After spending almost three years of my life being the Internet’s slave, I decided I’d had enough. Not only was blogging about my personal life getting monotonous and stale, living in New York was also starting to lose its luster. No one tells you this, but the city is only a fun place to live if you’re twenty-one or have twenty-one million dollars. When I first moved there, I was down for anything. “Wow, there’s a warehouse party in deep Bushwick starting at one a.m.? Great! I’ll just drink some Four Loko and we’ll head out!” Even when things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to, I didn’t mind, because the pain felt just as exquisite as the euphoria. But, like with every great romance, the honeymoon period had to come to an end. I remember one time taking the subway home after a long day at work and counting down the moments until I could be home in bed watching bad TV. I looked up from the book I was reading and saw an advertisement that said, “You didn’t move to New York to stay home.” I thought, “Oh my God, you’re right. I guess that means I have to leave now.” I used to be that person who felt more comfortable being out with my friends than vegging out on the couch, but those days were over. Now I wanted the stuff you couldn’t get in New York—like space, quiet, and nice weather. I figured there were 10,000 twenty-three-year-olds who would be more than happy to take my life in New York, so why not let them have it? It’s their turn to live in a glorified closet and stay up till 7:00 a.m. and cry on street corners. I was done.
When thinking about where to live next, it took me 1.5 seconds to realize that I should move back to LA. This was for two reasons. One, it was close to my family, and as I got older, I felt a stronger urge to be near them in case they accidentally died a tragic early death. Two, LA was the place I could write my ticket out of the Internet and pursue my dream of being a TV writer. Growing up I was always obsessed with working on television shows. For Christmas and birthdays, I would ask my parents to buy me Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek scripts. And whenever I watched something I’d put the closed captioning on so I could pretend I was reading dialogue. In college, I tried my hand at writing fake episodes of shows like Gossip Girl with my then BFF Sarah, but then our friendship blew up and I lost the confidence to write without her. I tried to forget about writing for TV and began to make sweet professional love to blogging instead, but the more I wrote for the Internet the more I realized it wasn’t a sustainable career path. The pay wasn’t great and my ideas were getting recycled over and over for hits. If I had to spend one more minute thinking about what insanely personal aspect of my life had the potential to go viral, I was going to Ctrl+Alt+Delete myself. So before I left New York, I got my shit together and wrote a pilot, which is an episode of an original TV show you use to get staffed on an existing one. My pilot was called Gimp, and it’s about—what else?—a gay guy with cerebral palsy! I sent it to my book agent, Lydia, who is a boss bitch and just the right amount of terrifying. She read it and was like, “This is hot garbage, Ryan. Go make it better!” Following Lydia’s orders, I retreated into my writing cave and emerged a week later with a script that was bearable. Lydia then forwarded it to a talent agency in LA that specialized in TV and film representation. An agent there liked my script enough to take me on as a client, so one month later, I was living in LA and looking for work.
At first I was optimistic about getting a TV job, even though the odds were definitely against me. It’s a notoriously difficult business to break into, especially if you are, according to my agent, a “white male with zero connections.” Six weeks in, I felt my optimism start to fade as I found myself in the most depressing scenario ever: alone on a Tuesday afternoon in an empty gay bar in Venice Beach nursing a glass of white wine. I had been on my feet all day and needed a place that would let me relax and charge my cell phone without judgment. I had never gone to a gay bar alone before, but it was 3:00 p.m. and the only other people there were two lesbians in cowboy hats, so I figured, “What the hell? This is the perfect place to lose my solo gay bar virginity. Let’s hope it doesn’t hurt too much!” I sat there, gingerly sipping my white wine, which tasted like delusional dreams, and wondered how the hell I ended up in such professional purgatory. Earlier that day I had talked to my dad on the phone and he asked me, “What happens if you don’t get a job writing for TV?”
“It’s going to happen, Dad. Trust me.”
I told him that not because of ego but because I knew there wasn’t any other option for me. If I couldn’t write for TV, I’d have to go back to the Internet and do what? Write listicles until I’m eighty? I don’t think readers have much of an interest in an article called “10 Signs You Have Dementia.” I had to take a gamble on my future to avoid being stuck in a dead-end career, but here I was in LA pursuing my dreams and feeling like an aimless postgrad all over again. You’re always one mistake away from being back at the place you were after college: in your underwear, refreshing Craigslist, the heat of your computer searing your thighs. It’s the ebb and flow of life. Some days you’re on top of the world, sipping champagne and cheering to some professional milestone, and others you’re unemployed and alone at a gay bar. Isn’t it funny? No. It’s not. But it’s something.
“Dude,” the bearish bartender called out to me. I was near catatonic, staring into my glass of wine, which was starting to look like piss.
“HELLO,” the bartender yelled again, loud enough for me to snap out of my fog and register where I was.
“Yeah?”
“Your phone is ringing!” My iPhone had been behind the bar charging. The bartender yanked it out of its charger and threw the phone down in front of me. I saw that it was my agent and remembered he was calling to let me know if I got staffed on an MTV series called Awkward. It had been my first staffing meeting ever and I thought it went well, but you never really know. There are a million reasons why you aren’t hired on a show, most of which are beyond your control.
I picked up the phone and thought, “Okay. This can either be the darkest moment of my life or the happiest. He might tell me I didn’t get the job, and then I’ll hang up, cry in public, order ten shots, get wasted, and have a triple kiss with the lesbian cowgirls next to me. Or he might tell me I got it, and then I’ll still cry and order ten shots, but I probably won’t make the grief-stricken mistake of kissing two lesbian strangers.”
“Hello,” I answered, my hands shaking on the receiver.
“Hey, Ryan! How are you?” my agent, Tom, asked me.
“I’m at a gay bar by myself, Tom. I’ve been better.”
“Yikes!”
“Yikes indeed. What’s up?”
“Well, I just talked to the people over at the network . . .”
I suddenly felt like I was going to vomit. “Oh, really? Awesome. What’d they say?”
Tom paused for a really long time. It was like we were on The Bachelor and he was about to tell me if I had been given a rose or not. Agents are so dramatic!
“Ryan . . . you got it!”
I started crying. The bartender and lesbian cowgirls shot me sympathetic looks.
“Are you serious?” I managed to squeak out.
“Yep. You got the job!”
More tears. They never stopped coming. Eventually I had to tell my agent that I would call him back when I was more stable to get the information. Then I just sat at the bar and continued to cry out of complete and utter happiness.
Your career is comprised of a series of high and low moments. The rejection that comes from pursuing your dreams can be devastating, but it’s coupled with these brief instances where you realize you might not be so fucked after all. I’m talking about the times you don’t feel like such a hopeless mess and something finally clicks inside you that says, “I can do this!” That’s how I felt when I got that phone call. After spending most of my life feeling like an idiot who didn’t even know how to break down a box, I figured I was finally onto something. The person who knew nothing was finally starting to learn something.
What We Talk about When W
e Don’t Talk about Money
THERE ARE A LOT of amazing things about writing for television. There’s the beauty of collaboration and being able to bounce ideas off some of the most insanely talented and funny people in the world. There’s the excitement of watching the words you wrote be brought to life on set by gifted actors. There’s the endless supply of snacks, which if you aren’t careful, will cause you to gain fifteen pounds in four months. And then there’s the money. The money is really good.
Shortly after receiving my first paycheck from working on Awkward, I found myself blacked out at a Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. I told myself I would only go in to look for a Tom Ford cologne I’d been eyeing (Tuscan Leather, $210), but somewhere along the way, I’d managed to lose my damn mind. After dousing myself in Tuscan Leather, I decided that I wanted—no, needed—to add Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille cologne to my shopping list.
“Hi, hi, hi!” I said manically to the man behind the perfume counter. “Can you come over here for a second?”
“Yes, sir; can I help you?”
“Um, yes,” I stuttered. “Do you think it’s possible to mix Tobacco Vanille with Tuscan Leather?”
His eyes lit up. “Yes! In fact, those are my two favorite colognes to mix. This is the Tom Ford Private Blend collection, which means that they’re actually meant to be combined with other scents.”
“Wow!” I swooned, wiping some sweat away from my forehead. “I could tell that Tuscan Leather wasn’t necessarily a stand-alone scent. What other colognes do people mix it with?”
“Sandalwood is very popular.” The man sprayed some Sandalwood on my wrist, and my whole body convulsed in ecstasy. Suddenly I was convinced that I was only three $210 bottles of cologne away from being the person I was meant to be.
“That smells amazing! I’ve been on the hunt for a scent that feels the most like me, but to be honest, I don’t think I found it until today.”
“I understand completely. People spend years searching for something that best fits their personality. It’s not easy.” The perfume guy eyed me slowly. “I can tell by your personality that Sandalwood, Tuscan Leather, and Tobacco Vanille are three scents that accurately represent you. They’re sexy and mysterious.”
“You really think so? Thanks so much.” I smiled coyly. Even though I knew this guy had no interest in seeing me naked, I appreciated him going the extra mile for his commission.
“So, what are we thinking? Do you want to get them?”
My body was buzzing. My armpits were dripping sweat. I felt high out of my mind and so alive.
“Let’s do it.”
He swiped my credit card, and I felt a surge of pleasure go through my entire body. I took my three tiny bags and ran toward the exit, thinking to myself, “Ryan, you need to get out of here. Things are about to get dangerous!” Then I saw a beautiful display of candles out of the corner of my eye and knew that I was dead. Candles are my favorite things in the world. Sometimes I have fantasies of loading them up in a baby stroller like they’re my children and taking them on a scenic walk. When I’m around them, I’m powerless.
Two hours later, I emerged from Saks Fifth Avenue with three colognes, six Diptyque candles, and a tiny jar of La Mer eye wrinkle cream ($285). Now that the spending spree was over, the adrenaline had faded and I was left feeling utterly depleted. It cruelly dawned on me that I had spent almost my entire paycheck in an afternoon.
When I want to spend money, nothing can stop me. It’s the same feeling you get when you’re horny. The craving comes over you and dominates your brain until you find a way to quench it. You immediately enter a fugue state where beautiful objects replace logic. At a certain point, your standards will lower and it won’t even matter what you get. You just need to experience some instant gratification as quickly as possible. Swiping your credit card and leaving a store with a bunch of shopping bags is not dissimilar to coming all over someone’s chest. Both are a release. But once the euphoria fades, you come to your senses and assess the damage. In the case of getting laid, it might be realizing that the stranger you picked up at a bar looked a whole lot cuter to you an orgasm ago. With spending money, it’s processing the fact that you spent almost $300 in twenty minutes and now have an $80 candle that doesn’t even smell that great.
I don’t go shopping very often, but when I do, events like the Saks Fifth Avenue Massacre happen. None of the things I buy make sense to me at first (lemonade mix from a high-end furniture store and $30 hand soap?), but then I realize they’re all things I think the better version of me should have. I buy stuff so people can see it and think, “Wow, who is that guy with an extensive candle collection and fresh-cut flowers on the dining table? He’s so together!” Whether you have money or not, the point of being a consumer in your twenties seems to be less about making yourself happy in the moment and more about taking the necessary steps toward becoming the person you want to be.
People don’t like to talk about these kinds of things. If you ever want to clear a room, just bring up the subject of money. Walk up to someone and ask, “How can you afford to live?” Chances are the person will scream bloody murder, tear out clumps of their hair, and run out of the emergency exit before they answer that question. Money is not something we’re supposed to discuss. Or if we do talk about it, it should always be in the context of us not having any. When someone tells you that they like your top and it happens to be inexpensive, you say, “Twenty dollars at H&M. Can you believe it?” But if someone compliments you on something you bought at Marc Jacobs for $200, you’re embarrassed and say “Thanks” instead.
I get why people are uncomfortable talking about their finances. Money is tricky—especially in your twenties—because it so clearly separates the people who were born with it from those who’ve yet to make it on their own. In one group, you have the privileged few who are either supported completely by their parents or at least get a little bit of help each month. For some, this affluence can be a major source of shame because rich kids don’t like being different. They want to “rough it” along with their peers and be able to say, “OMG, I’m broke too!” Sometimes they’ll go so far as to pretend they’re struggling anyway, which is so insulting. Once a very rich friend of mine was complaining about how she couldn’t afford groceries. The next day she showed up to lunch with a new Miu Miu bag. In college, I knew a rich kid who lived in a doorman building and moonlighted as a dishwasher because he said it felt like honest work. What is with rich people’s FOMO about being broke? It’s not fun!
Then you have those who are working toward some semblance of financial security. They look at apartments, they look at lattes, they look at cashmere sweaters, and all they see is a price tag, something that could catapult their entire existence into debt and misery. Money is the enemy. When they look around, all they see is people who have it better than they do, people with tans from their exotic vacations wearing expensive makeup and jewelry they bought with their “fuck you” money. In a city like New York, where I spent most of my twenties, the concept of wealth is completely distorted. You could come from the richest family in Kentucky, but when you move to the city, you feel destitute. True poverty exists here, just like it does everywhere else in the world, but the people who often identify as being poor in the city are usually, in fact, not poor at all. They’re just living in New York.
I’ve always been obsessed with rich people who have a tenuous grasp on reality. Luckily for me, delusional trustafarians seem to be everywhere these days. They’re at your dry cleaner getting their designer dresses tailored or standing in the corner of a grungy house party plotting to steal your boyfriend. The rich often live among us in disguise so as not to give their class away, but don’t be fooled by their ratty flannels and scuffed boots. That outfit costs $3,000. The stains on their faded jeans? Those were imported from France, you plebeian.
Here’s how you can tell if someone is rich. Number one: they live in Manhattan, Paris, San Francisco, or any other swinging me
tropolitan city. I know rich is a relative term, but if you can afford to pay sky-high rents, you’re already richer than most third world countries. Secondly, you have to understand that the rich have their own language, especially when speaking to each other. They say strange things like, “My parents bought me this apartment as an investment . . .” which, okay, yes—I get it. Real estate is certainly a wise investment, but you do realize that makes you a twentysomething homeowner, right? You know what’s considered a good investment at the age of twenty-four? Condoms. A nice pair of winter boots. Not lucrative property.
Rich people also like to say things like, “I left that at my summer house,” “My horse is acting out!” and “Dubai is actually kind of cool, you guys . . .” Someone who is well traveled is usually wealthy. Name a country in front of them and they’ll be like, “OMG, I love [insert weird place here]. If you go, you have to visit this amazing restaurant on the river that serves the best chimichangas. Ask for Mambo! He’s an old family friend!” The old family friend is another important signifier of class. Rich families like to travel in packs so that wherever they go they have a filial connection, a place to crash, and a job waiting for them. They look out for their own. Meanwhile, the only place I have connections is Costco, where my dad is considered to be a very important customer.
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