Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

12 - In L.A. You Ain't Shit

               

November, 1988

In my four years at Ellison College, I only spent one month — total! — without a girlfriend. Which, by the way, didn't stop other women from coming on to me with varying degrees of subtlety — ranging from flirtatious phone calls to what, these days, would fall under the technical definition of sexual assault — in the hopes of getting themselves a taste of sweet, sweet Rubicon.

From this, I concluded — incorrectly, as it turned out — that I was kind of attractive. What was really happening was that I was in an environment that seemed to have been designed with the sole purpose of allowing a disturbingly thin big-nosed Jew with bad posture and a wispy adolescent mustache to thrive.

I had no game — I was awkward and tongue-tied, my shyness frequently mistaken for indifference or hostility — but at Ellison, I didn't need game. I spent all day, every day, surrounded by intelligent, attractive women roughly my age. And "surrounded" is no exaggeration; the student body was sixty percent female. Plus, as if the supply-and-demand curve wasn't doing enough to buoy my romantic fortunes, Ellison had no Greek life and no football team, which meant that the apex predators — the football jocks and the douchey frat guys — had been flushed from the ecosystem.

To be clear, I'm not claiming to have been a Lothario — especially since nobody under the age of eighty uses that word — but I had become confident that while maybe I couldn't get anyone, I could definitely get someone.

But now I was in L.A.

And in L.A., as the saying goes, you ain't shit.

Six months after moving to The City of Angels, I still didn't have a girlfriend. I hadn't even gone on a date and I was having serious withdrawal symptoms; a delirium tremens of lovelessness.

Los Angeles women, it seemed, were looking for at least one of three things from a man: Game, looks or success. Ideally, they wanted all of those things, but they'd usually settle for one or two. I had none.

In terms of looks, except for the fact that my mustache had finally filled in, I was still as dorky-looking as ever. That would have been an impediment anywhere, but in a city filled with charismatic, strong-jawed, stubble-faced actor-men, I felt like an emaciated mutt at the Westminster Dog Show.

As for my "game" it consisted mostly of sweating and shifting uncomfortably. Not tremendously effective.

Success?  I made my living as an office temp, earning thirteen bucks an hour. The people I worked for were investment bankers, making millions. (The football jocks and frat guys were back and now they had expense accounts.) And I worked in a secretarial capacity, which was not exactly a panty-dropper, either. I doubt very much there's ever been a romance novel with lines like, Then she saw him. Sergei typed one-hundred-and-ten words a minute with ninety-seven percent accuracy, and he collated Xerox copies like he was carved from Italian marble. Her heaving bosom heaved heavingly as she watched him expertly work that three-hole punch. And she thought, "He can punch my three holes any day."

(I've never read a romance novel, but I assume they sound like that.)

It only got worse when I tried to explain that I wasn't just a temp; I was also an aspiring sitcom writer! Which, in L.A., was the equivalent of saying, "I'm not just a homeless person, I also have impetigo!"

Although in fairness, being an office temp/aspiring writer might have been acceptable if I was making progress — an agent, a pitch, a meeting, an option — but I very much was not.

Since moving to our apartment in North Hollywood — for those of you who are not familiar with Los Angeles neighborhoods, North Hollywood is to Hollywood as Billy Baldwin is to Alec (or for you younger people, as Luke Hemsworth is to Liam) — Tom and I had written exactly one script. This time, it was a spec. Cheers, because we learned from another aspiring writer/temp that nobody was interested in our original series ideas, they wanted us to write for an established show. It made sense. It also made the first four scripts we had written — the product of years of work — utterly worthless.

That it took us six months to write our newest script was a particularly bad sign. Essentially, the weekend was when we worked on our script, but it was also when we drank. And in the interests of efficiency, we very frequently did both at the same.

Multi-tasking!

We were convinced that alcohol improved the quality of our writing and it did... until we sobered up, at which point we would delete our nonsensical drunken ramblings and start again. A piece of advice for aspiring screen writers: Alcohol does not help your writing! Cocaine, on the other hand, is a miracle drug. Good enough for Aaron Sorkin, good enough for you.

Anyway, I didn't have the game, the looks or the success. And that was a huge problem. But the biggest problem was that I simply didn't know where to go to meet people.

My parents suggested that I attend a Jewish singles function. That sounded pretty desperate to me, but since I was desperate, I decided to give it a try.

The closest one was in Bel Air at the opulent Stephen S. Wise Temple ("the shul with a pool" as it was known). I found the experience mostly contrived and depressing; getting-to-know-you games that relied on quick, slick answers. The few women I was interested in were not interested in me and the one woman who was interested in me I didn't find remotely attractive.

Her name was Miriam Cohen. She was slight and pale, with exceedingly dry skin and a pixie hair cut that looked a little askew. She asked me out and I said yes. I'd like to think that I was being magnanimous, sparing her the sting of rejection — something which I had become increasingly familiar with — but I suspect that I just wanted to spend a few hours having my ego stroked.

And ego-stroking is the second-best kind of stroking there is.

———————————

"So how do I look?"

I was wearing faded jeans and a white knock-off Miami Vice jacket over a concert T-shirt from Pink Floyd's "Momentary Lapse of Reason" Tour. Tom and I had seen it together from the nosebleed seats at JFK Stadium. It was pretty cool. They blew up an inflatable pig.

Tom put down his Uncanny X-Men comic book and gave me an appraising look. He frowned. "This is for that girl you're not attracted to, right?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Then you're fine," he said, with a dismissive wave and went back to his comic.

I laughed as I frisked myself to make sure that my wallet and keys were in my pockets. All good.

"What are you up to tonight?" I asked and Tom shrugged.

"Got a date with Madelyne Pryor."

"Who?" He pointed to a panel in the comic book, a woman with brassy hair and big tits. I'll say this for Marvel's artists: They know their audience.

"What time to do think you'll be back?" he asked, flipping the page.

"I'm guessing ten. Ten-thirty." He nodded absently, his attention already back in the world of mutants and mayhem.

"Hasta later," I said, heading for the door. I didn't know it yet, but I was about to go on the strangest date of my life. Nor did I know that things would get even weirder when I got back.

(Continued...)