Smoking kills

It's late and I am exhausted but not tired. Make any sense? Chances are the rest will only get more obscure. I am trying to piece together the elements of the last week and they do not fit. The Jeep. The police report. The departure. The confusion... It all seems like a surreal dream.

Here I sit in Hollywood. I have a job coming up and a couple auditions. I have 2 PA jobs booked. Shit is working, kinda. I miss the city though. I am desparately homesick. When I first got to Chicago, I was certain I was staying my lease year and leaving as quickly as I could. Something unexpected happened though.
I kept getting more rooted. Second City. Good friends coming every week it seemed. Work and show friends coming fast and furious. One year led to two. I began touring with my close friend and roomate, Scott. I reasoned my way into year 3 by explaining that Chicago was tollerable because I kept leaving it. I think for that entire third year I spent more time in Minneapolis rehearsing than I did in Chi. By year 4 I had a pretty good circle of friends in the Windy City. I belonged to a theatre company, worked often with another I loved, secured an agent and was living on my own. I had come to terms with my sexuality and no longer sweated it. Bigger promises were coming through the wire as well. My sights were raising.

I still thought of Chicago as "the town I loved to hate" though. I understood something though. I was not finished there and still could not move back to my beloved home even if I was. Then something wholey unexpected happened. Amidst a a year of constant theatre work, I met a girl.

This girl was a reckless, bohemian artist... best I could tell. She spoke in poetry and had a "fuck yes" sort of approach to the city and life. I found someone that seemed confident that we were each all that we needed to take the world. It was magical.

I discovered to my amazement that the unfinished business in Chicago was figuring out why so many people loved it. This girl finished that lesson. I loved my city at long last. It was home, or at least worthy of that term to me now. Unfortunately, I knew that and Secnd City were my final hurddles. It was time to go. Am I just that masochistic that I have to leave something I finally liked?


Well perhaps. It is in my nature to subject myself to the unplesantry repeatedly. Despite knowing it s not good for me, may even kill me. There is a warning not just for pregnant women on those little boxes.

I also got a little bit of a push. What suprised the fuck out of me was that I headed West, all the way West. It is so far West that we past the West to get here. This place is only defined as the West Coast. I find myself in Hollywood Land. I never imagined being here beyond a short stay. But hell, let's be honest. I never expected I was going to try moving to London either.


So here I am. I again have that sense there is something to be done here. I just don't know if that is to keep gunning for it or pack and consider myself lucky for not having taken the Kool-aid. I have met some extrordinary people here. The circle isn't as large as I had in Chicago, but no one here has to gather for warmth on a train platform after the bar/dance club closed at 4am. None the less there are a few sellect individuals I am very proud to call friends here.

Yet here I sit in Hollywood alone tonight. My choice. I didn't have it in me to be social this time. It's been a long time since a day went by without her voice. I can't fake comradery tonight. Just not happening. It is a town about faking it though...

All the same, is this a time I can ignore that sense of need still in me and go? Can I finally snub it out and crush the pack? It's frustrating. Will there be "trouble" or will there be "double?"