So I’m sitting in Christina’s car, talking on the phone and waiting for her to get out of the post office. I’m playing absentmindedly with her keychain. And there’s this large, odd-shaped, bullet-like thing on there that says Spitfire. At the crest of the oval sits a thick switch. I push it in and up. Nothing happens. “Hm.” I think. “Maybe it’s broken.” So I push it again.

A jet of fine mist shoots up and out the top of the object, perfume perhaps? Then I breathe. Fire runs down my throat and into my lungs, as I leap, screaming, from the car. “FUCKING SHIT!” I yell into the phone, coughing and hacking to beat the band. “I think I just MACED myself!” My phone companion laughs at me. Christina, upon learning of my mishap, calls me an idiot. (“That was pepper spray, you moron!”) But I found it a fitting way to start my last day in LA – after all, who but me would do such a thing? Fucking pepper spray. God. And also, ouch.