The New Wave hit echoes in the chambers of my memory as my
day starts. I see the lead singer of Missing Persons. She looks like Central
Casting issued a call for Gem and the Holograms. The lead singer freely
informs, “Nobody walks in LA!”
These words resonate in my memory as I start my day. I am in
LA and I am a walker in this city where no one walks. It’s because I am
transplanted from a city where everyone and their mother take a subway or they
walk. In Los Angeles, the transit system is adorable. It tries, but it goes
everywhere and no where at once. And no, no one is walking.
Nobody walks in LA.
I begin my morning by heading to class at Antioch University
in Culver City. I am 20 minutes down the street. Apparently LA has some
neighborhoods you can walk in. This is one, kind of.
The sky is colored like Bob Ross took his water paints and
went to town. It’s happy and optimistic unlike the often dreary New York
skyline I left behind. As I hit the pavement I see Spanish Style houses. Even
the apartment buildings are Spanish style. There are no hulking, gray high
rises that remind you that no, you will never be able to afford to live here.
LA is expensive, it did that to me on it’s own. That’s why I don’t have a car,
duh.
As I wander the suburban sprawl to class, I see flowers in
December. There are no flowers in New York at all let alone in December. I
breathe in the fresh scent that is totally alien to me. All of a sudden I hear
the bark of an angry dog. It’s behind a fence so hell if I know the breed.
Either way it senses I am here and is mad as hell, probably because aside from
the mailman who is probably a drunk who barely does his job-my childhood
mailman was and from what I understand that’s more the rule than the
exception-this dog never has a walker let alone senses one.
Maybe this dog wants a friend.
Or maybe this dog is saying, “Bitch, didn’t you get the
memo. Nobody walks in LA.”
Yes, I ascribed the dog an identity and am even giving it
words. Maybe it’s because I am a ventriloquist and make objects talk. Maybe
it’s because I have spent too long in New York. We had son of Sam who had a dog
tell him to kill people. Maybe he was a ventriloquist gone bad. Cali has
Richard Ramirez who got a girlfriend on Death Row. Every city has their psychos.
As someone who makes puppets talk and now is giving a dog way too much agency,
I should just focus on getting to class on time. You know, school, the whole
reason I am in LA.
This entire time I am drinking coffee as I walk down the
street out of my pink mug that says Antioch MFA. It’s pink because I’m a girl
and I like pink things. As I sip my pink mug I see no one on the street. It’s
still just me. However, I see swarms of cars on the street. They are like bees
going to a hive. Angry bees on a mission. They are driving like they are either
late for the high paying job that pays the rent, the audition that will change
their life, or yoga. In LA it’s yoga.
New York has the same swarm except it’s foot traffic. Both
are equally as scary.
I cross the street and the drivers look at me as both a
herpes sore on their day and as an alien. A walker is a foreign being. I cross
the street with lightning speed like I am Errol Flynn and Captain America,
swashbuckling in a foreign land to live my dream on the written page. As I
cross I spill my coffee. Yes I applied for graduate school on my own and am
financing it on my own too. But I am drinking coffee irresponsibly and walking
in a no walk city. I am adulting well and badly all at the same time.
I hit the sidewalk. The hot texture of the pavement has hit
my white flip flop and boy are my toes hot. My sun dress is hardly proper
walking gear according to most but in New York I have walked from Wall Street
to Times Square in similar gear. Heck, as a singing telegrammer, I have worked
the tri-state and even walked along Jersey Highways in the dark. I can handle
people who drive like assholes. Jersey drivers are notorious. Yet the possible
brushes with death never cease to raise my pulse.
I catch my breath.
On to cross under an underpass. It looks like trolls should
live there but they don’t. Trolls in LA have cars and wouldn’t be caught dead
walking under their bridge. As I cross I see a black homeless guy, tattered and
pushing a shopping cart. There are people who would tell me I should be scared.
I am a New Yorker. I have dealt with all sorts of homeless. Many are addicts or
mentally ill who fell through the system. I try not to make eye contact. While
those in Jersey drive like assholes New York has made me act like an asshole.
I am looking both ways to cross the street. Suddenly I catch
the eye of the homeless guy. He has a shocked look as he sees me. His jaw drops
open. I can tell he is shocked to see someone that looks like me walking. I
want to say, “Buddy, I don’t own a car and your credit score might be better
than mine……just when I didn’t think I should shock you anymore.”
Seconds later, a school kid enters. By the look on his
adolescent face I can tell he’s cutting. He’s walking because he is too young
to drive and wants to escape his idiot teachers or bullies. Either way, it’s
me, the homeless dude, and the kid. All at the Outcast Table. It’s like high
school again. Now I am wondering if there is a LARPer amongst us and who
brought the dice.
That is when the light changes and I cross. As I continue my
walk, I see the cars and car dealership. I see VIP nails. Should I skip school
and get my nails done? I love my program and my teachers. But my nails need
refilled. They say I am a graduate student and they trust me. Perhaps they
overestimated the fact I was transforming into a character from Beverly Hills
90210.
That is when the white middle class narrative of my youth
comes in. I want Dylan McKay to ride up on his motorcycle to rescue me. So what
he’s 16 with a receding hairline and looks closer to 30. Damn it he would be my
age. Screw Brenda and Kelly, he’s mine! Yeah, that’s not happening.
Seconds later I see Sprouts. My mom was afraid of me getting
mugged in LA. I told her I did 10 years in New York. When I told her I was
going to school in LA she said, “You don’t own a car let alone drive.”
The way she carried on you would have thought I was getting
ass fucked in a video in Van Nuys. So I told her that. To which she bellowed,
“I am your mother! I worry about you all the time. Someday you will remember
this conversation and I will be dead!” Mic drop.
I continue up the hill. There is a bus depot where a large
Spanish population is. I don’t know what they are per se, and I am saying what
they are like I crawled out of a Eula Biss narrative on race and class. But
they are looking at me like I am crazy for walking. The LA stereotype is poor
people and immigrants take the bus apparently. Stereotypes are demeaning.
I want to tell them I am walking because my people have
fucked the world up so royally for everyone. I want to tell them I am walking
to apologize for our asshole president and the pressure it has put on their
families. But alas, that would make me look crazier than I already do.
I cross a second street. I see a motorist looking pissed as
hell and yelling. It appears he is talking on the phone. I hear my mom again
from my memory. “Does anyone know anything else about this hippie school you
applied to?” She asked.
“Mom, it’s a real school. Starboard is doing a low residency
PhD.” I tell her, informing her my cousin who’s a dance professor and soon to
be mother is juggling life and academia all at once.
“Sounds like a Trump University to me.” My mother snaps.
Yes, with this Tiger Mom it’s Ivy or bust. I did NYU undergrad and my brother
and sister did Brown. Her heart broke when I didn’t apply to Columbia. After
she pestered me to go to grad school I finally did it and it still wasn’t good
enough.
I see the car pass again. It’s white and it’s driving like
it’s buttons have been pushed. Yup, he was talking to mom.
The postmodern building Antioch is in looms closer in the industrial
park which it is situated. I am excited to be in class today, and more excited
to see my new classmates which include but are not limited to a former flight
instructor, a former Obama blogger, a poetry writing mom of three, a former
engineer from Korea who’s pen name is that of a Disney character, a woman who
had an arranged marriage that worked out and many more.
I am excited as a piece I shared in workshop marinates. It’s
the one about bringing my puppet pal Donald J. Tramp to the RNC as the
spokespuppet of an anti-Trump organization. He’s 3 feet tall and 15 pounds and
his resemblance to a US President is purely happenstance. I got some amazing
feedback.
Should I bring my puppet to school? Hmmm……Are they sure they
trust these grad students?
Across I see Holy Cross Cemetery. It’s beautiful and majestic
as I see LA sprawled and the massive city over the hill teaming with cars and
life. My classes are teaming with life and ideas. It’s a paradox.
Seconds later my phone buzzes. It’s my mom sending me a
text. She is telling me she has googled some of the faculty in the program and
is impressed they got such accomplished instructors and Ivy League educated faculty.
She is also impressed by it’s ranking. I told her this months ago but it doesn’t
matter. And then she wishes me a good day at school. Glad Tiger Mom is happy. I
will have one masters as opposed to the 30 PhDs I should have by now in her
world.
I see Holy Cross and the text from my mom. She is right. Someday
she will be dead. And until that time and thereafter, she will be a star in my
work because she just gives me endless streams of material. If that’s not love
I don’t know what is.
Either way, school is about to start and I see my friends. I
am headed to my first learning activity. Sure, I am doing the City of Angels on
foot, but I am walking towards my dreams and goals. That’s the way I see it.
And while Jesus wore sandals, perhaps tomorrow I will wear sneakers. As long as
I am going to walk in LA I might as well be practical.
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