I spent my last days of summer in Los Angeles as any Angeleno would: scouring overpriced thrift stores for fashionably distressed clothes. Packed between True Religion jeans and Affliction tees, I found a crumpled ball that was once a Blockbuster Video uniform.
Ten years ago, the last remnants of Blockbuster Video vanished from Los Angeles. Gone were the halls of Blu-ray discs and DVDs, the stores had been gutted and replaced with equally doomed frozen yogurt chains. It had been a decade since I’d seen that uniform, in all its crayon-yellow-collared glory, but I still knew it. I clawed through moth-ravaged “I Heart LA” shirts to reach that relic.
Time is fast and unforgiving in Los Angeles. It hurtles onward, breakneck and callous, flinging the city forward without a thought to whatever may be clutching at its palm tree-lined streets. It bulldozes and rebuilds before the dust has settled, would-be celebrities forgotten the moment their feet leave the desert sand. I’ve known this since childhood, since I learned skipping a day of school meant you vanished from the memory of your fifth-grade friends. Leaving was always out of the question. If I left Los Angeles, I’d be forgotten by my family, my friends, and the city. Any trace of my existence would be blown away in the Santa Ana winds and succeeded by an Erewhon.
When I found that uniform, I mourned my life, not yet gone. Blockbuster and I were cadavers, waiting for the hearses to arrive and bury our bodies, the last remnants of the life we once led. I took the uniform into the changing room with me and slid it over my sunburned shoulders—the skin left tight and red from my last walk along Venice Beach. I felt the fraying yellow threads rest against my throat. It didn’t fit. The sleeves barely reached my biceps and the hem hovered an inch above my underwear. The threads over my shoulder blades split with a muffled wail. I had to peel it off of me, tearing the seams below the armpit in the process. I threw it into the corner of the dingy stall, a mess of torn blue and yellow against the grime and dust.
Yet, in a mixture of affection, shame, and self-pity, I bought the uniform. Through a plastic garbage bag plopped in my passenger seat, it watched me the whole way home. I drove with it for 30 minutes, barely 20 miles in traffic, exchanging glances and stewing in the pregnant silence. I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to know if it hurt to be forgotten, if it’d feared being abandoned, like I had. Instead, I looked out the window.
The waves wore the rocks down to dust. Rusted piers littered the shoreline, all black metal and barnacles. I saw the trail along the bluffs I skipped down with my family and the breeze that had blown dust over our footsteps. I saw the airplane that would take me from here, vanishing even in the cloudless sky.
It’s rare for someone to save you a space in Los Angeles. Those flung from the speeding, reckless city find themselves torn to shreds, marred with road rash and broken fingernails from holding on too long. I choose to let go, to tumble through the dust, stumbling forward, clamoring up to my future. I’m not sure whether the space I filled will be there when I get back, or whether I’ll be relegated to the shelves of a thrift store and forgotten, but I take a step.