Bronson Page is a screenwriter, art director, and keeper of LovesickBilly.com. The economic downturn has made Bronson and his husband, Sam, reassess their home life. These are his words…

Irrational.

The thought of a $40,000 car is nauseating, but I’ve had two of them, and at one point I was part owner of four cars at once. It was madness. Someone I know was given a pristine, paid-for, mid-century modern at the top of Mulholland by her grandmother-in-law, as a wedding gift, and the couple considered putting $400K into a second story because there were no windowless rooms ideal for a media room. Our own 1,600-square-foot three-bedroom home has felt uncomfortable for a while, but not because it’s too small. In fact, Sam and I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working, so we just kept trying to FILL it. We scrambled to reinvent and outfit rooms to be cozier and more welcoming. We succeeded, but a simple problem remained: There are eight rooms, and we can only be in one of them at a time.

Downsizing.

Welcome to the Los Angeles economic downturn, and the fact that our beloved home has depreciated in value by – are you sitting down – 26-28 percent. To put this in perspective, in early 2005, I bought a decrepit 1926 Cape Cod-style rat trap right out of a Stephen King novel, in the mid $500s. Renovated electrical, siding, floors, double-paned windows, insulation and central heat and air ($110K) later the house is as good as new, and never more beautiful. Now, it just happens to be worth around $450K. When I bought the house with my ex, in 2005, we were fresh from a major real estate boom, and ready to flip a bigger house. Well, it was the relationship that wound up getting flipped before we’d even unpacked any boxes. Sam and I have vacillated for the past three years, wondering if we should stay or if we should go, but we were already on the backside of the bubble. We were too late.

There’s a lot of talk about mortgage restructuring and government assistance, but it’s not for us. You see, we’ve paid our mortgage on time, and without fail since I bought the house. We’re current, and in being current, there’s nothing that Chase can or will do for us. “We’re not even assigning case workers to an account until they’re four to six months behind,” a Chase customer service rep. in the mortgage-restructuring division told me last week. “Call us back then,” the rep. said. Even if we were six months behind, nobody’s writing down the principal on mortgages, so at best we’d just wind up with a better mortgage, with a lower interest rate, stretched over 40 years, instead of 30 – but still paying $625K for a home which will likely never be worth that much again.

Illusion.

The greatest danger of Los Angeles is that the illusion is not completely out of reach. The nosejob or the fake tits – or the liposuction – can all go on Visa, and what’s three to five years of payments when you’re getting jobs and getting laid? You want to live in a fabulous apartment, that can be had too, for just a little bit more than you had planned to spend. And, besides, have you seen where you’d have to live for under $700 a month? In this country, and especially in L.A., what can’t be bought can be leased for a while, giving the illusion of luxury arrival, until that next nugget comes in – if it comes in – and until then, like junkies, we will do nearly anything to get it. The number of Hummers and BMWs and Bentleys with custom rims is not directly proportional to the number of people actually getting rich in this town. It’s bling on borrowed time; an epic 22-inch chrome rim of revolving credit.

We’re making a change: preparing for foreclosure and downsizing to fit into a one-bedroom apartment by year’s end. Of course, this includes a credit rolldown, and an aggressive paying-off of our little remaining plastic on a nuclear scale. I’m looking forward to it, and that’s not just me looking on the bright side. A lot of the pressure is off. I have begun to blog again and write again, out of a love for writing, not a need to write something that is going to save our financial bacon.