Now, I’m not a particular fan of Los Angeles as a city or as a concept. I’ve been there countless times since then, but before the awards show, I’d only been once or twice and I hadn’t gotten used to the city’s bullshit. Of course, now I understand how to navigate the city: never make direct eye contact with anybody who’s going or recently been to hot yoga, never agree to take a wheatgrass shot, and never disrespect In-N-Out, even though their french fries aren’t even that good. Overall, though, it’s too hot, there’s too much traffic, and everybody is too beautiful for society to function properly. No community can ever last if everybody in it is beautiful all the time. No matter how much I love getting my Starbucks from a barista who looks exactly like Zac Efron, we need ugly people to balance out the world. That’s just how it works. Besides, everybody in Los Angeles is certifiably insane. I had an Uber driver in L.A. who told me her ex-husband kidnapped her children, and before I had a chance to fully express my shock, she told me she was currently working on a screenplay about the entire incident, and every ounce of human emotion I had in that moment evaporated.

The week of the awards show, I had to find something to wear, and I went with someone from BuzzFeed to help me pick out the finest suit we could find at the Men’s Wearhouse in L.A., and yes, before you question whether I’m telling the truth, let me assure you, I did actually wear a Men’s Wearhouse suit to an awards show where I was nominated. Hollywood! You grow up watching televised award shows and assume everybody there is dressed in Versace that Donatella personally stitched onto each of their bodies, but the truth is, half the people at any given awards show—and there are hundreds of these things happening every week—are wearing a bargain dress from Sears and at least five layers of compression underwear. Unless you’re Lady Gaga and show up with a team of specialists who pluck, pinch, and plaster over any semblance of what makes your body a normal human body, you’re on your own. So yes, we picked out a fabulously gray Men’s Wearhouse suit, the color of zombie skin, and paired it with a black shirt and gray-and-black plaid tie. I looked like a slightly more pampered version of a JCPenney store manager. Seriously, if I could go back and change anything about what happens in this entire chapter, I would change this outfit, and we haven’t even gotten to the night of the awards show yet. It was that drab.

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