dada

dada could be a harsh critic of my work

         Dada was my favorite, in the way that a child might be their parents favorite.  Not that they love one child more than the others but due to some experience they shared together which was special or unique they have memories that will cause them to to be closer.  His life ended tragically the day after Easter in 2008.

Not long after finishing our Junior year in college, Jaime and I kicked around the idea of getting a cat.  We called the Bellevue animal shelter and went down “just to take a look.”  The number of kittens was limited but there was one we locked eyes with.  He was completely black and sitting way in the back of his cage so that all you could see were his little yellow eyes.  He was scrawny, clearly the runt of the litter which is what drew Jaime and I to him.

We took him home named him Esteban and watched him grow.  We were the typical doting parents who loved him and worried about him like we were raising the Buddha reincarnate.  Much to Jaime’s joy Esteban loved to cuddle and often I could find Jaime asleep in bed her body curled around a black fuzzy ball.  Sadly just over a year later Jaime and I found ourselves driving to the Eastlake Veterinary Clinic with Esteban wrapped tightly in a blanket for the final time.  

For months Esteban had been having difficulty passing his stool.  You could see it lodged in his rectum as he would slink into his litter box trying to pass it, but nothing would happen.  Eventually the build up would become so great that he would crawl around the apartment crying out in pain.  The vet diagnosed him with mega colon a condition which caused a part of the intestine to become enlarged and the stool gathers until it becomes impassable.  We would take him to the clinic where they would give him an enema and keep him overnight for a fluid treatment.  On one such visit they took X-rays of him and showed them to us.  In the black and white image you could see that he was literally full of shit.

They gave us some medicine which made the stool softer and passable.  Because it was a compound it had to be specially made for us and a thirty day supply cost us $60.  The medicine worked, unfortunately it made his stool so soft that it would literally leak out of him.  We were finding little puddles of gray matter in corners of the apartment.  (Gray because of the special food we had to feed him.)

We had to lower the dosage which unfortunately required us to go back for more enemas at about $300 a visit.  Our last resort was an expensive surgery where they would remove part of his colon, even still we were not guaranteed the procedure would be effective.  There was a slim chance that the whole thing might just clear up on its own.  We decided to keep him on the medicine and hope for the best.

On a cold week that following October we noticed a lack of stool in his litter box and we waited for the impending pain.  Jaime and I had never discussed euthanasia but I think we both had it in the back of our minds.  After about a week without a bowel movement Jaime and I knew we needed to make a decision.  We could not afford another enema nor could we afford the needed surgery.  Silently we decided to spend a quiet weekend at home with him watching TV and trying to forget anything was wrong.  By Monday morning he was howling in pain and we reluctantly wrapped him in his favorite blanket and drove to the Vet where they would put him to sleep.  Neither of us had ever made a decision like that before, part of me still feels that I was a bad owner because I did not try for the surgery.  We bawled throughout the entire process, and held him in our arms while they injected him with a fatal dose of Phenobarbital.  There is a strange moment one that I think of often, where while holding him I tried to understand when he ceased to be Esteban and instead became just an empty dead vessel.  We held his dead body until we realized it was time to move on, there is no harder feeling than watching a technician take away your cats body knowing you will never see him again.  We didn’t have enough money to cover the euthanasia so the Vet graciously allowed us to make payments.

A week later unable to fill the void in our seemingly empty apartment we went back to the Bellevue animal shelter “just to look” and adopted a small black and white kitten we named Addison.  She was the opposite of Esteban in almost every way, bright and bubbly she was mischievous and less likely to cuddle with you than nibble on your hand.  Now we were the parents who’d lost a child and were constantly afraid of something happening to her.  In the first week we had her we lost in the apartment three times and brought Jaime to tears each time.

That Christmas we began watching a cat for a friend who was having a difficult time.  Riley was a big cat who had a heart of gold, one of the sweetest you would ever meet.  He arrived at our apartment covered in flees and filled with worms.  I remember giving him a bath and watching as blood swirled down the drain.  He had a patch of fur right above his tail that he’d scratched bald and bloody.

Within a month the flees and worms were gone and the bald patch was covered in hair.  He became as much of the family as Addison and they spend most of their days cuddling together in the sun by the window.  Riley’s owner rarely came to visit him and two weeks before  our move to Los Angeles we debated what to do with him.  We wanted to take him with, not only because we’d become attached to him but also Addison was attached to him.

In an effort to save our friendship with Riley’s owner we tried to be as diplomatic as possible.  We told her that we would be leaving in two weeks and that we would be more than happy to keep Riley.  She took deep offense to our offer to took Riley back, I hoped not to become flea ridden and full of worms again.  I still truly believe that we should have kept Riley and dealt with the consequences later.

When we arrived in LA Addison began wandering the apartment at night holding a toy in her mouth and howling.  It was clear that she missed Riley and we did as well, it felt like he had died and all three of us were trying to get over the loss of him.  On our second week in the apartment Addison slipped out the door unnoticed, it took us two hours before we realized she was missing.  We started looking for her and when we concluded that she must have gone outside Jaime began to loose it going from door to door in the building crying big wet tears of loss.  After an hour of scouring the building and thinking that she was gone for good, Jaime found her tucked up inside an old broken Coke machine.  Afterwards we started talking about getting another cat to keep Addison company, deciding to wait till after Christmas.

On a mid December Sunday Jaime and I were driving up to Target, on our way we passed the Burbank animal shelter which was advertising a “Kitty fair.”  We vowed not to stop, but on our way back we agreed to stop by and “Just look.”

The room with the fair was held in a room separate from the cages, the kittens were kept in little pens.  People were taking turns holding them deciding if they were a good fit.  At first it seemed we would in fact just look but Jaime spied this small black and white cat with long disheveled hair.  Jaime held him for a while until she handed him to me while she talked to the staff about adoption procedures.  As I held him he proceeded to fall asleep in my arms purring like a tiny motor.  I remember thinking that this is what it must feel like for parents holding their newborn child.  Here was this kitten who didn’t even know me trusting me completely.  By the time Jaime came back there was no doubt we were adopting him.

We couldn’t take him home that night because he hadn’t been spayed yet, they told us we could pick him up the following Tuesday after the operation.  On the drive home we discussed names, concluding that he was a serious cat and thus needed a serious name.  Something distinguished, perhaps something after a distinguished writer.  I threw in Spalding, Kafka, and Mingus.  Jaime threw in Faulkner, Plath, and Hemingway.  None seemed to work until (and I don’t remember how) we settled on Dada.  Named for the 20th Century art movement, we chose it mainly because the Dada movement was started by serious artists who took themselves seriously but seemed to produce humorous results.

The night we brought him home we were unsure how Addison would react.  She’d never been around a kitten before and we hoped that she wouldn’t try to eat him.  Neither Jaime or I are ones to slowly introduce animals into a new environment so we just plopped Dada down in the middle of the living room/kitchen/dining room.  There was much admiring from a distance by Addison but when she started to get closer Dada began purring.  So loud we could hear him from across the room.

By the end of the week he and Addison were best friends.  Dada loved to cuddle with everyone all the time.  He was like a little dog who would follow you from room to room just wanting to be near you and know what you were doing, then cuddle up with you.  What I remember best about him was his love for the computer, he would spend hours just watching me type.  Occasionally batting at the cursor as it flew across the screen, and when he got tired he would lay down next to it and drift off to sleep.

Last Sunday while organizing paperwork in our filing cabinet deciding what should be recycled and what needed to be kept, Jaime came across Dada’s paperwork from the Burbank animal shelter.  I looked it over trying to remember what it was like to be that age, what it was like to live in that apartment in California, what it was like to have Dada.  I tried to remember what Dada was like, what he used to do, but all I could remember was sitting at my computer having a spectator basking in the bluish glow of the laptop.  We took the papers, then filed them away with the other animals paperwork.

the first year is the hardest part ii

this is a thanksgiving dinner for two

            Often I would meet people in LA who seemed to be making their dreams happen,  be it acting, directing, writing or working in some capacity for a production company.  I would stare at them like they were a mechanic working on a car engine or a complex math problem, something I wanted desperately to understand but could not begin to wrap my mind around.  I was curious to know just how they seemed to be making this happen, nine times out of ten what I would find out is that they were one of three kinds of people.  A.  There was family money which was paying for their living expenses leaving them with wide open days to audition.  B. They had a relative involved in the business who was advancing their career regardless of their talent.  C. While appearing to do well for themselves they were actually quietly drowning in debt which will eventually swallow them up.  That one out of ten is a real rarity, yet this is the type of person whose story the media glorifies over and over.  Everyone else that isn’t one of those ten is just hustling, trying to make it.

The week before Thanksgiving Jaime applied to a stylish new restaurant in the heart of Hollywood, called Citizen Smith.  This was one of those restaurants where it was you along with 1000 other actors/writers/directors hopefully applying for 5-10 jobs.  It seemed like a long shot but when the interview went well things were looking promising.  The initial interview was designed to weed out the completely incompetent, so Jaime was called back for a second interview.

The writers strike was still going strong, we had to dodge protests to get to the restaurant.  Despite this Hollywood shutdown Jaime and I traveled deep into the Valley to an agency which claimed to help actors get agents.  This is basically like going to someone who promises to find you a temp agency, not a job, your paying them to talk to agents who may or may not be interested in you.  Best case scenario is that you sign with a talent agent who then still will need to find you an audition.  At the interview which lasted two hours they told Jaime something we would hear a lot over the next year and a half.  “Your great!  But with the writers strike there’s just no work.”  Even reality shows employ writers and so many of them had stopped production as well.

Trying to find a balance between accessing auditions, getting jobs and having actual consistent work which pays you enough to cover your bills is the biggest hurdle to overcome by far, harder than any audition you will go on.  Most former actors I met left acting exactly for that reason, they were busily working to find that balance when they landed a good day job and never went back.  You’ll eventually learn what your truly passionate about (even if it takes you 15 years) you’ll either stay passionate about acting or find something else you enjoy doing just as much.  There’s no shame in that it’s just the reality of the business, many great actors have found jobs they were much happier at.

Jaime wasn’t anywhere near that point, she was still full of hope and willing to make huge sacrifices to make her dream happen.  During her “call back” interview with Citizen Smith Jaime really hit it off with the manager and his suggestion to her was to come back that night and have dinner, get a feel for the restaurant.  Citizen Smith is a swanky place and there is nothing cheap about it, but in the hopes of getting Jaime this job we sucked it up opened our wallets and went in for a few drinks and appetizers. 

Like most of the trendy Hollywood clubs and restaurants, Citizen Smith looked like nothing from the outside but on the inside it was a sight to behold.  The design could best be described as the offspring of an Andy Warhol painting and a TexMex family restaurant.  If there was ever a place that screamed out “HOLLYWOOD” this was it.  The seat cushions were cow hide and the tables looked like (and for all I know were,” enormous slabs of sliced Redwood trees.

It was early about 6:30 and Hollywood doesn’t come to life until 9:00 or 10:00 so the place was mostly empty.  At the bar we ordered two $15 drinks a $20 Macaroni and Cheese and something else which I found so memorable that I cannot remember it now.  We watched Easy Rider on the t.v. and when are bill came the total was $60, which for two kids with no income was pretty steep.  We never met with the manager and I just hoped that somehow he would know that we’d been there.

On our way back to our car we saw the most adorable black and white cat sitting lonely in an empty parking lot.  It was the spitting image of our cat at home only about fifteen pounds lighter.  He sat looking mournfully as if asking me to come and take him home.  We watched each other for a long moment and I crouched low and slowly moved to pick him up.  I’m sure he was covered in flees and his intestines were full of worms but I just had to see how close he would let me get to him.  I was right on top of him when he darted away and under a car on the opposite side of the street.

The following Thursday was Thanksgiving, our first away from friends and family.  Often the week before a big holiday you would run into someone you knew and start talking.  The subject of Thanksgiving would be brought up and they would mention some orphan dinner that was taking place at a friends place or a friend of a friends place.  You would either show up with a dish or you find an excuse to decline.

Since the only two people we knew were going to be out of town we held our own Thanksgiving dinner in our apartment.  We got dressed up and spent the day watching t.v. and snacking as if company was going to arrive any minute.  For dinner we made enough food to feed eight people and then preceded to make ourselves sick trying to eat it all.  It was lonely knowing that 1,100 miles away our families were laughing, catching up, and getting full together without us.  On the other hand doing this all by ourselves made me feel more like an adult then I’d ever felt before.

The following week Jaime waited patiently to hear from Citizen Smith, after two days she gave them a call, only to be told that they were going to need another week to decide.  This was their way of saying “sorry we didn’t hire you.”

It was upsetting for her not to get the job but infuriating that we went down there and dropped $60 on mediocre drinks and appetizers with money we really didn’t have.

By the end of the week I got a call from Borders bookstore to schedule an interview.  I had applied for it two weeks previous and had forgotten all about it.  I would be going in Monday for an interview at their Century City store.  

To be continued...