Monday, February 23, 2009

Yuck at First Sight

Have you ever had sex with a man you were not attracted to ... at all? I have. As a matter of fact, I had sex with said man at a mall.

It was about three weeks into my mall exile, and less than two months after the casting couch. Maybe by the time Semi-Homeless came into my life, I was so beat down that I thought I couldn't do any better. Maybe I was so needy that any form of love was enough. Maybe after being surrounded by Hollywood predators, I needed someone I could push around.

Whatever the reason, Semi-Homeless ranks as my weirdest, most embarrassing, most what-the-hell-was-I-thinking relationship ever. And that's saying a lot.

I was sitting in the Crenshaw Mall food court studying my tarot cards when he came up to me. Semi-Homeless claimed to be 35, but he looked much older. He had a prominent caveman forehead and a pot belly.

So what was the draw?

You have to understand that the only thing I prayed and wished for more fervently than being a successful actress was being a wife. And the one quality that I prized in a potential husband above all else was the capacity to understand my moods and to not be fazed by them.

Semi-Homeless gave me an impromptu psychic reading, proclaiming that I was a "roller-coaster ride" and an "adventure;" that I had a jazzy singing voice; that I looked and acted just like my father; on and on and on until he said the magic phrase, that he and I were soul mates.

Then he immediately did two things right: he bought me a slice of pizza, and he massaged my back. Right before he slipped his hands underneath my shirt and inside my panties, right there in public!

He asked me if I wanted to go somewhere else, and somewhere else turned out to be a stairwell. Where he proceeded to lick parts of me that weren't supposed to be exposed on the back stairs of the Crenshaw Mall. He pulled out a condom, and I said no. I felt like the cheapest of cheap hos, and I barely just managed to pull my clothes on before a security guard came on the scene.

"I need to leave," I said.

He asked if I could drop him off at a vacuum shop a few blocks away.

Another really big turnoff. Semi-Homeless didn't have a car.

I drove him to some random house in the hood so he could pick up a key to this vacuum shop, then to the shop itself. When he asked me to "come inside for a minute" that should have been my cue to leave, but I followed him inside to a little back room, where he tried to finish what we'd started at the Crenshaw Mall.

Sexually, he did nothing for me. I didn't like the way he smelled, and his breath stank. I let him eat of the forbidden fruit, and I gave him nothing in return. I simply said, "I don't want to do this" and got dressed, while he all but burst into tears and confessed his love for me. He wanted to marry me. He was going to take care of me. He was going to come into some money, and he'd be able to help me. He tried again to hump me, and my exact words were, "Get off me!"

He was undeterred. He said with absolute certainty, "You are my soul mate, and one day we're going to look back on this and laugh."

Part of me wanted to believe him. But honestly? I was physically sick to my stomach.

(Semi-Homeless Diaries Part 6 of 12: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Thursday, February 19, 2009

My Great Aunt's Memorial Service



Those of you who have been following my Semi-Homeless Diaries are familiar with the trials and travails I went through with my 88-year-old Great Aunt. But if you assumed she was a sad old lady who wasn't long for this world, ha! My aunt lived to be 100 years old. She passed away Feb. 3, 2009, and yesterday, I attended her memorial service.

I wish I could say that her twilight years were happy and fruitful and filled with love, but honestly, I believe her last years were mostly a bewildering blur of loneliness. By the time I moved in with her, most of her loved ones were long gone. She had lived with her parents most of her adult life, even after she married. Her parents? Gone. Her siblings? Gone. Two husbands? Gone. Even Mr. Sweet Talker and Neighborhood Watch. Gone.

Most of the people at the memorial service were senior citizens, but their primary memories were of how kind Great Aunt was when they were kids. When you reach 100, real peers are hard to come by.

At one point in the service, the minister said, "If Great Aunt were here, she would say..." and then he inserted a Bible verse. I wanted to laugh out loud. Granted, my aunt was a Christian woman who regularly attended church, but I never heard her utter a Bible verse of any kind.

She didn't talk about the Bible. She talked about puppies. Her parents. Traveling. How her younger brother (my grandfather) used to call her a "green-eyed monster." How Century Boulevard, a busy Los Angeles thoroughfare, was still orange groves when she arrived in the 1940's. How when she moved to her South Los Angeles neighborhood in the 1970's "there were hardly any blacks."

The last time I sat and talked to her was at her 100th birthday party. She was wearing a silly birthday tiara and some comfy clothes that she wouldn't have been caught dead in 12 years earlier. If she could have really seen herself, she would have given a self-deprecating laugh and exclaimed, "Oh, gee! I look a mess!"

She didn't really know who she was. She didn't know who I was. She didn't know who all the people in the house were. She didn't know what all the fuss was about. I was able to hold her hand and sit with her and let go of some of the bitterness, resentment and guilt that I felt when I lived with her.

I wish that the 25-year-old me had been able to be more patient with her, more kind to her, more able to give her the love and nurturing and attention that she needed at the time. But I couldn't. At the time, she got on my nerves. And to be fair, I got on hers, too.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Mall Solution to My Nightmare Situation

I started living in malls the day after Great Aunt's friends accused me of beating her. It was God's will. You see, I'd read somewhere that writing with your non-dominant hand was a great way to tap into divine wisdom. So I kept asking God how to deal with my situation, and the burning bush that was my left hand answered back: Try to be gone from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, even if all you do is sit in the mall and read.

On day two of my mall exile, I came home to an answering-machine message from Mrs. Battleaxe, who had apparently declared herself my supervisor. When I called her back, she pulled out a list and began ticking off chores.

"First of all, there's that food situation. Well, I just want to know: DO YOU KNOW HOW TO COOK?" It was deplorable for Great Aunt to be eating the TV dinners she'd been eating for decades. Now, according to Mrs. Battleaxe, "They should be for emergencies only. And about Great Aunt's skin. It looks terrible. I have never seen her skin look like that."

"Mrs. Battleaxe, I am doing the best I can."

"Well, I know you are. No one is BLAMING you. It's just that no one has told you these things before. No one has TOLD you to cook before, have they?"

I took 60 percent of the sarcasm out of my voice, then added 15 percent saccharine and 2 percent rat poison. "As much as I appreciate your instructions, Mrs. Battleaxe, I am really not absorbing them very well right now. I have had a very exhausting day. Thank you very much for calling."

God had instructed me to go to the mall. Those were the only instructions I was following.

About a week into my mall exile, Neighborhood Watch called me to apologize. He was sincerely sorry he'd accused me of hitting my aunt. And something else was on his mind. He was in love with me.

"I been wantin' to make love to you so bad, 'specially when you was wearin' all those short dresses ... Ain't no chance, huh?"

Great. He had a key to the house. And I had no lock on my bedroom door.

What I did have was a big audition. The musical Rent, which had taken Broadway by storm the previous year, was about to have its Los Angeles premiere. I was up for the role of Joanne, and I was totally freaked out. I was scrambling to find the songs, then trying to learn the songs. With a cold. In my car. While driving to and from various malls.

The nerve-wracking Rent audition happened about two weeks into my great mall escape. I gave it everything I had, but knew immediately I would not be making Los Angeles theater history.

Fortunately, I had lined up what I thought would be a well-paying day job with a completely flexible schedule. I would be a tarot-card reader on the psychic hotline made infamous by a fake Jamaican urging the desperate and foolish to "Call now for ya' free psychic readin'!"

Of course, it was impossible to work, because my aunt would wander aimlessly into my room asking if I'd seen her scissors or her checkbook while I tried not to scream. I could only work late at night, after she passed out, or very early in the morning, before I escaped to the mall. Any mall.

Three weeks into my mall-hopping adventure, I was starting to feel like a vagabond. Not surprisingly, I met a vagabond. The unattractive, smelly vagabond who became my instant lover.

(Semi-Homeless Diaries Part 5 of 12: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Kitchen-Table Confrontation

I didn't even have time to take my coat off before the tribunal of bourgie b*%#tches started in on me, attacking me for not properly taking care of my 88-year-old Great Aunt.

Betty Boop, the least concerned for Great Aunt's well-being, was the first to attack. You see, 11 days earlier, I had committed an unforgivable sin. I had escorted Great Aunt to Mrs. Battleaxe's New Year's Eve party looking absolutely stunning. Better than Betty Boop, if her reaction was any indication. She had pursed her lips.

Now she simpered, "I didn't like your attitude yesterday."

"Her attitude toward you?" Mr. Sweet Talker asked.

"No, she was fine toward us. Her attitude toward Great Aunt." And Betty Boop began to rattle on about how "mean-spirited" I was.

It didn't take long – probably less than five minutes – for me to completely lose my temper.

"I was asked to come here to look after Great Aunt!" I shouted.

Great Aunt suddenly showered her stubborn, ill-tempered side. "Then go home!" she croaked.

"I will gladly do so," I spat. I glared at Mrs. Battleaxe and Betty Boop and said, "Y'all can deal with this sh*t on your own."

I stormed into my room, with about 10 gallons of steam coming out of my ears.

I could hear Neighborhood Watch signifying from the kitchen. "I always knew she had it in her!" Mr. Sweet Talker remarked that he'd never seen me like this, while Betty Boop kept adding logs to the fire with her catty comments.

When I calmed down enough, I re-entered the kitchen, ready to do battle: "All the sh#t you've been saying behind my back, you can now say to my face!"

I started with Betty Boop. "There are three people in this room who take care of Great Aunt: me, Neighborhood Watch and Mr. Sweet Talker. You and Mrs. Battleaxe are nothing but invisible friends."

Did they think I enjoyed pulling Great Aunt off of bloody floors in the middle of the night? As far as I was concerned, I hadn't received an ounce of appreciation or support from anybody but Mr. Sweet Talker, and I had sacrificed months of my life for nothing.

That's when Neighborhood Watch decided to open his big, loud mouth.

"God, forgive me in my heart if I'm wrong," he began dramatically. "But I believe you slapped the sh*t out of Great Aunt. I don't believe she fell on no flo'! She been drinkin' fo' yeahs, an' she ain' neveh fell till you come around."

I was stunned, furious, upset.

Neighborhood Watch rested his case. "See, you mad now! An' you know what I think that is? 'The truth hurts.'"

I looked Neighborhood Watch dead in the face. "F*ck you."

And since he wanted to talk about the truth, I added, "The truth is, you know in your heart that Great Aunt needs to stop drinking, but you're not going to let her stop drinking, because as long as she drinks, you drink free."

I told them that if this was the thanks I got, I was leaving. And when I left, there wasn't going to be anybody there to notice when Great Aunt left the gas on or put metal pots in the microwave.

Neighborhood Watch grudgingly admitted, "Yeah, Great Aunt do leave the gas on."

Great Aunt responded, "I don't do it every day, do I?"

The bourgie little kangaroo court was beginning to worry that I might pack up immediately, leaving Great Aunt completely unsupervised and a danger to herself.

So on their way out, Mrs. Battleaxe and Betty Boop made a big deal of hugging and kissing me and saying they were so sorry I was so unhappy.

Mr. Sweet Talker whispered in my ear, "They won't even be back, so don't pay them any attention because Great Aunt needs you."

I no longer cared what Great Aunt needed. I needed to move out. Soon.

(Semi-Homeless Diaries Part 4 of 12: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Friday, February 13, 2009

The Tribunal of Bourgie B*%#tches

Anyone who has ever had the displeasure of taking care of an elderly or disabled person knows that visitors are few and far between. Friends and family may come around for birthdays or special occasions, but day-to-day? Hardly. It's too depressing. Boring. Smelly. Weird.

In the days after Great Aunt's second drink-and-fall, three invisible friends decided to pay me a visit and give me a piece of their mind.

The first was Mrs. Battleaxe and her assistant, Betty Boop. Mrs. Battleaxe, a 70-something long-time friend of Great Aunt, lived in Baldwin Hills. Betty Boop was her 36-year-old personal assistant, a silly, vapid, pretentious, materialistic, keeping-it-young-while-still-posing-for-lingerie-calendars Los Angeles snob.

I was in my bedroom, about an hour into the three-hour job of braiding my hair, when they realized I was home and demanded that I join them in the living room. So there I was, half Buckwheat and half braids, facing down perfectly coiffed bourgie bitches.

Neighborhood Watch, the loudmouth from across the street, was in on the action, too. He had a key to the house and was a constant, nosy presence.

They were full of concern about bruised and confused Great Aunt. They'd never seen her look so bad. She was too thin. What in the world was the problem?

"You want to know the problem? This is the problem."

I shoved a recycling bin in their faces. It was filled with empty liquor bottles. One or two gallon-sized jugs of wine. Two or three empty bottles of hard liquor. All of it consumed by Great Aunt, with a little help from her drinking buddy, Neighborhood Watch.

The phones must have been busy that evening, because the next day, Cousin Inglewood paid me a surprise visit. I came back from early-morning grocery shopping to find her sitting in the living room. She had previously been cordial to me, but now she was fixing me with a hard, beady-eyed stare. Cousin Inglewood obviously thought Great Aunt had hit my fist, not the floor.

She watched me like a hawk as I stuffed a thousand TV dinners in the freezer.

"What? Y'all don't cook?!"

No, in fact, we did not.

Cooking was never my thing to begin with, but living with Great Aunt made a dreaded chore an impossible one. It took infinite patience to fix something as simple as a pot of grits. Because if I left the kitchen for even a minute, Great Aunt would turn off my pots.

So TV dinners it was. And the kicker was, that's all Great Aunt had eaten for years, even before too much vino and too much gin turned her wits to mush. She herself didn't cook.

I left the house and went to acting class. When I came home, court was in session.

Battleaxe and Betty Boop (who normally didn't visit at all) were back for their second visit in two days. Joined of course by Neighborhood Watch. And by Mr. Sweet Talker. He greeted me with, "You are the subject, and I am the predicate. Sit down here and join us."

I was on trial, and before it ended, I cussed all my elders out.

(Semi-Homeless Diaries Part 3 of 12: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Mr. Sweet Talker (My Great Aunt's Lover)

When I moved in with my 88-year-old Great Aunt, one of the first things I noticed was that she didn't particularly enjoy the company of other women. She adored men. In fact, she was downright boy-crazy when it came to one particular man, Mr. Sweet Talker, a dapper 87-year-old.

Mr. Sweet Talker had allegedly been a friend of her late husband, who had passed away two or three years before.

I say allegedly because the other man in Great Aunt's life considered Mr. Sweet Talker to be a charlatan and a fake who appeared out of nowhere to swindle a forgetful, befuddled old lady.

The other man was her neighbor from across the street. He was an uneducated loudmouth who watched everything that happened in the neighborhood and had an opinion about everything that happened in the neighborhood. He checked in on Great Aunt every day, did odd jobs for her and last but not least, drank with her. Neighborhood Watch hated Mr. Sweet Talker.

"He ain't no frienda Late Husband. I ain't neveh, eveh heard Late Husband mention his name once. I ain't neveh seen him 'round here in all the years I been here. That Mr. Sweet Talker is a crook! He put his son's name on Great Aunt's house. And you don't have to believe me, you can go to the courthouse and look that up yo'self."

Was Mr. Sweet Talker a crook? Possibly. I'll never know for sure.

It's true that Mr. Sweet Talker did try to sign over Great Aunt's house to his son. It's also true that he drove Late Husband's Mercedes, which Great Aunt gave him as a gift. He controlled all of her investment accounts, retirement accounts and safe-deposit boxes, and directed all of her financial mail to his address. But he also handled all of her bills and taxes and paperwork, something she was clearly incapable of doing.

Great Aunt would gaze at him adoringly with her blue-green eyes and utter with heart-felt sincerity, "Oh, I just feel so safe when you're around! I don't know what I'd do without you."

When he'd call on the phone, her voice would instantly turn all musical and she'd start chirping like a little bird. Once or twice a week, he'd visit in person, usually bearing three chicken dinners. He and Great Aunt would hold hands across the kitchen table and make goo-goo eyes at each other and sing love songs from a bygone era.

Once, I came home and walked in on the two of them having sex. Thank goodness they were both hard of hearing. I tiptoed into my room, hid in the closet and tried to erase the memory of two naked near-ninety-year-olds going at it.

Too bad he was married to another woman, his gravely ill wife of many years. Other than that, the love story between Great Aunt and Mr. Sweet Talker would have been perfect.

I liked Mr. Sweet Talker. He was kind to me, and kindness had been in short supply ever since I moved to Los Angeles.

"You're just the sweetest little girl in the world," he would say to me, usually right before imploring me not to move out, something I'd been threatening since her first drink-and-fall months earlier. "She needs you. Don't go. She needs you."

After a second drink-and-fall left Great Aunt's face bruised, friends and family came out of the woodwork just long enough to accuse me of hitting her. Mr. Sweet Talker was the only one on my side.

(Semi-Homeless Diaries Part 2 of 12: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Monday, February 9, 2009

Life After the Casting Couch? Initially, Just as Bad

I wish I could tell you that after my casting-couch ordeals, I immediately came to my senses and straightened out my life. But things aren't that simple. My life didn't change overnight. And, in fact, it initially got even stranger and even more embarrassing. Because my next relationship was with a semi-homeless man, who may or may not have been mentally challenged.

I met him at the Crenshaw Mall.

But before I describe how we met, let's talk about why I was in the mall in the first place.

I was in the mall because I practically lived in malls. My living situation with my 88-year-old great aunt had become so intolerable, my solution was to leave her house in the morning and stay gone until night. Malls were relatively quiet places where I could think, sit, read, write and just be. The little green hell house I lived in was a chaotic mess where I was monitored, insulted and pestered to death morning till night.

Living with my aunt meant dealing with an interesting cast of characters, starting with Great Aunt herself.

Every family has one person who represents glamor and success, and in my family, she was it. She was the well-to-do aunt who lived in Los Angeles and traveled the world and sent checks to my dad on holidays and special occasions. She had a Master's degree from the University of Michigan – a major feat for a black woman born in 1908. She was one of the first black school psychologists in the Los Angeles Unified School District. And last but not least, she was a natural blond with blue-green eyes. She could almost pass for white.

I'd met her on a few occasions. She had come to Detroit to visit once when I was in high school. Then, my last year in college, I came to Los Angeles to visit her on my spring break. To say I didn't know her well was an understatement. Especially after her husband's death, when she began to fall apart.

She'd been a closet alcoholic for decades. But outwardly, Great Aunt was a nice, prim, proper, well-dressed, middle-class, card-carrying member of the black bourgeoisie. And nice, prim, proper, well-dressed, middle-class, card-carrying members of the black bourgeoisie didn't have drinking problems. (That was reserved for those lower-class Negroes.)

Because she was a lady, Great Aunt didn't drink during the day. But 5 o'clock, like clockwork, the drinking would start. A glass or three of wine with dinner. Then a nightcap or 10 – hard liquor mixed with orange juice and a handful of peanuts. One after another, as many nightcaps as it took to make her pass out on her bed.

The problem was, she was starting to miss the bed and hit the floor.

The first time it happened, I had been with her less than two months. At 2 a.m., I was awakened by a sickening thud and found her in the hallway, lying in a pool of blood. A 9-1-1 call. Paramedics. An ambulance. Iodine and stitches in the emergency room.

Six months later, when I was emotionally raw from the casting couch and literally oozing slime, she fell again. This time, she busted her lip and scraped her arm.

And this time, I was accused of beating her.

(Semi-Homeless Diaries Part 1 of 12: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Saturday, February 7, 2009

Don't Be a Slut's Best of the Blogosphere - 2/7/09

It's that time again ... my whenever-I-feel-like it recap of some of the blogs and blog posts that have stuck in my mind over the last few weeks.

Best Ridiculous Stripper Story
It's nowhere near as traumatic as the time I was heckled by a strip-club clown, and it's even funnier when you consider the source. Jennifer is a sweet, loving, 20-something wife who wants a baby really, really bad – so bad she’s devoted an entire blog to how much she wants a baby.

My favorite Baby Makin(g) Machine posts are the ones where she contemplates things like buying shoes for her unborn son, making hair ribbons for her unborn daughter, or wearing a different bikini every day of the week during a romantic cruise with her hubby.

But it's nice to know I'm not the only woman who's run afoul of America's stripper obsession. Jennifer, armed with a Carmen Electra video, decides to get in shape by stripping. Hijinks ensue.

Good Man of the Month
Even though I've been single for a decade, it's nice to know that real men and real marriages do exist. Meet Eric, a husband and father of two from NYC. His blog, Makes Me Wanna Holler, is his take on the joys, pains and pressures of being a family man. One day he might describe how he shared President Obama's inauguration with his kids. Another day, he might grumble about his wife's granny panties.

But through it all, you see a dad and a husband who really loves his family.

That love is graphically demonstrated in my favorite post, when Eric takes his wife out on a date. I won't give away any plot points, but a man really has to love a woman to go through what he went through just to put a smile on his wife's face.

Scholarly and Thought Provoking, Without Being Strident
One of my favorite blogs is Saroj on the Issues. Saroj is a smart, pretty grad student who writes Facebook status messages like "Saroj is reading about signal transduction pathways...my favorite?"

But don't worry, her blog isn't dry and academic.

Saroj writes about current events, pop culture and politics, but not in an insulting me vs. them way. She doesn't just spout off at the mouth. She researches. She thinks things through. She makes interesting arguments and points.

So in honor of my current love affair with Facebook, here's Saroj's essay on The Emerging Facebook Culture.

Pretty, Pretty Pictures
Not all blogs are as verbose as mine. Some bloggers are visual artists who speak in photos and paintings. In homage to all of them, check out these beautiful miniature portraits of women for a dollhouse.

And now, Back to my sex Life
Now that I've wrapped up my casting-couch horror stories, I haven't figured out what to talk about next.

  • Do you want me to pick up where the casting couch left off, and tell you about the semi-homeless man I dated immediately after?
  • Do you want to know more about who I am today and my decade of near-celibacy?
  • Or go back in time to my college boyfriend, who just happened to be four years younger than my dad?

Leave a comment and let me know...

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Breaking the Cycle of Victimhood

My casting-couch ordeals were all crammed into one horrid, humiliating, four-month period of my life. But out of that pain came one very important lesson: I wasn't victimized by men, I was victimized by my own victim mentality.

Since I believed I was a victim, I attracted abusers. I'd put up with their crap for a while because they exemplified my poor-little-me world view. Then I'd have enough and walk away from the current bad guy, only to replace him with a new bad guy, because underneath, I still needed someone or something to blame.

By the time I moved to Los Angeles at age 25, this cycle of victimhood was on 100-miles-per-hour cruise control. The casting couch drove a nail into my victim wheel, making it wobble, shake and finally slow down. I didn't come to a complete stop, but I at least started obeying the speed limit.

Before the casting couch, I was a woman without boundaries.

After the casting couch, I started erecting boundaries pretty damned quick.

My evolution wasn't pretty.

I went from being sweet to being a full-blown bitch. I didn't know how to be nice and how to stand my ground at the same time, so for a while, I just stopped being nice.

My healing didn't really begin in earnest until four years later.

By this time, I was approaching my 30th birthday.

I'd recently broken up with the love of my life (more on him later). I'd given up on acting, and had a well-paying, but creatively unfulfilling, career as a marketing writer. I'd gained 90 pounds. I was single and celibate and miserable. I routinely walked the floors at 2 a.m., sobbing.

On the advice of a psychic (a new one, not the one who conned me out of thousands of dollars), I did a "transformational seminar" that helped me come to terms with my past. In the seminar, I complained passionately to the group about what a victim my mom was.

The seminar leader told me point blank that I had a victim mentality, and that I was, in fact, just like my mom.

Shocking. But effective.

Because up until then, I truly believed that bad things just kept happening to me. I didn't take responsibility for creating my own life experiences.

I immersed myself in that particular program and had another breakthrough a few months later. As part of my homework, I actually called Stripper Pimp and my former agent. I talked to them about how I had sold myself short by pretending to be someone I wasn't (a whore). I described what that lie had cost me and the people around me. I ended by describing my new vision of myself and of my life.

Both of them were very cordial to me. Stripper Pimp, in particular, was almost comical. He was surprised that I still lived in Los Angeles. He reiterated that "he'd always liked me," a phrase that had once been a potent emotional weapon when I was without friends, money or a support structure of any kind.

Talking about the calls with the seminar group was a huge part of my healing. It was like turning on a fan and opening a window and airing out some of the stench. Being a former slut was no longer my dirty, little secret. It was a catalyst for personal growth.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Parts 1-17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned Part 2 of 2: 1 2)

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

The Casting Couch is a Myth

There was one silver lining in my casting-couch cloud: It was the beginning of the end of my slut phase. I learned that I wasn't cut out for whoredom, even if it was a so-called job requirement for young women in the entertainment industry.

I say so called because I now know that the casting couch is a myth.

The couches are real. The casting is not.

Sure Hollywood abounds with rumor after rumor of how this or that star of yesteryear or yesterday rendezvoused with a well-placed studio executive or A-list director.

Maybe hanky-panky opens doors at the top. I've never been there, so I can't say.

But I know the bottom really well. And I know that naked favors never put one single, solitary credit on my resume. Not one. I won every single role fair and square, by hustling like hell to get in the room and then nailing the reading.

Ditto for the many working actors I have come to know. They are busy shooting films, taking classes, dropping off pictures, marketing themselves, networking, driving to the next audition and somehow making enough money to pay for it all. The most successful ones do this day-in, year-out ... for decades. There are no naked shortcuts.

If you don't believe me, and you choose to believe the sleazy con artist du jour who's ordering you to drop trousers "because that's the way it is," then at least exercise some common sense:

  1. Don't be a learn-as-you-go whore, because all you're going to get is screwed. The casting-couch kingpins know exactly how to play you, because they see your type every day. If you don't already know how to play them, you're playing to lose.

  2. Don't perform sexual favors for agents or managers. They don't make casting decisions. And 95 percent of them are every bit as insignificant as you are. If they don't represent stars, they don't matter.

  3. Don't be impressed by tales of self importance. So-called directors, producers or music moguls who haven't had a theatrical release, a top-10 hit, a Sundance smash or a ratings bonanza within the last 2-5 years don't have the power to do anything for you. In fact, they don't have the power to make their own dreams come true.

  4. Don't think that casting directors make pants-down decisions. In fact, don't think that casting directors make casting decisions at all. Most casting directors make recommendations to the people who make casting decisions. They work long hours ... they find actors and agents annoying ... and they tend to be frumpy, grumpy, middle-aged women. All they want is for you to read well and get the hell out of the room.

  5. Don't think it will all be ok when you make it. I know you think that when you're a big star, you'll have more than enough money to pay for a team of therapists or an on-call spiritual guru or enough drugs to erase the memory of how you debased yourself. But if you're anything like 99.99% of the actors who never become a star, you'll never be able to afford the therapy, the guru or the drugs, and you'll never, ever forget.

Ask me. I know.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Parts 1-17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned Part 1 of 2: 1 2)

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Sunday, February 1, 2009

The Nudie Role That Wasn't

The role was Streetlight Hooker. The show was HBO soft porn. The requirement was full-frontal nudity. And, of course, I booked it.

It was basically a "poem" about a white guy walking down a dark alley when a strange, exotic creature suddenly appears before him – a black hooker in a platinum-blond wig and trench coat, whose thighs rise from the top of her hooker boots like hot-buttered biscuits. (I swear, the biscuits were actually part of the script.) Then she opens her trench coat, revealing her full Eden glory, and kneels on the dirty ground to worship his manhood.

End of scene. Emmy's all around.

I accepted the naked, nonspeaking role for the life-changing sum of $150, the same day I first met with Final Hollywood Scumbag.

I felt queasy about it.

But a TV credit was a TV credit, so I dutifully showed up to a dirty warehouse on the outskirts of Skid Row.

The producer made a grievous error right off the bat. He introduced my scene partner as "the talent for this piece." Then, he saw the look on my face and changed it to, "the other talent."

Too late. I'd gotten the message. The guy was "the talent." I was "the human prop." Accordingly, he was making $250, even though I was the one taking it all off.

And the contract gave the production company rights to the footage "worldwide, for all perpetuity." This meant that if I ever did make it big, they could run my naked footage whenever and wherever they wanted, for centuries, epochs and eons.

It didn't seem like a fair deal.

They got me all dressed up. The thigh-high boots, the trench coat, enough swirling, wild-colored eye makeup to make me look like a parakeet. I was glad. Maybe no one would recognize me.

But they didn't stop at wardrobe and makeup. They also got me into hair, the aforementioned platinum-blond wig.

That was an undertaking. I had a head full of shoulder-length braids. Roughly two-and-a-half bags of made-in-Korea hair added to my own already-thick hair. The makeup artist twisted, turned, pinned down, tied up and suffocated my mountainous tresses into submission so they would lay flat underneath the wig.

Like most black women, I was used to pain when it came to my hair. But this went beyond pain.

The wig was so tight, my head was pounding. I couldn't see straight. I imagined that this must be what a migraine felt like.

All dressed up and nowhere to go, I waited while they shot somebody else's scene outside.

This gave me a lot of time to talk to the makeup lady, who had recently worked on one of my all-time favorite movies and was full of on-the-set gossip about the film's stars, a 70's dancing icon in his comeback role and a Jheri-curl-wearing newcomer in his breakout role.

She and her husband asked me point-blank how I felt about the nudity. And they wondered out loud what a girl like me was doing on a set like this, because most girls did this kind of work "because they had to."

Hour after painful hour ticked by. I had arrived at 5:30 pm for what was supposed to be a 2-3 hour shoot. Six hours later, I was released. They had run into technical difficulties and wouldn't be able to shoot my scene tonight.

Off came the wig.

On stayed the clothes.

I got my $150 anyway.

And when they called me back to reschedule the shoot, I applied the lessons I had begun to learn from all the lying, flaky Hollywood types around me. I told them that I had booked a commercial that was shooting the same day. So sorry, but I wasn't available.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 17 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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