My boyfriend Frenchy has many good qualities, but the one I'm savoring today is his ability to recognize something good and stick with it, despite the hard work and the emotional ups and downs that go hand-in-hand with something about which he is so passionate. No, I'm not talking about "us." We're somewhere in the middle of our first draft, not the third major revision. After five years of blood, sweat, and tears, Frenchy got to see his creative baby come to life this past weekend.
Frenchy's musical, which he created with his two collaborators, was performed for the first time in a workshop production, a theatrical experience that is much more than a reading, but less than a full-scale production. A musical, which I've heard described as "a play on steroids," is so complicated to create, it's the theatrical version of writing a novel. It's inspiring for me to see Frenchy's diligence, creative talents, and belief in the project finally reap the reward of having other people experience it in 3D.
Frenchy is a polisher. He sees something that has potential, but is not anywhere near perfect, and he works on it until it's really good. To him, an obstacle isn't a stop sign, it's just a rough edge that needs to be reworked until you get it right. Besides being a quality I admire, Frenchy's "patient, but persistent drive to improve" seems like a good indication that he won't bolt at the first sign of relationship trouble because he's used to constantly reworking things, making little changes here and there. I like that. And I need that -- most of all for the residue of hopefulness created by all his patient, persistent polishing.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
The Gilligan's Island of My Mind
I do not like waiting around for something to happen. Like most people, I want action. I want progress. I want efficiency. This is one of the reasons why online dating was so uncomfortable for me. And jury duty, which occupied my time recently.
Most of my day was spent waiting -- first for several hours in the jury service waiting room, then outside of a courtroom for a couple of hours. The waiting was so interminably long, I lost interest in reading and my mind started to play "Desert Island," this silly game I play whenever I'm stuck with a group of strangers for a while. The game is based on the farfetched idea that I and this particular group of strangers would have to reestablish some sort of civilization after surviving a catastrophic event that isolates us from the rest of what's left of humanity. Sort of like Gilligan's Island, but in the middle of LA.
I scan all the men in the group to try to figure out who would be my "husband" on Desert Island. The pickings are as slim as they were for Mary Ann and Ginger on Gilligan's Island. There's an olive-skinned foreign guy in his 30s sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, slowly swaying his head side to side, as he sings what can only be a funeral dirge in the land of his birth. This is America, babe. There is a time and place that is not now or here for that. Shut the f#ck up.
There are a dozen older men dressed in the standard retiree uniform of nondescript wire-framed glasses, a pastel-colored polo shirt, big-ass running shoes (usually white), and a pair of khakis two sizes too big. Bill Gates is not a fashion icon. Quit cloning his look. Well, unless you're *trying* to make yourself unattractive. Then, by all means, go ahead.
And then there's the chatty guy working the crowd with his well meant, but benignly insipid cliches belly-flopping out of his mouth every other sentence. He's in his late 50s, I would guess, and strikes me as the kind of guy who retires and becomes "The Waver" in his town. You know, that generically friendly, but inscrutable odd guy who stands on the same corner every day at the same time, robotically waving at the commuters driving to their boring jobs. That's his hobby -- waving at strangers. This guy gives me that same "what's-your-deal?" vibe.
It's surprisingly hard to "win" at Desert Island, and I more often end up in a draw, as I did a couple days ago when I gave up trying to find an adequate Desert Island husband within the juror pool. Instead, I looked around at the women among the prospective jurors, and decided I would be better off forming a platonic, supportive group with some of them, instead of trying to pair off with any of the guys.
Coincidentally, this echoes some recent conversations I've had with a few female friends, who have been thinking about what retirement will look like for them in 15 or 20 years. Some of my friends -- many of whom are single by circumstance, not choice -- extrapolate their current situation into the future and toy with the idea of living with, or very near, a group of their closest female friends when they finally retire. And even some of my married female friends joke about retiring within the immediate proximity of a circle of supportive, fun, and lively women, picturing themselves living in a women's-only dorm for retirees.
I'm not really sure what this means. At face value, it may mean single women in middle age have come to the realization that they may not ever meet Mr. (or Miss) Right, so if retirement with a romantic partner is not in the cards, what's an acceptable alternative to retiring alone? Or it may mean that middle-aged women are recognizing the increasingly important emotional support role of their female friends as they age. One thing I *am* sure of is that retirement with a guy like "The Waver" would be as unacceptable as Ginger or Mary Ann settling for Gilligan.
Most of my day was spent waiting -- first for several hours in the jury service waiting room, then outside of a courtroom for a couple of hours. The waiting was so interminably long, I lost interest in reading and my mind started to play "Desert Island," this silly game I play whenever I'm stuck with a group of strangers for a while. The game is based on the farfetched idea that I and this particular group of strangers would have to reestablish some sort of civilization after surviving a catastrophic event that isolates us from the rest of what's left of humanity. Sort of like Gilligan's Island, but in the middle of LA.
I scan all the men in the group to try to figure out who would be my "husband" on Desert Island. The pickings are as slim as they were for Mary Ann and Ginger on Gilligan's Island. There's an olive-skinned foreign guy in his 30s sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, slowly swaying his head side to side, as he sings what can only be a funeral dirge in the land of his birth. This is America, babe. There is a time and place that is not now or here for that. Shut the f#ck up.
There are a dozen older men dressed in the standard retiree uniform of nondescript wire-framed glasses, a pastel-colored polo shirt, big-ass running shoes (usually white), and a pair of khakis two sizes too big. Bill Gates is not a fashion icon. Quit cloning his look. Well, unless you're *trying* to make yourself unattractive. Then, by all means, go ahead.
And then there's the chatty guy working the crowd with his well meant, but benignly insipid cliches belly-flopping out of his mouth every other sentence. He's in his late 50s, I would guess, and strikes me as the kind of guy who retires and becomes "The Waver" in his town. You know, that generically friendly, but inscrutable odd guy who stands on the same corner every day at the same time, robotically waving at the commuters driving to their boring jobs. That's his hobby -- waving at strangers. This guy gives me that same "what's-your-deal?" vibe.
It's surprisingly hard to "win" at Desert Island, and I more often end up in a draw, as I did a couple days ago when I gave up trying to find an adequate Desert Island husband within the juror pool. Instead, I looked around at the women among the prospective jurors, and decided I would be better off forming a platonic, supportive group with some of them, instead of trying to pair off with any of the guys.
Coincidentally, this echoes some recent conversations I've had with a few female friends, who have been thinking about what retirement will look like for them in 15 or 20 years. Some of my friends -- many of whom are single by circumstance, not choice -- extrapolate their current situation into the future and toy with the idea of living with, or very near, a group of their closest female friends when they finally retire. And even some of my married female friends joke about retiring within the immediate proximity of a circle of supportive, fun, and lively women, picturing themselves living in a women's-only dorm for retirees.
I'm not really sure what this means. At face value, it may mean single women in middle age have come to the realization that they may not ever meet Mr. (or Miss) Right, so if retirement with a romantic partner is not in the cards, what's an acceptable alternative to retiring alone? Or it may mean that middle-aged women are recognizing the increasingly important emotional support role of their female friends as they age. One thing I *am* sure of is that retirement with a guy like "The Waver" would be as unacceptable as Ginger or Mary Ann settling for Gilligan.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Cruel Joke
"Smoking hot beauty is nature's way of making sure boring people get laid too. The rest of us have to be interesting," Mark Twain once wrote. Well, not really. *I* wrote that in a sardonic fit of dating pique once, and it's a joke I've made many times since.
I have this bias regarding insanely hot guys -- a bias I've held since midway through college. Hot guys have no personality. I am not referring to good-looking guys. I've known many good-looking guys with interesting minds and great personalities, and have even had the luck to date a few of them. I mean that infinitesimally small percentage of guys who are so damn hot, they never have to go out of their way to meet anyone. People just flock to the hot guy. So he's never really had to develop his personality in an interesting way. I'm talking about you, Brad Pitts of the world.
The hot guy is one of the Universe's favorite cruel jokes on us mere mortals. What could be funnier than a guy with an exquisitely perfect exterior, and a perfectly hollow interior? Before I realized the Universe was f*cking with me, I would develop a crush on some hot guy, preoccupy myself with clumsy machinations to loiter in his celestial orbit, then wait for him to notice me. After a string of failed attempts to grab his attention, my eager interest in the hot guy would turn to derogation, marinated by the sour grapes of his obvious disinterest in me. Half of my two-pronged strategy to get over Hot Crush would involve really focusing on his personality, not his abs. Perfect on the outside, Hot Crush was almost always disappointingly ordinary on the inside -- an Adonis with a doughy couch-potato brain. The other half of my "recovery" was falling for some other smoking hot guy. D'oh!
Physical beauty is a deceptive, tricky thing. When it comes to finding lasting love, there is nothing so over-hyped in value as beauty. It's not a particularly valuable asset, so much as it is a drug -- an intoxicating one that can distort your perception of others and yourself. Beauty is the fun-house mirror of dating. You can't trust it as a credible representation of reality, but it's hard not to pause and stare a while, mouth agape as your drool puddles below.
I have this bias regarding insanely hot guys -- a bias I've held since midway through college. Hot guys have no personality. I am not referring to good-looking guys. I've known many good-looking guys with interesting minds and great personalities, and have even had the luck to date a few of them. I mean that infinitesimally small percentage of guys who are so damn hot, they never have to go out of their way to meet anyone. People just flock to the hot guy. So he's never really had to develop his personality in an interesting way. I'm talking about you, Brad Pitts of the world.
The hot guy is one of the Universe's favorite cruel jokes on us mere mortals. What could be funnier than a guy with an exquisitely perfect exterior, and a perfectly hollow interior? Before I realized the Universe was f*cking with me, I would develop a crush on some hot guy, preoccupy myself with clumsy machinations to loiter in his celestial orbit, then wait for him to notice me. After a string of failed attempts to grab his attention, my eager interest in the hot guy would turn to derogation, marinated by the sour grapes of his obvious disinterest in me. Half of my two-pronged strategy to get over Hot Crush would involve really focusing on his personality, not his abs. Perfect on the outside, Hot Crush was almost always disappointingly ordinary on the inside -- an Adonis with a doughy couch-potato brain. The other half of my "recovery" was falling for some other smoking hot guy. D'oh!
Physical beauty is a deceptive, tricky thing. When it comes to finding lasting love, there is nothing so over-hyped in value as beauty. It's not a particularly valuable asset, so much as it is a drug -- an intoxicating one that can distort your perception of others and yourself. Beauty is the fun-house mirror of dating. You can't trust it as a credible representation of reality, but it's hard not to pause and stare a while, mouth agape as your drool puddles below.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
My Elusive, Fickle Friend
Confidence is to dating, what fire is to camping. Without a nice roaring campfire, you're just eating shitty food outdoors and sleeping on the ground. But with too much fire, you're cutting your vacation short because a wildfire is raging out of control. When you're dating, you must have *some* confidence, but not in excessive amounts. After all, if you can't sell yourself *to* yourself, how are you going to sell yourself to a near stranger you met online and are now meeting for the first time? Can there possibly be a more unreasonable time to expect self-confidence in a person than in the immediate aftermath of a life-changing breakup?
I have always found confidence to be so elusive, so fickle. Confidence is like that brilliant, beautiful, and utterly captivating friend -- the life of the party, the one everyone else is so eager to claim as their pal. She's so vivacious and energizing to be around, but you can never really count on her, because you can never be sure when she'll show up. Some days, confidence slums with me as I go about my daily life. Other days, confidence is whispering in Taylor Swift's ear that she has interesting things to say in a song, even though she's only 23.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my relationship with confidence.
When I was in my mid-20s, I worked at a newspaper that exclusively covered horse racing, which has always been a very male-dominated sport. One of my coworkers was a woman about a dozen years older than me who was very knowledgeable in a specific area of horse racing, and in fact, held some rather unconventional views on that subject. I felt an immediate bond with her, because she was an expert in the same area that had first captured my obsessive interest in horse racing. I marveled at her ability to unequivocally state her opinion and then back it up with her exhaustive knowledge on the subject. She did not qualify her opinions with hedging statements, nor did she even slightly budge from what she said when she was challenged by male coworkers. She startled me with the self-assured way she expressed herself. She was the first women I admired for her confidence.
Every time she got into a discussion with a coworker about her area of expertise, I observed her as if she were a wild baby animal wandering through my backyard or a celebrity getting a latte at Starbucks. I was intrigued by the mystery of how she came to possess such unwavering, but fully warranted, confidence. By default, I chalked it up to her hard work and observational brilliance, but I knew there had to be something else in the mix that I just hadn't considered. Months later I got my answer, when I, along with the entire office, was surprised to find out that she was transgendered. She had made the gender switch to female years before when she was a young adult, after having been born and raised as a boy.
So, *that* was the missing penis-shaped piece of the puzzle. F*ck! Of course! The key to having unwavering self-confidence is to be born and raised as a male. It was a rueful tongue-in-cheek life lesson I've never forgotten.
Since then, I've met many other women I admire for their confidence. I've come to realize that confidence seems to manifest itself differently in women than men. Maybe I didn't admire a woman for her confidence until I was 27 years old because I didn't *recognize* it when I saw it. Women's confidence is usually quieter, and it's often less emotional than male confidence. (Unless it's confidence about physical appearance, in which case, both women and men are neurotic emotional wrecks.) And women's confidence always comes -- always -- after a lot of hard work, the paying-your-dues kind of work that takes years.
All of this is not to imply that men have it easy when it comes to confidence either. Confidence is elusive to many people of both sexes, often as maddeningly elusive as the middle-aged lifelong bachelor or a parking space at Costco the day before Thanksgiving. Since it's essential for success in so many areas, I will continue to woo my elusive, fickle friend back into my life on a more regular basis. Maybe we'll just be Facebook friends. Maybe she'll come over to my place once a week for coffee. Or maybe, just maybe, I will ignore my needy desire for confidence and just plod ahead one step at a time until my elusive, fickle friend automatically just starts showing up every day for a quiet walk together.
I have always found confidence to be so elusive, so fickle. Confidence is like that brilliant, beautiful, and utterly captivating friend -- the life of the party, the one everyone else is so eager to claim as their pal. She's so vivacious and energizing to be around, but you can never really count on her, because you can never be sure when she'll show up. Some days, confidence slums with me as I go about my daily life. Other days, confidence is whispering in Taylor Swift's ear that she has interesting things to say in a song, even though she's only 23.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my relationship with confidence.
When I was in my mid-20s, I worked at a newspaper that exclusively covered horse racing, which has always been a very male-dominated sport. One of my coworkers was a woman about a dozen years older than me who was very knowledgeable in a specific area of horse racing, and in fact, held some rather unconventional views on that subject. I felt an immediate bond with her, because she was an expert in the same area that had first captured my obsessive interest in horse racing. I marveled at her ability to unequivocally state her opinion and then back it up with her exhaustive knowledge on the subject. She did not qualify her opinions with hedging statements, nor did she even slightly budge from what she said when she was challenged by male coworkers. She startled me with the self-assured way she expressed herself. She was the first women I admired for her confidence.
Every time she got into a discussion with a coworker about her area of expertise, I observed her as if she were a wild baby animal wandering through my backyard or a celebrity getting a latte at Starbucks. I was intrigued by the mystery of how she came to possess such unwavering, but fully warranted, confidence. By default, I chalked it up to her hard work and observational brilliance, but I knew there had to be something else in the mix that I just hadn't considered. Months later I got my answer, when I, along with the entire office, was surprised to find out that she was transgendered. She had made the gender switch to female years before when she was a young adult, after having been born and raised as a boy.
So, *that* was the missing penis-shaped piece of the puzzle. F*ck! Of course! The key to having unwavering self-confidence is to be born and raised as a male. It was a rueful tongue-in-cheek life lesson I've never forgotten.
Since then, I've met many other women I admire for their confidence. I've come to realize that confidence seems to manifest itself differently in women than men. Maybe I didn't admire a woman for her confidence until I was 27 years old because I didn't *recognize* it when I saw it. Women's confidence is usually quieter, and it's often less emotional than male confidence. (Unless it's confidence about physical appearance, in which case, both women and men are neurotic emotional wrecks.) And women's confidence always comes -- always -- after a lot of hard work, the paying-your-dues kind of work that takes years.
All of this is not to imply that men have it easy when it comes to confidence either. Confidence is elusive to many people of both sexes, often as maddeningly elusive as the middle-aged lifelong bachelor or a parking space at Costco the day before Thanksgiving. Since it's essential for success in so many areas, I will continue to woo my elusive, fickle friend back into my life on a more regular basis. Maybe we'll just be Facebook friends. Maybe she'll come over to my place once a week for coffee. Or maybe, just maybe, I will ignore my needy desire for confidence and just plod ahead one step at a time until my elusive, fickle friend automatically just starts showing up every day for a quiet walk together.
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