Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  And they know that looking at impossibly skinny models in fashion magazines doesn't make average girls happy. It's designed to make you feel bad about yourself by comparison.

  And then they promise to improve you, fix you, make you whole, make you beautiful and happy, if you buy their crap.

  Buy this gizmo! It'll fill the hole in your soul!

  Our entire life we chase the wrong things because we think having more money and buying more stuff will make us more happy.

  But it doesn't.

  You know why a billionaire has 100 Ferraris? Because 99 weren't enough.

  It's never enough. It's an endless uphill battle. Nothing will ever be enough, until you learn to find happiness outside of consumption.

  And once you realize that, you realize how satisfying it can be to simply be content with what you have.

  Once you come to terms with the fact that you have everything you need, and you don't want or need anything else, money doesn't seem all that interesting anymore.

  Suddenly you realize it's more important to do the things you actually enjoy, like traveling or reading or being creative. And to spend as much time as possible with the people you love.

  I FINALLY FOUND HAPPINESS

  "You know you're happily married, when you'd rather come home than go out."

  Heinz Rühmann

  "Home is not a place. Home is a feeling."

  Herbert Grönemeyer

  "Love is the most important thing in the world."

  Hermann Hesse

  "Love is the only force powerful enough to make life worth living."

  Konrad Adenauer

  "How was I able to live alone before, my little everything? Without you I lack self-confidence, passion for work, and enjoyment of life. In short, without you, my life is no life."

  Albert Einstein

  "This is the true measure of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved as much before us, And that no one will ever love in the same way after us."

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  In May 2016, Shelly and I went on our first cruise. To Mexico. We had so much fun! At one of the places where the ship docked, we raced a golf cart and zipped around town. And they had great shows and free food on the ship. It was huge. 14 decks, I think.

  In the middle of the ship, they had this giant golden spiral staircase, with wide open space in the middle, maybe fifty feet in diameter, all the way to the top. 14 decks. With a see-through glass dome above it, that let the stars in.

  And along each deck there were colorful little lights on the ceilings and banisters. When you stood at the bottom and looked up, it felt like you were inside of a giant Christmas tree, 14 stories tall. You were surrounded by thousands of colorful little lights all around you.

  On the last night of the cruise, Shelly and I went outside after a show, to look at the stars. We stood at the front of the ship and looked out at the ocean.

  It was romantic. We were having a moment.

  I stood behind her with my arms wrapped around her. It was pretty windy. Too windy.

  "I'm cold!" she said with chattering teeth. "Let's go back inside."

  "No, wait, I wanted to show you something!" I yelled. But it was too late. She already went back inside the ship.

  Damn. This looked so easy in the movies. Why did it have to be so windy tonight?

  I followed her inside. We were on the top floor.

  We leaned against the banister covered in little twinkling lights. We looked down into the 14-story canyon that looked like the inside of a giant Christmas tree.

  So pretty. So many colored lights all around us. I hugged her from behind.

  "Life is good," she said and grabbed my arms. We smiled and stood quietly, admiring the view below.

  Then I got down on one knee and whipped out a little black box. It was a one carat diamond ring.

  "These past two years with you have been the happiest time of my life. I never want to be without you again. Will you marry my?" I asked.

  I was so nervous, I thought I'd jumble up the words. But I didn't. Good job, Oliver. You did it.

  I had anxiously planned this night for weeks. I wanted to make my proposal special somehow. Memorable. I figured going on our first cruise would be pretty special. And then I would propose to her under the stars, overlooking the ocean.

  How romantic! Just like in the movies!

  Yeah, no, not so much. Why the fuck did it have to be so windy tonight?

  But the giant Christmas-tree-looking spiral staircase with the thousands of pretty lights was pretty cool too. Very unique.

  "Are you serious?" she said. Her voice broke. She had tears in her eyes. She clutched her mouth with her hands.

  I was still down on one knee, holding up the box with the ring. Waiting for an answer.

  Any day now.

  Finally she realized she hadn't answered yet.

  "Ask me again!" she said, crying.

  "Will you marry me?"

  I was way too nervous to say the whole damn thing again.

  "YES!" she said and accepted the ring.

  A few months later we flew to Taipei, to take wedding pictures. It's a tradition in Taiwan. Wedding photos are a huge industry over there. Like the movie industry in Hollywood.

  They have giant photo-shoot sets in Taipei. Entire parks that look like studio lots, with fake house facades, rooms filled with props, waterfalls and anything else you could ever ask for in a wedding picture.

  It's amazing. Do an image search on Google for Taiwan wedding photography.

  They do everything over there. You can even get a bunch of white doves, or ride on a white horse, or anything else you can think of. As if you were a movie star.

  And the photos end up looking like glamour shots in a fashion magazine. You know, like when a woman in a super-long, flowing red dress stands by a cliff, looking out at the ocean, pining for her sweetheart. With her super-long hair blowing in the wind. Like a fancy perfume ad.

  Amazing! They look better than wedding pictures of most Hollywood celebrities. In Taiwan they do Beyoncé-level wedding photography.

  A lot of affluent young Asian couples fly from Los Angeles to Taiwan before their wedding, to take these glamour shots.

  On the day before the shoot, we were in wardrobe, picking out our outfits. They have traditional suits and dresses, but you can also wear a spacesuit or a furry suit or something silly like that, if you prefer.

  What can I say, Asians are weird.

  I saw the pictures of one couple who opted to take wedding pictures that look like posters for an action film. They jumped out of a helicopter, with machine guns in their hands.

  Different countries, different customs, as they say in Germany.

  The actual photo-shoot took 8 hours. It was exhausting.

  First they did Shelly's hair and make-up. That took two hours. Then an assistant helped her put on one of the flowing gowns she had picked out the day before. It had a huge drape. Is that what you call the long thing in the back? It was like 10 feet long.

  I also had to go into make-up. Men wear make-up too in these glamour shots. Just like in Hollywood movies.

  The photographer and his assistant made Shelly and me pose in several different studio sets. I felt like a trained monkey.

  One set had a giant bird cage. We had to sit in the cage, with out legs dangling out, and look in love.

  I have never felt stupider in my life.

  After hundreds of studio shots in different settings, we went to the first of two location shoots. The first one was an old Daoist temple.

  For this shoot Shelly wore a traditional red Chinese gown, with a high neck. Very classy. She looked like a model. Well, she always did. But even more in this dress, with the dark wood of the old temple in the background.

  "You're my little Asian princess," I joked. "My little Jade dragon."

  "Oh my God! That is so racist! That is sooo offensive!" she yelled in fake outrag
e. We both laughed.

  The second location shoot was in a large studio lot. It looked like a normal park at first sight. With lots of trees and paths. But tucked between the trees were different sets.

  There were dozens of other couples at the lot. Each posing in front of different sets. It was a little bit like mini-golf, when you have to wait for the people ahead of you to move on to the next hole, so you can advance, too.

  And each photographer managed to get only his own couple in his pictures and shoot around the other couples that often only stood a few feet away.

  They even had a lake. Some of the photos we took were in a little row boat. We were both so stiff in the boat, afraid to move, so the boat wouldn't tip over and we'd fall in the water with all that make-up and hairspray.

  She wore a white gown for the last sets of photos. Inside of a church, and under a giant oak tree, in front of the lake. The pictures came out really nice. They could pass for magazine covers.

  We were in Taiwan for two weeks. Mostly in Taipei, but we also spent some time at Sun-Moon Lake, two hours away by high-speed train. We stayed in a ritzy lakefront hotel.

  We had a special Japanese bedroom. Without a bed. Fancy. You sleep on mats on the floor. You have to pay extra for the no bed. Go figure.

  I really liked Taipei. It's a very interesting city. So much to see. A bit like an Asian version of New York.

  The Taipei 101 Tower is their version of the Empire State Building. We went up to the top and admired the view. They also had an exhibit of Jade carvings. Very cool. Some of them were yuge!

  Their most famous Jade carving is this little green thing that looks like a cabbage. It's Taiwan's national treasure. It's their version of the Mona Lisa.

  My favorite part of the trip were the night markets. Lots of little booths, tons of people, lots of noise, and all kinds of weird foods and smells. And bright colorful neon lights all around you. It felt like I was in the movie Blade Runner. It was exciting and fun.

  Well, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Or control over his bowels.

  One of Shelly's old friends showed us around town one day. At one of the markets, they sold dried pig's blood on a stick. It looked like those ice creams on a thin wooden stick, except it wasn't ice cream. It was dried pig's blood.

  Shelly's friend didn't speak English very well. She pointed and gestured for me to try it. She bought one for herself and then kept waving at me to get one, too. I didn't want to be rude.

  It looked like ice cream, but it was black. And warm. I took two or three bites. I chewed and smiled approvingly. I didn't want her to know that I was trying not to gag.

  Shelly had been looking at something at another booth. Now she came over to me and saw me eat the shitstick.

  "What are you eating?" she asked.

  "Dried pig's blood on a stick. It's a local delicacy," I explained. Like she didn't already know.

  "Why the hell would you eat that? I don't even eat that," she lectured me.

  For good reason.

  That night I had the worst diarrhea of my life. I'm gonna spare you the details. You really don't wanna know. It wasn't pretty. And Shelly didn't leave me after that very regrettable night. That's how I know she really loves me. You can't fake that kind of devotion.

  In May 2017 we got married in Los Angeles. It wasn't a big wedding. We're both way too shy for that. We hate to be the center of attention.

  Yeah, I know, you never would have guessed.

  It was just a small ceremony, with family. I was so glad she didn't want to have a giant wedding. I would have had a heart attack.

  For our honeymoon we went on another cruise. To Alaska. We took a helicopter to the top of Mendenhall Glacier. The ice is blue, not white! Our guide showed us how much the glacier had shrunk over the years, due to global warming. (Don't let people in Alaska hear you say you don't think global warming is real.)

  We also checked out some historic sites of the indigenous Tlingit people in Sitka. But my favorite part of our Alaska trip was our flight in a small waterplane. Our pilot took us through narrow canyons and landed on a mountain lake. That was awesome!

  A few weeks later we went on a trip to Iceland, to see the northern lights. And we visited some of the locations where they filmed Game of Thrones. Our guide's name was Swan. He was an extra on the show and told us a bunch of interesting stories from behind the scenes. But my favorite part of that trip was the Blue Lagoon spa in Reykjavík.

  It's March 2018 now. We've known each other for almost four years, since June 2014. And we've been married for almost a year. Our first anniversary is coming up in May. We might go to Thailand. We'll see.

  But first we're going on a trip to Denver next week. To go play in the snow, and visit the Rocky Mountains National Park.

  I love every moment of every day of our life together. That's how happy Shelly makes me.

  She's not just my wife. She's my best friend and my favorite person in the whole world.

  No one has ever seen the real me as clearly as she sees me. And only I know the real her. No one gets us the way we get each other. I'd rather spend one-on-one time with her, than with anyone else. Just being around her, being alone with her, makes me happy. She gives my brain the biggest dopamine kick.

  I'm addicted to her. And that's ok. Because we're all addicted to something. And I'd rather be addicted to her than heroin or crackwhores or likes or money or religion or guns or racism or snake oil salesmen like Trump.

  The great thing is, she's addicted to me, too. Nothing makes us happier than spending alone time with just each other. We don't even have to do anything.

  We don't watch a lot of TV. It's not that we don't like it. We do. We have a couple of shows we love, like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Real Time with Bill Maher, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, and This is Us. But we rarely watch live TV. Usually we just stream our favorite shows and watch them when we feel like it.

  But most of the time the TV is off. Because we prefer to spend time with just each other. We talk and make each other laugh all night. The weed brownies help.

  Spending quality time with just each other is better than the best movie in the world. That's also why we don't really read any books anymore. She used to devour one romance book after another. But now our real life is better than the best romance novel. She doesn't want to waste any time hiding in books. She wants to enjoy real life with me instead.

  It's weird. When I talk about how happy we are now, I feel like I sound like a douche. We like to read about someone else's problems and misery and drama. But when someone starts talking about how well they're doing it's off-putting. And we want to spit in their coffee, because they're so obnoxious.

  Or is it just me who feels that way? Yeah, maybe it's just the German in me. We are an envious bunch. We pretend we're not, but secretly we all hate everyone who does better than us, and we love to see them fall. Because watching someone else's misery is fun.

  So here I am, living in one of the fanciest, most exclusive, most beautiful areas in the world, where I live with my dream-come-true wife.

  I'm typing the last few pages.

  I didn't think I'd ever write a better book than Bad Choices 1 and 2. But now I think I like this one the best out of the three. Maybe I'm biased.What do you think? Don't forget to leave your thoughts in an Amazon review afterwards.

  I'd like to think my books are more than just entertaining. I hope they're thought provoking. Kinda like modern art. The good kind. I hope you found this book to be stimulating. But on a more cerebral level than Fifty Shades.

  I sold my condo in Bonita Springs a few months ago. It was beautiful, but I don't miss it. The less I have to do with Southwest Florida, the better. Shelly and I went back there on vacation once or twice, but it didn't feel like home anymore. My home is here now, in Los Angeles, with her.

  There's an old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

  Misery, problems, and drama are interesting. Ha
ppiness is boring.

  We like boring. Personally, I've had enough drama for three lifetimes. I hope my life will be boring from now on. Boring and off-putting because we're just so ridiculously happy. No more sequels. No more crazy stories.

  Maybe I'll buy a condo in Las Vegas. We go there a lot. Would be nice if we had our own vacation place there. Maybe in Summerlin. We'll see.

  My beautiful wife came home a few minutes ago. My wife. I like the sound of that.