Unconventional Conversation

Anxiety's best friend.

Walking up the jetway into the main terminal of LAX, there’s a man about five feet in front of me that keeps glancing back. This guy in his yellow Timberland boots and puffy, black jacket, he keeps turning around and looking at me through the single eye hole in his black, full face ski mask. Casually, he slows his pace until he’s walking alongside me. So close we could be holding hands. 

Imagine this guy taking an interest in you. Those eyes, my god.

Los Angeles holds a special place in my heart. Not just because Mediterranean style houses are my favorite, the weather is always perfect, and every imaginable convenience is at your finger tips 24/7, but because it’s the first place I envisioned myself living after high school. I’d spent my junior and senior year convincing myself that my calling was some job in the movie industry. Writing, shooting, editing, directing, I didn’t care. I just knew that I belonged behind those twenty-foot-tall concrete fences, riding around golf carts between sound stages with a name tag on my shirt that indicated that I was somehow important. Then, music slowly took over my life, pushing film into the backseat until ten years later. My first time here was during a road trip with my childhood best friend, but that’s a story for another time.¹

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“You from LA?” His head tilts at a forty five degree angle as he walks, his boots dragging on the ground with each step. Through his mask, his jawline is square and sharp. The fabric in front of his mouth distorts, concaving and convexing with each muffled breath. Telling him I’m from Pennsylvania, he asks me what I’m doing here. I can’t tell if he thinks I’m someone else or someone he thinks he recognizes.

The thing about LA is that it’s one of the few places in world where people go to try to be somebody. Nobody is going to Boise, Idaho or Lincoln, Nebraska to become a famous-this or professional-that. Even somewhere as massive as Orlando, Florida. No one is moving to the home of Disney World to become the next Banksy or Dita Von Teese. Los Angeles is the hub of people trying desperately to both be anyone other than themselves and one hundred percent themselves to a fault. So, it makes sense, him questioning me.

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“Just here for work,” I say. You give too much information to a stranger and the conversation snowballs. It veers into how you got into your job, how long you’ve been there, and so on and so forth, until, suddenly, this stranger knows where you buy groceries and what sort of financial investments you’ve made over the last ten years. My lower calves feel tight, constricted against the elastic of my socks. The blood pooled at my feet from sitting for so long. Every step aches behind my left knee.²

A breeze pushes the smell of gasoline up the carpeted jetway. “What do you do for work?” I can’t get a read on the conversation. On him. I tell him I play music.

“Drums?” 

“Guitar,” I say, correcting him.

“You ever play a five string bass?” After telling him yes, he stops walking, puts his arms down, tilts his head back and looks at me sternly. “No way.” The entire economy plus section of the airplane slowly shuffles by us at the entrance to the jetway, trying to get from Terminal C to wherever. “You slick with it like that?” He starts walking again, oblivious to those around him. “What about an eight string guitar?” I say yes, and all he says is a long, drawn out, “nuh uh.”³

People in the terminal run by, late. Some sitting, eating, waiting for their flights to anywhere-but-here. Everywhere you look, people drag Louis Vuitton carry-on rollers. Hold their Gucci hand bags. Sporting their six-hundred dollar Fendi face masks. This is definitely LA.

“You got bitches lined up out here?” His question is jarring because of it’s bluntness. He pauses and then puts his hands up apologetically. “Sorry,” he says, “you fuck with bitches, or dudes?” We’re about a hundred feet from our gate and Vinny still hasn’t exited the plane. I slow my pace and this guy starts telling me how LA has the best weed and coke and the conversation is taking a strange turn and it’s hard to tell if he’s hitting on me or trying to sell me drugs or something entirely different and we just haven’t gotten there yet. My mouth is sticky, the way wet leaves stick to dirt. I tell him I need to wait for my friend getting off the plane and this guy offers his right hand up like he’s gonna arm wrestle. He says, “It was great meeting you man,” and then bro-hugs me.

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While checking bags a few days later, for my trip home, the woman taking the luggage asks for my ID and boarding pass. She glances at my driver’s license and says, “Olson! That’s a strong name.” She looks at me over the top rim of her N95 mask. Her eyes are a glossy hazel, and they squint as she smiles. “You cute, too.”

Aside from Vinny and myself, there’s maybe ten other people in the check-in area. Imagine a little puddle jumper airport, how empty those can get on some random weekday in May. 9:30AM on a Tuesday morning in LAX and we could be in Allentown, Pennsylvania or Yakima, Washington.

She hands my ID back and says, “I could be your older sister, though. Born in ‘79.”

Grabbing my bag, she leans in close and says, “You’re a beautiful person. We both are, Virgos are beautiful beings.” Pausing, she looks at me and says, “But, you know that.”

According to my natal chart, I’m a perfectionist to a fault. I can be cold and calculating because I have trouble “letting go” of my emotions. I’m overly critical and a hypochondriac.⁴ I’m not sure how this is considered beautiful but, hey, I’ll take it.

My natal chart. Please, someone tell me why I am the way I am.

She leans in closer and says, “Listen, we’re not perfect. Lord knows I’ve done some fucked up shit.” I want to look behind me to see if Vinny is almost done checking in for the flight, but this woman’s eyes are reaching through mine into my soul and clutching onto my insides for dear life. She starts to take my bag and continues, “But, we can forgive ourselves.” She steps back and puts her hand up to steady herself, like a jolt of vertigo blasts her. “I gotta relax with these percocets.” She laughs and throws my bag onto the conveyer belt. She points to my left. “Anyway, your flight’s up the escalator, gate 58.”

And, just like that, before boarding my flight, before even making it through airport security, I already miss Los Angeles.

1. Seriously, this story is way too long to be told here. Another post, another time.

2. This pain’s been happening for the past couple years. One time, I woke up with a golf ball sized knot in my left calf. Thinking it could be a blood clot, I went to the ER and the triage nurse berated me and told me it was obviously a skin infection. Obvious to who? Turns out, it wasn’t a skin infection and ended up going away on it’s own a few days later. So, ha, take that, nurse.

3. I actually just played an eight string guitar for the first time a few months ago while recording on the new album. Weird. Thick. Thats.. what she said?

4. Hypochondriac is pretty extreme. More like easy to concern with regard to health. There’s a good reason for it. More on this later.