First Week by Shamron Moore

I left Michigan with nothing but a few morsels of my twenty-three-year-old life crammed into my Saturn. The tinier the flat, brown land became in my rear-view mirror, the happier I grew. The final destination: Hollywood, California. The moment I rolled in on the 405, with palm trees and BMW’s in my peripheral vision, it hit me: I’m in L.A. Finally.

After dreaming of coming to the West Coast my entire life, I’m here. Both the smog and traffic invigorated me; it was a keen reminder of how far I had come, how alive my Hollywood dream was. I felt self-conscious of my lackluster car, packed to the nines with clothes and smacked with a Michigan plate. I didn’t want anyone to think I was a tourist. Oh, no; I was an Angeleno, I decided, at that very second. I had claimed my new home, even though I didn’t yet have one.

My temporary quarters was the Travel Lodge on Pico in Santa Monica. The ocean was as good of a spot to land as any, I figured. While walking on the beach collecting seashells the following day, I met a short, bespectacled man. He was intelligent, funny, and my gut told me he was safe. He took me to a house party in the Hills, up in the Oaks. I quickly made friends with the housemates (so much so I eventually married one of the occupants) and moved in as their temporary house-guest soon after.

The Spanish-style house, with its rounded archways and panoramic view of the Hollywood sign, was a far cry from the motel, and an even farther cry from the plastic-sided houses I had grown up with. Within a few months, I was on my feet with a place of my own, slinging drinks on Sunset.

As the anniversary of my L.A. move nears - thirteen years in October - I think back on that time in which I relied on nothing but my instincts. I was engorged with the kind of brazen optimism only a fresh-off-the-boat Midwesterner can possess. My then-naivete equally stuns and delights me, and if I had the choice to do my journey over, I wouldn’t change a thing.