The Leftover Crap

Growing up, my sister and I disagreed on sisterhood. She loved me while I saw her as the interloper that killed my only-child flow. Overall she was a happy kid. Mom’s little sunshine. Everyone loved her. Mom often asked me why I couldn’t be more like her instead of the mopey little goth girl I was. Indeed. I felt it was my duty to toughen her up for the cruel, cruel world I knew as envisioned by the Smiths and 9 Inch Nails. The truth was I envied her more than my angry teen self could ever articulate. She was happy about everything and everyone loved her. People never said “Shame about Ash,” the way I overheard them say about me.

The first summer I had my license the Devito/Schwarzenegger movie “Twins” came out. Mom let me borrow the car on the condition I took my little sister with me. We could therefore only see a PG movie so “Twins” it was. I don’t really remember how I felt about the film but as it turns out, it deeply affected my sister. The concept of superior genetic material being channeled into one child and not another somehow hit home.

Dinners around our table were lively with debate and spirited sarcastic banter. You had to be able to keep up. We weren’t inclined to go easy on someone with cracks in their armor. So that night when my sister, who had been conspicuously silent for a while, suddenly burst into tears it was all we could do not to jeer.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Did you burn your tongue?” Naturally, Mom was first to break into care mode.

Her big blue eyes welled up as my sister looked to me and then back to mom. “I finally get it,” she wailed. “She got it all. I’m just the leftover crap from your body.” We all froze mid-bite. My little sister had somehow equated me with Schwarzenegger and herself with Devito. While I’d always thought she was the favorite, she thought I was. It was one of those pivotal childhood moments. It was the first time I knew that she looked up to me. As one crocodile tear rolled down her rosy cheek we all took a moment to let this heartfelt revelation sink in. Then we burst into hysterical laughter.

Mom sat her down later and explained how genetics works, that she had just as many good things as I did, just different. I was in my late twenties before I realized how much her love and admiration meant to my life. I thought it was a revelation when I told her that my childhood anger towards her had just been a mask for how much I loved her but was afraid to say. “I know,” she shrugged. “I love you too.”

Over the years we’ve grown closer and closer. No longer an inconvenient interloper, she’s my best friend and the person I turn to for advice and comfort. When I want to make sure she knows I love her, I tell her she’s the best leftover crap a sister could ask for.

Just Like You But Not You

You know your really good friends of the opposite sex? The ones you’ve had forever and from time to time someone in your single life asks “Why don’t you just date so-and-so? You guys are such good friends.” Sometimes you even ask that question yourself.

Hmmm, he is a great guy. One of the smartest I know. I always feel at ease with him. We laugh. I can ask or tell him anything. He’s always there for me. Why are we not dating?

There is a multitude of excuses, of course. Too much water under the bridge. Wouldn’t want to ruin the friendship. I know too much about him. He knows too much about me. At a certain point, you’re such good friends you can’t imagine kissing him.

Yet these are usually the friends that populate the realm of the Back-Up. These are the guys we think “If I’m 40 and still single…” With 40 a scant few years away for me, these back-ups have been cropping up in my mind more often.

My most important back-up I met during college. I was dating someone, he wasn’t. We were drawn to each other. We became Just Friends. Not too long after, I was single again and of course he was dating someone. The ensuing years progressed much like this. We were never single at the same time but there was always that “but maybe if we were…” hanging in the air. Just hanging there. God forbid we ever actually said it out loud.

For a while I was engaged. And then he finally did say it. It was like it was finally safe to speak it aloud since I was officially taken. I was furious with him. Of all the cowardly, selfish ways to tell someone you possibly loved them. And what if we had been meant to be and now couldn’t be? I refused to speak with him for a long time.

I’m single again and now he’s engaged. And now I get it. I actually found myself sitting down to write him the same thoughts he’d sent me when I got engaged; prattling on about how I’d always adored him as a friend and had thought someday....and didn’t he ever wonder if we'd have worked?

I didn’t send it. I couldn’t. First, we were in our twenties when he sent me his letter and I have to believe we’ve both matured. Second, I expect on some level the Universe has everything worked out.

For a moment I worried my friend would get taken away from me. Then I took a deep breath. Intellectually I know he’d never let that happen. I realized it wasn’t about “wait, what if?” It was about a fear of never finding someone to be a true front man rather than a back-up.

My friend and I weren’t meant to be together in a romantic sense. We were, I believe, meant to dear friends and yardsticks by which we both measure the integrity and wonderfulness of the romance candidates that come into our lives. That is a truly valuable thing to have as a human. A gift I have overlooked from time to time while pining or feeling sorry for myself that there’s this great guy I can’t have.

I have to believe that there is a great guy out there somewhere working his way to me. And he’ll be a lot like my friend. Only not him. And thank goodness.

Two Tracks Diverged in a Hollywood

My best friend is getting married. He’s a great guy. They too met on Match.com, two months to the day before the Former Mr. Wonderful and me. I was giddy that we were both on the same track. For several years we had coached each other through relationship failures and helped each other keep the faith that HE was out there. Now we got to share the parallel routes of our nascent relationships and help each other through the inevitable obstacles. But now my train has jumped the track and, stranded amid smoking debris, I watch her speed on toward that ultimate station: wedded bliss.

I am thrilled for her. I truly am. But we will never again be two single girls who get to commiserate about the Sisyphean task of finding a decent man in LA. As we fell into a silence over lunch last week I panicked I would become useless to her. She’ll be going through things I can’t relate to. But of course she’ll still have life to deal with. You need friends for that no matter what it looks like.

A few weeks back I’d posted about how thrilled I was to be on a new track pursuing my dreams of filmmaking. I talked about how even though I was living on crumbs, I was content with the knowledge I am on my intended path and loving the work I get to do every day. She told me she’d cried in frustration when she read that. Talented and smart, she is struggling to get a small business off the ground while she toils at a draining day job that pays well but leaves her empty and tired of being yelled at by one of those High-Maintenance Hollywood Executives.

I was stunned. Of course my intention in writing of my own work joy had never been anything but to inspire. My heart went out to her. And I didn’t have the courage to tell her I feel the same way when I read about her relationship bliss. “Where’s mine?” my heart laments. “What if I’m alone forever?” the familiar fear flutters at the back of my stomach. “What about the kids I want?” I try to quell the thirty-something single girl panic. “What if I put myself back out there and get hurt again?”

It’s fitting that she was the one who discovered Mr. Wonderful’s profile back on Match.com when I was sure we were in true love bliss. She was the one who had to sit me down and deal what she knew would be a devastating blow. She was the one that saved me from getting hurt worse by blithely continuing with a man who was not in love with me. I know in that way she’s been instrumental in moving me closer to that guy who will wholly love me. And I know eventually she’ll shake loose from her Exec and create a business that she loves.

Between the two of us, we have everything a girl could want. We are on a different sort of parallel tracks. She has the guy, I have the work. We are yin and yang to each other. I have to believe we’ll both have the whole package before too much longer. Meanwhile we can keep listening to each other’s divergent lives. I guess that’s what friends are for: balance.

The Guy Across the Street

“What’d you do today?” I was on the phone Sunday with my friend from Seattle. One of my oldest friends who knows I live to check things off my ever-bloated to-do list.

“Nothing,” I told him. “I took a day off.”

The truth of the matter was I was nursing a wicked hangover, a rare experience for me.

“How’s life in LaLa Land?”

I snuggled down into the couch blanket and told him about my night.

I’ve lived here in my hilly, starry neighborhood for three years now. I’m in the cheap seats; the rental apartments at the bottom of the hills. But my uphill neighbors, the home owners, tend to be, well, famous people. Or people in the working realm of famous people. Just this morning on our hike, my dog and I greeted an A list actress whose dog likes mine and a cult TV legend whose dogs don't. A rising-star late-night TV host glares at me regularly for being friends with his ex-wife. With a 'hood like this, I shouldn’t be surprised at who my neighbors are, what they do and who they know.

I’ve been building a friendship with an ebullient artist up the hill who happens to be our street’s resident party hostess. I was thrilled to accept her invite to a dinner party on Saturday night. I’d been at her gallery opening earlier in the week and she told me the guy across the street, her dear friend, was going to be there. I was in.

The Guy Across the Street was someone I’d been fascinated by since I moved in. He seemed reclusive and often home like me so I reasoned he was a writer or some such creative. I was charmed by his boyish Mediterranean good looks and the shy wave and smile I would get if he drove by me.

“Oh he’s an absolute doll,” my hostess gushed. I would have accepted her invite no matter what but the chance to finally meet The Guy Across the Street was the icing on the cake.

I recounted to my Seattle friend how I’d arrived at the party and been presented to the Guy Across the Street by an art dealer friend of mine as the most fascinating and inspiring woman she knows. Have to remember to pay her later! It turns out The Guy Across the Street is not a writer but a major record producer only stopping home for a week. He’s in the middle of recording one of my generation’s biggest rock star’s new album. Of course he is.

We were standing next to each other when dinner was announced so we sat next to each other at the table and ended up talking. And talking. Guests left the party. He fetched a choice bottle of bourbon the rock star had given him and we worked on that for a while. Still talking until the wee hours. Finally, the exhausted hostess and her husband kicked us out.

So we did what you do. We went Across the Street. It was momentarily surreal to be entering this house that I’d walked by a million times and wondered what the guy who lived inside was like. And now here I was. We sat in his studio listening to music rarities and talking until the bourbon was finished.

Even thusly inebriated, I knew it wouldn’t be the best idea to let things go too far. We were neighbors after all. People would talk. But he was really cute. And we clicked so well talking. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I mean I’ve certainly had worse ideas. My head was definitely up for staying, talking all night and letting him continue to rub my cold hands. However, as often happens in these situations, my body took over.

The bellyful of bourbon suddenly felt like an unwelcome guest. I tried deep breathing to settle it but no good. I considered going to his bathroom but the thought of him hearing me throw up what was probably hundreds of dollars worth of bourbon was unthinkable. I thought it would look pretty ungrateful at least.

“I gotta go.” I blurted.

He chivalrously drove me down the hill to my cheap-seat apartment and for a moment I flashed on Andie not wanting Blaine to drive her home in "Pretty In Pink." But that thought was quickly shoved out by my inner den mother pleading “For God’s sake, don’t yak in the expensive car.”

He stopped said car, I pecked him on the cheek, bolted for my own toilet and flushed the evening’s festivities away.

Thus I spent my Sunday recovering on the couch while he was preparing for the Grammys.

“Do you think that left a bad impression?” I asked my friend. “I mean, it was a cool night, right?”

“Such an LA night,” my Seattle friend said. “Here you might go to dinner and say ‘I sat next to a guy in flannel.’ You’re sitting next to record producers.”

“Cute record producers!” I felt compelled to amend. A specific, cute record producer who hopefully didn’t take it personally that his evening’s conversation companion suddenly bolted when things were going so pleasantly. I’ll know next time he drives by me if I get a shy wave or not.

Meanwhile, add it to my list of Hollywood Cinderella experiences. I love this town.

The Fame Game

It seems to me the whole point of being famous would be the access to other famous people. The whole scene here seems to function as a giant Match.com for celebs. An actress has a crush on an actor? She just tells her manager to set up a meeting.

Then of course there’s the working in close proximity relationships that come out of productions. The actors get so used to pretending they are in love who can say where to draw the line in real life? LA largely is about pretending after all.

I’m not going to lie. I want to make it as a writer because that’s my passion but the name recognition that comes to the top tier writers is a tantalizing carrot. Part of the reason I’m bummed my parents didn’t push my teen modeling career is that if they had I’d most likely be dating a rock star now. Of course I’d probably have a hefty coke habit and narcissistic emotional issues but that’s beside the point. How else am I going to get a rock star boyfriend?

I got back to my indie rocker roots last night with a show at the new Safari Sam’s. It featured fantastic newcomers Monsters Are Waiting with a tight, upbeat sound and a magnetic front-woman who reminded me of a cross between Chrissie Hynde and the Cranes’ vocalist. Then the main attraction: StellaStarr. They are billed as New York Pop/Punk and their sound reminds me of old Cure, old Joy Division, and new Killers. The minute singer Shawn Christensen opened his mouth, I thought “Oh rock star boyfriend!” If only. Never mind that I’m probably ten years older than he is.

Dang it, why am I not in these higher circles of fame yet? I clearly just have to go out and get famous myself. Despite personal evidence that dating famous people is a disastrous proposition, that became my plan A for the evening. Find some way to launch myself into that starry world of pretend. ASAP.

Then I thought, that would probably work for a “performer” like K-Fed, but these guys are too cool. If Lindsay Lohan sent a note to them through her manager they’d probably blow it off. Or maybe meet her for the pure anecdotal potential. But I doubt young Shawn would be wowed. I could be wrong. But watching this powerful quartet on a small stage not very separate from the audience I knew they aren’t in it for the fame but because they have to make music. And that’s what we’re here to hear.

Then I remembered a girl with a different plan. A girl who would shoulder her way up to the stage and tell a band “Hey, I’m an LA DJ. I dig your stuff. Can we chat?” Haven’t seen her around for going on fifteen years. But I have the backstage interview cassettes to prove she existed.

As I slunk out the main entrance at the end of the set it hit me that maybe fame and pretending isn’t the best plan. How about Plan B? The possibility of finding someone because of mutual admiration for each other’s passion; not fame. I think the recapturing of youthful bravado it will require will be good for me. I gotta see if I can find my old tape recorder.

Question of the Day

Why do businesses have their hold music set to radio stations that are not tuned in to an actual station? Did someone at switchboard HQ accidentally knock the dial? Or do they feel we'll be entertained trying to deciper if that's Chuck Mangione or the Tijuana Brass? Just curious.

The Secret of My Non-Success

I’ve just had one of those quintessential LA writer experiences. I visited a writer friend on the set of the network show he writes for. Because you know, really, we’re all friends. At least we pretend to be. He gave us the full treatment: headphones to listen to the dialog while we watched the monitors, intros to the show’s stars, and even dinner at the crew’s craft service table.

This writer friend is one of those effortlessly successful people. In truth he’s the friend of a writer friend of a writer friend so I didn’t know that much about him. Curious as to how he grabbed one of the brass rings of the writer world: the Staff Writer Job, I asked him more about his background.

It seems he’d always been into film but had started out with his sights on a law degree. So he got one. From a really good school. Then, while he was passing the bar he decided to apply to grad school for film. With his glowing, brainiac scholastic record, he obviously got in. He then worked as a junior lawyer while going to film school and soon he had both his JD and his MFA.

With the contacts he had in both worlds, he was able to parlay his thesis film into representation and then this job. As he told me his career history, I began to feel like a big fat poseur. No credits to my name. No fancy advanced degrees. Just producing an Indie because I’m silly enough to think I can.

They say writers are really a bitter bunch and that we hold any other writer’s success against him. As this charming Southern boy aw-shucks-ed his way though his personal triumphs I found it hard to hate him. But I managed a modicum of resentment and ire.

Sure, I mused, I’ll just run right out and get my Jurist Doctorate and bang out a few well-received short films. Then I’ll just casually pull off an MFA and voila! It’s all so clear to me now. Why didn’t I think of that before?

Watching the set up for the final scene, I clung to my wisp of belief that my path is just different that his; my lack of “esquire” after my name won’t in fact preclude me from Hollywood success. At last I reasoned that anyone that has such success in so many other areas can’t be that good of a writer. I mean you have to bleed ink to really be a writer. A sideline interest never makes a byline paycheck.

Then I watched the scene film; a tense moment between father and daughter with subtext and understated emotion. At last I found the will to genuinely dislike this man. Now I’m a real Hollywood writer.