So what comes next when you feel you know your audience (oh hi!) and you definitely know your story?
Well, I could be oversimplifying things here but I believe...simply put, you simply
...tell your story.
Remember me mentioning my tendency to fall for one man and then gravitate towards his best friend or roommate? I realize now I may not have mentioned the roommate part. My bad. I was still finding my blog footing. Well, in the summer of 2009, it seemed I was finally done with all that nonsense. I had been dating a lot of different people in Los Angeles for about a year and a half at that point and had decided to embrace the whole "this girl knows what she wants" attitude even if what I wanted still wasn't 100% crystal clear to me then. 2008 had flown by thanks to a number of terrible Match.com dates, although one DID involve a memorable outdoor screening of The Great Muppet Caper (kudos to you, super short guy from Brentwood), a hot friend-with-benefits who suddenly got back together with his equally hot and drug-addicted ex-girlfriend (gross) right as I came to terms with the fact that I wanted more than just benefits (damn) and one random but lucky find at one of my favorite bars in Los Feliz. That last "find", however, was an actor so I knew we wouldn't last too long.
...Side note: the actor + actor equation will always without fail = either 1) too much drama to become anything long-term or 2) will consist of all physical attraction and nothing but pure competition as a sad excuse for substance. Ask any actor who's ever dated another actor. Unless one of them has already given up completely and welcomed a life of waiting tables and "hosting" $80 casting workshops for the rest of their life, the pair will never see their happily ever after. Even wealthy and fame-driven celebrities know this too, but you see, they have no one else to trust so they MUST marry within their own industry. They feel like they have to. These people also have fellow celebrity friends who just went through a first (...second...third...) divorce T minus ten seconds ago and therefore know how to give advice to the next fresh crop of actors seeking divorce from other actors.
Back to the story! By late August of 2009, I had only dated one other man besides all the aforementioned randoms in paragraph one. This man's name was Jason* and we met when I was drunk and on my way to an IHOP. In Hollywood. On my birthday. No really.
He was super tall, awkward, old school handsome and in a way, sort of creepy. If you thumb through my journals circa 1998-2002, this description of a young man would have also been known as: MY TYPE. I probably would have noticed him sooner had I not been about six birthday drinks in by then. The only thing that threw me was how direct he was right away. It wasn't what I was used to. Even the way we ended up sharing our first meal together was lovely but forced on his part. He eavesdropped on a conversation I was having with my two girlfriends as we crossed Hollywood Blvd., interrupted with a random question, then followed us into IHOP and decided to sit right down in our booth. That simply (and stalker-y). The hostess seated my friends immediately but I had beelined straight to the bathroom so had no idea that he had even walked into the restaurant once we'd left him in the crosswalk. But there he was - sitting in our IHOP booth, just staring at my friends Corinne and Monica. As soon as I approached the booth, he looked at me, grabbed the plastic red rose from the empty, white vase on the table, slid over and offered it to me with a smile. I was again, totally both creeped out and impressed, simultaneously.
This, as it turns out, was a wonderful guy. A guy who loved to say impossibly cheesy things like "I would like nothing more than to just stare at the stars with you tomorrow night if you can find the time to see me again, Kelsey." Ridiculous things like that. He'd write these sorts of notes in texts and I would spend my afternoons at work wondering what was wrong with him. Why he was full of so much romance so quickly and how strange it was to receive such sweet messages in text form. His words seemed like they'd jumped from a Dickinson page and yet there they were in a little white text bubble landing in my iPhone. It was all too much to wrap my head around.
Jason, as I discovered, was an actor but was new to the business when we met and had only just booked his first job at Universal Studios playing Norman Bates in their famous Psycho reenactment in the Studio Tour. This explained the creepy vibe. I suppose channeling Norman Bates everyday will do that to a person. He came from midwest wealth but rejected any and all handouts from his family. He aimed to prove to them, especially his father, that he was capable of more than just following the rules and getting by. He had been quite the rebel in high school - we're talking a reefer tee shirts and "the ponytail years" kind of rebel. When he moved to LA and got his own apartment, he adopted a little female dog - I can't remember the breed now. On our third date, he told me a story about her running away and how he spent every night just sitting out in front of his apartment complex in the Valley, shouting her name repeatedly. She eventually came back three days later. She apparently just strolled back up his driveway one night. I swore the story was fabricated but he promised it was true. On our fourth date, I asked Jason if we could slow things down and he promised that we would. We had been on four dates in one week - a new record for me.
I broke a lot of records that summer. Most dates in a week and quickest breakup with a guy I knew I genuinely liked. I ended it. We broke up after six weeks.
Have you ever broken up with someone you knew you could probably like forever? I didn't want to really fall for him so I broke things off. I liked just liking him and I didn't want anything to complicate that. What's strange is that I really do think I'll like him forever. Not love him - no. But when I'm 80, I'm sure I'll think: "Oh yeah! Jason. I really liked that guy." WHO THINKS THIS WAY BESIDES HEADY, POSSIBLY SELF-INVOLVED BLOGGERS AND JADED 30-SOMETHING WOMEN? Apparently, straight men think this way all the time. In fact, let's be real...the whole "cut it off while it's still great" strategy has worked for many a man and woman (hey there, Seinfeld. hey there, Fey.)
But, though I hadn't come to terms with it at first, I quickly had to face the fact that I actually didn't just break up with Jason just because I really liked him and because there may have been the potential for something meaningful there. I broke up with him because I knew I could like someone else WAY more. Though I only liked the idea of that person then...he was already a major distraction. That someone else...that one impossible dream (yup, I went there)...that one you never think will return? Well, he (Ben) messaged me on Facebook three weeks before I decided to end things with Jason.
Simple. Again, so simple. Ben wrote me the simplest of messages but a part of me knew this was a big reach for him. I received his message right as I was about to board a flight from LA to NYC. I stared at the message for what seemed like forever. Here was a man who never used Facebook - ever. His profile photo was still a picture of a show logo he designed while back at Juilliard. A little, tiny (and embarrassingly excited) part of me knew that he was reaching out to me for a very specific reason but I ignored my gut. You know that little voice that constantly reminds us all how scary success sounds and how ultimately failure is what we should actually anticipate? I stupidly listened to that voice...again. I rejected the romantic potential in this message from Ben and instead, I read it, tried to forget it and then took about a week to respond to him. So you know - the mature approach.
He had written:
"Hey Kels,
I'll be in LA for a few weeks this month - maybe longer.
Wondering if you might want to meet up for a drink.
Hope you're well.
-B"
And just like that, my next four years would become far less fulfilling and WAY more controversial than I ever could have imagined.
The part of me that still thinks of this man every other day wishes he had never written me at all. The part of me that felt the need to write my first blog entry and share with all of you that a man will ALWAYS hurt a woman and that there is nothing that will prevent this from happening unless you fear any sort of real life experience completely...well that part of me doesn't regret what he started that day. Still, I would never wish what he put me through next upon any woman.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent but only the innocent. ;)
