Sticky Wickets and Golden Hours

coming home again to Los Angeles...

“Los Angeles might be a place for those who ask no questions to thrive. In this it is like every other place. But for those who wonder, who voiced even the most basic existential concerns—what the fuck am I doing here? And why?—this city is a sticky wicket.”

Matthew Specktor, Always Crashing in the Same Car

***

This was my first trip to LA, where I didn’t go looking for my son, who lives in various pockets of the city, never staying in one place long.

I’ve done it too many times, and we end up arguing inside Goodwill or on a random street corner or inside a CVS, where I won’t buy him testosterone, but I will buy vitamins, sunblock, and shampoo.

Or worse, I am following him down the sidewalk, trying to reason with him, or he is following me down the sidewalk, trying to reason with me.

Round and round we go.

He deserves better, and so do I.

I also didn’t have the strength to go looking by myself. This was a solo trip to LA as my husband, Kiffen, was running the half-marathon in Nashville.

But this made me remember how, back in 2005, when Flannery, our son, was seventeen, Kiffen was supposed to run the LA half-marathon with him, but they wound up running the whole thing because Flannery kept insisting, “Just one more mile, Dad! Come on! One more mile!”

Kiffen was furious - that wasn’t the plan as Aunt Celina and the grandparents were in town, but Flannery kept going, and Kiffen ran alongside him. They didn’t speak from Mile 14 to Mile 23, but then, with the end in sight, they started cheering each other on, and they finished the marathon together.

Dad, we did it! See! We did it!

Of course, now all these years later, I’m so glad they did.

During this last trip to Los Angeles, part of me wanted to look for my son, longed to find him, but I held back. There was no way to reach him. No phone, and he wasn’t going online that I could tell. He orbits around the city from Silver Lake to Lincoln Heights to Skid Row. I could have spent the whole week looking, but instead I stuck to the plan. I imagined interviewing people who might know him, trying on my journalist hat instead of my mother veil.

I stayed with friends, housesat, hiked, walked, met friends for dinner, battled insomnia, graded student stories, went to some galleries, saw a friend’s art opening, saw another’s play, took another friend to the computer store run by a big-hearted computer genius in Glendale, attended Rufus Wainwright’s “Dream Requiem” narrated by Jane Fonda, since Cousin Alice Kirwan Murray sings in the Master Chorale. My great-grandmother was named Alice Kirwin, different spelling.

(Alice is the sparkly one with the lovely Scout Finch haircut)

(After the Dream Requiem…)

While I was in Los Angeles that week, Alice’s husband, Michael Butler Murray, recorded Werewolf Hamlet for audiobooks, and a sadness pressed a bit heavy on me to think of him reading the book aloud in his studio in Eagle Rock. The cold gray May weather matched the weight I was feeling. This book I wrote for children was not our lives, but it was a version of them that I never saw coming - these unwelcome events. I wrote a book I never wanted to write because this wasn’t supposed to be our story, but it was the only one I could write, and the one I needed to write to save my sanity. I knew Mike would be brilliant reading the book - he understood all the layers, so it was also a privilege to put it in his hands.

And our story is not unique. It’s just our story.

I also volunteered at places where I thought our son might show up, but he didn’t. Still, it was comforting to mark “PB & J” and count the lunch bags at the Hollywood Food Coalition while the 100 top road-trip songs played in the Immaculate Heart parking lot.

(Bonnie and John at the Hollywood Food Coalition)

I also handed out bagels and slices of cake for SELAH on a Saturday afternoon at the Silver Lake Community Church, and that felt right, too.

I could stay focused on the tasks at hand and not obsess, freak out, and start combing the streets.

What kind of bagel would you like, sir?

Want some banana cake, ma’am?

Yes, you can have seconds of everything.

***

But what brought me back to Los Angeles was the LA Times Festival of Books, to be on a panel called “Growing Up Is Hard to Do.”

I had time to kill before my panel that Saturday of the festival. I arrived with my friend, Diana Wagman, and her family, and we sat in the green room, a place packed with hundreds of writers streaming through to eat from the beautiful buffet and attempt conversation.

Diana was moderating a fiction panel in the afternoon:

The Best Kind of Hell: Relationships in Contemporary Fiction.

Then she said, “There’s Griffin Dunne.”

As soon as she said that, the memoir panel he was on was announced with Matthew Specktor, and I thought I’d go to that one. I wanted to hear what this memoir panel had to say about old Hollywood.

Then I spied Natashia Deon, who waved. Natashia is a criminal attorney and author of two books, The Perishing and Grace. She visited UAB a few years ago to meet our students as a visiting author, part of the UAB/BACHE Writers’ Series. I picked her up from the airport in Birmingham that fall Sunday afternoon and drove her around downtown to show her some landmarks - the Civil Rights Institute, the Four Little Girls’ statues, the 16th Street Baptist Church, bits of downtown, and Sloss Furnaces.

And, out of nowhere, a car hit us hard from behind.

We were both stunned, and Natashia said, “Wow, that happened,” and we watched the car that hit us race away.

I replied, “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“It’s not your fault. I’m fine. You?”

“Fine.”

It’s weird and embarrassing to pick up a guest writer, show her around, and then have some idiot hit your bumper and speed off.

I said, “Well, welcome to Birmingham, I guess.”

She laughed, and I delivered her safely to her hotel. Fortunately, the rest of her week went great, and the students adored her. She visited five universities in the area - UAB, Montevallo, Birmingham Southern (now shuttered), Miles, and Samford.

Natashia was moderating a panel at the LA Times Festival of Books.

"Both/And: Standing Out, Fitting In, and Coming of Age in Contemporary Fiction"

But whenever I saw her, one of us always brought up the accident as if we had to make sure it really happened.

That happened, right? Yes, it did.

Sometimes we’d tell people around us, “We’ve been in an accident together.”

Because it was so random. Here is Natashia with her family and Kiffen a few months ago when she brought them to Diesel Books.

(Natashia Deon and most of her beautiful family with Kiffen)

Next, I ran into Dan Santat in the green room, whom I haven’t seen in years, and I’d loved his graphic memoir, First Time for Everything, and his book with Lisa Yee, The Misfits. We caught up for a few minutes, and he didn’t know I wasn’t in LA anymore - that’s how long it had been since I’d seen him for coffee with a group called the “LAYAS” - Los Angeles Young Adult Authors. His infant son is now in high school, and I’ve taught Dan’s picture books for years with my students.

The oat milk by the coffee was gone, and Dan made an elaborately hilarious gesture of trying to eek out the last few drops into his cup, shouting, “No more oatmilk!? Don’t they know WHO I AM?”

And it was a relief to laugh in the highly-charged atmosphere of the green room.

Dan’s panel was coming up: “Rumpus and Mayhem: Adventure and Mystery in Middle Grade Fiction.”

Then we both had to leave, as that is the way with the Festival of Books. You catch up on years in seconds before getting churned outside into the mix again.

Bye! See you later!

And I wanted to get to the memoir panel.

Here is the full description.

Griffin Dunne, author of The Friday Afternoon Club, and Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour, in conversation with David L. Ulin (tickets required)

Matthew Specktor, Griffin Dunne, David Ulin.

Join us for an intimate, exclusive look into Hollywood with Griffin Dunne and Matthew Specktor as they talk about their new memoirs. Dunne is an actor, producer and director who earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in After Hours. Specktor is a novelist and screenwriter whose work has appeared in The New York Times, GQ and The Paris Review. During this conversation, both will dive into the legacies and scandals of their families while revealing the truth of what it’s like to grow up in Hollywood.

I’d read Dunne’s funny and moving memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club, and showed my students his documentary on his aunt, Joan Didion. I also remembered him as the cheerful and slowly decaying victim in American Werewolf in London.

I didn’t know the work of Matthew Specktor at all, but that was about to change.

I saw the memoir panelists leaving the green room, so I figured I would follow them, since I didn’t know the campus, and it was rainy and cold

Still, I felt excited to be home. I was back in LA - my son was somewhere in the city, and I was on the USC campus at the LA Times Festival of Books, going to hear a panel of old Hollywood stories. My son loved old Hollywood and knew so much more than I did, and if things were different, we might have gone to this panel together.

I took a picture because why not?

But my plans for following the golf cart of memoirists soon foiled, for the golf cart took off down the road, around a corner, and out of sight. I was wearing Converse that fit just right in dry weather, but in wet weather, they tightened and rubbed the back of my ankles raw as I tried to walk fast to keep up and figure out where to go.

I hurried past a line looping around one building for Libba Bray, who is wonderful, but I wanted to hear the memoir panel at the Town & Gown Building.

I was getting turned around trying to follow the map. I had taken the long way around by following the vanished golf cart, and now blisters were erupting, and I hadn’t brought socks or a change of shoes, and then I remembered something.

I had my Shakespearean Insult Band-Aids that a friend gave me to celebrate my novel, since the brothers sling Shakespearean insults at each other. I never thought I’d actually need the Band-Aids, but thank goodness I had them.

Thou puny rude-growing haggard!

Thou art pigeon-liver'd and lack gall.

Thou pribbling fen-sucked pignut!

As I hobbled in the direction of the Memoir Panel, a woman came up beside me and shouted, “Read my novel, read my novel. Want to read my novel?”

Not now. No thanks.

I stepped around her and kept going until I found the building, grabbed a seat, and dug out my Shakespearean Insult Band-Aids as the panel began.

I tried to be so quiet, unwrapping the Band-Aids and applying them to the back of my ankles while listening to the panel. It was soon clear I was irritating the man in front of me, who kept scooting his chair away, giving me dark looks, as if I were unwrapping loud candy. I felt stupid and clumsy as I slapped on Band-Aids or “Fifteen Large Assorted Plasters” as the tin box says.

I needed to be able to walk and not go barefoot.

I was suddenly so tired, jetlagged, and wet, trying to hear pearls from the panel and remember them.

David Ulin asked them about divulging family secrets, and Griffin Dunne said his brother gave his blessing to write anything in The Friday Afternoon Club as long as Griffin wrote it with love.

Matthew Spector’s father was a big-time agent in his 90s, not the 90s - Fred Specktor was still working and had agented the following and plenty more: Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Geoffrey Rush, Jeremy Irons, Helen Mirren, Joe Pesci, Taylor Hackford, Danny DeVito, Pierce Brosnan, Beau Bridges, Dan Aykroyd and playwright/screenwriter, Jez Butterworth.

Later, friends would tell me to read Matthew Specktor’s first memoir, Always Crashing in the Same Car, because it was so literary and full of LA stories. Specktor was there to talk about his new book, The Golden Hour, which had just been published a few days earlier.

Later, I would tell my son the title of the first memoir, and he would say, “He stole that title from David Bowie.”

Of course, my son would know that. I didn’t. I didn’t even know it was a David Bowie song. I kept wanting to call it Crashing in the Same Car Twice or something stupid.

Here is the David Bowie song, Always Crashing in the Same Car.

The memoir panel was wonderful, and David Ulin, the moderator, kept asking good questions about writing and family while I was surreptitiously applying Band-Aids to the backs of my raw ankles, the cranky man in front of me glaring my way.

David Ulin had been my editor on a piece I’d written for the LA Times about a humiliating book tour circa 2008 when I was upstaged by the CareBears and the Wolf Man, who was a no-show at Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley, NC. That awful day, the carnival barker had shouted at me before my reading, “Introduce yourself, I gotta eat lunch.” I almost started to cry, and my sister-in-law, Tomi Lunsford, playing and singing songs from the novel, Jessie’s Mountain, on stage with me to a mostly empty house after the Wolf Man announcement, whispered, “Hold it together, man. It’s show biz!”

This is Tomi Lunsford singing a song for her mother, who raised 13 children.

I’d also taken Lucy to meet Joan Didion when David Ulin interviewed her years ago at the Los Angeles launch of The Year of Magical Thinking, and I wanted Lucy, then 15, to meet her because she’d loved Didion’s memoir and wrote about it for an English paper. Lucy was my memoir, literary fiction, and realist kid, while Flannery and Bo loved fantasy and fairytales.

I tried to pay close attention to the memoir panel, but my mind was now on a loop, awash with LA memories, listening to the panelists.

Would I see my son? Did he know I was coming? It was on Instagram, the LA Times Festival of Books - the “Growing Up is Hard to Do” on the Young Adult Stage. Would he show up? Should I have told him I was coming when he called the week before? What time was Diana’s panel again? Why did Fox Rental Car close last night and not tell me, meaning I had no car to get around, so I would have to Lyft or Uber or depend on friends? Were other authors truly riding around in driverless cars? (Yes!) What was I doing in LA again, promoting this children’s novel? Why had I created such an exhausting 2005 book tour in 2025? It was coming to the end of the tour, thank goodness, but why couldn’t I go home to my house in Silver Lake or Echo Park, homes that weren’t there anymore except in some time portal when the kids were little and healthy, dressing in costumes, making pies, writing songs, the house always a wreck? Could I have a do-over? A sort of “Our Town,” but this time, I’ll remember to look more closely. Please?

Then, my friend, Ellen, texted me to see if I could meet her at the gate for Diana’s panel.

I texted back that I would, although I wanted to stay and get the memoirists’ books, but I wanted to see Ellen more, and if I stayed, I’d miss Diana’s panel entirely.

I listened for a few more minutes and slipped out to meet Ellen, trying to shake my thoughts loose.

Let go, let go, let go. Turn it over. Turn it over. Turn it over.

I thought of how earlier on my book tour in San Diego, about the boy who raised his hand during Q&A and asked me, “Do you mean you have an addict in your family? I am so sorry.” He gave me such a look of understanding.

Another kid in Knoxville said, “This is a big subject for middle school. Why did you write about addiction for kids?”

When I told him, the conversation flew.

His mom later wrote to me and said, “He’s been reading your book to the cat.”

The rest of the day went fine - my panelists, Robin Benway and Hope Larsen, were lovely, and so was the Santa Monica librarian, Robert Graves, asking us questions.

The rain continued in fits and starts, but by late afternoon, the sun burst through a torrent of rain, casting a golden light over the campus. We met kids who came over and bought our books. Robin and I both wrote books set in Laurel Canyon, which we didn’t realize, and Hope was from the mountains of Western North Carolina

***

Several days after the festival, I began listening to Always Crashing in the Same Car by Matthew Specktor while walking around the Silver Lake Reservoir on a gray day. His writing swept me into literary stories of Los Angeles, failure, loss, and regret, and they were told with such exquisite beauty I couldn’t stop listening and walking around the city. I learned about writers I knew nothing about from Eleanor Perry to Carole Eastman, and actors I knew a little about but not their stories…so many stories.

What else?

I talked to Flannery on Mother’s Day. He called from a stranger’s phone, and I answered it because he always calls from different phones, so I knew to answer. I was sitting next to my mom in her living room in San Diego, and she talked to him, too. They talked about how they used to love to sing together.

I mentioned that he might like this book by Matthew Specktor, and when I tried to describe it, that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tuesday Weld, Warren Zevon, Bruce Dern, and so many others are in it, and it was about the struggles they faced - what we all faced trying to make something good or just even something.

He said, “It sounds like failure. Fowley loved Zevon.”

I didn’t want to talk about Kim Fowley, a man who had yelled at me once over the phone to say, “I can’t help your son. I’m no mentor. Your son is neat and clean and speaks English, not like the kind they usually send me. And I want you to know that I don’t have any crystal meth in my bladder bags!”

It was such a surreal conversation in response to a desperate letter I’d sent him during the desperate days when I thought I could fix and control things and make people act better, be kinder, and save my son, who was working for him.

I said, “Well, Flan, that’s one of the themes of the book - failure. It’s called Always Crashing in the Same Car.”

“That’s a David Bowie song title - he stole it, Mama.”

“No, he didn’t. He used the same title of the song for the book. He explains it in the book and why. Before I read the book, I didn’t even know it was a Bowie song.”

“Well, it was. And he can’t do that.”

“Yes, he can - the book is out. Titles aren’t copyrighted.”

“They’re not?”

“No. You can’t copyright titles.”

“He still needs to talk to Bowie’s people.”

“Okay, fine.”

He said a lot more, and I tried to interrupt, but it was impossible. Why did I even bring it up? I got quiet, which is what I do under duress. Go dark.

Then Flannery said, “Mom? Wait. I want to tell you something. When you and Dad used to watch me perform, I always looked for you in the crowd, and I always found you. And I saw all the love on your face - all of it - all your love and excitement. I saw how proud you were of me, both of you. It was such love. I just wanted to say that, Mom, listen…I want to say thank you for that. Okay? Thank you.”

I got up because I was sitting next to my mom, who was almost ninety, and I’d spent Mother’s Day with her, and I didn’t want her to see me cry, but she knew. It was dumb to cry after so many years of this illness. But he caught me off guard. We were arguing about a song/book title about a memoir he probably won’t read, but maybe he would.

“Thank you, honey, for telling me that. Thanks for calling on Mother’s Day. Where are you living now?”

“I’m making a circle eight around LA.”

“Circle eight. That’s good.”

“No, it’s not good. My phone is gone, and so is my money. You should have told me you were in town. That’s why my money is gone, because you worry about me, and things happen to me. Things happen when you worry about me.”

We were on a loop again. A loop of signs, clues, and coincidences.

“But, thanks for getting me the Michelle Obama workbook like I asked. Could you please get me the Chaka Khan notebook?”

“I’m not sure what it is, but I’ll try. The bookstore didn’t have it.”

Then I told him I loved him, and he said he loved me.

I promised I would see him next time I was back in Los Angeles and to please stay in touch, and he promised he would.

Here are a few quotes from Specktor’s book, Always Crashing in the Same Car:

“Life itself is chaos, the artist’s life is often one that tends to give that chaos its full extension.”

“This is the trouble with those who show you how to live, unfortunately. They don’t necessarily know how to do it themselves.”

“There isn’t a writer alive who isn’t acutely aware of the time, who isn’t losing it—and finding it—constantly.”

I love this video of Flannery dancing with the lovely Allison Pierce, singing her song, “Drink One For You.”

Another LA story.

Other pictures of home…

Lovely Soma Snakeoil of the Sidewalk Project at her art show in Little Ethiopia.

Beautiful Ann Whitford Paul with her dog, Molly, at Trails in Griffith Park.

Diana at Bob Baker Marionettes Theatre

Tony Unruh’s art opening of Macramé at MorYork.

And beautiful Samantha Sidley, who opened with the Carpenters and closed with Patsy Cline and sprinkled a little Ozzy Osbourne in the middle.