Lipstick & Deadlines – A Memoir
Beyond the Hollywood Sign
I should start with a confession.
When I left you at the end of Episode 2, I was moving to LA after making a quick decision. I might have looked impulsive. Reckless. I wasn’t.
The truth is, I’d been preparing for that move since I was nine years old.
I wasn’t the kid scribbling stories in a diary. I was the kid glued to the TV, watching every kind of movie I could get my hands on — old films, foreign films, black and white films, films with subtitles, films no one else my age cared about. Sunday afternoons were my church: me, the couch, and whatever classic was playing.
Somewhere in those hours, I realized something that changed everything: Stories don’t start with lights and cameras. They start with a writer.
That realization lodged itself under my skin and never left.
By the time I graduated high school, I wanted one thing: film school. I wanted to write movies. Stories bigger than myself. My parents wanted me to have something else: rent money and health insurance.
They weren’t wrong. They were practical. They were raising a daughter in the real world, not the one I kept disappearing into through movies, scene notes, and the way I chronicled life through pictures — framing moments like shots, storing memories like stills from a film I hadn’t written yet.
So I did the responsible thing — the thing that would eventually save me more times than I can count. I got my paralegal certificate. I landed a job at The Firm. And then, quietly, stubbornly, I enrolled at the Seattle Film Institute at night.
That’s the part I didn’t tell you.
The part that makes everything else make sense.
I wasn’t drifting.
I wasn’t lost.
I wasn’t running away from anything.
I was running toward something.
Years of studying screenwriting.
Years of indie filmmaking in Seattle.
Years of believing — quietly — that I was meant for something bigger.
When I went to the Hollywood Film Festival, it wasn’t to escape the IPO mania. It was because I loved film — the craft, the history, the magic of it.
And on the last morning of the festival, while sipping champagne with breakfast and looking out my suite window at the Hollywood sign glowing in the early light, I said out loud:
“I’m moving down here.”
It wasn’t a dream.
It wasn’t a fantasy.
It was a decision.
And that is where this chapter really begins.
Origins of Space-Sha
Before we go any further, I should explain something that makes the rest of this chapter make sense.My nickname in high school was Space‑sha.
Not because I was dreamy or cosmic. Because I was a stoner — a functional stoner. Straight A’s. Honor roll. Newspaper staff. Responsible, reliable, and very high.
I didn’t give myself the nickname.
My classmates did.
And the way my parents found out still makes me laugh.
End of sophomore year, I brought home my yearbook — glossy pages, Sharpie signatures, the usual “HAGS!” chaos. My mom was flipping through it, proud of the little ad they’d bought, when she suddenly stopped.
Tilted the book.
Tilted it again.
Then, in that confused but trying to stay calm mom voice, she said: “Why is everyone writing Hey SPACE SHA?”
Before I could answer, my dad lowered his newspaper like a judge delivering a verdict. He didn’t look surprised — just resigned. And with that dry, disapproving, slightly amused tone, he said:
“I know why.”
That was it.
No lecture.
No grounding.
Just a criminal defense attorney realizing one of his clients lived in his house.
The nickname stuck. And honestly? It fit. Because even then — long before LA, long before the chaos — I was already living slightly above the ground. Not detached. Just tuned to a different frequency.
Spacesha wasn’t about being spaced out. It was about living a half step ahead of reality — already inside the story before it happened.
And that’s the girl who eventually moved to Los Angeles.
Spacesha Moves to LA
I didn’t drive to Los Angeles.
Of course I didn’t.
I flew — with a Siamese cat who had the lung capacity of a foghorn and the temperament of a disgruntled lounge singer.
China was talkative on a normal day.
Give him anti anxiety meds?
He got worse. He got drunk.
So there I was, boarding a flight to LAX with a chemically altered Siamese sounding like he’d just been cut off at a piano bar.
Every few minutes he’d let out this long, slurred, vowel heavy wail — the kind that made passengers look around like someone had smuggled a grown man onto the plane and forced him to ride coach.
I kept whispering, “China, please,” like I was negotiating with a belligerent uncle at Thanksgiving.
It wasn’t glamorous.
It wasn’t curated.
It wasn’t the LA arrival I had imagined.
And it was only the beginning.
Because while I was in the air with my drunk cat, Two Men and a Truck — the movers I’d hired to bring my entire life down from Seattle — had apparently decided to take the scenic route.
They were supposed to arrive in two days.
They arrived in nine.
Which meant my first week in Los Angeles was spent:
sleeping on the floor
eating takeout off a cardboard box
and spiraling about the fact that I had taped an ounce of weed inside my desk drawer before the movers left Seattle.
An ounce.
Not a cute little baggie.
Not a “just in case.”
A felony amount, taped inside a drawer like I was running a cartel out of Capitol Hill.
This was before weed was legal.
Before dispensaries.
Before “edibles” meant anything other than brownies made by someone’s cousin.
I bought that much because I didn’t know anyone in LA — well, except Mara, and she did all kinds of drugs, but didn’t smoke weed, which somehow made it worse.
So while my movers were off grid, I spent seven days in West Hollywood convinced they were either:
1. smoking my entire ounce,
2. selling it,
3. or being pulled over by highway patrol, who would open the desk drawer, find my taped stash, and come knocking on my door like:
“Ma’am, are you aware you’ve been running narcotics across state lines with Two Men and a Truck?”
And the worst part?
The part that still makes me laugh until I cry?
Imagining the phone call to my dad.
My dad — the criminal defense attorney.
The man who bailed out half of Grays Harbor County.
The man who took collect calls from jail at 2AM while making popcorn.
He wouldn’t have been mad about the weed.
He would’ve been mad about the sloppiness.
I can hear him now:
“Jesus Christ, Tayshia. If you’re going to transport contraband across state lines, at least don’t leave it taped in a goddamn desk like a Girl Scout.”
He’d be pacing, hand on his forehead, muttering:
“An ounce? An OUNCE? With movers? Who are these people? Did you get their names? Did you sign anything? Did you check the bill of lading? Christ almighty…”
Meanwhile I’d be sitting on the floor of my empty apartment like:
“Dad, I didn’t know anyone down here! I needed a supply!”
It was chaos.
Ridiculous.
Hysterical.
It was exactly how my LA era was meant to begin.
Not polished.
Not curated.
Not influencer ready.
Just me, a drunk Siamese, a missing moving truck, and a felony amount of weed taped inside a desk drawer.
Spacesha had arrived.
Jessica, the BMW That Tried to Kill Me
Once my furniture finally arrived — weed intact, miraculously — I did what any newly liberated, newly cashed out, newly transplanted young woman would do after an IPO windfall.
I bought a car.
Not a sensible car.
Not a reliable car.
No.
I bought Jessica — a darling white BMW convertible with tan leather seats and the personality of a beautiful sociopath.
She was Glamorous.
Everything I thought my new LA life should look like.
And she tried to kill me every chance she got.
Jessica broke down on the 405.
She overheated on Sunset.
But God, she was pretty.
And for that first summer in Los Angeles, that was enough.
Because I wasn’t working.
I wasn’t building a brand.
I was living my LA dream.
I spent my days at Santa Monica and Venice Beach — reading scripts, people watching, letting the sun bake off the Seattle gray. I’d drive Jessica up coast with the top down, music blasting, hair wild – like the opening shot of a movie I hadn’t written yet.
Reckless.
Delicious.
And it lasted exactly as long as my money did.
Because eventually — sometime around early fall — I looked at my bank account and realized that the IPO glow had worn off, the cash cushion was thinning, and Jessica’s repair bills were starting to look like ransom notes.
It was time to get a J-O-B. And that’s when the LA fantasy ended — and the LA reality began.
The Responsible Era (Sort Of)
I landed the job at Oakmont Investments — nylons, heels, thick carpet, institutional money — I knew two things for sure:I had stepped right back into a version of law that felt polished, rigid, and quietly numbing.
And, Jessica had to go too.
As glamorous as she was, my darling white BMW convertible had tried to kill me every chance she got. She was beautiful, but she was chaos. And chaos was expensive.
So I did the adult thing. The responsible thing. The thing that signaled, at least on the surface, that I was re entering normal society.
I traded Jessica in and bought a brand new VW Jetta.
A sensible car.
A reliable car.
A car that said, “I have a job with benefits and I show up on time.”
It was the end of the LA fantasy era — the beaches, the convertible, the sun bleached days where time didn’t matter and responsibility felt like something other people had to worry about.
The Jetta was my return to earth. But here’s the part no one saw:
While I was putting on nylons and managing institutional investments by day, I was also doing the thing I had moved to Los Angeles to do in the first place.
I enrolled in graduate level screenwriting classes at UCLA.
Long nights.
Stacks of scripts.
Workshops where everyone was hungry and half delusional and convinced they were sitting on the next great American screenplay.
And for the first time since arriving in LA, I felt aligned.
The Jetta got me to work.
UCLA got me to myself.
During the day, I was a paralegal in a marble floored office, navigating portfolios and investment structures and very serious men in very serious suits.
At night, I was exactly who I had always been — the girl who watched old movies like scripture, the girl who believed stories were sacred, the girl who whispered “I’m moving down here” to the Hollywood sign and meant it.
It looked like responsibility. It was actually commitment. I wasn’t abandoning the dream. I was building the foundation for it. And for a moment — a brief, shimmering moment — it felt like everything was finally lining up.
I Spy a Celebrity
My girlfriends had a game we played — I Spy a Celebrity. They were pros. They could spot someone famous from fifty yards away, sunglasses on, at night, in a crowd, while drunk.Me?
I was hopeless.
I never recognized anyone.
Ever.
People always looked “familiar” to me, but out of context? Forget it. My brain refused to connect the dots.
One Friday night, around 11:30 p.m., we’d been bar hopping up and down The Strip and ended up at this tiny Chinese restaurant that was absolutely hoppin’ — packed, loud, chaotic, tables practically stacked on top of each other. The kind of place where you could smell the food, the perfume, and the nightlife all at once.
We squeezed into a tiny table, practically elbow to elbow with the people next to us.
And that’s when I saw him. The guy sitting two feet away from me looked so familiar. I stared. He noticed. He smiled — that polite, “yes, you know me from somewhere” smile famous people give when they’re used to being recognized.
What he didn’t know was that I was a weirdo.
I leaned in — way too close — and said:
“You look familiar… did I go to high school with you?”
He laughed. A real laugh.
Warm. Sweet. Surprised.
“No,” he said, still smiling. “I don’t think so. My name is Eddie. Eddie Van Halen.”
Yes, THE Eddie Van Halen. Who, was like 15 years older than me. So no, I did not go to high school with Eddie Van Halen.
Speechless
It was a Saturday afternoon in West Hollywood, the kind of day when the sun hits the pavement just right and the whole city feels like it’s humming. I’d lost track of time at the gym — typical — and suddenly realized I was hosting Happy Hour in a few hours. Happy Hour at my place was always an event. My apartment sat one block off Sunset, tucked behind the House of Blues, and my friends and I would start there before heading up onto The Strip. Normally I shopped at Rock & Roll Ralph’s on Sunset — because that’s where all the famous people bought their groceries. We called it ‘Rock & Roll’ Ralph’s because sometimes we’d go at 2 A.M. just to people watch because that was a typical time for spotting ‘rock stars’ grocery shopping.But I was running late.
So, I swung into the smaller grocery store on Santa Monica Blvd instead. The parking lot was full. My fatal flaw — no patience — kicked in immediately.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
Finally a spotted an open parking spot. I zipped in, cutting off a pretty boy in a convertible. He flipped me off. I didn’t care.
Inside, the store was packed. I grabbed a cart and went into mission mode: wine, chocolate, cheeses, crackers, meats, nuts, fruit. Calls from my girlfriends started rolling in — all wanting to know what I was wearing that night — but fashion had to wait.
I realized I’d forgotten the crackers and headed toward the back, weaving through slow moving shoppers. Aisle 14A. Crackers.
Finally.
I pulled up next to a very old, sweet looking woman. I smiled. She smiled. All was nice, nice.
As I scanned the shelves, I felt her watching me. Not in a creepy way — in a warm, curious way. I looked up. Her eyes were extraordinary: soulful, intelligent, worldly, with a flicker of mischief. She held onto her cart for balance, her posture delicate but dignified.
And then I saw it.
On her arm.
A faded tattoo.
Numbers.
I gasped.
My hand flew to my mouth. My eyes widened with shock and heartbreak. She saw my reaction and instinctively covered it with her other hand, as if she could hide it or erase it from our moment.
My eyes filled with tears. She noticed. She stepped closer. Then, with a quiet bravery that made my chest ache, she lifted her arm again and let me look. The numbers were blurred with time, almost illegible — but unmistakable.
Her number.
Her history.
Her survival.
We stood there in the middle of a crowded, noisy grocery store — carts clattering, babies crying, people talking — and everything around us went silent.
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
Her eyes welled.
She reached up and touched my face, her hand soft and trembling. It lasted seconds. It felt like a lifetime. Then she smiled — warm, knowing, gentle — and slowly walked away.
I watched her until she turned the corner and disappeared.
The noise of the store rushed back in all at once, but I felt numb. I’d read the books. Watched the documentaries. But this was the first time it had a face.
Happy Hour lost its appeal. I went home. My friends came over. I didn’t tell them. Not yet. I wanted to hold the moment close, to honor it. That night, I stayed in.
No Strip.
No bars.
No music drifting through my windows.
Just me, my thoughts, and the weight of a stranger’s story written on her skin. I will never hear, watch, or read anything about the Holocaust without thinking of that beautiful woman and the brief, powerful moment we shared that left me—
Speechless.
It was a Friday — of course it was a Friday — and my Queen Anne roommate, Lisa, was flying down from Seattle for the weekend. I was supposed to leave early to pick her up at LAX. Easy. Simple. A normal human request. Except nothing was simple when it came to Brad.
Brad, the in house general counsel.
Brad, the bully.
Brad, who made all of us sit up straight like terrified schoolchildren the second he walked into the room.
So I did what any overworked, under appreciated paralegal would do: I IM’d my coworker to vent. I typed:
“I need to leave early to pick up my friend LAX. But Brad is such a JERK he probably won’t let me.”
And then — with the confidence of a woman who had no idea she was about to ruin her own life — I hit send.
Except I didn’t send it to my coworker.
I sent it directly to Brad.
The moment I realized what I’d done, my soul left my body. I stared at the screen like it might apologize. Or rewind time. Or burst into flames.
Instead, the typing dots appeared.
No exclamation point.
No question mark.
Just a period.
The punctuation equivalent of a guillotine.
I stood up, smoothed my skirt, and walked to his office like I was heading toward the electric chair.
He was sitting behind his desk, holding his coffee mug, smirking.
“You’re right,” he said. “I am a jerk. Go. Pick up your friend.”
He laughed.
I laughed.
We pretended it was fine.
And then — a few months later — I was laid off.
Not because of the IM.
Not officially.
But let’s be honest: the writing was on the wall second I hit send. And the truth?
I wanted out long before that moment.
I already knew I could do the job. I just didn’t want to be who I had to be to stay.
It wasn’t the first time I’d walked away from a life I wasn’t meant to keep. The childhood accident taught me that — how quickly everything can change, how necessary it is to choose yourself.
The job wasn’t feeding me.
LA wasn’t feeding me.
Only one thing was – UCLA.
So maybe I didn’t sabotage my life.
Maybe I just finally told the truth.
The Exit
I gave Vivian all of my furniture.The couch, the bed, the dishes, the lamps — all of it stayed behind…
I packed up China and all my books — the only things that had ever truly felt like mine — and then I packed that Jetta like an Amazon logistics manager with a quota. Zero wasted space. Every inch filled. Books in the footwells, clothes rolled into tight cylinders, boxes stacked with Tetris level precision. If there had been a packing Olympics, I would’ve medaled.
And when I finally walked out of that apartment — the one behind the House of Blues, the one where I’d lived loud and messy and hopeful. I felt relief.
Pure, unfiltered relief.
I didn’t even make it out of West Hollywood before I did the next thing I needed to do.
I stopped at a tattoo parlor on the Sunset Strip.
The artist asked what I wanted. I said, “A butterfly.”
He asked why.
I said, “Freedom.”
He didn’t ask another question.
The needle buzzed, the ink sank into my skin, and I watched a new version of myself take shape — a version that wasn’t trying to keep up with LA, or impress LA, or survive LA. A version that was finally ready to leave.
Tattoo bandaged, car packed, cat secured, I pulled onto the freeway.
And then I did the most symbolic thing a woman can do when she’s done with a chapter of her life:
I hit I 5.
Northbound.
No looking back.
No second guessing.
No dramatic montage.
Just a woman, a cat, a Jetta, a butterfly tattoo, and the open road.
