Apron Anxiety (6 page)

For the first few weeks in the bungalow, I’d take a half hour to write my
Glamour
entry in the morning, scrambling for compelling stories that I was willing to share about my newly single life. The problem was that my editors and readers wanted to see me single and mingling, but really, I was in no place for miniskirts and martinis. So usually I’d just inflate something true but totally insignificant, hit
SEND
, and be done.

I’d spend the rest of my day hiking, riding bikes, reading by the beach, and seeing movies, sometimes with Shelley, but usually by myself. I got a cherry blossom tattoo on my ankle just to see what it would feel like. And then I got a lotus on the back of my neck. There was no TV in the bungalow, so I was completely out of touch with pop culture, a cleanse of its own. This would have been a nice time to take up cooking, especially with all the raw beans and funky rice I had inherited in the pantry, but I was just as happy snacking on fruit, nuts, and chocolate all day, or take-out from any of the boho-Californian joints on Sunset Boulevard.

With trail mix in one hand and a California Chardonnay in the other, I’d sit quietly in the dark, spying on the neighbors sitting on the shared lawn. They were usually hand-rolling cigarettes and getting their cocktail on. They looked like young, adorable party animals, and they never stopped. Of course, I didn’t mind.
I’d hear them cracking up (or were they cracked-out?) all night long. When I caught a very famous, “straight” actor stumbling down the driveway at six o’clock in the morning, I felt a flick of a switch. Enough with the heartbreak. It was time to have fun.

In half a second, the “nabes” took me in and became my wild, West Coast ride. Not only were they ridiculously spirited, but they were also quirky and nonjudgmental, and they brought out an uninhibited side of me that had been dormant since my childhood in Longmeadow. They were also raging cokeheads. That didn’t bother me—I did plenty of partying in New York, but it was usually encased in work, and since I was always scared about appearing strung-out to my family, nothing got too excessive. But in L.A., no one was watching. I made my own rules and did whatever the hell I wanted.

While Shelley was finding her place with the beautiful and successful showbiz types, I was transfixed by my new, screwed-up friends, and my nights with them were becoming a bit corrupt. They were delighted to bring me (and
party supplies
) everywhere they went—to outrageous parties in the Hollywood Hills, unbelievable barbecues in Malibu, and underground art shows in Venice Beach. They were wickedly funny, highly promiscuous, and totally reckless. They didn’t wear seat belts, they never needed sleep, and best of all, they didn’t let me so much as mumble John’s name.

One night, we went to a party at a rock star’s glass mansion in the hills. I ended up so messed up from mojitos and more that I did a strip show on the deck while the nabes cheered me on. We found a disposable razor in the pool-house bathroom and I had one of the Guns N’ Roses guys shave my entire body. We called it performance art. It was exhilarating to be so out of control.
Fuck John. Fuck the dating blog. Fuck it all
. When the hot tub found me, things got even crazier with an infamous
drummer I had grown up listening to. Later on he told me he had a wife. And that she wanted to join us next.

The nabes and I did the same thing the next night, at a different mansion, with a different crowd, breaking different rules, with a different drink and different drug. And then we did it again.
And again
.

I easily could have found my happy place in the risky world of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, especially on this other coast, where nobody knew what I was up to. All that raw inhibition felt way too natural for me. Becoming an artsy, tortured fuckup was so incredibly tempting, and the road was
right there
for me to take. But I didn’t. After eight months in Los Angeles, I broke my lease and moved back to New York. The nabes had too many demons and were rubbing off on me in addictive and destructive ways.

Shelley and I would stay best friends, but her life in Los Angeles was too
Hollywood
for me to handle, especially when it wasn’t part of my job anymore.

My dating blog for
Glamour
received substantial traffic, but also armies of haters because of its feather-light content and general lack of substance or self-analysis (I never took it seriously and it showed). Suddenly, I was petrified that I’d made a mockery of my professional self and had ruined my writing career for good.

And John? After almost a year away, I still thought of him every day. His incandescent eyes and boyish humor, and how deliriously good it felt to be near him no matter how grim the circumstances were. I made peace with the cruel fact that I’d never be quite the same again, that losing John broke me in a way that couldn’t really be rebuilt. But I came to think of heartbreak as an impetus to becoming a wiser woman, sister,
friend, and writer, and, in a way, I felt chosen to have had such a healthy dose of it. Strong women don’t just happen.

If nothing else, my sad ending with John got me to L.A., which might have been a bit too sublime, but it did my soul some good. As I flew up, up, and away, back to New York, I knew I was moving somewhere in the right direction.