Hey! The second post in a row is here. I’m going to be as consecutive as possible. Getting back to the reasons I left Los Angeles begins with me going there.
I was raised to believe that if you are serious about something, you give it your all. In my mind if I wanted to be serious about being in the entertainment industry, I had to go where I had been told
my whole life all the pros go to make their living. Los Angeles.
I made friends with a co-worker, Chris, in Wilmington, NC who moved to San Diego with his girlfriend and had an extra room that I could rent. I packed up my Honda Civic, grabbed my eight hundred dollars in savings and took off across the USA, acumpanied by my cousin Jason Welch. It’s always better to share an experience. We stopped to visit family in Georgia and a friend in New Orleans along the way, but not for long and made haste towards the west coast.
One of my most memorable experiences from that trip would be driving through Texas. I remember entering the state on I-20 and driving for hours until Jason took over the helm while I slept. Jason drove until he was give out and then we switched back and forth only stopping to refuel. The plan was to drive from Louisiana to California without stopping. The shear size of land mass that is covered by the state of Texas had been imagined by my mind but I never knew how huge until I saw with my eyes and drove across it myself. The USA will leave you speechless with its beauty.
We arrive at Chris’s home in Ocean Beach, CA during the dark early morning hours and it was a true relief to rest and be free from the confinement of the small car. The following morning I recovered a street sweeping ticket from the window of my car and focused on using my phone to search for a job, two and a half hours away in good traffic, in Los Angeles. I had given four hundred dollars to Chris to cover a month of rent, so pressure to find a job was high as I did not want to return to NC with my tail between my legs. I also had to find an apartment in Los Angeles without raccoons living and fighting in the attic at night. Jason hung around a couple of days then caught a flight back home. I was happy he made the journey with me and will forever be grateful for his kind heart and reliable friendship.
I found some work in Los Angeles as a background actor for an HBO show called LUCK which told fictional stories of the shady dealings around a horse track. My friend Jesse Oneil and I used to joke that we were on scholarships with HBO, where they paid us to be on set and learn more about production. It always gave us a good laugh.
Jesse was another friend that I made in Wilmington. He lived in LA with his girlfriend and her cousin but they didn’t have a spare room. I didn’t find out he was in Los Angeles until a week after I arrived. Two weeks later, after a long day of background work and a four hour commute back to Ocean Beach, Chris tells me that he and his girlfriend just found out that she is pregnant. I was happy for them but not all in the world was great.
He then explained that he didn’t pay the rent for the current month and used that money to buy plane tickets to fly back to North Carolina to stay and raise their child close to his girlfriend’s family.
To be continued........