***
B was meeting up with an agent prospect on a recommendation from an actress friend, who said he could develop her career into something even bigger and better, while I was taking a jog through Central Park in an effort to clear my head.
I was nearing my breaking point. I had stayed with B for three weeks and although it had been nice, things had not progressed beyond random sexual encounters. In fact, I was starting to feel like some kind of male gigolo - her luxury in-house lover and friend - and I didn’t even get paid!
The good thing was, of course, that B was both happier and healthier now, seemingly far away from the dark hole she had been in a month before and eager to start working again.
Who was taking care of her scheduling, administration and agent work? Yeah, you guessed it, it was me. I was back in the wheel again, helping her sort her life out during the day and making love to her during the night. And I did this while I was helplessly in love with her and she wasn’t with me and that created a sickening feeling of inferiority which kept eating away at me. I hoped Cesar could make some sense out of it, because I’d booked a date with him for the first time in a long time at an organic café, not too many blocks from the Staten Island ferry. Life had changed dramatically for him, he was now in his first serious relationship and put all his energy into that. This was good for him of course, but I missed us staying in touch more frequently.
The Cesar I met at the café was not the Cesar I knew, his hair had grown out and he'd combed it to the side using a can of gel. He was wearing a suit and had a confident, mature air about him, hailing from a good job, a girlfriend and improved looks.
“Wow, look at you!” I said, as we sat down, “that’s a promotion alright!”
“You’re talking to the head of development,” Cesar grinned and that’s when I first really recognized him, the smile and its goofy, slightly tilted nature, was still there.
“Congratulations. I think you owe me lunch today. You know this all started when you cut those nasty locks off.”
“I know, I know - they were my bad luck charm. But I've really tried to turn my life around and I think everything changed when I met Rosa. She just makes me want to push myself and find strengths I didn't even know I had before. It's pretty amazing.”
I couldn’t imagine the old Cesar ever uttering a line like this, so it was a lot for me to take in.
“Sounds like you’re really in love.”
Cesar had a dreamy look on his face I’d only seen when he was smoking weed, “Yeah, you could you say that. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
I took a bite of my muffin and pondered it, “Cesar Livingstone, a soon-to-be married development manager. Never thought I would say something like that.”
“Me neither,” he said and sipped his cappuccino. “So what’s up with you two? Sparks flying, birds twittering?”
“There’s a lot of Twitter for sure, but I wouldn’t call it sparks. That part is still not happening. We just see things differently, I see a future and to her we’re just fuck-buddies until something better comes along.”
Cesar looked at me like I just said something remarkably stupid, “It sounds like you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Are you sure it can’t be that feeling that when you have something really good you're so afraid to lose it, it’s almost better not to have it in the first place? It’s obvious you’re doubting yourself too much and I’m pretty sure she’s not very attracted to it either.”
I could see Cesar’s point, but part of me felt that B very much liked where she had me, in a box, accessible, but without attachments. Problem was, I didn’t much like it myself.
“By the way,” Cesar said, “what is A thinking about all this? It must be quite a blow to him that you’re dating his ex. You were quite close.”
“He doesn't know, nobody knows. If you’ve been working as someone’s assistant for a long time you can get away with being seen in public and of course we don’t kiss out in the open. I can't really think too hard about his opinion at the moment, he has moved on and to be honest I'm not sure it's something to have an opinion about.”
“You sound pretty pessimistic to me and I hate it. What are you doing to yourself, Darryl? You’re letting her turn you into someone you’re not.”
Although his comment angered me at first, Cesar had always had a knack for hitting the nail on the head and here he had managed to do so again, it just hurt too much for me to accept it.
“You have to make it clear to her how you feel and be serious about it too, if she’s not interested in anything beyond sex, then I think you should make a stand and move out. It’s not dignified to be someone’s fuckbuddy, man. Even if she’s a superstar.”
It sounds so easy when you’re sitting on that side of the fence, dude, I thought before I finished my tasteless muffin.
***
I knew I should have listened to Cesar’s advice. It was a no-brainer really. But somehow I didn’t manage to approach B in a good way and my unease was growing progressively, which made me more and more insecure around her. It wasn’t what “the relationship” needed, that’s for sure, but I was on a slippery slope, mentally sliding into an abyss of lousy confidence. She didn’t seem to care too much though, her head was elsewhere: in memorizing movie scripts, upcoming business meetings, her re-energized career. I was happy for her but at the same time sad that our so called “romance” was coming to the inevitable end. I knew it all along of course: a middle class kid from Virginia and a Hollywood movie star - doesn’t make much sense does it?
The expense card was back in my hands, but I felt cheap using it, which made sense because it wasn’t a job anymore, it was something else. Did it mean she saw me as her assistant again? Possibly. The amount of sex kept decreasing and her spontaneous gestures of affection had completely stopped. I felt used.
Should I’ve been angry at her for doing this to me? In a way, maybe, but somehow I couldn’t. I felt I had been naive enough to put myself in the situation and therefore I had to be mature enough to get out of it. Like it was, we were risking to lose the friendship we had, but I had such a hard time letting go of the rosy moments we had shared together - they lingered in the back of my head like dreams you never wanted to wake up from.
On a personal level, I was stagnating, still with the increasingly vague hope of opening a wine bar, but with no clear path on getting there. I simply didn’t have enough energy to think about things like that.
But after my usual morning jog one day, I decided to seize the beautiful weather and pick up lunch and a few books to maybe spark some kind of inspiration. Cesar’s girlfriend, the always pleasant Rosa, had recommended a few books which helped her “keep her on her toes”. She was a real go-getter: feisty, hyper, not my type, but apparently Cesar’s.
I probably looked a bit out of place in the Barnes and Noble in my shorts and running shirt, but it didn’t take me long to locate all the books on Rosa’s list. I added a cappuccino and a turkey/cranberry baguette to the shopping list, paid for everything and headed out into Central Park. The sun warmed my face and I felt my spirits lift.
It was exactly what I needed.
I sipped my coffee, ate my under-heated baguette and browsed through the books, read a page here and there and forgot about time completely. I was enjoying myself so much, just letting my sweat dry in the basking sun, that I didn’t notice a man sitting down on the bench next to me. He spoke, “Trying to better yourself, huh?”
I looked over at the guy, who had a movie-star face, blindingly white teeth and a one-day stubble. He wore a white Lacoste polo shirt and was holding a large thermos coffee mug. It seemed like he wanted to let me in on a secret.
I was a bit taken aback by this. New Yorkers, as opposed to many other Americans, aren’t as keen on starting conversations with strangers and it’s perhaps no coincidence that “fuck you” is the most used phrase here. This guy was not the normal grumpy New Yorker, he was supremely confident and relaxe
d. But, of course, a sweaty dude with running clothes and a stack of self-help books has zero intimidation factor.
“Yeah, I guess. Got some recommendations from a friend.”
“Let me see those,” he stretched out his hand and expected me to hand him the books. It was kind of forward, but it’s not like he was going to steal them, was he? It didn’t fit well with his tidy appearance and his shiny golden Rolex watch. Unless he’d stolen that too.
The man scanned the books with his dark brown eyes, “Olson, I've read that. A bit basic, but good. Law of attraction? Controversial stuff, but brilliant marketing. Outselling the Bible for all I know. Aha, Tim Ferriss, somehow I didn’t see that one coming. Nice, but slightly weird dude.”
He handed the books back to me, “Not a bad idea, reading those. Might take you places. Depending on where you want to go of course.” The man took a sip of coffee and looked out over the Great Lawn. For a second he seemed to be lost in thought.
“I felt a bit out of tune so I thought I'd give them a try. You a big fan of this kind of books?” I said, and studied him.
“Not a fan, but I read them. Since I quit my job and got more time, I've started reading a lot more, pretty much anything that comes my way. I like to say that books find me, not the other way around. I also write myself by the way.”
“Anything I know?”
Dimples showing clearly in his chiseled face, the guy seemed happy I asked the question, “I don't think you've read them. I've written one on business with a marketing focus and one that’s part fiction and part autobiography. It’s called The Wake-Up Call. Here’s my card.”
The card was white with a name and some contact details on it. The name was “Jack Reynolds.” and below it it read: “Writer.”
I took it and stretched out my hand, “Darryl.”
“Nice to meet you, Darryl. You're not a New Yorker are you?”
“Likewise. No, not originally, although I live here now - I'm from Clarendon, Virginia.”
“That's a nice area. Myself, I'm a New Yorker through and through, wouldn't live anywhere else.”
I got the feeling this guy must have been some kind of top-of-the-line business man, which made me wonder why he was sitting on a park bench in Central Park in the middle of the day, talking to a smelly guy with a pack of books and colorful jogging shoes.
I noticed him looking out over the Great Lawn and followed his eyes to a little girl, not older than a toddler, stumbling around on the grass. Like he knew what I was thinking, he said: “That’s my daughter, Amber. She loves coming here.”
“Oh, okay. She’s cute.”
“Thanks, she got her mother’s eyes.” Jack smiled.
“Can I ask you why you quit working?” I said.
Jack made a grimace, “Oh, that's a helluva long story and I don’t have time to get into it right now. But in short, I'll blame and thank women for it. They were always central in shaping and changing me. It took me a long time to understand that and to be honest with you, I still don’t understand them.”
I couldn’t see Jack having any problems meeting women though. He was a magnet, testosterone fly-paper.
“It's the same reason I'm on this bench really,” I said, modestly, hoping he could give me some advice or at least listen in. I realized I was desperate to talk to anyone willing to listen.
“Don't tell me you're trying to improve yourself because someone else wants you to?”
“I don’t think so. I'm doing it for me, but I'm in this weird kind of relationship, it’s not even a relationship in that sense actually, where I feel we’re slipping away from each other and I really want to reach out to her and stop it - but I’m frozen. I was her assistant for years and now we’re lovers, but she’s famous and I’m not and I’m struggling big-time with confidence, while she seems to become more independent every day. The fact is that I have really strong feelings for her, but I’m not sure they’re mutual.” I realized I was sputtering out the words. I was both nervous and in dire need of getting them out.
Jack chuckled, “That’s some scenario, might even be a script in it somewhere! I’m not sure I can offer any advice without knowing all the details, but I do know that women hate insecurity and if you have low self-esteem, it’s going to drastically decrease your stock value. From the sound of it, I think it’s best to just tell her how you’re feeling and ask her what she feels about you. Get it out in the open, so you don’t run the risk you’re worrying about the same things for no good reason.”
It was pretty much as I expected - sound advice which was easy to give, but hard to follow.
“A friend of mine said the same thing a while ago, but I just can’t seem to get it out of me. Maybe it’s because I know what the answer’s going to be.”
“If you know what the answer’s going to be, you don’t have much to be afraid of do you? Believe me, you’ll feel ten times better afterwards, no matter how it turns out. And if it ends up the way you fear it will, you won’t waste any more time worrying and can at least move on with your life.”
Jack was right, I was wasting my time living in limbo and it was better to break the whole thing off if it had almost zero chance of survival anyway. I just had to deal with it.
“Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it.” I looked down on my stinky clothes, “I’ll probably head home for a shower now. But it was nice talking to you.”
“Sure, man, anytime. I’m spending an hour in the park almost every day so there’s a chance we might run into each other again.”
To that I smiled, said bye and left Jack and his daughter.
***
Fast forward a few weeks. I was still living with B, but she was on her way to Egypt to scout locations, meet the film crew and talk to the director of an upcoming epic movie, where she had managed to get one of the lead roles. There were no physical interaction between us anymore, but I was still helping her out, being a work-for-free live-in assistant. She’d asked me to come to Egypt with her, but I’d said no. Her new agent, Richard, was going with her so I had the feeling she wasn’t going to need me that badly. After all, she hadn’t pressed me hard to change my mind. Maybe she was a little bit sick of me.
To compensate for the sadness I felt inside about us, I had decided to put my mind on other things and ask B if she wanted to partner with me in business instead. It was such a logical idea, really, but it hadn’t hit me in my love-clouded state. Now, when I knew things were not working out between us the way I wanted them to, the idea had come to me almost like in a dream, and I loved it. It would help us stay working together, although living apart, and also be a big step towards achieving my dream. For the situation, it was as much win-win as I could hope for and I desperately wanted her to see it the same way.
You could see it as a friend asking a friend to put wings on his dream.
But I didn’t have much time before she flew to Egypt so luckily I had managed to get dinner reservations at a famous Italian restaurant to unleash the plan. Sadly, B’s renewed interest in the social life had inspired her to invite a guest, a famous musician that I, again, can’t name so let’s just call him J. They had been hanging out a bit lately, (she had gone to a concert of his and become a fan) and to me it looked just like the start of another one of her doomed love affairs.
It hurt, let me tell you.
But I knew that feeling sorry for myself was the least productive feeling in the world, so I tried to block it, focusing all my energy on my wine bar dream and seeing B as the way to make it happen. It was time to move on with my life and find a purpose to occupy my sad and love-stricken mind.
I’d done the ground work already and found a small, two-story, closed-down coffee shop in the Meatpacking district, which I really could envision as an Italian enoteca. It needed quite a bit of work, and it would cost me dearly to refurbish the way I wanted it, but that’s where B came into the picture.
I hoped.
***
Rao’s interior never chan
ges - it’s the classic of classics. People have been talking about the meatballs and the pasta sauces since it opened, but I’d never gone there and was looking forward to it. B, on the other hand, had been there many times as her ex-husband, A, loved the place and knew the owner pretty well. I was impressed by the cosy decor, small and homely in a Goodfellas and Godfather kind of way and it being very Italian, I instantly felt at home.
B was wearing a strong-shouldered Balmain dress for the occasion and looked ravishing. I also wanted to dress nicely and had put on my nicest suit (a gift from her), a grey Armani with fine chalk stripes and a crisp light blue shirt. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I had to admit how much she had helped my dress sense, suddenly I knew how to look stylish.
Rao’s owner, Frankie (what else?), said “Bella!” and gave B a big hug before we were led to our table. Then he told us the menu for the night and I went for the meatballs, while B chose a ricotta clamshell pasta. I was studying the wine list while she exchanged a few polite sentences with our table neighbors, a famous business man and his wife.
Sometimes I wondered what they made of me, these powerful and famous people. Did they think, “So who the fuck is this guy?” or were they just assuming I was also famous or just a friend of B? Did I have the “assistant look”, or could I pull off the illusion of having landed in the spotlight by my own efforts? I got the feeling that most people saw me as an (to them) unknown rapper, which was stereotypical and sad in a way, because I didn’t care much for rap music, but it still felt somewhat better than being an assistant.
After choosing a bottle of vintage Valipolicella Ripasso, I asked B where her “date” was. It stung a little, asking, but I wanted to get my point across. We had stopped sleeping together, so I had no right to “claim” her in any way, I guess, but it still felt strange how quickly she had “discarded” me.
She gave me an angry look, “It’s not a date, we’re friends. What’s up with you thinking I date everybody? In fact, I just got a text. He’s late. He’ll join us for dessert or drinks.”
Hollywood Ass. Page 17
