rm | LJ Idol, Week 0: Introduction

Everyone and everything needs an elevator pitch. Mine is that I live an almost entirely fictional life. It's a fabulous quip, even if most people never really quite get what I mean by this. But fabulous quips can power some pretty big adventures if you do 'em right, and by and large I do.

I live in New York City, which for a town with really high rents, is an almost entirely made up place. It is more what people think it is than what it actually is, a forest of buildings half-hallucinated into being. I grew up here, and I've spent my life watching it rise and watching it fall.

My life is shared with my partner, Patty, who I met on LJ playing in

_riverside fandom. She's sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and Hermione Granger, and the first time we met a guy asked me if he'd be real if I stabbed him, and our first actual date I missed because I was filming a commercial with James Gandolfini and an angry chihuahua. Somehow it all worked out anyway.

Work is a combination of things. I'm an actor, mostly in film; a writer of pretty much everything; and a dancer of whatever type you need to order up. I also do media analysis on a part-time basis for a German firm and work as a personal assistant to help pay the bills. If you're interested in my work, you can see me in a dance sequence in the upcoming Revolutionary Road; search YouTube for a video of Regency-era dancers at Naomi Novik's recent book release party; or pick up a copy of The Book of Harry Potter Trifles, Trivias and Particularities or the anthology Horror Between the Sheets: The Best of Cthulhu Sex Magazine.

In the realm of things I don't necessarily get paid for, but aren't any less prominent in my existence, I'm a serious student of classical and historical fencing. I'm also extremely active in fandom and tend to attend cons in a convoluted and ambiguous capacity because sometimes I'm a pro and sometimes I'm not. After a summer of running around to things like Dragon*Con and Terminus as a pro, I'm beyond happy to be headed out to Gallifrey One in February as anything but.

So when I say I have an almost entirely fictional life, I mean I can go where I please, when I please, looking however I wish. I mean that sometimes I am a man and sometimes I am a woman. I mean that I live in a city that most people don't even understand is real with a woman who does a job most people think can only happen in the movies. I know how to move like people who have never existed, know what they think about in the dark just before they go to sleep and know their cravings at the supermarket. I have allowed my obsessions to literally take me around the world and pride myself on a life that has been implausible and full of the most ridiculous sorts of serendipity imaginable.

Oh yeah, and I know how to ride a horse, sail a boat and fly a plane. No damn idea how to drive a car, though.

This is my second year in LJ Idol. You can find last year's introduction here. Meanwhile, hello, and welcome aboard.