10:34 a.m. - 2005-06-06
Life Was Like That Rant
So life was basically bliss and not so much bliss with David a permanent resident. On weekends, we would walk along Hollywood Blvd, stopping in head shops where David would purchase tiny screens and glass things for which I could discern no purpose. He loved it when I bought garish clothing at Playmate, a boutique that catered to working girls (and I don't mean secretaries). Once I told them, "I want a rabbit jacket like the hookers wear on Starskey & Hutch". Sure enough, they produced the rabbit out of thin air and I left $40 poorer. A men's shop we frequented insisted weekly that we had only just missed Rick Springfield, who had purchased eight pair of parachute pants. David was unimpressed. After Hollywood, we would head for Venice, walk the boardwalk where David would unabashedly oggle the skaters in their skimpy metallic short shorts. Usually crying and fighting by then, we would round out the day at Aardvark's on Ocean Ave., where David would update his wardrobe of used western shirts and I would buy yet more denim, denim jeans and denim skirts that had once been jeans and denim bags and denim bikinis and denim hats and, well, you get the picture. Pretty much anything that could be made out of denim. We would eat hot links and spicy fries and continue to fight over David's habit of, well, staring right through me while professing undying love. Yes, I registered on his radar, but apparently so did every thing else with a skosh of estrogen. Once I was driving my bug, David riding shotgun as usual, when two young girls appropriately skanked out were sitting on a bus bench. I pulled up right beside them, adeptly opened the passenger door and shoved David out. Another time, I found a membership card in David's wallet (and, yes, I had stooped to snooping) to a bookstore in which trench coats were practically mandatory attire. I pretended to be 'so into it' and he fell for my act. Heart pounding recklessly in my chest, I accompanied him into the store. I proceeded to shame him every way to Sunday. I popped quarters in the peep show, loudly narrating what I saw. I laughed maniacally as I read off magazine titles. I finally handed his membership card to a sweaty palmed customer, informing him that my now completely emasculated partner would have no further use of it. On the way home, we stopped at Danny's Dogs for some of those really special seasoned potatoes. Life was like that. We could spend our mornings chasing each other like cartoon characters around the neighborhood shubbery at warp speed, stop long enough to catch dinner with the pimps in the Oki Dog's patio and then cuddle ourselves to sleep mere hours later in our little corner of the world. Life was bizarre and chaotic, but never dull. Once David pursued me into the driveway flailing a Roman candle in the air. Once during a fight, he attempted to drive off in my bug. I threw myself onto the hood, banking on his impulse control. Once, in an effort to keep up with his fantasies, we actually rented a room at the Sunset One in Hollywood. I was so threated and freaked out, we ended up coming home, foregoing any physical contact and falling asleep at separate ends of the bed. Life was like that. Sunday evenings usually concluded with us sitting in what my son liked to call "The Crummy Park", which I picked out specially for its' dirth of white bread Burbank kids. We would affectionately calculate "how many fish sticks 'til the first, which was payday". We were definitely in the throes of what Neil Sedaka called "The Hungry Years". Still, they were some of my happiest times. We were crazy as bedbugs, but there was engagement and connection and energy and involvement and intimacy and maybe even some real love. Yes, I believe some real love. I tried hard to win David's family, but being a Shiksa was the unpardonable sin. His sisters more or less came around, but his mother continued to look at me as a water stain on the china she had smuggled over after the war at great peril to her life. I was an intrusion and an obstacle to her son's chances of having the perfect life with the perfect Jewish wife. What she didn't realize was that I was her biggest advocate with her son. He wanted no part of her or his family or Judaism, for that matter. We would compare religious notes and laugh about which path inspired greater guilt, Judaism or Catholicism. One time she broke down and invited me to brunch. She served lox and bagels. I did okay with the bagels, but the lox made me suddenly ill. Being the pleaser that I was, I politely excused myself, saying that I had forgotten something at home and would be right back. I held my metaphorical cookies all the way back to Burbank, gracefully depositing the lox into our own toilet and returning to the scene with no one the better regarding my shameful Shiksa secret. My family actually banned David from their home for a time, but eventually got over it and recognized the devoted heart that beat beneath those western shirts. Clearly, he loved me and I was not without my own foibles. David accepted me, pimples and insecurites and drama and denim and everything. He loved the entire package that was crazy me. We would have rain picnics in the car in front of Disney Studios, under that stretch of trees. Saturday nights, we would dance at Tennessee Gin & Cotton Company in front of the huge acquariums and stuffed hunter's game. I loved and guarded him with a throbbing, jealous heart. I was jealous of every girl on the street, every paper lady in those magazines of his, even of Cher on t.v. He was mine, dammit. And I was, well, I must admit I was always keeping a door open myself. But that was not so much a failing of David's as it was my profound and persistent inability to understand why on planet earth anyone would actually find me worth loving. I honestly could never get it. And so, the very thing I feared more than anything in life, being replaced by David actually my own projection. It was downright scary to put all my eggs in that perforated basket. I had one eye guarding David and one eye on the blue horizon. Life was like that.
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