The Bottomless Spritzer of Joy

our narrator slowly gets the hint

“I think people will have said enough to you about serious things, and so I am going to talk to you about what I feel is valuable, and that people think too little of, about cheerfulness and, something that is part of it as well, not being afraid about problems in life, but finding a natural solution for them.”—Sophie Taeuber-Arp, 1937

On a Friday in July, I received an email via a friend that a curator from Milan I hadn’t seen in thirteen years was looking for a place to stay in Los Angeles from Tuesday on. I had yet another full week of imminent deadlines planned, as if my summer was some featureless, dry, bone-on-bone grind. But this innocuous three-line email arrived with a slightly different feel, like maybe here I should try the opposite decision to my norm, so I said yes, sure, I could happily host and tour-guide this carless European. We hadn’t been in touch since goodbyes after a gallery dinner in Amsterdam in the late aughts; I knew her then as a stylish colleague with a stellar career a generation above me. I sent warm welcomes, then had a dream that something wonderful had been set in motion. It was a tiny dream, quite short, just a kind of evanescent knowing that something far bigger than I could see was now unfolding, which at first would be practical, though really it was happening on a sort of subtle or spiritual level. I woke up Monday morning and cleaned my apartment.

A chic curator arrived. On her first day in town, we visited contemporary art museums and architecture until we got in trouble with guards for going places we shouldn’t after hours. After so much art it was imperative we try on clothes; I found a killer black satin jacket and we swapped favorite pop songs on the 10 at sunset. Over drinks we talked about our work, and she told me the tale of how she met her husband—I must admit, I hanker for the passion of an Italian love story. Years later, I still remember how the two of them gazed at each other across a crowded Metro car in Milan, tender and brazen.

Out of practicality or boredom I tend to eat the same thing every day, which she found horrifying and attempted to reform by cooking exquisite dinners with the simplest of ingredients. One evening we had rosé and chocolate, and she shared the story of how her career began with a wild, shot-in-the-dark move she landed to the surprise of those around her, because she sincerely believed, why not? From our dinner nook, I looked out across the twilight sparkle-carpet of LA, and felt as if every moment of that week was god dropping hints. Gentle hints, like girl, consider culinary variety, and here is what it’s like to live from joy.

I don’t always catch hints on the first try. Friday morning I had my standard breakfast of oats, and we chatted about dreams over coffee. I’ve written down my dreams for years, I told her, and lately they’ve become strangely clear. Early that morning, in fact, I’d dreamed that a much, much younger man approached me with an unusual enthusiasm and desire, and in the dream I thought, this is what I’ve been missing, this is what it’s supposed to feel like. Then the situation changed, as if the exchange of energy was the message. I realized that I’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone openly and nakedly want to love me, or maybe I’d never truly felt it before. She said she kept a special notebook of dreams she’d had just before the pandemic began, which turned out to be premonitions, and in one of these she’d seen sculpture in Los Angeles.

That afternoon we went to the Huntington Gardens, and that night she insisted we go dancing in Silver Lake until the latest possible hour before her early morning flight. I threw on my tightest dress and out we went. After the clock struck midnight, in a pop-induced haze I shook it to a song about not giving a fuck, and a much, much younger man appeared in front of me so swiftly it was like he’d teleported from another realm. He asked me to dance with a direct, forward sincerity that made every date for the past year or whatever look like a wet towel, then led me to the center of the dance floor by a hand. I had Justin Bieber lyrics sung to me, and it was perfect.

Later my Milanese friend and I walked home in the cool, and this was the topic. I remember being amazed that my dream had precisely taken waking-life shape, while I felt a pang in my core, and lamented my singletude under the purple dome of the sky. Being Italian, fire on the dance floor, and capable of entire notebooks full of premonitory dreams, she was adamant that our job on this earth is to demolish the walls and stories that clutter our minds, and dance with the gifts of today.

In June and early July, I suffered a bunch of problems. If you’d asked me then, I’d have said surely I needed this or that sensible solution. Instead, I got a random email with a divine houseguest plus some clubbing, and it could not have been more supernaturally engineered to demo everything I didn’t know I needed. Here’s a sheer-magic swirl of élan, enjoyment, soul, the rebellious spirit to wantonly sample shrubs from the Huntington Gardens parking lot, and the passion to dance like fools. Here’s a bottomless spritzer of joy. The feeling of being openly desired by my dream admirer and Bieber paramour was just one side of the experiential coin, and it’d be naive of me to let it drop there. The real question is: Do I openly and directly dare to love the paramour that is my life, the stubborn ideas that haunt me, the world as it is and all of you, in this moment and the next.