The Shouting Reflex

My long-standing fandom of Duran Duran is well documented. We could call it a twenty-two year obsession. But that makes me sound…obsessive. John, the handsome bass player, was always my favorite. In the early 90s, I had a brief crush transference to the singer, Simon. By the time I got my dog, I had seen the light and ceded the number one spot in my heart to John once again. However, 'Simon' makes a much better pet name than 'John' so my giant pooch became Simon Le Dog.

Here in LA, one of my favorite nuggets of my Hollywood life is that that I have a friend that knows John Taylor. I’m tickled by that chance, however remote, that I might meet him as a regular person one day. It’s the kind of thing any fan dreams of. In fact, my friend got us back stage and introduced me a few years back but he was so adrenalized from performing I’m sure I made no impression. Since then, I’ve run into him once in public and froze. I promised myself the next time, I’d say something normal and nonchalant to him like ‘hey, I’m so-and-so’s friend. I met you…’ thus undoubtedly legitimizing my sanity in his mind.

This in fact was the topic of discussion a few weeks ago as I hiked a well-known celebrity-spotting LA hiking trail with two girlfriends and Simon Le Dog. I prattled on and on about my back stage meeting, how I knew he lived quite near to where we were and I was hoping my friend would invite me to a brunch where he’d be soon so I might get to meet him as a person and not a back-stage fan. Basically, I monopolized the conversation with “John Taylor this and John Taylor that and blah blah blah John Taylor” in a monologue befitting a Tiger Beat reader.

As we descended the trail, a tall man with rock-star hair and angular good looks passed us downhill. My friend paused my John-a-thon with:

“Um, Heidi, I think that was him.”

I looked more closely and gasped. Yes, the Man himself had just passed us with me blathering on about him. Certainly he’d heard his name. Certainly he’d rolled his eyes in recognition of my complete ridiculousness. Now what? I’d promised myself I’d talk to him in a non-stalker-like way at our next encounter and here it was; our next encounter. But how much had he heard? Was this my last chance? What would he think if I disturbed him on the trail? These questions raced through my head as John reached the bottom of the trail ahead of us and turned to loop back up.

Now he was coming right for me. I would actually be able to touch him in less than thirty seconds. How should I get his attention? How could I prove I’m not a crazy fan? And…where the heck was my dog?

In all the excitement, my dog who always sticks to me like glue had wandered off. Now I was a crazy stalker and a bad dog mom. As John passed me again, I decided my pet parenting took precedence and my stalking would have to wait.

So I started screaming “Simon! Simon! Come back! Simon!”

I swear I saw John flick a look back over his shoulder. It said: Not only is she a crazy nutter, she got me mixed up with my band-mate. Precisely the impression I was going for.

And so went my third encounter with the man I’ve loved since age eleven. I think our relationship is going well, don’t you? I also think I’ll go ahead and wait until my friend plans that long-promised brunch before I attempt to make any impression on him in a public place again. Someday we’ll laugh about this.

“Ah that was you, yes, that was funny,” he’ll purr in his Birmingham accent.

We’ll relate as two normal people and he’ll finally know I’m not out of my gourd or possibly dangerous to him. Yes, I'm a competely and totally normal person who occasionally likes to relive 1984. And he'll be fine with that. Save a prayer.

Breaking Molds

I was counseling a friend this week on letting go of a guy who wronged her. Pissed about how he had treated her I came on strong. “You want a guy who will adore YOU. Jesus, if he’s sleeping with her he doesn’t care about honoring your feelings.” It came out more righteous than I had intended.

She sniffled and fixed me in a stare. “Like you’ve never gotten fished in.”

“Oh, I’ve been fished in. I’ve sold out way worse.” And I proceeded to share with her how much I’ve managed to overlook, forgive or just plain ignore.

“We sacrifice for love, right?” She blew her nose.

I passed her another cookie from the box. “There is a line between sacrifice as in ‘I’ll give him my last chocolate chip cookie’ and sacrifice as in ‘throw the virgin in the volcano.’”

Every time, the hurt comes down to me not standing up for me. Kind of like the old game where my brother would grab my arm and swat me with my own hand taunting “Why are you hitting yourself? Heidi, why are you hitting yourself?” While I struggled to free my hand. Why indeed. Self-loathing is human nature.

When I first moved here, I dated a wannabe TV producer. With no discernable talents, Billy had floated around the TV world for several years but never made any money that I saw. Basically, this guy had convinced his parents to give him his inheritance early and lived in a swank three-bedroom apartment by himself. He had even connived his way into a parent-paid-for Chevy Tahoe.

“Yeah, this is really the right car for me.” He murmured, settling back into the leather.

Even in my star-struckness I remember thinking “but what did you do to earn it?”

I’d get home after a long day excited to tell him about a new work development. I’d ask him how his day was and he’d launch into, and I kid you not, a three-hour monologue about his day I came to call “The Billy Show.” Every single day. Never once in the three month course of our relationship did he ask about my day. And I kept dating him.

I ended up writing his treatments for him and prepping his meetings all the while wondering why he continually described his perfect woman in Jenny McCarthy terms. In case you’re wondering, I look nothing like Jenny McCarthy. He blithely informed me that he usually dated models but he liked me OK. And I kept dating him.

He went to a big TV conference and later told me he’d shared a hotel room there with an ex-girlfriend but nothing happened. But he might have been open to it if she’d been interested. And I kept dating him.

And my personal favorite: he ever-so-affectionately nick-named me “Chubby.” And I KEPT DATING HIM.

I kept dating him after he’d basically told me I wasn’t good enough for him, pretty enough, skinny enough, or interesting enough. The thing was I had been good enough when we met but I allowed myself to become a lesser woman. I had become so afraid of losing this prize of a man that I crept around his house like a skittish mouse.

“I can’t stand how passive you’ve become.” He moaned one afternoon.

And he was right. He wanted a strong woman. And where the heck had the strong woman I was when I met him gone? I was more concerned with fitting into the tiny space he left for me in his life than with being myself. The concept of keeping an eye on what I wanted while in a relationship was foreign to me.

One evening, I met a new guy at a friend’s birthday. He called me the next day and asked how my day was. Something clicked. I dug my strength out of the box in the attic and I dumped Billy on his arrogant ass. He was actually shocked.

“But I was just getting used to your body,” he whined.

“I’m not something to get used to,” I flared, “I’m something to cherish.”

Billy is a hilariously ridiculous chapter in my romantic past. But he’s also a painfully embarrassing lesson for me. I can’t believe I sold myself out like that. In the years I’ve lived here, I’ve come into my own and my tolerance for bullshit has plummeted. I recently kicked a new candidate to the curb when he couldn’t be bothered to open the door for me. You will treat me with respect and that’s all there is to it. Because I treat myself with respect. Finally. I would never date a Billy now. I don’t want my sad girlfriend to date anymore Billies either.

Last week I had dinner with good friends who are a married couple. His eyes lit up as he talked about seeing his wife for the first time and knowing he wanted her. I hand my friend another tissue and tell her he’s out there for both of us, that guy who will light up for us. But it’s up to us to stand up and be the kind of woman that would accept nothing less than a man like that.

“OK. But can we just sit today?” My friend blows her nose and settles back into the couch.

I pass her another chocolate chip cookie and we cookie-toast: no more dating broken boys, no more being weak women. If you toast along at home be sure to wipe the cookie crumbs off your screen.

The Last Race I Swam

Ah, the things that remind us of summers past. The smell of jasmine blossoms and chlorine, the sound of kids laughing. The rattle of acute bronchitis.

I sit here amidst tissues and chicken soup, hacking up a lung and remembering. When I was a kid, without fail, I would come down with bronchitis every August. Right at the end of swim season. Right during all the big important swim meets. I’d been a swimmer as long as I could remember. I’ve always been much more graceful at swimming that at, say, walking. Mom had been a lake life guard and synchro swimmer as had her mom before her. We were water people. Mom started me on the team when I was five.

In my thirteen-year tenure on the Flatirons Country Club Gators, I had a respectable career. Nothing spectacular. I wasn’t the one they talked about in the same breath as ‘Olympic grooming.’ That was my friend and rival, Julie. Julie swam like her mother had shagged a salmon. The summer in question, we were gawky teens and unfortunately for her, she looked like her mother had shagged a salmon. I wasn’t the top fish but at least I was cute and on a city level, I could kick some swimmer ass to be sure.

It was one of those transition years when I was at the top of my age category. A nice growth spurt had given me a great reach advantage. The next year, I’d be at the bottom of the crème de la crème: the 15-18s. This year - as a big 14 in the 13-14s - was my year to shine. As an angry goth teen, it was my year to bitch. The first of many such years, actually. I hated everything and everyone and swimming was my only normal kid outlet. Much as I secretly liked being part of something, swimming was good too because your head was underwater and you didn’t have to talk to anyone.

In the preliminary meets that summer, I’d qualified in everything I swam. I was the anchor on both our Freestyle and Medley Relay teams. I could swim those races in my sleep. I was more proud of my qualification for the 200 Individual Medley, a crucible event for me I’d never had the stamina for as a smaller swimmer. And proudest yet of my 100 Breast Stroke. We had a new coach that year and she’d brought in the newest Olympic techniques for breast stroke. She’d worked with me all summer and mine was one of the best races in the city. Maybe the best, we were about to find out when all thirteen teams in the league met at Finals.

And then, with annoying Swiss watch precision, my bronchitis hit. I slept sitting up in an attempt to keep my lungs clear. I rested and subjected myself to all manner of home cures. Looking back, I can’t tell you why actual medicine never seems to have entered the picture but in any case, the day of the Finals Meet loomed and I had a hamster wheel lodged in my chest.

“No really, listen!” I’d tell friends. Then I’d inhale rapidly and you could actually hear the ‘tick tick tick’ as though a rodent were running around in my lungs. Fun with mucus. That was about the only fun of it though as I watched my hard-won dreams of pool stardom slip from my grasp.

The Finals arrived and though the hamster wheel was firmly in place, I felt physically better. Maybe I could swim. On limited strength though, the question was: what event? My relay teams couldn’t compete without me since there were only four of us 13-14s. No back-up swimmers. But my chances at personal glory were here now.

In fact, I’d never swim breaststroke again after that year. The next year I joined my high school rowing team and subsequently blew my knees out. They’d never again be capable of the strenuous frog kick essential for Breaststroke. But I didn’t know that at the time. I was determined to be a City Champ for once in my life.

The meet started as they do with the Medley Relay. As usual, our team flew and we took first. Having shown a glimmer of the Breaststroke to come, I crawled back to the team tent hacked away, waiting for my glory races, conserving energy. My coach came to me and we assessed the rest of the day. I didn’t have the strength to swim all three races. Something had to give. I wasn’t highly ranked for the 200 IM so we canned that. That left the 100 Breast and personal glory or the Free Relay which my team wouldn’t be able to enter without me. Crap. I was a self-centered, shoe-gazer teen dressed all in black when not at the pool. Don’t face me with a choice between being helpful and being out for me!

The mothers of the 8-and-Unders have always been super annoying. They don’t yet get that this is a lifestyle for us; swimming. Not just a day care as it often is for them at this first stage. Many of us harbored dreams of Olympic gold and we saw such ignorant parental interferences were outrageous. The following year they would manage to rally together and fire the best coach we’d ever had because he didn’t coddle their kids with enough play time. ‘Excuse me? We’re here to swim, lady,’ we teens raged.

One of these busy body moms marched over to the tent and stood looming with her hands on her hips. No doubt to spur me on to glory - tell me I could swim both races and do wonderfully - how much her little daughter looked up to me and so forth.

“I think it is so selfish of you to be here, spreading your germs on everyone. You should just go home.”

It was one of those moments where everything gets slow and clear. Were I then the woman I am now I would have simply raised myself up to full height and flogged her with her Talbot’s pearls. Instead I stared at her from my sleeping bag and growled.

“Lady, I’m here so your kid can be on a winning team. You should be thanking me.”

Score one for petulant teenagers!

And just like that, I’d made the point to myself. I called my coach over and told her to scratch me from the Breaststroke. I was there for my team and I would swim the relay.

I’d like to say we swept the race and my sacrifice was for good of all of us. Honestly, I can’t remember. I think we came in fourth. But the fact that we’d placed gave our team enough over-all points to place us above our closest rival team at the end of the meet. More importantly, I’d managed to leak a tiny pink light of humanity through my teen-bitch shell. It would be years before I could look back on my goth-wear and laugh. Years before I wouldn’t face my dad with a “I’m serious! Stop laughing at my clothes! You never understand anything about me. Everything sucks and then you die, don’t you get it? Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!”

Ah teens. Can’t wait to have my own. I’m sure my parents can’t wait to visit that revenge upon me too. One thing’s for sure, they’ll be swimmers. I hope they wear black, stand up to adults, and occasionally do something for the team.

The funny thing I’d later learn about that summer is that no one remembers the small sacrifices. Good or bad. I’m sure no one but me remembers I gave up what would prove to be my only chance at City Gold for the good of the team. Just like no one remembers whether you took your vacation or worked like a dog. So it all comes down to doing the right thing even though you’ll be the only one who’ll care. Do the thing you’ll feel good about later. Give back. Take that extra vacation. Sitting here coughing away, I’m proud I swam that relay. And I’m the only one who knows. Me and my lung hamster wheel.

Thought for the Day

The world will daily give you reasons to dispair and lose faith in humanity. Your job as a human soul is to find the beauty and goodness in things and people despite that. That is faith.