Around The World in 14 Days
and an ode to Alex Consani
After five and a half long and HOT weeks, I’ve left New York. At long last, I have returned home with myself, an intensified hatred for the MTA, and a little strep throat :-)
In case you missed it, my last day in NYC was 97 degrees and humid. I was riding the M train between the Broadway and Delancey Stations, when all the signals between Brooklyn and Manhattan went down. I was trapped in a tunnel underground for 45 minutes. As a girl with mild claustrophobia and a panic disorder, this was my worst nightmare come to life. It was an omen that my time in New York needed to end.
Having lived in the city from 2017-2021, I’ve obviously been stuck on the train before. Delays, standbys, police activity, medical emergencies- these are familiar to me. Let’s not forget, I grew up in Boston proper. So, I was riding the train to and from school, work, and home most days. I am no stranger to public transit, nor the mayhem that comes with it… I just don’t ~love~ being stuck between stations for longer than two minutes with possible heat stroke, and no clear resolution for how or when I’ll get out.
Once freed, I vowed that I would not be extending my trip — something I was highly considering beforehand. I was taking that 7AM Alaska Airlines flight back to my safe haven of Los Angeles, as planned, no matter what. Sorry Alex Consani!
Speaking of Alex, today is her birthday! Happy birthday sweet supermodel! Here’s a photo of her whilst we were stuck on the train. She tried playing SVU for me on her phone to distract from my heat induced nausea/anxiety, but the premise of that show only makes me more anxious honestly. I do feel infinitely luckier to have been trapped down there with her, and not alone.
I was lucky enough to spend almost every day with Alex during my final two weeks in the city. This is a rarity, as supermodel besties are often gallivanting around the world and hard to pin down. Trans friendships are so special and important. I don’t think I fully allowed myself to have one until about twenty years old, when I had my first serious trans boyfriend. Before then, I only had my trans camp friends, and trans online friends. Besides that week or two at camp each summer, I never took action to surround myself with community in any way. It wasn’t until I fell in love.
Being in love with someone who was also trans opened my world exponentially. It taught me an improved version of acceptance and self love, and prepared me to love the other trans people around me. There’s something inimitable about the lust for life I had in those years, living in New York, celebrating my transness with others who needed to celebrate theirs too.
I’m currently writing from Ontario Airport, waiting to board a flight to Turks and Caicos by way of New York, JFK. It’s Alex’s 21st birthday, and we’re celebrating with an adventure! I can’t believe how young she is (and in turn, how old I am). I’ve known Alex since she was ten or eleven. We met at that sleep-away camp for trans and non-binary kids. It was the first of its kind, now joined by many other diverse, inclusionary summer programs for ‘othered’ children. Camp Aranu’tiq had locations on both coasts. I started going in its inaugural summer of 2010. I was only 11, and had not even transitioned yet. My parents heard about it from one of their peers. They signed me up thinking, “Hey, she’ll either come home and be like ‘this is so me,’ or ‘fuck all of that, what were you thinking?’” Sure enough, I found my people :)
By the next summer, I was going into 7th grade socially transitioned. I had named myself Ella, began presenting as a young woman, and was using she/her pronouns. It’s hard to believe I’ve been living life this way ever since. I’m fourteen years into my transition, and I’ve now been Ella longer than I’ve been anyone else. It’s easy to say I’ve always been Ella, but I don’t know if that’s true. What I do know is true, is that I am Ella now more than ever. <3
I do however, feel out of sorts being back in LA… It’s not that I lack the sense of belonging I found in New York, it’s just that nothing here feels as real. The relationships, the passing of time, the concept of working. All of that in LA is more of a facade than a reality. Acts of performance in the world of film and tv. At least the humidity is a lot lower out West.
So far, I have edited this week’s newsletter from Newark Airport, my parents house on the central California Coast (they don’t live in Boston anymore, crazy!), my home in Silver Lake, where I sat watching two men wheel out my old dishwasher and replace it with a cheaper, albeit not broken one, thanks shitty landlord! I stared at my computer screen with this Substack post open, at a cafe on Silver Lake Boulevard. I felt like such a meme — updating my blog from a hipster coffee shop on the east side. I was surrounded by airpod maxes, ballet flats and mary-janes (myself included, in oxblood patent leather Ferragamo ballerinas.) I couldn’t bring myself to write anything great there, which brings me to the Ontario Airport. I’m here, because JetBlue doesn’t want to see me win! They don’t want to see me in the Virgin Islands!
Soon, I’ll write to you from Turks (if I haven’t melted all of my brain cells partying with these kiddos… if i even make it there). I then return to LA for another method acting intensive, which is something I am very much looking forward to. God, how I miss and LOVE being a student! I am very excited to be back in the classroom. I can’t wait to tell all you about it ! Until then…
xoxo
Update: still haven’t made it out of LA. Trip: TBD.