LOS ANGELES « In Which We Are Living In A Manufactured Reality »
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 11:51AM 
It Is Still Only The Beginning, But Maybe I Can See The End
by MEREDITH HIGHT
It has now been six months since I moved to Los Angeles, almost to the day. Sometimes I forget where I am, where I have been. Then I go to lunch at Joan’s on Third in West Hollywood, and while I am in line ordering my deli salad trio, an urgent voice comes over the loudspeaker, imploring someone in the parking lot to move their black Bentley. Then I nearly bump into Nicky Hilton.
And I remember, oh yes, I live in Los Angeles now. I drive on the freeways, I spend $12 to park at the doctor’s office for an hour and a half, I drink Americanos from the Coffee Bean, and I wear JBrand skinny jeans. I resist becoming obsessed with my weight and my appearance, a feeling I have not experienced since adolescence. Yet this is the way in which Los Angeles affects you, the preponderance of beautiful people, the Prada purses, the models and actresses and celebrities who are approximately 1/3 the size of the average person.
Though it is tempting to strive to be “just like them,” you remind yourself that there are thousands of attractive and wealthy adults living in this sprawling, aspiring city who are suspended in an amplified and everlasting adolescence. Striving for stardom (read, validation) in the grown-up equivalent of high school, that is Hollywood.
And this is sad.
Parking remains one of the greatest challenges I face on a daily basis. This is a problem that has been compounded by a recent encounter with the parking attendant at my building. Reynaldo and I exchange reliable hello, how are you, have a good day greetings. Never once have we had a conversation beyond that, save for the day when I asked his name. Because, I have always detested the invisibility we impose on those in service industries, as though because they are washing your dishes, mowing your lawn or parking your car, they are their service, and not people.
This Tuesday, I park my car as per usual. I hand my keys over to Reynaldo, who it should be said is approximately five inches shorter than me and appears to be around sixty years old. He wears dark polyester pants, a paper thin white button down shirt and an approximation of a tie. He speaks with an accent that suggests he is not entirely comfortable with English, and he mangles my name every time he tries to say it.
He pauses after I hand over my keys. "You seem so sad," he says. "Did something happen?"
I know that I have been sad, and I know why, and I see the name of the boy in big block letters in my head. But was it so obvious? I don’t consider it appropriate to share any of this with Reynaldo, the parking attendant, so I say, "Oh! Thank you, no, no, I am OK. I am good."
"Are you happy?" he asks again, moving slightly closer, unwilling to accept my response. I think, this is very kind, almost brings a tear to my eye. It reminds me of a grandfatherly inquisition. "I’m fine," I say. I email a friend, really, do I seem that sad?
Two days later I park, I hand over my keys, and he asks, "What are you doing tonight? Sometimes I rent movie," he says. I realize what this is, and I have no idea how to respond. I am standing there trying to imagine how this could be even a fictional possibility, a short story about a young woman falling for an aging, Mexican parking garage attendant in Los Angeles, and the implausibility of even this keeps me standing there speechless. Reynaldo however has gone on to ask me when my lunch hour is, and how long I have for lunch, an hour? Someone else hands Reynaldo their keys and I take the opportunity to smile and walk away.
It occurs to me that like much in this city, nothing is what it seems. You think you know where you are, you see banners for earthquake preparedness, you hear older wealthy couples in argyle sweaters complaining about socialism in Beverly Hills, you see Orthodox, black clad men with boxy hats walking to the synagogue on Friday night. You find out in US Weekly that you attend the same church where Tom Brady and Gisele got married. You pass by Ethiopian restaurants and Koreatown and go to dinner in the Filipino part of town and you know this is a city, this is Los Angeles. But it is not the sanitized and glamorous city you see on television, in the movies.
On your way to work one Wednesday, you see a crew filming a baseball game, at nine in the morning, and you know someday, someone will see this on a screen and think they are watching a little league game in small town Iowa on a Saturday afternoon. You realize, this is all a manufactured reality, and this is where reality is manufactured.
This is where people pretend to be people, to help people understand people. Where lonely people write stories and screenplays and lonely people act them out, to help people be less lonely. The vacuity of celebrity culture is affirmed as you see the sadness in the eyes of the famous, the sense of being consumed by themselves and thus, lost. This is compounded by the illusion and expectation that we have created and imposed on celebrity, that says, you are young and beautiful and talented and rich and famous, how could you not be happy?
Which is something we believe in, only so that we can believe it is possible for someone to simply be attractive and gifted and moneyed and as a result, live without struggle and doubt and pain. We want to, need to believe in this manufactured reality. The real stars have transcended all this. They know that a life beyond work and magazine covers, a life of service and family, means more than the celebrity.
"Do you see stars?" asked a friend who was visiting.
"You mean, like in the sky? I guess I do, but not really. It’s not like in Texas," I say, the sky is not the same."
"Oh, I meant celebrities," she says.
"That’s good, though, it’s good that that is still what you think of, when you think of stars," she says.
A friend sends me A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace, and his take on David Lynch and television and Los Angeles are more than accurate, and now that I’ve seen Mulholland Drive and sets for major television shows in the lobby of my office building, and simply the city itself, I understand just how brilliant he was, even though I haven’t read Infinite Jest. “After absorbing so much about it from the media, actually visiting Los Angeles in person produces a curious feeling of relief at finding a place that confirms your stereotyped preconceptions instead of confounding them...” DFW writes, w/r/t to the city of angels.
Another friend insists I read Shopgirl, by Steve Martin. I leave the office at lunch, and I sit in the seventy-five degree sunshine, turning the pages.
He writes about the tackiness of Beverly Boulevard, and the plastic women who shop at Neiman’s, and Mirabelle’s college girl apartment in artsy Silverlake, and I know just what he means. He writes about men and women and love and how we both take pieces from the other for ourselves, even when we know we shouldn’t, when we know we are being used, when we know we are being selfish.
Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her but not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.
It reminds me of the boy and of how I am feeling about Los Angeles. That this city is taking from me, that I can see through it, even though there are parts of it that I love, that I want to keep. Like being able to see Fellini’s Amarcord at the small, faded theatre in my neighborhood, and Truffaut’s 400 Blows at an altogether different theatre, driving ten minutes to the sound of the sea, cheap pedicures, a fabric of experiences, a diversity of inhabitants and of course, In N Out.
But I see a flash of my future, and it is not in Los Angeles. I am living in a small town, somewhere quiet in a room of my own, at a wooden desk, looking out an open window, writing. I know that part of what I have been wondering — is Los Angeles for temporary or forever? — has been answered.
Meredith Hight is the senior contributor to This Recording. She recently wrote about moving to California and unavailable men in these pages. She tumbls here.
"State Number" - Magik Markers (mp3)
"The Lighter Side of Hippies" - Magik Markers (mp3)
"Shells" - Magik Markers (mp3)
Reader Comments (7)
Stop Crying
Grow Up
Get Stronger
Quit whining
"Good morning. If you want to avoid criticism... Do nothing... Say nothing... BE NOTHING..."
God is Love
Rev Run
"But it is not the sanitized and glamorous city you see on television, in the movies."
This is that new kind of snark. Right?
Hey,
Thanks for embedding my video! Interesting article. I lived in LA myself for a while before I moved to Vegas, so I totally relate to a lot what you say about it. Take care. :-)
these comments are rough.
I love you.
LA IS THE BEST CITY EVER! if u can't take the heat get the hell out the desert
Hey Spectre Folk which is an offshoot of Magik Markers played at the Ding Dong a couple weeks ago! And you missed it!