Going Out West

I found this old story that I wrote back in college. I left it as it was and resisted the urge to rewrite it.
--Ben

GOING OUT WEST
by
Ben Fishbein

When I was a Freshman Acting major at the University of Illinois, I had to take a class called Improvisatory Acting Technique. The professor was Paula Dixon. She looked as if she had spent her life consciously avoiding smiles, frowns, worry, incredulity, and anything else that might lead to wrinkles. The result was not pretty, but a complete lack of character. All parts of her face were falling at the same speed. She was superstitious, which wasn’t encouraging since one hundred percent of the grade was at her discretion. She made us take our shoes and socks off so we could “feel the acting space.” The acting space was hard-wood floor that had never been cleaned. I’m amazed I never caught a horrible flesh-eating disease. After every class, the soles of our feet were jet black. One girl cut her foot fairly badly on a splinter of broken glass. There was very little actual acting involved. Most of the semester consisted of the eleven of us standing in a circle and pretending to pass around an imaginary ball of energy. We had to “keep the energy going.” This may sound like an easy way to earn college credit, but for me it wasn’t. Professor Dixon didn’t like my energy balling technique.
“James,” she said. “Every time the ball comes to you, it loses energy.”
“I didn’t realize. Sorry. Are you sure?”
“Parvesh, is the ball losing energy when it comes to him?”
She had called on the one person who she knew would absolutely not take my side. Parvesh was from Saudi Arabia but his accent sounded more British. He was the only non-white there. Perhaps it was because he felt like a guest that he was unwilling to ever side against a figure of authority.
“Yeah,” Parvesh said. “He really dropped the ball.”
The class laughed at this.
Professor Dixon breathed deeply. Perhaps this was all the emotion she was capable of showing. “Just try harder,” she said to me. “That’s all we ask.”
I made a big show out of it. I grunted and gasped when it came to me, and exaggerated everything I did. Afterwards, the professor said, “Well done. I can see you’re improving.”
After that, I was no longer a regular at class. When grades came, mine was as low as it could be. I thought the vein on my father’s head would pop.
“We let you study theatre and this is how you repay us?”
“I told you what they made us do. It’s idiotic. There’s no point to studying acting. It can’t be taught. I’m just going straight to Hollywood. I’m just wasting time at school.”
“What are you going to do when Steven Spielberg asks you to pass an energy ball?”
My mother was more practical.
“It’s a different climate in California. You don’t have enough shorts. I’m buying him some shorts. When are you going? Wait until after Christmas. That’s when the sales are.”
“Don’t buy him shorts! He doesn’t deserve shorts!”
“It’s hot there.”
“Let him sweat!”
*
I didn’t know anybody in Los Angeles, but I had a plan. I would stay in a hotel the first night. The next day, I would find an apartment. The day after that, from my new apartment, I would begin to send out headshots and resumes, while finding a job as a waiter or something.
I made a reservation at the Day’s Inn on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Once there I found out there was a difference between the phrase, “Hollywood,” and the actual geographic location of Hollywood. It had been a great place when Chaplin lived there. But since then, the buildings had begun to crumble, the property values decline, and the place turned into Hollywood in name only. It was a ghetto. As I looked out on the dark street, I felt very out of place. Everybody had a shopping cart except me.
It turns out that most apartments won’t let you move in on the same day that you call expressing interest in the apartment. They have to do a credit check. The credit card debt I had accrued during my one semester at college ensured that I would never get an apartment.
I was left with little choice. I would have to stay in Hollywood (the literal Hollywood) and stay at a place that didn’t check credit and charged by the week. Once a person had stayed somewhere thirty days, he technically established residency and couldn’t be locked out without an official eviction. To avoid this, the owners made everyone leave for at least twenty-four hours every twenty-eight days. I wouldn’t worry about that for four weeks, due to my impending homelessness.
I checked out of the Day’s Inn and lugged my bags to the St. Francis Hotel, a twenty-eight day place. A chain-link fence surrounded the reception desk. An old man seated on the floor next to a potted plant called to me and asked me to buy him vodka. I told him no.
“Do you have any rooms?” I asked the woman behind the fence.
“We had one earlier today, but then it was taken.”
Now I was officially homeless. I didn’t know where I would go, but with throbbing muscles, I picked up my bags and began my solemn march.
“Just a moment, hon,” she said. “I just remembered. The cops raided someone’s room last night. He’ll probably be in jail for a while. I don’t think he’ll be needing it.”
I left my bags at the St. Francis Hotel, and went to the bank to cash some traveler’s checks.
Returning, I began to worry that the St. Francis would not be there when I got back. I picked up my pace, and crossed to the north side of Hollywood Boulevard. A police car in the gas station turned on its siren and the lights flashed. It peeled out of the station, but then slowed down like it was chasing O.J.
“You there! Stop moving,” a woman’s deep voice called out through a loudspeaker. “You! The boy in the brown jacket! Stop walking!”
No one in Los Angeles wore brown. They could only mean me. I did a quick inventory to determine if I did anything wrong. I was clean and legal.
A white woman whose hips pushed her gun out at almost a ninety degree angle got out of the driver’s side. A thin Hispanic with neatly trimmed facial hair got out of the passenger seat. Both cops approached me, leaving the siren and flashing lights on.
“Are you supposed to be wearing corrective lenses?”
“I have contacts.”
“You wearing them?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should be able to see the sign that says, “Don’t Walk.’”
“I’m sorry, I’m just…there were no cars coming.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“What?...No.”
“Do you have any drugs on you?”
“No.”
“I.D.”
I gave him my driver’s license.
“Why is there a staple in your driver’s license?”
“I had a speeding ticket once.”
“Illinois.” He shook his head. “They use staples.”
“Why didn’t you take the staple out?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know.”
He pulled it out with his thumbnail and forefinger, letting it fall to the sidewalk.
“Luis, why don’t you go turn the siren off,” she said. He walked back to the car, bent inside, and turned it off. He stayed there, presumably to run me through the computer.
“You here on vacation?”
“No. I’m here for good. Break into Hollywood, you know.”
“What does your mother think about this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to have to tell your mother you were flattened by a car on Hollywood Boulevard?”
“No.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Just a couple days.”
“Have you called your mother?”
“I don’t have a telephone.”
“Get a phone card. You can get one at any gas station. They sell them in there. You got cash?”
“Yes.”
“Good, you can pay the ticket.”
They gave me a ticket for fifty-five dollars, and I was ordered to show up at the courthouse on February eighth. “Get a phone card!” she called as they drove away.
*
The St. Francis Hotel wouldn’t give me a room without a picture I.D. and the only one I had was now with the LAPD. The only thing worse than living in a ghetto is being refused residency in a ghetto. I assumed it would be the same story at every twenty-eight day place. I resigned myself to taking a taxi to LAX.
Fortunately, they didn’t need to see my I.D. at the airport when I bought my ticket or boarded the flight back to Chicago. I had feared they would, because O’Hare had.
I got on the first flight back to Chicago. All together, my trip lasted only three days. It wouldn’t even quantify as a vacation. I was back in time for the spring semester. Everyone was surprised to see me. The concluded I had just been talking big, despite my insistence that I did in fact go to California. I retook the Improvisatory Acting Technique class, and continued towards getting an Acting degree.