How to Move – Part I: How to Pick a Place to Live (Post 1 of 3)

Follow What Your Think Are Your Dreams (Los Angeles)

My earliest memory of wanting to live in LA was in 1994, when my father rented the Steve Martin movie LA Story for me. It was the beginning of two infatuations: one with Los Angeles and one with older men. We’ll focus on LA here. I married the old man of my dreams a few years ago, so that infatuation has come to its logical conclusion.

I rewatched the movie with Basil today when I thought about writing this post. I had not seen the movie in many years, and thought viewing it again might provide me additional meaningful insights. My adult self-summary would be the movie uses Los Angeles clichés (traffic is crazy! california cuisine! the weather is almost always nice!) as a backdrop for a pedestrian love story between Steve Martin and Victoria Tennant. Dialogue is littered with heavy handed Shakespeare references. Somehow it was enough to get my thirteen-year-old self dreaming about a life in California.

Fast forward eight years: I was wrapping up my senior year of  at the University of Arizona. I had failed to get into any of the graduate programs I applied to. I was not sure what I would do if I stayed in Tucson. If I went back to Phoenix I was certain I was going to be maimed or killed by my mother or killed/maimed by a terrible gay man I had spent most of my time in college trying to date. I felt like a directionless failure.

I think I picked LA because it was a dream I could still chase. I had dreamed about being a writer, but my experiences in creative writing classes in college had convinced me I had limited talent. I had dreamed about being an English professor (just like my father had been), and I had been told by my undergraduate professors I was an excellent candidate. Apparently, ten of the top English PhD programs in the country disagreed. But I could absolutely move to LA: this was a doable dream. As long as I could pack up my crap and find a place to rent, the dream would be achieved.

I remember calling my parents to tell them I had decided I was going to move to LA. I had spent a lot of time disappointing them throughout my college career. When I had switched from pre-med to an English major, they grumbled. When I decided to apply to English PhD programs instead of law schools, my mom sat me down and told me I was throwing my life in the toilet. But I did these things anyway. I expected a similar storm of disapproval about going to Los Angeles.

“I decided I am going to move to LA after graduation,” I told my mother. At some point in the phone conversation, she handed the phone to my father and I repeated the same statement.

And so it turned out just as Maya Angelou prophesized: I can’t remember exactly what they said, but I can remember how they made me feel. They were exasperated and indifferent. I was stunned. In retrospect, I was even sad they did not try to talk me out of it, as I thought they would. I would have fought them about it, as I had fought them about my other post-high school choices, and I would have gone anyway. I hated fighting with them, especially my father, but I had come to expect it. It was our routine.

At the end of May 2002 I moved to Pasadena, California with two of my friends from college.

I did not realize until I started working in coffee shops in Los Angeles how many other people also moved to Los Angeles to chase their dreams: the folks I worked with were writers, actors, artists, comedians, and singers. They had come to LA to break into “the industry”, which was shorthand for the entertainment industry. Meeting people with these hopes for themselves and watching them chase after their chosen professions was humbling. I had only dreamed about getting to LA: anything else I could manage to do after I arrived I considered a bonus. These men and women had bigger goals: get cast in a blockbuster movie, write for a hit sitcom, release a chart-topping album, land a big-time art opening.

I loved working with them: hearing about their efforts to get their dreams off the ground reinvigorated me. But it also reminded me I had no vision for my own future. I could not see my future self. I do not mean I could not envision what my career would be, or what kind of person I would settle down with. I mean I could not see myself existing beyond the day, the week, the month I was living through. (I would learn later part of the problem was I was living in the wrong gender, although this was not the only road block.)

I left Los Angeles five years later. I did love living there. I met a lot of interesting people, spent some fantastic days at the beach, made visits to movie studios (to serve coffee and as a member of a pilot studio audience), saw art at fabulous museums, and sat in a lot of traffic.

If you dream of living somewhere, my advice would be to move and try it out. It may not end up being your “forever home”, but you can’t possibly know that for sure unless you give it a try.

Next Post: Nothing Left to Lose (New Jersey)