“I can’t believe you would tell personal things about us while you’re onstage. People see me there with you – it’s embarrassing!
A few hours earlier, I was on stage at the Laugh Factory in front of 200-plus USC fraternity brothers. They were rich, young, handsome trust fundish kids with Greek lettered t-shirts and the type of tooth whiteness that, until ten years ago, was only available to people with meth addictions and a bottle of 409 tile cleaner. Tan, young, fucking bastards. They probably still smelled each other’s fingers.
Driving home at the peak of DUI hours, I found myself in the familiar and unenviable position of rolling logic algorithms around in my mind in an attempt to systematically break down the ‘what the fuck?’-edness of yet another sentence set forth from a woman’s mouth. The exercise was par for the course with women in Los Angeles.
I stopped myself short – both physically and emotionally. Deep breath, Bill. Use the tried and true Scientific Method. You have a theory about what’s happening, so experiment and find evidence to prove your thesis. Drill down on the problem.
“What… are… you.. talking… about?” Right to the heart of the matter. I suppressed the urge to hurl every curse word I knew at her.
“The joker joke. It’s just rude,” she snorted back.
What a downer. While I’d adapted well to single life in Manhattan, the isolation and general sense of disconnect I’ve experienced in LA – my new home – has begun subtly rewiring my brain to want, and need, a companion. Sure, we’d only been seeing each other for a short time, but I liked Alison. I was looking forward to dating her.
Alison was beautiful and sexy with soft yogi skin and vocal tones. She was a booze hound, which juxtaposed nicely with her daily Buddhist chanting. Ironies in female behavior more and more seem to be what gets me out of bed in the morning. Plus, I took some comfort in the fact that it made it easier to get her naked. That being said, sex wasn’t the point. It was more about having a new best friend who just happened to be gorgeous. We’d just had lunch that afternoon and spent two solid hours talking about books, movies, philosophy… and of course, spirituality.
I had to remind myself that it was ‘okay’. It was okay that I found myself, once again, attracted to an archetypical ‘spiritual actress.’ I reminded myself that I am, at times, a spiritual actor. Come to think of it, at times I’m a spiritual actress.
If you don’t know WHAT a spiritual actress is, let me explain it as succinctly as possible:
A ‘spiritual actress’ is an actress who doesn’t work as an actress.
Because this ‘actress’ doesn’t really work, period, she has hundreds upon thousands of hours to read ‘The Secret’ and Eckhart Tolle and every other self-help/new age/personal development book in the clearance bin at Borders. While I think self-improvement is a valid and worthwhile goal, I find it odd that NONE of the spiritual actresses I’ve dated (I’m drawn like moths to a flame) have ever found hilarious irony in the fact that they continually justify their needy, selfish, actress insecurities with the eternal, selfless, gentle platitudes of generosity and worth.
The image of two actresses in a casting office trying to out-Secret each other for a role before either has even auditioned would be funny if it weren’t 100 percent accurate and observable on a daily basis. ‘Spiritual actresses’ have become one of those Hollywood clichés where the truth is always stranger than fiction. Go to any yoga class in LA and watch how many women immediately check their iphone to see if they got that call from their agent. No? Okay, I’ll hang out at Coffee Bean and set up a small business for 4 hours.
But I digress.
