#IAMSORRY

The bad news is, I'm not going to talk about my experience sitting across a small table from Shia LaBeouf with a bag over his head. What happened in the room is entirely what each person made out of it, sharing my experience wouldn't do the show justice. All you need to know is I was moved enough (or fooled enough – your pick) to not feel the need to share what happened in there with the internet.

#IAMSORRY was not about plagiarism or apology or forgiveness. It was about waiting in a fucking line. I spent those 48 hours living a role in a performance art piece, unaware of my participation until it was over. I want to be clear, this is not a comprehensive account of my line experience at all. There is a lot that happened that I don't even know how to begin to explain. But if you know me ~personally~, you might get a good story out of me one day.

It began as a joke. I planned on going just to get a selfie with Shia to give to my mom, who adores him. It'd be hilarious and a good story to tell, I reasoned. On the 13th, Maddie and I got to the gallery at 9am, it opened at 11. I had brought a book to read for class, foolishly thinking there would be nothing else to do all day. We started talking to the people around us in line. Two dudes from the east coast and a guy called Chris were in front of us, a student from Occidental named Matt, a woman and her daughter (who turned out to be evangelical Christians), and Disneyland's most stanned Peter Pan face character (ALSO EVANGELICAL?!) were behind us. As the day wore on and we slowly, slowly, inched closer to the door, our group expanded and started playing games, singing, and generally having a great time. We even started a band! (#ShitGhost2014 #ShitGhostCoast2Coast) We had such a good time in line that the next day, someone came up to me to ask if "the rest of our band was coming too" and another dude overheard a line-goer talking about us. (#OurImpact tbh)

Shit Ghost aka The Clique

One day, I will be able to tell my grandkids that my classiest moment in life was drinking beer out a McDonald's cup at 10 in the morning on a Thursday on Beverly. Or maybe it was drinking straight from a 40 at 8am the next day? Or peeing in an alleyway behind an art gallery at 4am? Or getting stoned with a bunch of strangers behind said art gallery in broad daylight? I guess all the inebriation was a way to pass the time.

s/o to Kearney's Market, where all alcohol was bought. Great family run business, not judgmental.

At one point, Ray Jay showed up and tried to cut the line, which immediately resulted in everyone heckling him. Hard. Yelling "fuck you, Ray Jay" felt pretty good, until people started taking pictures with him and a few members of Shit Ghost decided to get in on that and "fuck you, Ray Jay" turned into, "RAY JAY, HUGE FAN!"

JOEL STEIN ANECDOTE TIME: 

After getting high, I sat down behind Joel Stein, who was standing. He began exchanging words with the evangelical woman and my first thought was that they were having a religious debate. And it stressed me the fuck out. Unable to hear their words, I watched them speak until he turned back around. My heart was beating out of my chest. I needed to know what I had just seen, why there was so much negativity in it. Near weepy, I tapped Joel Stein's ankle and he immediately squatted down to my level. I mumbled about how I was worried about him and the woman, how I wanted to know what was going on between them, and that I was very anxious about the whole thing.

"What are you anxious about? About what you're gonna do in there?"

I grasped at my heart and just kept telling myself not to cry and not to tell him I was high.

"No, about what's happening between you and that woman. Are you fighting? My heart's racing right now."

He laughed and said that he and the woman were friends, they were just discussing what they would if [didn't catch this, too relieved they weren't arguing] and that they looked like they were confrontational because they're both from the east coast. I still felt nearly weepy. I thought of how hard I would cry in front of Shia. Later, I tweeted about how Shit Ghost had talked to him about his Generation Me piece and I called it a confrontation when I guess really I should have said "v minor heart to heart"??? IDK, I was pretty drunk at the time, sorry!!! Anyway, Joel Stein searched his name on twitter that day, as I assume he does every day (yeah, us Millennials are def the most self-obsessed generation) and replied to me. Joel Stein, if you are reading this, as I bet good money you are, I luv u like a brother and I grew up watching you on I Love The 70's/80's/90's etc and I hope you write about me in your article about the show. Glad you weren't fighting with that lady.

did not @ u, bb

As fun as the first day was, it was still pretty weird. There was point at which everyone was discussing what Shia would do or wouldn't do or how long he needed to recharge before every session and any passerby would have thought we were in a cult, discussing our leader. It was so jarring, so blatantly cult-y, and yet I too joined in on the speculation.

Waiting in line, we were famous. Camera crews were there to get b-roll and interview people on what they were going to do. Reporters were recording interviews on their iphones. I saw a few civilian-looking people taking notes. I was taking notes. In a world in which any and everything now has a thinkpiece, blog post, Buzzfeed article, and/or personal essay written on it, here was another thing that we will all one day include in our shitty memoirs.

While Thursday's line was jovial even until the end, when Shit Ghost realized that with 15 minutes til 6, we would not make it in and all brought it in for a goodbye huddle, Friday's line was rife with tension and weird vibes. Maddie and I thought we were ridiculous for showing up at 4 in the morning, but the first people had arrived at 2. Around 6, there was a confrontation regarding someone trying to cut. By 7 or so, a girl further down the line started telling us to write our numbers on our hands so there could be no cutting. When she assigned me my number (10), I told her I refused to be given a number. I tweeted something about the line becoming an exercise in self-policing. It felt very Lord of the Flies.

This is a boring picture to prove how early we were there.

I was on the verge of tears the entire day. The people we were now surrounded by gave off manic energy, possibly a result of pretty much all of them being on their third day in line. Some of the only relief came from the all girl's Jewish high school across the street. A group of students threw a note down from a window and then interrogated me about what we were waiting for when I ran across the street to pick it up.

"What are you doing? Are you bored? Are you unemployed? Why are you doing this?"

All those fucking reporters, and these girls were asking the hard questions.

Was almost hit by a car for this note.

A woman tried to cut with us and the situation was only resolved right before I went in (by Ken, the best security guard I've ever met, who gave me a very VERY comforting hug before I left). I had to sit down on the sidewalk and collect myself. A gaggle of the bad-vibe-people came over to see what was going on and I yelled at them to back off. I felt like I was drowning. Needless to say, the second I walked into the gallery, I started to sob.

Of course, OF COURSE, one of the first things I see when walking out of the show is Andy Dick, clearly fucked up beyond belief, trying to get in through the back door. As Connie would say, "Only LA."

Honestly, the whole thing feels like an LA injoke. One that probably not many people will remember in the next decade. But it feels important now, to me. If you didn't wait in line, you didn't experience anything. (Looking at you, Michael Yo.) If you didn't wait in line, you walked into a room, chose an object, and sat down across a table from a guy with a bag over his head. I took this bizarre opportunity not to abuse someone, as many people did, but to take a legit spiritual journey that ended in catharsis so intense I felt renewed afterwards. There's no way the dynamics of the line were, in any way, part of the artist's intent. It was a completely separate experience to the art, but still dependent on and integral to it. I, once again, do not have the language to explain what I want to say. But my goodness, what a ridiculous 48 hours.