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I have been thinking of names for my unborn child since I was five years old. My tastes have evolved since then, so it’s no longer Olive or Pickle: I have become more of a fan of names that won’t get my child beat up after school, because if that sort of thing is hereditary, the kid already has the deck stacked against him. For years I daydreamed about having a brooding, big-nosed, green eyed kid with my ex-boyfriend, the guy I dated for sixteen years, but I lost many hard-fought battles over the subject, and ended up in Planned Parenthood more than once. They should have a frequent customer card there, some sort of points/reward system for girls with no backbone. The last time I was in Planned Parenthood I went with the East Coast Sarah, and she was pregnant too: we had co-abortions, which were kind of like a couples massage but without the soothing feeling, soft music and pleasing aroma. I hadn’t planned on having that abortion, in fact I had told my family and my Boss that I was having a kid, with my boyfriend of 8 years, and that we were very happy about it. But in truth my boyfriend wasn’t ready for a child and in the end I couldn’t saddle him with any more problems than I already had. Dating me was hard enough. They screwed it up though, the nice folks at Planned Parenthood, and I had flown home to Ohio for a Black Tie Dinner in honor of my Dad, and was sitting at a fancy table with most of my brothers and sisters, all dressed up, when I realized something was wrong. The whole thing was a nightmare, and today as I sit at my desk staring at the pregnancy test I just bought at the pharmacy, I am hoping I never have to go through anything like that again.
There should be a group you can join on Facebook that counsels you about how to break the news to a guy you have only been dating a few months, someone who has adamantly declared he doesn’t want to be in a relationship, that you might be pregnant. The group could give you helpful hints, like how to open the conversation, and how to protect the breakable items in your apartment from being thrown against a wall. Mostly I would like to know how to keep him around afterwards, because I am about to lose my job and I hate change, so I don’t think I could take losing my non-boyfriend too.
When I was in Junior High School in Massachusetts, I had a fight scheduled with another girl almost every day after school. Girls would constantly ask me to fight them, I guess it was because I was really small but I had a big mouth. I only won one of these fights, and that was because I hit a girl in the mouth who had braces and she started bleeding and stopped fighting me. All of the Tough Girls at that school hated me, mostly because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut during class; they slashed the tires on my Mom’s car when she came to see me play the drums in a band concert and I couldn’t walk to the local library after school without fearing for my life. I used to hide on the path between the school and the library until all the Tough Girls left for the day, and I remember distinctly one day a tall girl who was about 16 and still in the eighth grade chasing me down the street while wheeling a baby carriage, cursing at me with a lit cigarette in her hand. It was a rough town, a small factory town, and not the actual town my family lived in, as I lived in a town too small to have a Junior High School. We moved away after my eighth grade year and I came back once to visit my best friend and go to the Annual Town Fair. Even though years had passed, I got followed around that day by some Tough Girl still angry at me for wise cracking at her during Science Class.
I am an adult now, and no longer get into fist fights with girls, but much of the conflict in my life still stems from my Big Mouth, and Hollywood is a lot like Junior High School. Every day lately, at some point, I start to get the same queasy feeling I got when I was younger and the end of the school day approached: the feeling that sometime later that day, I was going to get the crap beat out of me. Only one spunky Iranian girl at work has the guts to talk to me, everyone else has been instructed not to speak to me because my Big Boss is afraid I will sue the company for firing me for having Multiple Sclerosis. I had no intention of suing when this first happened, I was happy to learn I still had a job, but the New Producing Partner is now on a mission to make my life so miserable I will quit, and once again I am being called out to the playground to fight someone twice my size.
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D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I have not called in sick to work in years, maybe ever, but two weeks ago I was having a bad day, my left arm has been going numb for a while now, it crawls all the way up my cheek and lasts for a few minutes, and I finally just called in sick. The day before I called in sick I was in a meeting with my Boss and a Super Star singer/actress and my arm fell asleep and creeped up the side of my face. The Singer was nice about it, but I figured maybe I should rest, see a doctor, and admit I am sometimes sick for just one day. I am sitting at the doctor with an IV of steroids in my arm when my Boss’ new producing partner calls my cell phone. She has only been at our company for three weeks, and her voice has a phony ring of concern as she asks me if maybe in light of my recent flare-up of Multiple Sclerosis I should consider taking some time off. By time off, she goes on to say, she means a few months, and then I should get a job somewhere else. I can barely lift my head from the pillow in the hospital room as I gasp, “Are you firing me?” She sighs, as if this is the hardest thing she has ever had to do. “I just don’t think you can handle this job,” she says faux-sadly.
There is a flurry of activity that includes my Mother, who is a right-wing politician, calling my Boss and demanding to know if her daughter just got fired for having Multiple Sclerosis, and a letter being delivered to my hospital bed signed by no less than eight lawyers calling the whole event a “mistake”. Hospital beds, lawyers, concerned mothers, panicked Bosses, none of this is familiar territory for me and my prevailing thought is what could I have done to make this Producer hate me so much? I will admit I don’t like her much, but I didn’t know she knew that, and I was just getting used to having a job again, a real Hollywood job with buck slips and business cards and my own little office. Even though my Boss hired me back as soon as I called to tell him what happened, I have a feeling nothing is ever going to be the same for me at this job again.
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D-GIRL was a development girl in Hollywood and New York City for many years. While finding projects for actors, directors and producers to make into movies, she amassed a number of salacious tales of questionable morality that became an internet column entitled “D-Girl Diary.” She left show business to become a full-time writer in 2001.
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I am feeling very overwhelmed lately with a sudden influx of job/writing career/relationship success, its hard to keep it all straight but I am certain the Private Investigator my insurance company has sent to keep an eye on me will sort it all out. I don’t think he has much else to do except sit out front of my apartment building behind his tinted windows watching my stream of male admirers enter and exit, and I wonder if they will cancel my insurance policy because I am suddenly so popular. I suppose they are casing the joint to find out if I actually have Multiple Sclerosis, and I want to knock on the guy’s window and tell him I would gladly give up my insurance policy not to have this disease, and to be able to walk without wobbling for two days in a row.
Meanwhile my Boss has been keeping an eye on me to make sure I am doing my job and that all my recent success has not made me lazy, and I am extra vigilant via the internet about making sure my non-boyfriend is not non-committing to any girl he has met on his travels. And finally, my nemesis Lorna McSlutchen has taken to tapping into my emails to also see if I am doing my job, we are all watching each other closely, and it’s frankly keeping me up at night. There is a nice guy who worked at this company right before I left who reads my Internet Column, and he now works for a notorious book publisher with a past even more checkered than mine, and he has brought her my work and they are offering me a small book deal. I should smack down a copy of my manuscript as soon as I finish it right on the windshield of the Private Investigator’s car, it will tell him everything he needs to know about me.
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(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I have never had a baby, but I wrote a script once. I checked myself into a room at the Standard Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles to finish it, and handed the script to my best friend and Literary Manager Sarah when I was done. In my life, I have checked into various establishments before for help: hotels and hospitals, voluntarily and otherwise, but the Standard has far superior food to them all. I don’t know how to write anything that’s not about me, so I wrote a script called Forever Yours about a girl who stalks all her boyfriends, and it never went out as a spec because Sarah’s boss told me the main character was too creepy. I think the word stalker gets overused in modern lexicology: to be honest I don’t see what’s wrong with spending every second with someone once you know you love them. My new almost-boyfriend the Computer Guy/Thespian does not, however, subscribe to this philosophy and is going on a trip to India for a month for work. He is clearly not completely aware of my excruciating abandonment issues; meaning, I make it excruciating for anyone who tries to abandon me. I want to press my face up against the glass of his airplane to say my final Goodbye to him, but FAA regulations preclude this, so I am forced to make a colorful sign and stand woefully at the window of the divider between the main terminal and the gates at LAX while he endeavors to make his way to his airplane. The sign says “Don’t Forget Me” but I think it would be difficult for anyone to forget me, especially since I deliberately spilled an entire bottle of my Chanel perfume into his suitcase this morning.
We have only been dating a month, but I have had three vodka-Red Bulls, so I text him that I love him as soon as he is boarding his plane. It’s amazing how nervous laughter actually does translate in text message form, because his response is “love ya too babe” which, of course, commits to nothing. I head home immediately to begin an onslaught of email missives the likes of such this guy has never seen before. Forever yours, don’t forget me. Love, D-Girl. He has no chance, this docile, young studious lad. He has encountered a force bigger than himself and decisions have been made about his life far into the future. He should not fight it and just enjoy the ride. I’ve heard one may lose weight in India because the food goes right through you, so for this reason and my aforementioned stalker mentality I decide to look up flights to India and possibly join my new friend in a faraway land that hopefully has forgiving lighting and no laws against the aggressive pursuit of true love.
I’ve always been poor and only recently has that started to really bother me. The summer after my Senior Year in High School, I moved home from Ohio to Keene, New Hampshire because my Dad had married one of his students and they wanted the apartment to themselves. I worked two jobs that summer, at Papa Gino’s and at Friendly’s. I wore polyester uniforms for both jobs, and rode a bicycle to work. I saved up almost 500 dollars to bring to college with me in New York City in the Fall, the bulk of which consisted of coins wrapped in paper rolls, and that seemed like a lot of money. So it’s hard for me when my rich friends talk about troubles and pain, I know I could be really happy if someone else blow-dried my hair for me every day. I just know it.
My Boss finally approached me at work about buying my Internet column to develop it into a television show. Because I talk in my Internet column about being a terrible negotiator, I have a feeling my Boss has the upper hand in this conversation. He talks about being on a limited budget, how it will be a cable show and those pay less, but since my life is R-Rated our options are limited. My eyes glaze over during talks of monetary reimbursement, as I’m convinced I will never be rich, but I’m at full attention when my Boss talks about his vision for the show, which is a kind of Mary Tyler Moore Show, set in Hollywood, except Mary sleeps with everyone. He says on my show it would be as if Mary hooked up with Lou Grant at a party and it’s awkward at work the next day, and I suddenly wonder if he knows I was sleeping with my dead ex-boss.
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D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I can’t stop making out in public with my new non-boyfriend, because I am wildly attracted to him, especially his complete lack of interest in having any sort of relationship with me. I’m no psychiatrist but it’s possible I’m familiar with this feeling of neglect and coldness: my Mom used to call me Number Five because I was her fifth child and once she left me sitting in front of the library for eight hours because she forgot to pick me up. She also left me overnight at my friend Heather’s house, and at a gas station in Florida for half a day when we were on a family road trip. I guess I had it better than the sister who is one year older than me: when she was only two, she plopped right out of our car one day when we were turning a corner and sat there on the curb waiting for us to come back and get her for hours. It’s hard to keep track of eight children, and it’s equally as hard for the Computer Guy to balance all the girls he is apparently sleeping with – although I can’t imagine a nineteen year old GoGo dancer who still lives with her Mom is that hard to pin down.
At work my Boss decided to put my internet column onto our Development Slate as a potential television show. There has been no talk of money thus far, but I have it on good authority that people get paid for this sort of thing, so I’m hoping someone drops by a paper bag full of cash to my little apartment in Korea Town and all of my problems will be solved. I can’t imagine how nice it would be to get paid to write any more than I can imagine liking a guy who likes me back and who doesn’t call me dude and constantly send me texts meant for other girls.
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Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I’m the definition of a false advertisement, and I feel badly that the guy I met last night doesn’t know this. I come across cool, all loosey-goosey and full of trashy talk and innuendoes, and the quiet, serious computer technician I met at a cheesy Los Angeles bar last night thinks he hit the dating lottery. Little does he know I am not laid-back at all: I’m complicated, demanding, impossible to please, and if you date me long enough my keen sense of humor will be twisted back so that the only joke I’m really telling is the one on you. I bought him a drink and I kissed him before sending him off with the cute girl I talked up at the bar for him, and he texted this morning that he got lucky with the girl, and it was really great meeting me. It’s the classic bait and switch, he will likely never see that other girl again, but I give great text so I’m sure the next girl he gets lucky with will be me. Unfortunately for him, lucky isn’t really the word I would use to describe getting involved with me: this poor guy has no idea what he’s getting himself into. A good friend should tell him, if it seems to be good to be true, it probably is.
It’s all sales, the dating world, and I’m terrible at sales so I try and stay out of it, I don’t internet date or have my friends set me up, I just sleep with guys I know sometimes and every once in a while fall headlong into love and it’s like a bad car accident with casualties and broken parts scattered all over the road; it’s an unfortunate circumstance for everyone involved, and the computer guy from last night is just standing in the middle of a wet road staring into the headlights of a car without brakes. But that doesn’t stop me from sending him flirty texts all day, like mini-advertisements for a great new product on the market. I think I’m ready for a new bad relationship, it’s been a while since I really fucked up someone’s life.
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Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
There’s nothing worse than regret, and all I can do with all of mine is hope that Sarah has some too, and regrets dumping me as a friend almost five years ago. She has her own company now, she is no longer 22 and living on a boat, so I assume she’s doing well out here in Hollywood, but I hope she thinks sometimes about the illustrious writing career of mine that she helped to launch, and that had she been able to stomach being my friend, she might have professionally reaped the benefits of my success. I would have, at the very least, dedicated my book to her. Now she’ll be lucky if she gets included within the Acknowledgements, a hasty recognition buried between the names of shallow industry bigwigs who helped me along the way. I’m sure all the loosely-veiled references to her drug use and rampant sexual exploits throughout my book will be thank-you enough, but I can’t resist the temptation to include a sarcastic nod to her on the crisp, new first pages of my novel. I’m aware she’s the one who encouraged me to write in the first place, but I think I would have been happier in obscurity than written about in a nationwide magazine only to implode and have nothing come of my brief success.
It occurs to me I don’t want friends who ask me to go out every night, because I’m starting to like staying home more and more and I was genetically programmed not to be able to say no, but I would like to have the option of friends to hang out with should I ever become bored or lonely. Because I’ve burnt out all the lovely people of Hollywood, I’ve recently begun importing friends from across the ocean. I had dinner last night with a girl I met in the airport on the way to London. She’s an actress, a real one, not a waitress avoiding life, and Spanish and unfairly beautiful. We went to Magnolia and while we were at dinner we ran into Joe, a well-educated, black, gay agent who at one point in time wanted to represent me as a writer, but was scared of alienating my then-manager who was a short man and extremely wealthy and powerful. My manager was Sarah’s boss, and had produced a wildly successful teen franchise, a couple of them actually, and had gotten rich solely off the instincts of his development people, including Sarah. I’m quite sure he never even read the scripts for his big franchises, and although his web site was the original home for my column, I’m positive he never read my writing, and signed me as a client off of Sarah’s behest. I heard a rumor he now operates an illegal casino out of his garage, I’m not sure what he does but I do know he is no longer Sarah’s boss or my manager, not that any of that mattered while we were running Hollywood.
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D-GIRL was a development girl in Hollywood and New York City for many years. While finding projects for actors, directors and producers to make into movies, she amassed a number of salacious tales of questionable morality that became an internet column entitled “D-Girl Diary.” She left show business to become a full-time writer in 2001. Apparently, she is back….
Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I don’t see what’s so great about new – I prefer old. Old friends, old jobs, old boyfriends; I like things that are worn and comfortable, places I have been a million times, so the better half of my two week vacation was my stop-over in New York City, my home since college where even the biting cold feels soothingly familiar. The first five days of my vacation I spent in London, which sounds fancier than it was. In actuality I slept through a Pinter play in the West End, dozed off on the London Eye, and felt on the whole that I was observing a great city from afar, it was probably too short a trip to fall in love with anything. I had the nagging feeling throughout my visit that I was a little inferior to the stylish lag-abouts who jaunted down Oxford Street as if on a cold and crowded runway. But then I flew to New York, where it was even colder but at least people have the decency to dress in bulky coats and hats until they get indoors. I can still taste the spicy sausage with rice cakes I ate at Momofoku, which falls under the category of new to me, but I went to other old haunts like Blue Ribbon Bakery and I realized I’ve been living in Los Angeles for a year and I still feel like a current New Yorker, enraged about higher taxi fares and annoyed by the onslaught of Borough hoppers on the New Year. And then it’s back to Los Angeles, where there aren’t any Dunkin’ Donuts and the food all tastes the same, and I have a new job and new job-friends but at least I don’t have to think of things to talk about, because all my old stories are new to them.
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D-GIRL was a development girl in Hollywood and New York City for many years. While finding projects for actors, directors and producers to make into movies, she amassed a number of salacious tales of questionable morality that became an internet column entitled “D-Girl Diary.” She left show business to become a full-time writer in 2001. Apparently, she is back….
She’s baaaaack…most excellent. Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
For the first time since moving back to Los Angeles from NYC, I feel like a real Development Girl again. With Lorna McSlutchen breathing down my neck, I suddenly feel tremendous pressure to be successful. This week I scheduled drinks with agents and writers, tracked spec scripts and read until my eyes bled. And with my freakish ability to whip through a script in twenty minutes or less, I feel I’m finally caught up on the time I missed when I was checking into Mental Hospitals and gallivanting around New York with the gorgeous but broken East Coast Sarah. My boss the quirky Director is not as impressed with my recent efforts though, and calls me into his office during one of his rare visits to our bungalow, and wants to have a talk.
He’s strumming a guitar as he talks to me, which is mildly aggravating. “You have two sides to your personality,” he says, “the outgoing life-of-the-party who knows everyone in town, and the serious intellectual who writes amazing notes.” He pauses for effect and I’m feeling less chastised than complimented. “I don’t like the party girl side,” he says bluntly, and our meeting is over. I’m not going to clear my calendar, my boss clearly doesn’t know how this town works; it’s not just my ability to recognize good material, its obtaining the material before anyone else, and that only comes from lots and lots of scheduled drinks.
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Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
The worst thing about moving back to L.A. from N.Y.C is running into old nemeses at the Coffee Bean. I was anonymous in New York, and now today I’m standing three people behind Lorna McSlutchen, whose boobs are so big she’s taking up more than her allotted room in this crowded coffee shop. At first she doesn’t recognize me, I’m disguised by my Sarah Palin black glasses and faux-snakeskin Uggs that take up half my little legs, but then she catches my eye and hollers out a phony “Hey there! I know YOU…” and I’m instantly transported back to the day she asked me to lunch on the studio lot just to tell me she was dating my two-night stand. Her hair is darker, but I would know those humungous boobs anywhere, and she wants to know where I’m working, and where I went for a few years, and it takes her 3.5 seconds to bring up the guy who looks like an Alien who she thinks she stole from me. They aren’t dating anymore, apparently they dated for two years but he dumped her after she made the trek to Alaska to meet his family. I never met his family, I barely met him, I slept with him twice and he met Lorna at a party we went to and I never heard from him again. Her voice is too loud for this early morning coffee run and its giving me a headache. I express fake concern over her breakup and drop the Famous Actress’ name in her lap where it lands with a thump – “So that’s what I’ve been doing… just kind of hanging with her…” It’s half true and I think it conveys to her that I have not, contrary to her belief, spent the last two years pining over her short Alien-looking boyfriend who I slept with twice. I have become far too cool for that.
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(IMAGE BY Tashina Suzuki)
Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
