August 25-31st, 2006 - Three Introductions: Part IIIa

My most recent trip to LA was by far the most surreal--felt the most like exploring a foreign country where you might speak the language, but the systems of motion, the customs, the buildings, the foliage, the air, all feel alien.

I was visiting my special friend Mark's parents in Orange county. They are quite religious. Mark is an atheist, and I don't know what I am, but I'm definitely not into organized religion, and especially not Christianity. I know some wonderful Christians, but for me they don't outweigh the number of Christians that use their faith like a weapon.

We were given separate bedrooms, and we said grace before each meal, and we all went to church on Sunday morning. Mark's father gave the sermon and his mother gave the children's ministry. I had trouble deciding whether I should just stand politely while they all listlessly sang "Oh God you are so nice" songs, or if I should mouth the words shown on the enormous television screens on either side of the organ.

Mark was singing, which I found confusing. He does like to sing, but he's also very vocally anti-Christianity. Later, when I asked him about it, he said he was showing off for me, which clarified nothing.

After hanging out with Mark's parents for 3 or 4 days, we headed for LA to meet up with Mark's friend, Tom, whom I'd met two or three times before.

Tom moved from Chicago to LA about three years ago, to pursue directing. He's starting to get regular work, but he's still broke, at the beginning of things. Mark's parents dropped us off by a giant neon hand that was the identifying landmark for Tom's apartment.

Tom wasn't home yet, walked around the neighborhood, looking for a public bathroom. Tom lived on a main drag, an enormous 4-lane LA standard. The Subway Sandwiches had no bathroom, and the hardware store, paint store, and others of that ilk didn't look promising, so we ventured away from the street.

There was a quiet little side street with a series of bungalows and two-flats running parallel to Tom's street.

"I could see living someplace like this," I said.

"Mm hm," Mark noncommitted.

I wondered how much more expensive these places were, as opposed to those on the main street. Everything feels expensive compared to Chicago, where you can live in a centrally located 1-bedroom on a beautiful tree-lined street, walking distance from the lake and the train, for $850. Or, if you're willing to live a little further from the lake and train, you can do it for $600 and get a separate dining room thrown in.

We found an alley to pee in, playing look-out for one another. Mark and I had already decided we were going to move out together, in February. To me, then, this trip was half-vacation and three-quarters scouting.

We eventually met up with Tom, who looked tired. He was wearing a grungy undershirt and black pants sloppily rolled up, showing mismatched socks.

"I was shooting all day," he said, hauling his box fan out of the closet and into the open front doorway. "Stuffy in here. And they haven't paid me yet for the last two weeks."

"Woah. Are they going to?" Mark asked.

"We'll see," Tom said, collapsing in a 1970's brown overstuffed chair.

His studio was painted an awful sort of taupe, and got very little light or air. Maybe mostly because he'd put egg crate foam over the main window to block the street noise and light so he could sleep at night.

Tom got up to make coffee while we waited for his girlfriend, Katherine, to arrive. He rifled around in his kitchen and came back with a bit of newspaper.

"This is for you," he said, handing it to me. "It's about this woman who blogs about getting into writing for television. I think it's probably pretty useful."

"Wow, awesome, thank you," I said, flattered that Tom had thought of me.

When Katherine arrived, we took off in separate cars to get some beer, run by Katherine's for a smoke and to drop Tom's truck off, and then head for the ocean. I automatically followed Mark to Tom's truck. Tom's cell rang.

"Yeah. Ok, sure," he hung up. "Maddy, Katherine says you should ride with her."

"Oh, okay," I said, and trotted off to Katherine's sedan. We chatted easily on the way to our various errands. She turned out to be from Ohio. We all stopped into her apartment in Santa Monica to smoke. It was a "bachelor," which meant it had no kitchen, just a microwave and a little stove top and a small fridge. In a place that's supposed to be a gastronomical wasteland, as Tom claimed, I had trouble understanding the phenomenon of the bachelor apartment.

Moods significantly altered, we drove out away from city lights, and found a spot on the sand to sit and stare at the stars and waves. The couples curled up against the breeze, and we passed around a couple kinds of gourmet beer.

"So it seems like LA has enough people of substance to be socially sustainable, you know?" I said, my head spinning in activity, trying to predict my future. "I mean, there's the whole image industry, but there are non-imaginary people around, too, and I think with some time everything will drop itself into a matrix that makes sense. I mean that takes time anywhere you live, and if you're somewhere with other people with similar goals, I would think it would be a help," I spewed. There was no response. How long had I been talking? I was too high.

I kept trying to shut up, paranoid that I was talking too much, but I kept finding myself chattering away again.

"Do you guys go camping much?" I asked.

"Not enough," Mark said. "But when you guys come out, we can go whenever. For weekends and stuff."

They'd hit my fantasy for LA: besides writing work, the one thing LA has over Chicago, to me, is an abundance of beautiful places nearby. "That would be awesome," I said. "We won't have a car, but...."

"We don't mind driving" Katherine said.

"Yeah," Tom agreed.

"That's awesome," I said. "And I would totally be happy to pay for the gas or whatever, to make it fair." No response. Crap, that was probably tacky, bringing up money. Even Mark was silent.

But even with both feet crammed in my mouth and my mouth still running in spite of myself, it was clear that Tom really wanted us to move out to LA. He and Katherine like Midwesterners, and wanted more of them to play with. And Tom especially wants Mark to come out. They are good friends.

Tom stayed with Katherine for the night, so that Mark and I could use his bed. When I saw his apartment at night, I understood the appeal: it was a cozy, private little cave for relaxing and sleeping. We slept well, snuggled up together in Tom's bed.

(to be continued) (dot dot dot)

March 2006 - Three Introductions: Part II

My second visit to LA was far longer than planned due to travelanche.

I was on a Southern California camping trip with my friend, Morgan. We met at the LA airport -- she coming from NY, I from Chicago. Despite delayed flights, we giddily bounded for the car rental office, eager to embark on our heat-seeking mission.

The pebbles started skittering down the travelslope when the car lacked a cigarette lighter (for the road-essential iPod). The pebbles got heavier with a decided lack of heat at our campground in Joshua Tree National Park.

I woke up in the night to pee, and there was something weighing down the rainfly. I groggily considered: Is there a creature leaning on the fly? I poked tentatively and it slid. My disoriented brain gears went clunk: A creature's crap, then?

I pushed the flap out a little and saw white. There were four or five inches of snow crunching soggilly under my half-on sneakers as I crept out of the tent and a few feet away to pee.

I crawled back inside, fat flakes melting on my face, and snuggled back into my squishy warm sleeping bag.

"It's snowing out there," I said.

"You're kidding," Morgan said sleepily, just her nose poking out of a tiny opening in the hood of her bag. She giggled.

I smiled. "Southern California, huh?" I said, and cinched my own hood tightly closed.

The next day we watched the snow evaporate, leaving behind a still-dry desert ground, before we headed out to Plan B: Death Valley.

It had to be warm in the hottest place on Earth.

And it was, but so was I -- by the time we got there, I was feverish with a bad urinary tract infection, due to some negligence in hydration and to exhaustion from sleeping in the cold.

We got directions and left immediately for the nearest town with a hospital, which was through the mountains, in a snowstorm, at night, 90 white-knuckled miles away. The pharmacy was closed by the time we arrived, so I got some over-the-counter meds and we rented a motel room.

I neglected, however, to read the instructions carefully, and took the meds on an empty stomach. I then mistook the mild nausea for hunger, and went ahead and ate the guacamole and black bean tortillas we'd made for dinner.

I spent the rest of the evening tossing tacos into the toilet.

But in the morning I got some antibiotics and some ice cream, and we were back on the road to Death Valley.

We opted for backcountry camping. We got a topo map, packed our food, water, and shelter on our backs, and hiked out three hours on a rocky wash before we decided we had no idea where we were supposed to go. The path was not marked, the map was not clear, the sun was intense, there was no shelter, and my feet were badly blistered from sliding around in sneakers on lots of little rocks. (Morgan had forgotten to bring her extra pair of hiking boots.)

So we hiked all the way back in, got caught in a windstorm, couldn't find the car, and generally felt a notable lack of love emanating from Death Valley.

When we did find the car, Morgan felt she'd had enough.

"Dude, let's just bail ship. I don't want to push this any more," she said.

"How do you bail ship in the desert?" I thought about dumping the sand out of my shoes.

"Let's just head toward LA. We can find somewhere to chill out for the night on the way, and be there by tomorrow night."

I paused for a second, not sure if I was not sure or just exhausted. I listened to the wind whip around the little car.

"I mean, because, we tried, you know? We had a map, directions, equipment, and it just didn't work out," Morgan said, taking out the bag of chocolate chips. They looked pretty good.

"Tally ho," I said, and started the engine before reaching for the chocolate.

We spent one night, on the way, at a cute little campground called Red Rock. It was sheltered, sunny, warm, and pleasant. We took it as a sign that we were finally headed the right direction.

When we did get to LA, in the evening, we were greeted warmly by Morgan's friend, Bianca. Bianca was in the middle of a cinematography graduate course at the American Film Institute. I'd met her once before, on a visit to New York. I'd felt impressed and intimidated when she'd said she was applying to AFI for cinematography.

We settled into her beautiful old ranch-style apartment with homemade Japanese udon and spinach salad, and watched a film she'd just finished shooting for class. It was a cute plot, and nicely shot, but really, the writing was mediocre. The script for her next film was worse. I thought to myself:

I could definitely do better.

Morgan had been telling me I'd be a good screenwriter for years -- basically since she'd met me, our first year of college, 9 years prior. I liked the idea, but had always found the culture of film too intimidating. I am not a shy person, or an unambitious person, or even a socially awkward person. But I have never considered myself to be the kind of flashy or cool or slick person that seemed synonymous with film.

But there I was, in LA, seeing that some of the people who get into AFI for screenwriting are, at best, mediocre -- that I was better than someone who felt him or herself to be sufficiently talented to pursue this career, and was accepted into a respected school.

Well, damn.

My mood lifted for the first time of the trip. I had felt consistently tired and beat-up for the whole week, but suddenly I was bouncing around Bianca's apartment, telling jokes, fetching food, and talking a mile-a-minute.

The next morning, we went for brunch at a charming place nearby with outdoor seating and a line out the door.

"Maddy??" I heard someone say as I sat down at a table. I looked up. There was Lindy, one of two people I know who lives in LA.

"Lindy!" I said, and jumped up to hug her. She was working as an actor, and I hadn't seen her in at least a couple of years. We chatted through brunch and caught up a bit. She seemed basically the same as when I'd known her in college -- maybe a little thinner, her style a little more outspoken, but still the sharp-minded, analytically critical, thoughtful woman I'd known at the University of Chicago. LA had not dulled her senses or lulled her into a sunny, fashionable haze.

Morgan and I spent the remainder of our days in LA experimenting with their public transportation, which was shiny and huge, though it didn't seem to go much of anywhere. We went downtown and saw the St. Patrick's Day Parade go by -- a St. Patty's parade filled with shiny-black-haired Latinos instead of ruddy-faced, red-headed Chicago Irish.

We felt like ants, trying to negotiate our way to the modern art museum on foot, among enormous parking structures and highway overpasses.

Another friend of Morgan's saved us from our plight, picking us up in his car. We went together to Silver Lake, and bought cheap silly stuff at a thrift store, and then went for rosewater flavored ice cream.

LA was seeming like it was not a bad place.

Later, I parted with Morgan to meet up with my aunt and uncle, who live in Santa Monica. They picked me up in his enormous, white 1970's Cadillac, which, he boasts, gets 9 miles to the gallon.

"You can see the gas gauge go down when we go uphill," he gloated.

"Yeah, Anna told me," I said. My sister had already reported back, from a previous trip, on the environmental terror that was my uncle.

I cringed inwardly as they very generously drove me around to their favorite spots. They took me out for dinner at their favorite Indian place (nothing like Devon Avenue, but still good), took me to Amoeba Records (okay that's pretty awesome), and the next day carted me over to the Universal Studios Theme Park, where I bit my tongue and tried to find nice things to say about the broad array of colored sugar and plastic crap for sale.

My other sister, Carrie, came out to LA for her spring break, and met up with us. We all went out for lunch, and my uncle and I got into a long political debate about free trade, environmentalism, and social security. I tried to just ask questions, to understand why my uncle feels the way he does. I tried not to judge, even though he had been poking at my beliefs. (In the bedroom, for example, next to the bed, he'd put a picture of himself shaking hands with George Bush, knowing full well my feelings about Bush.)

Eventually it became clear to me that, actually, he didn't have any real animosity toward me or my beliefs -- that he was just insecure, and expressed that via disconcerting aggressiveness.

The relief of this realization, and the exhaustion of two days' worth of being polite and silent (while being driven around in my second-worst anxiety-causing transportation nightmare -- the only thing worse being a Hummer) caught up to me. I relaxed enough that the floodgates came down, and I had a somewhat embarrassing public release of tension.

My uncle took it all wrong, and thought that my crying indicated that I was hurt by what he'd been arguing with me -- my aunt took me aside to try to explain her husband and smooth things over, and I tried to explain that no, I was expressing myself because I finally felt safe to do so, that actually I felt much better now that I understood where he was coming from.

They are not people who talk much about their emotions, I think. And I can be pretty intense. It was hard to explain. But they are very kind, generous, loving people, and they both really did want me to have a good time.

So I left LA, this time, with two separate experiences of it:
1. A feeling of uplifting possibility for a future of writing, and of the social okayness that seemed to exist with my peers who were already there, and
2. A feeling that LA's consumer-centric, bling-centric, driving culture would present a heavy challenge to my notions of responsible environmentalist living.

I am not religious, but I do believe in the meaningfulness of coincidences and events. So on this trip, I also left feeling that I had been steered to LA, in order to see both the exciting and the daunting challenges that were there for me.

I went back to Chicago buzzing with the idea that my next step might be moving to LA.