Secret Celebrity

chapter two

Thirty-five years old. Yes, I'm thirty-five. But I'm an L.A. thirty-five. In other places thirty-five generally means you're a grown-up. A lot of thirty-five-year-olds have kids. A lot of them have teenagers. They have serious jobs. They have life insurance. They can fill out the whole questionnaire. When asked who to call in case of emergency, they have an immediate answer. But I'm not that kind of thirty-five-year-old. In Los Angeles you can be thirty-five and still find the Afghan Whigs more important than front-page news. Here it's not unusual to not feel or act grown-up. To not have kids. To have a job you're serious about rather than a serious job. To still think you're going to live forever. And to be so unsettled that your "in case of emergency" person changes from week to week. Living this way makes me, and people like me, a target for a lot of criticism, most often from people outside L.A. Real grown-ups look down on us as narcissists stuck in adult-escence. I was once accused of producing music videos that had no socially redeeming value. What? But don't get me started on critics and how their reviews should come with a disclaimer. In this case it should have read..."I'm pissed off that my low-paying job requires me to spend eight hours a day in a cubicle watching other people have fun in million-dollar videos." And even though I have a couple of hideous cubicle jobs on my résumé, that doesn't keep me from wanting to take critics on—which is further proof that I'm not a normal thirty-five-year-old.

Shouldn't I have more important things to fight over? Yes, I should. But I can't deny my get-even fantasy. I'd line up all those people who have criticized my life and work for being trite and say to them, Okay, let me explain something: The first seventeen years of my life were hell. I lived at the crossroads of depression and violence. All the grown-ups were like characters in a Eugene O'Neill play and every guy under twenty-five was a character out of Reservoir Dogs. Only not as cute.

Listen up, critics, you want me to get real? I've been real. It's overrated. You want me to make a contribution to society? Here's my contribution: Go west. Have fun. That doesn't mean I'm into a senseless life. I like sense. I like meaning. I just think you can get those things while walking with a light step and maneuvering with a delicate touch. Having lived through seventeen very dark, very long South Boston winters, I have great appreciation for L.A.'s almost endless summer.

Which is probably why I married my now, soon-to-be-ex husband. Met him six years ago, when he was twenty-five. We met on a vacation up at Big Bear. One glimpse and I was hooked. Thy don't breed creatures like him in my hometown. His blond hair, sparkling green eyes, olive skin, and irrepressible zest appeared to be some blessed mix of Connecticut WASP and Mediterranean mojo. (I was close. His father was Pasadena WASP, his mother upper-class Italian—New York by way of Milan.) His two great talents at that time were skiing and smoothly popping open champagne bottles. I used to watch him fly down the mountain and think if he can do that, he can do anything. No logic there, but that's what love does. As for the champagne, he always ordered the best, generally on someone else's credit card. It was the first time in my life champagne didn't give me a headache. Quite the opposite. Even the next morning, I still felt all bubbly and happy. It was the first time in my life when the "what ifs" weren't worst-case scenarios.

My husband was like a Xanax for me. Any residual depression I'd been carrying around from my South Boston days was gone. He made me laugh. It felt good. It made me feel alive. He got me to believe the good times could indeed roll on and on. He delivered the right message at the right time. What can I say? I ended up marrying the delivery boy. And I do mean boy. I should have been tipped off when I discovered his favorite toothpaste was Aquafresh for Kids. But being in love, I found it adorable that his kisses tasted like bubble gum.

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HE WAS LATE. He was always late. And of course he would be late for this lunch. The "let's talk about the terms of our divorce" lunch. I was sitting at an outside table at one of those Euro-trashy restaurants at the bottom of Sunset Plaza Drive. I'd already had an iced latte and had spent the last ten minutes eavesdropping on the guy at the next table's cell phone conversation. "Baby, you're hot. You're so hot, baby. Tell me how hot you are." Suddenly, he was there. James (never Jimmy) Chase, my wayward husband. He kissed me on both cheeks, Euro style. It was an affectation that drove me increasingly crazy, seeing as he'd grown up in California. He sat down and immediately signaled over a waiter. "Oh my God, I think we're wearing the exact same glasses," I said. "Oliver Peoples. Black frames. Green lenses."