LOS ANGELES

Brook, I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to see you on Friday. I feel like we have become so close over this past year, writing this Substack together.

I won’t go on and on about how beautiful and doll-like you are in person, because you are just going to block it out and refuse to believe me.

But for those reading, Brook is a smoke show with vampire skin that doesn’t seem to age and eyes so wildly blue that you couldn’t recreate them with any crayon in your crayon box. If she weren’t so deeply relatable and able to pull my heart out with a single sentence, I’d have a hard time not hating her.

More on Brook soon And by soon, I mean, two weeks from now when I release our interview for ALL THE FAILS .

VIDS OF MY OTHER GUESTS HERE

I’m never in LA.

When we moved to NYC ten years ago, I don’t think I bid this place a proper goodbye. I’m terrible with attachment- to people, places- things…. basically all nouns. But this defence mechanism that served me in childhood tends to get in my way as an adult. Unless of course, I lose an earring. Then, I’m the GOAT. I can let go and accept the loss of a personal object with the zen-like indifference of a Buddhist monk who only owns one pair of socks. It’s my super power. This is why most things tend to come back to me, because I never give them the satisfaction of looking for them.

When we left LA, I assumed that work would bring me back regularly and that the only big difference between here and New York would be the steps I’d log each day on my Fitbit. But not only did the industry change in the last ten years, so did I. New York, no longer feels like an escape. It’s my home.

I was never a mom in Los Angeles. Sid was six months old when I became convinced that my new home was haunted and that the only way to free myself of what one psychic said was “a ghost dog” with “an old man partner” was to flee.

Jason thought I was insane. I was probably just postpartum. But I played it safe and moved to a place as far away from Benedict Canyon as I could get: Tribeca. This is true. If you don’t believe me, you can read about it here.

I’ve been back to LA on occasion for random gigs and book tours, but I don’t often take the time to see anyone. With two kids waiting for me in New York, I’m working against a stop watch and the wrath of a child that feels fully entitled to critique my parenting choices.

This week, I’ve seen a lot of ghosts- people who once played leading roles in my life, then gradually faded into the attic with my old 90210 DVDS and pieces of jewelry that I refuse to look for.

I’m staying at a hotel with views of both my old house on Kings road above Sunset and Jason’s Ex’s old apartment (not on Kings road above Sunset). And I’m writing on a project with a friend who has known me since I was eighteen years old. We spent all day yesterday sipping coffees and sitting outside Jason’s Ex’s apartment on our laptops like we were back in College. It was bitter sweet.

I cried my eyes out when I hugged my friend, David on Friday. We hadn’t seen each other in over three years. This was a person who basically lived with me. We never had anything romantic, but you would think when I saw him that I was running into an ex-fiancee who’d left me at the alter.

I wept in his arms the way I weep when I think about Teets (my deceased, poodle/first husband) He isn’t just my friend David, who coached me on every audition, who picked me up after every failed screen test, who produced some of my first scripts and slept on my couch to protect me from poltergeist (and my neighbour Ricky Blitt who I was convinced wanted to murder me). He also represents a piece of me that is now deceased. My mad youth, my delusions of grandeur, the chip on my shoulder, and the belief that I’d have the same boobs forever.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. But because I’m damaged, I’ve never had the luxury of feeling this way. I’m sort of an “out of site, out of mind” type of person. When something is gone, I tend to just shut it out and move forward. As a child I needed to be resilient to survive. I needed to not care- to not feel feelings when I was met with disappointment. But as an adult, and a mother, I can’t not care. In fact, I need to fucking care.

Absence for me is comfortable. It’s reuniting that tears me apart. Knowing that I can’t go back and be the girl that I once was, knowing that no matter how hard I try, I can’t mend the chasm of time, those are the things that break me.

At my core, I want a closeness and a constancy with the people I love that I don’t possess the skills to maintain. I try to hide this from my children. But I fear they already know my shortcomings… probably better than I do.

I became an adult in Los Angeles. I lived here for nineteen years. I have stories for every corner- burnt bridges, and glass castles- my greatest triumphs, my most soul crushing defeats- they sit here stagnant, waiting to be found like pieces of jewelry I forgot I ever owned.

Walking these streets- breathing this air- eating all these fucking Kale salads… I can almost recreate what once was. I can almost close my eyes and still be there. But when I try to get close, I realise that these memories are nothing but thin air. I am now the lost soul, haunting someone else’s house. I am the ghost dog and his old man partner.