A cyclist and a simpler life

Thoughts before bed

A couple of years ago, I fell for an English boy who lived in Manhattan Beach, though I know he lives in Echo Park now. I know that, and I know that he’s dating the younger girl he works with, the VFX assistant whose sofa he fell asleep on, drunk and vomiting after their company Christmas party.

Back when I knew him, he was just an English boy in Manhattan Beach, who I fell for, so hard that two of the times I brought him home to my flat, I left my car keys in the front door.

They stayed there overnight. 

I was talking to a friend, a friend who I used to smoke cigs with, and drink tequila with, and drive around late at night with, back when we really shouldn’t have. He said that he’d been thinking about those months coming out of the pandemic and I said, me too, and then I said, well you were drinking so much, you were sick, babe, and he said yeah, you were sick. 

And then he corrected the you, to I, so that it made this sound of you–IIIIII were sick!!

So sick, that when I met a surfer in Los Angeles who was from my area of London, I decided that he could be the one thing that got me out of it.

The English boy and I had very little in common except that we were settling into Los Angeles and we both liked to kiss. We weren't very good at speaking. He wanted life to be simple, or as he said, “chilled.” I wanted life to be an excavation, or as he said, “intense.”

He made my problems seem smaller than they felt, especially when it came to my ambitions, and I made his problems feel so big they might actually warrant a conversation.

I remember, which is kind of funny now, but I remember telling him that I was worried that I was not enough of a cinephile for him. He worked in post production, making advertisements look glossier and prettier. I, at the time, made my money producing a podcast for Victoria’s Secret. He said that he liked that we were different. 

I see now, that what I meant was not about him going to the movies, but about where I was too scared to go, in my own career as a writer.

He never paid for me, which he told me was because of “ya know, feminism.” So I would go buy us groceries and flowers and wine, and I would feel confident about spending my money on him, because for the first time in my life, I was actually making some.

When we went back to London for Christmas, I realised that he grew up in a six bedroom mansion, just fifteen minutes north of where I grew up, in a two bed rented flat. 

He would never have told me this, but of course he gave me his home address, and then at a party in Clapham, a friend of mine ran into his older sister, who referred to the English boy as something of a black sheep.

I haven’t thought of the English boy much the last year, because my obsession with him was eventually replaced by other men, other projects, and other ideas of who I could one day become.

But then, back in July, I flew home from London and woke up in Los Angeles on the day of the Euros Semi-Final. I picked Romil up and we went to get smoothies in Los Feliz, and as we drove down the hill by the Reservoir, a boy cycled in front of me with shoulder-length hair and no helmet. What idiot would bicycle without a helmet.

That’s when the thought appeared. A quick thought that I actually knew that boy. That that boy, though his hair was different, was the English boy I once dated, cycling away from the German pub after watching the England v Netherlands match. I turned right, away from my flat, and told Romil to check out the window if it was him. No, he said. This is not GOOD.

I didn’t care. I turned up Chappell Roan, rolled down the car windows and told Romil to get a better look at the bicyclist. Come on, I said. Look. 

We bolted down Silver Lake Boulevard, as the bicyclist mosied on ahead of us, me, ignoring Romil, speeding up and up until I could really see it. The wind in his hair, the faint smile on his face. The English boy, bicycling in his flip flops back home after the match. So happy to be on his own in LA, without his helmet, free from the system he once ran away from. 

By the time we got to Sunset Boulevard, I watched as he turned left, towards his flat off the lake in Echo Park. I thought about following him, but I knew that was too much. In my heart, and also because at that point, Romil pretended to vomit up his smoothie.

Too FAST, Sojen.

And that was it, that was the first time I saw the English boy since we stopped seeing each other on purpose. And I haven’t thought much about him since.

Well, no. I’m thinking about him right now, lying in my bed before sleep.

My grandmother just died, the night before I had surgery on my ovary, three days before we announced a short film I wrote got into the BFI London Film Festival, a week after I interviewed the biggest pop star of our generation, and a week before my copywriting job closed our entire department. 

But here I am, lying in bed, worried that I left my car keys in the front door.