[a couple more pics to be uploaded when my internet gets its panties untwisted]

February 24-25, 2007

I looked in the mirror while I waited for the shower to warm up. My nose and cheekbones were darker, and when I peered closer I saw tiny little freckles. I used to just brown, when my skin was a little younger.

I'd worn 30 spf sunscreen every day since my arrival, but even in winter, the sun in LA is not to be bested.

Steam started creeping around the fish-patterned shower curtain, so I got in gingerly and fiddled with the knob for a while before committing to getting fully under the stream.

I washed the salt off of my face that had accumulated while we walked to the Chinese New Year parade, about 2 1/2 miles each way. The route I'd planned through Elysian Park had proved unfindable, but after clambering up a couple steep, crumbly hills, we'd finally given up on hiking paths, and wound our way around Dodger Stadium on main roads.

China Town seemed to be made up, primarily, of little import shops, rather than restaurants, like in Chicago or New York. I resisted buying lovely blue cherry-blossomed ceramic bowls that I knew I didn't need while I had my roommates' bowls to use, and while I had no income, and while I didn't especially want to carry them back with me. And I prefer to buy used, anyway.

I thought about the bowls while I shampooed my hair, and comforted myself with the idea that I could go back and buy them, later. Abstract delayed-gratification retail therapy. Not as satisfying as you might think.

I got out of the shower and dried off as quickly as I could -- the charming little house has no heat -- and at night, it drops into the 50's. I put on the one semi-dressy outfit I'd packed, put on some make-up for the first time in maybe a month, put my hair up, and decided I was presentable to the public.

"You ready to go, the girl?" Mark asked.

"Yeah, just about," I said, putting on my one pair of dressier shoes. "Do these go?"

"Uhhh, I think you have too much bare skin showing on your feet. It's not balanced," Mark said.

"Um, okay, well, it's these or Tevas," I said, irritated that Mark didn't automatically know that I was just looking for approval.

"Well, I mean, they're fine, I don't think anyone will be staring at your feet anyway," he said to comfort me. Also not as satisfying as you might think.

"Do I look alright?" I tried greater directness.

"Yeah, you look fine," he said, distractedly.

Sigh. He must be uncomfortable too, I thought. It was Tom's birthday party, after all, Tom being Mark's only friend out here.

"Okay, let's go, then," I said. We suited up with helmets and bright jackets and blinking lights, and rolled down down down our hill and along the minimally-hilled path we'd charted for ourselves using Google Maps Pedometer.

We found the house without too much ado, locked our bikes to a railing, took off our helmets, did a hair check, and headed in.

"Girl's sporting the pimp look now, huh?" Mark said as I was about to open the front door.

"Huh? Oh," I said, and bent over to unroll my pant leg.

We walked in and were half-greeted by some very loud frat-guy types who were sitting at the kitchen table. They gave us directions to a bedroom to drop off our stuff, and then Mark ran out with Tom to pick up some party supplies. I tried not to trail after Tom's girlfriend, Katherine, like a lost puppy, but the house was still mostly empty, brightly lit, and sober.

She and I liberally poured ourselves some of the vodka I'd brought, and added a bunch of Rose's lime juice to make it drinkable. The apartment was enormous, with a huge porch big enough for a ping-pong table, a café table, 4 chairs, and a bunch of empty space. The living room had a television set as big as a twin bed, which was displaying Empire Records on mute. A couple people were standing around making conversation about the movie, but I'd never seen it. I drank some more vodka.

People started trickling in, Tom and Mark came back with a fancy multi-colored disco light contraption, and I refilled my drink.

I went out to the porch, wandered slowly around, looking at the ping-pong table, the lattice work overhead, the view, and listening to the conversations around me.

"Aw, man, then the producer decided he wanted to reshoot the whole damn thing, at like five o'clock," an actor-looking, very industry-standard attractive guy standing near me said to his friend. They were standing at right angles to one another, invitingly.

"You're kidding," his less clean-cut, more California-looking friend said. I positioned myself in front of them, looking out at the hills, at a large, well-lit building perched atop one, in the distance.

"Yeah, my shoulder was killing," the first guy said. Their conversation lulled to quiet for a moment. I turned my body toward them a bit.

"Do you know what that lit up building up there in the hills is?" I asked them, gesturing at it with my drink.

"Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the Griffith Park observatory. You mean that one?" the clean-cut one said, and took a step closer.

"Yeah, with all the white lights," I said.

"Yeah, that's the observatory. It's pretty cool."

"Ah, okay, I hiked up near that the other day, but I didn't go in. You've been?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's really nice. They spent a bunch of cash to redo it, recently."

"Cool. I'm Maddy, by the way," I said, sticking my hand out.

"Hey Maddy, I'm Mike," he said, and shook my hand.

"I'm Dan," his friend said.

"Hey, Dan, I'm Maddy," I said, shaking his hand, too. "So where are you guys from?"

"Wisconsin," Mike said.

"Michigan, but I've been out here for 8 years," Dan said.

"Midwesterners! I'm from Chicago. What do you guys do?" I said.

"I do IT stuff for production companies," Dan said.

"And I'm a camera man and a writer," Mike said.

Dan was standing a foot further from me, and seemed a little shy. Normally that might have motivated me to talk him up, get him more comfortable, but, well Mike was a writer.

"Oh cool!" I said. "I'm a writer, too."

"Well, I mean, I haven't sold anything yet, just sending scripts out, so I guess I can't really call myself a writer yet."

"Well, do you write?" I asked

"Yeah, yeah, but--"

"Then you're a writer!" I encouraged.

He explained that he had a writing partner, and a bunch of contacts that were interested in his stuff, that he'd submitted a script that wasn't quite what someone had wanted, but they'd asked him to write something else because they liked his style. I tried to balance curiosity, a desire to network, friendliness, and my vodka, with decent success, I thought.

"How do you recommend getting started and connected out here," I asked him.

"Just meet people, you know, like you're doing right now, at parties like this," he said. I nodded.

Right then another guy came out onto the porch and turned to Mike, his back partly to me, separating me from the two guys.

"Have you seen Jared around, man?" I heard him say.

Mike started to reply, and I used the opportunity to slip off of the porch. I wanted to network, but I didn't feel comfortable asking for some sort of connection when I had none to offer. But then how was I going to get anywhere? As I wandered through the party, I berated myself a little for not being slightly more forward, and later overcompensated with a woman I was talking to, asking her if I could give her some of my massage therapy business cards, to give to her friends.

"Oh, uh, um--" she stumbled. Damn.

"Or I mean if you don't have any use for them," I started to backpedal.

"No, I could take like half a dozen, sure, yeah," she said.

"Cool, right on," I said, counting them out and handing them over. I made a mental note to talk to her at least once more, about something else, that evening. I really did like her, and I didn't want her to feel used or... uncomfortable, or... like she didn't like me anymore, said my vodka.

I wandered around again, looking for Mark, the only person there with any real sense of context for me. He was pretty drunk, too.

"Hey baby!" he said, and put an arm around me. I tuned out and let myself just be his arm candy for a little while, while he talked energetically with some musicians.

The night continued like that -- in spurts of social effort and retreats to under Mark's arm, with more vodka, with some great music from Tom's 12 hour iTunes playlist, and then some dancing, and some more retreating, and then more dancing again.

At around 2:00, we agreed we were sated, and that we should start sobering up for the ride home. But at 2:15, Tom pulled me back out to the dance floor, and I danced out the last of my anxiety, every lingering jumpy twitchy ansty feeling coming out easy in 4/4 time.

And by the time I got back to Mark, he was working on another beer.

"I thought we were sobering up," I said.

"I thought we were leaving," he said.

"We are, we are, I just was dancing a little bit. I thought we were going to hang out until we were a little less drunk."

Mark looked exhausted by the idea of continuing the line of logic.

"Okay, okay, let's go," I said.

"Okay," he said, and put the half-drunk beer down.

We gathered our stuff and gave Tom and Katherine hugs.

"Hey, uh, he's kinda swaying there, Maddy," Tom said, tilting his chin at Mark.

"Yeah, I know. We're going to walk for a while."

"Good, good," he said.

We said goodbye to anyone whom we happened to pass, on our way to the door, helmets and jackets on, fully bike-geeked out.

We unlocked our bikes and I glanced over at Mark. He was swayingly attempting to mount his ride.

"Hey, baby, can we just walk for a bit?" I asked. "I think I'm a little too drunk to ride, right now."

"Okay," he said, refocusing his energy toward walking with his bike.

We walked down the street in the chilly night air, my shoes click-clacking on the sidewalk, and I didn't much mind the cold, or my uncomfortable shoes, or much of anything.

"That was a great scene," I said.

"Yeah, totally. That was awesome."

"It seemed like everyone there was from the Midwest. I met this girl who I actually might've gone to acquatics camp with, in Evanston."

"Really."

"Yeah, we both looked familiar to each other," I said, and thought vaguely about "both" vs. "each."

"I could really go for some tacos right now," Mark said.

"Yeah, good idea. We can stop if we see somewhere open."

"Can we bike now?"

I looked at Mark's only moderately improved gait, and then looked down the long, steep hill in front of us.

"Can we get to the bottom of this hill, first?"

"Yeah, okay," he said grumpily.

The streets were almost entirely empty, and the sidewalks were wide, so we got on our bikes and pedaled down the sidewalk until we got to a taco place that was brightly lit and full of other drunk people. They didn't have anything vegetarian listed, but they more or less seemed to understand that we didn't want meat on our tacos and burrito. (Mark isn't vegetarian, but he stopped eating non-organic meat & dairy after seeing The Corporation.)

I could feel people looking at our bright jackets and our helmets as we chowed down, and I felt both uncomfortable and proud.

The next day I was hung over, and paranoid that I'd made a fool of myself; that I'd given the wrong impression by getting so drunk; that as a massage therapist, a healer, I was supposed to be a model of health; that I'd overstepped social bounds and been too much, too crazy with my dancing, too forward, too blah blah blah.

I tried try to tell myself that I only worried because I know these people have no context for me, and that it was a party, that I had certainly been fine, and probably even charming. But nonetheless, the next couple days were uncomfortable and even mildly depressive. I called my parents, signed on to my instant messaging program, and tried to tug my Chicago self out to LA.

Molly: how's the left side?

Me: oh mollers
so happy to see you
the left side is feelin pretty weird right now

Molly: uh oh

Me: im like wiat a minute wait a minute who am i???

Molly: ah

Me: there is just no one here to define me except mark, which is huge, but my god
and the weather is all unreal

Molly: i've been toying with the idea that rooting yourself has something more to do with defining yourself by activities and interests than people originally
the people will follow

Me: ...yeah, that makes sense
i was having trouble doing activities today

Molly: probably cuz you've been Action Maddy

Me: yeah... but i also felt like i didnt know what i was supposed to do
and i've been wearing the same jeans for a month

Molly: with your free time?

Me: yeah

Molly: did you try the usually maddy grabbers?
like writing, scrap booking your trip, yoga, making healthy food

And she started to list the things she knows make me feel better, and just the fact that she knew the list by heart made me feel better. So I went to my closet and changed into the tee shirt we'd made together, a few days before I'd left. One of the few articles of clothings I'd packed with me. And I snuggled under Mark's arm, and tried to let Molly and Mark hold on to who I am, for a couple hours.