Happy Halloween

The other night I stopped for gas as I took a roundabout way home, after an impromptu traffic avoidance detour. As I stepped out of my car at into the empty gas station in the dirty heart of Hollywood, something seemed eerily familiar. I stood in the spotlight reflecting off the white cement and besides the chug, chug of the gas pump, it was so silent. The hum of the nearby 101 sounded like the ocean, deceptively calm and potentially murderous – my eyes darted around as I tried to figure out what was giving me that uneasy feeling.

There was a small garage next to the empty convenience store on the lot – and when I saw it, it all came to me. I’d stopped at this very gas station years ago. A friend and I were on our way back home to the valley after checking out an exhibit downtown. It was a hot day and her car started acting up – so we pulled in to see if they could check the fluids. The day was filled with sunlight and this place had looked more colorful. It’d been busy, full of cars and people. I’d not been familiar with this side of town then and hadn’t known where I was. But I was here again. It looked so different now.

This is an example of an LA haunting, where memories attached to random locations throughout the city come flooding back. Like the bench where I saw my first tranny hooker. Or the gas station where I sat in the car while my date peed in the bushes. And the coffee shop where I wrote most of my thesis. Even the restaurant where I sat outside for hours talking to a friend about if I should break up with my boyfriend. And, yes, we broke up.

Sometimes I purposefully seek out these places – like the building where a company I’d wanted a job has its office or the bar where I went with a guy I liked who never called me back – just to get that haunted feeling.