The Terror Writer

Few words in the English language conjure such abject fear - such extreme reactions. It’s right up there with War, Murder, Mother-in-law. Yes of course I’m talking about Love. Every relationship gets to that point where you feel it. You want to say it. But then what? By now you’ve been around the block a few times and you know the sometimes unpleasant results confessing your love can have.

For us girls especially it gets drummed into our brains early. The quickest way to send a man running for the hills is to tell him you love him. If you’re like me, you have been fortunate enough to have someone run screaming from the room never to speak to you again all because you said the L word. Pure theatre, I highly recommend it. Actually, it’s amazing I even got to that point considering my anti L word training started in first grade.

I was madly in love with Gary. His big brother played on the Denver Nuggets so he was cool. He also insisted on wearing a belt buckle with our Catholic School uniform that said Tuffy. Only now do I see the absurdity of an eight-year old proclaiming his toughness but at the time, Gary was heaven in plaid wool.

As a child of divorce I was sent to a therapist which was the hip thing to do with your kid at the time. I didn’t understand it but I knew it was significant so I shared this with Gary. Surely such heart-to-hearts would forge a bond that would last us a lifetime. He seemed interested so I chattered away to him about the Lincoln Logs and the Battleship game I got to play with at the therapist’s. I felt Gary and I were really clicking. I wanted to take it to the next level.

He’d mentioned his love for the T-rex. Not to me but I was getting good at eavesdropping. I labored one night on a dinosaur drawing for him. I wrote his name at the top and “I love you” in proud crayon letters across the bottom. I marched into class the next morning puffed up and happy. I was going to deliver to Gary the most important dinosaur doodle of his life.

When I gave him the drawing, he looked at it blankly and mumbled a thanks. I thought to myself that this was fine. He just needed some time to process the enormity of this declaration. Later, at the pencil sharpener, I found my drawing in the trash can. Surely this was a mistake. You don’t just disregard something of this magnitude. Do you?

It turned out Gary wasn’t content just to trash my sentiments. He wanted to be sure his friends knew that he wasn’t about to get reeled in by all that horrendous love stuff. As we formed our neat Catholic School single file lunch line, Gary stepped out of the front and turned back to face everyone.

“Guess what everybody?” Everybody was ready to guess. My heart leapt. Is he going to tell them we’re going out? That we’re in love?

“Heidi has to go to a shrink ‘cause she can’t make friends.”

All eyes swiveled to me. Was that why I had to go? If not before, it was now. No one wanted to hang out with the therapy freak kid. Thankfully the teacher who somehow hadn’t heard this deflation of my heart herded us into the cafeteria and I didn’t have to actively address Gary’s claim.

Needless to say, that pretty much killed that. I moved on to Mike who was taller that Gary and in truth seemed tougher. Mike never spoke two words to me but later stole my book bag. It was a positive relationship as near as I could tell. I sure as hell never said the L word to Mike. It was far better to love from afar and not have to deal with public humiliation.

So we grow up. We learn our lessons. Despite occasionally sending someone running for the hills, we still love. We can’t help it. We fall hard and we dance around the subject while our heart does flip flops every time he smiles: “I like you,” “I’m crazy about you.” We may even venture a tentative “I love being with you,” which uses the L word in a more indirect way but at least we got to use it in a sentence because it was just driving us nuts.

So what do you do? How do you know when it’s time to say IT? Well first I’ve learned there should be something more than a single conversation and a dino drawing. I have also learned to listen. Not for him saying it, but for him being it with me. And even then, when I’m sure it’s a safe space, sure he feels the same way, I snap from being the self-assured, lion-hearted woman that I am back to being a little girl holding a picture of a T-rex. So I guess my best answer is take the plunge, trust and just say it.

Or, alternately make him a lovely drawing and hope he’ll say it first.

Must Be At Least This Tall

Between the Web, “the Rules” and Old Fashioned Ideals dating in this modern world is a strange ritual. It is even stranger in Hollywood; a town obsessed with beauty and money where everyone claims to be looking for someone down to earth.

And by down to earth, we mean not in the business. I met a guy at the carwash recently (why wash your car with your own hose when you can pay someone else to do it?) and was thrilled to learn he was a real-estate developer, not a producer or director. “Congratulations!” my girls cheered me when I reported to them. As though people with show-biz jobs have the monopoly on ego-tastic behavior.

I definitely have my ideals of what I like in a guy’s looks but sense of humor, wit and intelligence have been known to break me out of those. Even age-wise I’ve been open, dating guys much older and much younger.

But there is one thing I found I just can’t compromise on. Size does matter.

I recently agreed to a date with a guy who was short but he seemed kind and witty. The date came off like an interview with him making sure I knew all his positive selling points and show biz accomplishments. I guess they were impressive. But I came away feeling I still didn’t really know anything about him. Outside he hugged me and tried to kiss me. His narrow shoulders were well inside my swimmer’s frame… and I had to squat down. My end impression for the evening was: ick.

I’m six feet tall. I need a tall man. I have thought of carrying one of those amusement park ride characters holding his hand out at 6’2” with a cartoon bubble over his head: “Must be at least this tall to ride.” But that kind of blows the whole good girl image thing, doesn’t it?

I tried not to be superficial about it. I tried dating shorter men. I claimed the hang-up was theirs: “They get intimidated that I can reach the high shelves and they can’t.” But no, it’s really me. The thing is we girls like to feel small and protected. Even if you are the Hulk, if I can rest my chin on your head, I’m not gonna feel protected. I think it’s a cave man instinctual thing. It’s not fair to the great short guys out there but it’s ingrained in my being.

It’s gotten to the point where I’ll scope a guy based solely on his height. If I can see him from behind (because I can see him over the crowd) I’ll consider him a prospect, even if he turns around and isn’t so cute.

It’s a point of contention in my family. I’ll meet a new guy and be gushing about him “Oh he’s smart and cute and tall, he’s tall!”

“Why does that matter?!” my brother will shout at me. My brother is shorter than me but he’s also married so he’s not allowed to feel slighted by the opinions of us single girls.

“Because!” I shout back. “I’m six feet tall!”

I see his point. It shouldn’t matter. But it does. I’ll actually get possessive over tall guys I don’t even know. In the same way I’ve seen black women growl at a white girlfriend of mine who dates a black man I’ve felt the urge to yell at short girls with tall guys: “You’re taking one of our few good ones! Date someone your own size, leave him for me, you damn hobbit!”

Add my own sizist hang-up to a town filled with actors. The most common comment upon a celeb sighting is “Oh, he’s shorter than I thought.” Here my sea of fish shrinks to a puddle. I can’t even date George Clooney, he’s only 5’11”.

So is there such a thing in this town as a great, tall guy? Or is he just a character on the big screen who’s really standing on an apple crate? Maybe the quest to meet a HIM here is even more ludicrous than the quest to be a working screenwriter. But pie-in-the-sky seems to be my specialty. Might as well take the dream all the way. Go to the mattresses. Damn, just blew the good girl thing again.

Boys That Ski

I come from a land of sporty, competitive freaks. It’s the kind of town where you can walk into your office on a Monday morning, limping and stiff and your co-workers won’t ask what kind of accident you suffered. Instead, they’ll ask which trail you rocked over the weekend.

It’s reflected in my own family. One brother in the Athens games, one once scouted for the ski, a little sister who started beating my swim times way too young for my taste. In keeping with my prime directive to be a contrarian, rather than amp up my swim practice I quit. I became a walker in a town of runners. A contemplative in a town of actives.

Still, the sportyness is in my blood and I like to keep a hand, or foot in. When some friends suggested a pack camping trip to the Black Canyon near Gunnison, Colorado, I thought “Great!” The fact that the trail we’d take was called “Dead Man’s Folly” should have been my first clue.

But I had to go. Sure, it was my first ever pack trip and I’d be required to carry a sixty pound pack down nearly vertical trails. But I’d be with my uber-outdoorsy friend, Lisa. She always knew what to do. This was important because I wanted to seem like a cool, sporty chick. You see, joining us on the trip was lovely, lovely Patrick.

Lisa, Patrick and I had been working together for over a year and I considered each of them my best friends in their own ways. But I’d grown a special warm spot for Patrick. He was a redhead first of all - big plus in my book. He was from an intellectual PBS-loving family. He could perform his own home repairs. What more does a girl need? I could tell the feeling was mutual but neither of us was about to break the No Dating Co-workers rule.

We started at the top of the gorge which is roughly the same depth as the Grand Canyon. Seemed like a harmless enough trail at first. But soon it tilted and disappeared all together. We made our way down by sliding on our rumps, holding onto poison ivy branches and scraping our hands on the sun-scorched rocks. I wanted so badly to shine on the trip. I wanted to show how strong and tough I was. By the time we got to the bottom of the gorge and I collapsed into the river crying my eyes out, I was pretty sure any such illusion was out the window.

The fact that Patrick and I started dating within a week of me leaving that job told me he didn’t care about such superficial things. He liked me for the person he saw; maybe even what he saw for us together. I was thrilled.

Things were great too. Until winter. In an uber-sporty mountain town, you see, people do crazy things in the winter. They strap fiberglass creations to their feet and actually go out into the cold and hurtle down mountains. I for one have never seen the point of being outside when it’s less than fifty degrees Fahrenheit. As a kid I had been forced to undertake such ridiculousness and I can honestly say I wasn’t terrible. However, at nine I made a bold declaration to my family that as soon as I was in control of my own winter destiny I would never, ever ski again. And damn if I didn’t stick to that vow for nearly twenty years.

Then Patrick came along. A dedicated telemark skier and all around adventurer. Dammit. Why did he have to be a redhead? I was smitten and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice: break my no-ski vow. I went out and bought all the stupid puffy clothes. I borrowed skis. I made sure I had little glove warmers and everything. And suddenly Patrick, who had been so excited about bringing me into his ski world, decided he was tired of teaching girlfriends to ski and that I should have wanted to do it before he came into my life. This was a complete curve ball.

We sat on my couch watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics and something snapped in Patrick. He began talking as if the whole skiing thing was actually a big deal. He was talking deal breaker. How could someone who loved me be ready to flush all we had over a silly sport? Loved me, indeed. I realized that was the problem: he didn’t know that’s what this was. Silly boy.

He finished another deal breaker sentence and I jumped in: “But I love you.” There. That would fix everything.

His eyes dilated. He grabbed his jacket.

“If you need to call me for closure or anything you can. Otherwise, see ya.” And just like that he was gone from my life with the winter wind and that damn cold, white stuff.

My sister happened to call right then and heard my sniffles of shock. She duly arrived moments later with our dear friends Ben and Jerry.

I never saw Patrick again. Seriously.

Happy now in my LA life of perpetual summer I know I got something important from it all. If you’re going to be a contrarian, it’s best to make sure your chosen mate is one too. And if he’s not cool enough to hang with that, the L word won’t fix a thing. Instead it’s an effective way to weed out the ones who don’t really love you for you. And isn’t that really the point?