Getting to L.A. (Dwell and Tell III)

Okay.  People.  Not that I think you care, but in case you are following the last two stories like Alisa Ledyard is, I feel compelled to tell you that the Dwell and Tell Stories will not be told in the sequence in which they actually happened.  This one dates back to 1999.  You will eventually hear what happened after 34 W. 86^th Street, but it’s delicate material so it’s going to take some time.  I will tell you now, however, that my dear friend Rob had his tumor removed and beat cancer.  He is recovered and happily residing in midtown Manhattan.

I am at Charlie Brown's in Lexington, KY.  The house cabernet is $5 during happy hour and a whole $5.50 otherwise.  The other wines-by-the-glass are $7.25.  Indoor/Outdoor Seating.  Inside, the seating is mostly couches.  Adorable.

How about the time I lived in L.A.?  Friends of mine have heard me put Los Angeles down, referring to it like some stupid ex-boyfriend that treating me poorly and lacked any qualities good enough to justify it so.  If L.A. was my Ex, he dressed well, smelled good, and always had something fun planned.  He was full of jokes, but after a month, I’d heard them all and he told them again anyway.  He was not interested in conversation, not real conversation.  He was a flashy car, a Mojito, a smoothie from Jamba Juice, a workout video set outside on the beach, a song by Smash Mouth.  What I’m trying to say is that while L.A. was not all bad, it was not at all what I wanted.



I arrived around August One, after a road-trip with my two best friends, Megan and Alyssa.

Ginna, Alyssa and "Man", 1999.  If you look closely you can see the incredible scenery through which we drove, and a glimpse of the sunflower on the rearview mirror.  "Man" was the object of all our frustrations on the trip.  He was blamed for everything that went wrong and often relegated to the glove compartment for disorderly conduct.

Megan, Ginna, Alyssa, 2010

We started out from Columbus, Ohio where I’d spent the summer after my apprenticeship at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky.  I was recently heart-broken (I have written a version of that sentence in my two previous blogs and each refers to a different dude and a different bit of damage.  I think I ought to take a look at that.) 

I remember driving routes 70 and 66, throwing torn pictures of me and Mike Gerard out the window with the Dixie Chicks blaring and the wind blowing our hair totally crazy.  I was moving on, having hung on to the hope of that particular dude for a good two years.

Alyssa and Megan only made it as far a Las Vegas with me.  Sadly, while stopped in Sedona, Arizona, one of the most beautiful spots I’ve seen in our sweet country, we received word that another one of our friends had lost her brother in a plane crash.  The news dropped on us like a boulder, and our windows-down-squealing-through-the-country came to mean something else.  We were 25 that summer.  The miles from Sedona to Las Vegas were driven a little quieter after that, but not without the passion that had fueled the previous days.  I, too, had lost a sibling, and the weight of that fact took up some space in the backseat of my silver Honda.  A sunflower hung on the rearview mirror in my sister’s memory.  It is still there today.

I, of course, was going to continue on.  I couldn’t very well go back and do this journey again.  I had to go on alone.  Megan and Alyssa took a red-eye from Vegas to Columbus that would get them back in time to attend the funeral.  We had booked a room at The Luxor , the Egyptian themed hotel.  We played some slots and Alyssa taught me a little about Blackjack.  We took in a lot of vodka tonics.  Around 10:30 they hailed a cab and we said hasty goodbyes, which hardly contained the depth of the time we’d spent together those few days.  I was moving to the other side of the country.  Within a year, Alyssa would be the first of us to be married.  It’s hard to get all of that into a two-second goodbye.

I didn’t really know what to do with myself.  I had this big terrific room all to myself.  

I was dressed up, tipsy, and totally uninterested in gambling.

I was twenty-five.

I went to bed.

The last portion of the drive, from Las Vegas to L.A. was not far, but it can definitely induce panic to the lone Mid Western girl.  There was a stretch of pure dessert.  We had been warned to gas-up and have water.   I had some mild panicky spells, but I turned up my music and rolled forward.  I missed my companions, but I knew that somehow, my entering this new phase alone was symbolic and right.

When I first arrived in L.A., I subletted my friend Dan’s apartment.  He had three dudes as roommates (that’s another blog.)  Incidentally, Dan is now on HBO and probably my most famous friend.  I withstood that living sitch for exactly one month.  Coincidentally, another friend of mine had decided to give L.A. a try too.  Rob crashed with me in the apartment of dudes for about ten days before it became clear that we needed to get out.  I’d found a studio apartment in Los Feliz for $415 a month which was almost perfect, save for two things:  1.)  the brown carpet that pervaded the main room and 2.) the absolutely certifiable landlady, Carol, who resided in the apartment to the right of mine.

I lived there for eleven months,  I spent much of that time applying for grad schools as far from California as I could find. 

And, I collected a few stories…