Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: Nothing scared me more than intimacy — except L.A. freeways. But I had to face them both
The first time I ever drove on the freeway was to tell my girlfriend that I loved her. At this point, I had lived in L.A. for four years. “You can’t not drive in L.A.,” everyone said when I moved here. But I worked from home and lived relatively close to most of my friends. I had Lyft and Uber, a TAP card and a borderline unhinged love of walking. My excuse was that I didn’t have a car and couldn’t afford to buy one, which wasn’t a lie. But the real reason was I was scared of driving and I had decided to succumb to that fear.
I wasn’t always an anxious driver. Growing up in Massachusetts, I got my license at 16 and cruised around in my grandma’s 1979 Peugeot that had one working door and wouldn’t have passed a safety inspection. But I felt invincible. Then I grew into a neurotic adult with an ever-growing list of rational and irrational fears — from weird headaches and mold to running into casual acquaintances at the grocery store.
In my early 30s, I developed a terrible phobia of flying. “It’s so much safer than driving in a car!” people said to comfort me. So I did some research. This did not assuage my fear of flying, but it did succeed in making me also afraid of driving. I lived in New York City at the time, where being a nondriver was easy. In L.A., it was less easy, but I made it work.
When I was single, I appreciated that dating apps let me sort potential matches by location. I set my limit to “within five miles” from my apartment in West Hollywood and tried to manifest an ideal partner who would live within this perfectly reasonable radius. This proved somewhat complicated. My first boyfriend in L.A. moved from Los Feliz to Eagle Rock six months into our relationship, and we broke up. There were other issues, but the distance was the final straw.
I did eventually get a car but was restricted by my intense fear of the massive, sprawling conduits of chaos known as the L.A. freeways. Lanes come and go. Exits appear out of nowhere. And everyone drives like they’re auditioning for “The Fast and the Furious.” So I took surface streets everywhere, even when it doubled my driving time. I became pretty comfortable behind the wheel as long as I remained in my little bubble of safety. Then I fell in love.
Spencer and I met 14 years ago through a close mutual friend when we both lived in Brooklyn. Our friend had talked her up so much that I was nervous to meet her as if she were a celebrity, but she immediately made me feel at ease. She’s confident and comfortable in her skin but also exudes a warmth that makes people feel secure. At the time, I was newly sober, and feeling comfortable — especially around someone I’d just met — was rare.
Not long after we met she moved to Philly, and our lives went in different directions. She was starting med school. I was writing for an addiction website and doing stand-up comedy. She was living with her long-term girlfriend. I was trying to date the most emotionally unavailable people I could find, which my therapist (and every self-help book in Barnes & Noble) attributed to a fear of intimacy.
A decade later, we both ended up in Los Angeles. She had broken up with her girlfriend and was a resident at UCLA. I was taking screenwriting classes and walking everywhere. We texted a few times to hang out, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, keeping her busy in the hospital and me busy at home spraying my groceries with Clorox. Multiple vaccines later, we finally met up at the AMC theater at the Century City mall. Just as I remembered, she felt like home.
Over the next few months, we went to about nine movies together, our hands occasionally touching in a shared bucket of popcorn, before I finally got the courage to tell her I had developed feelings for her. We’d become close friends at this point, and the stakes felt alarmingly high. Also, she was emotionally available. Uncharted territory for me.
“I like like you,” I said one night while we were on my couch watching “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” My voice was shaking and also muffled, because I was hiding under a blanket.
This confession was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, and I’ve done a lot of scary things — gotten sober, did stand-up in front of my entire family (don’t recommend this), come out as queer to a bunch of conservative Midwesterners on a study-abroad trip (one girl took a selfie with me and sent it to her mom with the note, “I met a bisexual and she’s really nice!”). But I learned in recovery that sometimes when something is scary, we are meant to run toward it rather than away from it. That night, Spencer pulled the blanket off my head and told me she felt the same.
This beautiful, confident “Curb”-loving doctor did have one red flag. She lived in Santa Monica, at the end of a six-mile stretch on the 10 Freeway. On side streets, getting from my apartment to hers could take up to an hour or longer in traffic. After a few months, we were seeing each other so often that the commute had become unmanageable.
Also unmanageable were my feelings. One night, about four months into our relationship, I told two close friends that I loved Spencer but was scared to tell her. The absence of these words had become a weight between us, triggering insecurities and petty fights. My friends urged me to tell her and thought I should do it that night (we’d been watching “Yellowjackets” and were feeling a little dramatic). I felt emboldened. But it was 10 p.m. on a work night and it would take 45 minutes to get to her house by my usual route.
I called her. “I’m coming over!” I said. Twenty minutes later, I was merging onto the 10. I drove too slowly, got off at the wrong exit and gripped the steering wheel so hard my fingers went numb. But when I got to Spencer’s apartment, I was bolstered by adrenaline and the rush of having conquered my fear. I had driven on the 10 — at night. I could survive anything. I told her I loved her. She said it back. I didn’t even hide under a blanket.
This was two years ago. Since then, I’ve driven on the 10 hundreds of times between Spencer’s apartment and mine. Now we live together, which significantly cuts down on the commute. I still prefer a side street, but I’ll take the freeway if I have to. Since mastering the 10, I’ve also braved the 5 Freeway, the 101 Freeway and even the 405 Freeway. Spencer always tells me I’m “brave.” I’m starting to believe her.
The author is an L.A.-based writer, editor and comedian and co-host of the podcast “All My Only Children.” She’s on Instagram and Threads: @maywilkerson
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Lifestyle
In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping
Lee Byung-hun stars in No Other Choice.
NEON
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NEON
In an old Kids in the Hall comedy sketch called “Crazy Love,” two bros throatily proclaim their “love of all women” and declare their incredulity that anyone could possibly take issue with it:
Bro 1: It is in our very makeup; we cannot change who we are!
Bro 2: No! To change would mean … (beat) … to make an effort.
I thought about that particular exchange a lot, watching Park Chan-wook’s latest movie, a niftily nasty piece of work called No Other Choice. The film isn’t about the toxic lecherousness of boy-men, the way that KITH sketch is. But it is very much about men, and that last bit: the annoyed astonishment of learning that you’re expected to change something about yourself that you consider essential, and the extreme lengths you’ll go to avoid doing that hard work.
Many critics have noted No Other Choice‘s satirical, up-the-minute universality, given that it involves a faceless company screwing over a hardworking, loyal employee. As the film opens, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been working at a paper factory for 25 years; he’s got the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect family — you see where this is going, right? (If you don’t, even after the end of the first scene, when Man-su calls his family over for a group hug while sighing, “I’ve got it all,” then I envy your blithe disinterest in how movies work. Never change, you beautiful blissful Pollyanna, you.)
He gets canned, and can’t seem to find another job in his beloved paper industry, despite going on a series of dehumanizing interviews. His resourceful wife Miri (Son Ye-jin) proves a hell of a lot more adaptable than he does, making practical changes to the family’s expenses to weather Man-su’s situation. But when foreclosure threatens, he resolves to eliminate the other candidates (Lee Sung-min, Cha Seung-won) for the job he wants at another paper factory — and, while he’s at it, maybe even the jerk (Park Hee-soon) to whom he’d be reporting.
So yes, No Other Choice is a scathing spoof of corporate culture. But the director’s true satirical eye is trained on the interpersonal — specifically the intractability of the male ego.
Again and again, the women in the film (both Son Ye-jin as Miri and the hilarious Yeom Hye-ran, who plays the wife of one of Man-su’s potential victims) entreat their husbands to think about doing something, anything else with their lives. But these men have come to equate their years of service with a pot-committed core identity as men and breadwinners; they cling to their old lives and seek only to claw their way back into them. Man-su, for example, unthinkingly channels the energy that he could devote to personal and professional growth into planning and executing a series of ludicrously sloppy murders.
It’s all satisfyingly pulpy stuff, loaded with showy, cinematic homages to old-school suspense cinematography and editing — cross-fades, reverse-angles and jump cuts that are deliberately and unapologetically Hitchcockian. That deliberateness turns out to be reassuring and crowd-pleasing; if you’re tired of tidy visual austerity, of films that look like TV, the lushness on display here will have you leaning back in your seat thinking, “This right here is cinema, goddammit.”
Narratively, the film is loaded with winking jokes and callbacks that reward repeat viewing. Count the number of times that various characters attempt to dodge personal responsibility by sprinkling the movie’s title into their dialogue. Wonder why one character invokes the peculiar image of a madwoman screaming in the woods and then, only a few scenes later, finds herself chasing someone through the woods, screaming. Marvel at Man-su’s family home, a beautifully ugly blend of traditional French-style architecture with lumpy Brutalist touches like exposed concrete balconies jutting out from every wall.
There’s a lot that’s charming about No Other Choice, which might seem an odd thing to note about such a blistering anti-capitalist screed. But the director is careful to remind us at all turns where the responsibility truly lies; say what you will about systemic economic pressure, the blood stays resolutely on Man-su’s hands (and face, and shirt, and pants, and shoes). The film repeatedly offers him the ability to opt out of the system, to abandon his resolve that he must return to the life he once knew, exactly as he knew it.
Man-su could do that, but he won’t, because to change would mean to make an effort — and ultimately men would rather embark upon a bloody murder spree than go to therapy.
Lifestyle
Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade
AUSTIN, Texas – Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will nearly double in size over the next decade.
The airport currently has 34 gates. With the expansion projects, it will increase by another 32 gates.
What they’re saying:
Southwest, Delta, United, American, Alaska, FedEx, and UPS have signed 10-year use-and lease agreements, which outline how they operate at the airport, including with the expansion.
“This provides the financial foundation that will support our day-to-day operations and help us fund the expansion program that will reshape how millions of travelers experience AUS for decades to come,” Ghizlane Badawi, CEO of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, said.
Concourse B, which is in the design phase, will have 26 gates, estimated to open in the 2030s. Southwest Airlines will be the main tenant with 18 gates, United Airlines will have five gates, and three gates will be for common use. There will be a tunnel that connects to Concourse B.
“If you give us the gates, we will bring the planes,” Adam Decaire, senior VP of Network Planning & Network Operations Control at Southwest Airlines said.
“As part of growing the airport, you see that it’s not just us that’s bragging about the success we’re having. It’s the airlines that want to use this airport, and they see advantage in their business model of being part of this airport, and that’s why they’re growing the number of gates they’re using,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.
Dig deeper:
The airport will also redevelop the existing Barbara Jordan Terminal, including the ticket counters, security checkpoints, and baggage claim. Concourse A will be home to Delta Air Lines with 15 gates. American Airlines will have nine gates, and Alaska Airlines will have one gate. There will be eight common-use gates.
“Delta is making a long-term investment in Austin-Bergstrom that will transform travel for years to come,” Holden Shannon, senior VP for Corporate Real Estate at Delta Air Lines said.
The airport will also build Concourse M — six additional gates to increase capacity as early as 2027. There will be a shuttle between that and the Barbara Jordan Terminal. Concourse M will help with capacity during phases of construction.
There will also be a new Arrivals and Departures Hall, with more concessions and amenities. They’re also working to bring rideshare pickup closer to the terminal.
City officials say these projects will bring more jobs.
The expansion is estimated to cost $5 billion — none of which comes from taxpayer dollars. This comes from airport revenue, possible proceeds, and FAA grants.
“We’re seeing airlines really step up to ensure they are sharing in the infrastructure costs at no cost to Austin taxpayers, and so we’re very excited about that as well,” Council Member Vanessa Fuentes (District 2) said.
The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Angela Shen
Lifestyle
After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’
Wyle, who spent 11 seasons on ER, returns to the hospital in The Pitt. Now in Season 2, the HBO series has earned praise for its depiction of the medical field. Originally broadcast April 21, 2025.
Hear The Original Interview
Television
After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’
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