Jumbo’s clown room

Purple light bathes the stage at Jumbo’s Clown Room. 

I’ve never been to a strip club, I keep thinking to myself. 

Sometimes the thought bubbles to the surface in a kind of matter-of-fact way, like how I feel compelled to tell every single person who has ever waxed my vagina that I didn’t know I had hair in my asshole until I was probably 25. 

“Oh!” they reply, trying (badly) to hide their judgment at maximum, curiosity at minimum. 

“I’m not like, Amish or anything.” I add. 

Other times, the thought (the one about me never going to a strip club, I mean) is more like an accusation. Like, You’ve never been to a strip club, you square, uptight, anxiously attached, health-insured loser. You’d never run barefoot through a park at night. You’d be afraid of bugs, you’d be afraid of rapists, you’d never be in a park. But this particular night, I find myself at Jumbo’s Clown Room several martinis in, feeling cool, sexy, included, interesting, with my ephemeral, withholding, free-spirited best friend, Kitty. 

Kitty is the living embodiment of every straight white man’s indie movie fantasy. Kitty saw Garden State when she was twelve and modeled her entire personality after it. Kitty looks stunning in oversized sweaters she steals from the lost and found at the yoga studio she teaches at. (I’m not certain this is relevant, but I look like a hobbit in oversized sweaters.) 

Kitty looks like a seventies icon in a bikini without a spray tan. In fact, Kitty is so milky pale, she’s almost translucent, and can still look great wearing white (without a spray tan in a swimsuit, I absolutely resemble Matt Damon at the beginning of The Talented Mr. Ripley when Jude Law looks up at him with disgust and says, “You’re so white.”)

Kitty has an infectious laugh, and runs into the ocean in Malibu (or maybe it was another beach) at bonfires, unconcerned about sharks or the absence of towels or the fact that planes fly right over that part of the ocean and the fumes drop right into the water, like RIGHT into it and as a result you could get really bad diarrhea if you swim there. 

Kitty absolutely doesn’t think about lurking rapists when she smokes a leisurely joint in the park at night with her Justin-Bobby-adjacent ex-boyfriend, looking painfully cool in his papery old t-shirt. 

We’re here with Kitty’s on-again-off-again-hookup Gino. We ran into him when we were at the Dresden. (I’m not certain this is relevant, but the first time she saw him she thought he was hot, and I proceeded to wing woman her like a fucking Olympian. I was all, “Hey! Come over here! What’s your name?” and, “I think you and my friend are getting along great, you should probably exchange numbers.” If I’m honest, it was some of my best work.) 

Gino is very tall and very pretty, and if you look at him long enough, you forget that most of what he says is incredibly boring. We were 2.5 martinis deep when he turned to us and asked, “Jumbo’s?” “Yeah!” I squealed. I’m cool, I’m game, I’m sporting a slick bun and wearing a halter top! Nothing can stop me! At this point we’re drunk. 

We were in the middle of what Kitty and I liked to call “A Full Moon Night”. We coined the term in 2018 when we moved into our apartment in Los Feliz together and had countless nights out where weird cosmic shit happened. We’d run into old friends or celebrity crushes we manifested seeing, we remembered why we loved the shimmering shitstorm of living in LA, and giggled over how we’d never go back to the Midwest. Never ever. 

“We’re getting out of here”, Kitty told me at our old serving job in Chicago. 

We were 25, standing in the walk-in refrigerator, sweat beading down the smalls of our backs, soaking through our striped, cotton button-up shirts after a seventeen-hour Saturday double shift. I’m pretty sure I was crying. 

Kitty’s dainty hands clutched me protectively. “You and me. We’re going to LA and we’re gonna make it.” 

Back at Jumbo’s, as I watch Hollywood hopefuls dance, I politely place the bills on the stage, complimenting them. 

“You’re amazing! You’re so pretty!” I slur, in my vodka-soaked stupor. I worry I sound condescending. I feel bad and gingerly give another twenty.

Kitty and Gino cozy up, and I start to wonder if I crashed a date. Even though Kitty and I hadn’t seen each other in six months. Even though I checked in all the time to hear about her nonstop adventures. Even though I craved our 12-hour-talks where we caught up and laughed and cried about how we’d always be there for each other, and celebrate being in LA together, reminiscing on that pep talk in the walk-in. It’s a fond memory, but when I talk about it I sound a little sad, and I hope she doesn’t notice. 

As I contemplate tossing more cash at Amelia (who “kind of looks like Chappell Roan! Ohmygod she TOTALLY looks like Chappell Roan! Should I tell her?!”) a gaggle of girls show up. They wear sunglasses inside, they are very cool, and trying to decipher their feelings towards me always felt like trying to figure out how a kaleidoscope works. 

They are Kitty’s other friends, Kitty’s cooler friends, Kitty’s priority. They have rooftop parties overlooking the hills while they sip natural orange wine. They shoot each other on film. They collaborate on art. I never know until I see it all on Instagram. 

I feel my chest get hot, wondering how our first Full Moon Night since March suddenly felt like this; like a room I was locked out of, a sleepover I wasn’t invited to, a new season of Kitty’s TV show where I was mysteriously killed off. 

I wonder if it’s my anxiety making me paranoid, and pray another Bud Light will be some magical elixir, turning me into another one of the free-spirited, gorgeous Silverlake sprites with their indoor sunglasses and tiny tattoos on their lanky arms, dappled with freckles. Note to self: I should have worn a trucker hat and Carhartt pants. 

Do I smell like self-tanner? I hide in the bathroom. 

I think I should leave. 

No, you like your makeup too much. 

No, just stop thinking so much. 

No, you are not going to let them make you feel unwelcome at YOUR OWN PLANS. 

For the love of fuck, Hannah, stop caring so much. 

Get off fucking Instagram, Hannah. 

He didn’t watch your story, Hannah. 

He’s not even your boyfriend. 

I get another beer and the snarky throughts turn into snarky words under my breath, but then the words get louder, and before I know it I’m crying and yelling at Kitty in the parking lot. But it’s hard to breathe, to get the words out, like a nightmare where a monster is trying to get you but you’re stuck in your bed and you can’t scream. 

In this moment, I miss our double shifts back in Chicago. All seventeen hours of them. Our feet throbbing, my brilliant idea to pay off Matt (the kid who rolled silverware) to do our one hundred rollups so we could leave early and laugh over beers at the shitty dive bar across the street. 

I miss the first night Kitty saw our apartment in LA after I had moved in a couple of days earlier. I fashioned a giant box from the move into makeshift a coffee table, ordered Chinese food, and shoved flowers from Trader Joe’s in a vase. I got us a dining room set that looked like something straight out of Golden Girls, and had the Sex and The City movie playing on our TV, because it was one of the only DVDs I had, and we didn’t have internet yet. 

I miss crying about our shitty ex-boyfriends. Mine, a cringy bartender who had an obsession with Disneyland and copper mugs, hers a handsome young actor in AA who lived with his mom and whose career was moving too fast for him to value her.

I miss it all.

I miss Full Moon Nights. 

I miss what was.