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while i wait to hear back from fx about the show presentation i turned in to them last week. i know youre not supposed to put your life on hold for these things because they never pan out but its a decent excuse to do nothing for a week.
Denise Takata’s father left her when she was 8 with no particular memories of him. Unlike most mothers raising a child alone, her mother, Michelle talked about him openly, comparing him to every boyfriend and lover that came after his abrupt departure for Japan. “He could never cope with America” Michelle told her daughter,defending him. “And I would never have been accepted by Kenji’s family, so I stayed.” Denise Takata would have been in ruins were she like most other girls abandoned by their fathers but Kenji had been neither affectionate nor particularly fatherly, so Denise suffered no great trauma and moved on with her life half pleased that the man who had forever seemed like a stranger in their house was permanently absent. Kenji did leave one mark on Denise because even twenty years later, she could never bring herself to be surprised at being left by a man. Her longtime boyfriend, Sal, a self described poet and co-editor of the local literary magazine “Devil’s Wine” told Denise he had no idea how a self possessed woman like Michelle could have raised a little girl with such little self esteem. “Self esteem is a joke, Sal. Propaganda promoted by the public school system. The only thing it ever achieves is self delusion like yours.” Denise said cooly as they sorted through their books on their shelves to determine who was the original owner of the paperback penguin classic, “A Heart of Darkness” before they went their separate ways “Fuck you Denise” Sal would say before he shut the door for the next to the last time. What great last words those would have been, Denise thought. But Sal came back three days later to retrieve his Taiwanese cappuccino maker and before he closed his car door in her face he looked at her through tear fiilled bovine eyes and said, “I hope you and Hero live happily ever after.”
Hero was the thorn in Sal’s side: The great friend who Denise Takata has known since they were working on their English degrees at the University of Chicago. He called, or she called every night, without fail and Denise would retreat into the patio, and sit for hours on the little upside down plastic bucket smoking cigarette after cigarette as she mentored her friend through his 15 year writer’s block.
“Why don’t you just commit to something.” Sal overheard her saying to him through the kitchen window. “Just stick to your story like your life depends on it.” Words Sal had uttered to Denise just three weeks prior in reference to Hero’s problem. “Don’t be condescending, Sal. He’s not writing poetry. He’s writing a novel. It‘s a bit tougher” she replied
“A screenplay.” Sal said disdainfully.
And here she was mothering Hero with his words, helping him. Sal fell out of love with Denise before he even really fell into it, But it was Denise’s sharp tongue and mind, diverging so profoundly from the warm all accepting embrace of his colleaues that drove him into a sort of obsessive frenzy with Denise Takata. By the fifth week of their acquaintance she was pointing out the thinness of his metaphor, his clichéd analogies, jumping on a lazily written phrase he had been so proud of. It was also quite easy for Sal to move into Denise’s Santa Monica loft, outfitted with the spareness of someone so critical and self aware they can barely commit to décor. So he came bounding into her life, like a stray cat into the arms of the lonely old woman, with a sense of unquestioned entitlement.
Sal’s poet friends hated Denise Takata because they knew she hated them right back. There was no explanation Denise could give for this when asked and she herself wondered at times if Kenji, with his starched shirts and briefcase didn’t have something to do with her opinion of the bourgeois bohemians that met on her living room floor once a month, refusing the couch, to be in touch with the “great earth herself“.
“They’re here again.” she whispered into the phone from her bucket
“The poets?” Hero asked
“They’re theme this month is Sojourns”
“You should poison them.” he laughs
“You should come over and help me. We could be partners in crime. And then we could drive off a cliff together”
Hero falls silent on the other end. He never knows what to say to Denise when she brings up spending eternity with her. She backpedals.
“How’s Lauren?” she asks in response to his silence.
She imagines Hero on the other end of the line, his face creasing at the sound of his wife’s name and it makes her smile.
Hello Friends (and future bored self reading own blog). I've been writing all day so I dont feel like being creative and constructing sentences. I will update you on my life in list form. Here are 11 things I have done in the past week.
1. Retrieved my car from an impound lot that was stolen by hooligans only to find the 6 cd changer had been stripped of my music and filled with Gangster Rap.
2. Asked my orthodox friend who just gave birth if her lactating tits turn her husband on.
3. Thought about bringing up recurring view of ass crack with roommate (his not mine) (his crack.my view of it).
4. Told a man his penis is pudgy.
5. Saw a film called "Two Days in Paris" with two actors I thought I liked but now hate. Julie Delpy's guffmanness made me remember why I hated France. I hope whoever financed this got at least one amazing blowjob from her in return. However, Adam Goldberg's facial hair shows much promise.
6. Wrote a thinly veiled satire about scientology, registered it with the WGA, and felt pretty, pretty pretty good about myself.
7. Tried to tweeze somewhere where I'm never going to try and tweeze again.
8. Bought the gross kind of Mochi instead of the good kind.
9. Thanked my hungarian grandmother for the weekly transatlantic sock shipment.
10. Asked a girl to be my valentine.
11. Changed 20 things I've done in the past week to 11.
I went to a psychologist because school pays for ten sessions and I thought why not. Never mind that unless you're actually suffering from something it's a complete waste of time. So a couple of things threw me off about UCLA Psychological Services.
1. running into people you know in the waiting room. . So I'm sitting in the waiting room and I see Jeff , the Assistant Director on the film I'm producing and teh first thing I think is "Fuck, He's crazy. We're Fucked."
Then: Fuck. he thinks i'm crazy. He knows we're fucked. It was awkward but couldnt be ignored so I said to him: " So youre crazy too. Haha." Unblinking, unsmiling he says: "No i get debilitating blinding headaches that are stress induced". Now teh only reason this causes me concern is because we're a few weeks away from a big stressful shoot involving 20+ extras, crew, horses, locations, costumes, and so on so you can see how this is not very good news.
2. Thing number two that threw me off was my therapist. Heather. Who is very hot. And young. And hot. With great breasts. If I were a man none of this would be a problem. Or if Heather were my "let's-go-out-and-party" girlfriend and not my therapist. I have a very hard time confiding my existential issues to a person who looks like she's about to audition for me. And sure enough, I did some research when I got home: Heather studied acting. For some reason I always picture Freud being my therapist. I picture the Platonic ideal of psychoanalysis: A 19th century European room with great big windows, lots of bookshelves packed with old-timey leather books, the black/brown leather bed, couch thing. Not, sitting in a windowless room the size of a closet with HEATHER. (I really feel the name doesn't help either...)
3.Third thing that throws me off is Heather's annoucement at the end of the first session. We do a thing here called "Brief Counseling" she says. Then Heather goes on to define it as if I've never heard the word "brief" before in my life. It means I get ten sessions she says. Ten sessions is plenty of time, I joke, for you to misdiagnose me with ADD and prescribe meth to me. Heather smiles in that creepy way psychologists smile when you tell a joke and you know they're actually analysing the joke, trying to figure out how it fits it with the fucked up picture that is your mental health.
4. heather wants me to keep a diary. To write down my feelings before I impulsively get in my car and drive for 4 hours drunk off my ass to see someone who treats me like yesterday's garbage. or before I open my mouth to say something denigrating and awful to that person. Who I drove to see. Who treats me like yesterday's garbage.
I haven't kept a diary since I was 13 but I have this problem with writing called embellishment. Otherwise called, "writing interesting"ly". In any case, I hardly see myself pausing before what I like to call my word vomiting to fetch my pad and pen and attempt to transcribe the words the tiny demon screams in my brain.
Redeeming thing with heather, her last name is Demeter. i.e. the greek earth goddess if my memory serves me...
