LA gets a bum rap as the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, where vodka sodas run as freely as celebrities with their antics.
get in girls, we’re making the most iconic photo since the zapruder film
If you watch the movie “Babylon” (which I encourage everyone to, twice, three times, most slept upon movie of the past decade) you’ll see such reverie in graphic detail. Luxurious parties, endless champagne, men and women in partial states of undress cavorting.
the abbey a few years back before they started spiking women’s drinks
But meanwhile, across town (as they say on that show about New York written by gay men for straight women), the largest Christian revival in American history was underway at Angelus Temple, founded by Aimee Semple MacPherson.
gay icon
You probably have little to no idea who that is, but there would be no tent revival, Billy Graham, modern evangelical church, or Bette Davis rightfully trash-talking Faye Dunaway instead of Joan Crawford without Aimee Semple MacPherson.
She would be dismissed as an actress (albeit good one), put into that same silo as the whores of Babylon across town, but her movement fed the city during the Depression, kept spirits up when bank accounts were empty, and resanctified LA as the most Christian city in the country (as my dear friend of Filthy Armenian Adventures calls it).
The tension between sin and salvation cuts through the landscape deeper than any San Andreas faultline.
There’s sin in LA, but it’s also a place of redemption (and not just of careers).
does that sound like something you might be interested in?
LA never was Sodom, nor Gomorrah, cities of writhing beasts. Vegas is more your speed if you’re of that belief, where the only redemption is in leaving.
No other city in the country provides salvation in the way that LA does. You don’t go to Detroit to get your reputation back, and if you disappear in Chicago you were probably the victim of a drive-by. Miami is great if you’re a Latin powerbroker on the run, and Austin’s your town if you really want to live in LA but Portland’s too cold.
portland when it’s 65
But only in LA can you come from nowhere and have the chance to be someone, whether you’re the actors living it up in a rented mansion or the influencers living it up in a rented mansion or the preachers living it up in a rented mansion.
two weeks here and i love erewhon sOoOoOo much lol
The ability to start anew is rooted in Biblical teaching, the life of Jesus, the offer of redemption.
And LA is all about redemption.
Those who came to LA for redemption have now seen their lives burn.
How many in the fires came to LA for their second start?
How many are old – after all, the Palisades and Altadena are neighborhoods full of retirees – and will find it difficult to start over at 70 or 80?
I remember living in Brentwood (evacuated) and going to a yoga class at Yogaworks in the Palisades. It’s likely rubble now along with most of that gorgeous neighborhood.
picture-perfect
The seniors there were active – so active in fact that they bent themselves into all kinds of positions I couldn’t even do then, in my 20s. They laughed at my wall-sits, and then offered to set me up with their granddaughters.
joke’s on you, geezers – i’m even less flexible in my 30s!
The coffee shops, the Bay Theatre and the downtown that Rick Caruso heroically built before running for mayor (and unfortunately losing) are all likely damaged or gone.
imagine if all of LA looked like this
Among them are the memories of a shy, closeted kid in his 20s who proudly walked through those streets in his 30s with his then-boyfriend, Tesla parked in the charger downstairs, having tacos and ice cream and soaking in all the happy families playing in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the country.
who wouldn’t want to be holding hands through here and eating ice cream?
I wonder how many of those families lost their homes.
–
The story of Lot, after apparently the citizens of Sodom found the visiting angels “too sExY”, is usually remembered through the eyes of Lot’s wife.
so, is that eye lazy or are you happy to see me
A cautionary tale, she looks back upon the ruins of Sodom despite being told not to (the Bible is replete with stories of women not listening, which should be the real lesson in all these instances).
Scholars argue that it wasn’t just the disobedience, but the longing with which she looked back at their former home that condemned her to be entombed in a pillar of salt.
and it wasn’t even himalayan, cheap bitch
Can you turn around for people you love or mourn the lives you used to have?
Can I look back and worry about friends and loved ones and wish I could bring them with me?
Can I mourn those special days I spent in the Palisades with the man I was with, without thinking of his unfaithfulness?
Maybe that’s what Lot’s wife did to ban her to the crystals – it was simply her lack of faith.
—
I had the privilege of spending time on that “American Riviera” (not Montecito as some fake princesses claim) quite a bit the past couple of years, touring the Getty Villa (still there, god love em), meeting friends at Rosenthal Wines (destroyed by fire despite being across the street from the ocean(!)), touring some of the most jaw-dropping open houses in the country (status unclear).
paradise lost
I toured over 300 open houses in a matter of months. What started as a project became an obsession, all for content in finally realizing my dream of having a home-based content channel (still in progress).
Deeper than that was a more vulnerable dream – envisioning the home I want to live in with the man that I love.
His taste in homes was impeccable, and his contractor background made him knowledgable of all my blind spots. We’d spend hours touring homes, envisioning ourselves in them, how crazy would that be!
His shyness would creep in at a certain point.
His shyness was his cutest quality.
He’d say he could never afford these homes.
I told him anything’s possible.
view of the hills, view of the beach, room for rover, the edge of malibu
_
One place he said he could see living was Malibu.
Far enough from town, but close enough if you need to be there.
How hard would I have to work to be able to afford a place in a place like that?
Could this be the life I dreamed of?
My redemption of 17 hard-spent years in Los Angeles?
What brought me to LA was the vision of that life. I was going to go to Pepperdine, I got a half-scholarship, I’d live by the beach like Zoey 101 and have awesome friends and do awesome things and we’d all just soak up each other’s awesomeness.
back before we knew the full story about jamie lynn #freebritney
And yet – I chose UCLA.
Plans change.
The mandatory Pepperdine Bible class never sat well with me (not because of the faith, but because you’re graded on it).
I’m glad I went to UCLA. I made incredible friends, had once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
But plans change.
Maybe on an alternate timeline Pepperdine Wyatt is happier.
Or straight.
Or miserable.
Who knows.
I can’t spend life living in that paradigm.
I couldn’t imagine a month later my life would go up in flames and 3 months later the houses would too.
Scripts are edited.
Stories are rewritten.
Plans change.
—
Houses are buildings, homes have memories.
Around Thanksgiving of 2023 I visited my childhood home. It had been a couple years since I’d been back, and to my chagrin, all the trees and landscaping were gone. Cut down. Like a pack of locusts ate them up and spat them out.
The house that felt like a home growing up now looked plastic, artificial, like a model glued to a piece of foam board, the California missions we built out of foam and stucco with my mom yelling at 9PM wondering why I didn’t tell her a week ago it was due the next day, not a magical place of meandering arches, imposing columns, and whimsical landscaping.
that young lady definitely got yelled at the night before
I spent 17 years there, but that house didn’t feel like a home anymore.
—
My man and I had a cute little bungalow in Studio City against the Hills. My biggest LA dream was living in the Hills, and I finally had the opportunity to.
It was expensive, sure, but we could have guests, and there was room for the dog, and it was gated.
It was everything I wanted in a home.
I tried desperately to make it one.
The man I loved left it twice. Once in 2023, out of fear and anger after an argument.
Then again over a year later, because he wanted our relationship to end, to seek religious fulfillment instead of a life with me.
After all that, what was I going to do, stay there?
I understand the temptation of Lot’s wife to look back, but what could she possibly long for?
—
The Armenian people (of which I am part) are used to fleeing at a moment’s notice. Our homeland has been ravaged by various empires and tribes.
Ancestral cities, with crumbling Armenian churches from two millennia back are under different flags. Human history is about the movement of people, and ours is no exception.
Wherever we go – France, Russia, Boston, Michigan, Fresno, Los Angeles – we build. New churches, new homes, new communities. It’s in our nature to grab what’s important at the end of a bayonet and hit the road when we have to.
We don’t look back, either.
As William Saroyan said:
I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose history is ended, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, whose literature is unread, whose music is unheard, whose prayers are no longer uttered.
Go ahead, destroy this race. Let us say that it is again 1915. There is war in the world. Destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them from their homes into the desert. Let them have neither bread nor water. Burn their houses and their churches. See if they will not live again. See if they will not laugh again. See if the race will not live again when two of them meet in a beer parlor, twenty years after, and laugh, and speak in their tongue. Go ahead, see if you can do anything about it. See if you can stop them from mocking the big ideas of the world, you sons of bitches, a couple of Armenians talking in the world, go ahead and try to destroy them.
This past week I drove from Los Angeles (Armenian population: like a quarter million) to Idaho (Armenian population: 928 (now 929)). A few nights ago, I met with a dear high school friend from Armenian Club and her husband, and together we celebrated January 6th (Armenian Christmas, not the other thing, though hilarious) and for that moment despite everything – our trials and heartbreaks – we laughed.
Why did a small, still voice tell me as I was sitting in my house in LA, alone and heartbroken, to leave and not look back?
Why did I come up to Idaho?
To live again.
_
Saroyan was a drunk and a fool, a foul-smelling writer who my great-grandfather thought too disheveled to marry my great aunt 80-odd years ago. A “bum” my great grandfather called him.
He later took a liking to Saroyan, however, and included a story about working with him in one of his later books, Chance Meetings.
My great-grandfather even made the New York Times long after he passed.
He was one hell of a wrestler, a trait he passed down to much of my family who used it on each other as much as they did in award-winning matches.
And while picking the vines (a pastime activity, as System of a Down would say), the grizzled wrestler and impressionable writer talked shop.
Great-grandfather Nazaret knew every move, but the toughest ones were when your opponent gave you no opportunity to escape.
SAROYAN: How did it happen that you were able to disappear in that manner? What was it that permitted that impossible disappearance?”
“Well,” Nazaret said, “I finally decided that it was Christianity. Jesus did it. Our blessed babe worked another miracle. It is not for nothing that we are the first nation in the world to accept Jesus. It was Christianity that did it.”
“Yes, sir,” I used to say, “but your opponents, they also were Christians, every one of them.” The wrestler would look up and consider what I had said, and then he would say, “What you say is true, but we are Armenian Christians, and that gives us just the edge we need. An Irish Christian, a Greek Christian, a Polish Christian–Jesus will help them, but only after he has helped an Armenian Christian.”
I’m a Christian by birth, by blood, but I was never baptized. I don’t know why my parents never did, they said it was just one of those things that got away from them.
my future
Through different phases in my life I became stridently religious, mostly out of wanting to know what it was, fear of death, the typical stuff 8 year olds go through.
A-B-C-D-E-ATH
When I knew I was *different*, that Leviticus and Romans and the other fun verses could apply to me (more likely the Ancient Jews who reallllly needed to procreate for survival) I put faith first and shoved down those feelings.
But innate aspects of nature have a way of popping back up, and drunkenly coming out on facebook while stumbling down Sunset Boulevard opened up more doors than I thought it would.
“hey guys i like girls and guys now”
everyone: WE KNOW
I thought my life was over.
But LA provided me with a fresh start.
I found love, lost it, and found it again.
Just like in the movies.
well i didn’t say which type of movie
—
LA is the land of constant renewal, and with renewal comes a burning of the old.
The Old Hollywood stars of Babylon moved on. Once the talkies hit, they knew their time was up.
Aimee Semple chased a man she loved to the coast, allegedly faking a kidnapping. She came back to the church, but it wasn’t the same.
Their works lived past them, preserved in celluloid and in the generations who carry them in their hearts.
LA, the Christian town, revived a Christian nation desperate for guidance after people lost everything in the Depression.
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those Hollywood pioneers regale those in the present day with stories of heroism and vice, virtue and the messy business of Hollywood.
The Armenians tell the stories of their history, leaving a continual indelible mark on culture each generation.
When you move forward, you leave a story in your wake instead of a pillar of salt.