I decline another drink as Jasmine and West order more, apparently making a long night of it. Crooner switches from a vodka soda to a Cosmo, his pink fingernails matching his drink.
“That’s colorful,” I say.
“Just like your boss,” he says.
“Yeah. But I’m working on it.”
Do no harm.
“And, anyway,” I add, “her colors are a little fun, right?”
“You know what they say about color,” Jasmine says. “Put all the colors together and it just turns to black.”
10
The boxes arrive en masse, a little more than a year after Dad’s threat to send them, his timing always horrendous. They’re a collection of the tattered remains of my mother. They’re waiting for me on my front porch like bombs—six boxes, twelve by twelve, duct-taped within an inch of their cardboard lives, and the handwriting in Sharpie on each is unmistakably Dad. I taste PTSD, triggered simply by the way he writes, the whirl and edge of his letters like when he would mark up my school book reports and force me to rewrite them from scratch. That same handwriting from childhood cards my mother would force him to sign. That same hand, which hasn’t given me a card since the day Mom died those many years ago.
After a long day surviving Kathi—she went on a shopping spree last night and this morning asked me to return everything—plus a long commute home, I’m tired and have to go to the bathroom and just want to rest, and now Dad has sent more work for me to do. I put my bag inside and start hauling the boxes into my tiny apartment.
These boxes: Between my mother and Kathi, now I have two women taking up space in my life.
The boxes still smell like my father’s basement, the smell having survived shipping across the country, a no doubt violent packaging and delivery, and worst of all they survived time—these things should have been sorted years ago. I resent him for making me deal with them now because it’s a convenient time for him. What about what’s convenient for me?
I stack the boxes in front of my small, ratty sofa to use them as a cramped, ugly coffee table of memories of Mom. I have no urge to open them. I’m too busy to dive into Dad’s mess. I’m too busy with a new mother figure to deal with my old one.
* * *
Kathi’s life has been mostly mellow.
Assistant Bible Verse 125: Never let your guard down.
Sleep, bake, Vegas, repeat.
The sleep schedule is the same—this is one very tired movie star.
The bake schedule is elevated, with the kitchen of late often filled with cookies, apple pies, three-layer chocolate cakes.
Vegas trips mostly happen when I’m not there—on nights and weekends—or not at all. The bank account has been stable; Kathi’s business manager is harassing me less and less about Kathi’s spending—which I suppose by their standards has been in check. And I feel like I have her life under control, her details a fixture in my psyche: Her alias at hotels is Aurora Borealis. Her favorite dinner is Magnolia Bakery banana pudding. Her preferred psych ward is Cedars.
I watch Kathi Kannon live her life—have lunch with William Shatner, buy a new giant plastic cow for her front yard, autograph a fan’s buttock—and I feel alive, electrified, perhaps by proxy, but no matter. Kathi Kannon has been my antidote.
Hey, Siri, I’m having a blast.
Hey, Siri, I’m part of the family.
Hey, Siri, I want more.
Therapista says greed knows no end.
Why drink from a puddle when you can drink from the ocean.
In the almost two years since Kathi came into my life, or I came into hers, I feel a new surge of aliveness within me. I now crave the things that come with a mindset no longer besieged by depression: I want a home, dog, health, stability, a relationship—all the treasures that feel within my reach having taken this journey so far, treasures at the opposite end of the Kathi Kannon rainbow.
If travel is a wonderful alternative to suicide, so is dating, especially when you work for Kathi Kannon. Dating is not so much an escape from reality as a way to augment it. It’s looking at endless other people and seeing them as possibilities in your life, wondering how your world would transform with them in it, how you would look in their social-media feeds, their apartment, sharing their clothes. Dating can make new, brighter things seem possible. Of course, it has the opposite effect if “dating” goes on too long and consistently doesn’t end well. But, for now, I’m looking at my options with optimism. I feel worthy of a relationship, maybe for the first time ever. It also feels easier now that I believe I have something to offer, now that I have a secret weapon, an advantage, a confidence. I don’t have great beauty—I’m, like, a 6 by Los Angeles standards, surrounded by competition like models and guys wearing designer boots at nine A.M. at Ralphs. I don’t have real money or political influence. My superpower is: I work for Priestess Talara.
People in Los Angeles seem to dread the question “What do you do for a living?” Most people here are not doing what they want to do. Their day jobs as waiters and baristas are rebranded as “survival jobs,” but it’s all the same—something they don’t want to define them. But not me. Not anymore. I want to be asked. I wait for it. I bait people into asking the question. They ask me, “What do you do for a living?” And on more than one occasion I point to the T-shirt they’re wearing, the T-shirt with Nova Quest and Kathi Kannon’s iconic image on it, and I say, “I work for her.”
I want my job to define me.
I’m updating my OkCupid account with a new picture of myself, with my new, longer hair—now past my chin—and new glasses. Kathi took me to a store on Robertson Boulevard that only sells high-end vintage frames, and she picked out a tortoiseshell number that I’m getting used to, trusting her that they look good. All of the changes she’s making in me are requiring cautious adjustment. I’m still not sure whether she’s just amusing herself by making me into as much of a clown as possible, but even if she is, I admit, I’m enjoying the attention.
I’m finally filling in my dating profile, answering the dumb questions, taking the steps to finally be someone who’s actively dating—not just watching from outside the arena.
My self-summary:
People say I look like Frodo. I want to adopt a dog and name her Whitney Houston. I have an irreverent sense of humor. I might have a therapist. I’m from New Orleans but don’t have an accent. I accidentally signed up for a women’s gym one time, but they were very nice to me.
Nice to meet you, HipGuy2. He looks a little too much like Mr. Bean.
Nice to meet you, Footballer. He’s hot but a little too into feet.
Nice to meet you, Wine&Travel. He’s chronically unemployed.
I’ve been making a mini-career out of OkCupid. I’m messaging dude after dude, waiting for one who writes back, and writes back something interesting, compelling, some proof of my worth of companionship, of having a whole, living, human experience.
What I’m doing with my life:
I’m an assistant to an actress. I used to write TV news. I have a sweet tooth.
I’m meeting men in marathon swaths, sometimes several per week, all dates, no sex.