Nonchalance at the Chateau Marmont

The Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Photo / Getty Images

I just brushed my teeth with Chateau Marmont bath soap. It didn't taste any less revolting than I imagine normal soap would. My bad for forgetting to pack toothpaste. And now, with my non-LA-white teeth, I am writing this in the lobby bar of the Chateau Marmont.

This is quite a legendary place. Sofia Coppola made a film about it. John Belushi died of a drug overdose here. And here I am, staying here for five days on my own with only a lot of grim Russian literature for company: "You need to read the Russians".

Dostoyevsky will remain unread. I just ordered what I thought would be the equivalent of a flat white - a latte with an extra shot - but it turned out to be an iced coffee thing. "Normal milk?" the waiter said, and almost looked like he might faint.

Of course, I'm trying to look insouciant - an oxymoron - because I figure nonchalance is compulsory in Hollywood. As shame researcher Brene Brown said: "Not caring what people think is its own kind of hustle".

I'm wearing a skirt which is actually a chopped off op-shop dress held together with a safety pin. I have accessorised it with a lot of necklaces from the Dargaville Warehouse and Roman sandals.

I can safely say no one else in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont has my, er, unique look. I am sitting next to a group of girls all in very very short shorts. One of them just told the others she ordered an Uber and what turned up was not a black town car, but a silver mini van! This was hysterically funny. A man in a rasta-style crocheted hat is talking to another guy dressed rakishly all in black with a grey mullet, who practically exudes Alpha fumes. The body language and deference suggests he is "Someone" rather than a "man pussy".

Did I actually hear that phrase or imagine it? Oh, I do love the smell of testosterone in the morning.

Alpha: "She's 50 or 51 but she looks really good." I didn't make that up!

Tea Cosy: "She's not a bad person. She just does bad stuff. But she told me all this nightmarish shit about her parents."

Then someone puts on a Dusty Springfield LP - yes, an actual record - and annoyingly I couldn't hear the bad stuff she did. Then Alpha guy said: "We have nice people here. Come and meet my wife. I only want good people in my life."

He took Tea Cosy off to meet his wife, presumably a nice person. The Uber shorts have gone. They were replaced by a girl with long hair who is in development and "reads a lot of scripts".

She is talking about Per Se, a restaurant in New York. I actually went there last month for the nine-course degustation. Yes, I am officially a brattish luxury-infused wanker.

Does knowing you're a dickhead mitigate to make you any less of a dickhead? Of course it doesn't. The only thing that mitigates against being a wanker is actually not being one.

What I am really trying to do is learn to inhabit reality, in all its brutal, ferocious messiness.

No more crazy dreamland, or doing mad stuff to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings. The irony that I have come face to face with my own reality at a hotel with kale chips in the minibar has not escaped me.

"Do you know what we should do is have a massage," says a lady in short short shorts.

Mike Hosking should stay here sometime. No one would want to take a picture of him or his kids.