First, be sure to have recently gone through a tough breakup. That way you’ll have no interest in meeting anyone new, which of course women can sniff a mile away and are insanely attracted to, especially women who are rising actresses and used to having men chasing them like rabid dogs.
Then, be on your way to meet an old friend for dinner to talk about said breakup. Better yet—make this friend a gay man, so your friend won’t be on the prowl either (at least not for women).
As you walk up to the restaurant, receive a text from your friend that he’s running 20 minutes late. Fail to notice that a young woman happens to see you approaching through the windows.
Being new to this restaurant, ask the hostess where you can grab a drink while you wait for your friend. She points you to the outside lounge off to the side. Walk in.
Notice immediately that the lounge area is empty. Except for one woman. Sitting alone. Reading a magazine. Casually note that she is annoyingly beautiful.
Grab a seat at the bar nearby her. Peruse the drink menu while trying not to notice her to the side. Admire her now not just for her beauty, but for the fact that she’s confident enough to sit alone in a restaurant—something you almost never see women do. And then you look at the magazine and realize she’s reading the New Yorker. In LA. Accord her another 10 points.
Finally succumb to the need to break the silence and ask what she’s drinking. It’s an off-menu drink, she replies, since the bartender’s a friend. (Another 10 points.) Try to get witty for a second, offering, “By the way—reading the New Yorker in LA? I think you can get arrested for that. You’re not supposed to be developing your mind out here, you know.” She’ll laugh, and will then fully around to engage in a conversation. She acknowledge she’s from New York. Mention that you lived there once, too. When she asks about it, mention your brief stint in acting. When she asks why you quit, be honest and say the uncertainty was driving you mad, that you realized you cared more about the writing than the performance. Then realize you haven’t asked her what she does yet. When she tells you she’s an actor, turn an appropriate shade of red.
Ask her if there’s anything you’ve seen her in. She’ll like that you have no idea who she is—because frankly, you’ll later realize, you should have. She’ll cop to a few small roles, but completely hide the fact that she’s been the lead in major motion pictures, one of which was number one at the box office.
Resist the urge to ask her about her career and keep the conversation to New York vs LA, of which she has a lot to say. Let it finally occur to you that she might be waiting for her boyfriend to show up. But be ok with that, too. You’re not on the hunt, after all.
When your friend finally shows up and says our table is ready, be a little upset. But quickly try to figure out some way to stay in touch with her. Since it’s too soon to ask for a phone number, ask if she’s got a MySpace page or something (it’s 2007). She’ll laugh and insist no. Say it was nice meeting her anyway.
Your friend will soon ask who the hell that was and why you didn’t get her number. Insist it’s because your friend has lousy timing. But no worries: five minutes later a waiter will approach your table holding something in his hand, asking, “which one of you is Mark?” Raise your hand while he places a folded-up piece of paper in your hand. Let your jaw hit the floor when you realize she’s written her name & number and had it hand-delivered to you. Affirm aloud that you love LA.
A day later give her a call. End up talking for nearly an hour. Filled with more laughter and flirtatious energy than you’ve had since college. Agree to meet for a date soon. Decide on an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica.
Casually mention to your friends that you met an actress. Resist the urge to IMDB her. But you don’t have to, because your friends all know who she is, have seen all her films, and can’t believe you don’t know her. And by the way can they come along on the date?
Try not to get nervous. Try to stay you. Try not to be yet another guy in awe of her success. Do not DVR any of her shows or watch her movies. Remember she’s just a person. Whose name just happens to fetch over 2 million hits on Google.
Go on the date. Have incredibly easy chemistry. Marvel at how well it’s going. Be even more impressed with her passion, her vivacity for life. Also note her amazing ass. Try not to get ahead of yourself.
Hear about her training at Juilliard. Learn that she owes her genetic code to parents who are Italian and Brazilian. Try not to drool when she speaks Italian with the waiter.
Listen to her gloss over a tough breakup six months ago. Then notice she’s strangely silent when you tell her about yourself—your career as a writer, your also being a musician, and having grown up in New England. This will become clear later.
Go for a walk on the Santa Monica beach after dinner. Talk off your shoes and stroll by the water under the moonlight. Get into a playful fight where you throw seaweed at each other. Find yourselves strangely close and deliriously connected. Go ahead and kiss her. Nice and long. Even though it’s way too soon and you know it.
Wonder when the lights are going to go on, and Ashton Kutcher is going to come out from behind a tree and tell you, “You’ve been punked.” (Again, it’s 2007.)
On the way to her car, walk across the grass. That way, when the sprinkler system comes on, you can pick her up and carry her across the wet grass while she laughs hysterically. Have more extended kisses at her car. Agree to do this again sometime soon. Walk home approximately fifteen feet off the ground.
Have a second date a week later and laugh and smile just as much. A little less kissing this time—just to pace yourself.
Pick her up a week later at her house for your next date. Marvel at her house as she shows you around. Let her take you to her favorite restaurant this time. Raise your martini together to toast to her signing with a new manager. Take a first sip and marvel about how lucky you feel. Then it happens. Look across to her and see she’s suddenly turned to stone. She’s staring blankly at the door of the restaurant as if she’s just seen a ghost.
“Everything ok?” you ask her, when you know it’s not.
“Not really,” she’ll confirm. Wait a second for her to elucidate as she keeps staring.
“Someone you don’t want to see?” you’ll ask. But she’s gone now. Totally silent. You don’t want to look too, to avoid drawing more attention. Surely it can’t be the ex-boyfriend, you think. That’s too obvious.
But soon you realize it can’t be anyone else. It’s her favorite restaurant after all, where they probably once ate. Just as you defied all odds by even meeting her, you’re defying all odds again when her ex walks in. With the girl she caught him cheating on her with, you’ll later learn. The waiter will then sit them at the booth next to you.
Swing into action. Quickly get the check, pay for it and get her out of there, like rescuing a child from a burning house. You figure out a new place to go and get the car. (You’ll see a ’65 Mustang next to your car and comment “nice car.” It will turn out to be the ex-boyfriend’s, of course.)
On the way to new restaurant, she’ll have a minor breakdown as she confesses the whole story of how he broke her heart, betrayed her, and this was her first time seeing him again. (Oh, and also, he too is a writer who plays guitar and is from New England. At least she knows her type.) Go into charm overdrive. Whip out all the chops. Offer to go back and challenge him to a duel. Offer to also drive back there, escort her in, stand at their table and make out for 20 minutes and then pretend to just notice him.
You will rescue the evening. She will soon be past the tears and be laughing again. Order her two martinis this time. Offer to call up your recent ex and have her show up at this restaurant just to even it out. Have a fantastic meal and fill her with happiness.
Find a nearby dive bar afterwards and fill up the jukebox with ten 80’s songs. Make out in a corner booth until she mentions she wants to go dancing. Dance with her right there. To Billy Idol. Decide that keeping this girl smiling is something you want to devote your life to.
Drive her home with the sunroof open, stopping at every light in downtown LA for far too long, making out under the moonlight once again.
Drop her off and silently congratulate yourself on a miraculous save. You did it, you think. You’ll pulled off the unthinkable. Receive a grateful text from her and a promise for a less dramatic date the next time.
Email a few days later about the next date. There are tentative plans but she has to check her schedule. Try to avoid being nervous when suddenly she’s taking a little too long to get back to you.
After another few days, try her again.
Two days later she’ll call you back. There is something different about her voice this time. She’s more serious now—like a soldier who’s just returned from war, no longer viewing the world as a lighthearted place. She’ll tell you about the four days after the date, the 20 phone calls the ex made to her to apologize (yes, he saw you). She’ll tell you about her decision to change her number and file a restraining order against him. It will all seem pretty overwhelming.
And then she’ll tell you what couldn’t have seemed possible days earlier: that it’s all brought up a lot of anger for her, and made her realize she’s not ready to date just yet. And how she’s going to have to ask you to let her go. So she can finish processing it all. Maybe down the road she’ll be ready. But not now.
Swallow hard for a second. Then tell her how you feel sorry she’s had to go through this. And offer to just keep things mellow, that this doesn’t have to be a “relationship,” that there doesn’t have to be any pressure. You just got out of something yourself, after all.
But it won’t do much good. She’s already written the next act, has learned her lines by heart. Nothing about her sounds like she could be talked out of it. And you admire her even more for her conviction. You liked her because she was strong and independent when you met her. You can’t ask her to change now.
She’ll say she’ll get in touch when she gets back from a shoot in three weeks.
But she won’t. You’ll email her. Call her once or twice. But you’ll refrain from desperation. Barely.
A few months later, when she still hasn’t gotten in touch, she’ll suddenly be appearing on billboards all over the country for the lead role in a new sci-fi TV show she landed. Friends you told about her will all be asking if you’re still dating her. You’ll fail to get back to them. Multiply this times six months as her show lights up the ratings.
You’ll think to yourself, it shouldn’t hurt this much. After all, it was just a few dates. But you’ll know that that kind of chemistry doesn’t come around too often. And while everyone talks about the heartbreak of long-term relationships that don’t make it, the short-lived ones can hurt just as much. A relationship that never gets to really spread its wings is not unlike a child who dies young; it’s the thought of what could have been that breaks our hearts the most—much more so than the relationships we actually got to take a good swing at. You can’t help but film out in your head how your lives together might have gone. Because at the time of parting—not a single bad thing had happened yet. It was all still perfect. And you’ll make the mistake of thinking it could stay that way forever. For a while you’ll swear that there must have been something else you could have done or said to bring her back. But in time, you’ll chalk it up to a really unsatisfying but ultimately appropriate answer: it was just bad timing.
And you’ll do the only thing you can: write a song about it. You’ll call it Santa Monica Daze, about the first night you spent together on the beach. Friends and fans will call it their favorite track.
A year later you’ll get back in touch. She’s engaged to be married now (to a director, of course). You try to be happy. And sort of are, given that familiar passion you hear from her. You tell her about the song you wrote. She listens to it and replies back simply with:
;)
And while it’s not much of a souvenir for something that once seemed so unending, you’ll take it. At least you know it was once real.
ps: the song:
In the fall of 1983, I did what many of my friends would liken to winning the lottery: I convinced my parents to let me go to a ski academy. It was something no rational family would consider back then. We were a ski family, but not a ski racing family, which seemed a questionable breed of extremists. But my parents took a chance sent me off, and I still look back on it as the best thing that ever happened to me.
I was in 8th grade, and had grown up in the small town of Auburn, Maine where there was a remarkable preponderance of successful young ski racers. (This little town would eventually produce 12 Olympic skiers over the years.) A bunch of kids in my neighborhood were in ski families, and went away each winter to something called a “ski academy” where they’d train on a mountain every day, go to school in the afternoons, and race every weekend. These friends of mine were state champions, New England champions, and even went to something I’d never heard of called the “Junior Olympics.” They all had this amazing air of confidence about them, and seemed to take on anything in life without hesitation. And I desperately wanted to be one of them. So while I’d been ski racing for a year already, my results were dismal, and my friends told me, “If you want to really get better, you have to go to a ski academy. We’re skiing every day all winter long. You’re just skiing every other weekend. You’ll never catch up.”
So I brought up the possibility to my parents. They at first seemed to laugh. Surely you don’t think you can be as good as your friends, their looks seemed to imply. My mother was quick to say something diplomatic like, “Well, we’ll have to see.” My dad offered a more practical challenge: “How are you going to get into a good college from a ski academy?” (This was before he knew that schools like Dartmouth, Middlebury and UVM welcomed ski racers with open arms.) I brought up that my best friend Rob Parisien (who would eventually ski at the ’92 Olympics and later become a surgeon) was still able to find time to win the state science fair while also becoming the best 12 yr-old skier in New England. “Well, I’ll think about it,” he replied, returning to paying his bills.
A few weeks later, I’d arranged for Rob’s dad to have a talk with my dad about this then little-known school called Carrabassett Valley Academy (this is long before Olympic champ Bode Miller would graduate from it and make it known around the world) and tell him it wasn’t so bad. Soon after that, my parents were willing to give it a go. “Ok, one winter,” he said. “And then we’ll see how your grades are doing.” He felt certain that he had his out, and would have no trouble exercising it should I fail to meet the mark. When he and my mother dropped me off that November for my 5-month winter session, he shook hands with the headmaster Jeff Byrne and urged, “Make sure he does his homework.” Jeff nodded diplomatically. Just then, a deliveryman crated in a huge load of perhaps 30 un-mounted, brand new Dynastar skis. “Goodness,” my dad said. “Who are those for?”
“The sponsored kids,” Jeff winked, knowing my dad was impressed with this fresh bounty.
“Sponsored?” my dad asked attentively.
“Yeah, most of the top racers get sponsored, and the companies give them free gear for the season.”
Knowing very well the cost of a season’s worth of ski gear, my dad’s eyes perked up, and he quipped to me, “Well, if you get sponsored, you can come back again next year.” He slapped me on the back and headed toward the car.
That winter, I put on 25 pounds of muscle, went from getting 70th place in most races to top 3 in the state, made the Junior Olympics, won Maine’s “most improved skier” award, and sure enough: got sponsored. By Dynastar.
Since I’d also maintained an A average all winter, my dad begrudgingly let me come back for 9th grade, too. The whole year this time.
I would eventually move from CVA to the Green Mountain Valley School (both because there was more competition in Vermont, and because GMVS’s longer history appealed to my college-conscious parents) and graduated in 1988 (as the valedictorian, my dad would be proud to claim). I never did become the Olympics-bound hotshot slalom-specialist I once envisioned, but I did maintain a top 20 national ranking, get into Colby College, and eventually captain the division I ski team there, scoring in the top 15 at the Division I championships on my best days. Did it matter that I never really achieved my big goal of making the US Ski Team and securing an international racing career?
Not really.
And I would counsel any parent thinking of sending their kids to a ski academy to not worry about that in the slightest. There are plenty of other, more important reasons to do it.
True, three of my 18 classmates did make the US Ski Team, the most successful of which was Jeremy Nobis, who qualified for two Olympics, then turned his focus to extreme skiing and became one of the biggest stars in the world, completing over 30 films and appearing on countless magazine covers.
But in the end, most of us when on to more traditional lives, albeit very happy and successful ones. From my small class of 18, we boast: an airline pilot, a financial analyst, an entertainment lawyer, a photographer, a real estate developer, an international conference translator, a production company CEO and a Silicon Valley biz consultant. Me? I’ve got two careers here in New York City—as a writer and singer/ songwriter. And we were damn well prepared for all of them. Although many laugh at the possibility that a youth spent skiing could be anything other than cushy and luxurious, what they don’t think of is the sheer amount of discipline, resilience and toughness it takes to get through the endless 6:30am morning runs, the off-season dry-land training and weight-lifting, the getting up on icy slopes day after day, hurling your spandex-clad body down a battered and rutted course that threatens to blow our your knee at every turn, the constant injuries, nor simply the ever-present single-digit temperatures, nor the pressure of daily competition, nor the general expectation that you’re still expected to fit in a normal high school student’s education while you’re physically exhausted and getting ready to spend all weekend in a van traveling to races 200 miles away. I have one ski academy friend who went on to the Marines later in life, and he says being at a ski academy was tougher.
At these shools, you learn several things: the first of which is to suck it up. Complaining isn’t tolerated. And there’s plenty to complain about, whether it’s the wind chill of 20-below that gives you frostbite a few times a month, or the pulled muscle/ bruised hip/ sprained ankle/ or broken finger that your coach tells you you can still make it down the course with, or the fact that the fog rolled in on the mountain right before your 2nd run, and you had no chance of seeing as clearly as the other guys before you. You are constantly blindsided by unexpected challenges as a ski racer, and you’re expected to deal with them.
But you also pick up countless other traits that help you succeed: we hustle. When you’ve only got 30 minutes to get out of your ski gear, put away your skis, shower, hit lunch and cross campus to you first afternoon class, you don’t dally.
We’re resourceful. We learn how to be our own coach during the off-season. We find a way to jerry-rig our ski boot when a buckle pops off 2 minutes before a race. We learn to do homework and study for an exam while in the back seat of a crowded van coming home from a ski race at 10pm Sunday night.
We don’t wait for others to help us. We just figure out a way to get it done. You just crashed in the middle of the course, you’re bleeding from your face and have a loose tooth and there are no coaches around? You grab a fistful of snow, hold it to your bleeding cheek and ski your ass down to the emergency clinic for some stitches (this happened to me three times—and to another friend five).
We can get more done in less time. The very essence of ski racing is navigating a course of obstacles in as short an amount of time as possible. This ethic continues off the race course, too. The competitive mindset takes over your life. You find a way to get in a 1 hour run before your first class in college while your roommates are still sleeping. You finish the final physics exam quicker than the rest of the class simply because you can’t help it. You take on three extra curricular sports when your friends are just gonna go play video games in the dorm. You use your spring break to go summit El Capitan while others are just gonna “chill at my parents.” And later in your career, your time-management skills enable you to prepare the presentation in half the time it takes your colleague. For me, I still manage to fit in a second career as a musician at nights after I finish my career as a writer during the day. What other people look at and see as exhausting, we think of as exhilarating. We know that you don’t get inspired by lying around.
We’re not content with mediocrity. We’re taught from a young age that you can be better than who you are right now. So we constantly try to go from getting B’s to A’s, from getting 30th to getting top-10, and then from top 10 to winning. We’re not just trying to become regional director; we want to be president of the whole company. Or just start our own altogether. And we see a way that something can be done better, or faster, or more cheaply, even if no one is calling for it, we’ll find a way to make it happen. When your life is measured in 100ths of a second, you sweat the details.
We dare to take the road less traveled. We get married in the French Alps. We do study-abroad programs in Tanzania. We take jobs as an engineer on an oil rig off the Alaskan coast. We guide helicopter ski trips in Canada. To this day, a few of my friends and I gather in France every other year to follow the Tour de France on bike and ride the same mountains as the greats. Even those of us who carve out quieter lives as parents still do it in towns like Boulder or Burlington, and find time to go skydiving on our birthdays. And we’re all in pretty good shape. Most of us are the same weight at 40 that we were at 18. The habits you pick up at 14 tend to stay with you for life.
We don’t scare easily. When you grow up doing 80mph down double-black diamond trails, the threat of presenting to your boss in your first job out of college doesn’t exactly give you the willies.
And lastly, we’re well rounded. Sure there’s an obsession over ski racing. But since you can’t ski year round, you’d better pick up soccer or lacrosse or running or bike racing to stay in shape. And my school encouraged the arts with a yearly theatrical production. I played guitar for a school band, took on a dance part in a musical, and contributed essays to the school paper. These latter activities formed the basis of my two careers today.
So while going to a ski academy might not have given me a career in skiing, it gave me everything else I love about my life. From inspiring self-reliance, to a driven work ethic, to an endless zeal for life and more, you can pick up a lot more than just better ski technique by spending a few years at some crazy ski academy off in the boonies.
