Six.

The last six years have been, as the kids say, a trip.

I left California in my recently deceased grandfather’s white Ford Explorer, full of heartbreak and explosives. I picked up the fireworks in New Mexico at a little stand by the road. I got the whiskey at a drive-through liquor store in Arizona. I was just a kid. A dumb kid with too many suitcases and a brand new nose ring and Courtney Love bangs. I drove east. I didn’t think about what that meant was in store for the next half-decade.

I moved to Waco, Texas when I was 18 years old, knowing nothing about the place other than that there was a shopping center off La Salle made up of a strip club, a tattoo parlor, and a Mexican restaurant, which I quickly and affectionately nicknamed Tits, Tats, N' Tacos. By the end of it, I could have stayed in that dinky little town forever, wrapped up in the lights from the Alico building downtown and the sunrise over the Brazos. I met my best friend washing dishes at a crappy day job downtown, and we started writing. Our first drafts were covered in salsa and fueled by tequila, but still. I worked at a magazine that was helping to shape the art culture in a city full of the most talented musicians, artists, writers, poets, and creative folk I’ve ever seen. I fell in love with a boy with a double-pierced nose who loved mac and cheese and Bukowski, but hated brushing his teeth. I never slept. I stayed up all night, all day, watching X-Files and baking cupcakes and drinking tequila and dancing to Lovefool by the Cardigans all around the kitchen of Beatnix Burger Barn. I jumped over the fence at The Strokes' concert in Zilker Park in a mass riot during SXSW. I lived in my very first apartment with a roommate that I adored and her baby cat, Sheldon. That boy moved on, but I kept his old Common Grounds sweatshirt, his Han Solo pajama bottoms, the scar on my left nostril where his nose rings got tangled in mine.

I moved to Spain, and discovered that I hated tapas, but loved taking taxis to my flat in Madrid at nighttime. I studied for finals in a little boat on the lake in Retiro Park, and got stranded in El Museo del Prado because I refused to tear myself away from Hieronymus Bosh’s three-paneled painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights.  I ran away to Barcelona for the weekend, where I accidentally stole the wallet, cell phone, and jacket of a mugger on the Metro who tried to rob me. I learned how to file a police report in Spanish when my passport was stolen at the airport. “La ladróna robó mi pasaporte en el baño.” I mostly ate salt and vinegar chips, because Iberian ham is gross, and gained fifteen pounds of white wine and Spanish moonlight on a hilltop overlooking the city of Granada. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care. I was free.

I moved to London during the 2012 Olympics and the Damien Hirst exhibit at the Tate Modern. I ditched my group, and took every single excursion alone. I rode the bus to Stonehenge solo, climbed to the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral by myself. I locked myself in my bedroom with a fever and would only emerge to eat buckets full of spicy soup from Wagamamas. I visited my cousins whenever I got lonely, or popped into a pub to drink pints with the other school kids at Victoria College. I ran away to Paris and stayed on a pig farm in Normandy, filled my belly with crepes, put a lock on the Pont des Arts in honor of my grandparents. I threw the key into the river. The next day, I found out that I got the job at Letterman.

I moved to New York with two suitcases full of shoes and shirts with embellished collars. I worked at The Late Show for a while, and made the best friends I’ve ever had in my whole life. We’d stay out until morning singing bad karaoke at Bar 9, ordering watery pitchers of eleven-dollar Yeungling, cursing tourists who walked too slowly in Times Square. I got hit by a semi-truck and survived. I did my very first book reading and survived that too. I met Stephen Chbosky after a reading at the Strand, where he invited me to send him my memoir when it’s finished. I got free tequila shots at brunch from the world’s most beautiful waitress, who said she had read everything I've ever published. I found out how Hemmingway and Fitzgerald developed egos and drinking problems on the Lower East Side. I watched the sun set over Brooklyn on my best friend’s rooftop. I walked a skateboarding goat down Broadway on a hot pink leash. I took a Polaroid with Danny Bowien on my 24^th birthday. I joined the Greenpoint Writers Group and found out that hey, maybe I could do this writing thing for real. I was lucky enough to be loved by a chef and an actor, before they both broke my heart, one at Boulton and Watt on Avenue A, one outside of my apartment, exactly one year apart.  I fell into a depression and I drank myself to death, but the best part was when I rescued myself at the end of it. I danced on top of a table at Whiskey Town, signing all the words to every 90’s jam I knew with every single person in the city who loved me. I ate dollar slice for a year when I couldn’t afford anything else. I tanned in Sheep Meadow on the Fourth of July, and I got through Hurricane Sandy with nothing but a box of Lucky Charms and a bottle of rum. I scared off a crack addict with a bayonet in my first apartment in Bushwick. I ate pizza. I ate so much fucking pizza. 

How lucky am I, really, to have collected so many beautiful pieces of artwork to hang all over my walls? How lucky am I, to have fallen in love with dudes who made me laugh and cooked me food and changed me, for the better now, I hope. How lucky am I, to have made friends with the world’s best comedians, greatest artists, and most talented creators. How lucky am I, to have gathered enough stories to keep me writing for a lifetime.

I’m on my way back to Los Angeles now. I’m nervous, because I haven’t seen her in a long time. But I think everything is going to be just fine. I think I’m going to listen to the Rolling Stones and drive down Sunset Boulevard, past the Roxy and the Whiskey where I grew up seeing shows. I’m going to go rollerblading on the beach in Venice, and I’m going to run straight into the waves at free Zuma. I’m going to go to every Laker game, to every Best Coast show, to every candlelight vigil for Bradley Nowell down in Long Beach. I’m going to eat Yang Chow and Cheebo’s like they’re going out of style. I’m going to be in love with a guy that kissed me in an alleyway behind a donut store when we were sixteen, and turned out to be a pretty cool adult. I’m going to take my dog Jasmine for walks in the Santa Monica Mountains. I’m going to be with all of the friends who have stuck with me my whole life, no matter how far away I’ve lived.

There’s a song that I love, and it goes like this:

“So, nurse me like a mother / Raise me strong just like my father / Let me wander off, discover who I am. / I’ll have learned the deepest lessons, gathered up the finest blessings / Return to California once again. / I’ll come home to California once again.