called her boyfriend to loudly discuss dinner plans. What we ended up seeing on screen was horrifying. What was really there was… a bunch of actors and craftspeople trying to make it through another long afternoon on set. I think a lot of city living, especially in Los Angeles, is like that. The terror only exists at a remove.
Still no point on immigration? No. But here’s what I do know: should I find myself at a protest (unlikely, but one never knows) or at a Pride Night, or at a worship service, or really any old where, I will find someone to thank. I’ve been married five times, and I learned way back the first time ‘round that a groom’s main job at the reception is to thank everyone for coming. I’ve taken that as my mantra for living. Thank you, brave officer. Thank you, day laborer. Thank you, lasciviously exuberant drag performer. Thank you, tired but resilient street cart vendor. Thank you, anointed preacher, delivering your fiery sermon about a choice I do not seem to be quite making the right way.
Thank you all for coming. Thank you for being here.
Thank you for letting me witness a new way to be in this world.
May my Angel Town and all within it be delivered from rage, from self-righteousness, from fear, from sin, from the lack of empathy.
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