Only ten more skinny bitches to draw tonight...*

More friends in town this weekend. The delightful Kenneth, with his sharp wit and glittery dark eyes. His friend David in town, as well. Medical doctor, glowing optimism, snapping photos at every turn. The reason for their visit? None other than Shakira, that beloved Colombian diva with more than just a singing voice.

We sat in the back row at a hauntingly steep altitude in the Staples Center downtown. Shakira in all her glory filling the crowd with racing hearts and sheer adoration. She is a goddess, for sure, with her amazing moves, amazing brains, amazing singing voice that is just as good or better live than in the studio. Though I have never been the hugest fan of her mediocre tunes and strange lyrics, I have a LOT of respect for this woman after seeing her in concert. And her costumes were amazing. (She opened her set in a maddening fuchsia colored wedding dress!)

I kind of hated her, though. I felt the swell of the girl competition threatening to ruin my disposition throughout the evening. The girl competition is really REALLY happening here. I felt it in Seattle, but it was not dealt to me in nearly the dosage it is here. Heaping masses of pressure are heaped on the women of this city. Everywhere dieting, brazillian-blown out tanned beach babes with rich boyfriends/husbands fill the highways, billboards, and miriad shopping centers. They smile with bright white teeth and eyes that say, "I was born this way!" And I smile back thinking "Why did I wear the polka-dotted onsie out in public again?! What was I thinking?"

So far I have been in the presence of four celesbians. Samantha Ronson being the latest. I felt a bit less star-struck by her, probably due to her adorable awkwardness and failing DJ skills, but I couldn't help but feel as though I had checked off another on the bucket list.

*Title in reference to the intense amounts of homework I have each week for my Fashion Sketching class.

Freaking out/ Trip to Austin

Last week I nearly lost my s**t about three times/day for several days in a row. I knew it was going to be tight, living in shoebox with someone with drastically different living preferences, but the actual experience is something a bit more...graphic. Oh, the passive aggression, the pent up guilt and homesickness, the humility of having the toilet within hearing distance of one's partner, God, and anything else in a mile's vicinity... I have been confronting things such as: shame, humility, acute awareness of my hygienic habits, scheduling conflicts, loss of sleep due to hours of conflict resolution (i.e. arguing), and general irregularity...if you get my drift. I have considered bailing and getting my own place, even toying with idea of being a campus R.A. (I love teens!) I have been journaling and making lists like a schizophrenic, trying to make some sense of this fantastic adventure in coupledom.

I decided against moving out, of course, because it ultimately RULES, and I love my life, and the trip I took to Austin this weekend for Poni's high school reunion helped me gain a little of that perspective. Nothing like taking a break from daily life in the smoggy veins of Los Angeles to help one see and breathe more clearly the reality of one's own fortune.

Living in this city as opposed to Seattle makes me feel as if I am in one of those houses at carnivals filled with crazy mirrors and oddly-appealing bacterial odors. It is difficult to avoid a general feeling of pressure to be ultimately thin, successful, forever young, and generally conventional. I get the feeling that even people who are SO those things will never feel as if they are good enough. While living in Seattle, tabloid magazines were a tasty, trashy treat to help me escape from daily pressures whereas here they are beginning to make me feel a little queasy to even look at. Don't get me wrong, I'm still addicted to gossip-mags, and my current educational environment enthusiastically supports my reading them, but now they hit me in a place that feels bruised, and getting more bruised by the day.

Everything about school is both exciting and overwhelming. I am feeling the pull of the downturn rush of life's roller coaster as I plummet into the speed-of-light fashion industry...and my thirties. Sigh.

Introduction

As an undergrad, I studied gender, sexuality, and fine arts in congruence with each other in a self-designed major. After graduating, I dabbled in paper-pushing and various service jobs before settling in a career as a waitress/barista for a couple years. I saved some money, learned to sew and machine knit, and traveled to India before finally deciding to go back to school for fashion design.

I am in love with a beautiful and amazing Sagittarius queer boi who has turned my life upside down. His decision to move to L.A. was largely inspirational to my move here, knowing that before this, Los Angeles was perhaps the LAST place I would ever choose to move. He has an awesome job as a manny for a famous celesbian, who, like the planets, seems to be sort of orbiting around our ripening adulthoods, nourishing idealism in our hearts and warming the seats for our up-and-coming-ness. We live in her 400 sq. ft. guest house, (in which the tub is in the kitchen, the toilet is in the curtained closet area) with three parakeets and two ancient cats. It works, somehow. I think it's the skylights and the many-thread-count sheets...and all the LOVE.

I am a Cancer sun sign with a Scorpio Ascendant and a Libra moon. I believe this combination of planetary influences is at least partially responsible for my over-emotive passion, drive, and destructive inability to make a decision, or to see anything as black and white. (Hence the combo-major in college, wide-spread yet unfocused talents, queer sexual and gender preferences, and the hours it takes for me to pick out an outfit.) Merely making the decision to go back to school for something so specific as fashion design is something I am deeply proud of.

I have been here for one month, which has given me enough time to totally freak out before finally starting to feel kind of at home. The culture shock is considerable, but subtle...except for those moments when I find myself surrounded by models draped in money and pumped surgically with success, or when I realize I am have been jogging (yes JOGGING) for ten minutes and have passed nearly ten health-supplement stores.

I began school last week and everything about it has been exciting and inspiring. I love my teachers, my mentors, the few classmates I've interacted with so far, and I find myself already doing the homework before it's been assigned to me, palms sweating all over my sketches, or notebooks, or muslin. This industry is a roaring beast and I feel like a teeny-tiny lion tamer with far too much (or too little?) confidence. Aside from any complaining I might be doing about my experiences here thus far, I am so excited about life I can hardly stand it. I can't wait for NOW to be happening...you know?!