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It is the eve of my birthday. Tomorrow I will be officially, unequivocally, physically and mentally unable to bear children. Oh I am sure doctors would say there are possibly a few stray eggs left down there, swimming around still hoping for their big break, but it’s like I said to my Aspiring Actor boyfriend, you are too old, give it up. Luckily, I have prepared myself for this day, for the past three years I have been telling myself that it is not the end of the world if I do not have a child. It sucks, but the world will still go on, I will not die. It’s funny because I still feel around 34. I think I look about 36, but I feel exactly 34 years old. Old enough not to drink so much tequila that I puke out of car doors, but young enough to do a shot of tequila and make out with a stranger every once in a while. My life this past year has been filled with a strange and unbelievable calm the likes of which I have never experienced, having lived a life of tumult and pain since before I can remember. I always thought if I had such a year, a year with very little pain, a year with only an almost imperceptible undercurrent of ambient noise and nothing else, I would achieve great things. Finally, I would publish my novel, sell the television rights, spend my days fielding emails from ex-friends wanting to reconcile and I would fall in love with the type of man who does not tolerate drama in his life of any kind. A quiet and strong man who wants to sit on various docks discussing books and our favorite plays and who would scoff at the chaos that plagued me in years past would decide he loves me for my solitary nature.
None of this happened really, I barely remember the past year. I was recovering from the kind of grief that stops you in your tracks and takes your breath away for a whole year. Grief such as this is incurable: it is a lifelong affliction much like the MS that litters my spinal cord and brain. I did, however, finally find a way to live with the grief, not survive as I was doing for the first six months, barely breathing, plodding to work and home as if my feet were stuck in buckets of ice, I found a way to breathe out after long last and here I am, on the eve of my birthday, living with my grief a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean, thinking that now that I have that pesky pressure to birth babies out of the way, maybe now I will do something with my life.
Doing something with my life, of course, means to finish the novel for which I have a book deal that has now most likely expired, but the book, or books in me have not expired, book deal or not, they are in there clamoring to get out, begging me like the periodical well-meaning emails I get from friends every once in a while asking when my next column will magically appear online. I don’t just want to finish my novel, which has been written in many forms for years, I want it to be great, to honor all of the books I have ever read, so many thousands of books that have helped me through a hellish childhood and a confusing and sad adulthood. I know it won’t be great on every page, my substandard education and proclivity for crippling procrastination will prevent that kind of brilliance: I would be happy if it were great just for a second, a line here or there and a small whisper of the story that has been writing itself inside my head for years, I need to write it all down and so I shall.
Nobody ever talks about the bliss of falling out of love. It is an unbelievably freeing feeling, finally, as the stranglehold of worship and longing eases up ever so slightly. But this euphoria of getting over someone is rarely glorified in poetry or song: the poet describes the ache of a broken heart rather than the happiness one feels when one’s heart is set free. I am currently experiencing such joy, as I quietly slide out of the grip of a six year semi-romance with a half-boyfriend. I suppose he was my boyfriend for more than half of that time, but he was always only partly there, with one foot out the door and his eyes peeled for a prettier, younger girl – someone with financial stability, I suppose, and without a penchant for half-truths. So here I stand, on the precipice of things to come. I will now go back to longing for unspecified companionship. I have found that it hurts less to wish for more general things.
When I was in high school I wanted to be an actress. I had no talent, was only moderately cute, and my voice went up about ten octaves when I acted. Nevertheless, I was somehow given the chance to star in a production of Crimes of the Heart. One of the girls from the play died a few years ago, and I believe the last remaining VHS copy of the tape of that performance died with her, thankfully. I eventually gave up my dreams of stardom for the less glamorous world of backstage, and fell in love with the idea of becoming a Director. I liked the idea of being the only female in a male driven world, and I was happy to hand the job of starlet over to the likes of Michelle Pukey, who had an angelic face and the personality of a soggy magazine. It has been a few decades since high school, and next week I will finally be given my shot at the spotlight as I star in an episode of reality television posing as a customer of an illicit website. Aside from the fact that my mother would disown me if she ever found out about it, I can’t see how this brief foray into playacting will harm me. It seems to actually be a natural progression of things, as I spent most of my last relationship making things up, and my younger self spent a brief time dabbling in the seedy world of sexual perversions. It feels fitting that I should wrap up my life of sin with a National television show devoted to my fabricated wonton ways. And then I shall move on, from unrequited love and life’s rotten underbelly and emerge a new person, less interesting to be sure, but wholesome and pure as I enter the next chapter of my soon-to-be boring life.
Revisit the site and read the last post here.
My Dead Ex-Boyfriend would not want me to write about shit. He would not want me to write about a dumb crush I have on a guy whose dogs I have spoken to once, and he would not want me to belabor the point in a morbid fashion that I miss him. He knows I miss him, I tell him this when he comes to me in every single one of my dreams. He would want me to write about real shit, but some things are hard to write about because I am always culpable, and I am never just a victim, and the Dead-Ex would mitigate this, by telling me I did not bring this on myself. However, in this instance, the story I am about to tell is all me, I did this, and it was a mistake, and for this, they will likely find my mutilated body washed up in the Playa Inlet: I let back into my life my ex-Boss, the one who sexually harassed me. He is British, and he is brilliant, and he taught me how to write notes on scripts, but he is also crazy and he thinks he has been in love with me for years, even though when we met he was dating a very powerful Development Girl. At the time, I was new to Hollywood, two years older than him, but an assistant nonetheless, and I resisted his advances, although the friends of his girlfriend would contend differently. West Coast Sarah and I would go out with him on occasion, and he would overtly lust after me, but I spent my high school years escaping the advances of men to the point the boys would write “frigid” on my locker, so I was adept at avoiding the cagey Brit, and I let Sarah spy on my tracking website as a thank you for taking care that I was not raped by my new boss.
It has been a few years. I have moved back and forth across the country twice, and somehow, miraculously, kept in touch with the British, surly man who had professed his love for me when I was a lowly assistant at his company, to the peril of both of our jobs. I moved on, and so did he and somehow, we stayed friends. But not the kind of friends you have in real life, just Hollywood friends having lunch every few years and talking about sleeping together but wisely, not. A few years ago I had just such a lunch with him, and he was getting married. He still expressed interest in me, and that was the last I heard from him save for one email stating that he had sold a huge screenplay with a big Star attached, the same Big Star for whom I catered a New Year’s Eve party when I was still poor and struggling. A few months ago, I got a call from the brooding Brit, in the middle of the night, his voice foggy, he misses me, wants to see me…. The next day I emailed him innocently, sure lets have lunch, and he sent back a picture of a lovely little one year old baby. Apparently, however, his marriage was ending, and he said I am the girl of his dreams. I have been through this before, men loving the girl I used to be but not the girl I am now. My history with these guys, any guys other than my Dead Ex, is pathetically small, but I agree to a lunch because I respect the Brit’s standing in our fucked up little community, and the lunch started with nice pasta and ended with him chasing me around a coffee table at his house. Somehow I managed to escape unscathed but the damage had been done, he loves me now, real love, even though I am a new person, I am no longer fabulous or successful or fast-moving, and his obsession grows anyway. I don’t see him for months afterwards, but I bask in the glow of feeling pretty enough to be stalked, and then finally I agree to go out with him for Valentine’s Day.
Read D Girl Diary immediately.
If you are a fashion individual or perhaps you need some tips; look no further than my friend Tracey’s well-edited Front Row Tally. She rocks some vintage, hard to find jammies as well as a fantastic Questionnaire Section. Black and white, pops of colour and cool pieces. Check, check, check.
My Uncle is getting married, which is nerve-wracking because my Mother will likely attend, and any family gathering with my Mother involved is likely to attract police, ambulances, curious townspeople, and will require years of therapy to erase from all of our brains. My Uncle is her youngest sibling, and they also had a sister who was next eldest, but she passed away in a car accident a while ago, when she was only 26 years old. I was fifteen when she died, living in Ohio with my Dad, and I had been to her wedding a few summers before: a glorious affair and a testament to her loveliness that she married her long-term boyfriend’s best friend and her ex-boyfriend was not only okay with that, he was in their wedding party. She had long bone-straight black hair, an Italian beauty, and was gentle natured and kind to the flock of nieces and nephews my Mom would parade through her apartment in Boston every year for the Boston Marathon. I remember she always had M and M’s for us, and we never had candy in our house so that was a treat in itself. She ran the Marathon every year, and we would stand by the roadside at the bottom of Heartbreak Hill and give the runners oranges and wait for her to come by. Shortly after her wedding, my Aunt was in the back seat of a car when it was hit by a drunk driver and she went right through the roof.
She survived, and was in a coma for a while, and woke up blind. I still have the note she sent me in Ohio after she woke up which looks like it was written by a third grader. She lived another year, and then died on a postponed honeymoon to Jamaica, I guess her head could not handle the traveling. It is beyond heartbreaking that somehow she was taken from this Earth and my Mother is still here, making all of our lives a tiny bit less bearable. I am hoping my Mom passes through this family event without incident, but it would be shocking if she could concede the spotlight. She has softened over the years, with age and ailing health, so we might have a chance of escaping this wedding without her usual bouts of hysterical blindness or severe Munchausen’s syndrome in which she suddenly takes on, for example, the symptoms of my disease. For my birthday this year she sent me an easel, and canvases and paint supplies, not even knowing my penchant for painting the words of T.S. Eliot crudely on canvases and distributing them to friends who all, in seemingly unrelated incidents, dump me soon afterwards. It was an incredibly generous gift, completely unlike her, and although it was preceded by hundreds of phone calls announcing its imminent arrival, it was deeply appreciated and gives me a small bit of hope that she will attend my Uncle’s wedding graciously and surprise everyone, just like I was surprised two weeks after my birthday when the package of art supplies actually came in the mail.
It was really late, maybe 4 A.M one night when I had the urge to send Sarah an email. There is a reason these impulses only happen under the cover of night: in the light of day it might be embarrassing to chase down a girl who was at one time my best friend and has not wanted anything to do with me for years. But recent events have brought on introspection, regret, remorse, and most of all a desperate need to figure out what went so wildly wrong with my life. What’s funny is, I have been kind of – dare I say – happy lately, as happy as a single, family-less, ex-party girl can be, so I don’t quite know what I am searching for. I love my new apartment, it is spacious and comfortable and allows for beachside bike rides and barbeques, and I don’t like going out much anymore so I have more than enough friends. I have a relatively quiet job assisting a group of nerdy television writers who are quick to compliment my often sequined outfits and sun-kissed hair. I don’t have a boyfriend but I have a boyfriend-like guy who is great company and who makes out with me sometimes when I am not feeling well, and maybe I don’t have that girl I talk to a hundred times a day anymore, but I hate the phone anyway and I have a pen pal to whom I can tell anything, so there doesn’t seem to be too much more need for co-dependency in my life. But for some reason I emailed Sarah, just to tell her I am writing again, and show her the generosity of spirit I wish more people would show me, and she wrote back, cheerful as ever, as if we had continued talking eighty-five times a day this whole time, and I remembered that I always thought she should have a permanent exclamation point at the end of her name: “Sarah!” should be her legal name because she always seems happy to hear from you.
So we arranged to have drinks, and I am prepared for an ambush, but I don’t feel inculpable enough to prevent an onslaught of criticism, and I hope I don’t become so nervous I revert back to the manic and high-strung person she decided to abandon years ago. I miss Sarah terribly, just because it always made me feel great that someone as good-hearted as her would choose to have me as a friend, but I am not naive enough to think we will ever be friends again, for I am afraid too much has passed between these smiles. Still it will be nice to see her, I heard she is getting married and I am glad to see at least one of our lives turned out the way it was supposed to.
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)
There has been so much change in my life in the past month it seems almost contrived: if I were making this up, a good writer would tell me it’s too much. First, my Non-Boyfriend has decided he would rather spend time by himself than hang out in the eye of the storm with me, so I have not heard from him or seen him in a while. I moved to the beach and decided to start telling the truth for a change, and he lives on the other side of the world from me, in West Hollywood, and prefers fantasy to reality, and in retrospect if I had wanted this Non-Relationship to prosper I would have stayed holed up in Korea Town in my studio, but I opted for the lavish and pure life of Oceanside living, so I will be single for a while more, until I meet some tousle-haired beach bum who won’t mind my histrionics if it means a hot meal and a warm place to sleep. Second, I seem to have happened upon the only Hollywood assistant job that is actually, painfully boring, I think I would be better off working in an accountant’s office, or proof-reading M and M’s. There is not enough work to go around in our office. I would fire my unpaid intern if he was not so handsome and precocious: he knows the Box Office Gross of any movie ever made. He is like a film-geek Rainman.
I have also been really sick for a little over a month now. It started with a dumb virus but just like everything associated with my disease, it has morphed and degenerated and it started affecting my speech and ability to walk. It was hard to be cute for a while there, and even though I didn’t miss a day of work, I spent a good deal of the past month researching for our writers behind my computer and trying to act like I was be-bopping to music on my Itunes so nobody could tell that my arms and legs were jerking around because I was so sick. I don’t have an official Los Angeles Multiple Sclerosis Doctor yet, partly because I needed a reason to fly back to my beloved New York City every six months, but this past month I was sick enough to start doctor shopping out here, and I finally settled on the Amazing Dr. Wong, a gorgeous, tall Asian (!) Man whose teeth actually twinkle when he smiles. Dr. Wong is one of those people you just know was potty trained before he was a year old, and probably taught himself to read by age two. His movie star good looks and list of celebrity clientele, including the unstoppably quirky Miss Teri Garr, made him an easy choice against my Insurance covered doctors who all have offices on Alvarado Street and take patients on Saturday. It takes six months to get an appointment with Dr. Wong, and I will be paying thousands to be neglected by yet another stunningly handsome, elusive man. I may be single, and sick, and working a job far beneath my Masters Education and impressive resume, but I have the same doctor as an Actress I have admired since her role as the crazy Mousetrap lady in Scorsese’s After Hours and I live at the beach: this really is where people come to live out their dreams.
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.”
When I visit New York City it’s like seeing a boyfriend you sleep with occasionally and each time you see each other you pick up right where you left off. This trip it was crowded and smelly, as usual, and exciting and vivacious, and there was some crazy car bomb parked a few blocks from my apartment: people and cities rarely ever really change. I went to New York to see my doctor, because I have not found a good neurologist in LA yet, but the doctor’s appointment was almost an afterthought to seeing friends and cousins and going to a Yankee Game. Nobody in that city seemed to care that I am trying to clean up my act and live a better life: I wasn’t treated any better, given any special sidewalk space or a reprieve from a long line. That’s what I love about New York: it’s a narcissistic city and completely self-absorbed, just like all the men I date. I’m uncomfortable with affection, have serious intimacy issues, and I feel completely at home being abused by this city. As I walked down the streets feeling slightly ill the other day, the buildings spun around me and I swayed and wobbled, and almost fell about ten times: nobody even noticed. It reminded me of growing up as the middle child of a huge family, when I was sick my Mom would say, “You’ll live.” And maybe give me a can of ginger ale. For a nurse with eight small children, she did not have the gentlest of bedside manners.
Back in Los Angeles, I have moved to the beach. Now that I’m living in a spacious ocean chalet I’m wondering why I didn’t make this move a while ago, but I suppose I felt comfortable suffering in my crime-ridden Korea Town studio. I don’t even know what to do with all this new space, it looks like I am squatting, but I finally feel like I belong out here: if I start making any kind of money as a writer there is an imminent danger I might actually be a carefree, happy Beachcombing California Girl. My Old Boss who is now my New Boss was nice about me taking off to New York for a few days, but now that I am back he has tasked me with coming up with new ideas for television shows because the show we are working on has been tanking in the ratings. I was hired to assist the writers on the show but my Boss has been using me more and more to assist him: his real assistant is a cocky, good-looking kid who thinks he is too cool to do menial tasks for my Boss. Even with my luxurious new Oceanside apartment and my recent coast-to-coast jaunt, I am not too cool for grunt work, and Hollywood will always make me feel like I am cheating on New York – my flippant, cool boyfriend — with some guy who surfs and sleeps until noon.
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.
I have only been at my new job a few days and I already have the feeling it’s not going to last very long. I get nervous when I meet new people: I want them to like me almost pathologically, so I haven’t stopped talking for three straight days. I don’t know why I think people want to listen to me talk for that long, but silence makes me anxious, so I talk and talk, and because there is not much to talk about, most of the things coming out of my mouth are untrue. I spent last night looking this up on the internet, and apparently it’s a real psychological malady called Compulsive Lying Disorder and I stayed up until three in the morning reading message boards about the condition. I am suddenly empowered by the fact that my dishonesty has a clinical name, and there are other people who walk around telling lies all day. Although some of the people in the online forums are clearly wasting the opportunity to have a medical community recognize their amorality as a sickness, like the guy who says he has been telling people he is a vegetarian for years but secretly eating meat. I can’t believe I have never looked into this before, I have been in four mental hospitals and lost about thirty really good friends, and until now I have chalked this up to my eccentric nature. I remember the Sarah with the Big Boobs telling me people in Los Angeles talk about me worse than they talk about their dogs: I guess this is what she was talking about.
I’ve never really been called out about my lying before, I guess I’m good at it, but I think some people have been suspicious over the years, because unless my friends and family think I like driving around in an antique car, they are probably aware I have not exactly achieved the level of success I tout in my stories. As I’ve gotten a little older, I have grown weary of making things up, at this point I mostly just cover up for all the lies I told in the past, but since this is a new job and I want to impress everyone, I have gotten a few classics out of the hall closet and brushed them off, such as the imminent nature of my book publishing, which in actuality is a deal I lost a long time ago having never handed in the manuscript. I remember hearing from the Billionaire’s Daughter a while ago that Fifi doubted I actually have Multiple Sclerosis. Sigh. I wish I had made that one up, and if I had I would have picked a disease that had a name I could pronounce.
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 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)
