The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (11 page)

And I, who had never had to worry about being cool before, because being the daughter of a music star had come with the privilege of being able to dress and act however I wanted for my entire life without worrying about such non-music-progeny concerns as “cool,” felt an entirely new emotion: jealousy. For the first time, I looked at Risa, the first-generation daughter of Catholic Ghanaians, and compared myself to her. I wished that I could say whatever I wanted and get away with it. I wished that when I got up on stage, it made random people want to take me home and sleep with me.

I eventually decided that if I studied cool the way Risa did, taking forever to get dressed, cackling as opposed to laughing, claiming to be unavailable by reason of brooding over The One, Heathcliff style, tapping my carton of cigarettes on the table and walking away without a word as opposed to saying, “Excuse me, I’m going to go smoke a cigarette now.” If I did
that, I would be cool, too. But I didn’t want to be cool like that. I was happy being myself, I insisted. Back then, it had seemed like a beautiful moment of self-acceptance.

But now I could see that my cool factor hadn’t been what I should have been worried about. When Friend A says to a comedian’s Friend B that she is the funniest person she knows, and Friend C agrees, causing the comedian to take exception with that, the best way to prove this isn’t true is to say something funny. But I had just gotten offended. Which was the opposite of funny. Because the truth was, I wasn’t funny. I had been kidding myself, I realized, for over two years now, chasing a dream that my limited talent set wasn’t capable of fulfilling.

My parents had sent me to the best schools; I’d been granted so many luxuries growing up, with the expectation that I would eventually make something of myself. But I was useless. Worse than useless. I was, I realized at that moment, a negative deficit of a woman, unable to make my dreams come true, no matter how hard I tried. And all that money and effort that had gone toward helping me fulfill my potential had been wasted.

A picture of me throwing up in the bushes after finding my mother’s suicide note came back to me then. I thought of her, rotting away in her grave while I rotted away in my life, and the shame of it all became unbearable. Much like the night I had dumped my last one-month stand, I was overcome with the desire to be somebody else, anybody else but me. And entering the hallway, which was full of comics waiting to go on after me, only made the shame worse. Some of them gave me sympathetic looks. Most of them ignored me, concentrating on their own lines, probably hoping that my lack of talent couldn’t be transferred like an airborne illness.

I had to kill myself, I thought. Anything to escape this shame. I could drive myself to San Francisco, throw myself off their most famous bridge. I got so caught up in the image of my body sailing through the air before it hit the cold water, canceling this hot shame forever, that I walked straight into Caleb, who was waiting outside the green room.

And here I had thought the night couldn’t get any worse.

“Hey,” I said, both surprised and chagrined. I definitely wouldn’t have told the chlamydia joke if I’d known he was in the audience. “What are you doing here?”

He gave me a sly smile. “A little birdie named Abigail might have told me you were performing tonight.”

“Oh …” So the one laughing guy hadn’t been drunk. It was Caleb, giving me pity laughs.

I desperately wanted to tell him that I had based that set on an old boyfriend of Sharita’s, that I’d never had chlamydia, and, moreover, hadn’t decided to only start dating white guys exclusively because of the imaginary LaQuanda Green. But I didn’t know how to say all of that without bringing up my copious daddy issues. It would sound like I was lying or, even worse, sweating him so hard that I really cared what he thought. Dating in L.A. was a beast-versus-beast kind of situation. A woman couldn’t afford to let a guy she liked think she cared about him too early in a relationship. It was the exact same thing as exposing your neck to a circling lion.

So I stood there, frying in a pan of embarrassment and yearning for the Golden Gate Bridge. “Well, thanks for coming out,” I said.

But if the chlamydia joke bothered him, he didn’t show it. “You were great. Funny,” he said, rubbing my arm.

“Thanks,” I said, thinking that he had already morphed into an Angeleno. It had become a cosmic and continuously surprising mystery as to who was going to go on to be somebody someday, so no one in Los Angeles ever gave you their true opinions about a performance unless they really, really enjoyed it. Consequently, if L.A. audiences were to be believed, every single actor, comedian, and musician had been great in every single thing they had ever done.

After our initial exchange, Caleb and I stood there awkwardly. The problem with being a “sex on the first date” sort of person was that I had no idea how the actual courting process was supposed to go. Usually if I was
attracted to a guy, I slept with him. Then when things got too deep on his part, I left him. But I was turning over a new leaf with Caleb. So far we’d been on three dates that ended in awkward-but-sweet kisses and a promise on his part to call.

Him showing up at what I had just minutes ago decided would be the last show in my ill-considered comedy career, which had been meant to replace my ill-considered screenwriting career, threw me off my new version of game. How did one conduct one’s self when one wasn’t trying to negotiate a guy straight into bed?

“That set didn’t go so hot,” I said, giving a tentative poke at the truth.

Caleb was polite enough, but apparently he wasn’t a liar either. “Yeah, the audience was kind of dead,” he said, choosing his words so carefully that I could almost see the consideration that each one had been given as it came out his mouth.

“You know what?” I told him. “I think I’m over comedy. I mean it was fun, but it’s time for me to pursue something else.”

“Something else like what?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. Something that makes me feel like a worthy person, less tired of being me all the time. I want to be better than this, you know?”

I could see him struggling to come up with an appropriate answer and knew that I had taken this conversation too far. It was too early in our relationship to let him see that I wasn’t as breezy and confident as I came off on our first few dates. I had exposed my neck.

But I covered it with a wave of my hand. “Hey,” I said, switching my tone of voice back to the Thursday I had been with him up until now, the fun and happy woman who didn’t have a ton of issues and wouldn’t be dumping him at our thirty-day mark. “Let’s go get a drink or something. Want to go get a drink?”

He considered my offer for a beat or two, but then said, “Sure.”

I vowed to correct the damage I’d done. We’d get drinks and I’d invite him back to my place and we’d have sex for the first time. When he looked
back on this night, that’s what he’d remember. Not the routine that failed, not me whining about wanting to be a better person, but our first night of fabulous sex, the continuation of the honeymoon that was our first six months.

But, then, Caleb went still, his eyes wandering toward something over my shoulder.

“Mike Barker is headed this way,” he whispered, right before putting on his best nonchalant face. He really was becoming a true Angeleno. In New York, people would honk and call out to celebs on the street, but the one super-big rule in Los Angeles was that you should never let a celebrity catch you staring, even if that celebrity was as huge as Mike Barker.

I tried to look over my shoulder as casually as possible, dying to know which comic Mike Barker had come back here to see. Probably Still Lives With His Mother. His dating life was a mess waiting to be exploited for some bad man-child romantic comedy.

“You know he used to go with a friend of mine,” I said. “Strung her along for, like, a year, asked her to marry him, then one day he dumped her out of the blue. Left her for some actress.”

Caleb frowned and said, “I don’t want to harsh on your story or anything, but I’m not big on gossip. I feel it brings the wrong kind of energy to a conversation.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling like I had put my foot in my mouth for the third time that night. “I was telling you, because there was that weird connection.”

“Yeah, I understand. No worries,” he said, rubbing my arm again. And I relaxed. One of the things I liked most about Caleb was his ability to make others instantly feel at ease. It was like dating a non-celibate version of the Dalai Lama. I thought to myself,
Yes, this is what I need. Not a career in comedy but a relationship with someone who challenges me to be better person.

For a moment, I forgot all about Mike Barker, and for the first time in my entire dating life, I smiled at a guy in goofy way. “I really like you,” I told him.

He pulled me in close. “I really like you, too.”

“Hey, sorry for interrupting,” a voice said above us.

We looked up to see Mike Barker standing there in a vintage terry-cloth, short-sleeved button-up shirt and designer jeans.

“Sorry,” I said, thinking he wanted us to get out of the way, since we were blocking the entrance to the green room. I stepped back from Caleb to give him space to pass.

“No, I’m here to see you. Hi …” he said, shaking Caleb’s hand first and then mine. “I’m Mike Barker.”

See, this is what I don’t like about actors: they were always acting. You should have seen Mike Barker. Ridiculously tall and handsome, but radiating humbleness, like there was even a remote chance that Caleb and I didn’t know who he was.

“Hey,” Caleb answered, playing along.

But it felt too silly to play his introduction game, so I kept my mouth closed, waiting for an explanation as to why a movie star like him would be seeking out a female comedian who had just bombed on stage.

“That was, uh … a really interesting five minutes,” he said to me, obviously biting back laughter at my expense. “Not what I expected at all from you.”

Okay, it wasn’t exactly true that no one in Los Angeles said what they really thought of your performance. Once you got to a certain level of fame, you could pretty much say whatever you wanted. And in Los Angeles speak, “interesting” was the equivalent of “awful.”

“I know it’s really far from Beverly Hills, so that was so nice of you to come all the way out here to tell me my set was ‘interesting.’”

Mike did not miss my sarcasm, and to his credit he backpedaled a little bit. “No, not interesting-bad. I think the reason you bombed was because of
delivery. The way you say things—especially listening to it as a black man—comes off as pretty insulting. And really angry …”

Did I forget to mention that I hate when black men accuse black women of being angry? No? Oh, well, I should tell you now then. I hate that so …

“You didn’t like my set because I was angry? So was every other comic that came before me,” I pointed out. “You see, comedians are kind of in the business of being angry and insulting. Maybe it’s that you don’t like when black women in particular are angry toward black men, because you are, in fact, a typical, double-standardy black male.”

Mike stared at me. Hard. And something glinted in the back of his eyes. I met his gaze, letting him know that I wasn’t afraid of him, that I didn’t care what he thought of me. But then, the stare-off ended just as abruptly as it had begun. Like a Greek stage player, Mike changed out his straight-face mask for a smiling one.

“Listen,” he said. “I feel like we’re getting off on the wrong foot. I’m here because I’m producing and starring in a new biopic about your father.”

I did a double take. “A biopic. About my father,” I repeated. “You, Mike Barker, are planning to play my father in a film.”

“Yes, he’s an amazing man and I think it’s time he got his due.”

Reason #2 that I didn’t date black guys: They were dumb. I mean soooo dumb. For example, they were forever choosing the worst men and making them their heroes. Name any strutting basketball star, swaggering rapper, or unevolved football player, and you’ll find a black man hustling to be just like him. I could only stare at this actor who had stomped all over Tammy’s good heart, who had just told me that my father deserved a biopic because he was a great man.

“I want to ask you a few questions about your dad, and possibly bring you in as a script vet,” he said. “Call me.”

He pressed a business card into my hand, and I continued to stare at him, the shock of what he had told me rooting my tongue in my mouth. I
watched him shake Caleb’s hand again and murmur something. Then, with a squeeze of my shoulder and a blindingly white smile, he was gone.

Leaving Caleb to turn to me with a very confused look on his face. “Who’s your father? And why does Mike Barker want to play him in a movie?”

Why continue to date a guy who’s not excited about being with you? If the enthusiasm ain’t there now, it definitely won’t be there later.

—
The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
by Davie Farrell

EVERYBODY

T
he majority of Americans list Christmas as their favorite holiday, but this isn’t the case in Los Angeles. As anyone who has lived in the city for even a couple of years could attest, Halloween is the absolute number one holiday. Angelenos take it very seriously, spending enormous amounts of time planning their costumes and coming up with overly considered, precious party themes like “Silent Movie Stars Who Died Too Young” or “Zombie Pirates” or “Jimmy Buffet Was Here.”