02 – For Lauren, Home is Where the Heart is…
I haven’t slept since last night. After ousting Andrew’s plot to see some girl he met on set (as he likes to call it) and breaking my cell phone in the process I took a walk. Uncharacteristic of me, yes, but hardly something I regret now by any means. Although I was exposed to a city and way of life I really do believe I’ll never truly grasp or belong – I’ve achieved a new state of understanding and clarity. And above all, I’ve reached awareness so comfortable and inspiring I could have fallen into a deep child-like sleep if I had so wanted, but instead opted to remain awake and bask in the warmth of information I’ve at last allowed myself to accept as reality. I’m powerless.
With Andrew, I’m powerless. Where I am, where I belong, and where I’ll be five months from now, not something in my control. Who Andrew wants to be and who he is, not my problem. And although it’s sad, seeing and knowing what we once were and watching it all fade away – lying to myself that I actually could make things better – bring them back to where they’re supposed to be – knowing and truly believing that none if this is under my control – this is where I find my first true moments of serenity through the awareness of my inevitable solitude.
Maybe this will all be a passing phase for Andrew – this dream of Hollywood and fame and fortune – and once the phase passes as phases are known to do, we’ll go back east and start a family together as I had always dreamed…
… or maybe this is just the beginning for Andrew – and the beginning for me for that matter – and for both of us, sooner or later, a choice will have to be made and we’ll have to each follow our own path.
Together or alone.
I’m reminded of something I read in one of Andrew’s old drug-addiction books about a year ago: we’re powerless over other people; we have no control over them and what they do. We do however have control on how we allow them to affect u and how we allow ourselves to react to them… or something like that, I really don’t recall the quote to the letter, but the bottom-line of it all has served me all throughout the evening while Andrew was out doing God-only-knows and well into after the sun rose and he finally made an appearance back at home (if I can even call this home) roughly two hours ago.
I had been sitting in the same corner of the studio where I am now – doing something I haven’t done since before I met Andrew – writing. And as I was writing page after handwritten page of my thoughts and feelings and sorrows and desires – completely unaware of any passing time – a banging was at the door. Not the kind of banging one makes with their fist as if to knock or to announce their presence, but rather a sloppy and erratic bang-clank-swoosh-type of clatter that comes from a tired, drunk, and (I suspect) strung-out little boy masquerading as a man trying to enter an apartment on the sly.
It’s funny, just around the time Andrew was at the door, I had just started to wrap-up my writings – the theme of which being about a girl coming to realize that she no longer knows the person she loves, and with that, comes to terms with the possibility that she never knew her lover at all.
And then he walked in – actually dragged himself in is probably more appropriate – and from my corner I looked up at him and he looked down at me and together we said nothing. I’m sure he expected me to be up and arms the moment he walked in. Which I wasn’t. I’m sure he expected a long-drawn-out fight with tears and all the trinkets – in which there wasn’t. I’m positive he expected something, anything than what he received upon his return to the apartment… which was nothing.
And once the surprise passed and Andrew realized nothing was going to happen, he dragged his shell of a body from the doorway to the futon and was out before the second hand on a clock could do a full revolution.
He was gone – to put it simply – and as he lay knocked out with absolutely no emotion painted on his face as he slept, I coped with the fact that not only is he gone, he’s most likely never coming back.
And now he’s still asleep (if you can call it sleep) and he hasn’t changed position on the futon at all. I remember when I was a young girl and I would throw a fit my mother would always say, “I wish we had a video-recorder so you can see how you look when you act this way…” – god if only Andrew could have seen himself two hours ago. Maybe he’d finally wake up. But people like Andrew, people in his condition, they never wake up – they come to.
Looking at Andrew from my corner I grip my notebook tightly as if the words inside provide a sense of comfort and belonging Andrew on his best of days could never come close to comparing. The words inside along with the very act of writing them, to me, have been the realest, most genuine aspects of my life for quite some time. Through my writings never have I felt so at ease and despite written while alone in the dark, never have I felt such a sense of belonging.
Still seated cross-legged in what’s become my little corner of the apartment, I think back to when Andrew first stepped into the apartment a little over two hours ago – specifically the moment our eyes met – and for the life of me I can’t shake the horror I saw in his face… in those eyes that once felt like home to me not too long ago.
Truth be told, I’ve remained here on the floor the entire time on account I haven’t been able to muster the strength to stand up – because however sad it may be to admit, I know that once I stand up, there’s nowhere for me to go.
The person that crossed over the door and into our “home” two hours ago is a stranger to me… and I’m sure by now, possibly even a stranger to himself. If I were to stand up right now, I ask myself, where would I go from there? As tired as I may be I couldn’t possibly go to bed – I couldn’t possibly lay beside a stranger. Tired as I may be, I could never find enough comfort in that bed to fall asleep. And although I’ve been tired for some time and have managed to will myself to sleep night after night it’s all been under the warm blanket of denial. But now that I’ve outgrown that blanket and have faced the fact I live, breathe, and sometimes sleep next to a stranger – no matter how tired I may be, I fear I could never fall asleep with him beside me…
Because after all, how could I possibly sleep now that my eyes are finally open?
I wring my hands around my notebook which has now become wet and warm by my sweat and shutter at the realization that I can’t even consider this place, this closet of an apartment in which I simply dwell a home… not with him here. Not with him like this.
And with these thoughts raging through my mind and all these things I want to say with no one around to listen or to call a friend or familiar or feel a connection with I hang my head low – where instead of crying I allow the crack of a smile to form. There is a notebook in my hand and a pen on the floor. I have things to write and nowhere to call home – nowhere to go once I stand up. And then a thought crosses my mind – this is Los Angeles isn’t it? I’m sure there’s a Starbucks within walking distance filled with writers who write anonymously when they feel they have nowhere to call home… or nothing else to do.
Staring ahead finding the coldest of beds fit for the dead and dying, I think to myself, why not go for a walk and find a coffee shop? Sure beats the hell out of crying?
Although much to my surprise I couldn’t find a Starbucks I was able to find a coffee shop a couple blocks from our apartment called The Bourgeois Pig, and this place is for lack of a better word, heaven. A complete contrast to the scene on Hollywood Boulevard I was exposed to last night, this place rests on a quiet, almost hidden block on Franklin Avenue just behind our apartment building. And although I’m mad I hadn’t found this place sooner – I realize it’s my circumstances I’m in now that led me here and am grateful to have found it.
Where Hollywood, just a block away, is overflown with homeless and tourists and hustlers and night-clubs and hundreds of faceless creatures I could never walk beside; this little block of the city seems to be immune to all the disease and lies and misfortune.
Next to the coffee shop where I find myself finding myself rests only a couple of restaurants, a small theater (the real kind not a movie theater) and two rare bookstores. Moreover, from my observations in the hours I’ve been here, it seems everyone here knows one another. And these are good people – none of which talking about nightclubs or networking or face time or money or fame or clothes… they’re just, I don’t know, normal. And although I don’t know a soul on this block I feel more at home with these strangers than I ever have with Andrew since making the move.
Moreover, apart from feeling at ease with the people around me, I get the most comfort from what lays on the table beside my latte or cappuccino or latte cappuccino… my notebook and the thousands of words I’ve scrawled into her since sitting down at my table.
Due to my nature I was at first a bit timid walking to this place and once finding it, eventually making myself at home on one of the many hidden tables in the dark coffee shop. But shortly after ordering my drink and finding a seat my usual anxieties faded away in short time and without even thinking about it I simply wrote. One word led to another which in turn led to a sentence which in turn brought on an idea and off of one idea another was born and before I knew it my hand was cramped and late breakfast turned into late lunch.
I can’t explain it but my digging back into that part of myself I hardly explored years of go in terms of writing, finding that comfort in words and truly utilizing this outlet as a means of exploring myself and the world around… I couldn’t begin to explain the warmth I feel inside. Although I only have a notebook where everyone else around me seems to have a laptop and although I may only be writing down feelings where everyone else around me has some sort of book or screenplay in the works, I feel as if I’m the only one in here truly writing. And although I’m certain to the outsider my thoughts and words make little to no sense by now – especially seeing as I’ve made no sense – I couldn’t care less. For me this writing and writing in a place like this is more therapeutic to me than anything I’ve encountered in all of my life. The words and ideas I’ve let flow into my notebook, although may make little to no sense to a reader, are my lifeline. I’m not looking to get published or to produce a screenplay here. I’m looking to write because it’s the only thing that’s felt right for me in years. This, what I’m doing here and now, is my catharsis.
And with this ease I find in writing and the happiness it brings about, I can’t help but to look at the others around me scattered about the shop and shamefully feel a slight bout of superiority. I feel bad to say it being as I’m not the type to judge people or take any type of joy out of making judgments, but after a bit of observing the others in the shop, I seem to be the only one in here really writing and enjoying it.
But who knows…
It just seems like everyone around me is just staring at their computer screens – rather than pouring their thoughts onto the pages their torturing themselves… as if whatever it is they’re writing is a chore or something of the like. I don’t know. Watching these people and passing judgment isn’t going to help me, I decide to myself, what I need to do is get back to my writing.
I feel giddy and school-girl like and have fallen in love all over again with writing. For the past few hours I’ve been working on a story on what it is to call a place a home. What qualifies a home? I think of Andrew and what he’s become and what we’re becoming and touch on that aspect, unable to consider what we have home… where on the other end I think of the family and friends I left behind to come out here and be with Andrew… is that home? And in writing further I think of the latter and remember how stagnate I was – and if I had never met Andrew – how stagnate I may be still. At least now, through whatever pain I’ve endured by the hands of heartache, I’m evolving. Through my words I ask myself is home a place that’s always there? Is home a place you have to find? Or is home a place that eventually finds you?
I exhaust another page in my notebook and instinctually flip to the next blank page and keep on grinding away with my pen. I’m in a trance, where the outside world does nothing to or for me aside from inspiring whatever it is I allow into the world my words breathe life into.
My writings aside, whatever this is I’m feeling right now (I think they call it inspiration) and the comfort I’m finding in this dark and crowded coffee shop, I think to myself, is the closest thing to home I’ve had in a long time… maybe even in my entire life. And with that thought an idea strikes – I take the pen to paper to jot it down when out of nowhere—
Someone bumps into my table, spilling what’s left of my drink onto my notebook, and subsequently removing me from my trance-like-state. Whoever they were I really didn’t know for two reasons: first being I was wrapped up in my writing, second, whoever the jerk was, they just kept on going to the bathroom. Not even an apology. What an asshole. And then it hits me as I watch what was left in my glass cover my notebook, I’m in a city. People are jerks.
I rush to find a napkin and clean up what spilled from my cup. I then tend to my notebook and thank my lucky stars most of the spill occurred on the right side of the notebook, leaving most of what I’ve already written today unscathed. I return the empty glass to the server behind the bar and order another. They don’t ask about the spill or care. They tell me they’ll take my drink back to my table.
At my table as I’m putting on the finishing touches of my cleaning job the boy that ran into my drink without a word emerges from the bathroom and locks eyes with me. He kind of reminds me of Andrew – probably because he has dark hair and dark eyes – but another part of him suggests the complete opposite of Andrew. There’s something in the way he looks at me that suggests bumping into a strangers coffee table is the last of his worries. Although I’m not the type to judge, I can’t help but to get the impression that this boy is deeply troubled… and has seen and done things I could only imagine.
This boy, whoever he is, returns my stare and refuses to break. For some reason, I don’t know why, I feel about two inches tall. Although I doubt he’s doing it on purpose, he has this way of making me feel skittish just by the way he returns a stare. And although he can’t be more than five-foot-eight, I feel as if I’m under the shadow of a giant.
Truly shaken by his stare, I break contact and get back to drying off my notebook. After a moment I find enough courage to look back up at him and get the impression that he, for whatever reason, is struggling with something as simple as spilling a strangers drink. It’s as if he’s deep in thought, torturing himself… for what I don’t know…
And then he approaches my table, stands right above me, and coldly says, “I spilled your fucking coffee didn’t I?”
He’s remains solid like a rock, casual with his profanity, and sniffs a bunch. Not quite sure how to respond I simply say, “Yeah, but it’s no big deal.”
He says nothing for a moment and I get the feeling he’s studying me, as if he sees something in me separate from what he’s used to. Then after awhile he manages to say, “I ruined your notebook didn’t I?”
“Only the pages I haven’t written on” I say, “and it’s about time for a new one anyway. Only a few pages left.”
He nods his head and smiles, as if enjoying some private joke and says (almost patronizingly), “I take it we’re another screenwriter then? I didn’t fuck up your three act structure did I?”
No idea what he’s talking about I say, “No I’m just writing. Actually just started last night. I just have a lot on my mind and it… I don’t know, it just helps.”
Something I said takes this stranger back a bit and he says almost shocked, “You’re just writing for the shit of it?”
“I guess” I say, truly confused.
“Well then you’ve got a better chance at making it than the rest of these morons with their laptops” he says.
“I’m not really writing to make it” I say, “Like I said, I’m just writing because it helps.”
“You’re writing because you have to then?” he asks, “Not because you hope it will pay off?”
“I could never imagine anyone paying for what I have to write” I say, meaning every word.
“Stay that way” he says very matter-of-fact.
“What way?”
“True” he says without a smile or a blink – almost as if we’ve gone way past small-talk and he’s moved on to giving me advice. An elder of the tribe to someone new into camp.
The server comes with my drink and notices the strange boy beside me and says, “What’s up Donnie, you look like shit!”
“That’s probably because I feel like shit” he says while slipping the server some money, “This girl’s drink is on me and make up the difference by getting me a Redbull or something.”
“You’ve got it” the server says as he disappears back to the bar.
The strange boy, Donnie I now know his name is, looks at me for a moment – again almost as if he’s scrutinizing me – and finally manages, “You mind if I take the seat next to you? Too many people here for my liking and if I have to I’d rather sit next to a stranger. No obligation for small talk.”
“You could always leave,” I say with uncharacteristic confidence, “if you don’t like the people.”
“Yeah that’s always an option,” he says as he takes a seat beside me, “but I have nowhere else to go.”
“Yeah” I say with a smile, “I know exactly what you mean.”
