Everyone In LA is an REDACTED

by Sarah Fuller

  How charming, I thought. I wished I had a job where I could be sauced by mid-morning. Then I remembered that I did, but I also couldn’t be so drunk that I’d fall off the reformer machine during my noon Pilates class. Everyone loves a drunk until she makes a scene in class. Then you become that person.

  So I’m at brunch with my friends, casually sipping my champagne, when the same woman who informed me that everyone in LA is drunk or high reaches over and pulls on my hair. Since I wasn’t on the playground, and this wasn’t second grade, I turned to her, wondering what strange LA behavior this was. I’d spent a year and a half in central California where the people do things “differently,” meaning they are sort of normal. It’s totally boring.

  “Is this real?” the woman asked me, continuing to pull on my hair.

  I yanked my hair out of her hands, wondering if she meant the wool sweater I was wearing and was just too drunk to figure out the difference.

  “My sweater?” I asked.

  She’d told me that she shouldn’t be drinking since she didn’t have a gallbladder anymore, but that didn’t stop her. It wouldn’t have stopped me, either.

  “No, I meant your hair,” she said, again reaching over to tug on a strand.

  I was thoroughly entertained by this, but feigned offense. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  She then pulled a mane of hair free from her head, holding it high in the air over the scrambled eggs on the brunch table. “Because mine isn’t. Come on, no one in LA has their own hair.”

  I’ve since learned that she’s mostly right. For a while, I thought every woman was popping prenatal vitamins to get their thick tresses. A trip to a wine bar in Solvang was quite illuminating. Solvang is this cute little Danish town north of LA that the yuppies congest on the weekends with their Land Rovers and picnic baskets from Bed Bath and Beyond.

  I told the girl next to me at the wine bar that she had nice hair. “I’d have to sacrifice a goat to get hair like that.”

  She giggled. “I would too.” She then pulled the curtain of hair aside to show me a row of seams where her real hair met the fake stuff. It then turned into a show-and-tell moment, as six other women joined in, showing off their hair extensions.

  I think LA is cool. I love the people. I get Botox to tranquilize my overworked eyebrows. However, I’m way too low maintenance for hair extensions. But don’t think I haven’t thought about it. I do take prenatals, biotin, and collagen, all in an attempt to add a couple of inches to my hair. When it comes to attaching something to my body, though, I draw the line. I’ve always been a tomboy, which is just my way of saying that I have zero fashion sense and I’m too lazy to comb my hair.

  There’s a place across the parking lot from my Pilates studio that advertises itself as a “bar.” I was all excited when it moved into the shopping center, thinking of the convenience factor. I can’t drink before Pilates, but there’s no reason I can’t grab a cocktail afterward. I have a whole two hours before I have to pick up Eleanor.

  However, my instructor popped my bubble one day when I told her I was heading to this new bar across the way. That’s when she informed me that the Blink Bar was a place where ladies go to get fake eyelashes “installed.” I’d like to put a stop to calling things bars that don’t exclusively serve alcohol. That’s just wrong. That’s like calling strip clubs “The Office.” Deceptively, you can’t get a drink at this Blink Bar. And how could I even drink while someone is gluing fake eyelashes to my face? There is smart multitasking, but that is not it.

  Growing up in Texas, the old church ladies would smile at me and say, “Oh, bless your heart,” which simply meant, “You’re a dumbass.” In Oregon, the people are polite enough to never tell you what they are thinking. However, in LA, the place where everyone is considered fake, I have found people to be the most real. They might have foreheads so smooth you could ice skate on them, more hair that is fake than real, and extremely distracting, long eyelashes—seriously, that’s all I can focus on when looking at someone with extensions—but they are real in their hearts. At least, the ones I’ve met.

  Chapter Four

  I Shower Regularly

  I’m thirty-seven years old and have an online dating profile, so shit is obviously going according to plan.

  Apparently, people don’t meet each other at the coffee shops or pharmacies anymore. Gone are the days of bumping into a guy in a parking lot and having him ask for my number. If I do bump into someone, it’s because I’m on my damn phone, swiping through potential matches on a dating app.

  My friends Robert and Colleen met in a parking lot over twenty years ago. She was trying to get into his car because it looked exactly like hers. When he told her that, she was adamant that he was wrong. He then pointed two rows over to where an almost identical car sat but that one brandished a scratch over the right fender . He asked for Colleen’s number, and they’ve been living the hippie life in Oregon ever since. However, these days, if I see a guy trying to get into my car, I’m calling the police on his ass. This makes me wonder if, unbeknown to me, I’ve sent Mr. Right to jail. I have called the police on a few suspicious characters over the years.

  Dating apps are how singles meet these days. There’s Tinder for the hookups. Apparently, it has the most options, with over 100 million users. Isn’t it strange that there are so many single people out there looking for love, and yet there’s so much loneliness in the world? Sorry, had an introspective moment there. I promise not to do it again.

  Coffee Meets Bagel is an app for those looking for a long-term relationship. I like the idea of qualifiers because, let’s be honest, I’m fucking picky. This app, like most, has a time constraint. After a week, your conversations with a match disappear. It’s an attempt to force matches to meet up and not draw things out with long text messaging. In other words, don’t waste my time with sweet poetry. Let’s meet. If we click, great. If not, move on.

  I like this approach. I’ve respected the guys who after only a few messages ask me out on a date. It’s better than the guy who sent me long paragraphs for weeks amounting to a relationship that fizzled out because I got carpal tunnel trying to respond to all his talking points. And it’s way better than the guy who tries to pretend he’s someone else in chat. How do they not know they’ll be caught?

  I had this one guy tell me that he loved to read. I asked him, “What are some of your favorite authors?”

  Because everyone in LA is an asshole and has to be a douche, he says, “Mostly Hemingway.”

  And because I’m an asshole, I countered with, “Name one. Just name one Hemingway novel.”

  Complete silence.

  The dude couldn’t throw out a single Hemingway title. Twenty-two options, and the guy had nothing because he was a poser who had never read a single book by Hemingway. I’m not pretending that I spend my evenings by the fire reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I also don’t throw out pretentious shit.

  Maybe that’s my problem. When asked what authors I read, I’m too quick to say “Phillip Pullman, JK Rowling, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.” And yes, I actually read Fitzgerald. I have almost every line of The Great Gatsby memorized. I keep hoping to meet a guy like Jay Gatsby on one of these dating apps, but I think he is being lame, standing on a pier and pining after some slut.

  The dating app that I choose to waste time on is Bumble. I made the conscientious decision to go with this app because I have zero game. The other day, a super attractive guy at my gym ran after me in the parking lot. I thought he was going to tell me that I had my skirt tucked into my underwear…yet again. Instead, he sidled up next to me and said, “Hey, wasn’t that class hard?”

  Since then, I’ve learned he was trying to make a move. Did I agree that the full body workout we’d just done together was strenuous? Did I try and bond with him over how mean the instructor was? Oh no. Instead, I treated him like he was a beggar on the streets of Santa Monica and acted like I was a French tourist that didn’t speak proper En
glish.

  I nodded. Backed away. Kept my head down and said, “Oui, oui. Au revoir.” I then hustled to my car, wondering why the fuck I was speaking French.

  Shockingly, the guy has never tried to speak to me again.

  It is because of my horrible game with guys that I chose Bumble. It’s the app where the girl must make the first move. I’m trying to push myself out of my comfort zone.

  After I match with a guy, I usually comb through his profile and pick out the things I relate to. Then I offer him way too much information about myself and blow the whole thing. This has happened so often that my girlfriends have intervened.

  “Just say ‘hey’ and offer a single compliment,” Alissa, a fellow single gal, advised.

  To be honest, many of the guys don’t give a lot to go off on. I’ve encountered more than one profile where the guy has bragged about “showering regularly.” When did that even become part of a bio? Shouldn’t it be a given?

  I find myself looking past many things when reviewing profiles. My standards have sunk. At first, I was strict, swiping left over a thousand times for every swipe right. Then the same guys got rotated back into the lineup, and I realized that I’d gone through every guy in LA on Bumble.

  I don’t feel that my expectations are too far off. I want a guy who isn’t too tall or too short. Medium. No hipsters; I would only bring them down. However, I fear my expectations will have to shift even further. When did everyone in LA become a fucking lumberjack with a full beard and wearing flannel? Damn hipsters! This is the newest trend in LA, making most of the twenty-something guys look like they’re in their forties with these giant beards. Can we start a razor drive for these guys?

  Hear ye! Hear ye! Free shaves if you take off your red flannel shirt and donate it to a Canadian!

  Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the homeless from the eccentric, wealthy hipsters. I’m afraid to strike up a conversation with one of them only to get mugged.

  Most on Bumble in LA are too cool for school. Everyone has a profile pic of them at Machu Picchu. I’m not kidding. I related this to Alissa, and she said, “Why do you think I made a point to go there last year?”

  I was stunned. “You hiked up a mountain for four days to get a dating profile pic of you at Machu Picchu?”

  “Yeah, and since then, I’ve made a ton more matches,” she stated victoriously. She then related that one guy saw that photo of her and wasn’t mesmerized by the ancient temples behind her, but was rather unimpressed by her giant behind.

  “Sarah, he literally messaged me and said, ‘I didn’t realize you were so fat when we first matched.’”

  I wanted to be shocked, but Bumble has desensitized me. I matched with a guy who sent me roughly a dozen full body shots of himself standing around in various places. I thought it was weird but commended him on his ability to stand around.

  “Did you go to college for that?” I joked.

  He didn’t think that was funny. The guy was on a mission. “I’m only wondering why you don’t have any full body shots in your profile.”

  I dropped my slice of pizza and gawked at the phone. Is he fucking calling me fat?

  I responded with, “I just don’t have a camera person following me around. All I have are selfies.”

  Was that true? Probably not. But damn, men in LA are shallow. I deleted that guy and then went on the Keto diet the next day. I fucking miss pizza!

  I realize that it’s not just men who are shallow. I swipe left on tattoos, beards, redheads, giants, and men who play hockey.

  My friend who is a dental hygienist told me that she had a guy she could set me up with. “He’s smart, good-looking and really successful.”

  “Cool, let’s do it,” I said, lying in the dentist’s chair—one of my favorite places on Earth, because I’m weird like that.

  “There’s only one thing.”

  Of course, there is.

  “He still has a few baby teeth,” she stated.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked. “How old is he?”

  “Mid-thirties,” she answered. “It’s not his fault. He just never lost them, but seriously, he’s nice.”

  “I can’t date Baby Teeth,” I said. “The offer is off.”

  I thought she was going to poke me in the gums with one of her sharp instruments. Instead, she nodded, her eyes understanding, framed by her face mask. “I get it. I once wouldn’t date a guy because he was a waiter.”

  I gawked at my friend. “Fuck, you’re shallow. A guy could get a new job, but Baby Teeth is on the tooth fairy’s shit-list forever. He held out on her.”

  My dental hygienist laughed. “Well, it was less about his job as a waiter and more about him being clueless. He showed up here right before his shift at the Cheesecake Factory. I went to meet him, and he held out his arms, wearing this long apron. He said, ‘I decided to ask you out right before work because I know a woman can’t resist a man in uniform.’”

  I laughed, making her have to pull the instruments out of my mouth.

  “Damn, well, good thing you dodged that bullet. What a clueless moron. Although free cheesecake would have been nice.”

  She sighed. “I guess, but the man I married is an idiot, too.”

  “Oh, did you meet him on a dating app?”

  She shook her head, leaning down low. “No, I met him in this office. He’s the dentist.”

  Chapter Five

  I Should Only Date Pilots

  After one week swiping on Bumble, I had carpal tunnel and three dates set up. One with an Italian, one with a Brazilian and the last with a Russian. Unsurprisingly, they were all in the entertainment industry.

  Over the week, I texted with these guys, all of them on their best behavior. After over a decade with a nice, Midwestern boy, I felt like I was having an international buffet of men. What made it better was that two of them had accents; however, they also didn’t have class, and both canceled our first date.

  I don’t live in NoHo or the Valley, like all the cool kids in LA. I live on the other side of Malibu where the schools are fantastic, and the coyotes still own the streets. Although I’m only twenty miles away from Hollywood, I might as well live on the other side of the fucking world. When the Russian and the Brazilian learned how far away I was, they both backed out of the date, probably picturing sitting in traffic for eons over the course of our relationship.

  The Italian, though, he had class. We figured out a halfway point and planned a date.

  It’s now that I must make a confession. You know how some creepy men only prey on disadvantaged women? I have that same problem, but it’s with redheads. I totally don’t get where it came from and, like an addict, I’ve been trying to stop ever since I realized the flaw in my personality.

  It all started with a character who I wrote into my first book, a middle-aged man who was a British redhead with a bad attitude. I was totally obsessed with this character, and so were the readers. He was powerful, brilliant and a complete asshole. He was, in essence, my alter ego. The character then went on to appear in two series. And because I couldn’t get enough of his snark, he got his own five-book series.

  Now, mind you, I’d never even been around gingers. My oldest sister is one, but if you think we’ve spent much time together, you’re wrong. She’s ten years older than me and a pagan who lives off the grid and runs Renaissance fairs. I have zero interest in eating a turkey leg and having my aura read by a gypsy, so Dee and I don’t catch up…ever. Oh, and she also doesn’t have a phone since she literally lives in the middle of nowhere.

  Anyway, somewhere along the line, I developed this disorder where I attract redheads. Notice how I put that: I attract them. I’m like a dark place that’s accepting of their soullessness, drawing them to me. Before this Bumble business, I had dated three redheads back-to-back-to-back. I know! You’re wondering how I’d even found that many. They come to me. It’s weird.

  After the last one, I swore off redheads forever… or so I thought
. Shawn was a young engineer who seemed nice, however, on our first date, he described himself as a Slytherin. That’s like saying, “I’m a bad person.” Did I ditch him and go and find a good Gryffindor boy? Did I politely excuse myself from the date, knowing you never piss off a redhead? No, I tried to change him, arguing that he should retake the Sorting Hat quiz.

  Turns out he’s totally a Slytherin.

  “Oh, Sarah,” my friend Zoe said, consoling me after I told her about Shawn. “That’s a red flag. You run from a Slytherin. There’s no changing them.”

  “I don’t really appreciate your use of the word ‘red’ in this instance,” I told her.

  She shrugged. “What if I set you up with someone? Are you okay with Jews?”

  I thought for a moment. “Why wouldn’t I be? Aren’t they the ones who wouldn’t have me, since I’m all…you know, not Jewish?”

  She nodded. “Sometimes people don’t want to mix because of the religious aspect.”

  I was more concerned with the fact that they might be overly hairy, but I didn’t say anything about that. “Yeah, call your matchmaker and get me a date with a nice Jewish man.”

  I’m still waiting on that call.

  So back to my first Bumble date. The Italian and I decided to meet at a dark restaurant bar on a Sunday night. Upon meeting, I was pleasantly surprised. He wasn’t too short or too tall. He had a nice smile, and the conversation was easy from the start. Everything was going great until he said, “…yeah, well, and because I’m a redhead—”

  I slammed my wine glass down and leaned across the table, squinting at him. “You’re what? But you’re Italian!” His profile pics! Now that I thought about it, maybe his hair was more auburn than brown. How hadn’t I noticed before?!

  He smiled. “I know, it’s a bit rare, but—”

  I then whipped out my phone and activated the flashlight mode, dousing him in light like he was a criminal out on the streets. He held up his hands, squinting from the sudden brightness. Under the light, I learned that he was in fact correct. He was a fucking redhead.