10 years ago I watched the L word for the first time. I was squeezed tight in a small single at my boarding school, barely halfway out of the closet, and hopelessly in love with a German exchange student with red hair. Her name was Julia.
Back then, LA and West Hollywood was a world I could only distantly and curiously gaze into from a tiny laptop screen. A couple of years later, I deliberately and almost painstakingly chose to go to college in the Deep South(which, looking back, could have been some form of implicit homophobia), and self-segregated from the glamorous life of the progressive west coast. LA stayed as the land of promise to me for quite a while. The land of hollywood, the land of comedy, the land of gays. With the twist and turns of life, I ended up moving to California in 2017.
As I am watching the premier today, weirdly enough it’s also been 10 years since I first watched the pilot episodes of TLW.
Los angeles has become my home. Silverlake is my neighbor city. I met my now fiancée in West Hollywood. I feel all kinds of things about the city now—much disillusionment, sometimes hope, rare delight, bizarre closeness and familiarity. Sometimes it does feel like life comes in full circles—did I mention that my fiancée’s name is Julia? :)
View more about The L Word: Generation Q reviews
