Enamored of an Ass

As a young writer, I identified most with Shakespeare’s romantic characters. Viola, Rosalind, Helena; the girls with pluck and moxie who had great adventures and won the handsome protagonist too. They fit with my world view of how my life would go. As I get older, I find instead, I resonate most often with Titania. Not just because she’s queen of the faeries. Of course any title helps. But because, after a too-long night lavishing her royal attention on the donkey-head-transformed Bottom the Weaver, the spell is broken and she comes to her senses, puzzled as to why on earth she would sink so low. Out of sorts, she murmurs to Oberon, her king, that “I dreamt I was enamored of an ass.”

I am not the best judge of character as last summer’s subletter debacle can attest along with countless questionable choices of boyfriends. With my Pollyanna heart in full force, I take people at face value too often buying into their knight-in-shining-armor acts until I wake up one day, rather embarrassed and a tad horrified wondering why the truth wasn’t so obvious before.

The funny artist who turned out to be a broken child, the suave producer who turned out to be a selfish and cruel lay-about, the regal cook who turned out to be an uptight asshole… Oh ‘Tania, I feel you.

It’s not just in love either. It’s friendships too. Early in film school, I became fast friends with a girl who was always up for life’s adventures. We soon agreed to carpool to campus. It actually took me months before I realized she had never once offered to drive and I was the one going twenty miles out of my way for her on a weekly basis with nary an offer of gas money. But desperate for a good girlfriend in my new Tinseltown life, I clung to her.

We excitedly planned a girls’ night out and when we walked into the bar of her choice, I recoiled. It was filled with frat boys and plastic piñatas. Not the classy, low-key wine bar I had in mind. “Isn’t this great?” she gushed. Wake up call! A mutual friend later told me that this girl had once imposed on friend to drive to another state to bail her out of jail. On the way home they made a highway fast-food pit stop and she hadn’t even offered to buy the girl’s Big Mac.

My lack of people radar extends to my business life as well. I once bought so completely into a new friend’s business consultant act I set my best friend up with her for a consultation. My friend had taken precious time off her day job to have a half-hour lunch with this woman and get key guidance for the business she was launching. Instead of being the grand business match up I had imagined, the woman kept my friend tangled up for a two hour “meeting” that was garbled by email, and text interruptions and other clients needing “just a minute of her time.” The woman was actually rude enough to field several phone calls while my friend sat there, watching the minutes tick by and imagining her boss’ face getting redder by the minute as she wondered how to explain her quadruple-time lunch absence to him. To top it off, the woman later emailed expecting payment for her pearls of wisdom which had never been part of the discussion. I was mortified that I put my friend in this position and that I had been foolish enough to think highly of the woman’s business skill in the first place.

It doesn’t stop there. I once brought another new friend into my business. Dazzled by his professional talents as well as his smile, I bought his act hook line and sinker. We all did. Well, most of us did. Several of the other guys at work grumbled about all the flash and dazzle but I put off their comments. I actually thought “I can’t be wrong again, surely.” Of course I can, and don’t call me Shirley.

I watched waitresses melt for him when we had our business meetings out and I felt twinges of jealousy as he returned their smiles. I didn’t have a personal interest in him, not in that way, but I still wanted to be the girl he was focused on. What can I say, I’m a Leo, I need the spotlight. I listened to him tell me things that in any dating scenario would have been huge red flags: past bad break ups, low opinions of women in various parts of his life, a tendency to use people. It’s OK, I thought, I’m not a girl in his life in that way. Whew.

One day, some part of his pedestal slipped. I saw his self-admitted user tendencies as draining and selfish rather than starving artist bohemian, his righteousness as insecurity rather than maturity, his unresponsiveness as flakey rather than mysterious. At a certain moment I watched him with a date and thought “thank god that’s not me.” At least he was good at his job.

Despite this relief, I found myself as angry with him as I have been with any ex, former friend or evil subletter. For weeks I stewed in my anger until my boyfriend, ever the wise one, pointed out that I was angry because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed that I defended him to people who had seen more clearly than I, embarrassed that I had been fished in yet again by someone unworthy of my heart and my esteem. Donkey heads!

Unfolding from there, I finally saw clearly why I hadn’t been able to let go of other angers. It wasn’t that I hadn’t forgiven the exes for their assorted transgressions and cruelties. It was that I hadn’t forgiven myself for having chosen them in the first place.

That realization made waking up next to my real life Oberon all the sweeter. The irony is that for all these months as I reminded myself of these past judgment failures, I subjected him to a vetting of presidential proportions. Sure, he seemed like a fabulous boyfriend but I’m probably wrong again. Better poke and prod as much as I can to be sure.

He bore it all with grace and patience; far more than I deserved. The one person I have been the most suspicious of is the one person who didn’t merit my doubts. Figures I would turn the Spanish Inquisition on the wrong guy. I’m just lucky that he stuck around through it, waited till I washed the last of those faerie dust dreams away and laughed with me at the sight of all those donkey-headed former lovers, flushed friends and current folk.

Could it be? Could Pollyanna at long last be tempered by some real clarity and on-target intuition? Dare to dream.

Charity on the Sly

Anyone who knows me knows I am huge fan of KCRW. I’m a huge fan of public radio in general and look to KCRW as the taste maker for music. I need KCRW in my day. As far as I’m concerned there is no other radio worth listening to in LA. It’s either KCRW or my iPod.

I got my start in music snobbery early. I was perfectly willing to come to blows over musical taste and once pulled over and kicked a friend out of my car for slagging one of my favorite bands. For me, musical taste is not a matter of opinion, it’s a question of right and wrong.

I honed this attitude in college radio where I worked with several of KCRW’s current players and where I developed my CD collection. Back then I’d try to explain to the frat boys that if they listened to us, they could hear the next Chili Peppers or Cure or Nirvana before they became huge. They’d be on the cutting edge. They’d have none of it. Being on the edge was too much work for them. They just wanted to have their tastes formed neatly for them by KROQ. Here I proudly state I never dated a sheep-brain frat boy.

Luckily, my man shares my tastes for the most part or we’d have ended in tears long ago. He takes it one further. When flipping across the dial, if we catch a glimpse of generic pop pablum (read: every other corporate station now that Indie 103.1 is dead), he’ll quip “Ah yes, music for people who don’t like music.” His tartness on this topic steals my heart. But he’s got a great point. Because if you really thought about what you were hearing on corporate stations, if you delved into the artistry, you’d find none. If you really listen, you couldn’t possibly be satisfied by corporate crap. It’s music for people who don’t really listen but just need something to fill their ears. Like aural junk food.

Anyway, I love my indie music and my NPR. So every six months when KCRW conducts their on-air fund drive I always sign up for as many shifts as I can fit into my overtaxed schedule. Until the day I can afford an angel membership, I feel it’s the best way I can give back. Plus you meet the coolest people. Plus it gives me a teeny nostalgia flashback of my college radio days. So much joy.

The thing is because of my overtaxed schedule, because I have so many people depending on me to run our company, I don’t feel I can tell anyone that’s what I’m doing with my day. I’m not alone.

This time around I struck up a conversation with the project manager at the phone across from mine. She furtively slipped off a cell phone call. “That was my work. As far as they know, I’m at the doctor.” Like me she was over-scheduled, trying to be great at three jobs at once, occasionally sleep and have a social life. Like me, she felt that if the people that depend on her knew she was helping instead of working they’d be pissed.

What is that? We should be proud of our charity. Heck, our work should be proud of our philanthropic spirit, not to mention our good taste in radio. Yet somehow, we both felt like kids that might get caught playing hooky. What does that say about the priorities of giving in our culture?

“Must be nice,” quips a co-worker when I slip up and mention my first shift. He heads back to his to-do list while I am left stinging from the implication that I’m not working as hard as he is. Though I am his boss, I feel the need to justify my choices, to prove that the company is not at risk if I also live my life.

In our modern life, balance seems like indulgence. If you have time to balance your life, you are not working hard enough. This feels like not seeing the forest for the trees.

Last year I wrote about the wonder of discovering the weekend again. I vowed not to work on weekends. As predicted, I have back-slid somewhat on this. That constant need to prove I’m working hard enough is a demanding master. But my co-worker is right, albeit unintentionally: taking time to do what I need for me must be nice indeed.

So, you know what, working world? I took time from my work week to help out a cause I believe in.

As I say that I feel the panic rising; “say you still got more work done than they did,” it chirps. I’m tempted but no.

That’s the lesson. I may have in fact gotten less done than you did. And I’m OK with that because I did something that helps define my life. I am reaching for balance and doing something that I believe is an important contribution for the greater good.

I may not be able to give everyone good music taste, but I can do my part to ensure good music is accessible for those of us who know it when we hear it. And even for those sheep-brains should they ever choose to change their dials. I may be years from my beloved college radio but I’m still fighting the good fight. And keeping that spirit alive helps me do a better, fulfilled job running my company. Everybody wins.

p.s. your favorite band sucks.