As the plane made its initial descent into Los Angeles International Airport, I stared out the oval window at the twinkling white lights below, hoping I’d somehow left behind the heartache that was suffocating me back home in Chicago. I was 39, already twice divorced and desperate to outrun the pain of losing my husband and three stepchildren just five months prior.
The emotional baggage I carried far exceeded the weight limits of my carry-ons. Meeting men was the last thing on my mind.
A seven-minute Uber ride delivered me to the Renaissance Los Angeles Airport Hotel, a modern and unassuming locale that would be my weeknight home for the foreseeable future. I’d taken a temporary job building out a marketing team, commuting to L.A. every Sunday through Thursday. As a homebody, I wasn’t willing to make a permanent move, but my silent, empty house made a stolen season in SoCal seem like the perfect escape.
I checked in and bellied up to the hotel bar. Halfway into my second drink, a scruffy, tall guy with silvery blond hair from New York sat down next to me. As he asked me basic getting-to-know-you questions, I instantly realized the beauty of my anonymity. There, at Studio 12 Bar & Lounge, among the other clientele — pilots, consultants, vacationers — I didn’t need to dissect my romantic failures and lament about how every street corner back home reminded me of the life I had lost.
We laughed and chatted for over an hour. That night in my room, I replayed the coy conversation with the Yankees fan, who wanted to meet up at the same bar the next night if I was up for another round. But was I? Casual drinks were one thing, but courtship outside my ZIP Code seemed like a waste of time as I’d always dated with a specific ending in mind.
Back in Chicago, I lived in a sprawling three-story Colonial perched perfectly in a cul-de-sac. My second attempt at marriage left me alone in silence, tethered only to memories of what it was like to delight in the sounds of my ex-husband and three stepkids screaming “Uno,” chasing imaginary fairies through our house and laughing at dad jokes.
It felt like the life I was always meant to live. But within less than two years, we split up, and I had no legal claim to see the kids whom, for years, I’d considered my own.
Being single again felt like a step backward, further away than ever from happiness. I was haunted by the notion that I didn’t know what to even strive for. I’d chased what everyone else wanted too — the quintessential Hollywood ending of marriage, kids and a house — and didn’t calculate what would happen if it didn’t work out. I thought there should be more to my story, but I didn’t know what.
The next week I told a Gen Z co-worker about my flirtation at the hotel bar and admitted I wasn’t sure whether I was even ready to date or tell anyone my sad story.
“Girl, this is L.A.! Everyone is pitching a story or auditioning to be in a new one,” she said with a one-shoulder shrug. “You can tell any story you want.”
In a city that had manifested an entire industry out of rewriting stories, I wondered whether the secret was simply to write a new one for myself. Standing in my office, I decided that if L.A. was the epicenter of image makers, it would also be the capital of my reinvention.
I downloaded Tinder and started scrolling. I swiped right on a man whose profile pic was of him hiking Runyon Canyon with his golden retriever. A 45-year-old lawyer from Santa Monica, he booked us at a bourbon bar, Grain, in Playa del Rey after I told him I liked Manhattans.
His zest for life was palpable, accented by his pearly smile across the dimly lit windowless lounge. Rarely did he talk about anything in his past. He was filled with ambition to see more of the country, write a spy thriller and literally climb more hills. When he leaned in to kiss me in the candlelit corner, I closed my eyes and let it happen, all in service of the new story I wanted to write that didn’t have to end with me walking down the aisle.
The following week, I met a contractor whom I suspected sold weed in Venice based on his story about meeting a guy in the back of a shop with his cousin just before our date. He took me to the Arthur J and ordered an expensive bottle of French red wine and paid for our meal with cash.
I knew most of the dates weren’t going to end in marriage, but instead of feeling hopeless, with each conversation I was a little more sunny and smiley and full of possibilities, just like most of the men I met. Did it have something to do with the endless sun and sea in L.A.?
I found myself more carefully applying makeup in my hotel room before prancing down to the hotel bar. Over the coming months, I talked to half a dozen more strangers, and with each little bit of banter, the foggy air of anguish that had surrounded me slowly began to evaporate.
I realized in conversation with the handsome singletons of the Southern California coast, I was already halfway through an exciting post-divorce chapter of my life, coming out of my sad little shell. I loved the carefree optimism and enduring sense of ambition that seemed more alive on the Pacific Ocean than it ever had been in me back home.
When my yearlong tenure ended, I boarded my flight and soon was gazing out the airplane window over the Rockies. I exhaled with a smile, knowing I took the very best of L.A. with me.
I opened the dating app when I landed at O’Hare and swiped on a tall bald guy from Dallas, who was in Chicago for the weekend with his college buddies. I asked him to meet me on the lakefront for a walk — a poor substitute for the Pacific air, but beautiful all the same.
We spent hours talking, eventually walking to a pizza joint then back to a grassy spot by the water. The cool evening air nipped at my arms as he took my hand and told me, “You are a beautiful person. I just love hearing all your stories.”
For the first time, I let the repeated narrative inside my head of failed marriages and bad decisions melt away. I started hearing an exciting tale of a life still unfolding, full of possibilities. And the best part was, I finally felt like the true author of what would be written on the next page.
I once thought the only happy ending would be one with marriage and children. L.A. taught me to believe that whatever came next would actually be the most beautiful story.
The author is a journalist and marketing executive working on a memoir about poker and love. She lives in Chicago. Her website is andreajavor.com, and she’s on Instagram @andreaejavor.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
