the trip, in some detail
May. 1st, 2005 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashSammi wrote about it from her point of view. It covers the basic outline.
I'm still in a weird mood from it, and some other stuff in the back of my head, but I thought I should point that out and write something about it all myself, since people are asking...
So we drove down to LA. We visited Ken briefly, to nap for a few hours. Ken had been sleeping badly due to doing some cat-sitting. He went back to sleep after we talked for a while. Sammi slept on the floor, I on the couch of doom.
There was this one moment where I woke again, after some sleep, staring at the pattern on the upholstery. And for a moment I wondered what it would be like if the past several years hadn't happened, or at least the past few months. A brief mental rewind back to a few years ago where I was living in the corner of Ken's apartment. It wasn't an actual moment of mad disorientation, just a momentary bitter fantasy on top of a fraction of strange mood. I was, after all, on my side with one hand snuggled between my tits.
Ken got up and fed the cat, then disappeared back to sleep. He was still out when Sammi and I left; I left a note on the closed toilet seat thanking him for letting us crash at his place on such short notice that started "No, it wasn't all a dream!". The whole day had this sometimes hallucinatory quality to it, due to the sleep-lack.
Sammi and I went down to Santa Monica. Santa Monica is where I first moved when I came to LA. It's where my now-vanished animation school was.
Gabe had told me, a while back, that the school's building had been torn down and replaced by a parking garage. I kinda wanted to see this for myself, in some sort of weird ritual.
It was hard to be sure what had happened around there. Gabe, I decided, was wrong. The parking garage was across the street from the place, and always had been, even when we were going there. I narrowed down things to one block, from memory; I knew what side of the street it was on. Ultimately, after we went out onto the cliffs by the beach and came back from the other side, a final landmark nailed it down, and I recognized part of the remaining facade of the building. It's some kind of music-themed clothes store now.
A piece of my past, just gone. It felt kinda weird. Mostly that it took so long to be sure where it was. It was disorienting.
As it so happened, we ended up passing in front of the nasty apartment complex I first landed in, too. We were kinda going that way to get to the interstate to go up to Hollywood, and I kinda guided us past there. No particular emotions were attached to this place.
And then we ended up in Hollywood. On Saturday. On a hot day in spring. Before things were really starting to open. Lack of cash on hand meant the car was kinda stuck where we parked it. So we slouched up and down Hollywood Boulevard a few times. This, too, was full of mixed feelings for me, and a little disorienting.
Near the end of my time with Nebulous - where I worked on that horrible "Booty Call" Flash porn thing - a big mall got built at the head of Hollywood. It engulfed Grauman's Chinese, a tourist-destination theatre, to the point that Sammi didn't realize we'd passed in front of it a few times until late in the afternoon. It's called "Hollywood and Highland", after the corner it squats on, and it's really draining the life out of the rest of the street - there were a lot more abandoned storefronts down the several blocks than there used to be. Hollywood's sleaze and commercial shamelessness is being replaced by the same stuff you find in any other mall - except writ large, with faux-Assyrian decor.
The heat and sleep-dep and hunger started to get to me. I found myself ranting at length about this mall. I used the celphone to call the Postcritters for moral support, but they were out, so I left a message on their machine that was probably somewhat worrisome-sounding. Eventually we went and hid in the car again, seats down to nap despite the growing clamor in the garage it was parked in. That helped my mood a lot, especially after we went and used a credit card to have some mediocre pizza. At a nice, quiet place. Food - salty, unchallenging food, and relative silence.
Eventually it was time for the show.
Ralph half-remembered me. Not by name but some of the stuff we'd kicked around; he introduced me to his wife as "a great writer". Which was amusing to be described as. He didn't register my transition at all, oddly enough, until I said something about it.
"So you're a girl now?"
"Yep!"
"Cut it out!"
Disbelief or an order? Who knows.
I was pretty nervous about all of the socialization involved, to be honest. It was the first time I'd seen Ralph since he split with Spümcø. His version of why was different from what Kevin told me, not that this would surprise anyone. I was also nervous about seeing who'd turn up from the Spümcø crowd, and what their reactions to who I am now might be. Katie and Wil were cool about it, and everyone else seemed a little uneasy. Maybe it was just me projecting and worrying. There was this moment, after the shows, where I came out of the theatre and said hi to the familiar faces all in a conversational knot, and most of them very quickly found themselves in another conversational knot that did Not Include Me. Admittedly, I never really talked much with Luke or Cory or Chris anyway when I was a boy. It's quite possible I was just reading too much Meaning into casual randomnes, of course. When I'm worried I do this, constantly.
I hadn't seen Wizards since I was a kid. I think when it came out. I laughed at it a lot, at first, but I took it more and more seriously despite its cartooniness and the incongruity of Ralph's voice coming out of Peace. The unapologetic made nature of it is something I'd forgotten; most modern animated films go out of their way to present a seamless illusion, but Wizards has a lot of expressionistic, scrawly backgrounds. It worked for me a lot.
And Coonskin is wonderful on the big screen. This was a longer cut, and a much more legible print, than the bad video release of "Street Fight" I'd seen before, and it made a hell of a lot more sense. It's a very beautiful film, at times, for all its blood and horror. And the animation is fabulous.
The road home was a lot longer than the one down. We were exhausted and out of ways to distract ourselves. I might go to sleep early, tonight. I still feel fragile.
It didn't help my mood the whole day that I cannot, it turns out, draw worth a crap when I'm tired and nervous. My attempts to zone out and doodle look like things I just want to rip from my sketchbook.
LA was a place where I failed, bigtime. Every chance I got handed, I blew. Going there again like this, visiting the former site of Nebulous, of my school, brought back a lot of memories I might do better to leave alone for a while yet. I've changed who I am and I have more fun now but I still feel like I'm doing my best to remain a failure. I'm certainly making some of the same emotional mistakes. (link to private entry, don't bother clicking unless you're me.)
Jon came by to visit today, but I just hid. I'm really not ready to talk to people.
I'm still in a weird mood from it, and some other stuff in the back of my head, but I thought I should point that out and write something about it all myself, since people are asking...
So we drove down to LA. We visited Ken briefly, to nap for a few hours. Ken had been sleeping badly due to doing some cat-sitting. He went back to sleep after we talked for a while. Sammi slept on the floor, I on the couch of doom.
There was this one moment where I woke again, after some sleep, staring at the pattern on the upholstery. And for a moment I wondered what it would be like if the past several years hadn't happened, or at least the past few months. A brief mental rewind back to a few years ago where I was living in the corner of Ken's apartment. It wasn't an actual moment of mad disorientation, just a momentary bitter fantasy on top of a fraction of strange mood. I was, after all, on my side with one hand snuggled between my tits.
Ken got up and fed the cat, then disappeared back to sleep. He was still out when Sammi and I left; I left a note on the closed toilet seat thanking him for letting us crash at his place on such short notice that started "No, it wasn't all a dream!". The whole day had this sometimes hallucinatory quality to it, due to the sleep-lack.
Sammi and I went down to Santa Monica. Santa Monica is where I first moved when I came to LA. It's where my now-vanished animation school was.
Gabe had told me, a while back, that the school's building had been torn down and replaced by a parking garage. I kinda wanted to see this for myself, in some sort of weird ritual.
It was hard to be sure what had happened around there. Gabe, I decided, was wrong. The parking garage was across the street from the place, and always had been, even when we were going there. I narrowed down things to one block, from memory; I knew what side of the street it was on. Ultimately, after we went out onto the cliffs by the beach and came back from the other side, a final landmark nailed it down, and I recognized part of the remaining facade of the building. It's some kind of music-themed clothes store now.
A piece of my past, just gone. It felt kinda weird. Mostly that it took so long to be sure where it was. It was disorienting.
As it so happened, we ended up passing in front of the nasty apartment complex I first landed in, too. We were kinda going that way to get to the interstate to go up to Hollywood, and I kinda guided us past there. No particular emotions were attached to this place.
And then we ended up in Hollywood. On Saturday. On a hot day in spring. Before things were really starting to open. Lack of cash on hand meant the car was kinda stuck where we parked it. So we slouched up and down Hollywood Boulevard a few times. This, too, was full of mixed feelings for me, and a little disorienting.
Near the end of my time with Nebulous - where I worked on that horrible "Booty Call" Flash porn thing - a big mall got built at the head of Hollywood. It engulfed Grauman's Chinese, a tourist-destination theatre, to the point that Sammi didn't realize we'd passed in front of it a few times until late in the afternoon. It's called "Hollywood and Highland", after the corner it squats on, and it's really draining the life out of the rest of the street - there were a lot more abandoned storefronts down the several blocks than there used to be. Hollywood's sleaze and commercial shamelessness is being replaced by the same stuff you find in any other mall - except writ large, with faux-Assyrian decor.
The heat and sleep-dep and hunger started to get to me. I found myself ranting at length about this mall. I used the celphone to call the Postcritters for moral support, but they were out, so I left a message on their machine that was probably somewhat worrisome-sounding. Eventually we went and hid in the car again, seats down to nap despite the growing clamor in the garage it was parked in. That helped my mood a lot, especially after we went and used a credit card to have some mediocre pizza. At a nice, quiet place. Food - salty, unchallenging food, and relative silence.
Eventually it was time for the show.
Ralph half-remembered me. Not by name but some of the stuff we'd kicked around; he introduced me to his wife as "a great writer". Which was amusing to be described as. He didn't register my transition at all, oddly enough, until I said something about it.
"So you're a girl now?"
"Yep!"
"Cut it out!"
Disbelief or an order? Who knows.
I was pretty nervous about all of the socialization involved, to be honest. It was the first time I'd seen Ralph since he split with Spümcø. His version of why was different from what Kevin told me, not that this would surprise anyone. I was also nervous about seeing who'd turn up from the Spümcø crowd, and what their reactions to who I am now might be. Katie and Wil were cool about it, and everyone else seemed a little uneasy. Maybe it was just me projecting and worrying. There was this moment, after the shows, where I came out of the theatre and said hi to the familiar faces all in a conversational knot, and most of them very quickly found themselves in another conversational knot that did Not Include Me. Admittedly, I never really talked much with Luke or Cory or Chris anyway when I was a boy. It's quite possible I was just reading too much Meaning into casual randomnes, of course. When I'm worried I do this, constantly.
I hadn't seen Wizards since I was a kid. I think when it came out. I laughed at it a lot, at first, but I took it more and more seriously despite its cartooniness and the incongruity of Ralph's voice coming out of Peace. The unapologetic made nature of it is something I'd forgotten; most modern animated films go out of their way to present a seamless illusion, but Wizards has a lot of expressionistic, scrawly backgrounds. It worked for me a lot.
And Coonskin is wonderful on the big screen. This was a longer cut, and a much more legible print, than the bad video release of "Street Fight" I'd seen before, and it made a hell of a lot more sense. It's a very beautiful film, at times, for all its blood and horror. And the animation is fabulous.
The road home was a lot longer than the one down. We were exhausted and out of ways to distract ourselves. I might go to sleep early, tonight. I still feel fragile.
It didn't help my mood the whole day that I cannot, it turns out, draw worth a crap when I'm tired and nervous. My attempts to zone out and doodle look like things I just want to rip from my sketchbook.
LA was a place where I failed, bigtime. Every chance I got handed, I blew. Going there again like this, visiting the former site of Nebulous, of my school, brought back a lot of memories I might do better to leave alone for a while yet. I've changed who I am and I have more fun now but I still feel like I'm doing my best to remain a failure. I'm certainly making some of the same emotional mistakes. (link to private entry, don't bother clicking unless you're me.)
Jon came by to visit today, but I just hid. I'm really not ready to talk to people.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-01 11:26 pm (UTC)I don't know if it helped either of our moods much, but I'm glad we talked.
Success can be measured in all sorts of ways. You're a kind, gifted woman with 2+ people in your life who love you. That to me sounds like you're a good portion of the way there.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 12:26 am (UTC)Then, thrust back out onto the smouldering rock.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 12:36 am (UTC)I've also seen Heavy Traffic and parts of Fritz the Cat (I think is the title?).
There is a certain energy to his movies and I was always suprised when I heard friends poo poo his movies. It's amazing what things I heard, about how Ralph is this or that or this...it reminds me of how much we can assume about a celebrity/artist when our only contact with them is their art.
His movies deserve to be loved by those who are brave enough to let go of their egos and go for the experience.
*dances with a spider*
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 01:21 am (UTC)I hope I didn't unnerve you by following you down to your car. :P Even tired and ranty, you're a cool person to talk to.
Ralph -- I don't know the guy, but he seems really, really old fashioned. I don't think there's room in his worldview for more than "guy in drag". And that's not so much his fault, but I'd take his responses with a big hunk of sodium chloride. :) "cut it out" sounds mostly jocular, like "get outta here".
Think of it this way -- you made it up to the Bay Area, you found a housemate cool enough to drive overnight to Ralph Bakshi screenings, you did work that gets talked about years after the fact, and you don't weird out the people who matter. Eff double-u ee double-u, Peggy.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 03:21 am (UTC)Besides. Bakshi has done Hollywood for what? 30 years? Peggy's not the first trans* person he's worked with. Watching the interaction, it didn't read as if it were any big deal. I think Peggy's just being self-conscious.
She also seems to be forgetting the at least half dozen people that whistled, honked, or just explicatively cried out that she was beautiful yesterday. Seriously. I mean, even in Hollywood, and strung-out tired, if people are saying you're one of the hottest people around, that's saying something, isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 06:07 pm (UTC)Self perceptions are brutal, but not always how others see you.
I liekwise never thought you a failure, and in fact held you up as an exmaple of someone who was suceeding with their aspirations. But thats all outside looking in I guess.