The ‘bomb cyclone’ beating up the west coast intensified on the second day of my visit: silver sheets of rain coming down, pooling on street corners and running rivers around the wheels of parked cars – leaves and newspapers and single flip-flops floating by forlornly, coming to standstills halfway up driveways or plastered across kerbs. The greens and reds of traffic lights and headlights blurred over sodden asphalt, drawing down buildings and billboards into long strange reflections.

I sat, cosy in Annie’s apartment, looking out at the misery of it from the window of her studio. Nobody else was up. My jet lag had shaken me from my dreams at 7am, and I knew I’d have a long time of it yet; Annie is a card-carrying nighthawk, and in all the time I’ve known her I’ve never once seen her actually wake up organically – her alarm will sound and she’ll shut it off and roll over, and then it will sound again, and again, and then I’ll come in all restless and eager to get the day going, prodding her to get up – she’ll shoo me away, and then I’ll prod her again, and then I’ll prod her and her alarm will sound at the same time and then maybe – maybe – she’ll stir, sitting up lopsided with a shock of white hair like Eraserhead.

And then, every time, she emits exactly one high-pitched scream, like a baby owl, stretching her arms out to the sides and above her head, and follows it up with a guttural ‘ugh’ and a scowl at me for disturbing her.

I didn’t prod her awake this time, however, because of course she shares a bed with Tayler in their California home, and I don’t know Tayler well enough to go bounding into their bedroom with my cheery morning salutations. So I just sat, watching the rain and eating a piece of cheese I found in the fridge, until I heard the long, high-pitched screech from the next room that told me Annie was up and lucid once more.

I came meekly into their room – I always feel awkward about seeing people I don’t know in bed, feel like I’m invading their privacy – to find them sharing a blunt.

“Ahoy boys*,” asked Annie. “Want some?”

*It’s weird, you know. I have not one, but two friends who use ‘ahoy’ as a greeting. Alex in London says it too: ‘Ahoy!’ when he answers the phone. No idea.

I said no to Annie’s offer; I’ve not smoked weed in years. It disagrees with me strongly. Annie enjoys it when I’m high, finds it amusing, but I don’t – I get trapped in my own head like an old man in a snow globe, flummoxed by everything and blown away by actions that are usually subconscious, like turning a doorknob or scratching my nose. I got scared of my own tongue once – I became very aware of it and thought it was getting bigger and was going to cut off my air supply. Nope.

The rain was fucked, so we stayed in and ate breakfast. Tayler cooked eggs on toast for me, and I ate it sitting at their little kitchen table with a green table cloth. I asked if they had any spicy sauce and Tayler gave me four, along with detailed descriptions of each of them that I didn’t really understand because I’m not much of a foodie and I don’t know what ingredients are. If it’s a food that exists in a raw form and it’s big enough that  you can pick it up and munch it (potato), then yeah, I’m obviously familiar – but anything smaller, anything granular, complex, herbal, delicate, layered, complex – I’m at a loss.

I tried every sauce and flamed my mouth, then drank a coffee and went to sit on the sofa at the foot of the girls’ bed to watch a horror movie. I am at my most pepped, my most zesty in the mornings, and part of me wanted badly to go outside – to explore this strange new land, rainstorm be damned – but I was a guest, and to be a good guest you have to be quiet and patient and fit around your host nicely. 

At lunch Tayler took her car to get us all In-n-Out Burgers, and I stayed home with Annie watching South Park and trying on her various trendy DJ jackets and caps. She says I look cool in them, but no matter what Annie and/or the mirror says to me, I always feel like a fraud in anything but my own no-brand, worn-in, functional clothes. Whenever I try to branch out I get so self-conscious that I end up wishing I’d never bothered. I feel like I’m wearing fancy dress and everyone is looking at me. I feel as though people just know – even if they’ve never seen me before – that I’m trying gingerly to be stylish. And this mindset prevents things from looking good on me, because to look good – really good – you’ve got to be confident. You’ve got to not fiddle with your outfit or adjust things in the mirror; you’ve got to not give a shit. And I’ve always given far too many shits.

Tayler came back and we ate our burgers (juicy, tender, compact, big fan), and then I opened a beer because whatever I was on holiday. The rain held out most of the day while we chilled and talked, and in the evening Tayler drove Annie and I a few blocks away, to a bar called Cato’s. It was a rural-looking place in the city, everyone in plaid shirts, leaning on the bar. It felt strange hearing so many American accents all at once. In a hostel, or anywhere really, a US accent cuts across a busy room like diamond gliding over glass; the energy, the brashness of the accent always feels sharp and intense when juxtaposed with the gentle lilt of Franglais or Spanglish. Here, however, that was all there was, and they merged together in a steady, upbeat din.

We bought beers – some potent 9% thing that Annie likes – and sat, and talked, and adjusted our hair frequently. We spoke about our lives and careers and hopes, and often we referenced money. We never talked about money in the Berlin days, not even the lack of it – it never seemed to matter. We both knew we’d be rich and famous for our art one day, and that was that. Now, at 29 and 31 respectively, Annie and I are both reluctantly aware of the chance that we might not reach the heights we’d hoped for, and thus… well, you need money, don’t you. But I don’t like to think too much about that, because a large part of me believes – hopes – that for both of us, real success lies in wait still, tucked away behind a few more horizons. If I get just one good book published in my lifetime I’ll be happy. I could be 32, I could be 70, fuck it – still counts.

A bar or two later we stumbled home again, lightly sauced, and Tayler was on the phone to a friend when we came in the front door. Annie, in her eternal goof, knocked something off a side table while taking her boots off.

“She’s just walked in the door and she’s already breaking shit,” Tayler said down the phone.

It made me laugh. It was funny to know that Annie’s clumsiness doesn’t cease when she’s out of my life. She’d smashed three expensive wine glasses in the past month alone, Tayler had told me that afternoon. Annie denies all of this stuff, of course – but she denies it so desperately and vehemently that she effectively nails shut her own coffin. She sounds like Bart Simpson when she tries to fib.

That night Annie was playing a DJ set at a lesbian bar across town. I knew she wanted me to come along, but I felt a nagging sense of unease at the prospect. Not because it was a gay bar, of course – I’ve frollicked in a million – but just because… well, I’m sort of out of that whole scene these days. I don’t go to clubs anymore, I don’t dance in smoke and lasers, I don’t gobble down pills and get all gooey and butterfly-stomached. I don’t like it anymore! It reminds me of excess and mistakes and it makes my belly flip with recollective nausea. That’s the truth of it –  but because I was uncomfortable with this growing truth for years, denied it, thought it made me boring, I spent years turning up to places I didn’t want to go and just drinking my way through it. Even in Berlin, I’m not sure whether I actually liked going clubbing – or if I just liked spending time with my friends, and 16 hours of warped reality in a dungeon was simply the price to pay. I don’t know – it’s all a haze now, and I can only look back on it with older eyes.

I would always have an alright time by the end of those nights, of course, because by the end I’d be hammered, and I could have a jolly good time even sitting in an empty room when I’m off my face. But one of my promises to myself, after everything went wrong a few years ago, was to not do things I don’t enjoy sober. I can consume alcohol to complement things, fine, to add a level of silliness to activities I like, yes – but I shouldn’t use it as a numbing agent to grind through situations I don’t want to be in.

I felt terrible breaking this news to Annie, obviously. There’s something about her that’s so sincere, so joyful and blindly optimistic, that disappointing her feels like throwing a cold bucket of water over a puppy. But that’s another promise I made to myself: to set boundaries, and to practise saying no. And although I felt sad about letting her down, I felt secure enough in our friendship that she would understand – that she would want the best for me.

Annie beat me to it, however. As we sat at 10pm and pre-drank in her studio, coloured spotlights rotating on the ceiling, music pumping, she must have noticed a change in my atmosphere.

“You don’t have to come tonight if you don’t want, boys,” she said. “I would love it if you were there, but I understand you’re jet lagged and anxious. If you do come, I can always pay for your Uber home whenever you want to leave. Even if it’s after one hour. You could just party with me behind the decks then head off. But whatever you decide I totally respect it.”

She’s good like that.

I told my friend – it took every fibre of my being not to cave, but it’s an important lesson I’m trying to teach myself, and the fact it’s so difficult for me is why it’s so important – that I’d prefer to stay home. 

She patted me on the back and said okay, and I said thank you. She downed her can, called a taxi and headed out alone, and I slid into bed beneath the covers and felt strange. A part of me was proud, of course – proud of myself for being able to do things that would have been impossible for me only a few years ago. But another part of me felt scared that this change in me, this slowing, calming – which I’d known of for a long time, but would surely be a surprise to Annie – would put distance between us. The night is her world, and when we met it was mine too. But I’d found myself moving into the morning, and as I lay there, thinking and listening to the rain, I hoped quietly that even though the peripheries may alter and shift, our friendship would always remain the same.