Los Angeles: Just passing through (2000)

I knew I was no longer in London when, after our meal of grilled trout and bid-grained California rice, the waitress in neon-pink uniform gave us, no, not mint candies, but two bubble gums. I looked at Val, my college classmate and friend whom I haven’t seen in seven years, and then he said: “Welcome to Los Angeles.”

I slept through most of the trip. I only woke up again when the people around me began making noises and looking out of their portholes. Being the incorrigible Pinoy, I also looked outside and there it was: the Rocky Mountains lying below in browns and yellows, the canyons, ridges and ravines turning into orange and red as the sun began to set. Two hours later, we were at LAX, or the Los Angeles International Airport.

My sister was there, along with her husband, and they took a picture of me wheeling my luggage out of the counter. Very Califonian Pinoy, I thought, and when I looked outside, there were the palm trees I had seen in so many movies. The day after was the baptism of my first niece, Nicole, which was held in a Chinese restaurant. The Pinoy guests lost no time in offering me jobs so I could stay longer in California. When I told them I was just passing through, they gave me looks of disbelief.

 To escape from them, I walked over to the window. Outside, tall, gray buildings grazed the sky: canyons of chrome and glass, stone and steel. But the traffic was slack. A man was pushing a cart loaded with cans and empty bottles. Yes, in the middle of California dreamin’.

The Pinoys who talk about their big houses and cars in their garage will just drive me to boresville, I said to myself, so the next day, I rang up Val. He was an English Literature major at Ateneo; later he took an MA at Cal State and now teaches at Cerritos Community College. He picked me up from my sister’s apartment, drove me to the place with grilled trout, and then we went to Huntington Gardens, which also had a museum and an art gallery. A Gutenberg Bible was displayed in a lit case inside the library, along with portraits of famous Americans. There was a Japanese garden, a square space filled with grains of sand.

A rake had been used to comb the sand, and now the grains assumed the shape of undulating hair, line after line of the thinnest hair. Van and I sat on a wooden stool inside a traditional Japanese house, where we talked about the face of Gong Li and the words of Angela Carter. Imagine: two Filipinos in a Japanese garden, talking about a Chinese actress and a British writer. The seduction of the arts crosses the imaginary boundaries of geography, of skin.

Val lives in Hermosa Beach. He said that if I wake up early enough, I can see the golden dudes in skimpy trunks, riding the waves in their surfboards, or playing volleyball on the beach. But that night Val and I went to a bookstore called, ahh, The Hungry Mind. Some people were reading dull verses about their angst. This is California, where subtlety and elegance were difficult to find. Val and I just went to the café at the back, where we looked at the books (mostly best sellers). The next morning, I woke up late, alas, and thus I missed the golden boys.

My friend left the Philippines right after college. He still writes, he would tell me later, in his house by the beach, where the girls in string bikinis fly past on roller skates.

The search for the perfect body — along with what novelist Isabel Allende called “the search for the perfect cappuccino” — animates life in the Golden State. Remember, this is where the monster TV hit Baywatch came from. It’s life in the fast lane, then, and life in the dream factory. A showbiz family from the Philippines is known here as the “Slip and Fall Family.” They have the habit of going to the big department stores — Nordstrom, J.C Penney — then literally slipping and fall on the floor. In lieu of a long, time-consuming and expensive litigation, the store will just settle out of court.

Another shady character has the habit of pointing out TNT (tago ng tago) Pinoys to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a fat reward. Such rats, of course, are also found among other nationalities here — the Asians and the Latin Americans and now, the Eastern Europeans, fleeing economical and social oppression in the old homelands.

Along with the homeless white Americans, these “undocumented” aliens ironically roam the streets. The Latinos sell oranges and peanuts on crossroads, while old people advertise their housekeeping services in exchange for food. A group of “undocumented” Central Americans quietly squat on unused land below the five-level interchange of the San Diego and Santa Monica freeways. They illegally tapped water and electric lines, bought TV sets and refrigerators, and only got evicted when the INS raided them.

These are scenes, my friend and I mused, that won’t reach our cinema screen in the Philippines, these images of a dark and despairing city.

Afterward, my friend and I went to a bookstore in Hollywood, where, Val informs me, “movie stars hang out even late at night.” It was a small store crammed full with wonderful books. The shelves were so tall and narrow they had a movable ladder to help you reach the top. Here I bought tons of books I hope to read in the next 10 years.

The next day, I dragged my sister over to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where installation and mobile art works were on exhibit. Afterwards, we visited Ports O’ Call and had huge plates of steak for lunch. I bought glass dolphins from an American lady who used to live in Subic. The place was crawling with Mexicanos, some of them in wide-brimmed hats and cowboy boots. And everywhere, the heat that seemed to settle on your very pores.

I didn’t know it would be hotter than Manila, and infested with money-mad and car-crazy Pinoys.

Perhaps a poem I wrote for N. could sum up my inchoate feelings about this great and sad state.         

“Even angels would choke/ in this air. / IBM, Bank of America, Sanwa/ seem suspended in smog that resembles ashes/ frozen in the air/ for too long. / Our Honda Civic zips/ on the freeway/ that’s really a huge car show: in the nineties heat shimmer/ the Lexus and the Camry,/ and yes, the old masters:/ the Volvos, the Benzes, the BMWs.

“The Latino in a sports car/ to my right is cute, all right, / but why oh why/ does he have to drive/ as if he were still in Guadalajara?/ the deejay speaks/ in an accent as crisp/ as Manila’s yuppies’ FM:/ One young boy shot in the back/ while on his way to school./ Two woman raped in McArthur Park.

“A grandmother in the cross street/ to Glendale holds a placard:/ will work for food./ A homeless man carries a bundle/ of clothes like precious water/ on his back./ On Santa Monica, beneath the lights,/ a young black dude/ jerks a full and fleshy thumb/ for a ride.

“Oh. I’m so far away from home, / and so close. / In this city, even angels/ would weep.”

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