California Dreams: Thirty-Five Years Living. Lessons Learned.

I really believed in California Dreams. I still do. People come to California from all over the world to make new lives. That’s why I came. It was a little past midnight when I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on the morning of June 26, 1984. Behind me were a little more than thirty-five years of an east coast life that often felt like twice that number. You’ve heard some of this story before. Public housing in South Bronx, New York; a Catholic seminarian in Middletown, New York; two different life acts in Washington, D.C., one as a radio host and producer, then later as a television and radio reporter, and then much later as a government official; and there were the four years as a television reporter in Hartford, Connecticut. During all those years, I somehow had managed to live the lives of a sixties rebel, junkie, two marriages, a son (Antonio), and dropped myself into some scandalous intrigue involving the Mayor of a major city (google it) Not a proud moment. After all that hard living, I was ready for a new life on a new coast where new beginnings really do begin and fresh starts really can blossom in the Southern California sun. I was 35 years old.

Something mysterious happens when you take a New York Puerto Rican-Dominican and throw him into a different reality like California. I can’t explain it. Call it culture shock. The expansiveness of the Los Angeles Megalopolis, its food, culture, the clothing, the weather, the diversity unlike that of the east coast. The sheer size and distances. Driving is not measured in blocks but in miles and time and anxiety and road rage. You arrive in a Hawaiian Shirt because you really think this is LaLa Land only to discover that’s only in the imaginations and myths of east coasters. The myth that this is paradise was quickly disrupted in the first months by the big lettered graffiti on the 405 freeway at the Santa Monica Boulevard exit: MEXICANS GO HOME (And I thought Los Angeles was a spanish name).

There’s no time to figure it all out. Money needs to be made. A place to stay. I’m lucky. I had help: Sumire Gant and a Thomas Map Guidebook. Transportation is the first order of business. You need a car but this is SoCal. A motorcycle seems appropriate to wiggle in and out of these jammed freeways. Doesn’t matter that I’ve never been on a motorcycle. How hard can it be? About as hard as the life that was built over the next thirty-five years. You can ride that white line confidently as if you’ve been doing this all your life. And then sometimes, you have to put it down (luckily) at only 30 miles an hour and not the 90 that you think is really cool on the 110 at 1 a.m. in the morning. With no helmet. That’s been the last 35 years. Pushing it. Being jerked down. Slowly, unsteady at times, crawling back up, righting the life, and getting going again because there is no time to lay down. There’s no time to stop. There’s only time to live the new life you must build from scratch. Celebrate the triumphs. Roll-over the defeats. And keep on steppin’.

In those years, I have dreamed so many California Dreams and lived so many lessons learned. As I celebrate this anniversary, I want to take a moment to love how far I’ve traveled and this moment I find myself in. None of these successes would have been possible without my best friend and wife, Sumire Gant. A homegirl from Compton, California who is the smartest, funniest, most crazy (in the best sense of the word) person I’ve ever met. From the moment she picked me up at LAX on June 26th until now. Without her, there would be no life of the past thirty-five years.

1984-1985: Motorcycle Messenger, Airport Shuttle Driver. There’s no better way to learn how to maneuver your way through hundreds of miles of Greater L.A. freeways than just to do it. Armed with a Thomas Guide, no GPS phone here, you do what you have to do in rain, sun, earthquake, fire, and mudslides. You discover neighborhoods, people, and landmarks. From downtown L.A. to the Valley to the South Bay. San Bernardino. Newport Beach. You get it quickly. You are not in Kansas anymore. This is not New York or Washington, D.C. This is another planet that needs exploring.

1985-1987: Bartender at Alpine Village in Torrance. I did not know this was a thing. Octoberfest. German and Austrian Expats. A lot of drinking. A lot of drinking. Country night. Big Band night. European Music night. From Palos Verdes to Hawthorne to the Beach cities, they come searching for nostalgia, hard drinking, and the myth that all of this is some other life when it’s just what it is: a decorative shrine next to the 110 freeway that is definitely not the Los Angeles of the future. For two years, I learned how far men and women were willing to push themselves down the rabbit hole of alcohol and drugs in order to immunize themselves from the daily drudgery of their lifeless lives and work. The drinking and drugs would haunt me for years. I would store the experiences in my brain for the future stories that I will one day write.

1987: It is dizzying how fast your life can change. From meeting a guy who literally lived and worked in the neighborhood of Hollywood to winning a place during a national search for participants in an American Film Institute Summer Workshop in Television Drama Writing. I had to write a Television script for the first time in my life. Pre-internet on an electric typewriter. Then, there was that phone call months later from that same Hollywood guy (Jay April) to come work for a start-up cable television network called Movietime. “Can you run over to Long Beach from San Pedro and produce a behind the scenes television segment with River Phoenix?” (I had no idea who he was at the time). Oh, and I also married Sumire Gant. Lessons learned: never let go of a good thing and answer that phone call. Your future may be on the other end.

1988-2008: Movietime, E! Entertainment Television. How do you measure 20 years with more than just time spent? What are the milestones of working in a dream world called Hollywood while the real world is spinning out of control around it? Interviews with movie stars, Grammy-winning performers, Emmy award TV stars. Award shows. Red carpets. Live television. Screaming fans. Celebrity hosts. Against a backdrop of my first real earthquake (Northridge), L.A. Riots (the first time I felt like this was really my home, “They’re burning down my city”), The OJ Trial, the new Millennium, September 11, my personal descent into hell. It’s more than twenty years of nonstop action spinning out of control travel, excitement beyond your wildest dreams and nightmares, hard drinking, hard living, hard eating, hard spending your life and soul away. And yet, I wouldn’t trade that life for a gig at a bank or on an assembly line somewhere in San Bernardino. I may have aged more prematurely than expected. I was thirty-eight when I joined the Hollywood Industry Society and that’s old by any reasonable standard. I was both lucky and just too damn ambitious to have passed up this opportunity. Lesson learned was to grab that ring when you can and work out the details later. Oh, and don’t forget: don’t kill yourself in the process.

2008-2019: Burnout, a descent into hell, the slow crawl out of hell, salvation, new beginnings. It really is a long story but Hollywood is full of my story. Burnouts and worse are not uncommon. In my case, I had help. Sumire, our son Daichi, my first born Antonio, and family and friends. Through the Great Recession of 2008 to Day One of Sober to Publisher of Palacio Magazine to returning to school at Long Beach City College after forty-five years to capture that number one goal on my bucket list, the Bachelor of Arts Degree (after I transfer to CSULB in a couple of years). Nearly three years later, a continuing 4.0 GPA (yes, I’m very proud), Dean’s List, Honors Society, President’s Ambassador.

California has been both an opportunity and a cauldron of despair. But, I’ve come forward from a place that I never want to return (Sober 2846 days). It’s true this thing called Clarity when you become sober. I live with fresh air in my face and a gentle breeze at my back pushing me forward. Laughing that I’ve made it out alive. Learning to deal with Boomer aging and everything that goes with it. Thirty-five years of California Dreams and still dreaming. Not bad for a seventy-year-old former east coaster now very much a SoCal dude. Lessons learned. Lesson applied. Looking forward to the next thirty-five years. Yeah, I said it. Life is nothing if you don’t dream.

California Sober Living Voices in my Head