Every now and then, a little confidence gets thrown in with all the doubt. In many areas of my life, I'm full of doubt. In LA, mostly the doubt involves knowing where I'm going. I've gotten lost a number of times, though because I've mostly been on my own in such incidences, it's not been a huge problem for the main reason that no one was really relying on my knowing where I'm going. When I go out and about, I generally write down the directions to wherever it is I'm looking to go. Then to come back, I just follow said directions in the reverse. And then came tonight. I took Robert out to a fabulous little gay piano bar I'd discovered shortly after moving here. And in all my excitement, I remembered exactly how to get there (sort of--I thought I had missed the place but we miraculously found it immediately after I said so), but didn't know quite how to get on the freeway home (thereby avoiding the long drive down Sunset Boulevard we had enjoyed on the way over).

But it was night time, and after my delicious and long island ice tea, I was perfectly confident that I could get us back to the right interstate in a jiffy. And by "jiffy", I apparently meant the following: a.) I would first drive down some streets I didn't even recognize the names to, b.) I would turn down more streets I didn't know the name to, and c.) I would jump onto a highway I had only ever before driven when I was lost. If that's not a winning combination, then I guess I'd better quit gambling before I ever actually try it.

And while I was feeling all up for an adventure, and thus taking said roads rather than back-tracking the way I had come, my passenger was a bit apprehensive. Which is understandable, given that I had been thinking out loud something to the tune of: "Well... I'm not sure where this'll take us, but I think it'll get us to someplace I recognize." And then it totally didn't. And then we ended up in the hills somewhere between Glendale and LA, and it looked all dark and shit, and I was like "hey this is a nice drive."

Very fortunately for me, I finally DID find some interstate signs I recognized as belonging to one I had driven at least twice. (LA has at least five hundred different interstates crossing through the city. When I get directions to someplace that involves my driving on more than three freeways, I basically consider myself fucked and give up without trying to get there. It saves me the hassle of getting lost along the way, and I figure I probably didn't want to go that that place badly enough anyhow.) And for once in my life, I felt proud for having thrown caution to the wind and trying something new. Sure it was just a bunch of lucky guesswork, but I like to think that I somehow displayed some fabulous and unknown form of navigational intuition. Call it wishful thinking, but I've always fancied being a pirate, and this is the closest I've ever come to actually fulfilling that dream. The only thing missing was the parrot on my shoulder. Next time, maybe. Next time.