Get Out of Town--If You Can
Going to Boston last week made realize how strange it is being an out-of-towner from L.A. rather than in L.A. I can't say that I like it; I feel thrown off my game as host of just about the most unreadable city in the country, if not the world. Here, I get to explain to people where L.A. begins and ends and begins again, how to get to Hollywood in a straight line, where to find Rodeo Drive (not Rodeo Road--big difference), why and how there are two San Vicente Boulevards. But in Boston, the most east coast of east coast cities, I'm a rube. Geographically, I'm at a total loss. The vast but simple grid of L.A. is replaced with a complicated, concentric web of streets and highways and roads that curve into and away from each other and don't bother with names. The entire layout is like an extended family that all know each other and treat each other tolerably well, but if you're on the outside of the family, woe unto you. Find your own way. I wasn't there being a tourist. I was there to see my niece Desiree graduate from Harvard with a masters in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government. Alas, Boston gave not a damn about this momentous occasion. Little did I know. The morning of the graduation, my sister and I set out bright and early from the hotel to get to Cambridge. According to a map, it was only four miles--about the distance between Inglewood and Culver City. Piece of cake. We had a GPS and a Mapquest to navigate by. If we happened to steer wrong, surely it could be made right.
Wrong. Very wrong. Boston is not the kind of place that forgives wrong turns. Though it wasn't that so much as trying to figure out what turn to make in the first place. We strained to see street signs that didn't exist or that showed up a mile after we were supposed to have made a left. The GPS got so flummoxed, it announced "You are at your destination" when we pulled over into a shopping mall parking lot to assess where the hell we were. My sister, Desiree's mother, very nearly had a breakdown: on one of the biggest mornings of her life, she was lost. Never before had a city's topography so conspired to keep her away from a place that was so maddeningly close. I was no help. I was very proud of Dez, but in those maddening moments on the road, I was angry at her for not going to UCLA.
We made it, of course. We were too late to pick up Dez at her apartment, per our original plan, but perfectly on time for the graduation itself. Walking through Harvard Square, we relaxed. I got coffee. My sister brightened at the sights and bought flowers for later. And it turns out that the exclusive Harvard affair was so crowded as to resemble Woodstock. People sat on the quad lawn and stood up on brick ledges; one guy stretched on the grass next to me and went to sleep. You couldn't see anything or anyone, including Desiree. But we were here, in the middle of a kind of relaxed chaos that felt pleasantly familiar. Today, it was home.
