At around the 4th month of dating, Ellen moved out of the free, tiny guesthouse she was living in (in exchange for cooking for the main house’s crazy owner 5 nights a week) Santa Monica (about 10-15 minutes from me) to an expensive ($1900) loft in downtown L.A.

I had a sneaky feeling that I wouldn’t make it 30 days after she moved downtown…

The $1900 in rent was $1900 more than she had been paying and really, a lot of rent for L.A. In my building, in the neighborhood just south of Brentwood (yes, OJ’s Brentwood), a 2 Bed/2 Bath would MAX out at $1600 or so. My building rented 1 Beds for $1200 at the time.

That is to say, she had to work EVEN MORE to make that $1900 nut. I think parking was another $200 a month too.

A quick rundown of those 25 days or so:

• I always came downtown to stay over (maybe 3 nights a week, costing me $10 in parking each overnight visit)
• we never had sex in the new place.
• she would ignore me and work in the other room ALL NIGHT while I stayed in the bedroom and watched TV and wrestled with her dog. Like, I went to bed without her.
• Discovered she had ERASED all the photos of us from our Hearst Castle trip and didn’t save any back ups.
• The ONLY sign we weren’t on the way to a breakup, she made vague references about trying to get me a parking pass. This actually confused me.

THE LAST NIGHT:

She was very unaccommodating in little ways. Like insisting she keep the huge windows of the old bank building she lived in open, despite central air.

So we go to bed one night and shortly after I fell asleep, a mosquito — which I HATE HATE HATE — flew into my ear, which totally freaks me out and I ended up waking up and flailing at my head and going “Aaaaaaaaah!” loud. Right into her ear.

This was what Malcolm Gladwell calls “The Tipping Point.”

The moment where the ice cracked under the weight of a mosquito.

She woke up and was SOOOOOOOOOOO ANGRY.

“What the fuck? You just yelled in my ear!”

“I’m sorry — there was a mosquito in my ear — I didn’t do it on purpose.” To add insult to injury I might, admittedly, have giggled at her strong reaction. It was pure nerves.

Her eyes burned with rage. That was it. She was DONE. I felt it to my bones. I bet the people sleeping in the apartments all around felt that tremor of fury.

There was no love left.

We went back to bed, but something had shifted. I could feel it, like a boulder that was now under the covers. A few minutes later, I got up and put my jeans on in the dark and found my shoes. I was going to leave, sneak out.

She awoke. “What are you doing?”

“What I am I doing here — what purpose do I serve?” The Truth Bomb. I dropped the Truth Bomb.

She said nothing. There was a moment and I got back into bed. (I should have left for many reasons but ultimately didn’t want to drive 25 minutes / 14 miles back to my house at 1:15 am.)

That was the last time I saw her.

In the morning, she was gone. And she called and broke up with me a couple of days later. “I adore you but…” — she didn’t — “this isn’t working for me.”

She said she would drop my stuff off at my apartment and the two times / days she gave me she never showed up or called to cancel. Then one day I went to my car and she had left a cardboard box in front of my car, unsecured, with my medications and shit in it that all could have been stolen.

I found her on Match not long after.

I was matched with a girl named “Susie” on e-harm. (I like calling it “e-harm” instead of “e-harmony”). I think we made it through the “5 Questions of Death” and got to talk on the phone.

On the phone, she sounded like a 11 year old. You know, that tiny, mildly squeaky voice. And answers questions in short stacco bursts. And when I told a joke, it took a second for her to process it and then laugh, like when you tell a joke to a kid. You know, you can watch their brains figuring out the twist and then they go “Oh, ha ha ha.”

I didn’t know if we should get together, but she was super, super cute. 5 feet and a curvy little body. So I made plans to meet at a breakfast place near her house and left it on her VM. And then she called me back VERY EXCITED about the place I choose. Unusually excited.

CUT TO: The date. She’s 15 minutes late. And since was early, I had been sitting there for 20 minutes.

She shows up and she’s cute. And dressed like a kid. She had big white buttons on her jeans. Like she stole her pants from a Raggedy Ann doll. In fact, she’s the type of girl that would buy clothes with really big buttons. Or wear Blow Pop/Hello Kitty/SuperGirl T-shirts UN-ironically. Or overalls. It was hard to imagine her in a dress. And she had tiny little kid hands. What was not tiny was her bosom. She had a very adult bra-size. It was tough to process these two “ouvres” in my head.

It turns out she was excited about the place because she thought they had closed and they had choc. chip pancakes which she ordered and was very, very excited about. Like a kid would be. Like because they got choc. chip pancakes all was right in the world at that moment. It was kinda charming and made me uneasy at the same time. I felt like a Big Brother taking a Little Sister out for pancakes.

Conversation was tough as it sometimes is with an 11 year old. At the 35 minute mark, I said, “Well, my meter was going to run up” (which it was because she 15 mins late) and she suddenly looked sad.

“I can refill it…but while I’m gone you gotta come up with some questions to ask me, okay?” Somehow I didn’t sound like a dick when I said this.

I re-fill my meter and come back and sit down.

“What’s your favorite animal?”

For a second, I thought she was kidding. She wasn’t.

“I guess meerkats. I liked that show on Animal Planet — Meerkat Manor. Maybe 2nd, sloths. They are kinda popular now. After that Ellen show freakout with that blond actress.”

“Mine’s an elephant. And when I watch shows about elephants. I have to hold this elephant doll I have.”

Oh shit.

(TO BE CONT.)

I call a woman this AM — get the VM — she calls me back while I’m leaving a message…but she’s with a friend, on her bike and our few minute conversation was interrupted every 30 seconds by her talking to her friend, other bikers, random people on the street…I felt like I was joining her in an Old Navy commercial.

“So, what are you doing today?”

“well, I have to work on this — ”

“Make a left now!”

This is a real pet peeve of mine. I’m not your friend. You don’t know me. I’m try to make a good impression and get to know you and it’s hard when you’re on your cell and got ADD and I’m just another distraction.

But after about 6 minutes, she says she’ll call me back later.

***

She calls at 7 and it’s better. And she’s tells me about her friend’s lousy boyfriend. I give a brilliant assessment of the situation. She’s impressed. And laughs.

She asks me where I’m from. I say Philly. And then I lived in New York.

And she says “Manhattan?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we had a house in Long Island, then a house in Queens, then a house upstate, then a house in CT, then a house in________, and then a condo in Greenwich Village….”

“Wow. That’s a lot of houses.”

No laugh.

(We’re losing pressure, Captain.)

Then she corrects me on the difference between The High School for Performing Arts and Art And Music in NYC.

(Ship’s going down, Captain.)

She then volunteers that she was married when she moved to LA. And now divorced. And gave me short synopsis on her marriage and her ex’s professional failures (was a top chef for the studios and now cooks in a hospital) — she still sounded disappointed in his choices. “I saw potential in him he didn’t see himself.”

(I don’t like the sound and tone of this, Captain.)

“What about you?”

“What about me what?”

Silence.

“Oh, was I married? No, nope…”

More silence. More rope to hang me with. This is starting to feel like a bad job interview.

I very, very briefly talk about moving her for a woman and that didn’t work out.

“Then what?”

I get what’s happening — she’s trying to conduct a RELATIONSHIP AUTOPSY. This is not going to be pretty — either way — if I go into great detail or I avoid it. Either way I’m dead.

“Then I was with a girl from Italy and she had to move back for school and her family.”

Silence. Then:

HER: “Well, thanks for sharing that. I have to make dinner and have a lot of things to prep, so I got to go.”

ME: “Oh! Okay, then.

HER: See you later.

ME: Okay.

Time of death: 17 minutes and 20 seconds.

The last woman I called my “girlfriend” was Ellen and we started dating this month two years ago.

She was an Event Planner. I didn’t realize this at the time, but this was a terrible idea.

Usually when you met someone, someone on Match, you think they want to date someone, they have the time to date someone. That is to say, someone who is not already in a long term, committed relationship with their job / career. A career that is very demanding and possessive of that person.

I’m smarter now — I hear the signs right off the bat — “I’m a pilot; in medical school and single parent to a 1 year old AND a full-time writer; I’m in production (this is a popular one in L.A. — it means they work 60+ hours a week and/or are gone for weeks / months at a time); I’m an event planner…”

What I didn’t realize at the time was that most events are on the weekend. Those two days when OTHER events you want to take your date to is happening (concerts, lectures, plays, comedy shows) and the nights leading up to that (Friday night for example), that event planner needs to plan for their upcoming events.

That is to say, Ellen was always working. When the rest of us were playing.

On the 4th month of dating (June), I tried to plan a weekend getaway, road trip for us. This was damn near impossible. I had already tried to get her to go to Spain with me in May for a for days for a friend’s wedding, but that was off the table. Even though she worked for herself, she was a slave to her clients and POTENTIAL clients (“What if I miss a $8000 job when I am gone?”).

But I got her to agree to a road trip to Hearst Castle — we’d leave on a Friday and be back Sunday. But after we had made reservations, a birthday party came up for one of her clients and she was not happy about farming it out to a girl who worked for her freelance (and only making a $100 on the whole thing by having to hire her). The morning we left, she left a bunch of big boxes with everything in the center of the living room for her.

The next day, Saturday, the client called and was livid that the girl forgot the biggest boxes and didn’t hang this lights or something and Ellen had a meltdown and there went our weekend. Over Chinese paper lanterns or something.

We never went away again.

And then there was the Squeeze concert. On a Monday night. In July.

In addition to being an event planner (at night), during the day she was a fit model. Not a model model, but someone who was a living manequin for fashion designers. So that day she had been on her feet in heels for hours and hours. And was pretty miserable about having to go directly from work to a concert. And stand.

Basically, our love life, our dates and ME were just inconveniences in her life. Things that got in the way between her and her work. It was what it was. Ellen had gotten divorced a few years earlier after a 10+ year marriage. And when she talked about the last few years, there were a LOT of boyfriends. Short term boyfriends. Maybe at least 8 of them in 3 years. That’s almost 3 boyfriends a year. That lasted a few months. I remember thinking “I’m going to be one of those short term boyfriends.”

The woman I moved out here for was the same way — married to her work. I remember nights of just staring at the back of her head at the computer in her living room for HOURS while I watched The Sopranos and played with her cat with a fishing rod feather toy.

It was 10 years later and I had dated the same person with a different face.

I had an interesting date last night.

A woman had written me a very lovely, very flattering note on Match about a week ago. She was cute. Not traditionally beautiful, but really, really cute. A real girl next door. She even compared herself to the girl next door and Pam from ‘The Office’ in her profile. She had been a teacher.

We talked on the phone. It was okay — not bad, not great. Unremarkable. But okay. I think we even talked for 45 minutes. Aside from one story she told about teaching, I don’t recall anything else from our talk.

Now, a few days before I had first date with a 5’9 blonde (let’s call her “The Mayflower Girl”) and our first phone call was an HOUR TWENTY — and flew by. It was very sparky. And Mayflower and I even talked a couple more times before our date on Tues. Which was great. And we made out in her car.

I remember thinking to myself, “I should just ONLY go on dates with women I have THOSE kind of conversations with. Long, sparky talks.’ ‘Cause historically? Those women are the women who become my girlfriends. All the other she-was nice-enough-good-looking-enough-talk-was-okay ones really go nowhere. They just don’t.

So I meet this one last night in The Valley. Let’s call her ‘The Nice Teacher.’

She’s right on time. And looks like her pics. And we have a nice time. And it lasts for 90 minutes. And it’s fine.

But I keep looking at her and trying to figure out why I, well, why I don’t want to have sex with her.

She’s cute. And has a nice body. And nice hands. And a kind face. Blouse could have been nicer. And her hair could be longer (both easy tweaks). And she’s an easy laugher.

But every time I went to think of her naked or us having sex or kissing, it was like tuning into a radio station just out of range and all I was getting was all static.

And I was having trouble thinking of things to ask her. Usually I’m an ace at keeping the convo flowing, even to the point I feel like I’m giving CPR to a conversation — but I kept drawing a blank.

But she asks a lot of questions and seems interested in my anecdotes and answers.

I walk her to her car. She drives me to mine. I’m wondering if we are going to kiss. I land just right of her mouth.

I drive home and realize, ‘Huh, I think I’ve been out with women who probably have felt the same exact way about me — he’s cute, charming, good on paper, paid the check, but there’s just something missing I can’t put my finger on….I feel like I should give him another chance on principle, but I can’t deny my gut telling me to move on and wait for A SPARK with someone else….”

(My 5th floor walk-up – my residence from 1994 to 2000)

I’m reading Carlos Kotkin’s Please God Let It Be Herpes and man, this guy really captured something. What’s it’s like to try and find love and dates as a man when you have been given no tools whatsoever. No older brother, no strong father figure, no friends who can impart advice. And you have limited social skills to begin with.

Reading his book reminded me of all my attempts at dating in New York in the late 80′s to about 2000.

I remember hearing about an orgy in my dorm (or a 3 way) either freshman or sophomore year. This kind of melted my brain. How does one get 2 or more people naked and having sex, when I was still figuring out how to get one naked and willing. (In retrospect, booze/drugs and beauty were probably involved)…

Here are some of the high/lowlights of my New York Dating Years:

• Tattooed Girl I met in line registering sophomore year who I went on one chaste date with (not even a kiss), who later accused me of date rape to the New School Administration after I didn’t want a 2nd date (Date Rape was ridiculous trendy in 1989).
• My freshman year R.A. (who was 21 to my 18) who I was in love with — catching her with multiple partners in the dorm. (This is a much longer, unfortunate story) – 1988 – 1989
• The ex-heroin addict from Australia who liked me but fled my apt. I minute I tried to kiss her. (circa 1997-98)
• Dating a woman who had a pitbull. And a studio apartment. The two times we had sex, her dog sat behind her head / behind the folded down futon and watched me with his angry glow-in-the-dark eyes. (1998)
• Going out with Tiffany Goldstein, a 22 year old Jewish transplant from the Midwest who was a classic Seinfeld “Two-face” (she looked completely different every other time we went out.) On our 3rd or 4th date, casually mentioned that she fucked a black guy who worked at Radio Shack she knew from H.S. when she went back home the week before. Years later, her head was bashed in by a homeless man with a 5lb piece of concrete (true story) and it made the news. (circa 1997-1998)

• Reading a forwarded e-mail where a woman I had gone out with said I was “too short to date.” (1996)
• The older woman who looked like Ann-Margret who I fooled around with once who totally lied to me about leaving for the weekend instead of just ending it with me. She was a voice over actress and every time I went to the movies, I had to hear her voice on recorded announcements before the movie started. (1997 or 1998)
• Totally freaking the roommate of a co-worker out by “courting her” – dropping off a gift of an autographed book of her favorite author at her office. (1993)
• Hitting on a redhead in elevator while on crutches, getting her number and then freaking her out when I popped by her office when I was hobbling in the neighborhood (I was an idiot). (1995)
• The girl who looked like a little Jodi Foster who had a boyfriend but totally wanted me to do something and I only figured this out 10+ years later when watching a video of me talking about it at the time. Oddly, her mother lived in my singing teacher’s building and I would pop down after my lesson. (1997/1998)

This is a story about The English Girl which warrants a whole post of its own. But this a good little snapshot….

So it’s our 3rd date and I end up back at her dumpy apartment in a seedy part of town. (The shower had no shower head — just a pipe jutting out of the wall and there was so much water damage to the bathroom walls, there were giant bubbles of paint and plaster falling out onto the floor)…

And she’s naked. She had a fantastic figure — she looked like a curvy Degas ballerina come to life.

She’s on the bed and her body and skin are flawless….not a wrinkle or mole….but then I notice a small, but unusually deep scar right above her breast… between the collar bone and the top of her breast.

I point at it. “Where’d you get that scar?”

“Oh,” she says casually. “That’s where my ex-boyfriend stabbed me.”

I’m processing this — she’s sort of hinted about her wild-child years and she has an Girl Interrupted / Angelina Jolie feel and look about her (full, natural lips, dark hair, piercing eyes).

“But it’s not that wide…”

“Oh, he stabbed me with a letter opener. And over here is another scar where the doctors had to keep my lung from collapsing.”

OMG!

It’s been a while since I dated her (4 years) and even thought about her….

Her name was (let’s say) “Renee.” I met her at a Feminar (Female + Seminar =  Feminar).

I had been on a “Men’s Panel” during the seminar, where they brought in 4 guys, put us on stage and then we answered honestly from cards the women had pre-written questions on. (I have since been banned from doing this panel anymore — it may have been because I dated this woman — I never found out).

I KILLED at this thing. I was hilarious, but poignant. A woman even stood up and with tears in her eyes apologized to me for dismissing guys her own height when dating.

I happened to stay at the hotel to eat an early dinner after the Feminar team rushed the men on the panel out like we were The Beatles after a press conference. An hour later, I bumped into Renee on the way to the bathroom. She was taller than me, maybe 5’9, kinda cute in a quirky, average girl way. She took my card and was nervous like I was Davy Jones and she Marcia Brady.

She e-mailed me about a week later and then disappeared but then gave me her number after that. She lived in the Bay Area. The next time she came down, we would hang out.

We did — we went to eat, where she looked at me googly-eyed all night and ended up back at my place…and ended up staying for 5 days.

Which wasn’t a bad thing – it was fun and different and like a vacation from own life. And it was nice having someone to sleep in bed with, take naps with, make dinner with, etc. An Instant Girlfriend. Add water and mix. We had fun and laughed. A lot. And she was very sexual free. Experimental. Daring. Non-judgemental.

THE BLOOM COMES OFF THE ROSE:

Classic situation of getting too sexually involved with someone before you really know them (I don’t think anyone would date/have sex if we waited around for every character flaw to arise — I mean, think about it)…

What I didn’t know was she was SOCIALLY A LIABILITY. Blurted things out in public. Embarrassed me. Was socially unconcious. It was like having a child — she would do or say something I would have never seen coming. (“How did you get your head in the banister in the 2 seconds my head was turned?”)

Worse yet, it was like BEING WITH MY MOM (who does the same thing).

Some examples of the stuff that annoyed the shit out of me. (now keep in mind when they came up, it kinda of annoyed me but not enough to say something, but when a million of these things piled up and then one last one hit the pile — I WAS DONE).

• Taking her to lecture that was being recorded, she stood up at the break and (without warning) announced to the whole room, “Anyone wanna get a pizza?” The lecturer had to quickly speak up and say, ‘No, no — we can’t do that.’)
• Once grabbed me from behind in Whole Foods after I said something she didn’t like and wouldn’t let me go (this was a technique she used with her nursery school toddlers when she was working). And refused to let me go despite repeated, whispered, angry warnings.
• Once grabbed my nipple really, really hard while having sex — my animal / automatic instinct was to punch her — I actually had my fist raised.
• Once put on my jeans when I wasn’t looking and stretched them all out of shape (she was taller and curvier than me, so getting them on must have been a real feat — it never occurred to her, “Oh, these are way too small, I better not keep FORCING them on”)
• Once said, “How come you never tell me I’m beautiful” This was like week 3. A needy line (and the needy way she delivered it) made her LESS beautiful.
• I could never get her on the phone when I called / needed her. Always went to VM. (“Oh, I forgot I had my phone off…”)
• When we did talk on the phone, she went on and on and on about her horrible childhood. Endless stories of this.
• Was always LATE. Like, missing PLANES late. Which often fucked up my schedule (and she wasn’t working at the time) — there’s was a whole incident when she missed her plane in SF and had me pick her up at LAX and RUSH her to a hair appt in West Hollywood — freaking out in my car the entire ride — she was 2 hours late for (and then I had wait around in WH for 1.5 hours in the middle of the working day).
• Tended to stay one day too many when she visited (and didn’t ask me if was okay to stay a FIFTH day), she would just miss her plane.

There were other things too — I HATED, HATED her other LA friend and her boyfriend, but the above are the “bad” highlights.

I broke up with over the phone on the sixth week when she proposed coming down for another visit. There was all these little things I could have spoke up about (“hey, don’t touch my stuff” after the jeans thing), but how many times do you have to tell someone to correct their behavior (to your liking) when it’s really that YOU JUST DON’T LIKE THAT OTHER PERSON.

I’ve been putting this off…too soon I guess….

So what happened on Day 21?

We had tickets for a show I had bought 2 weeks earlier.

Now, to refresh you, only a few days before she made the crack about me “being a girl FOR THE LAST 41 YEARS.” When she had only knew me for 15 or 16 days.

I had to say something, course correct, speak up like I done, well, not in any previous relationship that sloooooowwwwwwwllly went off the rails.

But I had calmed down about it and was going to bring it up either the night of the show or shortly thereafter at a good time.

So the night of the show, she shows up at my apartment in wedges 4 inches higher than me (my face came up to her collarbone), hair pulled tightly back and up, with a lot of pale makeup and very red lips. There was something very cold about her outfit/appearance.

She apologizes on without prompting about the ’41 years’ comment (“wow, that was mean”), but within minutes HIT ME HARD WITH A BOOK she didn’t like the title of (It was something about “How to Control Your Alpha Bitch” — now I realize how that could have been misunderstood — it was a guide FOR alpha women and I had ordered it for research for my script MONTHS EARLIER).

On the way to the show, she just BREAKS MY BALLS in the car (I don’t remember what she said, I just remember mock strangling her a few times) and generally defiant, bitchy and mouthy.

At the show, I remember saying to her, “Hey, I’ve already dated you — I don’t need to date The Mean Girl 2.0.”

This is us at the show (front row — see ball of red hair in upper right):

After the show we drive back to my apartment (she had already announced she was not sleeping over — this is the 2nd time — with no explanation — “Hey you staying over?” “No.” And scene.)

We sit on the couch, kiss a bit, watch David Blaine on TV and then HER STOMACH HURTS and she wants to lie down on the couch. “Do you want to come to bed?” “No, it hurts. I can’t move.”

I get a blanket, give her a pillow and go into my bedroom (only 15 FEET AWAY!!!!!).

In the morning, she wakes me up. “Hey, I’m going.” No kiss, no nothing. Half sleeping, I take her hand and put it on my cheek. She leaves.

(to be continued…Part 3: The Phone Call!)

a 1st date you’ve had THREE TIMES.

There’s a difference. A big one.

I remember this first occurring when I was in New York, close to my last year (prob. 1999 or early 2000), I had coffee with this redhead who worked for a famous director — THREE TIMES. Coffee. We never even graduated to dinner. Or even lunch. We literally met for coffee three times. And each time, it was basically the same date — small talk, a few laughs, no physical progression. Not even a kiss. Or a touch on the arm.

It was the Groundhog Day of Dates. Same date — same length, same level of intimacy — just a different coffee shop and day.

After the 3rd, I had to e-mail and and ask her if we were dating, not dating, friends, not friends or what. I wasn’t mad, I just needed clarity. I just didn’t want to have a FOURTH coffee date. She wrote back she was on the fence and that’s why we went out so much, but ultimately wasn’t feeling it. (We later hung out as buddies when I visited NYC a year later, but since lost touch)

I’ve had about four of these “Faux 3rd Dates” in the last year, but only now can I really distinguish them from a “Real 3rd date.”

• The dates are oddly far apart. I went out with ‘Lena’ last year — we had our 1st date in Dec, our 2nd in Jan, our 3rd in Feb. To contrast that, the Snarky Redhead I just went out with — we had 5 dates in 21 days. Every 4 days or so. There’s freakin’ MOMENTUM.
• They don’t progress physically. You don’t kiss until the 2nd or 3rd date. And it’s not a really good kiss — it’s basically a peck.
• The dates are all the same — you don’t feel like you are getting to know the other person any better — you don’t feel them opening up, you don’t feel any closer with them, you don’t like them any more — it just feels like an exact replica of Date One.
• You just feel you are on the fence about them and they are on the fence about you. You ask them on a 2nd or 3rd date and if they refused, you wouldn’t care. There’s a “what the hell” quality about it. And you are curious to see if they’d say yes to another date — almost like you were placing a half-assed bet with yourself.