Starchela in LA

Chapter Twenty-Four: HOLLYWOOD

Chapter Twenty-Four - HOLLYWOOD

I wish I knew these people. Some of them actually seem worth knowing and others look like I should know them – if only to freak out the starfunkers at school when I say I've met them.

There are so many people at my coming out party: writers, directors, designers, actors of course, and models. There are grungy and there are fabulous. There are genuinely pretty, like Natalie, and made-up gorgeous, like porcelain dolls. Some guys are buff, some are elegant, there are metrosexual and downright rugged, like they could build a table or something. So many aromas in the air – all sorts of perfumes that I also wished I knew. There's such an abundance of cleavage and every lady has fantastic boobs – and poor me was hoping to impress with my natural assets. Darn, you'll have to impress them with your writing after all, Starchela.

I'm the odd man out. I don't belong among these people. I don't know any of them and seem kind of unworthy to get to know them. They write deep and beautiful stuff, they carry class and style on their sleeve, they're easygoing and I'm awkward. They know what to say, they're chatting charmingly among themselves, and I'm constipated for words. They're gorgeous, thin, and masters of their craft. They've come from every corner of the world and get to do art every day.

I'm walking through the crowd in my Chanel dress looking for an anchor. A spot or person to hold on to.

The Chanel lady and a seamstress came by yesterday for a fitting. They had made the dress to my measurements and it fit like a glove. They still found little things to fix though. I didn't want to take it off. I didn't look like myself in it.

Today, hair and makeup people came. Funny dudes, putting me at ease with chitchat. I wish I knew them.

All day, crews have been preparing the garden. Yes, my aunt found a screen. She conferenced with the organizers and the decorators, and they ran wild with the idea and decided to incorporate the screen and put screens all over the place. So now there are plasmas or LEDs or whatever in every corner of the garden playing pictures of the party. It is funny, they're shooting the milling crowd and playing it back to itself. It's like mirrors. Screens in the bushes, in the arches, at the bars, along the paths. They hung those TVs on stands, laid cables, synched and calibrated them. It must have cost a fortune.

I walk around looking for an anchor. I see Evangeline Lilly – I want to say the real one, but my aunt is just as real. I think. Kate from Lost. So pretty, so tiny and delicate, like an elf. She has a movie premiere these days, she's been on TV all the time, but she found time to attend my soiree. She's doing it for my aunt, I know, but my heart still flutters. I wish I knew her.

I see myself on one of the screens. I do a double take because I don't recognize myself at first. I look kind of fabulous in this bizarre hair. The dress is a knockout, of course, and in it I kind of disappear enough to do the trick.

Crude. Crude. Crude. This is such a mess. I'm supposed to be composed and cool. I'm definitely neither, and I'm also not a bunch of other things that I'm supposed to be. If I wasn't walking around in a haze I'd probably be aware that I'm falling apart, coming undone, coming apart at the seams. I need someone to hold my hand, look me in the eye and let me breathe a while, just breathe.

A band is playing under a giant hibiscus. Hibiscus is my flower, my avatar. My mom used to grow one in a pot in the living room. Then I took it to my room. I almost killed it for a couple of weeks. Then I got in the habit of caring for it. Flowering it, combing the soil with a fork, removing the dead blossoms. I posted pics of it on my wall on Facebook.

I stand under the hibiscus, on the side of the band. It's bizarre to find the plant that I grew in a pot in this garden, big enough to canopy a band. Five guys and a chick. Playing some kind of lounge music with a pinch of ethno – sometimes Hispanic, sometimes gypsy – to keep it awake. She has a melodious voice. I stand under the hibiscus and breathe a little.