Newsflash: I'm doing great in New Orleans, so I'm donating $100 for every 1K I make here to Dr's without Borders for Haiti relief. If anyone knows any other grassroots organizations who are responsible and great, let me know.

photo by Romy Suskin

Years ago, I met a guy named Oliver through mutual friends. He was at least 6 2” with full sleeve tattoos, dark hair, blue eyes. He was good looking not like generic hot dude cute, but like rock and roll refined; equal parts messy chain wallet cool and expensive dork. I think he was a guitar player and his Dad wrote songs for Elvis. He was sober a long time and he rode motorcycles. He owned things. I’d never dated anyone who owned things.

 

I met Oliver for breakfast on Sunset Blvd and we talked easily and deeply about our fathers, about sobriety and about break ups while we nibbled cheesy eggs and chugged weak coffee. 

              “I feel like I’ve been breaking up for years,” I said.

              “It’ll surprise you,” he said.

 

After breakfast, I straddled him on the back of his vintage Triumph motorcycle with my chest against his spine. I don’t like riding bitch. I made an exception.

He drove up and around Mulholland drive into the warm Los Angeles air with the sun blazing through eucalyptus trees. The ride and the talk about our distant fathers and breakups made beginnings seem possible and the past petty. He stopped at a pet store somewhere on a hill near a park where I held puppies and pet kittens.

 

    We left the pet store we went back to his place and we made out on his giant bed. He had a Jacuzzi in his room but it wasn’t obnoxious, just a large beautiful bathtub with a panoramic view of the canyon thick with trees. He had several expensive collectible guitars on display in a bright kitchen. He noticed me suck in my stomach as I took off my shirt.

            “I’m not afraid of your curves,” he said. I wanted to fuck him but we only kissed and rolled around on that bed for a couple hours. I was told by my straight girlfriends to never fuck on the first date if you like a guy.  After a while, he drove me back to my car. I was high on adrenaline. My skin vibrated, scraped raw as if I were an egg about to be dropped from a rooftop. Overexposed. Fragile.

 

Before the date with Oliver, I’d broken up with my hip-hop hairdresser boyfriend, a guy who lived out of milk crates and moved bags of weed out of a yellow Tupperware container in our one-bedroom, Hollywood sardine can, which always smelled like a skunk slaughterhouse. We’d struggled on my bartender, stripper cash and it was my bed we’d slept on for nearly six years. After separating our pets and plants, I finally drove my things and his cat away in a U-Haul. We howled like we’d both been declawed all the way to my empty apartment.

 

Oliver never called me again.

 

The next time I saw him, he held a baby. He got back together with his ex. I saw them at our mutual friend’s wedding brunch.

 

The “Oliver Standard” became the type of guy with some stuff to offer; a guy I’d have to be raw and honest with. A guy who impressed me. Intimidated me. Made me a little squirmy.

 

After Oliver didn’t call I sought refuge in someone who was thrilled to be with me.

Like the marriage of coffee and cigarettes, I went great with his heroin habit. I was never intimidated by him or made nervous by his accomplishments. Instead, I applied to grad school and did bachelor parties on the weekends, while he held up women at ATMs for dope in my 1978 Chevy Nova. I knew he loved me, but he loved heroin a lot more.

 

Years later, another gentleman caller of the “Oliver Standard” variety showed up:

 

I got nervous and pushy. When I’m intimidated, I either shut down or play ringleader, both come from the same set of fears. Both chase people away. I don’t know which happened first. The chemistry was great and connected. Fragrant. Profound. He’s funny, smart, primal and rhythmic. An impossible handful.  Green eyes like electric olives when the light hits. Erotic. Sophisticated. Flighty.

 

Neither of us sought anything heavy-handed or monogamous or whatever. Neither of us wanted to be pressured. But, I forced myself on him then made amends. Twice. In two days. Then he bolted like an arsonist still holding the match from the weird high-maintenance girl. 

 

Timing is everything. And reading someone is like playing music. Knowing when to back off. Knowing when to pounce. Knowing when to listen and when to shut the fuck up. When to dance. When to be still.  When to disappear.

 

I know when a guy wants me. It’s what to do when he doesn’t want me that makes me puke. Pull my hair out. Run naked into oncoming traffic looking for someone to fuck. Anyone.

photo by romy suskin

 

Listen. The egg’s already broken. I’m well versed in slime. I know how to clean up my mess and move on.  But there are shells in my teeth and the taste of eggs I can’t shake. The Oliver Standard ends up with a skinnier version of me, a girl who’s six months clean and living with her parents without a self supporting bone in her body.  A girl who has a book published. A pretty, Italian comic. Or, he ends up with his ex and a baby and a tidy life in Laurel Canyon.  Or he walks off with the blonde who talks baby talk.

Or Nothing.

A hundred hungers seeking flight; All of us wanting the same fucking thing. To feel more alive.