Loving Long and Hard in Los Angeles

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My name is Adora Flame.  I am here to share with you my dear Internets, my mischievous little voyeurs of all that burns deep within the hearts of feline spirits and between my divinely mouthwatering thighs, the sins, wins, losses, and lessons learned from loving long and hard in Los Angeles.

My first LA love, the angry yet lonely young man that he was, married someone else three months after we parted ways for the umpteenth time.  After a love triangle with his roommate, five years of stormy break-ups and earth-shattering make-ups, three cities and a trillion frequent flier miles, oceans of passion, rivers of ecstasy, 365 favorite positions of the day, and multiple underground sex clubs, my ex (the ex of all exes) ran into the arms of another woman, who had just broken up with her long-term partner two months prior to our split.

I was too shocked to feel resentment when I heard the news.  I was too certain we had always been doomed from the start to feel anything at all when he and his wife divorced a year later.  In the interim, I went through men like tissues.  If there was an inexplicably endearing and flagrantly dangerous man in sight, odds are he was glued to my side for three months, the general duration of the courting period, which is fun and light before someone gets frightened and runs for the hills.

Then one night I met Chance.  He was a rock star – a beacon of hope to any romantic young woman in search of a soldier with grace and heart, a cowboy with poetry, and a majesty to all lost boys.  I had been collecting his albums since I was in high school.

Arpeggios punched and vibrated the walls inside my favorite Sunday night venue, as the man in question lit my cigarette, and told me we’d change the world together.

“You’re one smart motherfucker, aren’t you,” he said as more of a declaration than a question.

“Yes, yes I am.”

It was at that one moment, and not one second sooner that Chance had me. He knew I intellectualized every encounter and exchange with relentless skepticism. He knew glitter and gold failed to stimulate my senses and only sharpened my defenses.  He was attractive, but not gorgeous.  He was charming, yet sincere.  He was powerful, and he was insane.  He ruled the world, but he was alone. He was a tragic king, and he had the passion and balls of an amphetamine-induced Shakespearean superhero on Cialis. He had me at “smart motherfucker.”

By our third 48-hour long date, we were already talking about what we’d name our first child.

“Jack,” he said. “I like the name Jack.”

Then came the three B’s – the booze, the babes, and the bourgeoisie.  I thought I could handle it, and perhaps I could have.  However, I convinced myself I was incapable of being the iron-willed matriarch my girlfriends in college said I was.  Because behind all my blazing bravado, I am not made of iron. I talk hard and I play strong, but everything on the inside is soft.

I didn’t think I could ever live in his world without feeling like I was sacrificing who I really was.  I couldn’t be a rock star’s lover because I couldn’t play second fiddle – not to his fame, not to his fortune, and not to the countless groupies who wanted a piece of him.  He knew all of this, but then one night, as we lied down wrapped in each other’s arms on the floor of his recording studio, he asked me to try.  And so I did.

A few weeks later, after having a colossal argument over a horrible misunderstanding, we made plans to go to his ranch in Montana the next day.  That evening, he was arrested.  He was arrested and his handlers wouldn’t let anyone, even me, near him for weeks.  He went to jail for  three months, and then moved to New York to be closer to the east coast fashion mogul he had been seeing before he went to the big house.  (Yes, he was seeing her the same time he was seeing me.  No, I didn’t know about her.  Yes, I should have seen it coming. No…I didn’t.)

I had a fulfilling and free-loving life in Los Angeles before I encountered Chance, because I didn’t know what it was to be in love and feel that in spite of all the chaos, maybe just maybe love could conquer all.  All my time in LA after that experience was the “Post Chance Era.”  I didn’t date anyone for a year.  Eventually, I left LA for outside reasons, only to be beckoned back six months later.

While I was gone, I became reacquainted with the possibility of falling in ridiculous mountain-moving spellbinding love, and not with danger, but with innocence.  It’s a beautiful dream that I don’t want to lose.

Now that I’m back in the City of Angeles, I have decided that I’m not leaving without soaking up this newfound lease on passion and romance with each and every pore and loin I possess.

Please join me on this journey. It’s going to be the joy ride of my life.