Angeleno Femme

Rule Of No

They took shots of Jameson in the background while I picked at the glitter stuck to my fingertips. “Sure you don’t want any?” They asked over, and over, and over again. “Naw, not drinking for awhile — giving my body a rest.” They’d nod, but drunkenly offer me a plastic cup filled with the liquor ten minutes later, their memory retention like that of a goldfish.

Only 48 hours earlier I’d thrown back Johnny Walker carelessly at the Roosevelt while dwarfs in spandex wrestled in a miniature ring on stage. I grinned and threw ice cubes in my mouth, my skin warm to the touch. The ride down the 101 with me in the backseat was dreamy, the road slipping by like ribbon and conversation not quite sticking, but still bubbling in the car. Bagels, cream cheese, shuffling my feet around on glossy hardwood floors, giggling. Then, Thursday morning I woke up with the kind of hangover that bars you from doing anything but breathing shallow, quick breaths and praying no one shakes the mattress. “You should enjoy that hangover,” a friend shouted from another room. “That bottle of Blue Label was fourteen hundred dollars.” I lied there and writhed in the wealthy misery. The body knows no cost except liver damage.

There is a level of temptation that comes with being single, in your twenties and living in Hollywood. A wild night out is merely a five dollar cab ride away, and I’m a sucker for good friends and good morning-after stories. My entire college experience was spent in a long distance relationship, so true freedom I tasted about as much as I tasted a cocktail. I often turned down the boozey nights out in Union Square or the East Village that were typical of most college students for a phone call with my boyfriend, or to “catch up on reading.” I’d lie in bed sober and wait for the front door to open again, the heels to stagger in, and my friends to eat pizza while falling asleep. I’d channel surf and stare at my phone, counting hours and time zones back in my head, wondering why I didn’t want to go out.

But when I returned to LA, found an apartment in Hollywood and a new status as a “single” girl, the college years crept up on me, just a few semesters late. My breakup was brutal, but that toughened my resolve to find happiness. I clinked glasses every weekend. Danced with my head tilted back, eyes closed at a packed club on Ivar, the world hugging me and the morning not even a thought in my head. I carelessly kissed boys when I felt like it, consummating nothing but my independence and ability to turn them down, to their dismay. I smiled bigger in pictures. I operated by rule of “yes” and relished in life’s options, options that were never available to me during my years spent back east. It was a profound, necessary change for me. I wasn’t just single and living on my own. I was free.

I became the go-to for a good time, my apartment always packed with people pre-gaming on cheap alcohol and iPhone pictures. We’d end the night by convincing our cabbie to sit in the Taco Bell drive-thru line at 2:30am, reminding him incessantly that “we tip really well, seriously, we do.” The hangovers were tolerable because I was, for the first time in what felt like everdom, having fun. I felt a lightness to my life that I’d been lacking while tied down in a heavy, painful relationship. I was truly feeling like the 22 year old that I was, experiencing all of the elation, regret and spontaneity that comes with youth.

Friends that returned from party-hard universities were surprised to see me going out, drinking and mingling. Aren’t those days gone with college? they’d wonder, only to realize that I never had the chance to experience those days. College, for me, was a study in premature adulthood, in talks of “maybe we’ll have kids” and “we’re going to get married, right?” I was a late-bloomer, but then again, I always was. My first kiss at 16-going-on-17, I moved to no beat but my own. And as it turned out, life had lined me up my wilder years after I’d received my diploma. I embraced it with a pair of stiletto boots hitting the sidewalk on Sunset boulevard.

Every party, though, must eventually find its end. I knew mine was coming when hangovers began to feel like burdens, when all clubs and bars began to feel the same. I felt it coming in autumn, and settle over me in winter. Instead of waking up and thinking, “God, last night was so fun!” I’d wake up thinking, “Man, I should have just stayed in,” and examine the half-eaten junk food next to my bed. I felt lethargic, sluggish. What was once thrilling because it was new and exciting was now mundane because it happened every weekend. It steadily lost its appeal. After the little-person-infused night at Beacher’s, my hangover throbbing in a way I had not seen since my 21st, I knew it was time for a healthy change: Sober March.

So, I played with my manicure last night while those around me shouted out how many shots they’d had by 9pm: “What are you at? 6?” a burly man asked. “I’m at 12!” I knew I was in for a long night. We headed to a club, and I sipped a Diet Coke, hyper-aware of the atmosphere. A man whose cheek was stained with a red lipstick kiss stumbled back and forth, slurring that my friend should “come with him to his table, really.” Drunks swayed on their feet with phones illuminating their faces, concentrating on each word typed, rereading with squinting eyes to confirm spelling. Men sweating out alcohol grabbed my hand on the dance floor and wouldn’t let go, trying to persuade me to “just dance this once, just this one song.” A whiskey on the rocks, my go-to drink for months, was spilled all over my dress and purse, chilling me in the cool night air. I huddled up against an outdoor heater and looked around.

I began to understand that most of what night life is is not constructed by a club’s ambiance or beautiful cocktail waitresses. Rather, it is constructed by the uninhibited mental state that a few shots can give you. They create the proverbial rose-tinted glasses, whereas I wore none. As I watched girls wearing dresses painted on their flesh walk by, I wondered what I looked like to a sober bystander: a smirk, a flush, an “Oh my god, I love this song!” I was glad to have my mind be sharp and clear, and realized I’d rather be at home in bed with a book. I said goodbye to my friends who chugged umpteenth drinks, and weaved through the dance floor, the disco ball flecking light against my sleepy face. The party was ending, even though this one would rage till 3am. 

I found a cabbie who zoomed down Argyle and asked me how I was doing. “I’m okay,” I said. He asked me if I was drunk. “No, actually, completely sober. It’s nice.” When he dropped me off, I heard his driver’s side door open as well. He walked around the car, shook my hand and said through a thick Indian accent, “You are beautiful and smart. It was a pleasure driving you.” I ducked my head, embarrassed, and thanked him. My friends drunk texted me until 5am, but I was too busy sleeping soundly in my bed. As it turns out, freedom has two sides to it. I’d spent a year indulging in my newly found freedom and my ability to say “yes.” I said yes to almost every date, invite out, and offer of a drink, and I loved that I could do so without guilt. I see many of my newly single girlfriends enjoying this aspect of freedom. They are embracing their ability to say “yes.” But, there is another end of the spectrum that you finally reach. Now, I understand that true freedom also means saying “no” even when you are presented with options. It lies in having the ability to indulge, but choosing not to. In the end, freedom is an exploration in choice.

I woke up this morning at 9am, and instead of chugging water and popping Advil, I opened my blinds and grabbed my Kindle. My body felt clean. I thought to myself, “What am I going to do today?” Options are spread across the table. And I value the beautiful day, the sunny weather, my good health, but mostly I value my power to decide. I can choose. And this capacity for choice is a great thing, but today, it’s made even greater by my lack of a hangover. I appreciate things more. The sun is bright, and I don’t mind.

Like An Onion

A drug addict, feening for a couple bucks and a fix, sells beat up acoustic guitars and disco balls to Sunset boulevard storefronts with an urgency not seen in most locals. The leather guffey hat he sports reminds me of bondage role players or maybe just London. Beneath the modest brim, his face is pale and slick with sweat. He smiles politely as I turn down his offer of a leather jacket — two sizes too big — and quickly shoves belongings back into a duffel bag. A drop of sweat gathers at the tip of his nose and is flung into the night as he whips his head to speak.

“Pawn shop wouldn’t take these,” he says, pointing to a few dolls with matted hair.

Somewhere in the background, a guy with a pretty face and gentle eyes clicks around on a computer, ignoring the frantic energy of the vagrant salesman. One time caught with syringes, he may have shot up earlier. But fixed and sedated, he rests now, and doesn’t buy anything either. I wouldn’t take him to be a heroin user. He had me fooled, at least. His well-fed dog sleeps peacefully near his feet.

Hollywood, a land of unveiling secrets and illusions, is a layered town. At a speakeasy nearby where the password was “bird” for the night, discussion panned out regarding one man’s gloat days earlier: “I slept with a porn star last night, and satisfied her. She even wanted me in the morning.” His friend quickly rebutted when not in the same room: “No, no, he didn’t sleep with that girl.” Another Jack on the rocks was ordered. I sipped and listened, thinking about how the man with porn star dreams watched two transsexuals stroll by one night and stated, “They’re not fooling anybody.” Back at the table, words still exchanged: “If he slept with someone that night, he paid for it.” I tossed an ice cube in my mouth and excused myself to use the restroom.

In the speakeasy’s bathroom, I readjusted my skirt to fix an illusion. I wondered if my outfit could, somehow, hide my insecurities, something that had been quietly tapping on my psyche all week. I turned to the side, smoothing down my shirt. I turned to the front and toyed with the layering of fabric. Applied some lip gloss and thought about when I was thinner, though not necessarily happier. When I’d dropped weight simply because I found it difficult to eat around a man for whom I wanted to convey perfection. He’d eat bagels and eggs at 3am with a fork and I always politely declined, save a bite here or there. My waist accommodated vital organs and nothing else. Clothing hung beautifully. Old jeans fit. But usually, with weight loss comes a trade: one anxiety for another. The maintenance of perfection for a man who could not commit left me always chasing a dream of monogamy, while he chased blonds on the side. I looked good, but in my head understood it would never be good enough. To think he could be mine, well, I wasn’t fooling anybody either. Only myself.

Several pounds later he now exists like a haze over the Hollywood sign, seen from afar. We speak, sometimes. I hear from him during his lonelier moments and unfurl beneath him like a safety net. I know, he knows. We’ve unveiled it all and now I am left with a dwindling text friendship that I couldn’t pawn to anyone, even though I could use the cash.

New characters and secrets come and go, like the kind that tend to date hairdressers. Sitting out on Highland one January night, a guy with “13” tattooed on him says to me about fake lashes, “You wear the individual ones or the full ones?” I ask him how he knows so much about falsies, and he cites an ex. “Wearing them is bittersweet,” I remark without a hint of mascara. “You apply them and then realize you look much better with them on than without.” He calls me beautiful like it’s a discussion about the weather, and I think back to how many times the man who chased the blonds said the same to me: once, while drunk.

And on my birthday, seated in a chair beneath a hairdresser, I waiver on whether I’ll apply false lashes or not. “It’s your night, your birthday, come on!” she encourages with a blow dryer in her hand. The last time I’d sported a pair I ripped them off at a 24 hour donut store and left them on the table. I’d already applied layer after layer of makeup, and joked that the transformation I’d had since I entered the salon was startling. But with time pressing down on me and a dinner reservation, I questioned the false lashes and eventually settled on a coat of mascara. I’d indulged in enough illusions, whether with heels or outfits or blush. I wanted something to still be mine, sort of.

I cruise Sunset home, passing stores that some remark are fronts for selling drugs. The cross-dressers with evening stubble strut down the street, the addicts sit with backpacks and plans, and girls like me fuss with skirts and ideals. The overdressed strike a match for a cigarette but don’t inhale. The lights in the city dim, the secrets swirl, the cravings fester, and I apply another coat of mascara as if it could somehow fix things. I know it won’t, a nonexistent sweat slicking down my face, but I try anyways. I’ll sell it as best I can.

Hollywood At Dawn

I live in a part of Los Angeles that is comprised of highs and lows. Hollywood is a dirty town, where the rent is cheap and sirens are background noise, but Hollywood is also the place that tourists flood to, and where nighttime exclusivity is most prevalent.

Hollywood is a sun-down kind of place. Not many friends venture to my neighborhood during normal business hours, but rather find themselves stumbling down Wilcox after midnight, asking about street meat and complaining about their shoes. It doesn’t really draw locals during the daytime the way other nooks like Santa Monica do. But as is true with all things in life, this area’s mystique differs vastly based on how much light is shed upon it. And perhaps that’s why I love driving through Hollywood — the land of tourist dreams and debauchery — during dawn, when it is nothing more than empty streets and normal people. When it’s real.

As the light of another day is cast upon the city, Los Angeles has its elusive quality peeled back like the skin of an orange, revealing the pulp beneath the smooth, glossy rind. I drive down the wide, open streets past bars, lounges and clubs that I’ve stood in line for. With dawn’s quiet, gray light barely saturating the fronts of the buildings, you realize you’ve never actually looked at the place you’re partying at. The outside doesn’t matter when the only goal is getting in, and getting drunk.

I often find myself laughing at the scene in Hollywood. At the door to a bar on Ivar and Hollywood, a woman with a British accent and a large floppy hat leans in and asks through a whisper, “What party are you with?”

“Uh. We aren’t with a party. We just…came here…to come here.”

There is discussion as to whether or not that’s okay with another doorman, who evaluates my friends’ and my attire and bone structure before motioning us past the velvet rope.

When we get inside, it’s practically empty. This is Hollywood — it is a world based in creation, whether that creation be your dreams of stardom, your full face of makeup for a night out, or the illusion of exclusivity outside of a club. But there can still be an emptiness that lies just past the exterior’s carefully crafted image. They won’t say it, but the line that’s forming outside is just a front to cover for the vacant insides of a lounge. And we won’t say it, but maybe beneath the heels, skin-tight dresses and lip gloss, we feel empty and lonely as well.

At the end of the day — or rather, at the beginning of it — all patrons are the same. We work our jobs, we have our dramas, we have to go to the dentist and debate which shampoo we should use while at the store. But nightlife in Hollywood builds the notion of exclusivity out of factors like money and perceived beauty, factors that can themselves be illusions as well. Hollywood builds castles on nothing, and we drink to it, while people are turned away outside because of their “ratio” or inability to spend thousands on alcohol that would be forty dollars at a liquor store.

And the town can do it under a cloak of darkness, a cloak that contributes to the illusion. But once last call has been announced, once the cabs have been filled, the Taco Bell consumed, the sleep had, light creeps in. And here is Hollywood bare, exposed, vulnerable. Each venue that you have spent hours trying to gain access to is a door. An illegal immigrant, tired from commuting, cleans the fingerprints of the rich and inebriated off of the glass of clubs he will never be seen at. He wipes the city clean for another day, another night.

An Asian man in his 50s sits passively on the corner of Hollywood and Vine in front of an expensive sushi restaurant and he gazes down the street, waiting for the bus. A handful of joggers find their pace with soles meeting the Walk Of Fame Stars that will be photographed by European tourists later in the afternoon. The Hollywood sign rests underneath a foggy haze. The homeless are still asleep. There is no exclusivity at this hour. At Winchells, everyone gets served. The bus picks up any passenger. And the sun’s building light illuminates everyone, not just the rich and the beautiful.