I Thought I’d Be a Movie Director

I drove Petrovic to L.A. from San Francisco. The almond groves were in their dormant phase. The tall grass at their trunks was yellow. We passed that sign for In-N-Out Burger that I didn’t always look up in time to notice. Petrovic had recently made a movie, popular among intellectuals, in which there were two stories, one about a woman who was a victim in sex and the other who was a dripping, chocolate-covered vamp. Both characters made me uneasy and I felt like a prude because of it. He told me a story about a couple who stopped by the side of the road and fucked. I laughed. He was a psychologist before he was a filmmaker. When we arrived in L.A. he made it clear that I was a disappointment to him.