Los Angeles by Ling Ma

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Ling Ma’s Los Angeles is a surreal and darkly humorous meditation on memory, heartbreak, and unresolved trauma. To give you a sense of the uncanny found in this short-story, the female narrator lives with her husband in an opulent mansion but he only communicates in dollar signs. Perhaps this a metaphorical critique of her decision to marry for money and social status instead of love. If that weren’t strange enough, the house is also occupied by her 100 ex-boyfriends. They linger like ghosts of the past, quite literally living rent-free in her mind. It’s as if The Bachelorette took a comedically absurd turn where instead of the eliminated contestants leaving, they simply refuse to go. 

The story functions as a psychological case study of a woman grappling with past relationships and repressed emotions. Among the countless exes, two stand out: Adam and Aaron. Adam represents deep, unresolved sorrow because he is the "one that got away" and she is still in love with him. Aaron, in stark contrast, embodies something far darker. He was physically abusive, and when she finally chases him off the property during the climax, the act becomes more than just a moment of confrontation. It’s a symbolic exorcism; a desperate attempt to reclaim control and purge the trauma he inflicted.

Blurring the line between dreams and reality, Los Angeles unfolds with a fever-dream logic, where past and present collapse into each other. The mansion itself becomes a psychological landscape, an elaborate prison built from memory and regret where emotional wounds manifest as physical presences that refuse to be ignored. There’s a nightmarish quality to the narrative, yet it’s tinged with dark humor and sardonic wit, as if the narrator is both trapped within her own subconscious while battling inner demons. Ling Ma captures the eerie persistence of unresolved emotions and the narratives we construct to make sense of our pain.