LA x 5

Grief calls me a Cherryhead and candies with the same name appear at crafty. I pick one up and keep it in the side of my chair. I don’t feel well and it’s the first day I really want to go home well before wrap. I crave a bed and silence. No matter what your job is, some days you crave a bed and silence.

I pretend to give a powerpoint presentation about CJ and AP laughs and laughs. When the cast and crew applaud the guest's wrap, tears glob up in my eyes. Goodbye forever, I think. She said “Hello, Alice” whenever I walked by. I have to send out new pages. Prop up my laptop on a dresser while everyone clears out. I’m on the last shuttle back to base.

I wish Puhg were here all the time, but my lonesome has fueled activities or even rituals. I’m using makeup wipes daily and with a lateish call I adventure to cute donuts. I admire watching hard workers work hard.

Thursday is my first parking hell. I meet up with a friend of a friend for a dessert I’m trying not to eat and can’t find a spot for almost an hour. “Why are we meeting?” crosses my mind often. One reason I like LA is people are nice and seem to want to help you out. One reason I don’t like LA is people maybe only seem nice and know it’s impossible to tell who can help you out.

A quick bunny day with two shots. I transcribe, which is a sensible and hilarious task. I’m taking down all these Hellen Keller jokes AG keeps riffing. There is a formal meeting. I sit in and note note, then we revise in AP’s trailer, then I find a Starbucks to get wifi to send out. I get this idea that I need to see I Feel Pretty very badly and pre-order tickets. I mismanage my time picking out a CVS candy and have to run through the mall to make the flick. I get a popcorn just in time. I truly enjoy the film, curling up in a row alone, watching the credits and understanding all the titles. I feel anxious about my own projects. I talk to Puhg in the parking garage before Yosh and I go to a birthday thing. After an hour we do the meet new people thing. I am a proud thing.

After SoulCycle, having trouble moving. My shoulders/heart heaved. A brunch invite finally kicks me out. Fluffy pancakes with Dal & co. We walk into an occult-y shop and I explain I love candles but never buy them because it seems like such a weird thing to spend money on. I stand in the light on the sidewalk. He comes with a small black bag—a candle for me inside. Sometimes the work behind relationships is evident. It’s been something we built, but he feels dropped into my life, or vice versa, in an intentional way. I am forever grateful. I get texts about script revisions. Gotta jet and find a Starbucks. A former castmate is there too? Unreal. I am surrounded by people typety typing screenplays, and I am legit revising TF’s lines. Yosh and his stoned gf take me to the home of veganaise. It’s a sleepy little hang in sweats like we’re old old pals, which we are, which is nice.

Frank and I have to wait an hour for brunch, but it’s so worth it. We have ten years of catching up. Real juicy, crushing, theorizing, can’t believing catching up. Buckwheat pancakes. I don’t want it to end. On a weird patio a Hollywood couple buys me salad. They are so here. Every person I meet has a helpful story. Awkward amount of time, so I walk to Hollywood Walk of Fame, that trash pile, in order to get earrings. Dal’s show is so entertaining. I am beaming watching him do his thing while fans geek out. My roommate ghost is home, and we unexpectedly talk an hour when I mean to fall right to sleep.

LA IV

Something is different! Something is so different! I have my daily pecan salad with the stand-ins and laugh and laugh. I have a corner, I know the routine, Grief is my friend, my real friend. JS has gourmet vegan pop-tarts delivered to set on the very day it is so hot I have to wear shorts. PP tells me my tatt is cute. It’s too good to be true. “You have nothing to worry about--you’re in,” this person says. In exchange I tell him how to date a girl. I thought our meeting was a dinner. It wasn’t. I drive-thru a quesarito and crunchwrap on the way home. Pair it with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It’s so hard to know if everything is small or everything is huge. Right now, everything is perfect.

I hadn’t gotten to try a couple vegan donuts at the shop I went my first weekend, and JR has several dozen catered. I eat four. A stand-in casually mentions, “Is it good? Because I saw you eating a chocolate one this morning.” I’m doing things right. Sometimes I laugh so sincerely. I have to write a fake Ted Talk about microdosing. I remember watching the Writer’s Room episode about Breaking Bad when the writer’s assistant explained how she had to research poisons. I remember thinking that that was the coolest job in the world—to research and write. Now I am deep into science journals about acid trips for the sake of a bit.

Late call. I FaceTime in for the rehearsal of my new musical. Chills. This thing I was told was impossible x3 is in front of me. I am walking through the middle of set and roll my ankle. It shocks me in an unfamiliar way. I immediately feel like barfing. I turn kind of white, and the makeup ladies ask if I need the doctor. I walk slowly to a stool and think, “I just need to take a few deep breaths.” Then everyone is around me and I’m on the ground. Once my vitals have been taken and it’s decided I pinched a nerve and I am half-forced to eat a sandwich, it’s almost nice. The producer and 1^st AD both assure me. AP lowers her voice and asks, “Wanna sue? I can tell you who has money.” There are new pages, and Cowsk says I can pitch alts. I write five, she picks two, and AP chooses one. My joke will be filmed. I have never acted so casual in my entire life. On the way home I think about how lucky I am and cry out of gratitude.

Thursday my theatre dream is on set getting the lay of the land. CJ is magnetic. She sits in a room alone with me. She speaks magically and openly and grabs my leg. I cannot help but tell her I wrote part of my graduate thesis on one of her plays. I watch my joke get shot over and over from different angles. RD says it is her favorite alt. AG laughs heartily. The night is long. What am I inside? I miss my boyfriend. I eat potato chips driving home to stay awake. I’m mad. Scene revisions come out at midnight, so in bed, in pjs I reformat and distribute.

Zumba morning. I am the only white person and I feel a kind of “Am I imposing?” but I stay because my body misses long workouts. I boost to a hip café for hemp milk espresso and rewrites of my musical. Late night and candy candy candy. Close to midnight JR insists we share a cookie sandwich. I have already eaten two, but what can you do? The pool is glowing under a balloon. The moon and palm trees.

Sat: I eat cashew yogurt while FaceTiming into my musical. Tear up at the finale. A friend texts me during one scene, and I respond, and then I wonder, “What am I doing?” and I feel guilty. Trashy donut shop with high-class treats. MB and I split eight. She has to go, and I want to write, but I can’t seem to. I tell myself I’ll leave once this guy buy $20 of lotto tickets at a time does. He doesn’t for hours. I find a stupid salad, go home and take a walk while all the dressed up people crowd sidewalks. I used to do this on the drunk strip in Pheonix too.

Morning is for the market, a misplaced run-in, church. A planning meeting with Elrey, a real life sunshine chat with a Chicago comedy early-move star, a podcast with a hidden treasure, email from AP, so I have to awkwardly sit in the living room and revise a scene while everyone else munches biscuits in the kitchen. It’s always like turning in a term paper, so I text Smirn to say we will not be having vegan dinner and instead going to an ice cream parlor for dinner. 

Tweak Three

We’re ahead of schedule. I want to be in the sun, but I also don’t want anyone to think I’m weird for choosing the solo bench across from the shaded tents. I take my bowl of kale down the block and sit on a curb behind a trashcan. A garden café behind a Korean church. I take a phone call. I drink a lemonade. I finish the short film script. I’m supposed to meat Ghoul for dinner but go to the wrong Aroma. There are three Aromas in LA. She’s 45 minutes away. I get an email from AP. New pages need to be distributed quickly. I feverishly drive around trying to find internet. Wind up on a Starbucks patio, pausing work every fifteen minutes to move my car. After I press send I exhale and buy a $49 massage. It is heavenly. I eat disgusting snack food in bed. I’ve asked a stranger for advice.

Green canopy. I am kind of in trouble, but kind of not. On the upside, I think feeling bad can be an indicator that you care. The 2^nd AD tells me his story and gives me a run-down of what is to come. What could be to come. There’s a novel in the movie, and I am given the task of writing it. The words will very probably not end up on screen, but I’m teenily proud. Puhg and I talk on the phone while I walk in place because I am sick of sitting 12 hours a day.

Today there is a nameless black chair. For me. My headset went from nothing to numbered to Sharpie on tape to officially label-gunned. AP says she would definitely read through everybody’s text messages if she were left alone for more than ten minutes with our phones. After work, Ghoul and I meet at the real Aroma. Dig deep on art and commitment. The restaurant is inside a house, and her black swan necklace, the twinkle lights, my chocolate cheesecake make it seem like a dream.

How do you seem excited and no-big-deal at the same time? I eat plantains with RD. We talk about ghosts and then how 2016 changed us for real. “No one is thinking about you,” I block into my head. In a good way. It’s late but there are obscure treat buns to be had with MB. Something is not right. Maybe there is nothing up there.

And maybe the publicist is my friend. I have learned to make duties for myself. I like duties. We go late, and I feel Friday fussy.

The sun makes it all better. I can’t be mad in the sun. No parking, wrong turns, it just means less. I pack up and make my way to Santa Monica singing Sheryl Crow. The best Salt and butter donut. The best. The best. I read Oscar Wilde. I meet with a playwright. He rejuvenates me. He tells me things I hope as if they are true. He has made a life this way. He is happy. I feel California girl with new round glasses and hot pink lipstick. I study in the Reading Room and walk to the beach, buy a new t-shirt and perfume on the promenade, sit outside working on my book. Diablo and I eat Greek. I love her and she tells me about an awkward encounter with Keanu Reeves. I’ve learned a lot from interacting with famous people. Mainly that quantity of adoration is not quality of adoration, and experience, even positive, with someone beloved will never compare to an experience with one’s own beloved. We go to a serendipitous movie, which I never do. Krasinski got us good. Today is the opposite of Thursday. This is how weekends feel for non-teachers.

At 6 I’m up to do HIIT, at 8 I’m buying cashew yogurt at the Studio City farmer’s market. Yosh & fiancée + Coors. We did comedy under a Taco Bell. It never gets older, it never gets less magic. I worship in a sweatshirt and meet some girls for lying around and discussing. Two hours loafing until I can barely stand myself. Walk to a bakery and sip on oj and cookies, rip through my book until my computer dies. There are a few more hours, but “just go to sleep” I tell myself. Just go to sleep. You need it.

Los: Dos

Toasts & latte. Very delightful. Very expensive.

Lunch is weird. Does figuring out where you will sit at lunch ever not feel like high school? I pull up a folding chair into the sun. There are vegan hot dogs in the dinner cart. I am confused about how regular things seem. I knock on a closed bathroom stall and hear the voice of PP grumpily respond.

The 2nd AD called lunch, so I walked a block to a cafe. I had this idea of sitting alone with a grant application. In the ten minutes I was eating a fonut (baked donut) I got three emails and needed to make revisions, copies. My insides rattled, I shoved my junk in a bag, and ran back to set. Later, in the van on the way back to crew parking I heard a makeup artist and tech complain about a mistake I had made with the yellow pages. Cowsk assured me no one cared. I can't get it out of my head and google "making mistakes at work" until I fall asleep. I miss the grant deadline.

Any book about movies could be titled "Where Should I Sit." I sit on an awkward stool. I sit in the writer's seat when she's acting. I sit on the floor across from AG. I am hyper aware of Doing Things Right, and I still print something in the wrong direction.

Call is late. Time to run. Time to walk to the v hip cafe for some work and nosh. Two pieces of toast and a Figeroa espresso is $24. I HAVE to learn to check prices here. There's no wifi. I sweat enough to buy a shirt at Forever 21. It has tiny cocktails on it. I change in the car. Everyone is chipper before a three-day weekend. People all over the country would give up their friends and families to do what they do, and everyone doing it just wants an extra day to have the friends and family back. We go late. The producers buy an adorable cafe truck. A cocoa. I think about how millennials are portrayed in film. I don't remember what happens in chunks of time, namely the chunks before bed.

LA proper: bangs cut, three hour vegan donut writing sesh, a tattoo shop that doesn't tow me, hairs waxed, reading in the sunshine. My temporary roommate is making dinner and I soak up his real pro-ness. A meeting that frustrates me (how do you say you are stupid about X without people thinking you're stupid about Y?) see the show I could join if. It's early and it's Friday, but that's all I have. I try Sneaky Pete, eating donut halves in bed.

7:30 AM SoulCycle in Pasadena. I didn't like it, but I miss vigorous workouts. I'll go again. I worry about this car thing a lot. There are a lot of signs and street parkings and meters. It's about 10-20% of my brain at any given time. I plan to write, but I have to lay down and watch Popstar. I watch every credit. I know many of them. I really enjoy it. At the Echo Park cafe literally everyone has Final Draft open. I meet victoriously. It's hot. I'm in shorts. I drive over to Chicago pals with a lemon tree. I keep asking for advice and everyone says they don't have it, but there's pebbles. Again, what do I do with myself? What is left? I treat myself to Thai while I text Puhg, which is a decent date. I spend a long long time in CVS. When I get home, I crack everything open at once and use it. Face scrub, a nail file, glasses cleaner.

I'm too late to church to sing of Easter gladdness. Oatmilk ginger iced chai. One thing SO LA is all the milks. I love all the milks. We have a girl's brunch. I don't have to think about writing or art or anything. We gossip about dating and gyms and I'm in love with this pink tile and the little bit of grunge here, everywhere. I Yelp donuts. I eat donuts (marshmallow peanut butter and cro-muffin). I send out the draft. I apply for a contest. Did I throw my money in a hole? Someone doesn't. Guy from the past invites me to an improv show. It's seedy but I am happy to go and see this dumb (it is very dumb) thing that will be here if I am. I have to go to sleep but I can't. I purposely didn't buy Easter candy all week. I cave, purchase M & M eggs, munch popcorn, watch Crazy Ex Girlfriend, fall asleep reading scary stories.