It was drizzling as I walked along Hollywood Blvd.. “Hey dude.” A man’s voice said behind me. I saw the speaker with a skateboard under his arm. So sick. The man in street fashion with long, curly, black hair jogged toward me and said, “I saw you coming out of the hostel, where I stayed, too. I arrived in Los Angeles this morning. I’m new. Would you mind if I walked around together?” It was my first fresh encounter since I arrived in America and his English easy to hear. “Not at all. Let’s go,”I said.
In the afternoon we took the tour organized by the hostel. The sun was braking through the clouds. Hid name was Ivan (anonymous). The chemistry―he was warm and outgoing, and I was collected yet introverted―was somewhat good. Unlike his appearance, actually he taught English to elementary school students in Colombia, and so he often translated what I didn’t understand into what I could understand.
“K, watch me,” he put his skateboard on the edge of the water plaza against the background of the letters: BEVERLY HILLS. It was showtime―he wore his cap backward, stood on it, and begun to ease ahead balancing his body carefully. But I felt something was wrong. His board wobbled and tilted, and in no time he stepped to the water side; the water splashed and his pants wet. What is this all about? He cocked his head pulling up his pants.
We walked on for a while past the gorgeous houses. He begun to do that on the sidewalk again. It had not been for three seconds when he fell out from his board―five seconds at most. He overturned it countless time through trial and error as a beginner did, however, and the look of him―holding a well-used skateboard, dressing well in street style and his long hair blowing in the wind―was sophisticated. I tried to clear up what a conundrum.
Ivan said, “K, let’s go eat something before climbing the hill.” And then he started to talk to a Brazilian guy in Spanish with a laugh and bright; I was not a character to jump in by goofing around. At the same time I thought he must have pushed himself somewhat to speak to me―he had to use easy English in the way he did to a child. Following behind them, I felt as if I had been invited to make up the numbers.
At Hollywood/Highland station, the tour host taught us how to use the TAP(Transit Access Pass) Card. I struggled to reload my card alone, and while the others had gone through the ticket gate. “K, what’s up?” I heard the voice of Ivan from the other side and almost immediately he came back to me―that was a relief.
The path to Griffith Observatory climbed steeply. We hiked in the group: three men from Mexico or Brazil, except for Ivan, were quiet and a woman from Australia was always full of energy and dancing. Ivan was quite the social butterfly and got along well with her, however, and once he begun to hang out with the other groups, there was an awkward tension in my group.
I acted on my own in the observatory, for it was a little hard for me to fit in the others. “K,” Ivan came out of the blue with the energetic woman. “You ‘disappeared’ on the way, l’d been looking for you,” he said. “Oh, I’ll take photos for you.” I thanked him, had photos taken and walked with them. Seeing him and her joking around and playing together, I become a little distance in order not to get in the way of them―time with me would be fun for him? I wondered.
When I was refreshed after the shower that night, I saw the tattoo on his arm and said, “Cool tattoo.” I did not know if I really thought so. Since I watched him skateboarding, he had looked dodgy. “Thanks. Do you like tattoo?” he said. “Yes, that’s art, but I can’t put it on my skin,” I went on. “In Japan, there are a lot of people who linked the images, in a word, outrage. It would also affect your career, even if it was invisible. There will come a time I’ll make money outside, then get tattooed.” I laughed at a little, but he looked puzzled and said, “I have never been to Japan, but interested in. I will come to see you someday.”―I thought he said that to just flatter me.
The next night, I played billiards with Ivan, who asked me, “Want to go for a drink?” “I would, but tomorrow, I was to leave here early in the morning,” I said. “All right, I will see you off,” he said and then I saw him leave the hostel with the Brazilian guy―my instinct told me that he would not do that: after the drink he may well sleep late.
I strolled around the glittering hotels in Las Vegas when I got email from him: “Hi, K! … I wanted to goodbay to you. But I didn’t know what time you leave. It was really great meeting you … .” That sounded like a clumsy excuse.
Over the next two months, we exchanged a few email. His email: “I hope to see you again.” “I miss the good days we shared in LA.” “I hope you are doing good!”―I sensed that I was just one of his many friend and, sure enough, I did not hear from him since I sent the photos in my trip to Vietnam.
In the winter of that year, there was an email from him … I replied to him less and less, until I no longer used that email account.
Two years after I met him, I opened email inbox for the first time in a year: “Hello K! What’s up with you? You ‘disappeared’ again.”
The second email: “Next June, I am going to travel to Tokyo. I am so excited about this trip, but at the same time a little sad, since you are not in Japan.”
Of my foreign friends he was the only one who has got in constant touch with me.
* I couldn’t speak English at that time, All conversations was not what I really said, but what I wanted to say.
