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  “Look for the signs, they will appear,” she said.

  “Really, will they?” I asked.

  “Hold your thoughts up to the sky to have the answers shown,” she explained. I left her and the Yoga Vibe feeling hopeful, but still a bit bewildered.

  I met the Tennis Actor back at my studio apartment; he was off to an audition for Crest Whitestrips. I had watched him place the strips across his upper and lower teeth—maybe he was trying ‘Method’ commercial acting.

  “They work, don’t they?” he asked as he held up the Polaroid ‘before’ shot he had taken. I said, “I’m buying!”

  He washed his mouth and smacked on some aftershave that smelled expensive. I counted to ten in my head and then I said, “I’m tired of LA.”

  He just nodded in agreement as he put on his brand new khakis and his new pale blue button-down shirt. He never wore the same outfit to an audition unless it was a callback. He had new clothes at my place and at his, and at his best friend Aaron’s house—a hard-nose screenwriter who claimed to have used my ‘weirdness’ for two of his screenplay characters. I gave Shadow a dog chew and took off my clothes, at last ready for a hot shower. He ignored that I was twisting my nipples for sensation, understanding my continual need for pleasure.

  I had heard all about body piercing and had once met a British guy (who looked as if he could double for the actor Tom Hardy) at the bar over on Cahuenga Boulevard that used to be called the Burgundy Room—he had just gotten a cock ring.

  And when I asked, “Does it look cool?” He unzipped his pants and pulled out a firm cock with a silver ring through the tip of it.

  And I had to admit it looked really attractive and not at all strange. Everything sooner or later appears normal. At least, in Los Angeles.

  “Bled for two frigging days, now it’s all right; thanks for asking to see it. Luv,” he said proudly. It’s cute how the Brit’s use the word ‘luv’ instead of ‘babe’ or ‘honey’.

  And I said, “Looks totally cool,” and then we continued drinking our beers til the bar closed, and no, he didn’t ask me over to his place. So how it feels to touch or how a condom fits over it, I still don’t know.

  “Wish me luck!” the Tennis Actor hollered.

  “Luck!” I yelled, and then stood by my window watching him walk away. He wasn’t in love with me, nor I with him, just a good, good guy. And yes, he would make it just fine without me.

  2

  YES

  I had gotten tired of the East Coast years and years before. At that time, I was living half a block from Chinatown in Manhattan, and had decided that I needed to go out to Hollywood, California, and be in the movies. It was either New York or Los Angeles and I had already done NYC, and my best friend Paloma had said, “You need to chill out from NYC for a couple of years. Maybe Hollywood is the right place for you.”

  It was my Aunt Helen who had suggested that I go out to Los Angeles as an adventure.

  She said, “If you live by palm trees, you’ll feel something new. Los Angeles has palm trees, rows of them.”

  Paloma added, “Go for it!”

  And fortunately, Aunt Helen had given me the four thousand dollars to fly across the country with, money that allowed me to rent a single studio apartment (as in the one on Rodney Drive) and even to buy an eight-hundred-dollar Toyota hatchback, circa 1975, and, boy, did it look dated. Coincidentally, classic/vintage is in in LA.

  I waited tables at Universal’s cafeteria on the studio lot (yucky if you’re an actress, because you feel invisible and horribly obscure). I would have done temp jobs but I’m a one handed typist—(I’ll explain why later on). Anyway, a year later I quit, because I met an art model named McKenna from Memphis, who suggested that I become an art model like her. Number one reason; the flexibility of hours would allow me to go out on more auditions. Number two; I had curvy hips, shapely thighs, and even a soft belly (not a camera-thin/anorexic actress body, but the really fleshy, rounded butt kind).

  “You have an hourglass figure, the painters will go nuts over you. You have to become an art model,” McKenna informed me.

  She was tall and thin; she had the ‘Egon Schiele’ artist-type body and had made a fantastic career of it.

  So I said yes, which normally is what I say, because my best friend Paloma had once told me a story of how John Lennon had gone to see some art at an apartment in Manhattan and he had seen a carved sculpture on the wall that said “yes,” and, as he went out on the rooftop—there stood Yoko Ono. She had made that work of art.

  Okay, so who knows if the story was or is true, but when in doubt, act ‘as if’. Even if it wasn’t, it had worked for me. Starting out saying “yes” just made life easier than saying “no”. No is a two-letter word that every actor, director, producer, or screenwriter hates to hear.

  The phone rang, pulling me away from the window and out of my deep thoughts. It was the painter, Kenneth. He needed me to pose for a few of his friends in Venice; his other model had unexpectedly canceled, leaving them stranded for a muse.

  “How fast can you get here?” he asked.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Unless I fly, and then, well, that’s a minute or two,” I said.

  He liked my wry, okay, really dumb, humor. Everyone knows in Los Angeles, that to get to the West Side (Santa Monica/Venice/Marina Del Ray), it takes less than an hour when there is no traffic and up to two hours when there’s traffic. The key is going when there’s no traffic and taking the 10 Freeway or Sunset Boulevard all the way there. So I dried off from a quick warm shower and put on my black DKNY dress and gave Shadow an extra dog treat. I had already done the art schools from Pasadena to Brentwood, and after just a year, I was only working for private artists.

  It was then that I decided to see if I could borrow some extra paint from Kenneth to paint my own “YES”. Maybe if I hung it up, I’d get the answer to where I was to go after I left LA.

  Kenneth is one of those realist painters, where everything looks as if you could snatch it off the canvas. There were two other painters, a guy, older than Kenneth, originally from somewhere in Russia, who did charcoal drawing that blurred real images with an imaginative bent and a local California artist Kenneth had known for years, who laughed a lot and told jokes when everyone took breaks.

  Kenneth’s studio was the quintessential artist studio, the kind a set decorator would die to use as a movie location: enormous open space, museum white walls, a model block in the middle with several old easels set around it, a lengthy steel counter with a stainless steel industrial sink against the far wall, a very used and trusted coffee maker brewing for the billionth time, a slouchy, worn out leather couch with a Mexican blanket draped over it, a black leather club chair, a single metal bookshelf with stacks of art books, a stereo, and no TV. The tiled bathroom had a shower, a toilet, a cobalt glass sink and gray bath towels.

  Large finished painted canvases were stacked against the walls close to the door. A wooden table with four heavy ornate chairs was where I’d sit with Kenneth and the Russian artist, while the California guy moved around us, never standing still. It had always gone that way.

  I arrived to a warm bear hug from the 6’2”, sweet-faced Kenneth. To win him over to using me as his art model, I had had to prove myself. The key to being an art model is simple and challenging at the same time. A set of three B’s: Being able to contort the body. Being able to hold the pose fifteen to twenty minutes without moving. Being able to go right back into the same pose after a short break, without changing the level or position of any part of the body. I had first posed for one of his ex-wives, also an artist, who told him about me, and that’s how I started posing for him and attaining all three B’s for twenty-minute stretches at a time.

  There’s that thing I like so much, when you meet someone new—and it just doesn’t take long to feel a kind of closeness, as if you knew him/her for years. Kenneth and I had that; we just dug each other as subject and artist. He liked my curvy hips, my breas
ts and my imperfections, which incidentally make an art model worth drawing. Supermodels need not apply, imperfections rule on canvas every time. I trusted him so I had allowed him to take photos of me, for future work.

  So there I was, heading into Kenneth’s small bathroom to put on my Chinatown-bought silk robe while the artists took their positions behind easels. A crimson velvet chair stood on the raised model platform, otherwise known as the model block. A minute later I walked toward it, taking off my robe and letting it fall to the floor.

  Being naked in an artist’s studio or art classroom is a thousand times different from pole dancing at Cheetah’s on Hollywood Boulevard or any other ‘live nude girls’ place. No one is there to get horny. Artists see beyond the T&A; in fact, they notice the color of the areola, the size of the nipples, the contour of the thighs, the outline of the veins, the nape of the neck, the slope of the shoulders, and the hair that sprouts in whatever shape, length and color above the vagina. An art model doesn’t jiggle, she stays motionless, and that’s what I did as I faced the chair, and twisted my wide hips out so my breasts showed and my neck arched. I held one hand on the chair where I was pivoted and the other above my head, my fingers curled toward the painters. I heard Kenneth’s guttural noises of approval, since, I knew what type of poses he liked and tailored them for him. “Ahhhhhhhhhh,” he said. That’s probably the fourth unspoken key to art modeling: being able to anticipate the pose an artist wants.

  Someone once asked me what I did while they were drawing or painting me. I remember liking the question, because it made me think, “If I’m posing, looking at the ground, after a while I begin to see images; a shape, a face, or a creature. Of course, this is only possible if the floor has texture.”

  Modeling is the quietest I’ve ever gotten, and the closest to meditation that I’ll ever get. Being so wrapped up in the stillness, without forcing myself to not think and to just stare is how it happens for me. Sometimes I daydream, but not a sexual daydream, because then naturally my hips and lips would move.

  Also, art modeling is the way I got over the ‘drilled in’ idea that it’s necessary to have super-skinny thighs and the ‘perfect’ actress body. Once you have artists tell you how exquisite, beautiful and unique you are—you’re free.

  Every time I’ve met one of those “Help I’m trying to become a skinny twit” actresses at an audition, I’ve told them to art model at least once. I’ll say, “It’s the quickest way to body self acceptance and you’ll be comfortable if you ever have to shoot a nude scene in front of a film crew.” Hey, I’m not a shrink, and taking care of myself is enough of a task, why add to it?

  There I was, facing the window that funneled in the bright California sunlight, when I thought about the “yes” and decided to imagine polished silver metal 24” x 24” letters spelling out “YES” dangling above my head. Moving like wind chimes by the small hands of three elves dressed in off-white painter pants, matching shirts, and white baseball hats, barefoot and sitting on the high ceiling rafters of Kenneth’s studio. The “yes” letters attached to fishing rod lines. I felt this sudden sense that an answer was coming to me in the next day: a map, or a written outline of where I should go.

  Later that night, he showed up, the Tennis Actor with his dirty blond hair slicked back, and for the first time I said, “You know what? I can’t hang out tonight; I need some alone time, some me time, some un-male time.”

  In a bitter tone he replied, “I got a callback, thought we could celebrate, but if you’re not in the mood, then so what!”

  I could have been soft and explained that I needed to be alone only for a few hours, so I could hear my own thoughts and figure out where my life needed to go and where the “yes” was going to come from, but I didn’t.

  “Congrats on the CB (callback). Talk to you tomorrow,” I said and took Shadow and went inside. I used to be the most dumped girl there ever was, til I turned twenty-six (I’m twenty-seven now) and decided to stop waiting by the phone, to stop trying to cross paths with a guy, to stop begging for some guy to let me stay over night, for the whole night, including breakfast, when he really wanted me to leave his place after the sex. To stop screwing him to just fill in the gap between me—and nothingness.

  I watched the Tennis Actor amble away, half wanting to run after him and jump on his back and hump his left leg just to prove that I had him, that I could keep him, but I forced myself to close the downstairs screen door and let go. I had never done that, I had always been the one walking away after a guy had asked to me leave or even hinted that I should. I had listened to guys telling me that they “needed their own space for a while” or that they’d “be back in touch, real soon.” I walked up the stairs and into my apartment. Shadow raced to his water bowl. I locked the door and sighed. I felt strangely different.

  Ugh, I have no plans ever to be a woman without a man, and yet I wasn’t lonely. Okay, so I also knew one night was one night and not a thousand. TG (Thank God). I opened my fridge and then made a delicious vegetarian plate of sesame pasta, with huge chunks of tofu and heaps of spinach. Good food calms me down. And tofu rocks! I gave Shadow his Science Diet dinner, and spread my turquoise bed sheet onto the hardwood floor. I took off all my clothes and there I lay naked, just waiting for the sign, the life-size moment of change to appear—the “YES”.

  3

  EGGS

  Waking up and looking for the sign of “yes” was no picnic. First, I had slept on the wood floor with just a sheet under me—which was fine for Shadow, asleep at my left hip, but my body was stiff in all the wrong places. And from the floor, I saw the used condoms the Tennis Actor had flung nonchalantly when he was ready to ejaculate on top of my belly, face, or against the wall in my little alcove bedroom.

  So much for my trying to act ‘as if’ I could attain Elizabeth Bennet’s love success in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—which, incidentally Keira Knightley had done a great acting job in the movie version of, and the Mr. Darcy actor (Matthew Macfadyen) was beyond vulnerably perfect for what I had imagined. I read the book in high school and had had the twisted naive thought that I, too, was going to grow up and fall in love with a modern day Mr. Darcy—one who wouldn’t toss his used condoms on the floor and who would be in love with me, body and soul. What was I doing? And for how long had I just been doing nothing with my love life? Not that the Tennis Actor wasn’t exciting, good looking, and well-built in the area between his legs. But was there really a future?

  I sat up as Shadow started licking my thigh. “Is there a Mr. Darcy in LA?” I asked. Shadow barked as if I had said, “Park” and I got up, feeling achy and cramped, turning on the shower in my tiny bathroom covered in pretty blue tiles from wall-to-wall. It was the best feature in the place besides the roof top patio. I stood under the hot shower, thinking over and over about finding out if he (Mr. Darcy) was in Los Angeles, and if I had just been looking in the wrong places.

  Then I took Shadow to the Laurel Canyon Dog Park—not just as a bonus for him, but as a way of searching for the hippest, coolest, most real Mr. Darcy. Out of all the dog parks in LA, Laurel Canyon has to have the hottest dudes around. Okay, at least in my limited opinion. I had never thought of myself as a love addict, only because ‘addict’ has such a negative ring to it. But there I was, at eight in the morning, looking for Mr. Right, Mr. Love, or Mr. Darcy, whoever would be authentic. Meeting ‘attached’ guys or married guys is no fun (in fact, it’s a waste of time and energy).

  Anyway I saw a lot of fine looking men in the park as Shadow raced around, barking like the hippest dog ever. I stared at every guy, trying to see what reaction I’d get. Nothing! Ha, ha. I should have grabbed a cardboard box and my red permanent pen and written, “Seeking LOVE, please apply,” and put it around my neck. But if my acting coach had seen me, he would have said I ‘lacked the balls to command the stage’ and he’d have been totally right.

  Around that time, because timing at times can be perfectly rotten, the Tennis Actor text
ed me saying quote unquote, “24b-up. I’ll be in touch soon.” Ugh! A 24b-up equals a 24-hour break-up, it’s not an official ending, it’s more like not meeting for breakfast, lunch, or dinner for one whole day until you figure yourself out or screw someone else. I just texted back, U got it. And I did. Hey, it’s not like I could get snotty or bitchy or throw a hissy-fit. After all I had asked the Tennis Actor to give me last night off and I was in the dog park hunting for a modern day Mr. Darcy-not just any man, of course, but still, facts are facts. So there I was, a few feet from a colossal pile of dog shit, a 24b-up text in my cell phone, and no available men anywhere in the park. “Shadow,” I hollered, after cleaning up the poop which, like recycling, I can do with my eyes shut. So much for finding a handsome yes!

  I got in my car and drove us down to Sunset Boulevard, with the urge to race up to Zuma Beach in Malibu and watch the surfer dudes. Being afraid of water made it extra exciting to sit and gawk, not to mention that surfer dudes have detailed, killer bodies. But, my cell phone rang. It was Beth asking if I would race over to the Woman’s Club of Hollywood to pick up a stack of 8x10’s to phone actors for tonight’s casting director’s workshop. Having a talent agent is great, but it doesn’t mean they do everything, especially if they are not ‘A-list’ agents, and if you’re not an ‘A-list’ actress or actor, yet or ever.

  “Sure, give me two minutes,” I said putting Malibu on my ‘another day’ list (along with finding Mr. Darcy/Mr. Right).

  I had started attending the workshops as a way to get seen by new casting directors who Ray, my agent, couldn’t get me in front of. Yeah, it cost money to be seen, but because I did the phone calls, and solicited other actors to come, I got to do them for free. Okay, so maybe this was a sign that I wasn’t yet done with Hollywood, that maybe a really big, amazing stardom break was going to come my way tonight.