Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

by Eve Babitz

You can’t write a story about L.A. that doesn’t turn around in the middle or get lost.

I’ve been in love with people and ideas in several cities and learned that the lovers I’ve loved and the ideas I’ve embraced depended on where I was, how cold it was, and what I had to do to be able to stand it.

Early in life I discovered that the way to approach anything was to be introduced by the right person.

I’d broken off with both of those guys because I was impatient with ordinary sunsets; I was sure that somewhere a grandiose carnival was going on in the sky and I was missing it.

Poor Shawn thinks he likes silver rooms and gay Southern adventures when he really likes to lie in the sand.

“You are perfect for Los Angeles, you know. You’re like the lady whom everyone’s in love with but they hate themselves for it because you’re all wrong. They don’t have anything to go on with you. No precedents. You’re voluptuous and too smart and too kind and too mean, and you give everyone just what they want and then you get sad and bland . . . I used to wonder why you dressed the way you did—one minute I see you in those old shirts and that scarf! . . . and the next you’re at some art thing and I see women look at you when you don’t know it and they’re all wondering how in the hell you did it. You glow.”

Once it is established that you are you and everyone else is merely perfect, ordinarily factory-like perfect . . . you can wreak all the havoc you want.