Nancy, my first real girlfriend, took me to this little pond in the hills above the Arroyo Seco in Highland Park. Many years later I found out the place was called Ernest E. Debs Regional Park but at the time it I thought of it as some kind of wilderness. We hiked up for like 30 minutes and came over this hill to find a picturesque little pond, verdant and shadowy, unlike all the chaparral surrounding it. It was something out of Cather, like in Death Comes for the Archbishop, when Latour discovers a riparian hamlet in the middle of the southwestern desert. It was a perfect place for a new couple to spend time together—if you look it up in Google, the pictures of the pond show a couple (the arm of one over the other, the other contemplating the pond) sitting together.
Nancy brought a blanket and spread it out, and we sat there for many hours talking and kissing. Total bliss for a teenager who believed, as many teenagers must believe, that kissing was something that other people got to do and thus felt blessed by the moment. Eventually the day started to darken and we left, the ground all scrambled up beneath our blanket. I am sure we must have come back at some point, but I don’t remember. That first time, though, I will remember always.
I was telling Sofia, a friend of mine from those days, that story. I began: “Remember that little pond over Arroyo Seco?” She said: “Yeah, I took you there, remember?” Then I did remember. I remembered the whole thing! She took me up there and we talked about her boy troubles and her family troubles and so forth. I really wanted to make out with her but she didn’t want to make out with me and so I just enjoyed her company, and we did a bunch of stuff together. In the radiance of the memory of my visit with Nancy, I had completely forgotten that another girl had taken me there first, as I was to take other girls there later.
The best thing in popular music this year was Olivia Rodrigo. All of her songs made me smile every time they came on the radio. My favorite is “good 4 u” but the one that made me smile the most was “déjà vu.” Who can’t relate to that feeling, the betrayal of someone doing stuff with someone else that they did with you? But, honestly, there’s nothing more normal. Are you supposed to invent yourself for every new relationship? Are you supposed to come up with all new stuff when you date someone new? What if you happen to like the old stuff you did??
I like the places my old girlfriends have taken me. Places where, surely, their old boyfriends and girlfriends had taken them before. The place that fries fries in horse fat, the place that makes amazing cioppino, the observation deck at the De Young, and so on. I feel your pain, Olivia Rodrigo, but when you get over it, you will take other people on that car ride to Malibu.
