A Snapshot in Time

 


As managing editor of the “Los Angeles Downtown News,” (circa 1999-2000) I decided to make use of my contacts in the local fashion industry for a weekly cover story. I’d started out in journalism at the “California Apparel News” years before, my fiance was a top fashion designer with a downtown studio, and a good "package" was possible. Ever-ethical, I chose Anna’s friends John and Kellie, and their company Josephine Loka, for the front page feature. My fiance was not happy about this and let it be known she didn't care one bean for my journalistic scruples. I went to the publisher, Sue Laris, with this quandary and she laughed. “You think you’re not gonna put your future wife on the cover?! That’ll never work. Besides, she’s gorgeous! Put her on with the other two.” And that was how things went in those days. The publication had a considerable circulation and my status was close to that of an extra city councilman. I enjoyed the luxury of my left-hand man Edward Rivera's entertaining scribblings, which were making for a transformed and dynamic pub. I would pick Anna up after work for free nights downtown at the theater, opera, symphony, and restaurants, then write about them the next day for publication. John and Kellie would later invite us to Burning Man where we forged mystical bonds of friendship under the sparkling desert dome. We were pearls in the oyster shell of the world, but all states of being are transitory, especially states of grace. John lives in Oregon now with his partner where they cultivate marijuana. He is battling cancer. Kellie, the beating heart of our sexy urban tribe, married a Frenchman who got into trouble and was deported. She followed him to France and has been gone from our lives for 15 years, never to be replaced. Anna, as most of you know, has been robbed of her rich creativity by illness. She had fished this image out of someplace in her mousey meanderings and was staring long at it. Alzheimer's doesn't kill every memory. I no longer enjoy the status of an extra city councilman (or anything similar for that matter), but am still here and still writing.

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