I promised everyone that to show that I was going to be a good girl, I wouldn't shave my legs for my most recent date.
I had to. I am starting to get a reputation with my friends that if I am feeling a physical connection with someone on a date (even someone I don't like that much), I will do things a nice girl shouldn't.
This time around in what I like to call Dating-Palooza summer edition, I am playing it differently than I have in the past.
Why?
Because I finally realized that I don't want to flounder in Maybe-ville with guys I am not sure of anymore.
Guys who I am not interested in really, but guys who I keep going out with. I keep going out with them because *they aren't all bad, or the sex is good, or because really, I don't connect with many guys; find guys who stimulate me mentally and well other areas. So when I do find that, I tend to stay longer than I should even if I don't feel the huzzah that this romantic girl needs. I get comfortable and fall into a pattern that I believe is monogamy and lingering loving feelings when it really is my desire to not have to date anymore.
I am doing things radically different now.
I am stating up front in my online dating profile what I want.
I am not responding to people I know I won't like even though they seem nice and would make nice friends.
I am not doing any of the aggressing or the sexual innuendo or the yuk yuks I usually do.
Mads proclaimed that she was proud of me.
Kate mentioned I am on my way to really getting what I want.
Ah but that is the question.
What do I want?
I have always said, I will know it when I feel it.
I still believe that.
So it is hard to put into words exactly what I want.
But I am getting really good at sussing out what I don't want.
Which makes it harder to be strong when I am feeling a little amorous with someone (who I may not really be interested in but who I may fake myself into believing I am interested in if he * (see above) is a good kisser, lover, general good guy, etc)
Last night, I DID shave my legs and had a really nice time with the latest guy.
We laughed. A lot.
And we never ran out of conversation.
The date ended with a peck on the lips and a lingering hug.
Unusually prudish of me.
But to change the events, I need to change my behavior.
He was very nice.
And I accidentally left my sweater in his car.
Which looks like a sign, but really wasn't. We were engrossed in a conversation about 70's tv shows.
And he walked me to my car. And my ego hopes he asks me out again.
But my huzzah factor isn't so sure.
I have another date with another guy next week.
Dating is hard for me because a) I am already extremely busy, b) in this heat, it is hard for me to look dewy fresh. I end up just looking dewy. Very very dewy. and c) the getting ready: The hair, the skin, the shaving, the making sure that the date me is a much better version than the regular me (at least superficially).
But if I cut out the shaving (so that I won't be tempted to go so physically so fast) it will cut out a step in my search for the huzzah.
It is the first step in my Disciplined Dating 1-2-3.
Last night, my dad and Rondie came up from San Diego to pick up Kate and me so we could go to the Magic Castle.
A childhood friend of mine is a member and we met up with her at Micelli's for dinner. Once our bellies were full of pasta and wine, we headed over the hill to the Magic Castle.
First thing I noticed when I walked in is that a guy from the internet dating site I am on is a featured magician. The reason I knew is because he had the same picture on the wall as he does on his profile. I was hoping he was performing so I could see if he was any good before I responded to him.
He wasn't performing last night.
But many people did.
And we laughed A LOT!
In fact, I kind of have a headache today because of it.
In one of the smaller rooms, Rondie starts talking to these 2 girls.
Turns out, they live on the same street in San Diego and they are only 5 houses down from each other. The magician backstage can hear this all and comes out and makes a reference to it.
"I live on that street too" he says
"Did you hear all that? Isn't that incredible?" Rondie says very casually with him even though he is on stage and she is in the audience.
"It reminds me of this one time..." he starts in
Halfway through, Rondie very loudly (still thinking they are having a dialogue) says, "What? I think this is the set up for a joke!"
My dad leans over to her and says, "It is and it is his show now."
We all kind of tittered.
Magicians came up to us in corners of the bar and performed very crafty tricks for us.
The quote of the night was (very unoriginal but true): "How are they DOING that?"
We never got the answers.
Then during one show (the big show) there weren't 5 seats together but there were 3 seats in one row and 2 seats in another.
I sat next to the guy in the one with 3 seats.
"Are these seats taken" I asked
"Now they are" he said (also very unoriginal discourse I know)
Then I am joking with him and the guys behind him. They are all apprentice magicians. They are very cute.
"We are in a work release program. We clean up real nice. Prison makes us good audience members" says one of the cute ones.
The guy next to me says,"Don't trust the guys behind you"
"Why, will they stick a shiv in my back?" I ask to the guy next to me.
Laughter.
The guy next to me says, "Oh, it sounds like you are in the business too." (I am not sure which business...I assume comedy but maybe he meant the prison business).
Then some guy standing in the aisle looks at the guy next to me and says, "I want to see you after the show. I will introduce you to him."
I look at the guy next to me, still thinking I am on a roll of funny.
"He is pissed," I say, "because you gave the seats you were saving for him, to us. And he wants to talk to you about it after. He is like, 'Asshole, why did you give up my seats. I will see you after the show.'"
Blink blink.
Okay, so what I said wasn't funny (they aren't all golden) but I think he really thought I was crazy.
He wouldn't engage me for the rest of the show.
When we left, Rondie was tired because they were driving back to San Diego and was getting antsy and wanted to leave.
She drives a large white car. It's new.
We went to valet.
We waited.
Then a large white car pulled up and Rondie said, "There it is, there's our car."
And so we went to it and opened all the doors and were ready to climb in when a very perturbed man tapped my dad on the shoulder and said, "Are you SURE that is your car?"
We did a double take and realized that there were things that didn't fit, like the flower hanging from the rear view mirror, or all the bags that were left in the back seat.
We said, "Oh my god, we have the exact car. That is so weird."
And the man said, "No way, you have an Infiniti."
And we all went, "Yes yes we have an Infiniti too....wait..no we don't. We have a Lexus."
Then we pretended it was part of the magic show.
poof!
you go home in a different car.
We waited to see if ours showed up.
Which it eventually did. And we ran to it to make sure no one did to us what we had done to the Infiniti.
Which was unnecessary because we were close to the only ones left waiting for valet.
Poof! And just like that, we left the Magic Castle.
Magic is fun.
Last night on the way to belly dance class, I noticed a man talking on his phone.
But on closer inspection, I detected that he had no phone. He was talking into his fingers, as in, I am pantomiming that I am on the phone, holding it next to my head but you and I know it's pantomime, kind of thing.
But I am not sure he knew that he was pantomiming.
I hope he is getting a good rate on his "cell" phone.
Then as I was talking to my sister in Germany last night, I got several call waitings. I looked to see who it was. No one I recognized. Several companies.
No messages.
I hung up with her.
My phone rang a total of 8 more times. It was midnight.
WTF????
I almost disconnected my phone.
But I didn't.
And as soon as I made that decision, the calls stopped.
I have weird phone karma.
This heat is making it hard to sleep.
I toss and turn and wake up several times throughout the night.
Which I normally don't do.
I am a very heavy sleeper.
And I don't know if it is the heat, or the heat-induced waking spells, but my dreams have been more vivid and so touched with reality than ever that I awake wondering where the hell I went last night.
A couple of nights ago, I dreamt that I was on a roller coaster ride (like the Matterhorn). But it wasn't a ride per se.
It was the first gondola up to the top of Mt. Everest. And I was in the first group of people to ride it.
At the bottom of the mountain, it was all festive with a tibetan (sp?) band and mountain people doing dances. And there was sparkling cider and carrots.
Once in the gondola, there was a more somber mood. I kept making jokes like, "Why would you walk it, when you can still get to the top without breaking a sweat". People gave me very mean glances. And this little man came up to me to tell me that we would be passing by corpses and skeletons of people who hadn't made it to the top while climbing the mountain.
We made it to the top in our gondola. But none of us cared once we got there. We looked around and took pictures.
We said, "Man it is like being in an airplane." We had to wear special masks so as not to feel funny from the altitude.
And then we all got back in and glided back down the mountain.
I took the dream to mean (dreams always have to MEAN something, if I haven't gotten rest) that either that without the challenges, certain gains just aren't worth it, OR, that seeing corpses really make it hard to laugh.
Last night, I dreamt that I was part of this improv/writing/dance class.
We were preparing for a recital. The night before the recital, I was at a gas station late at night (across from where the recital would be) and this security guard tried to warn me that it wasn't safe there for me all alone.
Then came two guys who were having sex in the bathroom. Which really offended the security guard. And he chased them out. Then several people from my imrov/writing/dance class came by and they knew the securiy guard and everyone was shocked that we all knew each other. Turns out the security guard is a major photographer.
Suddenly, it is the night of the recital recital.
Our teacher was my one-person show teacher. But his name was something else.
My mom was there, as were Mads, Jazzy, Ennui and Sarahgrace.
It was outdoors and it was a warm evening.
All my classmates and I were great in our performances.
Then the last guy went up and broke every rule of how to perform (this combination mentioned above improv/writing/dance) and it was spectacular. At first we held our breaths because we weren't sure this wouldn't be a disaster. He broke the 4th wall and involved all the ladies in the audience into his routine. His name was Conrad. We couldn't stop talking about it once it was over.
And no one was jealous. Everyone was very happy that it went well.
After the show, we hung out at the outside courtyard bar where we had just performed. One of the guys in our class was the bartender there so he allowed us to stay past closing time.
He looked like Ghost kind of. And he admitted that he was OCD and a hypochondriac and didn't like it when people hugged him.
But he had hugged us.
And when I pointed that out to him, he told me that he had to work very hard to do that.
We all congratulated Conrad and felt very proud of himself. Almost like he knew all along that this risk he had taken would work even though he had been told by many not to even try it. His wife was there to support him but because she was pregnant, they left pretty much after the show.
Mads brought up to one of my classmates that she had just seen an amazing photography exhibit (turns out it was the secuirty guard's) and that it made her feel scared to take pictures because she wondered if she was even any good.
That brought up the idea of choices and just going for it.
Then I brought up how (and this happened in real life but got filtered into my dream) my friend Laura from Portland suggested that I take one of my blog entries and make it into a monologue for auditions. Which in the past I would have never considered because it broke the rules and who was I to be a rule breaker. But for some reason, hearing Laura suggest that, made sense. And I told them how just like Laura's suggestion, Conrad's bold recital piece had broken EVERY rule and that there was no time to be scared with regard to creativity.
At 4:00am, the bartender/classmate, said that he needed to close up shop because he was tired.
As we were dispersing and saying good-byes, I made a very big effort not to hug him so tightly.
Whereas my mom hugged him and then kissed his chest and forehead.
I looked at him after she did that and he was wiping his face with a rag and looked a little shaken.
I woke up out of that dream in a hurry this morning.
I had emailed a friend who originally wanted to get together this Sunday for brunch. But I was supposed to be going out of town. So I wrote her last night to let her know I could still do brunch since my plans had changed.
I THOUGHT she wrote back and said, "great, I am still free. Let's meet at 10:30".
When I woke up, it was 10:00am, so I dashed out of bed with the dream still very clear in my head.
I logged on to my email to make sure that I had the correct time to meet and lo and behold...what I thought she had written was a dream too. There was no reply from her. We weren't meeting afterall.
I swear this heat is either giving me wisdom through dreams, or it's going to make me sound like a crazy person when I start calling my friends out on things I THOUGHT they said to me but didn't.
The air feels slightly cooler but very heavy right now. I want to go back to sleep but I don't think there is any rest for me there.
*sigh*
I keep thinking I smell really good.
I am sitting at my desk smelling a really nice aroma.
But I think maybe a perfume might have spilled in my purse.
And I am not sure why I would have had perfume in my purse that spilled anyway.
I am afraid to look to find out it is true and that it isn't that I smell so damn fabulous.
Last night was one of those nights where everything lined up to my advantage and birds were singing and lights twinkled, and no homeless people with Tourettes screamed me awake with shouting, and the two Trader Joes hotties that I love both helped me and smiled and flirted with me. It was a wonderful night.
I met up with my old writing buddy.
We drank wine, and ate bread and cheese (note: this is not on the weight watchers menu so I have heard - sheesh).
I caught her up on all my goings on...
The tv show pitch with fellow belly dancers,
the book with Mads,
the band with Henry that we are supposed to start,
And all the exercising:
the hula hooping that I do for 15 minutes every day at lunch on the 3rd parking level with 7 other women,
the salsa,
the belly dancing, and
the pilates (yes that is right, I said pilates...and I don't like it. It's not fun. But that shit works)
The more we talked, the more we realized that
I think she is funny.
She thinks I am funny.
And as the wine kept pouring, we discovered that we found ourselves to be hilarious. We are going to start sketch comedy writing together.
Her husband looked at us judiciously. As did the dog.
My theory is that when you are funny, you attract judicious looks.
Which if we are doing things right, we will get a lot of.
I think I am about to get busy. I mean busier.
I am excited.
Last night was so strange. Like ghosts were in my midst.
Like there was a creepiness in the air.
And I don't think it was just the heat.
So I jaunt off to Mads's after work. She made the best dinner and then we got down to some serious writing. We made some great headway on our book. I loved that the first part of the evening was people calling Mads while we were drinking wine and talking about life and such and her telling people that we were brainstorming on our book.
Which we weren't at that time.
In fact, I thought we may never get to it because we were having such a great time socializing and listening to good music.
But then, once we got focused, you couldn't stop us. Ideas came at a rapid pace. Almost like we were possessed. Or inspired.
It was crazy.
Finally, we had to stop because we needed to get some of the stuff organized before we could move forward. Plus my hand was cramping from such speed writing (the downside of typing everything I suppose).
So I left feeling pretty good about what we had accomplished.
As I went to my car, I had an eerie feeling.
But no one was around.
Then this nicely dressed woman looking very normal comes up to my car and was in hysterics (where not 5 seconds before she looked normal and calm). She wanted me to call my minister for a voucher for a motel and when I told her I didn't have a minister, she wanted to give her a dollar. Normally, I wouldn't hesitate when I see someone seem so distraught but there was such a creepy vibe and so when I told her that I didn't have anything (which to be fair, I really only had a dollar left in my wallet), she asked me to pray for her. Which I told her I would. Once I u-turned it to get back towards home, I noticed her and she was walking and talking to people normally again and without any crying and hysterics.
It jangled my nerves because my guilt was fighting with my intuition of creep factor acknowledgement.
Then I was on Vine and noticed that there were two sportscars waiting to get into traffic.
Part of me thought that they would try and race and were waiting for traffic to die down.
But at the next light, I noticed that they weren't racing but there were 20 Lotus cars all in a row just driving through the night in Hollywood.
Other weird shit happened too but I was so tired. I was just praying to make it home before anything weirder happened.
Then just as I was parking at my home I noticed this tall figure dressed in black walking back and forth in front of my building.
She had long black hair, and was 6 feet tall and her eyes almost seemed black. She didn't even look at anything...just kept her eyes staring straight ahead. Made me think of the Elliot Smith lyrics to Waltz #2:
"she appears composed, so she is, i suppose
who can really tell?
she shows no emotion at all
stares into space like a dead china doll"
That was this girl.
I was revisited by the creep factor.
I normally don't get that with women late at night on the streets. I am usually happy to see another woman.
But just as I took a breath to make my way to my front door, I noticed a large crowd coming out of my neighbor's apartment.
It was his birthday and they were all celebrating.
Nicest guy in the world. He is a record producer and he is really cool.
And at that moment, I believed even more in his coolness since his friends came out at the perfect moment to break my nerves up.
With security, I looked down the street at the woman in black and instead of her doing her usual turn to complete the act of walking to and fro in front of a building, she kept walking down the street into the night.
Once inside, I breathed a sigh. Then I heard shouting outside.
I looked out the window to see what all the hubbub was about and noticed that no one was there.
The whole evening had a ghost-like quality to it.
No one was really there or really as they appeared. Everyone anxiety levels were raised, or maybe just my own.
Maybe Hollywood's ghosts were out and about last night.
And maybe that were engaging me to notice them.
Thank god it didn't affect how I slept. I crashed on my bed so hard that I wondered if maybe the whole evening hadn't already been a dream.
Hard to tell.
Last night I went to the Fabulous Rachael's house-cooling party (she and her roommate are moving).
It was a really nice evening. Meeting new people.
At one point, I walked into the dining room and met 3 brand new people and seriously, every conversation topic they started, I was connected to in some way.
Them: you know...portland
Me: Get out, I am from Portland
Them: Oh that is my cat, she is a tortoise point long haired siamesese
Me: That is exactly the cat I have...someone recently told me that that wasn't a real breed and here you have the same cat and she looks like mine but with better markings
Them: You know blah blah Toronto
Me: My family is in Toronto
Them: You know being alive...
Me: Get out, I am alive...
Okay that last one wasn't true but they seriously started laughing thinking I was making this shit up.
It was funny.
Beautiful house, nice people, saw Claire and Henry and now....
Henry and I are starting a band.
He was waiting for my drumming to take off. Which it didn't.
Now he is going to teach me bass and I will be the lead singer.
Henry is so cool.
Especially since he is letting me be the lead singer.
There are other reasons, but that is the main one in my mind right now.
And we met Steve who is a cellist. He may or may not be in the band.
Claire will start wearing "I'm with the band" t-shirts until we come up with a name.
It took me 3 months to watch it because it is 3 hours long, a strange subject matter and it is in english and german.
I finally watched "The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl". She was the filmmaker that made propaganda films for Hitler. She was never a Nazi but she was friends with him sort of. She was first and foremost an artist and that is where her focus always was...making the perfect art piece.
When this documentary was made about her, she was 90 years old and has a boyfriend 40 years her junior and was one of the oldest scuba divers in the world.
Some of the techniques she created so many years ago are a staple in today's filmmaking. She was a pioneer but she was also one of the most hated filmmakers. It was an interesting watch because she is such a complex lady and the subject is complex because for her it was always about art rather than politics. Well I mean, that is if you believer her. Which many didn't. Who knows if she was really that ignorant of what was happening around her with regards to Hitler's politics or if it is what she chooses to remember. I mean, she seemed to be truthful about things in the film that you would never want to say if you were trying to clear your name so maybe what she was saying was true.
She was a pistol too.
She argues with the fillmaker making the documentary about her lighting and such. And she treats her boyfriend like a child criticizing all his filming abilities.
In the past few decades, she has gone to Africa to live with and take photos and film of the Nuba.
And still she is demonized about her subject matter which couldn't be further from making Nazi propaganda films or her art-ish filming of the 1936 Olympics. The film about her poses a lot of ethical questions about the artist's responsibility towards the subject matter.
She died at 101 years old. Which is a long time to live if you are a perfectionist artist who is villified no matter what you do.
It was thought provoking. If also informative in many ways.
No matter what she did and if she was rightly or wrongly accused of things, I want to look as good as she did and be as physically able as she is when I am 70, let alone 101. Just, you know...without being demonized if possible.
And then I watched "Hustle and Flow", which I loved.
It is strange when I can't remember what is in my netflix queue and then I receive all these various types of films.
Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I don't. This weekend, I liked it.
I was once visiting my dad in Irvine when I lived in Oregon.
His 3rd wife knew someone who knew someone who had a lot of tickets to see Yo Yo Ma at the Hollywood Bowl.
I went with her. We drove to her friend's house in Studio City and then we drove to the casting director's house near the Bowl. She held the tickets and had a very exact science to picnicking at the Bowl.
It was great. And I remember at the time wanting to have a life where I lived in LA and met up with friends after work in the summer to go to the Bowl.
And eventually I moved down here. And I have gone to Bowl concerts in the summer. And they made me happy. But something was missing. Maybe my expectations were too high. I have and will always enjoy concerts there but the idea of what I thought I would experience always fell short.
Until yesterday...
After a long day of work yesterday with new girlboss acting eerily similar to my mom (whose behavior I am still having a knee jerk reaction of sensitivity to), I was looking forward to the evening plans.
It was Jazzy and Zappy's birthdays yesterday. And we had tickets to the Hollywood Bowl to see the Shins and Belle and Sebastian.
It was a warm summer evening, complete with the traffic that makes you feel like the artful dodger as you wind your car to a perfect parking spot on a street that hasn't been closed off yet. I wasn't so lucky last night, so I parked in stacked parking.
The people-watching at the Main Gate while I waited for Mads to bring my ticket was fun. I saw soooo many people I knew while standing there. Once Mads arrived, we joked that all the hipsters of LA were at this concert.
We got our seats. We were a large group of maybe 17 people but we were seated in different spots.
From our seats, I could see the landmarks of LA that make me the happiest (aside from the Capitol Records building): the Observatory all lit up and looking splendid, the Hollywood Sign and the Hollywood Bowl stage.
I was uber content.
The wine started flowing.
Tamara brought a lot of delicious food.
The Shins were great.
And Belle and Sebastian was AWESOME! The energy, the sound with the Philharmonic, the temperature, the crowd...it was one of the best concerts I have gone to, where I was totally relaxed, having a ball and just feeling good to be there.
And I got to see Evren and Jax yet again!
And BoyPisces and his man Sal. And Frenchiegal (with whom I had a brief deep conversation in between songs).
Jazzy and Zappy looked really pretty. Then after the concert when everyone was leaving, Tamara brought out cupcakes and we sang happy birthday. When we looked around, so many of the concert goers were standing there singing along. It was so funny. Mads passed out cupcakes to anyone that was still in their seats.
It is weird when you have an idea of the kind of life you want and then you realize one day that you may have just achieved it. At least certain moments of it. And if life is really only made up of moments, I hope more of them are like last night.
This has been quite a busy time.
For the past month and a half, I have been going at a rapid pace of birthdays, memorials, good-byes and such.
But in the past week, I have been going at warp speed.
My mom came into town on Thursday evening and leaves Wednesday.
I love my mom.
But there is a reason I moved back to California while she stayed in Oregon.
We are so similar that it breeds a lot of huffing and puffing, irritation and impatience from both of us with each other.
It is always a good mirror to see my behavior and how I need to change it so that I don't act like she does.
It is a good lesson but it is hard to swallow seeing myself that way.
But aside from that, this weekend has been highly fun.
Thursday night, I wisked my mom from the airport to Chinatown for Ennui's birthday party. There were a few tv stars in attendance and it was a wonderful way to show my mom a hollywood party.
Evren, Mads and Jazzy were there too and we had fun dancing.
It was the start of what I will call, My Dancing-like-crazy weekend.
Friday, my childhood friend Leigh, got married. It was a wonderful ceremony and the reception was a lot of fun. The music, the food, the company the ocean view were all part of what made the evening magic.
Saturday, we went to visit my mom's best friend for breakfast and then on to a BBQ where we saw more childhood friends from the old Venice hood.
Sunday, my cousin got married. It was a family reunion of the highest degree. Several family members got together for the first time in 25 years. So many adults when last I saw children. Some of them even had children now.
I sat at the fun table while my mom sat with all her peers at another fun table. She got to catch up and I got to dance and laugh a lot with my cousins.
Also a great wedding with all the fun faldera.
Today, we went to my mom's brother's home at the beach. His wife made the most amazing dinner and we celebrated my mom's birthday early. The waves crashing and the sun setting while we drank wine and had amazing coversation set the tone for one of the most comfortable, relaxing visits of the weekend.
My uncle is 71 years old and looks like he is 57 or something. His brain is amazing.
My friends know that I do not like old people. I am not of the opinion that they have amazing stories. I am of the opinion that unless they are good story tellers, they are just people with longer boring stories. I don't think that age necessarily brings wisdom. It can. It just is not automatic for me. My uncle doesn't strike me as what I would term "old", but if his mind stays the way it is now, I will always line up to listen to what he has to say. He is so interesting and doesn't come off as preachy. He just makes conversation and it makes you realize you are learning something.
He was trying to help me figure out what to do to make money. And land a rich man.
It was a really nice visit and I feel very calm.
Tomorrow is 4th of July. Also my mom's birthday. Mads and her family are making a dinner-fest for my mom. It will be so much fun.
But before that, we are headed to visit some of the relatives we saw at the second wedding again which will be a lot of fun.
This weekend has been awesome at times and trying at times. I am grateful for all the wonderful people that my mom and I have seen. I am grateful for my life and all the family and friends that constantly remind me of the love that is out there. I am grateful that my mom has come to visit and that we have had a lot of laughs.
But mostly, I am grateful for the fact that I love my life and can't wait to get back into the stream of it, leaving behind some amazing memories.