Scrappy Little Nobody (11 page)

I kept going. “Do they have to keep the music this loud because no one in Los Angeles has anything to say to each other?” I thought constantly making fun of LA made me look smart.
Alex ignored me and eventually I got the message that if I was so annoyed by the situation, I was free to leave. Sadly, the truth was that I was equally under the spell of the nightlife mythos. It didn’t matter if you weren’t having fun; you pretended that you were and bragged about it later. I wanted to do the bragging bit, so I shut my mouth and stayed.

For a while Alex and I engaged with the nightclub culture as frequently as we could. My interest in getting into these clubs didn’t last long. (It would vanish completely after my twenty-first birthday because, like guys who play hard to get, or Tickle Me Elmo, or your first period, sometimes you only want a thing until you have it.) But at nineteen I did spend a short and regrettable period in a classic trap: trying to fit into something I hated, just to prove to myself that I could.

Once I realized (to my great relief) that Hollywood Party Girl was something I was not destined to be, I found increasingly joyous ways to spend my time.

Instead of privately obsessing over them, I forced Peter to help me rehearse audition scenes. The terrible roles were far more fun (and more frequent) than the good ones. The horror scenes were especially good fodder, and we’d end up screaming bloody murder and chasing each other around the apartment. It’s weird that I never got those roles.

When some of my California-native friends heard I’d never been to Disneyland, they insisted on taking me that very moment, even though it was pissing rain. We ran around the park soaking wet but almost completely alone. I started teaching myself to bake, I went to an unreasonable number of costume parties—why did my friends throw so many costume parties? I rediscovered my favorite things—long walks and great movies—and eventually the darkness and power that I’d projected onto the city started to dissipate. I hadn’t booked a job or improved my financial situation, but I was going to be okay. Then a funny thing happened.

I started getting calls from the same friends from my hometown, the ones who’d been adapting so well to college, now in the first months of their sophomore year. Back at school again, they were no longer overwhelmed by newness or possibility. They had gone back to the same place, and the same friends—some of whom they had made hastily—and now they were lost. It was fine to be a freshman who hadn’t declared a major, but now they had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives or what kind of person they wanted to be, and they were feeling the pressure to decide fast.

The role reversal was uncanny. I hadn’t even booked a job yet, but somehow we’d switched places. I was convinced that I was
on the right path, and they were riddled with uncertainty. I’d only been looking at the drawbacks of my situation; my single-mindedness meant that I had no backup plan, and I worried that if I failed, I’d be unhappy doing anything else. But now I saw this as a blessing. I knew what I wanted. I’d never considered how scared I would be if I didn’t.

That year Felicity Huffman won an award for her work in
Transamerica
and said something in her acceptance speech that I held on to for years. “The second time I didn’t work for a year, I gave up any dream that looked like this.” It knocked me sideways. This undeniably talented woman went years without getting a job, not because she wasn’t good, but because sometimes you just have to pass an endurance test. I worried that luck and timing and opportunity (and my little frame and goofy face) might never align at the right moments, but for all the inexorable insecurities that live inside my head, I knew what I was capable of. I just had to be patient.

I did get work, eventually. I acted in a few independent films that made me happier than I thought humanly possible, but they didn’t change my financial situation or keep me all that busy. So I had to develop some hobbies.

My biggest time waster (and unrepentant money suck) was baking. Baking provided something I didn’t know I needed: the ability to make something tangible. Actors don’t
make
anything. You work all day but there’s nothing physical to show for it. It’s an oversimplification, sure, but it felt so rewarding to put a little effort into something and have three-dimensional evidence I could hold in my hands. It also provided more of a thing I’ve always liked: validation!

Baking is a really fun way to get people to like you. Being a good listener, a lively conversationalist, a loyal friend—it takes so much energy. Spend a couple hours alone in your kitchen and get the same effect? Sign me up! Sadly, I have less time for it now, but for a couple years, it was my whole identity.

When I was in the throes of my baking phase, my oven broke, and, luckily, different friends were happy to host me for a few hours and let me fill their apartments with the smell of cinnamon while I refused to let them help, because YOU DON’T KNOW THE SYSTEM. I saw baking as a risk-free way to try things that I knew were beyond my skill level. I was never the girl to strap on a snowboard and head straight for a black diamond, but if I saw “advanced” in the corner of a
Martha Stewart Living
recipe, I’d think,
Bring it on, you crazy bitch.

This meant that I would sometimes spend hours in someone else’s home, experimenting and cursing and emerging from the kitchen looking like I’d fought off a rabid cat. But my hazelnut torte would be shining and beautiful, and I’d go pawn it off on someone who hadn’t seen behind the curtain and would praise me as a culinary genius.

One friend in particular liked having me come by. Scott wrote music during the day but didn’t like being alone. He wanted someone around to chat with for a few minutes every hour or so but then needed to sit in front of his computer with headphones on to get work done. It became a semiregular arrangement. After about a year of this, he told me he’d gotten off meth. A month before.

What? What was he talking about? Meth addicts were gaunt and toothless; their hair was stringy and their nails were dirty and
they certainly didn’t burn me indie rock CDs. How could a friend of mine have been in this kind of trouble without me noticing? I felt foolish and so, so guilty. He was out of the woods (and sober ever since, thank god) but really, what kind of friend was I?

“So, you would just do it as soon as I left your apartment? I mean, were you ever like,
She needs to get out of here because I need to . . . do meth
?”

“No.” He looked a little embarrassed, maybe more for me than himself. “I would do it before you got here.”

“I’ve seen you on meth?!”

“I would say, for the last year, you’ve only seen me on meth.”

I’m the biggest idiot on the planet.

“Yeah, I didn’t like being alone, but then I just wanted to sit on my own and work once you got there. You really never noticed?”

“I thought that was just your personality!” I was reeling.

“Why do you think I never wanted to eat the food you were making?”

“You said you didn’t have a sweet tooth! I believed you! Because, you know, I believe people when they say things!”

He was laughing now. I’d gotten shrill and frazzled. I was laughing with my friend about how he was hiding a meth problem from me. This is when I learned that I cannot tell when people are on drugs. At all.

•  •  •

After a while I met some fellow aspiring actors, which was nice because they were the only people in LA who didn’t crack the old “So you mean you’re a waiter” joke when the “What do you do?”
question came up. Every now and then we’d get stoned and talk about our silliest, most specific goals.

“I want the ‘and’ credit,” someone would start. “You know, at the end of a bunch of credits sometimes there’ll be a ‘with’ or an ‘and.’ Obviously I want to be a lead and get first billing or whatever, but someday I want to be the ‘and’ guy.”

“Oh,” I said, “I want the ‘is a revelation.’ Like in the
Brokeback Mountain
trailer when they show Michelle Williams and the voiceover guy reads a review like ‘Williams is a revelation.’ I want to be a revelation.”

“That’s a good one. Maybe I want that. No! I want the secret post-credits cameo!”

Most of my friends were not actors. A surprising percentage were just my neighbors. I became close with a group of stunning girls who lived in a duplex down the street. Paige was a model, Amy was an exotic dancer, and Valerie was a former exotic dancer whose wealthy boyfriend paid her bills and rent. They’d met during a lap dance. It was a true LA love story.

The girls were beautiful, hilarious, and tough as steel. On the night we met, Valerie, through her thick Queens accent, said, “You’re smart, right? You know how I know you’re smart? ’Cause I woulda copied offa you in high school.”

I liked hanging out with them. These ladies could PARTY, and being with a group of girls that bombastic made me “the quiet one.” I was their mousy, serious friend, and I happily leaned into the role. Surrounding myself with people who were so much more attractive than me meant I could feel like the substantial one. I wouldn’t call it healthy, but I did it anyway.

They also had a talent for getting into and out of trouble. The cops showed up at their house once because of a noise complaint, and I swear on my life, they turned up the music, ran into the street, got on the cop car, and danced with the officers until they went away. In the rain.

We went to Vegas and Palm Springs. We went to the Spearmint Rhino in downtown LA after eating some especially potent pot brownies and watched Amy do what can only be described as an erotic Cirque du Soleil routine. When Valerie’s boyfriend came into town, he’d rent out a suite at the Chateau Marmont and we’d all get drunk and choreograph fake music videos to every song on my iPod.

They got me out of the house, which was no easy feat. And no matter how hard I struggled, they forced me to occasionally have fun.

I still hadn’t yet had a “boyfriend,” though, and I realized this was unacceptably weird. Nineteen-year-olds had boyfriends, dammit. They had boyfriends, they had ex-boyfriends, most of them had multiple ex-boyfriends. I bought a book called
Guide to Getting It On!
and prepared to get it over with.

Outside of romance, my “real life” was coming together, slowly but surely. It didn’t look like how I’d once thought it should. I couldn’t afford Crate and Barrel plates (my ultimate idea of status. Related: Did you know that there are fancier places than Crate and Barrel to get plates??). The jobs I was getting were low-budget and almost willfully not mainstream. My friends weren’t polished, but neither was I. It was so much better.

I
read somewhere that the reason adolescent girls are attracted to androgynous young men is that they seem less threatening. Since their sexuality is not fully realized yet, they feel safer placing attraction on boys with thin frames and delicate features, because it subconsciously reminds them of another girl. They don’t have to confront the implications of being attracted to someone masculine and virile enough to, you know, “do it.” (Okay, I don’t remember
exactly
what the thing said; I’m just trying to sound smart before I talk about “special feelings.”)

The piece stuck with me, whether it had any merit or not, because I was totally one of those girls. I loved the baby-faced New Kids on the Block but felt wholly creeped out when they changed their name to NKOTB and started growing facial hair. When Jonathan Taylor Thomas cut his hair short enough that it no longer fell in his eyes, it was a betrayal. Zack Morris was far preferable to A. C. Slater. Slater was the one with the rippling muscles, but outside of lifting heavy furniture, what on earth did that have to do with anything?

The thing the article got wrong in my opinion was that I didn’t feel threatened or intimidated by masculine guys; I felt
nothing. They didn’t stir something in me that I wasn’t ready to deal with; they didn’t stir anything at all. They seemed as attractive as the side of a building. Not that I knew exactly what I wanted to do with, say, Devon Sawa in
Casper
, either. Even my tender-faced teen crushes inspired pretty elementary goals. I knew I found them interesting, I knew I liked their faces, and I knew if we met (like if they maybe moved to Maine to escape the pressures of stardom) I’d want them to like me. Beyond that I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen. And once I found out, I was so nauseated that my daydreams would only reach the point where I kissed the object of my affection (a.k.a. the middle brother from
3 Ninjas
) before the dream cut out like a busted VHS and started again from the beginning.