Authors: Kristi Lynn Davis
If I needed home décor or furniture, I had to schlep all the way into Manhattan, because the Astoria stores were so limited. Then if by some miracle I happened to find something I could actually afford to purchase, I had to figure out how to get it home on the subway.
Meanwhile, from my apartment, a trip to Manhattan was a forty-five-minute endeavor on the subway and enough of a hassle that I didn’t want to go back and forth several times a day. I couldn’t afford to keep paying for extra subway tokens anyway. So whatever I needed at any moment of the day I had to carry with me every moment of the day.
A typical day in town might include ballet class, Mirmdance rehearsal, work at Joy of Movement, and drinks with friends. Or jazz dance class, scholarship receptionist work at Steps II, an audition, and a date. Consequently, my bag was often loaded with tap, jazz, character, and ballet shoes, two changes of leotards, work clothes, toiletries, a towel for showering, a book to read on down time, address book, hair dryer, curling iron, lunch, dinner, water bottle, portable music device, sweats, headshots, sheet music, and more. I was like a homeless person or a bag lady lugging nearly everything I owned, sweaty, smelly, and grimy by evening from a day of dancing and trudging through Manhattan. If I had a hot date or plans to party with friends, I had to find somewhere to stash my substantially overstuffed satchel where no one would steal it. Such a suitable place was rare, so I usually had to haul it along. A dirty duffel is not the most attractive accessory when on a romantic rendezvous.
As if carrying around back-breaking baggage wasn’t unbearable enough, I couldn’t even make up for it by wearing a cute dress and high heels. I had to walk blocks in those shoes and perhaps run in them if someone questionable was following me. So I had to find comfortable, sensible walking shoes that didn’t look like Grannie’s orthopedics and dress down enough to minimize unwanted attention from strangers. Top this off with the fact that I was sweating from shouldering my thirty-pound dance bag for three miles, and I had exponentially decreased my sex appeal.
The most limiting factor of all was that if I wanted to go out at night I had to walk to and from the subway in the dark by myself or take a cab ride—about $15 one way to or from Manhattan, an expense I simply couldn’t afford on a regular basis. To be honest, I couldn’t really afford to go out in Manhattan period. It was all so expensive and such a hassle that I usually opted to stay home at night and be lonely.
Oh, I was all right when I was spending time with Jenny. On nights off in Astoria, we often ordered sesame noodles from our local Szechuan restaurant and watched a movie. But she had a boyfriend, family, and loads of childhood friends, so I didn’t have her to hang out with all the time. It wasn’t her job to babysit anyway.
I was particularly missing home early one morning as we rode the bus back from a Celebration Magnifico gig. It was three a.m.—perhaps the loneliest time of day—when we passed through smutty Times Square. (Remember when it used to be smutty?) I stared out the window, listening to Bruce Hornsby’s “Mandolin Rain” through my headphones, and witnessed my first real, live prostitutes in mini-mini-skirts and tragically high heels. It was the dead of winter, and I knew they must have been freezing cold. I was mesmerized at the sight of real hookers. They were obvious. I couldn’t imagine having sex with random, creepy strangers. Dancing with them was bad enough. I wondered if they felt lonely, too.
My stupor was interrupted by one of the metaphysical junkies sitting across from me. “Kristi, you are a star person.” “A what?” I responded trying to pry my eyes off the prostitutes. “A star person sent down from the heavens to lead the people,” she replied with cosmic authority. I didn’t know if that was true or not, but I wondered if I was cut out to be a star in New York or anywhere else.
*******
One day I overheard a conversation in the dressing room at Steps, which not only dampened my already fading quest for stardom, but also sent me into a mini panic attack. As I was changing out of my dance clothes, I heard an aging woman remark to another dancer, “I’m thirty and I’m just starting my dance career. In fact, I just got a job with a company called Celebration Magnifico.” My ears perked up. “I’ve always wanted to dance, so I finally decided that I had to give it a shot.” I loved her go-against-the-odds-screw-the-age attitude, but one terrifying thought made me sweat: “What if I’m still here when I’m thirty, prancing around hotel ballrooms in a carousel horse costume asking hormonal teens to hand jive?”
That horrifying vision sent my head spinning. Sure this whole dance adventure was fun and interesting, but where would it get me? I couldn’t bear the thought of wasting my education. I wanted to move up in the world and get a respectable job that utilized my potential.
To top it off, New York City was simply overwhelming to this ingenuous suburbanite chicken. The crowds. The derelicts. The fear. The loneliness. If I stayed I might end up a mental patient escapee hiding out at McDonald’s with the other defectors. Maybe they, too, had come to NYC with dreams of grandeur only to freak out and go off the deep end. I had to leave before it was too late. I ran hyperventilating to a Manhattan payphone and called my mother, sobbing, “Take me home!”
Telling my parents and Jenny that I was already giving up on NYC after less than six months was devastating and embarrassing. Going home with your tail between your legs stinks. The irony is that I had been one-hundred percent successful from the time I moved there. I auditioned five times and landed every job. I won a dance scholarship from one of the best-known studios in New York on my first try. I got into a modern dance company the day after arriving despite having never done any modern dance before. I got right into the Celebration Magnifico A-team and was traveling around the country. I never had trouble paying my rent. Really, I did “make it there.” Unfortunately, I just couldn’t take it there.
Next I had to break the news of my departure to my boss, Bart. I was afraid he’d be furious. I was booked solid with parties in December, a busy party month, culminating in New Year’s Eve. New Year’s was a big deal as performers got paid triple their usual salary and Celebration Magnifico had so many parties booked they needed each and every performer. If you turned down New Year’s Eve, you might as well say sayonara to the job and leave your glitter gel behind. I was reneging on a whopping seven parties while I drove my stuff home to Michigan, but I had decided to fly back to do New Year’s Eve. Scared stiff, I pulled Bart aside at a party and bravely spilled my guts. Luckily, he liked me and was overwhelmingly compassionate.
With exit strategy in order, I took advantage of the few weeks I had left to do some sightseeing. Following a book touting free things to see and do in New York City, I set out solo to see Battery Park, the view from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building, South Street Seaport, the Frick Museum, the Whitney modern art museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim. Meandering down Wall Street, I sampled the street vendors’ gigantic doughy pretzels and piping hot sausages draped in grilled onions and green peppers.
It was Christmas time, so Jenny and I strolled around Fifth Avenue window shopping and admiring all the bedecked buildings, some wrapped like presents or donning giant candy canes. We marveled at the lavish displays of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. We melded into the throngs of people at Rockefeller Center for the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, where the police surveyed the crowd from horseback like Canadian Mounties. I felt uncomfortably trapped in the crowd. “I’m really going to miss you,” Jenny mourned. “Me, too,” I sighed. We had become close friends, she softening her opinions and I becoming more street savvy. Somehow the city mouse and the country mouse had met in the middle.
My parents arrived, and we once again packed up my belongings. Sadly, I had to leave my nearly new dial-a-bed in the apartment, as we had no room in the van. The drive back to Michigan was icy and snowy. With my eyes closed, I sat listening to Garrison Keillor’s “Lake Wobegon” stories on the radio—tales of the comforts and security of life in a small town surrounded by family and friends. I relaxed for the first time in months. Woe, be gone!
A couple weeks later, I flew back to New York, as I had promised Bart, and rode the Celebration Magnifico bus to Atlantic City for our New Year’s Eve gig. As I limboed in the New Year with drunken strangers, I knew the coming year would be very different for me. And that’s about all I knew.
“I certainly never expected to end up back here again,” I thought, staring out the cab window, my eyes squinting from the glare of the summer sun. I had gone to New York a youngster, but was coming back a star. “We’ve been through a lot,” I whispered to The City. I wanted to hug the place like an old friend. “Sure our relationship was short and somewhat rocky, but thanks for everything,” I silently offered in sincere gratitude. “I’m not the same scared, naïve girl I was fifteen years ago, and I wish I could have seen you back then like I do now.” Because, in spite of its involuntary, 9/11 maniacal make-over, New York looked better to me than ever before. The City shone brightly, and I could clearly see the diamond beneath the rough—the excitement, splendor, and beauty of this place of extremes, its wealth, poverty, and everything in between.
The yellow taxi cab dropped me off in front of Jenny and her musician husband’s four-story, red brick brownstone. “Have a beautiful day and keep cool,” I said, over-tipping the driver in honor of this special occasion. “Thanks very much. You, too, Ma’am. God bless.”
The people here are so nice.
Jenny was at work when I arrived but she had left a key for me under the flowerpot in the charming, tiny, back garden. This place was a palace compared to the small, two-bedroom apartment she and her friend rented back when I lived there. I set my suitcases down in the living room and plopped down on the comfy sofa. A cat wandered in to check me out. “Well, who do we have here?” I bent over to pet her. “Nice pad, kitty,” I said as I scanned the room. Jenny had done well for herself here. She had abandoned her performing career, opting for stage management instead, and had worked her way up to the pinnacle of the profession. How impressive that she was a Broadway stage manager for
Chicago
(the steamy, jazzy, Kander and Ebb and Bob Fosse musical about Prohibition-Era murderesses). It didn’t get much better than that.
“New York’s not so bad; is it?” I asked the cat, who started to purr from all my petting. “What if I would have stuck it out a little longer? I didn’t even audition for any Broadway shows. I should have taken more advantage of my scholarship at Steps and trained hard with all those amazing teachers. What do you think, kitty-cat?” No answer. “Cat got your tongue?” I chuckled at my own stupid joke. “Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda.” Second guessing my decisions was pointless and a waste of precious time and energy. Had I stayed in New York, I would have missed out on some pretty bitchin’ California adventures. My rad move to the West coast had gotten me where I was today. “Cowabunga, Dude!” I kicked off my shoes and laid down on the couch for a quick catnap while I waited for Jenny to come home.
Act 1, Scene 2
California, Here I Come!
New York wasn’t for me. I loved dancing, but that wasn’t enough to overcome my fears and the challenges of life in the Big City. Plus, becoming a professional dancer was a tremendous shock to my system having come from such a sensible, academic, risk-averse family. Tossing my education out the window to do something so frivolous and insecure seemed selfish and foolish, two characteristics I did not wish to possess. My parents didn’t discourage my wacky dance adventure, but I knew they’d sleep more soundly (as would I) if I went to graduate school. Consequently, I decided to get my PhD in Social Psychology. “Dr. Davis.” Now that sounded respectable. What a relief to be doing something that seemed like the intelligent, practical thing to do—a decision that would bring sincere support from my parents and a guaranteed paycheck.
While waiting to get accepted into graduate school, I took on mundane jobs in retail and fundraising. They were the perfect reminder of how the real world and I did not get along. I did not thrive in a practical life of nine to five, suits and nylons, weekends off, one-week vacations, and bottom lines. Working an office job, I felt like a piece of cheese sitting undiscovered, molding away in the back of the refrigerator. If I didn’t get out soon, I’d shrivel up and die from a life of missed opportunities, wasted potential, adventures not experienced, and what ifs. I didn’t want to be eighty years old thinking I had never really lived. This “normal” existence was killing me. I stared at the clock, watching the time tick slowly by, wishing my life away. After a few months, I noticed my saggy derriere in the mirror and decided it was time to start working out again. I missed the dancing, so I auditioned for and was accepted into a modern/jazz dance company in Ann Arbor. It kept me somewhat sane for that year.
In August of 1989, I left Michigan and my humdrum routine for graduate school at the University of Minnesota. At first, it was exciting to be doing something supposedly worthwhile with my life. I was successful there, too—got a full teaching scholarship, earned good grades, had a nice apartment in a fun neighborhood, made friends, and even dated a bit. Still, it was lonely living all by myself in a new city, so I bought a beautiful, blue, Siamese fighting fish to keep me company. Once again, I missed dancing so I started taking classes at a reputable dance school downtown. Grad school turned out to be terribly stressful, and the chain-smoking assistant professors seemed more overwhelmed than the students. “This is what I have to look forward to?”
I was at a loss. I sat down by the fishbowl and confided in my fish, “I am miserable here. All I do is study until midnight and then wake up and study again at five a.m. It’s interesting stuff to learn, but I hate statistics and I don’t really want to do social psychology research for a living. It’s too stressful and not fun for me. But I just moved here. What will people think if I abandon yet another career plan? What will my parents think? More importantly, what am I going to do with my life if I give up on this, too?” My fish stared back in silence with a look that said, “I’m stuck alone swimming circles in this tiny bowl for the rest of my God forsaken life. You think I give a rat’s patootie? Stop your whining. At least you’ve got choices.”
The thought of quitting was so embarrassing and horrifying, however, that I mustered all my willpower and forced myself to stick through another semester and make it work. I chose to keep right on swimming circles, feeling alone in a tiny fishbowl. But, once again, I nearly had a nervous breakdown. This time felt even worse than the time in New York. When would I learn to follow my heart and do what I truly loved?
Apparently, this world of academics wasn’t for me either. I had tried the business route, the academic route, the safe and secure and practical route, the route that garnered parental approval. “Now what?” Hoping to find some clarity, I pulled out my credit card and booked an emergency trip to San Diego, California, to visit my sister, Cindy, who was in transition herself. She was abandoning her PhD program in Oceanography to pursue a sexier career: screenwriting.
There is no better place for soul searching than by the ocean. As I walked barefoot in the sand, I asked myself, “How do I really want to be spending my twenties?” The most exhilarating, thrilling, exciting, passionate, enticing, challenging, rewarding, inspiring idea I could come up with was to be an entertainer traveling the globe. The reasons flowed like the ocean waves: I want to meet unique, interesting, artistic, creative, outgoing, talented, famous people. I want to go to places I’d never go to on my own. I want to be learning, changing, growing, and challenging myself on a daily basis. I want to stand out in a crowd and be fascinating. I want to live on the stage, being paid to do what I love most: sing and dance, wearing exotic makeup and glitzy costumes.
What it boiled down to was I wanted my twenties to be a thrilling adventure, and I was finally willing to take the risk. The truth was, everything else made me so miserable that I was forced to do it as my last option. I was afraid to try again, but what did I really have to lose? I had no money, no house, no husband or children. I could only move up in the world. If I failed, I would have wasted some time and felt like a fool in front of friends and family. But if I never tried, I would regret it for the rest of my life. There’s nothing worse than wondering, “What if?” I could always go back to school later, but this was something I had to do when I was young. It was now or never.
The hardest part of this new game plan would be telling my parents about another seemingly flippant, haphazard choice. All I knew was that I had to find myself, discover the world, and fill the void of dissatisfaction that was gnawing at me.
“Move out here and live with me,” Cindy offered. I felt relieved at the thought of having my sister around, plus California seemed like a logical place to relaunch my entertainment career. And it’s sunny California, for goodness sake.
So, much to my parents’ chagrin, after finishing the semester, I quit school and moved back to Michigan, where I spent two months working as a secretarial temp at Ford Motor Company to bank some cash. I was headed off to California with $5000 and no idea how to make my dreams come true. All I knew was I wanted to be an entertainer. And this time, I meant it.
*******
When I announced the impending move to my Midwestern friends, their response was, “Are you crazy? You’re moving to California with all those weirdos?” They were sincerely scared for me, worried I’d end up practicing naked yoga, consuming tofu and wheat grass juice, and shaking a tambourine at the airport with the Hare Krishnas. I left with slight trepidation, wondering if they might be right.
Mom and I repacked my possessions, this time into my new Ford Escort. With my precious pet fish in its fishbowl, wedged between the seats, we ventured west. It was California or bust. In the Rocky Mountains, we nearly did bust. My underpowered and overloaded car labored up the steep, snow-covered roads at a maximum of thirty-five miles per hour, semi trucks whizzing dangerously past. I kept a vigilant watch for runaway vehicle lanes on the downward slopes, as I never knew if my brakes were going to work. My poor, gorgeous, royal blue fish sloshed about so violently in his fishbowl that he turned a pale, deathly gray. I would have thought it impossible, but my fish appeared to be seasick! Eventually, a blizzard forced us to stop for the night. Hotel staff and patrons pointed and laughed as I carried in my fishbowl wrapped in a pillow to keep the traumatized little passenger from turning into a frozen fish stick.
When the snowstorm abated, we continued on to Las Vegas. The casino scene was smoky, seedy, and swarming with slimy people. “How can anyone stand this place?” I asked my mother. Even the one-armed bandits and cheap, all-you-can-eat buffets weren’t enough to entice me into staying any longer than absolutely necessary. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
It was such a relief when we finally reached our destination: sunny Del Mar, California—a charming, little, tourist town situated on two square miles of picturesque Pacific coastline. At the sight of the sparkling, blue water, a wave of peace and calm washed over me. “Ah … freedom, hope, and new beginnings!”
Since my last visit six months ago, Cindy had moved from La Jolla to Del Mar. Her four-unit apartment building, surrounded by palm trees and built on dramatic bluffs bordering the shoreline, sat smack dab on prime ocean-front real estate. How on earth did she score such a superb top-of-the-line location? I quickly discovered how: Her abode was a bit on the ramshackle side and clearly in need of repair. I was tempted to hammer in a few nails on the spot. We knocked on the door of the weathered wooden building. “Kris! Mom! You made it!” Cindy squealed as she hugged us. “Come on in. You can put your stuff in my room.” Cindy shared her two-bedroom apartment with another young woman, and now I was adding all my belongings to their already cramped space.
“I call this place ‘The Crap Shack,’” Cindy chuckled, as my eyes scanned the scuzzy interior. Her jesting only slightly softened the blow of the shocking sight of my new living quarters. The grungy, brown living room contained two shabby sofas—one placed on the floor in the usual manner conducive to sitting and the other propped up on its end, leaning against the wall, as if she was saving it as back-up in case of a couch emergency. In addition, a towering, ceiling-high, ratty, dirty-beige carpet-covered cat scratching-pole stood in the corner.
This place was a pigsty (or catsty), thanks mainly to Cindy’s roommate—a quiet, pencil-thin, plainly pretty PhD student from the University of Southern California—and her two cats. To call her a slob wouldn’t do her justice. She was the slobbiest slob I’ve ever seen. You could not walk through her bedroom without scaling mountains of clothes and junk. Even her bed was completely covered in rubbish, and the bathroom shower curtain could have served as a science experiment, growing mold and an assortment of fungus in its thick layer of grime. I envisioned the roommate twenty years down the road as one of those crazy cat ladies you see on the news, with forty-seven cats and a condemned home filled with their feline feces. She had started her collection with two pets we nicknamed “Psycho” and “Pee-Pee.” Psycho was afraid of everyone but her owner and would run around like a maniacal scaredy cat. Pee-Pee would climb into your clothes and urinate on them. We had to make sure the closet was shut and the door to our bedroom locked at all times.
Pee-Pee also preferred to whiz on the stove while you were cooking or on your leg when you sat down to eat. When he was in a good mood, he’d walk up to you and vomit a hairball, but that was about the friendliest he got. He just didn’t want us in his home. As if that weren’t disgusting enough, the living room became infested with fleas from the cats. We had to sprinkle Borax everywhere to combat the little buggers. It was all I could do to keep from crying, “What was this recurring problem with cats? Had I been a cat-abusing dog in a previous life?”
To make matters worse, my fish died not long after settling in California, because the public drinking water he was swimming in was so bad. He disintegrated before my very eyes, more chunks falling off him every day. Distraught, I called a San Diego pet store for help. “How often are you changing the water?” the man inquired. “Every few weeks, like they told me when I bought him in Minnesota,” I replied. “You need to change the water every few DAYS here, Lady,” the man replied shocked at my mistreatment. I made that fish endure motion sickness, the frigid cold of Colorado, and the oppressive heat of the desert, only to be placed in toxic, flesh-eating water. I could have done that poor, little guy a favor and simply flushed him down the toilet before I left Michigan.
I started feeling buyer’s remorse. You know, like when you make a big decision such as moving across the country with no job and no home of your own, and you get there and your beloved fish dies and you end up living in a hell hole? Even a good night’s sleep eluded me because the sound of the ocean waves crashing on the shore was so loud. This wasn’t what I thought I was buying when I purchased a one-way ticket to Cali.
Fortunately, my life situation was about to change again, and this time for the better. First, after a few weeks I became used to the sound of the waves and even learned to take comfort in their tidal rhythm. Then Cindy made a discovery.
Cindy had been searching the want ads of the local paper for jobs, since she was currently out of hers, having bailed on grad school. “Kris, there’s a notice for salespeople for an art gallery called Intarsia Gallery. It’s at The Plaza, which is great, because we can walk there if we want.” The Plaza was a three-story, high-end, open-air shopping plaza that had opened in the heart of the main street, Camino Del Mar, just after I arrived in town. It was a heavenly, peaceful shopping and eating oasis overlooking the ocean.
The art gallery was just as magnificent. Tucked away on the top floor in the back of the building, it was a classy, eclectic boutique that housed everything from faux Southwestern Indian pottery waterfalls, to unique jewelry dripping in amethysts and silver and turquoise, to colorful hand-painted silk clothing. Cindy and I both got hired there, and with careful counting of our pennies, eventually earned enough change between us to move to a very nice one-bedroom apartment a few blocks away from Le Chateau du Merde. “Au revoir cats! Au revoir fleas!”
*******
Once adequate income and hygienic housing were acquired, I began to acclimate to my new surroundings. I had moved to Del Mar during peak time—summer—when it was flooded by tourists, many coming down from Los Angeles to rent beach houses or hit the Del Mar race track for racing season. The one main street in town included a delightful mix of funky little shops, cafes, coffee houses, art galleries, independent bookstores, boutiques, seafood restaurants, expensive gourmet dining establishments, and waterfront luxury hotels, to support the influx of people with deep pockets. The city’s oceanfront also offered some “gnarly waves, dude,” so you could walk down the street any day and find buffed, tan, young surfers changing in and out of their wet suits by their cars on the side of the road. It was good to keep an eye on them as occasionally one would accidentally let his towel slip.