Annabelle – Chapter 10 – Girlfriend

I could feel things were moving forward with Annabelle. We would text and Facebook message each other when we were apart. We would send each other songs and it was nice. I could tell she had thrown the switch and I was the man in her life now.

It’s funny when you read Michelle compared to this odyssey with Annabelle. Here we are in chapter 10 and she’s just becoming sort of my girlfriend. When you live something you feel it immediately. But you’re in the movie and you can’t really see the whole show. Because you’re just one of the actors. Then you think about it later, and talk about it to your friends, it’s another layer. But when you write about it, you really can see it clearly, even if you can’t remember all of the dates and moments. I think that’s why therapists ask their patients to keep a journal. Writing lets you stand back from the events of your life and really see it for what it is or was.

Writing these stories has really helped me break the shell of my understanding and bring a calm clarity to my life and the journey itself.

Annabelle was in her 20’s and trying to make her way. I could see she was bitter that her parents had spent $100k on her education in college to go the School for the Arts here in Philly. She wanted to be an actress. Like millions before her she had the dream of being a successful actress. Her sister is an emergency room doctor. Her other sister is a lawyer. Both of then seem nuts and can’t keep a man. Her brother flies helicopters for NATO and lives in Texas. Annabelle’s parents had the money to send her to a good school and do whatever their “weird, artsy daughter” wanted to do. I’ve never met her family, because she said she didn’t want me to meet them because she kind of didn’t like them.

I know… Here it comes. Deep water.

This family is a product of dysfunction. Her father has an amazing job and makes a fortune each year. He’s fat and unhealthy and seems like a miserable person that hates his life. They’re from the south so there is some racism and homophobia in that family as well.

Annabelle has an uncle that she loves who’s gay and the family have basically disowned him because “being a faggot” is against God. What the fuck? I’ve met him and he’s a wonderful man.

Annabelle’s dad was always distant so that makes the daughters over achievers to please dad and never really understand men, and have fucked up relationships, because they were never raised by a man who led by example to send his daughters into tomorrow on a solid straight line.

The son usually ends up moving away and barely talking to the family, because dad’s a dick and mom’s tuned out.

Annabelle’s mother was I assume a trophy wife who lives the rich life. She blows money on all kind of stuff and even shoplifts sometimes for the thrill of it. This is a woman who is profoundly unhappy and thinks the rules don’t apply to rich people. Annabelle actually told me that she said that. She never cooked meals for the kids and all they did was eat take out so they’re sort of like wealthy white trash.

I guess this is where Annabelle learned her eating habits. You know how I feel about this. I’m an elegant dude with killer manners and I was appalled to watch Annabelle wolf her meals down when I was with her. She ate like my buddy Church when he’s stressed out and instead of drinking he stuffs his feeling with chow.

But here we have is this very tall somewhat average girl who just isn’t right for New York or Hollywood. They want a type and she just isn’t it.

A million people go to Hollywood and NYC each year thinking they are going to “make it.” Do you know how hard that is to do? It’s just mostly luck and being in the right place at the right time. I lived in LA and wanted to be a metal god in a rock band. It never happened. I’d probably be dead or a complete asshole had it happened.

Matt Leblanc had $17 in his checking account when he landed the role of Joey Tribbiani on the hit sitcom, Friends. He was broke. By the final season he was being paid $1 million an episode. That is lightning striking.

All of these dancers, writers, actors think their going to make it in these cities and maybe about 9 make it a year. Those are less than Powerball lottery odds.

So all of these failed “artists” are bitter when I tell them I’d like another round of drinks, or that I’m going to need these shirts back from the dry cleaners by Wednesday instead of Thursday.

So they huddle together with all of the other failures in their little circle of people and just do whatever they can. It’s really sad. You have to accept the inevitable and go do something else. I have an outgoing personality, so I went into sales and financial services. I was fine. I can comfortably wrap myself in my memories that I gave it a shot and it just didn’t happen. My father used to say, “if you don’t get something in life, you didn’t want it bad enough.”

Okay that’s total bullshit and something he read somewhere. His brother had a great creative mind but my dad just didn’t. No fault no foul. He was just that guy. But he educated himself with books his whole life. But the problem with that is you become the sum of other people’s experiences and thoughts. Not your own. It makes you sound smart and helps you get ahead in life, but there is no creativity in it. He once gave me the greatest compliment he would ever give me when he saw me play guitar. He said. “I love music but you can actually MAKE music.” That was huge to me. I’ll get into that whole thing in another post series that will publish in 2018.

But what I’m saying is, these failed artist types just aren’t very talent so they all cling together for support. That’s a normal reaction. Showbiz is the only vocation that devours its young. It’s sad, but if you choose that life be prepared to work as a waitress a lot.

When they’re with their failed brethren working on some shitty project or stage play that just suck Royal Canadian moose cock and is painful to watch you feel sorry for them as to how silly it is. It’s a shame. They always use words like “Amazing” to describe the performances of the people around them, and it just isn’t true.

I have been and artist (pen and ink) a musician and a writer. There is nothing AMAZING about any of it. They will say things like, Our musical director and pianist is so AMAZING. No. He’s not. He’s just a bitter asshole who is mean to everyone around him as he plinks away at his piano playing the shitty soundtrack to your play that makes no fucking sense.

He’s not at Carnegie Hall, he’s not selling out the Wells Fargo Center. That’s what he wanted, but it never happened, so he’s stuck with your shitty little troupe to just keep going.

People use the word, AMAZING and AWESOME all of the time now. Everyone is misusing it.

There once was a little boy who at 6 years old his teachers said. “I think something is wrong with your son. He hardly speaks. He is unreachable and unteachable. He’s lost in his world of dreams. That little boy was Albert Einstein. Now that motherfucker was AMAZING.

Little myopic, chubby, homosexual Reginald Dwight struggled in his life. That little boy became Sir Elton John. That man is AWESOME.

See the difference? I know it seems like I’m digressing into something else. My last girlfriend Michelle had her challenges in life but on the ground floor and pound for pound she’s a solid lady.

Annabelle is a handful. I feel love and lust for her, but now she’s picked up a camera and like a thousand other swinging dicks in this city calls herself a photographer. She’s struggling to figure out what she’s going to do with the rest of her life or at leat the next 5 years.

She’s a very juvenile 27-year-old. Michelle had worked in business since college. She’s worked for corporations and been in offices and worked with people in real commerce. Annabelle is a failed actress who is trying to make her way as a photographer taking other shitty actors headshots and shooting people’s weddings. It’s a constant struggle for a person who never worked in a real job and spent her childhood making art in her bedroom. If it was good and she got discover it would be a totally different story, but it’s not. It’s the other side of the coin.

This is what I have gotten myself into. I think I’m in love with her. I feel it. But there is a euphoria that is connected to it that isn’t real. It’s not good. I’ve felt this before but the drug of falling in love is so strong with this one that it’s doing things to me.

I had it with Michelle in the beginning as we all do, but with her it settled down into domesticity. That cools the addiction.

I’m older now and I have turned the clock back once again on a young girl. I’m older now and here I go with another 27-year-old who doesn’t know who she is, what she wants and where she is going. This is the problem dating younger women. It’s a vicious circle that I have repeated many times. Michelle was stable. This one is all over the place. Lost.

A leaf blowing in the wind.

But the drug of love takes me and I’m in it now. We don’t make love, we fuck. Annabelle has sex like she does everything else in her life. Like a fool. We have sex like she eats her food. There isn’t a mutual celebration of us sharing our most intimate vessels in union.

Because if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

It’s good. It’s hot. Come on. Even mediocre sex that isn’t what you want is still sex. The fury. The release. Sex is like free beer and pizza but if the pizza is tough and the beer is warm it’s just not the same.

She always had to be working on her photography, because her mind and calendar were unmanageable. But I get it. We’re in different places in our lives. She’s trying to make something. I’m cruising at 51.

There were times she would get so wrapped up in her work that she would come over. I was cooking her a romantic dinner in front of the fireplace. (I’m a deadly cook) She would show up sometimes and say tonight was a work party. That meant that at some point she would be working on her photography stuff. Do that shit at home. Manage your schedule and your work load and be able to turn it off when you’re with a loved one. I can always separate the two. That’s a person. Focus on them tonight.

I quit smoking and it was really easy. I literally stopped buying them. No withdrawal, because I had replaced that addiction with Annabelle. I know I loved her more than she loved me so it was easy. I went from a 36 waist to a 32 waist in 3 months. Yea. I did that for Annabelle.

When somebody really loves you, they love you for you. Period. They dig the person you are right now. But me being in love with the idea of love and not even knowing it was happening to me is a crazy addiction. That was me then.

I am no longer that man. (But still sporting the 32 inch waist, baby!)

I thought this post would be different. My notes said how when she came over and we watched Jurassic Park together. Or how the first time we had sex, I remember looking in her eyes with a sense of teenage nervousness as I slowly slipped her black lace panties down her long slender thighs and having sex with her for the first time. It was great. I was happy to be with her. I was lit the fuck up from being in love with someone.

So the relationship is hot and cold. I’m feeling a little crazy being with Annabelle. That should have been a string of red flags, but like when I started this tome you just can’t see it.

She’d be isolated from me for 10 days at a clip because she was so wrapped up in her stuff. Shoots, working on two plays at a time that were both garbage, and just being a scatter brain. She doesn’t have a good relationship with her dad, but it seems she is very much like him. Just an isolated person that is consumed by whatever she’s working on and to hell with the real people in her life.

She started talking about moving to Belgium out of nowhere and studying animation. (No idea) The next time I saw her (Which was like 3 days later) She said she was going to become a company member of a drag cabaret.  It’s just this one guy that loves to run around in public in a dress, and a few other losers that put on the most godawful shitty musical comedy plays that absolutely blow.

So here I am in love with the idea of love with a girl half my age and I am only feeling three things outside of the sex and dinners.

Frustration, aggravation, and grinding disappointment.

Oh great, we’re “In a relationship” on Facebook.

Fuck. What am I doing?

 

Google the lyrics to this song….

 

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