I have this very hot singer friend who has these giant blow-out parties every year for his birthday. One year, it was a fancy-schmancy black tie party in the Hollywood Hills. He had rented this gorgeous house with a grand piano and a giant pool in the backyard. I dragged my friend Jaime with me, who is literally always a good time no matter where she is. Like, we could sit on a pile of trash in a Hollywood alley and she’d still somehow make it fun. For this party, we were wearing faux fur stoles in the Los Angeles heat of September over our party gowns, and were hoping that since our party host was a very hot guy, that he’d have some very hot single friends we could meet and marry and become rich ex-housewives of.
When we arrived to do our first “lap” as Cher Horowitz would do, the first thing we noticed was that it was really hard to figure out which of the men were gay and which were straight because every single one was in a tux. Most without socks in Gucci loafers, which made it even more confusing. The ratio of men to women was also strangely off — like, there were a LOT of dudes and like five women. While this was an absolutely welcomed problem, we couldn’t figure out who was into who, and therefore, needed to pause in our search for our dream men until we got our sea legs sorted.
Artwork by @khalidrahman306
So, we invited our hot birthday friend over —who floated over to us like he was some sort of dream rock star vision on a cloud. He was in white from head to toe, and looked similar to Jared Leto with his long dark hair falling all around his sickeningly gorgeous face. Jury is still out on whether he likes only women or if he sneaks a few men in every now and then — either way, he’s so obnoxiously beautiful that I can’t imagine either sex ever turning him down. He literally makes my stomach hurt thinking about how hot he is.
Anyway, so “birthday boy” introduces us to his Aunt and Uncle who happen to be sitting nearby with probably like, ten cocktails in each of them. Uncle Morty was in a bowling shirt with his name embroidered on it, and was attempting to match females to males as some sort of drunken matchmaker. Jaime went to find us some sort of drinkable wine and I was left with Uncle Morty who was convinced he was going to find the man of my dreams any moment…
“What kinda guys do you like? Short ones? Tall Ones?” He said in a gruff rumbly voice.
“Uh, I like smart ones?” I said.
Just as I said that, two twenty-something year old guys entered the backyard, and not two seconds later, Uncle Morty attacked — asking the boys if they were single and if they liked girls. Besides this being quite possibly the most awkward moment of my life, Uncle Morty literally took my hand and put it into the shorter guys’ hand and told us to go dance. Like, as if people still did that at parties?
We didn’t dance, but he did tell me his name was “Kyle” (like, how predictable, right?) and that he was a Real Estate Broker. Kyle and I hung out for most of the evening, I’ll admit I never had any delusions of him being more than a good makeout — but Jaime was like, “go hang with the kid because he clearly likes you.” So fine.
We sat at the grand piano for a little while and he played a few chords and sang a very predictable Radiohead song. No, it was not Creep, but maybe it should have been?
Looking back on this, I can clearly see this was a “party trick”. My father says that every man even without musical talent will always know at least ONE song on the guitar or piano, in the event that they can play it at a party to impress girls. Now that I am one hundred years old, I can say with confidence, he is not wrong.
A quick sidebar that Jaime never found any decent wine, and I guess I was literally drinking vodka on ice because there were no “mixers” left by this time. So, I was too drunk to be privy to any tricks and I totally fell for it. Insert facepalm here.
Another quick sidebar: I am an idiot and have always fallen for anyone who can half play a guitar — you can play sub par terrible bar chords and I’ll still think there’s something stupidly magical about you. I’ve luckily been to therapy enough times now to know I need to cut this shit out — but let’s just say this was my one last hurrah with not only a sub par musician, but a man younger than twenty-five also.
We planned a date for the following week — a pretty standard dinner date at a Korean BBQ place. The only thing strange was that he made it very clear he didn’t drink. So, not being sure if he was maybe a recovering alcoholic, I didn’t want to be rude and order a drink in front of him — so I refrained from doing so. I felt things were going pretty well, considering he was basically a child who had literally graduated from college like, last week. But this isn’t the part where you scream in horror and wonder what the hell I was thinking… that was when we got back to his house.
This house was like a frat house — it had like six bedrooms with six different guys living there. One young man ( I say this like I’m some sort of grandmother?) was in the shower at the time we arrived, and another was slurping some sort of microwavable ramen noodles on the couch. I suddenly felt like Taylor Swift and was feeling twenty two again, and was praying there was at least one roll of toilet paper and some sort of clean hand towel I could wash my hands with in the bathroom. But wait, it gets worse…
He takes me back to his bedroom, and trips over a lamp in the dark, which is on the floor. Once he switched on the light, there were crumpled dirty clothes all over the floor, with only a bed and one set of drawers. He grinned and said he had just moved there from Philly — so he didn’t have much furniture. I was trying so incredibly hard not to be judge-y, but wait, it gets even worse…
I will preface this with the fact that I know I’m an asshole. As you may know, I grew up “entertainment industry adjacent” and got a film and television degree, and basically only have friends who also work in the entertainment industry. Not on purpose — it just happens this way. My father is a successful music producer and songwriter, my uncle is an Emmy-award winning television director, at least two of my best friends are editors on shows like The Kardashians, my best male friend has written and produced songs for artists like The Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato, and a few of my friends may or may not be siblings of Billie Eilish. I also had been managing a teen pop singer for five years at the time, in addition to producing television commercials. So I was deeply embedded in the music industry at the time…
Now mind you, this kid had me believing he was a Real Estate Broker. Which stupid me, I should have known better, right? And he was a Real Estate Broker during the day — but, we all know why people actually move to LA, and it's definitely not to work in Real Estate.
So, to my horror, I turn around to see there is a ten foot long white board attached to the wall — with one section detailing the structure of his screenplay; a middle section detailing the names of the songs he wanted to include on his first LP; and a few “live, laugh, love” quotes for good measure. So maybe if I were a normal person, I would have seen this map as a glorious manifestation tool and thought he was a real “go getter” for being so organized. But, because I am who I am, and because I’ve seen all the things, and watched the dreams get crushed of those around me over and over again in both music and TV/Film on repeat for over two decades now — I felt this nagging sense of wanting to tell him to just “RUN” while he still could. I wanted to scream, “DON’T LET THE GLAMOUR SUCK YOU IN!!” But I couldn’t be that person…. I couldn’t be like Usher telling T-Pain he “ruined the music business.” So, I’m pretty sure I turned a whiter shade of pale and remained that way for the rest of the evening as I tried to pretend I wasn’t trying to hide my cringes.
Just as I asked… “so you’ve written all those songs? What’s the one called ‘Samantha’ about?” I tripped over a box, which appeared to be some sort of care package shipped from someone named ‘Samantha.’ So of course, I ask “Who’s Samantha?” and suddenly I’m the bad guy here…
But wait it gets worse….
So he pulls out a folding chair, A FOLDING CHAIR, places it in the middle of the room, and turns on these neon overhead lights that made me feel like I was in a police interrogation room, and insisted he play me a few of the songs he’s written. I literally thought I was going to throw up. How was I going to hide my cringing now?! This poor child started strumming and singing terrible lyrics with no melody and I could feel my heart fall down into my bowels… as if I was going to shit pieces of it out all over Samantha’s care package and the tiny little lamp on the floor. Meanwhile, the kid had no idea about my “entertainment industry adjacent-ness” and was probably assuming I was some sort of normal person who would just simply be impressed with the fact he even HAD a guitar. I was frozen in the chair, for all eight songs.
Eight songs, no less. Of terrible songs that sounded all alike. And I couldn’t figure out what to do with my eyes — should I look at the floor? Should I offer suggestions on Act one of his screenplay?
But wait it gets worse….
So this kid finishes his last song. And I am just sad by this point. RUN FROM THE GLAMOUR MY CHILD, DON’T LET IT SUCK YOU IN!! He had noticed my eyes wildly looking around the room, trying to hide my complete and utter embarrassment, and worst of all — he called me out on it. He was heartbroken that I had not sat and listened overly intently to every word in his lyrics like Samantha probably did. I’m not sure he was even wanting any other actual feedback other than, “OMG, you are SO talented!” and I couldn’t even give him THAT. I felt like I was on trial for murder here, with eyes staring at me, terrible overhead lighting, awaiting any blink of an eye that might indicate fondness, or I don’t know, confirming to him I was attracted to him even an inkling? Which by this point, I just wasn’t.
A quick reminder this kid didn’t drink — and therefore I had not a single drop of alcohol in my system to take the edge off, or make me not so hyper aware of my ability to overanalyze the smallest of things. I tried to fake applause, tried to fake like I was so taken aback by his talent… but I knew he could see right through me. He knew, he knew I was Heartless like Kanye — and it was because I hadn’t run away when I could, the glamour sucked me in and now I was SO cynical I was hard to be around. And I wanted to tell him — your white board is cool, but also, this place crushes you, and if you aren’t a pain in the ass like I am, you might get swallowed alive. You can’t be playing Radiohead songs to impress girls here.This isn’t some playground, it's war!
So yeah, it gets worse…
He then insisted we play a game where we lock eyes and not look away for ten minutes. I could not think of anything worse at this point, especially with my heart basically about to fall out of my butt. Eventually, this dumb game led to making out — which I feel like was the play all along, and like fine, that’s really the only reason I went on the date anyways — so sue me. The next morning, I woke up before him, slid on my shoes and watched him sleeping peacefully. Like, he literally looked like an angelic innocent little child sleeping. And here I was, a cynical burnt out tired-of-hollywood-shit grandma and I just couldn't bring myself to tell him he was better off being a Real Estate Broker.
So I left. Quietly, silently. I wasn’t going to be the one to crush his dreams…. Someone else was going to have to do that.
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