the first year is the hardest part iv

all those presents are from my mom

Our first Christmas in Los Angeles away from family was bittersweet.  Christmas for Jaime and I had always been a marathon, she would wake me up at 5 am to open presents.  At 9 am we would go to my dad’s house for breakfast.  Around noon we would head off to Jaime’s Grandparents, for Lunch with her family, our visit there would be shorter because Christmas eve was also spent with her family.  By 3 or 4 we would head off to my parents where we would finish our evening with dinner before going back to our own home.  The day was exhausting and often difficult to enjoy without worrying about when and where we were going next.

In LA our day was significantly less eventful.  Jaime still got up around 5 am to open presents but then we went back to sleep.   We woke up later to eat breakfast and watch television and call our families to wish them a merry Christmas followed by snacks and more television.  We started cooking dinner around 4, ate by 6 and finished our evening by falling asleep in front of Survivorman.  

For me work was going fine, I was working at developing a routine and had started taking the bus home.  Jaime on the other hand was barely clinging to her sanity.  Her interview with LAMILL coffee, an LA based roasting company had gone well.  Up till that point LAMILL had exclusively sold their beans to upscale restaurants like Spago and now were opening their own cafe in Silverlake, a nieghborhood bordering Los Feliz and Echo Park.  The interview went well enough that they hired her which was good news except that they weren’t scheduled to open to the public until February, she would start training in mid January.  This was all good news she just needed it to come sooner, before she lost her mind.

On New Years eve our friends Joel and Annika invited us to the Archlight where they would be having an adult only showing of Bad Santa, they allowed you to take drinks into the theater.  I’d never seen the movie before and can’t really stand to watch Billy Bob Thornton do anything, but after two rum and Cokes I found it to be humorous.  Afterwards we bought a frozen pizza from Von’s and took it back to our apartment.

It was hard to believe but due to family issues our general stress concerning jobs we’d not seen the only two people we knew in LA until this evening.  We ate pizza and caught up and drank until Joel heard about a work party that was taking place at a house on Winona Avenue, about a mile and a half from our apartment.

We decided to walk their and avoid the need for a designated driver.  When sober the mile and a half walk seed easy and reasonable.

The party wasn’t terribly lively, the highlight was playing Wii bowling.  Midnight was a non event I don’t remember counting down the seconds or if we watched anything on television.  It might simply have been that one person looked down and noticed that it was after midnight and we all shouted a pathetic “happy new year!”  What I do clearly remember was catching Jaime in the kitchen chugging a bottle of Champagne. 

I had work the next morning which meant that I needed to leave the house no later than 5:20 am.  The party wan’t getting any livelier and Jaime and I headed out back home.  At first everything seemed fine, we were a little tipsy and it was unusually cold outside for an LA evening, but as soon as we turned the street corner onto Franklin Avenue Jaime went berserk.  (I should preface the next portion of the blog by saying that Jaime has told the following story on stage numerous times and so I tell it heree with her consent.)

It was a major shit storm, as if Jaime walked through an invisible wall that brought out all the absolute crazy in her.  She began screaming at me, crying, falling to the ground, flailing all around.  She screamed nonsense at the top of her lungs and I begged to be quiet.  I literally dragged her for a mile and a half, while cars slowed down as they passed us trying for a closer look.  I was lucky no one called the Police, the whole scene looked terribly suspicious and I had no idea how I was going to convince them that I wasn’t taking her home to rape her.

me: Oh hello officers.

officers: Is there a problem here?

me: oh, no... everything’s fine.  She’s just drunk... I’m... it’s not fine... I’m trying to get her home.  I’m her boyfriend... we live together.  I need to get her to bed... just to sleep.

I could just see the scene with a dozen cop cars blocking the street, Jaime and I in hand cuffs and separate cars and me talking a mile a minute telling the Police that really everything was fine and that in the morning it would all be worked out.

I had to carry Jaime the last block before we got home at 2:30 am.  I put her to bed and she wasn’t there but two minutes when she sat up and vomited all over everything.  I took her to the bathroom and propped her up against the toilet and began cleaning up.  By 3:30 I was finished and found Jaime passed out on the bathroom floor.  I should have let her stay there but instead felt that she should come back to bed.  After tucking her in she immediately sat up and vomited again.

I didn’t get to bed until 4:00 am and with an hour of sleep I awoke and headed off to work.

It was one of the lowest points in our three years in Los Angeles and about as low as I could imagine starting 2008.  I didn’t blame Jaime, I don’t know what either of us really expected our of our first two months but I know we both expected things to be different than this.  I felt for her and knew one thing for sure; we’d just set the bar so low that things had to get better.

*               *              *

Things did get better, within a few weeks Jaime started training and by February the restaurant opened.  She would be busy with work and getting to know her coworkers who were a truly a great group of people Molly, Viv, Nick, Matt, Andy, Grace and so on.  We got to know them well and they were able to help Jaime began to get a foothold in the industry.

I would like to say that this was the end of our job hunt, that now we had steady pay checks and we were able to spend our free time chasing the dream.  I would eventually quit Borders without notice, sending only an email to the GM that I would be in Saturday  to pick up my paycheck.  Following a series of accusations against her coworkers by the company Jaime and her coworkers began weekly drinking sessions at dive bars called “Fight Club” and eventually Jaime had no choice but to quit.  There would be other jobs and better times, we were never settled but if you dedicate yourself enough you can find those jobs in LA.

There is no doubt that the first year is the hardest, in just two short months that saying had been proven true.  Unfortunately there were still ten months to go before we could call it a year and get the second year underway.