I am the bastard child of two opposing monarchies. Too crass for London, too clothed for LA. Those who are strictly internal, are hiding something, and those who live solely as extroverts haven't found anything within them worth keeping hidden. London and LA are prime examples of these polarities. London is stern, upright, and callous. And Los Angeles is a carnival of curated charisma.
I won’t ever fit in here completely. For one, I despise actors. Professional liars. I always felt that people who wanted fame only wanted to be loved, and required incontrovertible evidence. And if you are famous, you never have enough close contact with anyone for it to be real. Why would anyone require unanimous proof that they exist? Why would you need to be recognized en mass? What a bizarre affliction, to expect your reality to scream and swoon your name while remaining curiously devoid of any intimate contact. To be pedostolized and worshiped is the same as being objectified or demonized. It will rot your soul. What a psychotic affliction, to yearn for fame. Only to have your name trail behind you in rooms, in a finite flatulence, gregariously bouncing off the walls.
London and LA share a caste system, but in London it is unspoken. It is silent and hereditary, embossed into ancestral lines, determined by nothing but fate. Your social standing is omitted in the stature of your schooling, your ancestral acres, and the connotation of your cadence. This social order is heavy, shrouded in slave labor, and in dire need of sanctification. Anciently etch-sketched into the unanimous status quo. Being at the top comes with a price that only your predecessors will ever truly know.
However, London is honest. Upfront about its depression, as its taciturn temperaments scamper through both vile alleyways and pearly manors. Shameful family secrets are shared in a pendulous fog. Familial disappointment seems to collect in an invisible firmament, looming over the kingdom while people complain in unison, adding dark witticisms to conversations. London’s ashy texture and grubby bosom have braced more wars and woes than eight LA’s. A silent resilience can be derived from its antiquity. I attribute London to my brute honesty and the sarcastic semantics that have characterized me as a bitch. But only in LA can I be vulgar. Only in LA, can I abuse my pretty privilege to the fullest extent.
In LA, facial attributes are designed by both doctors and divinity and thus, the hierarchy becomes illusory. Everyone begins to look related. In Los Angeles, you are free to attempt to become anything. Aesthetics precede ethics. Not without its nepotism, nor its imbalances, but with much greater odds. Celebrity Children weave elbows with orphaned prodigies, and they take on familiar demeanors. You could become a TikTok prophetess, an onlyfans sensation, or maybe even immortalized in an Oscar-winning film; so long as you stay in the current of desire, without precise direction. Just wait your turn, and the digital age will ordain you divine. But even at the apex of the food chain, there is a sense of fragility. It's rush hour traffic, and if you pause, someone waits behind, studying your position, ready to occupy your space. You can merge with the crowd, but you can’t slip under its bestial appetites, nor slow down, for the status quo reconstructs by the minute. A seasonal reshuffling ensures that status in Los Angeles stays fresh, and promises richer rewards.
In London, you must act like a wife, and in LA, you can only ever be the other woman. In London, you must prove your longevity, and reliability, as if you are a sturdy plot of acreage- able to weather the passage of time. London is humble and horrified by sex. But in LA, you have to steal the spotlight, tempt fate, and present your radiant God-shaped void. In Los Angeles, your relevance is temporal, and you will never have the city’s undivided attention. But if you flirt enough, if you can hike up your skirts, and reveal your secrets, Hollywood will have you. Even if it's just for a few hours.
Enough charm and determination can get you just about anywhere. You will be welcomed into rooms reserved for the pretty and powerful, by curtseying wide-eyed hostesses and accommodating affiliates. NPCs and extras wade hopefully in the background, awaiting instruction. Unconsciously, Hollywood assembles a variation of an English aristocracy. Committing a cross-continental transference, they hold court, inbreed and interlace. There are no Dukes nor Duchesses, but fuckable musicians, prestigious producers, actresses and models in waiting. And of course, the people who seem to survive like impossible holograms, with no viable means of income. As if it is embedded ancestrally somewhere inside of them, the anointed attendees congratulate one another, with surgical smirks, for having made it here, despite the odds. Aggrandizing the affluent, they repeat unresolved rites, climbing up the staircase to become a local legend. Successfully, they have reassembled a fun-house mirror of the food chain. A distorted, yassified version of the same monarchy their predecessors fought against.
But in LA, we are politically correct, and we are definitely doing our part. See, we have transcended titles, and become egalitarian in our extravagance. Actually, at least half of our nobility are former nobodies. The conquest is not for the crown jewels, because we’re better than that. We do it for the culture, and our greatest conquest is for clout.