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"I'm going on 50 dates and I'm taking you with me"

Flirt-a-go-go: A Journal of My Adventures



December 27, 2003
This morning I was thinking about relationships, and it occurred to me that the most twisted and debauched one, the one most closely resembling a master-and-slave scenario, is the relationship that most of us have with money.

I was once in an encounter group for work -- in L.A. of course -- and people went around the circle and disclosed their most intimate secrets. Amid a very public sea of sexual confessions and childhood fears, the moderator asked one question so personal that everyone was allowed to privately check off a box for her eyes only: their income.

The healthiest view of money that I've heard in years was courtesy of a fictional character: Samantha, the sexually extravagant 40-something from Sex and the City, said, "It's fluid. You have it, you give it. You need it, you take it." Most people in real life have monetary views more twisted than Samantha's bedsheets, unfortunately. For instance, I would never be the person who orders appetizers, wine, dessert and an after-dinner drink at a restaurant and then suggests that the whole party -- some of whom had a dinner salad and water -- split the check equally. That seems so inconsiderate to me, yet I'm sure those people couldn't imagine running a web site that accepts money from strangers.

The funny thing to me is when someone who has lots of money sees me struggling and tries to tell me that money isn't everything. Of course money isn't everything -- nothing is everything. Then I get it, they're assuming that I've never had any. "Having money creates lots of different problems," they assure me. Pfft. Bantamweights. Try selling that load of hoo-ha to someone who didn't have her own pony when she was nine. Of course it is better to have money than to not have it. That's why everyone is always talking about it. And saying that they wish they had it. I know there are some things money can't buy. It's the things it can buy that I'm concerned with.

For one of my dot-com layoffs, they called the whole creative department into a conference room. Surprise meetings are never a good sign, especially when they tell you to "be sure to bring along all of your things." After the layoff of the writers and editors was announced, the manager of the department gave a big speech about how talented we all were and how we shouldn't worry, that we would all find new jobs right away, on and on and on. Just as I was making a note to myself to key his brand-new BMW when I left the parking lot, the CEO stopped him. "Uh, Steve? Your position has been eliminated too."

The look on his face… sometimes there are absolutely things money can't buy.

December 20, 2003
I'm selling my writing career on eBay. It's item #2973912080. The bidding starts at $1.

Description (revised)
This career is 8 years old and has hardly been used. It would be the perfect gift for someone just getting out of journalism school or someone who's independently wealthy.

As the proud owner of my writing career, you will win my years as music journalist. You will get into any club in Los Angeles for free during the late '90s, and have unlimited access backstage, especially if you're female. You will meet underrated, but highly critically acclaimed artists like Paul Westerberg and three members of the Pixies. You will also get to speak with Elvis Costello for approximately 1.5 minutes.

Does the excitement of you in my career stop there? I think not! You will also get to experience my dot-com period, which includes seeing your future salary spent on extravagant lunch buffets and realizing that your end-of-the-year bonus went toward that $10,000 ice sculpture at the Christmas party.

Bid generously and I will also throw in three genuine dot-com layoffs, complete with a cardboard box and armed guard to escort your department out of the building -- each has only been used once!

This item also includes:

* A stack of rejection letters from some of the finest publications in the country.

* An answer to the question, "So what do you do?" that actually doesn't bore everyone.

* Camaraderie with people hanging around coffeeshops on weekday afternoons.

* A weird sort of bonding/mistrust from other writers depending on how good your latest idea is.

* Unsolicited criticism of your work from nearly everyone, whether they've read it or not.

* Lots of cute little paychecks -- perfect for miniature collectors!

Guys, this is simply one of the few low-paying careers that chicks really dig the most. Ladies, you'll never have to worry about emasculating your man with your income again! Good luck and happy bidding!

December 17, 2003
When you're a self-styled Internet celebrity, you have groupies, but they don't necessarily wear platform heels and silk halter tops. Well, they might, but you don't have to know about it.

One of my most fiercely dedicated groupies is Steve. Steve is 40 years old and lives in his mother's basement, but he has his own hotplate, so it's nothing weird. Last night I got an email from him. He was probably wearing pink fishnets and knee-high Dr. Marten boots paired with a miniskirt whose length borders on illegal. Fans. If they only knew that they don't have to dress that way to get my attention. Anyway, his email indicated that he's not in the Christmas spirit and neither is his mom. I can relate to that. I steered clear of getting a tree this year because of the disastrous involvement I had with the guy who bought me one last year. The only decorations I have in my apartment are two small poinsettias, and they are not even red, they're pink.

I suspect my lack Christmas spirit has more to do with where my writing career is at. You see, this time last year was the height of the Internet panhandling boom and I was getting my first attention from the press.

When you're a self-styled Internet celebrity, you have colleagues. They are other self-styled Internet celebrities. You don't know what they're wearing, either, but sometimes you get to meet them -- in talk-show green rooms or the unemployment line. It was an exciting time as I met people begging to travel for free, begging to be let out of a marriage or begging for a scrap of respect from the cruel, cruel world. The future felt wide open and I knew we would all be international successes. It was the happiest eight days of my life.

Now it's a year later. Some of the web sites got big book, movie and television deals, then quit. Others got nothing, then quit. I feel like I'm really fighting to stay afloat with no money and not even an offer of my own column in a free local paper. It's so tempting to give up the web site. I mean, I'm sitting in the car, it's running and the garage door is closed… I just want to rest my eyes for a minute.

It's like the end of the dot-com boom all over again. One minute you're complaining that the caterer got the wrong kind of tofu for lunch, the next you're being told your stock options aren't real and those men in the uniforms will be seeing you to your car.

Merry Christmas, Steve. Say hi to your mom!

December 13, 2003
My friend Anastasia is a poster child for American chutzpa. Like a Horatio Alger tale in a halter top, she took a post-9/11 layoff and parlayed it into a successful business. Her product? Socializing.

Last night was the debut of an underground theme night she's been working on with the help of a local radio station. Though I dearly wanted to stay in and watch Miss Match, I haven't had a date since October, so I popped out to say hello and perhaps snare a few more live ones.

When I got to the bar, the first thing I noticed was that I was attending Microsoft's Christmas party. Surreal, but I went with the flow and ordered a top-shelf gin martini and billed it to them. (For the curious: Men in beautiful suits; chicken wings and barbeque potato chips on the buffet table. There was also a guy there with a spiked mohawk and a kilt, but he may have just wandered in like I did.) The Microsoft people stuck to each other like Sneetches with stars on their bellies and I bravely went to go find my own kind -- those without stars on thars.

Anastasia explained that the club had overbooked and her guests would be arriving shortly. As she and I were standing on the empty dance floor, music pounding and glitter-ball spinning, I asked her if she's ever dated anyone she met from her own club nights. She said she dated one guy for quite a while but he doesn't show up anymore due to the restraining order. I told her my own story about The Man Who Took My Number and Gave It Away to a Friend -- the absolute worst dating story I could think of. She said it's so funny how we take things seriously when they aren't that big of a deal.

It got me thinking about perception. When a man dumps you, or in my case doesn't call in the first place, he has a black soul, he should be imprisoned, he is the Antichrist. When you tell your tragic story to other women, though, more often than not the response is, "So Jack's available then?"

I know a woman who found out the man she met through an online dating service had a serious girlfriend in another state. She filed a complaint with Match.com and asked to have him removed from the service. Their autoresponse indicated that they really didn't care. And justifiably so. I mean: MAN CHEATS. FILM AT 11. But when it's happening to you it feels like the guy should be prosecuted in some sort of international court of relationship law. Thank God women are 100 percent blameless in relationships, as the purity of our integrity is something I cling to on an almost daily basis.

On my way home from the club I stopped at the grocery store to buy myself a bottle of wine. The cashier made my night by asking to see ID. I giggled and joked that of course I am over 21. Because the Cosmos don't want me to feel good about myself for even a moment, the withered, pockmarked crone behind me was buying champagne. "Can I see some ID?" the evil cashier asked.

Perception is everything... even if it's wrong and lasts for 30 seconds.

December 8, 2003
A few months ago a photographer called me. He wanted to me to be part of a gallery show he was calling The Outsiders Series, because "you are definitely an outsider," he said.

The photo shoot never happened, but I thought about what the photographer said. From a very young age I've been identified as an artist, but am I an outsider too? How much coolness and poverty can one person stand?

Yet I relate to the hipster at the thrift store with fingerless gloves who says: "If I have to listen to any more Christmas muzak, I'm going to put a gun to my head," or the tattooed coffee-shop guy who says: "If I have to make one more Christmas latte, I'm going to put a gun to my head."

One place most outsiders are drawn to is the thrift store. I was on my way to one the other day when I snatched a seat on the bus in an uncharacteristically ruthless way. A blonde college girl and I were heading for the same spot, but I dived in before she could, though it was sort of clearly her seat. My karma was instant. The very next woman to get on dumped her gingerbread latte in my lap. It wasn't hot, but it was very sticky. She explained that she doesn't even drink coffee, and I was thinking: No, you apparently just carry it around to throw at people on the bus.

I never look great when I do my thrift-shopping. I have horrible allergies to dust and mold, and this naturally conflicts with my love of hunting for buried treasure through the dingy racks of shoes. I found a happy solution in the pale blue surgeon's masks they sell at the drugstore. I can browse the filthy clothes to my heart's content, though I know I look like I may as well just start wheeling a shopping cart containing all my belongings down the street.

Anyway, I found a Gucci bag for $4.99. I bought it with the intention of selling it on eBay for a tidy profit, but looking at the unfinished seams of the somewhat sad bag, my intuition told me something was off. I decided to get an expert opinion and headed for Macy's. I brought my little bag around and although several of the saleswomen couldn't tell if it was real of not, one older woman who didn't even put down the phone she had attached to her face said snippily, "If it were Gucci, it would be $500, not $5."

Is it any wonder that when confronted with labels on designer purses or labels on our own personalities that some of us run toward the fringe? Rudeness at Macy's acts like a salad spinner that you would buy from TV at 1 a.m. Its centrifugal force throws well-meaning souls like me into "the outside," never to return.

While it's tempting to live in the future when things aren't going as you'd like, your real life is in the here and now.

As I walked from Macy's to the bus stop, the sick-sweet smell of brown sugar wafting up from my pants, wearing my long hair tucked under my baseball cap and my surgeon's mask around my neck, I realized: My daily reality consists of the homeless, the drunken, the pierced and underage. These are the people in my life.

But someday maybe I will be their queen.

December 3, 2003
I had my first in-person job interview in three years the other day. It was at a grocery store. I would be handing out food samples and paid approximately one third of what I was making at my last editorial job.

I was taken into the back room of the store by a woman who was just learning how to give job interviews and a man who was there to jump in in case she said the wrong thing. I wish I had a man like that in my daily life, actually. Would save me hours of explanation about things like, "When I said you look dumpy in those pants, I was blaming the pants. Really. Some men love fat women!"

Well she may as well have shined a 1000-watt bulb in my eyes as she interviewed me.

She asked me what I buy there and I said, admittedly, mostly hors d'eouvres.

She asked me if I can cook like a gourmet. I nearly said, "You mean like pour egg nog and cut up chunks of frozen pound cake like the current food sampler does?"

I told her about my spokesmodeling and she informed me that I wouldn't be handing out Ritz crackers and indeed the store doesn't even sell Ritz crackers. I've always been more of a Chicken-in-a-Biscuit sort and I don't even know what the vitriol toward Ritz crackers was all about, but I felt it would be more politic to keep my thoughts to myself, so I did.

She told me they want someone who will "dazzle" everyone. I looked over at the person doing the job now and considered holding a compact up to her lips to check for signs of life.

She questioned whether I was enough of a "creative person" to work at a grocery store and I squeaked that I have worked in the arts for eight years and I think that's creative.

She called me today to tell me someone else got the job.

And my friends, who are sure that soon I'm going to be so rich that everything in my current life will be nothing more than a hilarious story, got another future party anecdote which goes:

"Remember when Amy couldn't even get hired at a grocery store?"

"Amy who's working on that screenplay with Stephen King?"

"Yeah. Amy Cusack..."

December 2, 2003
It seems to me that the main perk of being famous is being rich. I mean, I doubt that Matthew Perry bounds out of bed in the morning thinking: "Yes! I can't wait to go to lunch so people I don't know can stare at me." I'm thinking it's more that million-dollar-a-week paycheck and his silver Porsche that propel him to work at 5 a.m.

When you're well known on the Internet, it's like being Lee Harvey Oswald -- you're famous, but without the money. Press and the hits it generates are your currency. They're virgin's blood to a vampire and I'm always parched.

I got big press in Asia this week. Normally when you're featured on the news, it's just for one day, but they profiled my web site for two or three. Even that is not enough for me. I checked today and they had replaced my story with one about women who are up for the Nobel Prize. Sure, peace and humanitarianism are very nice, but are those women bringing dates to the awards banquet? What kind of wine will be served and is Matthew Perry even going to be there?


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