The Pacific Palisades Fire & My Adolescent Trauma

source: @Starkian7789 on X

I was initially planning on going to the Pacific Palisades with my friend

Mattp969

that same weekend the fire broke out but obviously canceled my plans. The Palisades has a special place in my heart, as far as fond memories but it is also the source of much of my adolescent trauma. This may sound morbid and insensitive, but a small part of me wonders if the fires erased some of my adolescent trauma, by destroying the physical locations of certain traumatic memories. My initial reaction to the Palisades fire was a combo of sadness, empathy, and a surreal shock to see an area I was so accustomed to most of my life not existing anymore. However, this was mixed with a morbid fascination to watch how it all would unfold.

I grew up in nearby Brentwood and attended Paul Revere Middle School, which borders Brentwood and the Palisades, for 7th and 8th grade from 1998-2000. This was my only real exposure to the upper class coded, popularity coded crowd on the Westside in adolescence. However, my Elementary School, which I have fond memories of, had an upper middle class demographic. After Paul Revere, I attended a private school for students with autism and Aspergers for 9th grade, whose students also tended to be from wealthy backgrounds, albeit lower in social status. I spent the first semester of 10th grade in England, though I could not attend school there since my family only had tourist status. After that, I attended Uni High in West LA, which was pretty ghetto.

Robert Stark’s Paul Revere Yearbook: Class of 2000

The demographics of Paul Revere were a mix of upper class coded White students and bussed in students of color from poorer areas. That demographic combo, combined with the school's sheer size, created a cutthroat social environment. This counters the leftist and sometimes populist view that there should be greater integration among different racial and socioeconomic groups. I remembered some liberal teachers virtue signaling that “we’re a more inclusive environment than private schools”. Considering how emotionally vulnerable many are at that age, it is disgraceful how schooling is set up in America, and I am in favor of a major overhaul of America’s public education system. Regardless, at least Paul Revere kept their patriotic name and didn’t change it to something woke.

Quicksilver Adds

source: www.swellnet.com

Before Paul Revere, I attended the very ghetto Emerson Middle School in Westwood for 6th Grade. Despite Emerson being in a well off area, there were many Black students bussed in from the ghetto and I experienced a lot of nasty racial bullying. In response to the bullying, I transferred to Paul Revere, which I hoped would be a better environment. However, at Paul Revere, the bullying shifted to students who were from more upper class coded backgrounds and higher in social status. While the Black kids were intimating, at least I could have this ugly pride that they were inferior and would amount to nothing. When you get bullied by the most privileged and conceited youth, who will probably go on to succeed in life, it stings at the bottom of your soul. The popular coded guys were often these blonde surfer and skateboarder bros who wore Quicksilver clothing brand and Puka shell necklaces.

Robert Stark’s 8th Grade ID Photo from Paul Revere Middle School

I was initially a loner but attracted attention by doing impersonations of Gilbert Gottfried from Married with Children and Kramer from Seinfeld. This helped me get out of my shell and make some friends, but it also made me a target of bullying. Regardless, I did have some positive memories, including getting to meet Michael Richards when he was the Grand Marshall of the Pacific Palisades 4th of July parade in 2000. He was super friendly, as I ran down alongside him, impersonating him, and he didn’t even use the N-word.

Michael Richards

source: Wikipedia.org

I had some excellent teachers, including a biology teacher who had this farm-like set up with animals, which was a sanctuary to go to during recess and lunch, as well as a great English teacher who later ran for Congress as an anti-War Progressive Democrat and was involved with Code Pink. I was in adaptive PE because I couldn’t cope with team sports but since I was a good runner, there was an arrangement where I could run with the regular PE class. The adaptive PE coach was nice and funny and was also a huge Seinfeld fan. Regardless, I was mainstreamed for all my academic courses, though I did have an IEP.

What made my experience especially traumatic, was that this was the time that I and my peers were going through puberty, and that sense of the lost innocence of childhood. I observed how puberty created these new oppressive social hierarchies while I remembered Elementary School being much more egalitarian. One particularly traumatic memory was of my 8th grade graduation dance. The popularity coded crowd was grinding up against each other to obnoxious rap music, including popular coded guys grinding on one of my crushes, who was a blonde with an Eastern European look, and she was wearing a short skirt. I was off on the sidelines, totally alone with not even one person I could talk to, and when I tried to get in close to them, one of the asshole popular coded guys pushed me out of the way.

In my 8th grade history class, this Russian Jewish girl who sat in front of me, stuck her backside up in the air near my face to tease me, but more playfully than out of any maliciousness. I also started to hear these rumors about intimate activities involving the upper class coded popular coded crowd, which even if they were probably embellished, caused me immense anxiety and trauma.

Alicia Silverstone

My main crush was a blonde Jewish girl who resembled Alicia Silverstone and came from a wealthy Palisades family. Funny enough, Filthy Armenian told me that he remembered her. This was after I discovered that the Podcaster, Filthy Armenian, who I’ve hung out with a few times in LA, attended Paul Revere at the same time. However, he was a year ahead of me and I don’t remember him. I also remember from my yearbook that the actor Emile Hirsch attended Paul Revere a grade ahead of me.

source: @AndrewHires on X

While Paul Revere was not impacted by the fires, parts of Pali (Palisades) High were burnt down. I attended Pali High for summer school before 9th Grade and was initially going to attend there. Pali High is demographically similar to Paul Revere, in being about evenly divided between upper class coded White students and bussed in students of color. The White population was about half Jewish, including Persian Jews, while the other half were regular Whites. However, when I attended summer school, there were much fewer upper class coded White students. I took an art class in which these Mexican guys were extremely disruptive and bullied me. Due to this, I decided to attend private school, and was later not allowed to attend Pali. This was because I was not in the right district and I was initially only allowed to attend, conditional on transferring directly from Paul Revere. While I attended the more ghetto Uni High, every 4th of July, I went to the fireworks celebration at Pali with my family, and I felt excluded by all the upper class coded popular coded cliques.

I used to go swimming at the Rustic Canyon Pool with my family, which was a hidden gem in a really beautiful location that few people knew about before the internet. However, upper class coded people mostly avoided swimming there, due to them having their own pool or access to a country club or private swim club, so it ended up mostly being where all the Central American maids took their families. I remember as a very young kid in the early 90s, visiting a friend in the Palisades Highlands, which looks like an Orange County style subdivision. We used to go hiking near that reservoir, which ran out of water, and one time we found wild garlic. I also used to go hiking at Temescal Canyon, and one time I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger with his family at the waterfall.

source: @awfully_cold on X

Throughout my life, I have had all these bizarre random coincidences, such as attending the same City College as Elliot Rodger at the same time he did, though I have no recollection of ever crossing paths with him. Not to mention that David Lynch dying right after where the Hollywood elite lives burned down has some esoteric significance.

source: @rebeccanagle on X

The area lost many historic landmarks like Will Rogers’ old ranch at Will Rogers State Park, where I used to go hiking, as well as the historic Topanga Ranch Motel off PCH. However, the lake shrine at the oasis that is the Self Realization Fellowship survived, which may have some spiritual significance. Rick Caruso’s Village in the Palisades was one of the few structures in their downtown area to survive because Caruso hired private firefighters. While the Palisades Village is a great place as far as being walkable, it counters the spirituality and serenity of the Self Realization Fellowship, as a symbol of materialism.

source: @ARmastrangelo on X

There is nuance to class warfare in that there are upper class coded people who advance civilization but also those who screw over the middle class with financial parasitism and political corruption. Both the “Eat the Rich” socialist side and the Reaganite side who believe that wealth is the best metric for value are lacking in nuance. Wealth eugenically selecting for beauty adds another layer to the envy around income inequality, which people don’t want to talk about. The Palisades stands out, even compared to other wealthy parts of LA, for having a lot of attractive females. My “lived experiences” regarding class and social status dynamics come up a lot in both my fiction and non-fiction writings. I even wrote some of my novel, Vaporfornia, at that Palisades Starbucks, that burnt down.

source: @libsoftiktok on X

There is a lot of envy driven Schadenfreude about the Palisades and Malibu burning down from both MAGA chuds in Red States and leftwing people of color in California. I get the resentment over income inequality and I am above average in envy and resentment. However, envy can be a petty destructive instinct rather than wanting to uplift civilization or create beauty. Regardless, there are these great equalizers in life, and death is one of them but natural disasters sometimes are too.

source: @SunshineCoastSS on X

It may sound insensitive to go on about my silly adolescent trauma while people lost everything. However, I am sensitive to the fires, as where I grew up in Brentwood was right near the evacuation zone and I have had to evacuate from a wildfire a while back. While I might have less sympathy for an ultra wealthy person taking a major financial loss, losing everything, one’s home, all irreplaceable priceless possessions, and all of one’s memories is an absolute tragedy. Not to mention that it is tragic to see such a beautiful area destroyed.

Both memories and possessions from the past offer comfort and attachment yet also contain psychological scars. I might be better off if I had some brain condition that erased all my traumatic memories from adolescence, yet I would no longer be who I am. When I visited the Palisades, I would get triggered by certain memories, much like I get triggered by hearing music from around 1998 to 2000, or if I get the same Chapstick brand, that I used in middle school, which they still sell at most markets and drug stores.

Westside Pavilion 1986

source: r/LosAngeles

Certain locations have a special symbolism regarding good memories or trauma, so a place being destroyed is analogous to a person dying. Even if you mourn their death, there might also be certain traumatic memories that are erased. It is the same as how places change and how people lament how the area they grew up in becomes unrecognizable. For instance, I have hypnogogic childhood memories of these cool 80s malls in LA, like Santa Monica Place, Westside Pavilion, and the Beverly Center, that were erased by minimalist renovations.

I find Alan Watts’s Buddhist philosophy of letting go of all attachments, very difficult to cope with, and I think it is especially difficult for people who live with trauma. I find that approach demoralizing and more of a way to cope with the tragedy of loss. Different people process losing everything, in say a fire differently, with some people suffering from the loss and pain for the rest of their lives while others might feel liberated. This also relates to aging, lost youth, missed opportunities in life, or even accepting that the earth will eventually be consumed by the Sun. There is this deep yearning for something permanent and to escape from the cycle of loss, decay, and death, which many find through spirituality with a sense of permanence in the Divine.