One Is the Loveliest Number

Me and Julian Schnabel, one on one, that’s the way it’ll be. A private showing at the Gagosian gallery in Beverly Hills. Of course, it’s not Schnabel without a crowd, celebrities and paparazzi--a thousand other people will be there, too.

But it’s good to squeeze past the doorman with no date in hand to make witty critiques under her breath about the art fans in various states of undress throwing panicked glances about the room. No colleagues to pass along what people are saying about the five paintings here, each about the size of the door to a single-car garage. Tonight it’s just me and Schnabel and these large ideas on the wall that keep blurting out, “I am him!” Because the work is a convergence point for what feels like a cult of personality, it seems appropriate to meet it alone.

The crowds are here to see the art, but they’re also here to be the art, and one has to be in the right mood to appreciate it. Why risk having someone else along to break it down? Besides, being alone in a room full of celebrities is not really like being alone. It’s like being with invisible friends. There’s Viggo Mortenson (Strider in “Lord of the Rings”), Mickey Rourke, John Waters, Dennis Hopper.

We’re all making the Schnabel thing together.

That togetherness makes it a fun night to be alone. I run into friends, but often the person they are with urges them to keep moving, even if they want to talk. I am free to give all of my attention or none. Artists themselves often go to openings alone, or with other artists, as if to deny evidence of mainstream life like spouses or children. Some of them are eager to talk. This is their ocean, and the water is warm.

Movie depictions of solitude in L.A. have one listening for a wistful noir trumpet solo blowing from down the alley. But, on the contrary, this is a great town for going out alone, and being alone in it is one of its greatest luxuries. To be at the Schnabel show alone is totally satisfying. Or to indulge in a guilty pleasure like the latest blockbuster or trendy restaurant. In the most socially deregulated city in America, no rule says your life must be like an episode of “Friends.” That’s a lot of pressure and doesn’t even look like that much fun.

Of course, you’ll have to learn to ignore a barrage of media messages telling you that solitude is a kind of pathology. I ran into a gallerist at the Schnabel show who said, “I thought that going out alone was supposed to be a drag.” Advice columns tell women how to avoid being pitied or hit on and tell men how to not look like a psycho. But this approach seems to indicate deeper problems.

“Being alone is really an important part of self-care,” says “Dr. Drew” Pinsky, an L.A. internist and teen relationship expert on MTV’s “Loveline.” In the perennially adolescent world of Los Angeles, who better to ask? “It’s more than just taking a break from our busy lives. If a person can’t be healthy alone, I have serious doubts about their ability to be healthy in a relationship.”

The lunch really is that naked.

The fear of being alone also denies some basic facts. In L.A., we end up going out alone all the time. How can we help it? According to the 2000 census, almost three quarters of a million people in Los Angeles County are “householders living alone.” That’s up 3.5% from 1990, and half a million of those people are under 65. That’s a lot of single people looking to go out. Not to mention those who are partnered with a workaholic.

Or those with a child who trade nights off. Or those with a corporate job in which one’s other is considered insignificant, like agents or publicists, who end up not alone but surrounded by people not of their choosing, which is a kind of loneliness, and one of the worst.

One of the reasons you live here is because the culture is deep and alive, and you’re going to end up wading in by yourself once in a while. So let’s institute a new policy of honesty. Protect the glory of solitude, and repel the pain of loneliness. Don’t be one of those people who feigns disconnection: “Oh, I never go out.” Because (a) you do, and (b) you go out alone, and (c) you sometimes like it.

“Pop is about liking things,” Andy Warhol once said.

And that requires courage. It means declaring yourself and being prepared to defend that choice. But that doesn’t mean you have to fight that battle constantly. If there’s something you want to keep close to the vest, just go do it yourself.

We all do this, to a certain extent, when it comes to taking care of our bodies. A lot of Angelenos spend their precious free time alone at the gym, running, doing yoga or surfing, maintaining some semblance of physical fitness and sanity.

But what about our minds? According to a friend of mine, who reads scripts and books for film development at Miramax, the solitary approach to entertainment and culture is more than an indulgence, it’s a philosophy. Especially when it comes to movies. Probably more people go to movies alone than anything else one can do on a night out, other than shopping. Just like there are date movies, there are solo movies.

“I remember seeing ‘Cyrano’ several years ago with a friend,” she says, “and when the lights came up I was wiping my eyes. And my friend, who was pretty much doing her taxes in her head through the whole thing, put her hand on my shoulder and sincerely inquired, ‘Is it because you have a big nose?’ How much better the experience of the film would have been without the social obligation to explain that, no, it was not because I have a big nose.”

This is exactly why I had to sneak off by myself to see “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” Colleagues interested in serious film like the latest Dogma 95 film dismiss this as big special-effects puffery. But for those who read the books in adolescence, it’s hard to resist seeing it come alive with transcendent actors like Ians McKellen and Holm, or to see Hollywood’s depiction of the psychedelic power of the ring itself. The whole idea of having to instantly sum up your emotions, or to explain what attracted you to a film in the first place, or to even go mucking around in your reactions, is sometimes a drag.

As counterintuitive as it may be, one of the most common refuges for solitude and escape is the car. Can’t take the crush of humanity on L.A. streets? Well, get off for a drive somewhere. This is the one I hear all the time: “I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I drove out to the desert.” That kind of mindless drift usually ends in a motel in Palm Springs. Desert Hot Springs. Joshua Tree. Vegas. An empty highway is still the most direct line to the heart of this country, and to our atrophied contemplative faculties.

It’s a way to make life and thought linear. The highway doesn’t have to be all that empty or long. No one can snake their way down Mulholland Drive without feeling its strange mix of desert canyon emptiness, self-conscious cultural iconography, and lack of all destination other than Topanga and finally the sea. The car is also a way to feel social without having to be social. Lots of the cars cruising the Sunset Strip on Saturday night are a party of one. For all the complaining that Angelenos do about their commutes, most people also savor that time. The movie that is L.A. plays out on the windshield, and you are your own character in it, inside your car with your own dialogue and soundtrack and reasonable ending.

If driving is about feeling connected to L.A. on a macro level, then hiking is about connecting on the micro. When you hike directly out of the city and, for instance, up to Griffith Park Observatory, you feel as if you know a part of the city that’s too intimate to experience by car, by media or even by socializing. Hiking puts you in touch with the very dirt shifting too and fro under the city, the creosote bush and azaleas and ocotillo.

When I hike alone, up Franklin Canyon in Beverly Hills, I like to think of Edward Abbey’s great book about solo hiking, “Desert Solitaire.”

Not because of its deep bits, which are many and profound indeed, but because Abbey admits that, while hiking days on end in open desert, what he thinks about most often are women he’s had sex with and getting a cold beer.

This adds levity to the drive up past the lunatic parade of chateaux and mock Tudor next to mid-century modern next to Mediterranean mansion. Once on the trailheads looping out from the Franklin Canyon Reservoir and up into the dusty hills, all you have to do is walk and let things get basic again.

Nothing is more Los Angeles than dining out alone. And the swankier, the better. Sure, stopping off for a macho burrito can be damn satisfying with no one around to tell you not to. At 2 a.m., Pinks looks like a place of worship, our Angkor Wat. But since you’re alone, and whatever you do is going to be fairly inexpensive, why not live a little? Grabbing a table at Les Deux or Lucques--and make sure it’s visible, one of the better tables, or even if it has to be at the bar--opens up a whole new range of possibilities. After all, who are you? The restaurant staff sure doesn’t know.

You can either hide out and enjoy a great meal, or engage the physical separation from the other diners as an opportunity for fun. With the right attitude, you’re someone.

Sushi is a great option, because chefs naturally focus on a solo diner. I stopped off at the sushi bar at U-Zen in West L.A. on a recent trip out alone and felt completely at ease. Unlike daters and couples, the chefs know you’re probably there for something special. I played this up by asking the waitress for Ebisu, a delicious Japanese beer usually not on the menu. They made me a chef’s choice dish, which turned out to be a triumphant monkfish liver presentation and a special salad. The man from the couple sitting next to me indicated that he wanted one of those, too.

The sushi bar was fun because it was physically comfortable. Going out alone almost always comes down to this. You’re going to feel best wherever the glorious solitude inside is matched by the atmosphere and the people around you.

Interactivity can make the night even better. For instance, the Thursday “Cooking With Gas” improv show at the Groundlings theater makes for a great night out. The 100 or so people who pack the tiny theater on Melrose are a nice mix of couples, gangs of friends and solitary patrons--and a good number are actors themselves, and that makes for a slightly charged atmosphere.

On a recent Thursday night, the cast included special guests Seth Green (“Austin Powers,” “Greg the Bunny”), Mindy Sterling (Frau Farbissina from “Austin Powers”), Mike McDonald (“Mad TV”), and Dan Castellaneta (“The Simpsons”). The director of “Cooking With Gas” pops up in front of the small audience and fires questions like, “OK, these two are having an argument: about what?”

The audience shouts out responses--”dirty underwear!”--and that’s what they have to work with.

“What do you like best about this?” asked the friendly young man sitting next to me. I told him I was surprised at how funny unscripted comedians can be, and that I felt included. Some of the scenes were a howl and had the actors themselves busting up. “Yeah, we’re all part of it,” he said. “The show depends on us.” Afterward, the cast comes out into the tiny lobby to answer questions and mingle, and it felt pretty comfortable to stand around and talk to the people I just met there.

On the way home from the Groundlings, I stopped off at a Santa Monica bar, Renee’s Courtyard Cafe, where I know the bartenders and feel at home. I thought more about what a kid at the theater had pointed out: The couples talking and snuggling around me were insulated from the world; they didn’t have to interact, they had each other. But the spectacle that is Los Angeles, the great nights that leave you with great stories to tell, the great cultural push forward, those require some acting out. They need a free radical to set off the chemical reaction. I had another drink. The kid was exactly right, the show depends on us.