Look, all you need to know about me is that when I was 40 years old, I got in my car in Portland, threw in a couple trash bags full of clothes, plugged in my phone through a cassette tape adapter, and drove to Los Angeles. I spent the last 24 years working as a barista—sometimes waitress—fucking men I didn't like and watching movies like a fiend..sometimes three a day. Ever since I watched Indiana Jones as a kid, I wanted to be a director. Then my dad died. He had massive brain tumors. He left me $974,400. We hadn't spoken since I was 18. I decided to take that money to LA and make my movie. That's all you need to know about me.
I didn't know what movie I wanted to make. I didn't consider myself an artist. I just knew that there was something itching in me that wasn't going to be fixed in Portland, and I used a sort of spiritual dowsing stick to lead me to my new home, which I always knew would be LA. I should have moved there when I was 16—I should have never waited for the excuse of that inheritance.
But, some people's stories start earlier in life, some people's start later—mine started later.
I'd recommend starting as soon as possible simply because you never know when yours will end.
Not to get deep on ya.
But I wanted to be a director because I like telling people what to do—and I rarely got a chance to do that. Mostly it was other people telling me what to do, and the only person who listened to me was Mr. Bunny—even the men I fucked didn't seem to take instructions.
Sometimes I wondered if I was gay. But cunt disgusts me.
So—living proof, right here—you can be turned off by women and men. Fuck 'em all. Sex was never my thing.
I mean I do it all the time—I'm just not a connoisseur like some people.
But movies, yeah. I liked Lolita (not the Kubrick version) and Japanese movies where a whole bunch of schoolgirls get raped and kill themselves.
I like white and red together—like white panties and red blood. Period fascination? Maybe, in a backwards sort of way. I just like the mixture of innocence and death—who doesn't?
I'm of the Tarantino school that film is magically paired with violence—that there's some secret tryst between the two. And it probably is the cut—that seminal element of film wherein an entire field of vision representing one image is violently? replaced with a new field of vision representing a new image. That's pretty violent.
I drove to LA eating Arby's and smelling my own farts.
I wore the same clothes the whole time.
When I got to The City of Broken Dreams, as some rightly call it, I was horrified. Thirty miles of outlying city with nothing but gas stations and rail yards and Mexicans driving Escalades, screaming at me unknowables in Spanish that I can only assume had something to do with wanting to fuck me. And by the way, there's a lot of cities in this world called The City of Broken Dreams. It's not just LA that'll take ya and break ya—it's everywhere.
I figured fuck it—if I get raped and killed by a bunch of cholos, it won't be so bad. I mean everybody's got to die some way.
I refrained from giving them the finger, though.
I wish I had to this day.
If a guy actually looked at my pussy, rape would be the last thing on their mind. I'm on my period, so there's blood encrusted in my pubic hair with snarls of dried uterine clots. Plus, I have a problem where I can't control when I pee, so I wear adult diapers. They don't really make them like diapers anymore—they're like thick panties, and they come in different prints like white angels on a pink background..but you can tell when you look at them that they're not normal panties and that they indicate that something is wrong with me. So rape that, cholo.
Anyway the sun came up over LA and I couldn't even see the buildings.
I was too afraid to find a hotel so I pulled into a neighborhood street in Hollywood and slept in the back covered by my bags of clothes, hoping to death that no one would see me.
The plastic was making me sweat and that's what woke me up at 12:12pm, in front of this fantastic 1920s building called the Fontenoy. When I got out of my Honda, this maintenance man watched me adjust my crotch through my jeans.
He smiled.
I smiled back.
If you only knew these were adult diapers, I thought.
Then a man comes through the front doors holding a chihuahua.
"Are you my ten o'clock because you're awfully late."
"I'm not your ten o'clock."
I pet his dog.
"Oh, she like you. She don't like just anybody. Do you have a dog?"
"Not anymore. I—"
"Well, everybody here has chihuahuas. You can get you one."
"I'm not looking for an apartment."
"So you're just planning on sleeping in front of my building in your broken-down Honda? Girl, this is LA. White girl like you..get you a Porsche or something."
"A Porsche isn't really my style."
"Oooh, she like you. I think you will fit very well in this building."
"You wanna hear my rape joke?" I say.
"Girrrrl..do I wanna hear your rape joke??"
"If you don't hate me after I tell it then I'll look at your building."
He purses his lips and covers the dog's ears.
"Go ahead."
"My girlfriend was gang raped by a troupe of mime artists."
He looks at me, waiting.
"They performed unspeakable acts on her."
"Girrrrrl, I see that Oregon license plate. You gonna have to get some sharper material if you want to survive these comedy clubs down here. Let me show you your new home."