Behind the Orange Curtain
running log 1/25/26 - 1/31/26
This month’s Substack earnings will be donated to Westside Vendor Buyout to support Los Angeles street vendors affected by the ICE raids. Every dollar goes to vendors so they can stay home safely without losing income.
A few sporadic text messages flutter against my hip, where my phone is tucked into the pocket of my Nike biker shorts—my favorite pair for long-distance runs. They’re high-waisted with flexible compression, molding and stretching to my body while keeping everything tight and in place. Nothing jiggles, which means I can drift into the run instead of wrestling my shorts.
I maintain a steady pace as I pull out my phone, struggling to swipe it open through the salt left by a slick sheen of sweat. It is eighty-two degrees in January. I am overheating, the ocean breeze doing its best to keep up. When Face ID fails to recognize me and instead demands my six-digit passcode, my frustration with technology and the ever-growing desire to rid myself of it consumes me, filling me with contempt. I pound the numbers with my thumb. The phone refuses my first two attempts, buzzing in condescension until I finally get it right.
The texts are from a friend who was lurking my location on Find My Friends.
What are you doing behind the Orange Curtain?
Running! I respond.
The only thing I do once I cross the invisible border between Los Angeles County and Orange County, aka “the Orange Curtain,” is run.
If I’m being honest, it feels scary crossing this county border as a gay woman. I stopped visiting this particular city I’m running through, Huntington Beach, after graduating high school, once I understood that many of the people here are less accepting of who I am. That perception was solidified by the documented history of white supremacist activity, reinforced by slurs shouted while I held hands with a then-girlfriend, and by friends pushed and screamed at by counterprotesters on its main street after George Floyd’s death.
But lately, the danger feels everywhere. It’s dangerous to be gay, as I am. To be trans. To be Brown. To be Black. The threat, the hate, the fear are real for so many, and they weigh on the world until it feels bleak and perilous. Orange County can seem like a petri dish for that kind of hostility, but I try to take what’s good from it—to remember that not everyone here hates people like me, to resist lumping all of OC into a single fearful assumption. I try not to give in, not to collapse into a puddle of defeat. Running makes those feelings melt away. I don’t forget the danger, but stomping the pavement rouses something impenetrable in me, the miles I cover shielding me like armor.
As I look around the wide beach path full of runners, walkers, dogs, cyclists, families, and skaters, I see everyone smiling. I smile back. I half-wave at other runners, an acknowledgment of our shared suffering. To run is to endure pain, to live in it, to find your way through. To me, this shared suffering becomes its own act of resistance. If we can endure this, what else might we be capable of?
Everyone is so nice and joyful, living for the unseasonably warm day. They don’t know who I am. I am just a runner passing through the Orange Curtain—sure, wearing all black, covered in tattoos—but a runner all the same. I am privileged to move through here unnoticed, unpoliced. I could be one of them. Would they still smile if they knew?
I run through the happy people, keeping my slow but mighty pace, taking up space with my breath, my body, my being.