People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is...

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as her car drives up the onramp. “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles." Though that sentence shouldn’t bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter…Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blair’s car. All it comes down to is that I’m a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven’t seen for four months and people are afraid to merge.

From the opening pages of LESS THAN ZERO by Brett Easton Ellis.

Haven’t read this one in a reaaaalllly long time and felt like I needed a vital dose of disaffected 80’s youth in LA-ness. This is hitting the spot.