Soon, the flight attendant rolls by to take drink orders. I order a white wine, crack open the top, pour it in the plastic cup, take a big sip, and turn to Mom.
“So, are you gonna ignore me the rest of the trip?”
“I just feel very guilty now,” she says in her delicate Southern drawl. “I forced you to come with me, and you don’t want to be here.”
“You didn’t force me. It’s just so hard to leave the baby. It’s a lot for Mike—”
“I know. I feel terrible.”
And now I feel terrible.
“Mom, it’s fine. I wanted to be here for you. Am I not allowed to be honest about how I feel?”
It goes back and forth like this for several minutes, she playing the I feel so guilty card, and I, the I want to be here/It’s fine one.
Finally, I finish the wine and beg: “Can we just move past this and try to have a good time this weekend? I don’t have the energy to argue about it anymore.”
She agrees. We move on.
• • •
Renting a car and driving from LAX is very familiar—we’ve done it dozens of times—but the fact that the car isn’t headed to your house in Los Feliz guts me. It’s exactly why I didn’t want to come here.
The hotel is downtown, right across the street from the venue, and all the streets are shut down for blocks in preparation for the event. When we check in, they hand us a fat envelope with our itinerary and tickets to both the awards ceremony and the Governor’s Ball. The tickets are gilded and beautiful. This is another world.
We check in and get dressed for the pre-party. It feels wrong driving up to the party in a rental Altima. There are paparazzi hovering outside. We walk up a short flight of stairs to long folding tables where NBC staff is checking people in. Our names are crossed off the list, and we head past security into the party. It is painfully loud. The music is pulsing and deafening. I have to shout to communicate with Mom, who is standing directly in front of me. It’s also hard to find anywhere to sit or stand. The place is packed with beautiful people in beautiful clothing who are schmoozing, kissing cheeks, and throwing their heads back in laughter. I have to turn sideways and squeeze in between people and their conversations to get from Point A to Point B. Point B is the sushi bar, where two men are preparing fresh hand rolls. I’m starving and would love a fresh hand roll. I grab a cocktail off a tray and make my way into the line. After the sushi bar, we squeeze over to the raw bar that’s overflowing with shrimp, oysters, and crab legs. I note how much you would love the food here but likely hate the party overall. This is not your scene. You would be the only one in a hoodie.
I turn to Mom and say, “No wonder he became a drug addict.”
We run into a few people from Parks and make small talk. Most of the evening is spent with Aisha Muhharar and her Jewish boyfriend, Ben. I’m grateful for the opportunity to finally meet her after hearing so much about her over the years. They manage to snag a table, and we sit and talk forever, mostly about Ben being great marriage material because of the Jew thing. We are biased.
I see why Aisha was one of your best friends in the Parks writers’ room. Like you, she is so down to earth and human. Conversation is effortless, despite the fact that we’re screaming at each other from across the table. It really is obscenely loud, and her boyfriend happens to have hearing loss (did you know that?) for which he recently got a formal evaluation and will soon be fit for hearing aids, so we talk all about that. He pulls up his audiogram, and I compare it to Iris’s, which I also happen to have on my phone. It’s rare for both of us to find someone else who knows how to interpret an audiogram. Instant bonding material.
• • •
After the party, we meet our childhood friend Johnny for ramen at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo. That was always your favorite place to take us when we were in town even though it was always mildly stressful because you were so impatient, and there’s only like five tables in the restaurant, and you have to put your name on the list and wait outside for at least an hour to be seated and you would smoke and pace so much it sort of soured the meal once we finally got to it. We would both get the tonkotsu ramen with the side of chicken fried rice. The Best. The broth is creamy; the noodles homemade. I crave it for months on end in the winter—and the summer, too. Year-round, really.
The last time we were at Daikokuya together was the first weekend you met Mike. It was spring break 2012. He and I stayed at your house. We went to that bar in Los Feliz and met up with Johnny and Taal, who—as we both know—has been struggling to find his way for a while but is having an even harder time now that you’re gone. You were probably his closest friend in the world, and he’s lost without you. Anyway, Johnny took one of my favorite all-time photos of us in the tiny waiting area of the restaurant that night. It’s been my Facebook cover photo for months now. We’re sitting there together with a space between us. There’s
