City Lights

They say that Los Angeles doesn't really have a skyline. And that's true, I suppose, if you compare us to New York or Chicago with those fortress-like walls of skyscrapers domnating both the day and the night sky. L.A.'s downtown rises much more subtly up out of the middle of the city's expansive sprawl, looking a little like Emerald City on approach from the yellow brick road. And it's not always easy to see. Sometimes obscured by hills, smog, or simply distance, catching a glimpse of the colorfully lit towers, especially at dusk, can be an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. But I had a view of it from my first apartment, when I moved here, six years ago this week. Not from my living room, but from the pool and hot tub on the roof of my building. It was a favorite ritual of mine to go up there after work and just stare out over Hollywood, downtown, and the endless concrete slab it all sits on. Following 45 aggravating minutes in traffic, watching the sky, and that skyline, as the sun set behind me, was strangely therapeutic. It was all so very glamorous, you know--those hills, the pool on the roof, the gentle breeze of the night air as you looked out over downtown, the Hollywood searchlights, and 10 million people winding down their day.

I've hardly ever had any reason to actually GO downtown--much like almost everyone I know. Unless you work there, the twinkling downtown lights seem to be best admired at a distance, from the terraced neighborhoods in and around West Hollywood. There are occasional loft parties and art gallery openings, club nights or operas at the Dot Chandler, and as you arrive at these places, with the skyscrapers looming brightly overhead, it always seems a bit strange that the buildings actually EXIST. The symbolism was not lost on me, when I first noticed it, and this image that L.A. has--all form and no function. Lots of style in a complete absence of substance. A set of beautifully white, capped teeth smiling warmly as the person behind them admits right up front they aren't really going to remember your name, not even 30 seconds from now. Los Angeles, entertainment capital of the world, land of sound stages and fake sets, only comfortable with makeup on and the camera rolling--otherwise, a vapid, cultural wasteland populated by a bunch of phonies and freaks.

I am happy to report that I have found these accusations to be patently untrue. While I continued to be fascinated by those glittering downtown skyscrapers viewed from my fabulous hilltop perch, I found a very unique brand of real behind the city they represent, and the people who live in it. It was the very sort of thing I had hoped I'd find here. I have found in L.A. a city full of people chasing a dream, or running from a nightmare, or settling down, again, to start over. Nobody questions this. You are absolutely free to be whoever you want. Do your thing. As long as it doesn't impinge on anybody else's thing, you are absolutely welcome to go for it. I know many people who came here because, after coming to terms with being gay, they no longer felt welcome in the small communities where they grew up and they're here because they're less conspicuous. I know people who, in spite of the odds, are here to make it big in the biz. There are people who were tired of their job and are looking around at something, anything, at entry level, at 35 years of age, just as long as it's different and interesting. These three rationales represent, in some way, my own reasons for coming here. Almost nobody is just here by accident. The fact that pretty much everybody I meet has a plan, an agenda, a dream or even some outrageous delusion about their own life which they live out with gusto all the same, is a remarkably refreshing change from other places I've been where people seem to have simply remained because that's where life dropped them.

I have found people who will take at face value, whatever it is you tell them you are. There is a dynamic, vibrant energy being constructed by people who are here re-inventing themselves, building their dreams, free of any expectations. Maybe it's because I grew up in a town and an environment where your life path was pretty much laid out for you the moment you were born; and if you committed, say, the unpardonable sin of still being unmarried past the age of 25, people would wonder what was wrong with you. The L.A. thing can be a dangerously subtle energy, though, one that gets misunderstood by amateurs, in the same way that exquisite acquired tastes are very often dismissed by those who try them only once and refuse to see what all the fuss is about. The energy of everyone running around constructing their own realities and painting their own facades based on who they believe themselves to be, may sound to an outsider like a blatantly shallow way to live. Viewed differently, it seems to me, a much more genuine way to be--people wearing their souls on their sleeve and asking only that you take them at their word and deed.

The source of all this musing is a walk I went on the other night, with my friend Steve's dog Cooper. Heading down a particularly hilly Silver Lake avenue, we passed an empty lot, which exposed those downtown skyscrapers in all their glittering mystery. My six years in L.A. have been very different from what I imagined they would be. There have been periods of abject poverty punctuated by bursts of world-class fabulousness. I have rubbed shoulders at parties with international A-listers, and ridden the bus with people who looked liked they hadn't had a bath or a real meal in weeks. And as this last year has proved to be a trying one for me, I find myself relying at the moment on a wonderful family of friends, who have been nothing but generous with their time, resources, couches to crash on, with nary a word of disapproval, nobody asking, "how in the hell did you get yourself into this mess, anyway?"

I noticed that the view Cooper and I were enjoying was courtesy of an empty lot, a steep hill, between two houses built on either retaining walls or stilts. I looked down to the bottom of the lot and sure enough, wreckage of a house, knocked off its foundation during the last big earthquake. I was again grateful for the real and wonderful bonds between people, flourishing audaciously even here, a place where even the ground you stand on has the nerve to just completely dislodge, once in a while.

My life, at the moment, feels completely dislodged. I believe now that it is possible for earthquakes to happen inside individual people. "Change looks like failure, in the middle," a friend told me once. I thought about this as I looked at my skyline skyscrapers, which looked different now. No longer did it feel like I was looking out over my own kingdom, lord of all I surveyed. At the moment I've been knocked down a few rungs, if not completely off of the ladder. But tonight, the twinkling city lights reminded me again why I came here, and that I have dreams, and that there's really no reason not to chase after them, seeing as how everybody else around me is. I decided to be excited, instead of daunted, by this change, this earthquake that seems to have rocked me off my foundation and given me the opportunity to start over. I'll be even more excited just as soon as I figure out what it is I want to change inTO...