The Danse California

A young woman deals with mail and regret while following her dream far from home.

It started with a light switch.

It started with a grimy, chipped light switch in a grubby apartment on the ragged edge of the City of Dreams.  Someone had described L.A. to me that way: the City of Dreams.  Geographically speaking, the successful people probably live in Dream Homes, the not-yet-successful live in Day Dreams, and the probably-never-will-be-successful live in Wet Dreams.  I don't fit in quite so nicely - I figure my part of town is more for the Wrong Side of the Tracks Dreams.

And in that raggedy edge of Nightmare town, I reached for a light switch that wasn't there.

I hadn't been in town long enough for my hands to get used to the change.  When walking into every room, I still reached for the right, like back home, instead of to the left, for my new, rented portal into the dream world.  In the normal scope of things, forgetting where the light switch is doesn't inconvenience you much.  It's really not that big of deal.  You might slap your forehead and grunt at your own forgetfulness.  Or you might have a brief wave of nostalgia for home, for that other switch, and that might bring a smile to your face.  Not me, because it really wasn't a big deal.  I reached out my left hand and flipped that switch with as much authority as I could pump into a wrist flick.  If I acted like I hadn't forgotten, that means it didn't happen, right?

Remember, I said it started with the light switch, not that it ended there.

The letters added to it next.  I had a collection of a couple days' worth of mail waiting on my kitchen table.  The lights cast dusky shadows around the edges of the pile.  I had such high hopes for that pile.  I had been in L.A. for a while now, and I'd been making the rounds to find an agent, find an audition, find a producer, find a script, find the vehicle to make my dream a reality.  It seemed that every minute I hadn't been at work had been spent charging along some avenue of inquiry, meeting with people who might meet up with other people, writing applications that might or might not get read, and pursuing gigs in kitschy, tetchy little theaters that might give you an STD when you walked in the door.   I had been purposely dropping as many lines as I could, hoping one of them would get a bite.  I had traveled to this ocean town in hope of landing the big one, one to tell stories about back home.  Now, I had picked up a few extra shifts at work in the past days, and hadn't gotten around to the mail since Monday.  Just sitting there, that pile of mail had to have a reward for my hard work in it, somewhere.

I pulled out a kitchen chair, which creaked only a bit more loudly than my muscles as I collapsed down into it.  It had been a long day at work, and an even longer string of days.  But there was still that hopeful reward buried inside the mountain of mail, and that was incentive enough to make me wade right in.

The first few were bills.  I had been expecting them, but not looking forward to them in any way shape or form.  I had demanded paper communication from most everyone, because the only way I had found to make sure my checks didn't bounce was to write each one by hand myself.  These bills balanced into their allotted place in my tally sheet.  I smiled grimly as I recorded each one: I had pulled a double shift two nights ago to make sure that the last one would clear.  So when I set aside the bills, it was with a mild sense of satisfaction, of a plan going right, and a crisis averted through better thinking.  I was a little smug as a flicked through the ads, proud of my self reliance and admiring of my own virtue as I didn't actually begin drooling over the discounted steaks or new fall fashions.  I pulled a coupon for soup and put it next to my shopping list.  I told myself that a microwaves cup of Progresso might not be grade A prime cut of American Angus Beef (TM), but it sure beat Campbell's.  Always an optimist, that's me.  So, optimistic and a wee bit smug, I came to the last letters at the bottom of my pile.

Physically, I'm sure that they looked like most any other letter, but I swear that I saw them surrounded by some kind of heavenly light.  Maybe Moses felt the same way, when he got the Ten Commandments.  But, by God, they felt special.  Because in them, there was the hope of vindication.  I had packed up my life back home, scrunched it up so that it could fit in a suit case, and brought myself here.  My parents had said "Honey, are you sure?  It's an awfully long way.  Are you sure that's what you want to do?".  Honestly, every time they had asked that, I had felt a little less sure for a second, but I had always steeled my will and always answered "Yes!", every time with that exclamation point, a cheery smile and a firm nod.  Maybe one of them would have a little cheery something in it, and a firm nod of its own inside, because I was beginning to feel the need to steel my will even when I was alone.  I was beginning to have doubts.  And when I had told my boyfriend about that, he had said, "I'm sorry, lover-girl.  You don't have to stay out there all alone.  You can come to me and I'll hug it all better.". Sometimes well-intended but misguided affection is the hardest thing to deal with.  A hug from him was sounding better and better and better as the days dragged on.  One day, I knew, wanting that hug could overwhelm wanting to keep fighting for my dream.  Looking at those letters, I felt that they might contain the keys to support my own faltering will, to keep my smile firm and cheery, and to give victory, if not hugs.

And that feeling is what made the devastation so exquisite as I sat amongst the innards of decidedly polite, but definitely dismissive rejection letters.  Each one had congratulated me on some achievement, or on my tenacity, or had assured me in business-speak that I was a really nice girl.  And each one had also informed me, regretfully they said, that I just wasn't their girl. 

The clock ticked away.  It marked time as my thoughts whirled between longings and hopes and needs that felt so desperate, if they weren't met, then I'd surely burst.  Tick tick.  My dream spun in a dreary pirouette, alone on a stage, and spun slower, and slower, until it looked in danger of toppling over all together.  Tick tick.  My optimism, self-reliance, and pride lined upon alongside each other, belles at the ball waiting for partners who had forgotten about the event entirely.  Tick tock.  A bare spotlight harshly illuminating dancers, frozen mid-step, straining to hold their positions and their smiles, sweat bejeweling them and their lifted feet began to shake with the strain.  The emptiness as my hand reached for the familiar light switch but found only bare wall echoed in the next beat.  In the next, my small pride tried to fill the gaping concert hall and failed miserably.  Tick.  The burning sting that the best thing in the mail had been canned soup.  Tock.  The hope of intangibles stuffed into shredded and disfigured letters.  Tick.  The worried hopes of loved ones swelling into an dominating accompaniment behind my delicate instrumental solo.   Tock.  The hollow realization that with each second, it was becoming more and more impossible to call any of my loved ones and tell them about this.  My dance with the mail system had taken me past the hours even the most loving family could be reached. 

As I sat alone in my kitchen, it struck me that I ought to regret my choice to runaway and join the Hollywood Circus.  I was homesick, lonely, unsuccessful, overworked, underpaid, and agonizingly far from the people I wanted to show that I could do it.  I doubt that at any point, then or since, I have known what the "it" I wanted to show really was.  So add to the litany that I was also uncertain, scared, insecure, and mildly convinced that one arm was getting longer for no good reason.  It would have made sense to regret leaving home.  It would have been logical to repent my sins, and maybe try retreating back into the life I had lived.  But in that kitchen, paid for by work I didn't like, surrounded by rejection letters for work I had always wanted, and facing a clock that insisted on pulling me further and further from my old life, I found no regret at all.  This isn't to say that I didn't wallow in the mental dance routine, timed to the clock, that spun me through every gamut of negativity I had within me.  This isn't to say that I rose up, kicked butt, and lived happily ever after.  This isn't to say that I won. 

All it means, is that I survived something that I had been convinced would kill me, and I didn't live to regret it.

It all began with the light switch.  And it all ended as I turned off the light on today to get ready for work tomorrow.

Reviews

[Archos]

Great story. Very realistic, natural and interestingly written. Thanks for sharing!