Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: Our home survived the Palisades fire. Our love almost did not
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a quote widely attributed to Tennessee Williams: “We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”
When the Palisades fire broke out in January, forcing my teenage daughter and me to evacuate from our quaint canyon home while my husband was at work on the other side of town, I did my best to gather our most essential items before heading for safety. Drenched in a cold and sudden sweat, I grabbed our family’s passports, a baby album, my vintage Levi’s — tossing them all into a large silver suitcase.
As my girl and I crawled out of Santa Monica, inching our way through a clogged artery of cars, I felt as though I were in a dream: Neighbors lined the streets, loading up the trunks of their cars while a massive plume of black smoke hunted us in our rearview mirror. Between chatting nervously with my daughter and navigating the roads, it occurred to me that I’d forgotten my grandmother’s brass heart-shaped locket. I’d forgotten the framed photo of my husband and me from our honeymoon to Maui decades earlier. While my daughter tried to calm our two panting pups in the back seat, I worried: What else had I forgotten to save?
No one knew at the time that what began as a local wildfire would quickly come to decimate our city; a beloved small town within the larger landscape of L.A. And I had no idea that my own life — specifically my marriage and the little family we’d created — was itself about to be scorched.
When you choose to live in Los Angeles, you do so with the understanding that, at some point, you may be required to brace yourself for all manner of natural disasters. Earthquakes are the one that have always scared me the most. As a little girl living with my mother in Ohio as my father resided in L.A., I used to pray at bedtime that he’d make it through the night. When, at 18, I finally made my way out West for good, I began reciting the same prayer for myself.
Fires weren’t so much on my radar, but as it happens, they have the ability to shift the earth beneath one’s feet just as drastically. After days of uncertainty, staring at the Firewatch app as miles of hillside and countless numbers of homes were reduced to ash, we let out a collective sigh as we learned that our house remained standing. And yet with the entire contents of our home ravaged by toxic soot and smoke, we, along with thousands of others, were displaced, forced to find temporary housing.
Five weeks passed in a fever-dream of Airbnbs and air mattresses until, finally, we were able to secure a short-term lease on a place of our own. It was a minor miracle in the current L.A. market of limited availability and price gouging. Standing in the barren living room of an unfurnished Hollywood rental, my husband and I should have collapsed in relief. Instead, we did what any exhausted couple of 20-plus years might do: We fought.
“I need a break,” he said, jaw clenched.
“What do you mean?” I shot back. But after months of couples therapy, I knew exactly what he meant. He needed a break from us, or, rather, from me. Our dogs barked incessantly.
I dropped my head into my hands and squeezed hard — a futile attempt to contain the chaos in my brain. Tears forced their way through closed lids, streaming hot down my cheeks. As a little girl growing up in the ’80s, one of my favorite movies was “Firestarter,” starring an 8-year-old Drew Barrymore. When enraged or overwhelmed, Barrymore’s character would start fires with her mind. I remember fearing back then that I, too, might have this power, so profound was my pain.
Now, despite decades of my own inner work, despite years of actively trying to not be ruled by the wounds of my past, I couldn’t help but to detonate at the threat of my husband leaving me.
But having a child means that even during times of disaster, natural or self-made, we must carry on. As the days passed, I attempted to blend our old life with our new one by scattering our few family photos around the apartment, helping my daughter navigate a new bus route, dealing with insurance adjusters. Yet as my husband grew increasingly more distant, I sank into a state of despair.
Loss suddenly seemed everywhere. Beyond the many dear friends who lost their homes in the Palisades and Altadena fires, beyond the decimation to our once gorgeous coastline between Santa Monica and Malibu, I thought of my daughter who would soon be off to college, of my ailing father, of my marriage. Unable to eat or sleep, I sought out help. I met with my trusted longtime therapist, emailed my spiritual teacher, road-tripped down to Orange County to visit my best friend. I also met with a grief therapist with whom I’d worked a decade earlier.
“You have some very real, very major things happening. But this isn’t just about now. What does this feeling remind you of, Evan?” she asked, her voice soft and supportive as she leaned in toward the screen separating us.
Suddenly I was no longer idling in my parked car, phone propped up on my steering wheel. I was 9 years old again, unaccompanied on an airplane somewhere above the continental U.S., being hurled between two contentiously divorced parents. As I talked through my present-day experience, I began to understand exactly what had happened between my husband and me on the day of our move; why I had lashed out so fiercely.
Famed psychologist Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems therapy, posits that our minds are made up of different sub-personalities much like a family system. He labels some of these parts our exiles — the wounded selves that hold our deepest pain. When my husband questioned our marriage, my exiles, my most fragile, fearful parts felt wildly threatened. That is when my firefighters — our most reactive, protective parts (and no, the irony is not lost on me) — stormed in to shield them unfortunately in the only way they knew how: through rage.
They weren’t trying to destroy my marriage; they were just trying to keep me from once again experiencing the anguish of being launched into the world, alone and afraid.
Every day for over a week, I knelt before a makeshift altar in my bedroom, anchored myself to my breath and performed a most Herculean feat: twice daily, hour-long meditations. Rather than resist my sadness, I allowed myself to feel it fully — even when this meant soaking my T-shirt in tears, even when it felt as though the tears would never stop.
“I can handle my life” became my new mantra.
As I began to experience the sort of clarity and calm that only meditation can bring, I had a powerful insight: I recently trained to work as a doula, supporting women through labor, reminding them that the most unfathomable pain — in life as in birth — comes just before the new version of themselves can be born.
I considered how, for days on end, I’d cried in the shower, doubled over in heartache. I can’t survive this, I’d sobbed to my best friend. You will, she insisted.
I pleaded to the universe to spare me of my suffering, to reverse time, to let me be anywhere but here.
Just like birthing mamas do in the throes of labor.
But as I was recently reminded, our agony isn’t the end of the story. It’s the threshold. And when once we emerge on the other side — and we always do no matter how unlikely our survival may seem — we emerge transformed.
After eight interminable days, it struck me: My husband was suffering just as deeply as I was.
Sitting across from him at a tiny, borrowed wooden table, I chose to tell him: “I understand now. I hear you. I’m sorry.” Suddenly, he softened. My ability to empathize enabled him to see a door where once he’d believed none had existed.
In the end, had I saved love? It’s such an amorphous, ever-evolving entity; I’m not really sure. Though I certainly hope so.
But what I do know now is that this fire hadn’t come to destroy me; it came to show me what was indestructible. It came to show me that I could, indeed, handle my life.
The author is a writer, yoga teacher and doula in L.A. She is at work on a memoir. She’s on Instagram: @evanecooper
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
When Bill Belichick, one of the country’s most famous football coaches, appeared on “CBS Sunday Morning” over the weekend to promote his new book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons From My Life in Football,” he touched on a number of topics, including his apparent disdain for inspirational halftime speeches.
Football, Mr. Belichick said in his interview with Tony Dokoupil of CBS, is really about strategy: What is his opponent doing? How does his team need to adjust?
“Identifying a problem,” he went on, “figuring a solution and then executing that plan to make it work.”
Jordon Hudson, Mr. Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend, tried to do exactly that at one point in the interview, when Mr. Dokoupil asked Mr. Belichick, 73, how they had met.
“We’re not talking about this,” Ms. Hudson interjected off camera from the producer’s table.
“No?” Mr. Dokoupil asked her.
“No,” Ms. Hudson said.
Representatives for Mr. Belichick and his school, the University of North Carolina, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the interview, but his relationship with Ms. Hudson — and, of course, their nearly 49-year age difference — has been a source of intrigue since the couple went public last year.
As gruff as he is successful, Mr. Belichick re-emerged from a brief sabbatical in December when he signed a contract worth about $10 million a year to become the head coach at North Carolina. It was seismic news that shook the world of college football — North Carolina has traditionally been a basketball powerhouse — and thrust Mr. Belichick back into the spotlight.
He had previously led the New England Patriots of the N.F.L. to six championships in 24 seasons as the team’s head coach. But his tenure with the team came to an end after the 2023 season — the second straight in which New England had finished with a losing record. At the time, Robert Kraft, the team’s owner, described it as a mutual decision for them to part ways. Mr. Kraft, though, later said in a radio interview that he “didn’t enjoy having to fire him.”
In his appearance on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Mr. Belichick insisted that he had not been fired. But when Mr. Dokoupil pointed out that Mr. Belichick had not included a single reference to Mr. Kraft in his book, Mr. Belichick offered a blank stare and curtly noted that Mr. Dokoupil’s observation was “correct.”
One person who is cited in the book is Ms. Hudson, whom Mr. Belichick describes in the acknowledgments section as his “idea mill and creative muse.”
Ms. Hudson has more than 87,000 followers on Instagram, where she describes herself as the daughter of a Maine fisherman, an avid birder and a former college cheerleader. She is also a pageant queen: She is set to represent her hometown, Hancock, Maine, as she competes for the title of Miss Maine USA 2025.
Ms. Hudson and Mr. Belichick met in 2021, reportedly when they were seated next to each other on a flight. They were first spotted together in 2023, and their rumored romance later became official after Mr. Belichick’s split from his longtime girlfriend, Linda Holliday.
As the Patriots’ coach, Mr. Belichick had been averse to social media, going so far as to broadcast his ignorance (real or feigned) by referring several times to “Instaface.” But he has been active on Instagram since he began dating Ms. Hudson, and she has featured him prominently in a number of her own posts — including a Halloween-themed one in which she is posing as a mermaid and Mr. Belichick is reeling her in as a fisherman.
“Never been too worried about what everybody else thinks,” Mr. Belichick said in the “CBS Sunday Morning” interview. “Just try to do what I feel like is best for me and what’s right.”
At the same time, it seems clear that Ms. Hudson has played a role in trying to shape the public perception of their relationship. In emails recently obtained by The Athletic, Ms. Hudson came to Mr. Belichick’s defense after he expressed concern to North Carolina officials about being called a “predator” online.
“Is there anyone monitoring the U.N.C. Football page for slanderous commentary and subsequently deleting / blocking users that are harassing BB in the comments?” she asked in an email in February.
During the CBS interview, in which she was described by Mr. Dokoupil as a “constant presence,” she took care of monitoring things herself.
On the tip of Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, beyond the vape-scented sidewalks and partygoers waiting for their ride-shares, there’s a velvet-roped portal to another dimension. Every first Saturday of the month, those in the know gather at the historic Spotlight nightclub for Simon Says, the city’s most daring, avant-garde LGBTQ+ party.
It’s a scene that defies easy description: Nipple tassels twirl beside kabuki-painted faces; “My Fair Lady” hats tilt above bodices constructed from yellow caution tape; liberty spike hairstyles collide with exposed flesh; and professional dommes in fishnet bodysuits playfully flog (with permission) their friends while goddesses with antlers sip drinks on velvet couches wedged between potted palms.
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1. Daffne E. Cruz, left, and Daniella “Ellez” Herrera at Simon Says. 2. D’Mahdnes LaVaughn and Nathan Sierra. (Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
This isn’t Studio 54, though it shares the same spirit. It’s Hollywood reimagined. And if Simon Says, you’d better bring it.
Seductively clad dancers, including longtime host Love Bailey, flank the stage where DJs spin a fusion of New Wave, late-stage disco and early bloghouse that attracts L.A.’s queer creative underground. It’s not uncommon for celebrities like singer-songwriter Adam Lambert, electronic-pop star Slayyyter, queer streaming network co-founder Damian Pelliccione, contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and film director John Waters to pop by for a visit.
The vast majority of attendees identify as LGBTQ+, and while the door is technically open to all, it’s the ones who show up transformed — glistening, feathered, glammed out — who are whisked in the quickest. Founder and executive producer Andrés Rigal, part master of ceremonies and part fairy godmother, prowls the line, handpicking the most striking attendees and sending them past the bouncer with a nod and a smile.
Reese Rush and Andrés Rigal.
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
“We do run an old-school nightlife door, rewarding those who show up in stunning looks,” Rigal says. “If they’re wearing an elaborate costume they’ve been gluing together all week just to be at Simon or are a trans person all the way in the back by themselves in heels — ouch — I will give them that special moment and make them feel seen.”
Rigal is one of Los Angeles’ most prolific nightlife producers, with a reputation that precedes him. Numerous Simon Says attendees told The Times that they initially came to the party simply because they saw Rigal’s name on the flier.
Cassie Carpenter, an entertainment reporter who identifies as asexual, makes it a point to attend every event Rigal puts on. Dressed in a revealing keyhole dress and towering beehive wig, Carpenter comes to Simon Says for the ambience and the chance to dress in drag.
Cassie Carpenter.
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
“I hate to get in full glam for a subpar party; it’s a waste of lip gloss,” she says. “Simon Says is always worth it. I’ve met amazing people and ran into surprising old friends. Friendship is everything when you’re asexual.”
Mostly known for large-scale fêtes that attract the likes of Katy Perry, Kesha and Paris Hilton, Rigal has been a feature in the city’s queer party scene since the mid-2000s when he revamped Avalon’s former Spider Club into the boho-chic nightclub Bardot and unveiled one of the city’s longest-running and most popular Pride events, SummerTramp.
If Simon Says sounds familiar, it’s because it had a short-lived moment in 2012 when Rigal’s company, Andrés Rigal Presents, introduced it at the now-closed A-lister club Smoke & Mirrors.
Grasping onto the coattails of the waning mid-aughts, Simon Says failed to conjure much interest at the time. Rigal thinks it might have been too early to cash in on the hipster-indie-sleaze era, as “everyone was still coming out of their American Apparel hangover.” Simultaneously juggling a number of other events such as Evita, Rasputin and Mr. Black, Rigal decided to shelve Simon Says for the time being.
Toward the end of 2023, pining for a more intimate party that wouldn’t draw crowds in the thousands, Rigal discussed reviving Simon Says with his partners Daisy O’Dell, Sean Patrick and Mark Hunter. An opportunity to host it at the Spotlight, a new Hollywood club housed in the bones of one of L.A.’s oldest gay bars, presented itself, and the party kicked off at the beginning of last year.
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1. A masked partygoer, left, with Drake James. 2. Wang Newton. (Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
On Saturday, Simon Says will celebrate its one-year anniversary, with music by Felix Da Housecat and house DJs Patrick and O’Dell.
The small-capacity venue sees around 700 partygoers through each night, each of whom pays $10 to dance from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Motivation for guests to arrive early comes in the form of a limited-edition zine that may contain a photo of people from the previous month’s event.
Co-founder Hunter, better known as the photographer Cobrasnake, has compiled these tactile time capsules printed in black-and-white since Simon Says’ first iteration in 2012. The goal is to highlight the party’s best-dressed guests. As the back of the zines say: “Turn a look, get in the book.” Although the zine is free, only a handful are printed, scattered around the venue at the start of each night, and you won’t know if you’re in the zine until you look through it.
Queer fashion designer Drew Arvizu, 25, has attended all but two of Simon Says’ events in the last year. He’s become a party fixture not just due to his regular attendance but because of the over-the-top bespoke outfits he dons.
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1. Drew Arvizu. 2. Colin Campbell, left, Drew Arvizu and Pat Posey holding a Simon Says zine. (Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
For the inaugural Simon Says, he wore a horned luchador mask and polka dot clown suit; in November 2024, he balanced a four-foot, 20- to 30-pound vintage Las Vegas showgirl headdress atop his head; and in March 2025, he flaunted one of his own creations: a floor-length yellow taxicab-checked tube dress with intentional cutouts across the breasts and groin area.
“Simon Says reminds me of why I love nightlife, and it’s definitely an incentive to pull out my sewing machine,” Arvizu says. “These zines are keepsakes from a moment in my life, and I hope I keep them forever.”
Christian Morris, a pansexual, nonbinary artist from Inglewood, attended his first Simon Says in March dressed in a tiger stripe suit, blond mullet wig and Aladdin Sane-inspired lightning bolt face makeup. Describing the event as “feeling plugged into a queer power source,” Morris noticed the partygoers didn’t just want to go to the event; they wanted to be the event.
Christian Morris.
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
“From the leather and chain looks to the queens in long black and yellow spiral dresses to the woman dancing on a speaker in a gold sequin romper outfit, everywhere I looked people felt hot and haute and danced with abandon,” he says.
And apparently, miracles can happen at Simon Says. Despite hardly ever meeting romantic partners on nights out, Morris left with the phone number of a “funny, super smart, sexy” crush he met on the dance floor, and the two scheduled a picnic date for the following week.
An element of romance permeates the Spotlight’s interior, with an intimate dance space and a sumptuous lounge area outfitted with Persian rugs, Victorian-style furniture and steam trunks that double as coffee tables. Also, there’s no need to leave your drink behind or grab your coat if you want a quick nicotine pick-me-up when you’re at Simon Says. Thanks to a grandfathered-in back patio, which includes the venue’s second bar, one can smoke indoors because the area doesn’t have a roof.
“Being in the space just makes me feel at home with the couches, the rugs on the dance floor and the fact that you can often find a place to sit even if you’re not paying for bottles,” says pop musician Morganne Yambrovich, 27, who came to Simon Says in March to celebrate her first night out after ending an eight-year relationship.
To mark this transformation and get back in touch with a creative side she’d kept dormant during her relationship, Yambrovich spent six hours wrapping craft wire around hair extensions to create her look for Simon Says. The resulting piece was a pair of butterfly wings braided into her hair intended to symbolize her recent metamorphosis.
“If you go out in certain neighborhoods, everyone’s going to look the same. But there’s no such uniform at Simon Says,” she says. “Most people show up in the most creative expressions of themselves. For instance, I would not wear a giant hair sculpture and butterfly makeup to Tenants of the Trees [a bar in Silver Lake].”
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1. Carter Daniel. 2. Phoenix Lee. 3. A partygoer with Ian Lomas, center, and Francisco Alcazar. (Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
As the adage goes, those who turn a look probably will get into Simon Says’ book, but those who don’t quite turn a look will still get into the party. That’s because the event is about inspiring others as much as it is creating a safe space for self-expression. On any given night, you’re likely to find three generations of partygoers at the club — Gen Z, millennials and Gen X — and yes, straight people are welcomed with open arms.
“Once we gather under the disco ball, identities blur,” Rigal says. “On the dance floor, we become something shared, something bigger.”
Rigal and his team make a point of meeting with security and staff before every event to ensure that the ethos of welcoming all is maintained throughout the night. Although the bathrooms are divided by gender — and marked with Basquiat-style dinosaur imagery — on the nights when Simon Says takes over the Spotlight, those designations are ignored, and the toilets become unisex. There are no VIP sections either, and while it can get chaotic, everyone is allowed on the stage. When this reporter descended the stage stairs to the dance floor, a security guard offered their hand for support.
“It’s kind of like making a salad,” Rigal says. “The more ingredients touching one another, the better. I want all of my spaces, especially Simon, to be melting pots of interaction. When you allow the space to be free, you are more likely to have these really incredible moments, and I don’t want to rob anyone of that.”
In recent months, some Simon Says attendees have funneled political statements into their fashions. Longtime friends Colin Campbell, 63, and Pat Posey, 46, coordinated red and black looks for a recent party. Posey wore a mini dress featuring the colorway, while Campbell dyed his beard red and black and donned a red and black pigtail wig and shirt with the slogan “Resist Fascism.”
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1. Colin Campbell’s colorful beard. 2. Pat Posey. (Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
After the November presidential election, the friends experienced their first hate crime in Hollywood when a car passing by shot them with airsoft pellets and yelled a gay slur. Now more than ever, Campbell and Posey stress the importance of being visible and fighting back, and fashion is their chosen vehicle for doing so.
“We dance to celebrate ourselves, to recharge our batteries, to have the energy to put up with the ignorance and hate that is spewed at us every day,” says Posey, who started cross-dressing after moving to L.A. six years ago. “At Simon Says, everyone is welcome. Bring your true freak, and let it fly.”
Inspired by Campbell and Posey, to whom he has grown close through Simon Says, Arvizu has started imbuing political messages into his clothing as well. For a recent red-carpet event, he wore a shirt with the message “Protect trans youth,” and at the December Simon Says party, he dressed in rainbow from head to toe.
As the 2001 Basement Jaxx tune “Where’s Your Head at” thumped through the speakers at the March event, one partygoer dressed as a cowboy initiated a spontaneous dance-off with another partygoer dressed in a vintage Vietnam War vet uniform.
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1. Cocoa Rigal. 2. Omarr Herrera. (Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
“Work it out, work it out!” cheered the cowboy, Ricardo Logan, 36, who included light blue in his outfit for trans solidarity.
His dance partner, tax and accounting professional Omarr Herrera, 44, a stranger until this moment, gurgled back, “Ahhhh, I love you!”
It’s moments like these that remind Rigal why he created this party.
“Queer nightlife is a sanctuary,” he says. “For the kid arriving in L.A. from a conservative hometown, for someone pushed out of their family, for the dreamers and the outcasts — this is where they find kinship, voice and vision. That metamorphosis is the heartbeat of everything I do.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington had fewer big-name celebrity guests than it did during the Biden presidency, when Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Sean Penn mixed with journalists and politicians. But on Saturday a red carpet was rolled out nonetheless.
President Trump, who skipped the annual black tie dinner during his first term, made no plan to attend the gathering before leaving Washington to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome.
An appearance by the comedian Amber Ruffin, who had been booked as the host, was scrapped last month “to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division,” as the association’s president, Eugene Daniels, put it in a letter to members.
Here’s how the people who attended the event — known as “nerd prom” in the capital — looked when they arrived at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
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