from Eve’s Hollywood: A confessional L.A. novel

I was probably 13 when I realized there was this whole, huge, unexplored and exciting expanse of guys who were mainly adventurers with talents that they were hoping to connect into the Hollywood carcass while there was still time. I remember the day it hit me. I was standing across the street from what is now Cyrano’s on the Strip when, from out of the West a white, top-down Jaguar pulled an illegal U-turn and an incredibly stylish, tousled, white-teethed, blue-eyed, sun-bleached, eyelashed young man reined in his car and was silent for a moment in front of me before saying, “Oh, you’re just a kid,” and making another noisy U-turn before he continued on his way. I was 13, it was 1956, I was wearing my leopardskin bathing suit and eating a Will Wright’s chocolate burnt-almond ice cream cone, and I suffered a broken heart.

–Eve Babitz