Survivor: California

Nothing makes me feel like a New Yorker like being somewhere other than New York. On our first night in California, I went out to buy a six pack. We'd had a long day and were looking forward to sitting by the pool and having a beer before we went to sleep. So I hopped in our car and drove off. A few seconds into my trip I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for. Were I in New York I would be looking for a bodega, and I would know how to find one. I would walk down main streets until I got that bodega-approaching feeling that comes when you start to pass the stores that typically surround a bodega - the Taste-D-Lite, the Chase bank, the cell phone store.

In Chicago I would pull over and ask where the closest White Hen was. In New Jersey I would ask someone for WaWa. In Vermont I would ask for directions to a package store. In other assorted states I would try to find the 7-11. But in California, I had no idea what type of store beer might even be sold in. I thought maybe 7-11, but who knew? And then, three minutes into my beer search, I found the Church of Scientology. I was, most assuredly, no longer in New York.

This had actually been obvious from the second we stepped off the plane in LAX, when the bus driver tried to make friendly conversation with us as he drove to the rental car lot. And then again, when the rental car lady asked us if, for an extra $10 a day, we would like to upgrade to The Hottest Car in LA. The hottest car in LA was, I think, some kind of Cadillac, and no, we didn't want to upgrade to the hottest car in LA. But I loved the concept of the hottest car in LA, as though there had been a scientific survey for hot cars, and someone had determined the hottest, and if you were seen driving anything else you would be deemed uncool and run out of town. The hottest car in New York, by the way, is a taxi.

Our first stop was beautiful Santa Barbara, where we discovered that taking Milo out on the street in our new super-duper backpack-baby-carrier was a guaranteed way to attract comments. Milo encourages this, of course, because he is a smile slut, and also oddly chatty. But most of all, being out in public with Milo guarantees that we will be forced to talk to anyone else with a baby in a two mile radius. At the end of our trip I'm pretty sure we'd met every baby in the greater Santa Barbara area.

Milo travelled well, as babies go, but still I can't say I really want to go backpacking through Europe with him any time soon. For starters, he's entered a grabby phase. Which means that when you sit down at the table for breakfast, anything within arms reach goes into Milo's mouth. One morning Steven put a bowl of hot oatmeal in front of me, and within seconds Milo had plunged his fingers into it. It wasn't his finest hour.

Shortly after the oatmeal incident we dropped Milo off with my father, and proceeded to dance around the car singing "Freedom!" for a good twenty minutes before getting in it and driving off to the wine country. We quickly concluded that we'd be more than happy to move to Los Olivos, CA, open up a vineyard and hire people to pay attention to it while we sat around and read and wrote and reveled in ridiculously scenic countryside. In the wine country we met a man who paints wine labels and another man who owns a vineyard in Cleveland (what?) and a woman who wanted to commiserate with me about being a struggling writer until she discovered that I'd actually been published. And then, tired and stuffed full of grapes and chocolate, we headed back to Santa Barbara to pick up Milo, who was busy demonstrating to my father why we sometimes call him the Amazing Always Awake Baby. When you see other babies in car seats or strollers they are always napping. Not Milo. Milo is always, constantly, eternally awake. It took another day before we figured out that if you cover the stroller with a black cloth then, like a parakeet, Milo will, thankfully, drift off to sleep.

Our time over in Santa Barbara, we pushed on to Los Angeles, where Steven and I both determined that we would not like to live, unless we were able to sell screenplays and make enough money to buy a gorgeous house in the hills. Otherwise, it seems like you pretty much live in a strip mall.

As the wedding festivities began we met a number of people who, when asked what they did, said they worked in the "Entertainment Industry". I told one of them that if someone said that to you in New York you'd assume they were a stripper. Maybe I was feeling a little insecure. Why did they keep saying Entertainment Industry? Why didn't they specify what the hell they did? Did they think we were stupid? Was this the job equivalent of people who went to Harvard, who, when you ask them where they went to college, say Boston. Which is extremely annoying because then you have to ask where in Boston, and then they say Cambridge, and that is the point in the conversation where you realize they've not only gone to Harvard, but have decided to be annoying about it, and you'd rather not be talking to them in the first place because they are making this conversation twice as long as it should have been, and you were only asking where they went to college to be nice anyway, you really didn't care that much.

So at some point I asked one of the entertainment industry workers why people weren't more specific about their jobs, and he said he thought that maybe it was because there were a lot of roles one could have in the industry, and by being vague they didn't have to explain that they were peons. Or that maybe it was that people felt like it was a stupid industry to be in, especially when talking to uppity intellectual New Yorkers like ourselves, and it was their way of being dismissive. Which was the complete opposite of the way Steven and I had interpreted it. We'd thought people were being dismissive of us old-media types.

And then it was on to the wedding itself. I have to say that attending a family wedding after recently publishing a tell-all book about one's own wedding and general disdain for weddings in general is an experience so surreal that someone should write a book about it. Not me, of course. Someone else. The highlight? Hearing my second cousin asked my aunt, to whom she is not related, if she was mentioned in the book. When my aunt said she was, my cousin replied, "by name?". My aunt wasn't mentioned by name, but I think at that moment maybe she wished she had been, which is pretty funny because usually one would hope to avoid mention in a family memoir.

The wedding was over in a flash. I like a participatory wedding, and any celebration that involves the bride fronting the band on Proud Mary is a hit in my book. And before we knew it we were back on the BQE, driving home after a long day of travel, past those utterly depressing buildings that look out over the highway.

"Yay, New York," said Steven.

And I was happy to be home, but also suddenly had the feeling that perhaps I'd stayed too long at a party. I liked the open spaces of the wine country, the smell of the ocean, the beautiful days repeating on each other until you long for rain. My whole life I'd wanted to live in New York. And now, ten years later, it occurs to me that I never really thought beyond that first apartment. New York is an amazing place to live, and if I could afford a restored brownstone or a classic six on Central Park West I'd stay here happily for the rest of my life.

But that was never my plan. My plan was: get apartment in village, get job, find boyfriend. Beyond that, who knew? I never thought I'd be married or have kids either. When I said recently to an old friend that I was surprised I'd ended up married while some of our other friends were still single she said, "No offense, but I'm kind of surprised too." So I guess it's time for a new plan. I'll hate to give up being a New Yorker, but I'm ready for the next big adventure. Here's hoping it doesn't require the Hottest Car in LA.