LOVE is NOT blind, but it is definitely HEARING IMPAIRED.

Part Seven: an award show fiasco,and other last reasons 'Why I waited 22 Years to Get Married.'

So here it is: The last batch of reasons I had for why I waited twenty two years to get married. If you look at my archive page, you can read the other six parts to this endless query. Yes, I have beaten this premise to death. I understand that you you may be fed up with it. And yes, now I will get back to more of the assorted weird random musings that constitute my view of the world. But I am a completist, so I am publishing this.

Reason # 25: LOVE IS SOO NOT BLIND (but watching this show presents a good reason to be afraid of marriage)

Season One opened with a rueful woman singing a sorrowful lament:  

“You’re walking through your memories.

You’re looking for an answer.

Don’t want to waste your days away…..” 

   We, who are watching this very first episode of the very first season of ‘Love is Blind’, contemplate this wasting of time as we see limousines, each containing one sad-eyed but incredibly attractive person in their twenties, peering out the window in the back seat. They search the darkness mournfully, hoping that if they are, in fact, throwing away their days, maybe there’s still some way for them to salvage their nights.

Then one of them, a handsome blonde guy with beautiful light eyes, looks into the camera and talks to us.  “When I heard about this ‘Experiment’, I knew it was for me.” says Matt, 28, who calls himself a“charity director. “It was the opposite of what modern dating has become.” Unfortunately, Matt’s upbeat confidence about The Experiment as a solution to his dating problems is misplaced. As the show continues, for some reason, we never see him again.

But now, as all the limos containing all the very telegenic people, begin converging into the same driveway, the emotive girl singer on the sound track continues her sad lament:

“Your heart is singing out.

You’re breaking through the clouds.

Go get what you want!

Go get what you want!”

 When Season 1 of ‘Love is Blind’ first began on Netflix during the pandemic in 2019, I was intrigued by the way it tried to cast itself as ‘The Experiment’. “Can people fall in love without ever seeing each other?” the two exceptionally pretty hosts kept rhetorically asking, “Is love really blind?” Perhaps one day, they seemed to imply, the significant findings from this simple reality show might help all mankind.

I think that is why I starting watching this show, now wrapping up its sixth season. Positioning myself as the Malibu version of Margaret Meade, I decided to study this American version of The Trobriand Islanders, (by which I mean “tribe of very attractive people in their twenties with indecipherable generic jobs.”) to find out how these people, presumably members of my species, are able to leap, hither and thither, into the kind of life changing decision that made me nervous my entire lifetime. What did they mean when they all claimed to have “fallen so deeply in love” with someone they had never seen and only known for a few days that they knew this was the person with whom they wanted to spend the rest of their lives? Had any of them ever given the definition of love more than a minute of thought before they signed their TV release forms?(Author’s note: I understand that the ‘people’ on reality shows are not “people” per se. Yet statistically I have read that we share almost as much DNA with them as we do with the chimpanzee and the fruit fly.)

The way that the show works is that for 10 days, a group of very good-looking contestants, all of whom were pre-selected by producers and Netflix executives (some of whom The Writer’s Guild was on strike against for a lot of 2023) agree to sit opposite each other in specially designed little airport-lounge-like staging areas, separated from each other by a translucent wall. The show calls these rooms”The Pods” and when the love seeking contestants are inside them, they can talk to, but not see, each other. It is here, sprawled cozily on an upholstered loveseat, with access to snacks, alcohol and a blankie, that they will try to connect to with someone in pursuit of making “the single most important decision of (their) entire life.”

That most of the women contestants are dressed in tight, short clothes revealing large areas of toned body parts and a great deal of visible cleavage is just one of the many Zen parables that must be deciphered in ‘The Experiment’ since it is repeatedly said to be about falling in love with someone sight unseen. So why are these women getting all dressed up? (Discuss amongst yourselves. But, ahem, I think we all know.)

Putting that aside, here is how the show describes its mission: “We live in such a disconnected and distracted world, your value is often judged by the photo on your dating app.” explains Vanessa Lachey, the vivacious and beautiful female co-host of the show, whose dating app photo cannot have limited her choices even once. Unfortunately that has not been the case for ‘Wesley’, an average looking 27-year-old sales manager who we meet before he leaves the back seat of his limo. His recurring dating dilemma, he tells us, is “I’m short. And there’s a lot of women out there who won’t date guys who are short.” ‘Hope’, a 31-year-old sales manager who identifies as “a big girl,’ concurs. “The Experiment allows me to be judged by who I am as a person.” She says ” “And I do want to leave here with a husband.” Sadly, we are fated to never find out how ‘The Experiment’ might have transformed the lives of Wesley, Hope or any people hampered by common physical traits sometimes considered flaws because almost every person we end up watching conduct a blind search for “love” is beautiful enough to ink a six-figure deal as a representative for a protein bar.  By now, some of them may have already started their own protein bar company.

“Once you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with,” host Vanessa continues, “then you will propose. You will leave here an engaged couple with a wedding date.” Vanessa speaks of this course of action breezily, even though she is describing circumstances that would give me a life threatening asthma attack.

  Among the contestants undertaking The Experiment back in that very first season of the show was Barnett, a handsome 27-year-old frat-bro-engineer who could have been a stunt double for handsome host Nick Lachey. “I always go for pretty girls.” Barnett tells us, surprising no one, “It’s shallow to say but it’s the truth.” Though later he feels compelled to add that a mate is “not all about physical attraction in the long run. It’s about who will be holding your hand on your death bed.”  But Barnett’s concerns about death bed aesthetics are never tested here since the choice he is destined to make is between three exceptionally pretty and very confident girls. “I’m a fucking catch over here.” Says Jessica, one of Barnett’s top three. A second one, Amber, says that the reason she is even here still searching for a mate is “a lot of people don’t take me seriously because…. I ain’t ugly!!”   

Eventually, Barnett spoke the most realistically grounded thought that I have heard from anyone in the entire six seasons of the series to date, when he admitted “I don’t know how to differentiate between feeling good and feeling the L word…”  (By which he meant ‘love’, not that streaming show about lesbians.) ‘All the girls loved my jokes. Every single one of ‘em.  So, whoever I saw last is my number one.” he tells us, (accidentally also explaining everything about the dating habits of comedians.) He then goes on to confess that he thinks “Amber is scary….She excites me but she scares me. If I don’t propose to Amber she’s going to find me outside and whoop my ass.” And it turns out that Barnett is so comfortable with the idea of terror as an agent for bonding that he decides to ask Amber to marry him! After he proposes, the show allows him to finally meet her in person. And when he sees how hot she is, he tells us that he is glad he didn’t put his brain in charge of this important decision. For Barnett, her hotness entwined with his feelings of fear turned out to be the winning combination.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would take these afore-mentioned details and make fun of Barnett for the rest of his life and mine. But since Barnett and Amber remain one of only seven couples who met on ‘Love is Blind’ and still remain married, they have turned out to be one of the rarest things to result from the show: A ‘Love is Blind’ success story.

Meanwhile contestant Jessica, who was for a while Barnett’s number one choice, is so humiliated by not being chosen by him after she pursued him seriously, that she retaliated by saying yes to a proposal from Mark Cuevas, a fitness trainer who is ten years her junior. Is this an example of love being blind or humiliation needing compensation? We soon find out since we already know that the age gap bothers her (“Mark is 5 years younger than my baby brother.”) But Jessica decides to look past this obstacle because they’re both from Chicago and they both like The Bears and The Cubs.“Mark and I are creating a true soul connection” she says, having convinced herself that shared sports team loyalties are a true soul connection. “Mark is everything I ever wanted and so much more.” she declares. And she holds steady to this until she finally meets Mark in person. Then she confesses to camera that he really isn’t her physical type.

And kaboom: She has answered the question “The Experiment” purports to be solving: “Is Love Blind?” It’s only the middle of Season One and we already have our answer. Not only is love not blind, it doesn’t even need glasses for reading.

Nevertheless, by Season 2, the hosts are claiming that “The Experiment is now a proven approach to finding love.” This is based on the fact that two couples who met in The Pods still remain together one entire year after the weddings in Season One. Of course that is before we find out that NONE (as in ZERO) of the couples that found true soul connections in The Pods in Season 2 lasted long enough in The Experiment to make it to the reunion show a few months later.

And so the seasons wear on. And I keep watching, never really able to explain to most of the people in my life exactly why I persist. And as I do, increasingly I find myself praying that the couples I see falling for each other in The Pods and proposing to each other do not go through with it. Especially since it appears that a lot of these people believe that for love to survive, it must operate without any visible flaws. Anyone who has been in a relationship for even a year knows this is ridiculous. Yet in Season 3, after first declaring her undying love for a guy who looked like an AI rendering of every jock from my high school, the prospective bride could not control her rage over the huge and un-fixable offense of where he put his wet towels. This giant overwhelming chasm in their soul union eventually led her to the altar, fully dressed in the wedding gown we had watched her pick out on camera. And there, before invited friends and family, we watched her read her one true love a laundry list of all his shortcomings before she said no and stalked off. 

Which brings us to the more relevant question: who are these people who are willing to pretend to jump into a marriage with someone they say scares them while also exposing their intimate secrets to voyeurs like me? 

Well, obviously they are all people who like a lot of attention. The occupations they list definitely indicate a certain type: ‘ mindset coach’ ‘ content creator’. “brand ambassador” “media assistant.” These are often occupations that might be short hand for “confused but attractive twenty-something person who hopes that being on a reality show will open some doors to media related opportunities.” And they’re not wrong. Kelly from Season 1 (who calls herself an “empowerment coach”) is a perfect example. When we first meet her, she is ebullient about her prospects for finding true love when she boasts “In less than 24 hours, I have found three potential guys that I can see myself with for the rest of my life” Yet by the end of her run on the show, she is standing at the altar, telling her prospective husband “I don’t” and then filmed as she runs out of the room.

But, the unexpected part is that as it turns out, NOT getting married is as good a result as any for a show contestant. A post show google search of Kelly reveals that she is now is hosting a podcast and YouTube channel, has 390K Instagram followers, and will soon become an author. So maybe Kelly failed to prove The Experiment. But she scored just about everything else.

Which brings us to Season Six, which just wrapped up at this writing, And a very special season it was since for the first time in the run of the show, four out of five of the prospective love-blinded grooms decided to back out at the last minute. A couple called Jimmy and Chelsea reassured each other about the depth and strength of their love so many times on camera, under so many weird tension filled arguments, that it was a relief to me when he backed away from their union. It was unpleasant to imagine how either of them were going to keep up the all-day-long-guilt-ridden ‘I love you’ ‘‘I love you too’s’ in real life.

More surprising was a guy named Clay who said so much positive stuff about marrying a woman named A.D., including several long discussions with both of their mothers, that it seemed like a reveal of sociopathy for him to drag the whole thing out until the two of them had gotten fully dressed in their tux and gown, gone thru hair and makeup, and were standing together at the altar listening to a generic pastor read his favorite Bible verses. Only after she said “I do” did he reveal he was backing out. If this isn’t sadism and a complete obliteration of ‘The Experiment’ I don’t know what is.

Ultimately, ‘Love is Blind’, is a show that has proved repeatedly that watching people lie to each other about the deep feelings of love that they both share is now a viable, if very weird, form of entertainment. Only one couple went through with an actual marriage in Season Six. And very proud we are of them.

So summing up: given the increasingly low percentages of successful marriages resulting from The Experiment, I think it is incumbent upon the producers to re-frame their mission statement, since it actually has turned out to be “Can two incredibly attractive, publicity-chasing egomaniacs sustain the appearance on camera of any kind of a bond, even friendship, for a period of 37 days?”  And the weirdest thing about the change in the premise of the show is that I would definitely watch this new version just as hard.  Because what ‘The Experiment’ actually appears to be proving is that, although love is not blind, product endorsements definitely are. And for most of the contestants who appear on the show, that is an even more desirable result.                                       

Reason # 26: Fear of The Best Laid Plans

Belief in the evil eye has persisted across all civilizations and centuries. References to something along these lines can be can be found in Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic traditions, as far back as the sixth century.

  My family had Jewish roots but no real active Jewish practices. Nevertheless, my grandmother used to say “kennahara” immediately after saying something hopeful or positive. It meant “no evil eye” and implied that if you were so foolish as to be cheering for your own good fortune, you were actively asking the evil eye to swoop in and ruin it for you.

  In my now-husband’s Catholic mother’s final days on planet earth, she came down with pneumonia. When family members called her on the phone to find out how she was feeling, her response to each of them was “Much better today, thank you.” As it turned out, those were the last words she ever spoke.

  When I learned this, I immediately thought to myself, “If she’d been Jewish, she’d know that the correct answer to the question “How are you feeling?”, especially if you have pneumonia, should be “Eh. I’ve been better.”  If she had followed that up with a “Kennehurra”, she might still be alive today.

  Throughout my life, I have seen a lot of evidence that things go horribly awry as soon as you try to plan something you want to be perfect. The more energy you put into attempting to achieve a good result through hyper vigilance, the more you are setting yourself up for all of it to go bad. There must be a scientific explanation for this. In my next life, I will devote myself to finding it. I call this “The New Underwear Rule.” Because the underlying principal is the same one that operates if you have an important romantic date and you buy new underwear. One hundred percent of the time, after the purchase is made, the date will cancel. Often the connection to this person is lost forever. Making a purchase like this requires great care.

Yes, I have examples of how this rule works in a variety of circumstances.

In 1983 , along with about 10 men, I was nominated for a writing award. The award show was to be televised. This meant it was a big high-pressure occasion that required I find something acceptable to wear. And by ‘acceptable’ I mean chic, flattering, and moderately impressive. These are not the adjectives I generally use when selecting my clothing. If you don’t believe me, here is an example of a recent piece of clothing I purchased for myself

But on this occasion I rose to the challenge by finding a store that offered the services of a personal shopper. She understood the task I was facing far better than I .  It took a few visits but I finally settled on buying an Armani women’s tuxedo. It was fitted, it was wool, and the idea was to wear it with a semi-sheer lacy top underneath. It was not only the first piece of designer clothing that I had ever purchased, but the personal shopper had the tuxedo tailored so it fit perfectly and then also accessorized me. I had never been accessorized before, let alone tailored. Suddenly I had statement jewelry…and by statement jewelry I mean earrings, necklace and a bracelet that did not look like I bought them from a witch at Renaissance faire. (I believe the statement the jewelry made was “Yikes. Who did Merrill borrow that jewelry from?”)

  The outfit was finished off with a pair of patent leather women’s shoes with three-inch heels. As far as I could tell, I looked like a very fancy version of me.

 In the interest of tidiness, on the day of the event, I waited until the very last minute to get dressed so I would not spill any goo or food on my fancy duds or become coated in dog hair. 

  Everything seemed to be going as planned, except for the part about the wool. The award show was held in Los Angeles in September so when the day arrived, it turned out to be the hottest day of the year. I believe that it was part of the prophecy of ‘The New Underwear Rule,’ making itself known. Where the event was being staged, it was going to be 100 degrees. Although this was years before anyone coined the term ‘climate change’, it was not before they coined the term “Oh shit.”

Still, I knew it would be in an air-conditioned auditorium so, because I had forgotten about The New Underwear Rule, I believed that everything would be fine.

 That was before my partner, with whom I was attending said televised ceremony, announced that he had cancelled the limousine the event was sending for us and had decided to drive his own car.  This did not trigger any alarm bells at first because I knew that the event had sent us a special valet parking pass.

 So…we got all dressed up and we both looked pretty good, for us.  For additional anti-troglodyte insurance, I had a friend do my makeup. As far as I could tell, I had hedged all my bets. I was event-ready.

 Then off we went, in my partner’s car, where a radical shift in ambience occurred during the hour and a half drive. As we approached the venue, we began to encounter a lot of traffic. That was when my partner decided that he did not want a valet to park his car. He was frequently an angry driver but on this exciting occasion, the pile-up of limousines converging on the Pasadena Civic Auditorium began to get on his nerves. Somehow he began channeling Larry David, some sixteen years before the premiere of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and thus did he decide he’d rather try to find some parking on-the-street instead.

I nodded silently, knowing that he was not going to be able to make this happen. But I also knew that it would not go well if I presented an opposing opinion. So, I sat quietly and observed without comment as we encountered a total lack of other parking options. That was when he got the idea to park the car in the parking structure at a nearby shopping mall.

It was early afternoon on a Sunday and the mall parking structure was full as we began snaking the car up the crowded ramp, looking for a space. Finally, we found the last space in the entire structure, on the very top floor.

 This introduced another set of unforeseen problems I had no reason to consider back when I was being tailored and accessorized. The mall was about six blocks from the auditorium. We were now heading there on foot, and on the verge of being late.

 To make our way to our destination required us to walk through both Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom’s. So, through the makeup department, then the children’s clothing and housewares department at Bloomingdale’s, we jogged. Then on into the connecting thru-way part of the mall that led us into the make-up department, then the shoe department and the children’s clothing department at Nordstrom’s. Onward we went,  past the notions and gifts. And everywhere we went, people stared at us, open-mouthed…wondering why two people in makeup and tuxedos were speed-walking brusquely through the store.

On the plus side, at least the stores were air conditioned, making this the easy part of our journey . Where it evolved into unalloyed punishment was when we exited the mall and began to navigate the city streets of Pasadena in the bright L.A. sunlight. The air was completely still. Heat waves were rising off the asphalt.  The temperature was a cool one hundred degrees.

 Now we were uncomfortably close to being late, so my partner broke into a sprint. Alas, I was no Sarah Jessica Parker. Sprinting in three-inch high-heels was not an option for me so I scurried along as fast as I could but remained a full half block behind, dressed in wool and three-inch stilettos. Now I could feel the sweat cascading down the sides of my perfectly tailored wool tuxedo jacket, then puddling in my shoes as my hair moved from damp into wet. Before long, it was beginning to stick to my forehead and scalp like I had been swimming. On cue, my makeup began running in rivulets down my cheeks. And, by the edicts of The New Underwear Rule, all of my careful attempts at looking chic were for naught.

My ten-minute power-walk to the auditorium finally ended when I raced up the stairs to the already closed doors, four minutes after my partner and seconds before the doors were locked for the rest of the event. I had done everything right but despite all my best laid plans, I arrived at the auditorium completely bedraggled. And that was the look I would have for the rest of the evening.

  The good news was that the auditorium was air conditioned. Everyone else in our award- nominated team looked cool, calm, happy and handsome. I was the only one who looked like a rodent who had escaped from a sewer. Or to be more vivid, I was that year’s version of Rudy Giuliani with his hair dye running down his cheeks.

  The award show itself offered a very tense first hour since they didn’t get around to announcing the winner of our category until the second hour of the broadcast. And also because my partner kept leaning over and whispering to me, repeatedly throughout that entire star-studded evening, ”What time do you think they close that parking structure? You don’t think they’re going to lock up that mall and we won’t be able to get in, do you? Don’t the stores close at nine? What if we aren’t out of here by then? What if they lock the whole place up and we can’t get the car?” Because he was good at improvising, he had many many different versions of this question to ask. But I had only one answer: “I have no idea.”

Naturally, we won the award for which we had been nominated because that is also how The New Underwear Rule works. When you are very prepared, the most awkward and least expected things are going to happen. In this case, it meant that I would appear on national television looking smudgy and damp. For that reason, I was grateful that I wasn’t asked to make a speech. If there is footage of this event in a file somewhere, I hope it has been destroyed in a fire.

 There is, of course, a coda.

 After the ceremony, all the award winners decided to meet at a restaurant for a celebratory dinner.  My partner and I went back to the shopping mall parking structure and successfully retrieved the car. Along the way, we met up with one of the other writers, who didn’t have a ride, so my partner offered him the front passenger seat. And that is how it came to pass that I had to sit in the back crawl space of a Porsche, dressed in an Armani tuxedo and three-inch heels, hunching over an award I’d been given that was some kind of gold colored metal figure equipped with wings that came to a razor-sharp point. Praise be to God that we did not have to come to a sudden stop because, as my grandmother used to say “That’s a good way to put out an eye.” And thus did The New Underwear Rule have to stop short of a trifecta.

Meanwhile, the lesson seemed very clear: As it was with my botched appearance at a high-profile award show, so too would it be with a wedding. There was no point at all in The Best Laid Plans, no way to control of this stuff. Though, maybe if I’d remembered to say Kennehurra, it would have saved me.

Nah. No way.

Though next time I might try to remember to say it because… Nah. No way.

REASON #27: It’s LUST that is blind. (Fear of the Shoop Shoop Song.)

Seems like I heard this song every time I turned on the radio when I was growing up. It was recorded for the first time in 1963 but has been re-released by various artists every few years ever since. It’s technically called The Shoop Shoop song but the real title should have been “It’s in His Kiss.” It goes:

Does he love me I want to know
How can I tell if he loves me so
Is it in his eyes?
Oh no! You'll be deceived
Is it in his sighs?
Oh no! He'll make believe
If you want to know if he loves you so
It's in his kiss
That's where it is.

I’m not holding Rudy Clark, composer of ‘The Shoop Shoop song’ responsible for all of the terrible couplings in this world but I know he led me in the wrong direction. It is frighteningly common for women to confuse attraction with love. Just as it is frighteningly UNcommon for men to do this.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid thirties that it occurred to me that the lyrics to “It’s in His Kiss” were not a piece of wisdom being passed down in verse thru the generations by people who know whereof they speak. Because it certainly doesn’t take long to discover that the only thing being foretold by someone’s kiss is the likelihood of more sex. And one of the saddest things about failing multiple times in relationships is learning that it is possible to have sizzling sexual chemistry with someone you actively dislike.

Loveless attraction is only one of the many nasty tricks nature has up her sleeve. Nature has so many nasty tricks that it is hard not to conclude that the creator of the world would check most of the boxes for anti-social personality disorder in the average online personality tests.

No other animals are bothered by this. There is not a sparrow or a sea lion or a potato bug that would think twice about making a judgment about cold, distracted sex. If the male mating dance doesn’t appeal to a female peahen, a few seconds later she will be on her way to a hearty meal. It’s only we humans who want to interpret every emotional or sexual interaction as a life changing symbol. The rest of nature loves the idea of breeding and doesn’t much care how impersonal it may be.

Everyone agrees that sexual chemistry plays an important part in a healthy relationship. But some of what is commonly referred to as ‘love’ in the early stages is actually the excitement that comes from the brain forming a powerful but unreliable new neuropathway in honor of someone whose sexuality it finds alluring. That a lot of human women then go on to try and format an entire life for themselves around this ignited sexual spark is just one more casualty of all the ridiculous ideas that form the foundations for what humans laughingly refer to as ‘civilizations’

According to everything I have read on the subject, sizzling sexual chemistry only lasts about one year, tops, because the neuro-chemicals that are created are so powerful they burn themselves out. Humans like these neuro-chemicals so much that our brains dedicate a brand-new neuro-pathway to every person who delivers them. Then those neuro-pathways get flooded with other powerful chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin and oxytocin until the whole damn pathway wears out. After that happens, (and it always happens), for someone to get the same hit of sizzling excitement requires the owner of the brain to go out and meet a whole new attractive person and start over again. It is all very exhausting given that the new neuropathway will also last only a year.  This is where Kurt Vonnegut Jr. would throw in “and so it goes.”

When any one particular neuro-pathway starts to wear itself out, many people start to complain that ‘the spark’ has gone out of the marriage. They incorrectly hold the human in question and their poor choice of clothes, hair style or romantic technique responsible. But the crazy intensity of new sex is not coming back with this person. That’s just how chemistry works.

  There are other kinds of positive sexy feelings still available going forward but they are probably not dramatic enough for the neurochemical-dopamine addicts who would rather believe they can re-ignite a dead neuropathway by inhaling drugs or eating oysters. There are whole industries built to sell them flimsy lingerie, cruises to the Caribbean in balmy weather,  porn of every stripe and weirdly-colored alarming looking battery operated phallic shaped devices. But nothing can revive dead neuropathways.

People who haven’t learned to tell the difference between love and attraction should not get married until they figure it out. Possibly not afterward either.

   Eventually, everyone sensible who plays the searching-for-love course realizes that allowing lust to command the spotlight is opening the door to the worst of human craziness. In my experience, High-Drama Lust (HDL) as the driving factor in a relationship bodes badly for relationship longevity. On the plus side, it definitely brings unique unplanned moments into your life. It was High-Drama-Lust that got me through the scary days of the 1992 L.A/ Rodney King riots.

 There I was, frozen with fear in front of my television, consuming non stop media reports of multiple fires and gang fights and endless unnerving live footage of seemingly normal middle-aged people strolling through the broken plate glass windows of riot-shattered stores to casually join forces with their friends who were group-carrying large appliances down the street. No one was in a rush. There were no police, even though there was a curfew.

 At my house, some 30 miles from ground zero of the battle, I was still so terrified that I invited a few friends who lived closer to the center of the action to come stay over and ride out the riots with me in relative safety.

  So, there we all were, cooking dinner on an outside barbecue, when a flirtation I’d been nursing with one of them erupted into heat. Suddenly the end-of -the-world scenario that seemed to be unfolding around us was imbuing every shared moment with the compelling now-or-never vibes of an overwrought Academy award nominated dystopian science-fiction film. If this was the end of the world, lust made as much sense as anything else.  Next thing I knew, I was having a despair driven assignation with my new crush while the world burned…even as I was imagining the impassioned tragedy scorched diary entries I would later write. The only thing we forgot to do was go down to the beach and let the waves wash over us while we lay prone, like in ‘From Here to Eternity’.

  Of course, we all survived. And, as with most lust-driven encounters, the Venn diagram that was created from that short-lived disaster-enhanced-crush and the one created by the reality based dangers of the L.A.riots revealed an area of spicy moments so microscopic they could almost not be seen, juxtaposed as they were next to a larger area of national chaos and an even larger area of broken national socio-economic issues.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as this end-of-the-world moment ceased, so did the entire tragedy-bonded lust-driven-relationship. Poof. Gone without a trace.

Reason # 28:  UP NEXT:  2021 and deciding to GET MARRIED.

Yes. I will probably also write about the unexpectedly happy ending to all my years of anxiety.