A Midnight Mating Party for California's Most Exhibitionistic Fish

For 10 years since moving to LA, I'd wanted to go check out a coastal wildlife phenomenon known as the "grunion run."

And for 10 years, I'd put it off because I didn't like the idea of hauling my cookies to the beach late at night to witness a group of small, sardine-sized fish (the California grunion, Leuresthes tenuis) that may or may show up.  

But no matter how much of a crapshoot it may be, I knew I'd never see this summertime spawning event if I didn't at least show up and try.

 

A Pandemic Valentine

Ever since the first shutdown was looming back in March 2020, I've been desperate to "get back in the game."

Not necessarily the dating game, or the relationship game, but just "the game"—to be among the other living, breathing human beings who desire and are desired. 

The Threshold of Fright and Flight: Lessons From An Alpaca

It can be difficult to get up close to an alpaca.



As alluringly friendly as they seem...



...and as genuinely inquisitive as they are...



...they're actually a bit standoffish.



They might come galloping towards you as you walk by their enclosure...



...but it seems to be more of a practice of threat assessment than an overture.



On a sunny Saturday afternoon at Windy Hill, the alpacas would rather stick with their own kind, tussling with each other...



...and keeping humans out of spitting distance.



They may appear to smile...



...but if you offer an outstretched hand...



...they'll back away, almost predictably and programmatically.



Like many other animals—both wild and domesticated—you've got to let them come to you.



If you seem too eager, they'll back away and never come back.



In terms of the study of animal behavior—or the practice of wildlife viewing—the distance between you and the animal at the point at which they turn around (even if calmly, it's a form of fleeing) is called the flight distance.



But there's a moment before that when they actually exhibit fear, even if it's just a fraction of a second. That's the threshold of the "startle response," a.k.a. the fright threshold distance.



And while there's certainly an average measurement of those fright/flight distances among any given species, it's not quite so simple or predictable with alpacas.



After all, there are two main breeds of  them—and, quite frankly, no two individual alpacas are alike, anyway.



Some are calm and serene.



Some are cautiously curious.



But, unlike other camelids like llamas—and, well, camels—alpacas have never been bred to be beasts of burden. (They're really too small to carry much of a load.)



From an evolutionary standpoint, they're genetically predisposed to just hanging out in the herd, grazing and breeding. (They'd prefer to do it naturally, rather than being artificially inseminated at the hands of a human.)



Humans generally only come around to give them food and shear them for their fiber.



Although there are ones that are considered of "pet quality," I wonder how close you could ever actually get to an alpaca, even once you gain its trust? (Llamas, on the other hand, are incredibly friendly and affectionate and well-accustomed to human contact.)



Might it forever turn away from you when you're near, even if it doesn't actually walk away? Might it just tolerate you?

Does its fright threshold distance ever disappear, even if the flight threshold becomes negligible? Maybe the acute nature of "fright" evolves into a chronic condition of "fear"—and, as a result, the alpaca (or any other animal, for that matter) just learns to live with the fear.

It's not that the fear goes away. But maybe the alpaca just acclimates to it enough to anticipate what will make it want to flee, rather than getting so unexpectedly spooked at every turn.

The only way to really know would be to spend a heckuva lot of time with a few alpacas. But who knows? Maybe that would just be a cruel exercise in the scientific method.

And for what? The sake of furthering our own knowledge?

Maybe we can just respect their wishes, give the fluff balls their personal space, and keep our distance without asking so many questions.

After all, not every face out there is ours to smoosh. Not every head is ours to pet. And there are plenty of other animals out there who are starved for human affection and, for whatever reason, don't get it.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: A Ranch of Sweet Alpacas
Stand Like a Tree, and They Will Climb
The Legacy and Legends of California Camels
Photo Essay: The Healing Powers of Highland Springs

Open Letter to Our New President

[Photo added 12/28/16 6:34:00 PM - CC0 Public Domain]

I don't think I've ever known a U.S. president as well as I know you. 

In fact, I met you years ago. I met you over and over again in the 20-plus years of my adulthood. You had different faces and different names; you were in different cities and wore different clothes; but you were you, all the same.

You were the man who pulled his car over on Sunnycrest Drive and asked me for directions to the high school when I was walking home, and then pretended not to be able to hear or understand me as I kept my distance, urging me to come closer. You were the first man to show me your penis uninvited, but you were far from the last.

You were the man who lived in the dorm room next door and came to visit me drunk one night, just to tell me how inexperienced and foolish I was and coerce me into doing things I hadn't done before and didn't want to do. 

You were the man who denied doing all of it and then blamed me for misunderstanding. 

You were the stranger who followed me off the Night Bus in London and shoved your hand up my skirt while muttering something unintelligible and then slithering away.

You were the classmate who walked me home drunk just to have sex with me, even though I said I didn't want to.

You were the guy who used a crowded subway train on the way to work as an excuse to rub up against me with your hard-on, so bold and unabashed that I couldn't believe it was happening, and I froze in fear. 

You were the guy that catcalled me on the street and then called me an ugly, fat cunt when I rebuffed your advances.

You were the date who complained that my bra didn't match my panties.

You were the date who complained that I didn't wax my hair down there.

You were the bartender who wanted me to crawl around on all fours like a dog.

You were the bartender who tried to shove it in the back door without asking nicely first.

You were the bartender who only pretended to put on a condom.

You were the friend who started having sex with me while I was asleep, even though I only let you stay because you were too drunk to drive home.

You were every guy who got too handsy with me in the office, and who got every excuse on earth from all those around you. You were just being friendly. You were just joking. You were married. You told me I was being too sensitive and uptight. 

You were the boss who couldn't see past my womanhood. I was smart and successful, but you took every chance to tear me down with a double entendre, and you made sure you had plenty of witnesses.

I've often wondered why I've encountered so many versions of you over the years, what makes me a target and makes you seek me out to harass, abuse, assault, and otherwise victimize me over and over again.

But now I know: It's not me, it's you. 

There are so many Donald Trumps out there, and they all voted for you. 

And there are many more of them than I ever expected, even though I'd met so many of them already.

We tell our girls to stay away from guys like you. We tell them not to put themselves in a compromising situation with you, not be alone with you, not to go home with you, not to get drunk with you.

But how can we avoid you, when you're the president of our country? When grabbing life by the horns -- and women by the "pussy" -- is considered presidential?

How can we teach boys who are becoming new men to be kind, loving, and fair -- and not to rape?

How can I have any hope for anything, when the people have most certainly spoken, and what they've chosen is the one thing I've spent my entire life trying to get away from?

Don't get me wrong, President-Elect Trump. It's not all your fault. You're simply the pied piper of all the sexist, misogynist, superficial blowhards who've finally come out of hiding.

They say you should know your enemy. Well, I know you. I know you all too well. 

But you don't know a thing about me.

Related Posts:

Don't Blame It On Me

Dispatches from My Soft, Naked Core

A Case of the Unsecure

Living With the Terror

More Than a Woman

I've never felt like I was born the wrong gender. As far as I know, I was born with one kind of private part, and I got to keep it. As far as I know, I have two X chromosomes, and that feels just about right.

But that doesn't mean I've always identified with women. Quite the opposite.

Sure, I like pink. A lot. As a preschooler, I was so vain about wearing nail polish that it helped me kick my nail-biting habit. I begged my mother to let me wear pantyhose and lipstick even before my older sister, and I pored over the cosmetics section of Wegman's while my parents shopped for groceries. When my mother refused to let me go to the affordable Piercing Pagoda kiosk at Shoppingtown Mall, I used my own allowance money to pay a doctor an inordinate amount of money to pierce my ears.

But I always admired men, and I mimicked them inexhaustibly.  I wore rainbow suspenders like Mork from Mork and Mindy. I worshipped the Fonz – not because I wanted to be his lover, but because I wanted to be him. And out of all the Pink Ladies, I would've chosen to be Rizzo, the butch-est of them all.

In truth, I'd probably rather be a T-Bird than a Pink Lady.

In fifth grade, I thought the coolest thing was to walk around with a comb in the back pocket of my jeans. I'd suffered for four years in Catholic schoolgirl skirts, my plump thighs rubbing together, my too-big white Sears underpants riding up with nothing to hold them in place. In jeans, I felt like a badass.

I knew I wasn't like the other girls in school, but I never thought that I wasn't a girl, nor that I wasn't meant to be a girl. I just had a broader definition of what being a girl meant. I could play with Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels. I could wear a red plastic fire helmet around the house and dress up like The Hulk for Halloween. The whole world was open to me. I could do whatever I wanted, and no one would question it. Well, not much.

If I had been born a boy and wanted to play with dolls and cars, they would've thought something was really wrong with me.

Yes, there are chromosomal and hormonal differences between the male and female genders. Men get the benefit of an X and a Y, and women get stuck with all X's. But women get to experience testosterone-fueled aggression and estrogen-linked dysphoria. We're lucky like that. There may be documented psychological differences between men and women, but they're not absolute. Can you be intellectually a woman? Can you be emotionally a woman? What does that even mean?

I've always felt more comfortable around humans of the male variety, from a very early age—preferring my father over my mother, and gravitating toward my godfather and uncles rather than my aunts. I went fishing with the guys instead of hanging out in the kitchen and helping the womenfolk with dinner. I didn't deny femininity altogether or spurn girlish conventions. I just embraced it all.

As I grew older, it seemed to me that I had a capacity to love all types of people, with complete disregard of their body parts. I didn't care what was in their jeans; I was attracted to how they treated me and what made them special human beings. Some were manly men; some were girly girls. Even more confusingly, some were boyish girls, and some were feminine boys, which kind of rendered the whole gender dispute a wash. They kind of just cancelled each other out and seemed the same to me.

Throughout my life, probably since puberty or so, I've occasionally had dreams in which I was a guy. In some cases, I was a male version of Sandi – me, but a dude, penis and all. But I was the same me. This dreamtime gender fluidity never disturbed me, and I never read much into it. After all, for a very long time, I wished I could trade my life with someone else's. (I kind of still do.) Why not a guy's?

I enjoy slipping into the costuming of a skydiver, a race car driver, and a construction worker. I love hard hats and belt buckles and cowboy boots and leather jackets. Might I wear a tuxedo one day?  Sure, bring on the top hat and tails, and I'll sing like Marlene Dietrich.

I have the luxury of being able to do it all, without being labeled a cross-dresser. Sometimes I think I deserve that label when I get my makeup done and wear a gown. That isn't reality for anybody. Pajama bottoms are reality. T-shirts are reality.

In those cases when a man takes on stereotypically "female" characteristics—whether as a sassy West Hollywood gay man snapping and strutting while calling out "Girlfriend!", or a drag queen hosting bingo at Hamburger Mary's, or a transgender celebrity extolling the virtues of embracing their true self as a dolled-up, half-naked cover girl—I recoil a bit. I can't relate to them. It's too much. It's a persona, not a person. It's some hyperbolic fantasy of womanhood that many of us natural born women can't live up to—a fantasy that perpetuates a comic book caricature of what we are or what we're supposed to be. We women are torn down when we live up to that expectation, and we are torn down when we don't.

I never classified myself as a tomboy, but I've definitely been considered "one of the guys" in several different groups of friends. In college, there were fraternities that joked about inducting me into their brotherhood because I fit in so well. In most "no girls allowed" scenarios—even up through adulthood—there's usually an unspoken "except Sandi" clause.

I embrace this. I don't question it. There are women who exhibit stereotypically male traits, and men who are in touch with their feminine side. I try to take what I like, and leave what I don't, regardless of which bucket it belongs in. I like people who are strong and confident and kind and loyal and caring and honest and trustworthy. I drink margaritas and straight bourbon. I enjoy chick flicks as much as action movies. I want to drive muscle cars and ride in horse-drawn carriages. I've flown a sailplane and then gone winetasting. I've taken my aggressions out at the shooting range, and then gone home and cried myself to sleep.

I am genetically and physically a woman. But I'm so much more than that.

Related Posts:
A Good Woman
Am I the Same Girl?
Just My Type
In Praise of the Nice Guy

EVENT: The Last Zipper Factory in the West - with Obscura LA

The zipper: fashion technology that's about as retro as it gets.


Photo by U-Can Zippers

Fashion trends may come and go, but the once-vulgar zipper has become a necessity for anything you need to open or remove quickly.

When a button or a buckle won't do, there is always the zipper – but it only rose to popularity when its "lewd" advertising campaign promoted quick disrobing, causing a public outcry. The thought of this hookless fastener sliding up and down – and allowing its users to slide in and out of whatever covered them up – was just too much for some people to bear.

Fast forward 100 years, and now we can't imagine our handbags, jackets, jeans and boots without zippers, though we usually don't think much about them unless they adorn the red leather jacket of a major 80s pop star.

Join me on an excursion to U-CAN Zippers USA, LA's only zipper factory, appropriately located just south of the fashion district. Voted LA Weekly's Best Factory Tour 2014, our visit will take us through the "Made in the USA" production lines of a stateside full service zipper factory – a rare thing today, when 80% of the world's zippers are made in China.

U-CAN uses almost 12,000 yards of zipper chain per day, and paints almost 25,000 zipper sliders daily. We'll witness their assembly line in action, as it creates various types of metal and plastic zippers with varying sizes of teeth. We'll also see their inhouse Dye House & Lab, where they can concoct almost any color in addition to the 600 colors already available on their color card. (They can even create a double rainbow.)

If we're lucky, they'll even share the secret to fixing a zipper that doesn't close the teeth, and other infuriating mysteries of malfunctioning zippers.

Tickets On Sale Now

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: No Place Like Homeboy
Photo Essay: A Book By Its Cover

Don't Blame It On Me

I'm amazed at how many bad things that have happened to me are (supposedly) my fault.

When I was three years old and overcome with terrible temper tantrums, my parents thought I was crazy or evil – even calling me the "devil child" – when it turns out I was almost blind, and had high functioning intelligence without the verbal skills to express myself.

When I was sexually assaulted by my neighbor in my own dorm room, the college disciplinary board blamed me for letting the guy into my room in the first place.

When I woke up to a guy having sex with me while I was asleep – clearly unable to consent – I was blamed for letting him spend the night in my bed, though I'd only done so because he'd passed out there and was too drunk to go home.

When I was being sexually harassed at work, I was blamed for "not being friendly enough" when I tried to maintain a professional decorum and resisted being sexually objectified and interrupted in private and public meetings with double entendres and a round of wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

I have permitted too many things to go too far in my life, and I've learned from that. It shouldn't be this way, but in some circumstances, you may not be "asking for it" per se, but you're engaging in risky behavior that just increases your chances of being hurt. You can have all the faith in the world in people, but many of them don't deserve it.

And many times, I've waited too long to walk away. I guess I can be blamed for that.

So I've built up my walls, a tough exoskeleton to protect myself from my soft, naked core. I don't trust anybody anymore. And I don't like to be touched by strangers.

This has become a major point of contention in California, a state full of people who love to hug and kiss strangers, and who get offended if you don't welcome it. I can't tell you how many times I've ended a business meeting and a man I've just met has swooped down to hug me. At first, I'd taken to saying, "Are we there yet?", but they would invariably inform me that we were, indeed, there, so now I just have to refuse the physical contact as politely as possible. But there's no great way to say, "Please don't hug me. It makes me uncomfortable." Besides, they never seem to ask for permission. They just go for it.

Business meetings and casual daytime acquaintances are one thing, but nightlife encounters are a bit more traumatic. Drunk people love to hang all over you, manhandle you, grope you, and then feign ignorance when confronted. I can't tell you how many times I've declared, "That's my boob," and some guy has argued "No it's not." Are you kidding me?

There was one night at Jones Hollywood that a drunk guy got so bad, and wouldn't stop putting his arm around me despite my repeated protests, that I raised my voice and threatened to punch him in the face. The bartenders just stared blankly at me and kept drying the washed glassware. They rolled their eyes as they turned away. The bouncer kept his position at the door. I was all on my own, forced to defend my own personal space, forced to try to convince people why it should be protected, and why I should be able to decide whether my own body was touched or not.

How is this even a question?

Last night, I was back at Jones, and sat at the one empty seat at the bar. The guy next to me looked familiar, but then again, I've seen a lot of that restaurant's patrons before. I asked him how his day was. He said, "I remember you, you don't like to be touched."

"That's right, I don't like to be touched – by strangers," I said.

He offered an outstretched hand to shake, which I thought was ok, but when I grasped it, he held on too tight, squeezing and rubbing his thumb along my hand. "Don't be creepy," I warned, and snatched my hand away.

He then proceeded to tell me how he loved hugging people and how he was a "toucher" and he'd made it his goal to convert me. "I'm going to hug you tonight," he said.

"That sounds like a threat."

"It is."

I started to get freaked out. I couldn't figure out if he was being intentionally ridiculous for comedy, or if he actually was a dangerous person. The bartender came over to say hi and I told him that this guy was creeping me out and kept trying to touch me, and the bartender said, "What? He's a great guy!" and then walked away.

I thought I would reason with my potential assailant. I said, "You have to understand, when you meet women of a certain age, it's very likely that they will have been molested or assaulted or raped or otherwise harassed at some point in their lives. I've had multiple of those things happen to me. Acting like this is going to trigger them. You have to be respectful of the boundaries they set."

And then he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, and he said, "Those are the buttons I'm going to press tonight."

And then I had my answer. In the choice of flight or fight, I'd tried to fight, but it was time to fly. But before I went, I lit into him and unleashed my wrath, calling him a "sick bastard" and "rapist" and warning him to never speak to me again. I stood up and towered over him, somehow becoming twice my normal size, as you would to fight a bear or a mountain lion.

And he just smiled and snickered at me.

The bartender came over. "Are we screaming?" he asked, giving me the side-eye. "We're not screaming right? We're just talking?"

And I knew then that there was no one there to help me, so I removed myself, thinking I would just change my seat, but finding myself in the ladies' room to have a good cry and try to put myself together. But it was too late: I was wrecked. This guy had torn me down.

And then the worst thing happened: the manager of the bar told me that I couldn't stay, that he would call me a cab and I would have to be the one to leave. I recited our conversation to him, and he kept asking, "Did he really say that?" The manager then said he interviewed the people sitting around us and the bartender, and all they saw was a guy trying to shake my hand and me freaking out on him.

"You didn't hear the things that weren't screamed," I said.

"Well, all I know," he said, "Is that you sat next to him."

I then confronted the bartender for selling me down the river, and he said, "What's going on with you? Why didn't you tell me there was a problem? Why didn't you just move your seat?"

Oh, okay, it's all my fault. Except I did tell him I was getting creeped out. And he didn't believe me. He didn't listen.

I was hiding in a dark corner on a bench for quite some time before the manager came back to check on me again. He said, "Do you want me to kick him out? If you tell me to kick him out, I'll kick him out."

I said, "If I were you, I'd kick him out for what he did."

So the manager went back and talked to him again. And then, here's the kicker: he returned to me, and said, "OK, I've asked him to leave, and now I've got to ask you to leave. I can't have you here."

No apologies for a bad experience, no comfort that they were here to keep an eye on me and protect me, no assurances that this was a safe place. Instead, I'd caused a problem, and I had to be removed.

I felt punished for standing up for myself. Again.

I don't want to stay where I'm not wanted, so I tried to gracefully bow out. But I don't know how I can go back there, to a place where I thought my friends were looking out for me, but where they actually permit inexcusable behavior to happen, and I'm expected to as well.

Too many horrible things have happened to me as a result of me being nice and not wanting to be rude. Of me putting other people's wants and needs ahead of mine.

And I'm damaged forever because of it. The only thing I can do is try to prevent any further damage from happening.

And this is what I get.

Related Posts:
Dispatches from My Soft, Naked Core

Letting Myself Go

I was doing so well, back in February of last year, nearly a year ago.

I was working regularly, and back into a routine.

I was leaving work a little early to go hiking before it got dark, sometimes hiking after the sun set just so I could get it in.

I didn't want to let myself go. I wanted to be in shape and a healthy weight for me. And I was trying really hard.

But as the pressures of my new job started to get to me, a job which unraveled as quickly as it began, I gave into the many temptations of office life. One slice of pizza turned into an entire personal pizza all for me. Flavored seltzer water turned into beer at lunch. Healthy snacks turned into handfuls of M&Ms.

When that job ended, I was determined to keep up my fitness routine, particularly now that I had plenty of time to devote to hiking and swimming during daylight.

And then arrived the ultimate sabotage: I got rear-ended, giving me whiplash and a brain injury, exacerbating my preexisting fibromyalgia, sending me into physical therapy three times a week for three months, plus weekly visits with a talk therapist and nearly daily phone calls with an attorney. It was hard to find time to exercise. It was hard to get out of bed. It was hard to move at all.

Even as my physical condition improved, my head wasn't ready to get back into any physical activity that required thought, or choreography, or navigation.

I was stagnant because I needed to be. My focus was on getting better.

But all of these traumas – and dating someone new – brought on a significant amount of anxiety that I'd never experienced before, obliterating my appetite and twisting my stomach into knots. I lost ten pounds in a month. At the time, I attributed it to having a new boyfriend and being motivated to look good naked, and when it didn't work out between us and ended unceremoniously, I started letting myself go.

Sure, it was the start of the holiday season – first my birthday, then Halloween and pumpkin spice everything, then Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's Eve and rainy days and Mondays – but I deliberately let myself go, I decided to let myself go, because it became clear to me that my looks didn't matter. Even at my most beautiful, I would not be beautiful enough for LA. I clean up good, but not good enough.

So why bother stressing myself out over weight loss, hair removal, manicures, makeup, contacts, blowouts, fashion? I had enough to worry about: my own physical and mental health, my dwindling finances, my spiraling career, and more.

So I stopped worrying about how I looked. I stopped getting my hair done. I stopped wearing makeup. I cried so hard and so much, my tears ate away at the skin around my eyes, creating red sores and scaly patches. I wore the same pajama bottoms as pants every day. I ate whatever I wanted, and watched my body expand exponentially.

It didn't matter. I was letting myself go. I was letting myself fatten up like a Christmas goose. I was not just allowing it to happen, I was making it happen.

At least I could make something happen. I didn't seem to have control over anything else in my life.

And what a relief not to count Points or calories or fat or portion size. What a relief to say "I can" and "I will" rather than "I can't" or "I won't." What glorious comfort I received from chocolate and chips and pizza and pasta and calamari and cookie dough, when I needed it most.

But when it came down with it, I was inconsolable. I knew I was destroying myself, but I couldn't stop. I'd been here before, these familiar feelings of shame and loneliness and failure and addiction and obsession. We do strange things to survive. We do what we can, left to our own devices.

But there was an end in sight for me. At no time did I tell myself, "This is my life now." This stage of letting go, falling off the wagon, was always meant to be temporary. I just had to get through spending the holidays in LA alone, and then I could get back on track.

I knew it was a cliché, but I just couldn't wrap my head around depriving myself of these comforts until January 2.

And when the New Year came, I was ready to let everything else go, and take myself back. The benefits of hedonism have now been outweighed by the disgust I feel when I look in the mirror, the pain I feel when I wake up in the morning, and the time it takes to find something to wear that fits.

I haven't had a drop of alcohol since January 1 (11 days and counting), the longest I've gone dry since July 2012. I've been following Weight Watchers again. I've gotten back into hiking, and have gone back to the gym.

I'm the heaviest I've been since 2010. I'm very out of shape. And, for the timebeing, I'm very sore from the increased physical activity, after months of stagnation. I feel a little better, but I've got to be in it for the long haul. This isn't just a New Year's resolution. I have to take back my life, and find myself again, whether or not I'm working or dating someone.

I've gotten buried somewhere underneath all of these crises and circumstances, and it's time to dig myself out.

Related Posts:
Letting Go
That Which Weighs Me Down
Getting Back on Track
The End of Acting Out

The End of Acting Out

I have a long history of acting out.

At age 19, I moved to London for a semester abroad just a couple of months after having gotten my first boyfriend ever and having lost my virginity. At some point, I figured out that there had been some overlap between me and another of his girlfriends. Subsequently, the second guy I ever had sex with was a drunken Irishman in the ladies' bathroom stall in a pub in Galway.

There were plenty of other college indiscretions, of course.

The year I moved to New York City, I spent Halloween night judging a kissing contest between three guy friends. When the winner spurned my subsequent affections, I started hooking up with another one of his friends. When that guy spurned my affections, I hooked up with every fellow member of his band except one (and a few of his other friends).

My parents didn't allow me to date in high school, but they also didn't teach me how to respect myself. They abandoned me emotionally and left me to my own devices. What else was I supposed to do?

I self-medicated with random dalliances.

I manipulated people.

I turned them over to the dark side.

I never learned how to have a healthy relationship. I didn't even know how to start one. (I still don't.)

I jumped from guy to guy (and sometimes from guy to girl to guy) trying to fill this huge vacant space inside of me, and it kind of worked. I had plenty of stories to tell. My phone was always buzzing. I rarely had to be alone if I didn't want to be.

New York City is like that. Sex is in the air.

If one guy rejected me, I could walk down nearly any street and find another. I knew which bars to go to, and at which times. I stayed until they closed and the doors were locked with me still inside. I drank and I got them drunk. I didn't always know their names. I didn't always remember their faces.

Although I began two years of sexual avoidance in 2008 after disastrously falling in love with two different people who would never love me, I bounced back with a vengeance in 2010, and I started pursuing nice guys with the same obsession that previously targeted bad boys. I had my groove back, and my hands full. It seemed healthy – just having fun, celebrating life, celebrating my new body after a recent dramatic weight loss.

And then I moved to LA.

Life hasn't been easy in the three and a half years since moving here, with two layoffs, inconsistent work and money, and persistent loneliness. The romantic and sexual interest once felt so strongly in NYC has since been timid, hidden, or non-existent. I've had to work much harder for it. No longer does anything just fall into my lap, so to speak.

I mean, I've had my moments in LA for sure – a couple of bartenders, a late night hot tub, a rock star. When I lost my first job in LA, I ran directly into the arms of someone who was completely emotionally unavailable. When he spurned my affections one night, I hooked up with his housemate.

But I've made progress. I ended things with a cute guy who'd only call me at 2 a.m. I cut off the guy who was weirdly obsessed with what he considered my fat body. I stopped dating the guy who never acted like he liked me in public and then expected sex at his place at the end of the night. I refused to be the other woman. I finally asked for what I wanted, rather than just accepting whatever came my way.

Still, old habits die hard. When I recently realized that the person I'd been faithful to hadn't been faithful to me – and probably had no intention on being faithful moving forward – my first inclination was to act out. I texted former lovers. I went on Tinder. I joined OKCupid. I was desperate to find somebody else to make me forget, to help me punish him.

I've only had a few days now of putting myself "out there," and you know what? I'm done. I don't want this. I don't want some other guy in my apartment, in my bed. I don't want to have meaningless chitchat with somebody new. I don't want to take my clothes off, though they used to come off so easily.

I want the love that I felt when I was with him. No crazy sexcapade is better than falling asleep with his head on my chest as he whispers, "I love you."

I hadn't been with anyone for six months before him, because I'd been looking for someone like him. Maybe he wasn't a perfect match, but I'm not going to settle for something else now.

And maybe that means I'll have to be completely alone for a while.

Or maybe I just have to get used to the idea of being alone forever.

Related Posts:
These Unavoidable Regrets
Pacific Standards
The Love I Deserve
This Kind of Fool
Open Letter to My Potential Matches

Programmed to Chase

I don't know what it is in my genetic code or my dysfunctional upbringing that programmed me to chase down whatever I wanted.

Early in my education, when I was still coloring drawings of Jesus and perfecting my cursive, my parents made it very clear to me that I would have to get a full scholarship (or pay for my own tuition) in order to go to college. So I won science fairs and math bees, got great grades, did as many extracurricular activities as my parents would allow, performed community service, and got that scholarship.

Done.

Next?

After paying my retail dues at a discount clothing retailer, I nabbed my dream job: in the music department of a store at the mall, the first step in my budding music industry career (and still my favorite job ever).

Having no idea what I was doing, I set my post-college sights on New York City and chased it down in a rental truck full of my things, careening through the Lincoln Tunnel on my way to conquer Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then Manhattan again, and finally Queens.

I got a job at the best record label in the world. I got promoted over and over again. I got laid off, and then hired by a company I'd been stalking for a year. I won a game show. I won court cases, unrepresented. I won awards and trophies and gold and platinum record plaques.

I seized that city in a full-on attack, ready for a fight.

At one point, it seemed like I could get anything I wanted, if I just worked hard enough, if I just chased hard enough.

That is, anything except the one thing I really wanted: love.

That didn't stop me from chasing it – unsuccessfully, from the wrong people, from those who didn't deserve me, from those from whom I deserved better.

This was my training ground, my boot camp. I chased and never caught what I was chasing, but I kept getting better at it. And every time I tried to give up the chase, I caught a whiff of something irresistible, and like a greyhound to a hare, off I went.

I can't resist a good lure.

I always tell myself that I want to be chased, but to be honest, I get scared off too easily when someone is in too hot pursuit of me.

Perhaps I scared off all those people I ever chased before.

But I think some people actually need to be chased.

And although I've given up on some people in the past...

...maybe I shouldn't have.

Maybe I should've chased a little harder.

Maybe I should've chased a little longer.

Maybe I should've asked for what I wanted.
Maybe I should've said how I felt.

Maybe it would've worked.
Maybe I would've found what I was looking for.

And now...

Maybe someone might be worth chasing.
Maybe someone might want to be caught.

Related Posts:
Let Me Love You
Free Milk
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Love Is the Drug

These Unavoidable Regrets

I started this blog in 2006, though more seriously devoted time to it in 2007 and 8, concurrent with an ensuing existential crisis and then an actual life crisis that has been going seven years strong.

There's a reason why I called it "Avoiding Regret" and not something more definitive, like "No Regrets" or "Eliminating Regret," or not something more positive, like "Pursuing Beauty" or "Carpe Diem": because regret is always coming at you, from all directions, and all you can do is try to make the right decisions to dodge it. It looms, like an incoming tsunami. And, at some point, you can no longer run from it.

I suppose some people in their decision-making process consider, "Is this the right thing to do?" But I have never been guided much by morality, preferring pragmatism and a self-centered focus on my own feelings. I ask, "Will I regret this?" or, more likely, "Will I regret not doing this?"

I consider everything I say carefully. I act strategically. I edit and reedit my writing. I try to regret nothing.

But I have a whole life that I lived before 2006 that I must take responsibility for, in my younger days of foolish and reckless abandon, released out into the world after a sheltered childhood, unprepared for what I might encounter.

I didn't know how not to drink too much.

I didn't know how to respect myself.

I didn't know how to demand respect from others.

I didn't know how to find love, or be loved.

In those early days of adulthood, I made a lot of mistakes. I certainly seized the day, but probably too much. I seized everything within my grasp, everything offered to me – including too many drinks, a potent serving of crystal meth, and people who didn't belong to me.

My first boyfriend Seth was dating another girl when he first took me out. I knew this, but I accepted the date anyway, as well as the goodnight kiss. On our second date, he declared that he'd broken up with his girlfriend, and wanted to make me his girlfriend – an offer I accepted, not knowing that this was a lie and he was actually now dating us both.

I also didn't know that this would establish an inescapable trend in my dating life: I would never be the one; I would always be the other one.

Even before that, in high school, I would get these lines from guys that went something like "If I weren't dating __________, I would be dating you." But then when that guy would stop dating whats-her-name, he wouldn't run into my arms. He'd start dating some other girl, and there I was, still on the sidelines.

Seth taught me a terrible lesson: that guys could be lured away from their girlfriends, even just momentarily, even by a chubby, nerdy, inexperienced girl like myself. I gained much of my sexual experience with other girls' boyfriends, and, later, husbands. I started innocently enough, asking pointedly, "Do you love your girlfriend enough not to cheat on her with me?" and engaging in a subsequent makeout session that the guy would ultimately regret and sometimes the girlfriend would even discover. It got worse as time went on, as guys got older and more willing, and as The Taken Ones pursued me more enthusiastically than any single guys ever had, and possibly ever would.

At the time, I didn't care. In each case, I blamed the guy. After all, he was the cheater. I was lonely and unloved – and available! – looking for affection wherever I could find it. I had no integrity, because I was desperate to fill the void, even with something that didn't belong to me.

Even when I thought that I was finally a girlfriend again, it turned out I was Freddy's other woman, unbeknownst to me until his actual girlfriend introduced herself to me. I did the right thing and broke up with him then, but only because I felt cheated on. If he'd been upfront with me about the girlfriend but wanted to be with me too, I probably would have permitted it, because I would've been willing to accept a shared love, any love.

After all, as the other woman, at least I always knew I wasn't the only one. It was a choice I could make.

But those girlfriends out there didn't have that advantage.

I always saw the girlfriends and wives of the men I attracted as the enemy, perhaps because they had what I wanted, or they had gotten there first, or they were keeping all the good ones to themselves, and out of circulation for the rest of us.

Now, I realize: I was the enemy.

I've done some very bad things in my life, to a lot of people I didn't even know. Most of it was meaningless and brief, but on occasion, it was repeated and extensive. The only three men from my past that I've ever loved were committed to some other woman at some point in our relationship, while they were also with me.

Since moving to LA, I've tried to spurn the inevitable advances of the taken ones, but when your loneliness is killing you, it's not easy to choose to be alone. I've relapsed a couple of times, but not at all for the last two years. I'm not proud, but it's progress.

Earlier this year, there was a wedding I could've tried to stop, but I didn't. I'm going to give that girl her chance to be happy with a great guy. He doesn't really want to be with me anyway. At least, not now.

The thing is, out of all of those people I've hurt in the past by trying to find some love for myself, the person I've hurt most of all is me. I now have no faith in humanity. I can't trust anyone. Even as I start to date someone who's wonderful, who says he wants to be with me, who says he has no intention of doing anything with anyone else, I cannot help but think of all of the other women who are out there who are just like me, waiting in the wings for their chance. And how I wish they would just give me my chance to be happy with a great guy, finally, after waiting my whole life, all this time for someone who thinks they could love me.

This is my comeuppance.

I have done this to myself.

I have turned men who were not cheaters into cheaters, and now I think they all are.

And somehow, I think that I deserve to be cheated on, in exchange for what I've done.

These regrets cannot be avoided.

Related Posts:
My Regretful Past
Upon the Disappointing Lack of a Mayan Apocalypse
Disappointments, I've Had a Few...
Black Swan, and The View from Behind First Place
Not My Kind of Friend
My Public Shame
Mine, All Mine

Feast or Famine

There aren't a lot of gray zones in my life.

Somehow, I've gotten this far in life on a diet of binging and purging.

It's either feast or famine with my career, my daily routine, and whatever romance I can drum up.

I'm either in an executive-level, high-paying job, or I've got nothing going on at all.

I'm either driving 200 miles in five hours from Oxnard to Pomona, or I can't get out of bed.

I either can't get a date, or I'm joking marriage with the guy I've seen three times in five days.

In this past week, for the first time since January, I found someone in LA that I liked and wanted to be with. For the first time since moving here more than three years ago, I felt liked by someone who was willing, able, and actually available.

And then, without warning, he can't seem to find the time to make a plan with me.

It's OK. I can take a hint. I was afraid of overdoing it, burning out, too much too soon, and saw this coming. I know I should've said no. But I just couldn't resist the whirlwind he swept me up in. I took as much as I could get and ran with it. 

It was like I found some fireworks, and I decided to set them off all at once.

See, I'd just grown accustomed to the idea that my time had passed, that it was over for me, that it just wasn't going to happen. And then I got just the slightest taste – a minuscule amount, less than a sliver – of how it could be.

Even though it didn't last longer than the burning of a match, it showed me that I'm not too old, too damaged, too heartbroken, too fat, too weird. I could love again. But I don't want to bother with the grayness of dating. It's so exhausting. Can't I just skip right to the love? The ecstasy? The rapture? The comfort and familiarity?

Can't I just pick a person who also picks me and we just decide to go do that together?

Do we have to dance around it?

Time's a wastin'. I don't have forever anymore. My life is half over.

Maybe this is the life of a manic depressive, or a bulimic, or an addict. I've never been diagnosed with any of those conditions, but I do seem to experience only peaks and valleys – the highest heights of the rollercoaster, and its steepest plummets, but none of the moderate loop-de-loops or gentle banking turns in between.

And the one thing I've learned is that whichever extreme has me in its clutches at the time, it can change, just like *that* ::snaps fingers::.

Related Posts:
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Or, The Cassandra Complex
This Addictive Life

This Addictive Life

I suppose at some point or another, we're afraid to turn into our parents.

And at some point, we realize we already have.

As much as I have always recoiled from my mother – according to her, since birth – I have often identified her traits in me. I hear her in my own words; I see her in my actions. I catch glimpses of her in the mirror and in photographs. I identify with her in ways I find disturbing and inevitable.

I knew that my mother called herself a recovered alcoholic, but I never knew her to drink. The story goes that she was a party girl at age 19 when she met my father, sitting at bars alone, kibitzing with bartenders while she snacked on maraschino cherries and drank fruity cocktails. My parents both tell of a time when the drinking became too much while they were together, and my father offered my mother an ultimatum: "It's the drinks or it's me."

Of course, this came from the same man who couldn't admit he loved my mother until the day he proposed marriage.

But still.

According to the tale, my mother skipped any 12-step program and successfully stopped drinking by simply going "cold turkey." Whether she was ever addicted to the actual alcohol or not is debatable, because her addictive inclinations quickly transferred over to sweets and sugary snacks, a pattern I witnessed over and over again throughout my childhood and adolescence.

"Who ate all the Twinkies?"

"Well, it wasn't me, that's for sure!" my mother would protest too much, clearly implicating herself. If not that, her weight problem – over 200 pounds at a mere five-foot-one – gave her away.

And it wasn't just food – the secret eating, the overeating, the obsessions with sugar-free candies and Tofutti and other "diet" foods that offered no nutritional value but took over her daily caloric intake. My mother always seemed to be addicted to anything that brought her any amount of pleasure.

In the mid-1980s, our mother became obsessed with Bruce Springsteen, as many Americans did in the advent of the success of Born in the USA. But how many other Americans bought two copies each of it on vinyl and cassette, just to have a spare copy when playing the record over and over and over and over again would surely wear it out?

At the time, it seemed somewhat understandable. Our mother grew up with nothing, so when she got something as an adult – thanks to our father working two jobs to support our family – she was terrified of losing it.

But these addictive tendencies turned her into a collector as well. One music box brought her joy, so she collected dozens of them, buying cabinets to house them and accepting no birthday or Christmas gifts other than that which would add to her collection.

The same happened later with porcelain dolls, which eventually took over the dining room, rendering it unusable for dining.

The same happened with the mushroom theme in the kitchen, and the potholders that were hung in every blank space on the walls and appliances.

My parents claimed to not be able to contribute anything to pay for my college education, but we managed to have a television set of some sort in every single room in the house: the living room, the basement, the bedrooms, the bathroom, the kitchen, and even the pantry. At some point, a VCR accompanied each of those TVs.

My mother's compulsive shopping reached full-tilt later in life, when she went on a long-term QVC bender, buying too much for herself, my sister and me, the nurses at her doctors offices, her doctors, and everyone else she knew. She bought cases of gifts and distributed them to people she barely knew, making them uncomfortable, unable to reciprocate the gesture.

Most of all, my sister and I realized early on that our mother was addicted to our father. She quite simply could not get enough. Then again, none of us could. Dad was working two jobs to try to support us, was barely awake long enough in the morning before taking us to school – not even eating breakfast at home, just shaving and dressing for work –, and came home for a mere 45 minutes for dinner before departing for his second job. We all cherished the Saturdays and Sunday nights off, and dreaded the Mondays. We fought and clamored for his attention. Mom treated me and my sister much like "the other woman," hiding her jealousy so badly that we wrote a runaway note (though we never ran away) that read, "You can finally have Dad all to yourself."

We watched our mother crawl all over our father, begging for his attention, never getting enough, every moment of pleasure driving the desire for more more more. A little taste was almost worse than nothing at all. Sometimes I think it might be better to not know what you're missing out on.

I can't blame my mother for her pleasure-seeking. How am I any different? I'd rather eat a whole bag of cheese curls or an entire jar of peanut butter rather than just a taste. If I can't have the whole thing, I'd rather not have it at all. When I hear a song I like, I want to listen to it over and over again. I want to nap forever. I want to hike every mountain and drive every road and taste every pancake that every Southern California coffee shop has to offer.

When I won a game show in 2011, the producers came up to me and asked me what I thought. The first thing I said was, "Can I play it again?"

I am an addict every day. I may not shop uncontrollably for shoes and handbags, but I get high off planning my adventures, and even just one adventure is never enough. I have to plan a full day's worth of activities, and when I do, I crash horribly afterwards.

Recently I was advised to find "weekly pleasurable activities" to help me cope with the depression and anxiety associated with work and financial stress. I had to laugh. All I do is fill my time with pleasurable activities. I can't get enough. I have a hard time working in an office, because I just gaze out of the window, wondering what's happening out there that might bring me pleasure, that I'm missing out on.

I have overdone it with food, alcohol, sleep, and sex, and yet I feel like I'm always holding myself back. I've never had a taste for drugs, but I have an unquenchable desire for men who think I'm beautiful. Too often they're drunks. I guess addicts attract one another. But when I meet someone I like, I want to spend every day with them; I want to invite them to everything. And if I let myself do that, I inevitably scare them off. (To be fair, if they do that to me, they scare me off too.) And if I don't, I don't tell them how I really feel, and either way, I usually lose them.

Having grown up so closely to an addict, I'm not sure I can tell the difference between "normal" behavior and addictive behavior. What's not normal about pleasure-seeking? Aren't pleasures what make life worth living? Aren't they the driving force of nearly everything we do? When we volunteer or give back or donate to charity, don't we do it because it feels good?

My addiction to stimulation has kept me living this long. I'm not sure what else could. I'm not satisfied just plodding along, and I don't understand how others are.

But I've got this terrible hole inside of me, and it takes a lot of work to fill it. I need attention and affection and adventure and discovery and beauty and love and excitement and newness and comfort. And I need a lot of it.

I just never seem to be able to get enough.

So, either the pursuit of it is what will keep me going, or I'm destined for disappointment.

Related Posts:
This Censored Life, Or, I Will Not Go Quietly

My Side of the Bed

Even though I've never upgraded from a double-sized mattress, for a long time I would only sleep on one side of it, turning over in the middle of the night by lifting my body up, rotating, and plopping back down in the same spot.

I was saving the other side of the bed for someone who might come occupy it. In New York, I'd gotten used to someone sleeping over there on and off, and always hoped he'd return. When he didn't, I tried replacing him with others, all temporary tenants, renting the spot by the hour, maybe for a night or two, just so I wouldn't have to be in that bed all by myself.

When I moved to LA, I'd hoped that the other side of the bed would be occupied by someone I'd been seeing out here during my regular, repeated scouting missions throughout the year before I actually moved. But it turned out he'd started seeing someone else, and after six months of waiting, holding out hope, it became clear that he wasn't leaving her anytime soon, so I gave up. I started turning over onto the other side of the bed.

For a while, it was still the other side. I felt like I was sleeping in someone else's spot, borrowing it, renting it, ready to give it back, waiting to give it back.

A year and a half later, there's nobody I want to give it back to. I want to keep it for myself, and make it all mine.

I don't merely turn over onto that side anymore. Some nights, I start on that side, positioning myself next to a pillow which occupies my usual spot.

There is no other side of the bed anymore. It's all — the entire thing — my side of the bed.

I don't know what changed. I had a visitor last August whose visit made me feel like I was ready for my close-up, whose departure made me miss feeling like a girlfriend. A week with him made me desperate to date again, sending me in pursuit of some other guy who I deemed my intellectual equal, an adventurous companion, but who, ultimately and unfortunately, turned out not to be my emotional equal.

I tried dating him for a couple of months. I tried liking him for a couple of months. I tried making him like me for a couple of months.

But as I suffered through teary loneliness while sitting across the table from him, on opposite sides of a large diner booth, turned away from him while clinging to the edge of his bed, he against the wall, scrolling through his cell phone, I just couldn't wait to be alone again.

And most of all, I did not want him intruding on any part of my bed.

And now that it's over (after he unceremoniously stopped contacting me, much to my relief, though also to my insult), I don't want anybody invading my side of the bed.

Perhaps — in my older age, with my slowed metabolism — the need for sleep prevailed. Now, if I get late night calls or messages, I ignore them, preferring a restful night so I can get up the next day for whatever I have planned. I no longer wait for the phone to ring; I dread it.

Everything associated with dating and sex feels like a huge bother. I'm selfish. I don't feel like listening to and supporting another person's illnesses, financial woes, and job stresses if they're not going to support me in mine. I don't care to hear the same stories over and over again, with the glaring absence of any questions asked of me.

I want to be told I look nice. I want to be kissed in public. I want to be prioritized. I'd like an occasional orgasm.

But I just don't want to beg for it.

A coworker recently asked me if I was freaked out about turning 40, a doom that awaits me in 2015. "No, not really," I said, "Because I figure my time has already passed. I mean, I live a very full life, but it's pretty much over for me." After all, I've been looking down the barrel of 40 for a while now, breathing down the necks of the 40-somethings that surround me, who, 10 or 15 years ago, would've seemed so much older.

In fact, I told her, I'm kind of looking forward to my 40th birthday, an excuse to do something (else) crazy. I went skydiving for my 30th — what adventure can I concoct for my 40th?

I'm still grieving the loss of my youth, and the missed opportunity of love and companionship, but I'm advanced enough in my grief to vacillate between Depression and Acceptance. (Actually, I think accepting it is what depresses me. I don't like giving up.)

I have lots of things to do, and no desire to be weighed down by or make compromises for another.

I have lots of sleep to get, and can't be exhausted because someone's snoring kept me up all night.

I'm glad I'm alone now, because everything that's mine is mine.

If I ever change my mind, I'm sure it'll be too late. And that's something I'll have to accept.

But I think it's already too late. So I might as well be happy the way that I am.

Related Posts:
The Other Side of the Bed

That Which Weighs Me Down

One of my proudest accomplishments is losing 50 pounds in 2010.

One of my most tragic humiliations is gaining 20 of it back.

I haven't wanted to write about it because that would mean acknowledging it as true.

But I must write about it, because a culture of secrecy is what feeds these things that eat away at us - addiction, affliction, abuse, binging, purging. My mother was a secret eater. Last I knew, she was over 200 pounds at only 5'1".

I don't know what happened to me. I was at a peak low weight in September 2012 after spending another month in Joshua Tree. I was in shape, eating healthy, drinking less, and feeling good. I'd been so successful for over two years. I'd shared my story with everybody. It became part of who I am.

But something derailed me.

My birthday was not tragic in 2012. Not that year.

For some reason, by Halloween, I was already feeling fat again, not happy with the photos of myself in my "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" / "Material Girl" pink gown with the giant bow. I wasn't hiking every day like I had been in Joshua Tree. I wasn't working, and had no regular schedule, no routine upon which to rely.

In November 2012, I'd probably gained ten of those pounds back already. I was so stir-crazy and broke that I took a job at the mall, which made me more active with eight consecutive hours of standing and running between racks and dressing rooms, but more inactive on my off days, feet hurting, lower back aching, brain fried, tired of talking. Without reliable lunch breaks and rest periods, I rewarded myself with post-shift happy hours and martinis and dinners, spending most of my paycheck and piling on the calories.

I was very hard on myself back then, ten pounds heavier than my lowest weight, only about three pounds over a healthy weight range for my height.

It feels like I've been torturing myself about my weight forever. I don't know how to stop. I wasn't even happy at my lowest, because it literally only lasted a day, and I couldn't get back to it, no matter how hard I tried.

I wish I'd been happy with myself back then. I wish I could be happy with myself now.

Things actually got worse when I resigned from my mall job, despite having freelance work (in my actual career) to occupy me. In the months that followed, I lost two guy friends - both of whom were treasured confidantes - because of complications associated with their "taken" status. I had a one night stand with a stupid drunk Silverlake hipster who told me I reminded him of a Botticelli painting, at which point I knew it was time to leave. Around the same time, I finally relented and accepted the advances of one of the few age-appropriate single men in my life, only to discover that he was - at best - a chubby chaser who wanted to bury himself in my rolls of fat. I was only a little overweight at that point, and he treated me like an all-you-can-eat buffet. He called me his "big girl" and wanted me to say things like, "I'm your big girl."

I wasn't even that big back then.

I tried complying, but I was traumatized. Worst of all, he was putting his own pleasures and desires above my general mental health and body image. It didn't matter how much my perceived rotundness turned him on, I couldn't feel good about it. There is a giant leap between "I love you just the way you are" and "Your stomach is huge! I love it!" It pains me to even type the words and have my eyes read them back to me.

Although a situation like that might make most people want to never eat again, it sent me snacking and drinking, making worse the very thing I hated, that which I'd tried so hard to get away from.

In June 2013, I rejoined Weight Watchers, having fallen off the wagon and skipped meetings for a year and a half. I spent six months feeling like I was starving myself, and never losing more than six pounds, eventually gaining it all back - and then some - by the end of the year.

During Christmas break back in Syracuse, I was like a heroin addict getting reintroduced to smack. I consumed Christmas cookies for every meal, with no pause in between. I didn't want to eat anything else, and I couldn't stop. I hadn't been home for an entire year - didn't I deserve a little treat?

But it wasn't one little treat. It was a constant flow of sugar and fat and chocolate and peanut butter down my throat, barely pausing to chew or even roll the deliciousness around my tongue.

Around New Year's 2014, four years after first joining Weight Watchers, I was too sick to get back on the wagon, bed-ridden and forsaken by the one person in LA I thought I could count on. That entire month, my weight kept going up, every week.

I started a new job on January 15, generating a professional stress-level I had not experienced for six months. As my weight continued to go up, I considered switching from Weight Watchers to some other diet plan. I considered appetite suppressant powders and pills. I wished I could develop an eating disorder.

Instead of drinking and eating my sorrows away, I started leaving the office early enough to go hiking before sundown, and on some nights, hiking in the dark (which everyone knows I hate doing). I started booking aerobics and dance classes, taking my sweaty ass home afterwards instead of going out, and feeling good about it. I've been bringing my lunch every day, avoiding the free snacks in the kitchen and the daily lunch delivery orders made by all of my coworkers. I'm trying to eat half what I was eating before, and drinking even less. I'm trying to cut back on Diet Coke. I'm trying coffee without sweetener.

After a week of not cutting corners and playing by the rules instead of trying to cheat the system, I lost 4.6 pounds, making my meeting leader's eyes bulge when she weighed me in. I just nodded and cast my eyes downward, saying, "I know. I had to."

I don't know what it was, but something clicked. I don't want to be dependent on anyone or anything, much less sugar, caffeine, and fatty, crunchy, doughy, cheesy things. I want to feel better because life is better, not because I'm acting out or breaking the rules or self-medicating.

I don't care if I ever eat again, but unfortunately, I have to. I can't go cold turkey like an alcoholic. I can't avoid kitchens and grocery stores. There's no methadone for pizza and doughnuts.

I don't care if anyone else ever sees me naked. I want to look in the mirror and smile.

I want to see my cheekbones.

I want to find my bellybutton.

I want my clothes to fit, my beautiful new wardrobe to which I finally committed (after months of wearing clothes too big) because I thought I would be able to stay at that weight.

I want to sleep well.

I want to get out of bed in the morning without limping. I want to do everything without pain.

But I also don't want to live life with limitations, wondering what to order and when I can eat again, passing on offered options because they're not on plan or they'll trigger me. Turning anything down is torture for me. I want to try everything, taste everything.

So what do I do? As I round out my second week of being back on track - really on track - I'm curious to watch the scale when I weigh in on Monday. I used to skip breakfast, wear skimpy clothing, and remove all my jewelry and shoes when I weighed in, hoping for any tenth-of-a-pound difference it might make. Now I at least eat a small bowl of cereal and just wear jeans or whatever I'm wearing to work when I get on the scale. It's not a competition. I'll either get back there or I won't. There aren't any tricks to it.

Either I can do it again, or I can't.

I guess I'll find out.

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Hello to the Old Me
What Goes Up, Must Come Down
That Which Haunts Me

Dispatches from My Soft, Naked Core

Maybe I've grown old.

Maybe I've grown up.

Maybe I've lived alone for too long, I've forgotten my former liberal sexual politics.

Maybe California has changed me.

Maybe I've finally developed some long-sought sense of self respect.

But now the casual, soulless world of dating just makes me sad. Like, really sad.

It used to be that being alone made me sad. Being rejected made me sad.

Now being pursued makes me sad. And knowing the ins and outs of those pursuits, which are most certainly used on others, perhaps more unsuspecting than me, has burst my bubble so badly, I've given up nearly all hope of romance in this world.

I have a high school friend I haven't seen in years who has used Facebook to compliment me, at first out of admiration, then out of some long distance sexual pursuit. I am a lonely woman, so I admit that I encouraged him at first, despite his marital status, assuming he was lonely too, in a loveless marriage, and was trying to connect with something familiar and safe. When he admitted that he and his wife did love each other, and were continuing the marital act of lovemaking (despite not always actually sleeping in the same bed), I turned cold. It didn't matter how smart or talented or interesting he thought I was. I no longer felt complimented by his lecherous comments on my photos.

I have an LA friend I don't know very well, who has pursued me on and off since we met in October, usually in between dating some other girl. We've gone out a couple of times, so it seemed OK to accept an offer for a sexless sleepover. (After all, I am more often turned down for sex than pursued for it in LA, so it would probably be safe enough.) Upon peeling back my layers of clothing and revealing my soft, naked core, he delighted in everything I saw as physical flaws, and exuberantly pointed them out. When I complained, wanting to bury myself in a winter coat and never come out again, he protested, "No, I like it!" But someone telling you how much they like your love handles or your unshaven legs or your big nose or your ears that stick out - and, for my own protection, those were not the things that he pointed out - only makes you more self-conscious about those areas. I guess we women don't want guys to even notice that we haven't waxed our eyebrows in over two years, not for them to exclaim, "No I love how messy they are!"

Besides, why was this guy so hyper-focused on my body parts anyway? Why are all guys across the board obsessed with nipples and do everything in their power to catch a glimpse of one?

Both those situations made me feel horrible. And those were guys who know me, who profess to like me.

In New York, I never knew it back then, but I now marvel at strangers' ability to pretend, quite convincingly, for the span of time that they're with you, that they are so into you. You are soulmates. You are the most gorgeous woman they've ever met. You are hilarious. They can't spend the night without you. (And then, of course, you never hear from them again, and if you do see them again, they don't remember you, or pretend not to.) In LA, a harsh reality sets in before anyone is even naked, when guys say things like, "I don't know if I like you. I don't know you." And for some reason, you still take your clothes off.

I'm not sure if it matters if they like me or not, because even when they do like me (see above), it doesn't feel so good.

I don't know what I expect - what I ever expected - but it's not that. It's not this.

It's not meeting a bartender who's also new in town, bonding over moving from New York, and then getting booty-called by him at the end of his shift, punctuated by a text message that reads, "Wanna bang?" the next morning.

It's not him telling me, after I've gracefully declined his kind offer, that he wishes I wasn't all "cracked out", or he'd give me his big you-know-what, and do you-know-what to me.

That doesn't make me laugh. At this point in my life, that feels like a threat. I don't know where in the world that behavior is considered acceptable, but not in mine. I don't know what girl would have gone for an approach like that, but not this girl.

I went on a blind date fix-up the other night, and when I finally arrived to the bar late, the guy sitting next to my date got up to leave. Clearly he was lit, and apparently had been drinking for hours already. He bowed out of the conversation, gave up his barstool, and declared, "Don't worry, I'm clearly not driving home. I'm going to go hit up my Top 5."

I was stunned. "I knew that happened," I told my date, "but I've never heard it actually said out loud by a real person."

My date wasn't sure what I was talking about, so I clarified, "He's going to go try the top five girls he can booty call."

"Oh," my date said. "I had no idea."

And then I wondered why I knew that and he didn't.

And what that said about me as a dater.

And whose Top 5 I had been in.

And for whom I'd only been #5. (Somehow that feels worse than being off the list altogether.)

I am a competitive person. I don't like to play games I can't win. When I won a game show, I didn't answer a question unless I was absolutely sure I would get the answer right.

I kind of don't want to do this anymore unless I can be #1. And not just on the booty call list. I don't want to be #1 Nipples or #1 Ass or #1 Orgasm.

I just want to be important. And valued. And the only one. At least for a while.

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A Good Woman

Lately I've been thinking about what it means to be a good woman.

I've spent my whole life obsessed with walking the fine line between good girl and bad girl, hard on the outside but soft on the inside, innocent and vulnerable yet naughty and nasty.

I was an excellent student in school, so much so that none of my teachers expected any evil-doing when I showed up late to or skipped class.

I was obedient to my parents.

I lost my virginity relatively late, at the ripe old age of 19, to my first and pretty much only boyfriend.

After that, I let myself loose on the world. And even though at heart I think I was always a good person, I became a bad girl.

In New York, though, it doesn't matter so much. We're all bad girls in New York. That's why we can't find boyfriends in New York. That's why we don't get married in New York.

But does it have to be one or the other?

I mean, the Virgin-Whore Complex is a bore.

We girls grow up. We become women. And if we didn't marry while we were still girls, if we didn't have children while we were still children, we can't maintain this Madonna image as a Single Woman late into our 30s, 40s and beyond. It's just not realistic.

At age 37, I now qualify as a cougar. I've been having sex for nearly half my life.

At this point, I'm not wearing white to my wedding. I am scientifically old enough to be a grandmother. I surpassed advanced maternal age two years ago.

When can I stop worrying about being coy, playing hard to get, waiting for the third date, batting my eyelashes, saying no and putting up a good fight and just do what I want to do?

It seems to me that a Good Woman is honest about who she is, how she feels and what she wants. She respects others, but above all, she respects herself. A Good Woman knows the life she wants to live and the person she wants to be, and she doesn't let anything or anyone stand in the way of letting her become it.

A Good Woman enjoys a meal.

A Good Woman makes eye contact.

A Good Woman knows how to put together an outfit, order a drink, and find her way out when she gets lost.

A Good Woman can pay for herself but lets you pick up the tab.

A Good Woman stopped calling herself a "girl" a long time ago.

I'm not sure I was ever a very good girl, but I'm trying to be a Good Woman. I am not a mother. I am not a wife, and may never be. I am no longer my parents' daughter, nor my sister's sister. I am no more than a passing fancy, a fleeting memory, a stolen kiss or a one night stand to most. And I am a friend to fewer people than I ever have been in my adult life.

So, perhaps for the first time in my life, I am no longer defined by those who surround me. I have no work to do, no titles to hold, no roles to portray - only my own self, embodying my best womanhood I can, while I figure out what that even means.

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