Surviving L.A.

I am a person split in two trying to walk side by side on a tight rope that doesn't exist. One is either somwhere or nowhere and the line between is not a destination, but either a beginning or an end. But when in L.A. that line can quickly turn into something it's not. I am a good girl in a bad girls world, and my god everyone is always running. 

If someone told me my parents set out on a quest to find the most boring house in one of the livliest cities on Earth. I'd believe them. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I think it's a blessing that nothing happens around here, when I see the shit that happens everywhere else. But on days like today I think it's bullshit. Days like today is when I remember that I really am alone, and that there's really no one out there for me, and no matter what it really doesn't matter because the hard fact is that I really do want to be alone. What this really means is that I'm much too boring for the big screen. 

But that's just somedays. Other days I'm just too dreamy for the suburbs and that is the magic of L.A.. You can be anything you want to be here, and if you're good enough it becomes true. At least that's what you get to tell yourself every night before you go to sleep, but that doesn't mean your family won't find you hanging off the balcony by morning. I always thought there should have been some pamphlet being handed out somewhere reading, "L.A., CAN YOU HANG?" before opening up to a long list of warnings. But that's just what makes this city the best one, because if you can make it here it matters, if you can't make it here it matters, and if you die, well at least it was cinematic. This is the land of impulse and I am a ticking time bomb. 

The house carries the echoes of the television up thr stairs and creeps under the space below the do it until I have the theme song for All in the Family stuck in my head. I hate that show, and even though my parents would fit nicely into the roles of Edith and Archie Bunker, I can only express my disapproval by not watching it. Maybr then it won't be real, at least until something better comes along. 

Anyway, if the tv is on that means my dad is awake and so is my mom and I'll have to get up and get dressed before one of them comes up here or my entrance into the day will be...mediocre. Can't have that now can we? I get up and close my bathroom window before the warm air comes in and stuffs up the place. My dad likes to remind me that I wouldn't have this problem if I hadn't decided to move into the attic, and I like to remind him that I don't care. I didn't move up here for the air, I moved up here because this room has character, and my old room was so...blah. Not to mention the view from that bedroom window contains a bush growing up thr back of the house. At least up here I get a decent view of the whole street. In fact it's the only view of the street we have. 

Whoever built this house somehow thought it was a good idea to build it both backwards and sideways, and then decided afterwards that their fuck up could be fixed if they just threw a bunch of bushes around it. So now the front door is the back door and the lonely attic window is the only one on the front of the house. But we can't have it any other way. Not because of money or privledge, but because this sort of run down, half assed, backwards kind of perfect is the only kind of perfect this family could ever fit into. 

Just because my mother likes to gossip about the celebrities that come into her salon, and fawn over their hair or their clothes, doesn't mean she want to start shopping at big fancy stores. And just because my dad likes to go to his clients big mansions to laugh and drink like he's one of them, doesn't mean he's not still looking forward tl his old, worn down, stained up recliner at home. They just like to look at pretty things. Just look. Don't touch. I promise it's contagious. 

But I guess that's the difference between me and them. I want to look. I want to touch. I want to get infected. This is L.A. the land of oppurtunity, and my parents might not be from here but I know that my fucking soul was made from this place, but my heart just simply isn't in it. It could be anywhere, or rather nowhere at all. At this point is there really a difference? Does it even matter? Souls, are what everyone is selling around here, and school is begging for mine. Fuck them for thinking they can have it, cause high school doesn't matter anyway. 

What happens after school if what really matters. When I leave to wander the busy streets, and take the bus to the pier so I can feel like I'm in the movies. So I can feel good. So that every time I turn a corner I can see the face of a Cartwright up on a billboard, or bustop, or building. Which is nice because the show doesn't air again for another few days and I'm getting restless. 

The show is a guilty pleasure really, although everything I love feels that way in my house, but this....this deep satisfaction I get from watching it is enough to make me feel like someone else. Enough to blur the lines between this world and the next. Some nights, I Iay awake in bed and listen to the Cartwrights from two houses down. A series of voices echoes throughout the neighborhood and sets off the dog from a block over. I know that if I peel my head out the window just far enough I can get a glimpse of the house. From here none of the yelling ever makes sense, but I know John's crying in his room, Mrs. Cartwright's crying in the kitchen and those tires squealing is Evelyn.

If it was really her, she's obviously pissed, but the fact is that if I walked down the road right now the only person I would find is our drunk neighbor Joyce Flannigan throwing her husbands clothes out into the yard, before she goes and passes out on her couch. God, real life is boring. I wonder what the difference between here and there really is....

Maybe I'm the one in tv land, and they are the ones living real life. That would make sense after all, since I'm always having trouble with feeling real. Always trying to find that next good moment, to feed the need for the next good moment. Until I'm full enough to go back to that backwards house and slowly wear away to nothing, hoping there's enough of me left by morning to get up and do it all over again. I wonder what happens if I just stop....death. And that's exactly why my need for Bradley Cartwright is as strong as my will to survive.

Brad can give a girl a look that can make her do anything. Not just because he's good looking, but because he's got some way of starting a fire inside you and he doesn't care if it burns you down. No one's gonna save you but yourself, and somehow that never makes sense until I see him plunge a knife into someone. Brad gives people a reason to keep running, cause if you don't you'll die. Or maybe that's just me. Or maybe I'm just looking for a reason not to lay down and die. But god, this place is such a pretty casket.