“I think that is the mistake that people make in moving to LA. Not being in nature.”

“I would love you to see me in court. That’s like, my element.”

“Do not give away this motherfucking SEAT.”

“Balboa park. That’s a start.”

“We recommend people come every two weeks for the first six months. Then once a month.”

“If someone tells me not to walk on the grass, you think I am going to listen?”

I met an old friend for happy hour one Friday in early Santa Barbara summer. I hadn’t seen him in 10 years approximately, since college. A takeaway we referenced multiple times during our meet up, like you would the weather or where to park downtown.

A decade ago we had different personas. He played in an American folk band called Whiskey Piss and lived wonderfully fringe in a mountain hideaway with apple trees and a Japanese hot tub. I wore pleather moon boots, smoked Marbolro Ultra Lights, and refused to ride a bike. Now he’s going to be a lawyer and I am am Manager of software things.

I felt pleasantly heavy with anticipation. I think all the elements were there for one of those incandescent reconnects. The meet up itself was more shimmer on the water. Mild cheddar. A flat, peaceful afternoon. Not a second of unpleasantness, but no purple dusk magic carpet ride into the past.

What gives, I thought to myself as I shuffled home.

I tried to remember myself in college. We met freshman year, there were three of us who became friends. We grew apart over the years but stayed in each other’s orbit, almost fiercely, even as our interests diverged. While I was at my first rave with a pack of Brazilians, my friends were eating acid and walking around the Lagoon or spending all night in the bowels of the library listening to tapes of banjo music.

I remember being able to tell each other the truth, even if it was uncomfortable. There was a lot of talk about feelings but it didn’t feel excessive, maybe because we had endless reserves of hormones pumping through our veins. It just felt very accessible. Deep talks and heart to hearts were an easy apex on a big night out, all hyped up after hours of ferreting away cheap vodka at a house party.

…

During happy hour I think we talked about how the 90s are back. It was an observation I leaned into. I remember watching the young girls pour into the brewery in baggy jeans and flowery crop tops, feeling a little sorry for myself that I aged out of the current trend.

Back then, I doubt I would have even hesitated to start in on intimate details of my personal life. I was both wildly dramatic but also brave, in a rubbery way. You have emotional yield, like a toddler. I think I got dumped one night and all I needed to do read David Sedaris for 12 hours the next day and I was fine. I used to get drunk and rip plants out of the landscaped ground and give them to my friends. I was barely embarrassed.

Now I catch myself holding the visceral details back, sharing the high level overview which sounds like a commercial. I caution my partner against telling people too much; he has an incredible coming of age story, but sometimes I think it’s too distracting and personal. Then I can’t believe the hypocritical pop psych garbage that comes flowing out of my mouth because I have always championed openness to the point of telling my poor mother, who’s shown zero interest, how important micro-dosing is for a social climate of healing.

Now we are brave in different ways. We can work long days, do a sweat, raise the baby and cook dinner. Sunset friendships and make meaningful attempts to create new ones. Grocery shop, get gas, pay bills, clean your shower, and do it all over again. The gall to take on sheer mind numbing sameness with a modicum of grace, and even enjoyment?

Is this the new phase of brave less self discovery, more self improvement? Sometimes I see memes that characterize self care as radical. If time is our most precious resource, is this the moment to trade finding yourself for aromatherapy naps?

I don’t know.

A few months ago I visited my friend in New York City. She and her fiance just got this spacial apartment on the Upper West Side. I have been to New York only twice, but I know it’s the best city in the world.

We went out dancing at the Wild Hearts Disco on Halloween night, I wore pink chiffon. We met models and mortals and stayed out until 4 am having absolute fun. I think I did find myself a little in that warehouse in Brooklyn, bobbing up and down in a smoky room and watching a PG strip tease on the tiny stage. I definitely was able to be cracked open, sharing feelings and fears that had stacked with my friends.

So maybe it’s still a balance. Take some naps, but every now and then go to a warehouse afterparty.

Recently, I went on two different walks. The first alone, up a well worn trail, across a river swoosh, under oaks and pines. The second with my friend and her daughter along Cabrillo Boulevard, over the pier, to the Rainbow Arches and back.

Alone, I plodded along the trail. I drifted into melancholy, then to the present of navigating knobby roots and jagged little rocks, and briefly touched down into mindful nothingness. My solitary hike absorbed pleasantly and subtly into my day.

With company, along west beach, I bubbled over with a list of updates and laments, barely taking a breath, adrenaline and dopamine pumping through my veins like a matador. Side hopping and skipping as I scream talked, stimulated, intoxicated, and thrilled. It felt like something had happened after a long spell of non happenings. It marked the week.

I was not owed this meeting, this release. We cultivated it together, after years of friendship and care, all those tiny moments and adjustments you make over the years. The luxury of company.

Company is not a right, it is a privilege. It feels essential, but it is not guaranteed.

Prior to End of Days, company was so ubiquitous it felt perennial, an auto deposit you just receive for your general humanity. Sometimes ritualistic; loud happy hours with a dry house white and an exotically fried vegetable or Sunday dinner, meatballs served family style.

Then it was part obligation, a social spiritual necessity. Someone is arriving, someone is leaving. We need to catch up, we need to get blasted, we need to talk. Modern human life choices bred their tiny echos of contact.

And sometimes, because of time, we were called to mark the moment by experiencing it together. The baby turned 30, tragedy struck, speeches were made, witnessed, and surreptitiously recorded by me.

Company was omnipresent. Unflappable. Taking up space and time, creating a million little scenes of life, sucking out energy, filling our souls.

I turn over my stone of pandemic mandated Loneliness like a bright blue jewel. Dreaming of the absurd luxury of witnessing a public display of affection. The afternoon sun ripe on my jawline. Effective eavesdropping in a glowy restaurant. Finally comprehending the total decadence of just being alive.

It is painfully beautiful now as I do without.

Every interaction is a gift of love. A piece of lightning magic you earned by existing in this time and space. Time you devoted to your small corner of earth, to make it brighter and bigger.

The ultimate five star splendor of having you by my side, in this paradise. Don’t forget! I will not.

Maybe I did learn something on my hike.

One lovely November Friday, a baby and a dog took four adults on an early evening walk down Cabrillo boulevard in Santa Barbara.

I remember this day because I was wearing white jeans that had a nickel sized hole on my right butt check, a few inches away from my crack. My boyfriend told me this and I didn’t believe him; he took a photo with my phone and I snatched it up.

It looked like a vermin had taken a quick bite out of my long suffering winter whites. Not egregious enough to warrant a costume change, but irritating. My tiny circle of exposed skin looked scaly and pink. I made a note to artificially tan and exfoliate later.

It was ironic, because I had recently spent a melancholy afternoon thumbing through social media of the actress/artist/poet/style/model variety. After years of indifference, I’ve become newly fascinated by the city of Los Angeles. I can’t really go there currently, so I consume highlights.

I’d spent a long time gazing at a random photo of a beautiful and tan actress/artist/poet/style/model caught in a moment on a set. There seemed to be a shooting of a spot. But then there was an additional film camera shooting photos (unrelated to the spot being shot). This other camera captured her, in combat boots and vintage Levis, a perfect, well placed rip across and under one full luscious cheek. There were no scales in sight. Perfect round, small, wonderfully exposed butt skin.

I was distracted for a time on our walk, thinking about the juxtaposition of the two photos. I, the naked mole rat. Her, a desert peach.

I was humming along in my depressing little joy thieving when I noticed the boys slow their walk and gaze longingly off to the left. As we approached what I thought was a Mustang, I realized it was actually a McLaren. This was only because I was finally close enough to read the car’s insignia on its backside.

A 30ish man in denim emerged from the spaceship door and rounded his sleek white front to open the passenger side. By this time, all six of us had slowed to a crawl, unapologetically invested in whatever treasure lay behind door Number 2.

The door slid up to reveal a carseat with an infant strapped in, like a precious honeydew melon.

My friend snapped her head forward, stiffened a giggle and pushed the stroller ahead. I think my mouth flew open and I raced after her.

“You can’t put a baby in a McLaren!” I whispered angrily, clutching my pearls.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the McLaren baby. How far did they drive? Was the McLaren purchased pre or post baby? Can you effectively rig a car seat in that fire hazard? If it had been a Ford Mustang baby, I can’t know if I would have cared as much. I only recognized the significance of the car once I saw the writing on it’s ass.

A few weeks later after Zumba in the Park, I returned to my 2015 Pollock-ed Prius, courtesy of some vengeful neighborhood birds, to find the same McLaren parked behind me.

I checked the trusty logo to make sure it was actually her.

MCLAREN.

I snapped a photo and prepared to text it to our thread, giddy with the manifestation, ready to make some irreverent jokes to my friends.

I paused. I circled the car like a hyena. I stood staring, read it again. MCLAREN. Then I lost the wind in my weird floppy sail.

An intoxicating piece of perfectly constructed machinery doesn’t predicate it’s value. I realized the most magical thing about that McLaren was the tiny new life in his little blue onesie.

A ripe fruit in a desert, tan limbs akimbo, popping collarbones, a wildly indulgent lilac daydream. Beautiful things and people will always lend me a rush of delight. I love to swirl it around, drink it in, then let it pass into my own funny alchemy. Then we can turn it into magic.

The most fabulous thing about living alone is you can be a real slob pig and maintain an aura of seductive mystery. It’s tempting to believe behind the gauzy curtain of single occupancy there’s Nancy Sinatra on the record player and chamomile tea in the afternoon. Pale yellow lingerie and pour over coffee. Folded laundry. Fresh lilacs. Mangos. Or possibly it’s a raccoon humanoid funneling those crispy onion straws you top salads with at 1 a.m. in underwear and inexplicably, a 7th grade soccer jersey.

Not sure if I buried the lede in my majestic prose but:

I now live alone. I have the responsibility of a household!

When I left my beloved San Francisco what I didn’t quite bargain for was that I had successfully become rooted. Which I guess bodes well for my original Ocean Beach manifestation. My whole ambition in life was to ingratiate myself into the community of my little beach oasis town. Absolutely obsessed with belonging.

I thought I could rip out the roots, throw them in my highly abused Prius, and get on down to the good times. So when San Francisco went into lockdown, I made the well informed and empathic decision to leave my ex & homestead by throwing my stuff in trash bags while mutter ranting about how I’d come back for the rest.

I moved in with my mother and sister while I plotted my next move. Not sure plot is a good descriptor. More like plodded. I plodded through long, unproductive days I was completely responsible for as I manically postulated my new life. I’d impatiently waiting for my mother to take a break from her Zoom World or my sister to get home from her essential work so they could drink wine with me and hear my latest psychotic game plan for the future.

At one point, I heavily considered moving into a remote beach shack where I could work-from-beach, raise chickens, not surf, and foster multiple dogs. I’d get so much writing done with just my chickens and wolf pack. I could invite people over for camp outs. I’d escape the news. I could totally handle a septic tank. I’ve been to Burning Man, man. I’d probably also want to cultivate a lush garden so I wouldn’t have to drive to town as often. Should I get a truck? A power drill? A gun?

I now remember tuning out the implications of my mother’s worried gaze as I repeatedly flipped through the Craigslist photos of the shack.

“Look at this tiny wooden kitchen!” I cooed. “Do you think the stove is firewood?”

I had an Edie Sedgwick on her last Factory film energy, except less glamorous as I lived in bike shorts and slept in my adolescent bedroom.

My pandemic breakup and subsequent spiral planning, fueled by mania and Belvedere, made me an unreliable narrator of my own fate. However, there was one echo I couldn’t shake.

I lived in Santa Barbara throughout college and early 20s. Santa Barbara is not an accidental paradise. The area excels in leisure, relaxed living and California with a capital C. Yet it carries a weight in the magic, it’s sensual surround sound. Mountains dotted with vistas and red tile roofs loom across the 101 where giants palms and dinosaur agave guard gilded beaches. Night blooming jasmine, eucalyptus, and orange blossom blend with sea salt air, potent but subtle, intoxicating. I was molded there from a irritating little colt into a semi stable young woman with enough vim, vigor ambition to try her hand at a new city and a new love.

Santa Barbara always flickered in my consciousness, a quiet and balmy daydream I’d return to again and again.

Now, I wanted to move back. I just did. I had a strong urge and feeling. It felt like the lock and key when everything else felt like a blackout. I wanted to walk along the estuary, behind the cemetery, hitting the cliffs, finding Butterfly Beach. I wanted to drink mezcal in the harbor, wine pulled from the sea, climb oak hills, take my favorite class, live in a craftsman, learn all the names of the roses at the garden, pet babies and dogs, and watch closely like a creep as women my age took on motherhood, marriage, and running households. While I went in the absolute reverse direction.

Is it strange to move back to the land of your 20s? Was I trying to recapture a feeling? I believe that ship has sailed. I am 32. Also egocentrically speaking, was I ready to be the new kid again, albeit without out that youthful shine? The zeitgeist panders to a very specific set and I had moved out of range a bit ago. In reflection, there is something wonderfully freeing about that. I admittedly found it discomforting.

I didn’t have a ton of baked reasons to move besides I could with my job and I had a warm heart when I thought about it. So I did it. I found a little bungalow slightly out of budget, bought new ceramic cookware, and took a leap.

I question myself constantly. I am often lonely. I sometimes feel unsuccessful, broke, and behind. So Santa Barbara itself has not solved the conundrum of my thirties. Shocking, I’m aware.

But I never question this place. I never question my tiny burgeoning newness. Santa Barbara remains my queen. I am able to dance with some of the most incredible women I have ever met. I hike with my best friend after work. My house is my own. My bills are my own. Healing is coming.

In the summer, my local friends’ threw an outdoor bbq and I was invited. We were a sort of wrecking crew 8 years ago, occasionally single monsters queens in mini skirts, making roasted vegetables and talking about our dreams. You lose touch in the way of roads traveled, one rides into the sunset, the other jumps off a cliff. Two sisters, now both married, a new little baby. My best friend, her husband, and their daughter. A visiting uncle, a cheese plate, and an inflatable pool.

We made passionfruit margaritas from a giant fern gully vine that winds itself around their house. We sat in the kiddie pool and watched the next generation lose their minds splashing. I was suddenly shy. I never felt so grateful. These people owed me nothing, yet I was in their home eating burgers, sharing my messiness, letting the new knowledge of their orange blossom lives wash over me like a perfect wave.

I didn’t deserve it, but I drank it in with pleasure.

“We’re so glad you’re home.”

Me too, friends. Thank you.

Do you have a personal elevator pitch? My name is ________, my job is _________, I do ________ for fun.

I used to. We all used to. Maybe it was just our daily routines, neighborhood pride, or fond weekend memories, but we were able to plug and play certain specific details into standard water cooler talk or general human interaction.

Current events have turned me (and maybe our nation) from nuanced and upbeat chipmunks with restaurant recommendations and quirky coffee shop anecdotes into homogenized zombie mole people whose primary differentiations revolve around that titular heat map graph that answers the question “How infected is your area?”

It’s groundhog day, again..

No, wait. It’s demon crusty ratpig in the scary hellhole day.

You accept it. We accept, adapt and make the necessary adjustments to protect one another and slow a precipitous decline.

You can’t, however, play dead. We cannot go full stop, that hasn’t been working either.

So you gingerly baby step to the next evolution of self. Masks on the outside, resolve on the inside. Mountainous grocery runs and bootstrapped finances. Donations and painful, fruitful reading. Mail in ballots and internet petitions.

I am trying to find footing in this new normal. (I really want to put an accent on the a. Shouldn’t it sound different? New nor-Mowl. Kicky!) Actually, not even footing. I am trying to understand when happens when you put one foot in front of the other. Do you take a step forward today, or does a mutant sidewalk squid emerge from a gutter and wrap a toxic tendril around your ankle and sever it from your leg?

I am afraid of taking action because of these monsters.

The Rona Monsters.

I don’t want anyone to get hurt.

However, night still turns into morning. We still plan for next quarter. My sister will turn 30 in November. August will shift to September. The lines around my eyes are still there from smiling, so things are still happening! Whether I am afraid or brave. Maybe now the events seem smaller, but I don’t think their size makes them less impactful. And sometimes there is joy. The joy feels different also, but not less. New, like healed skin: pink, awkward and shiny.

The waiter for my tiny outdoor table at D’angelos. I feel like their stray cat. He calls me “my sweetheart” and always brings out the Tapatio hot sauce because it’s from his home town.

Natalie’s daughter’s laugh and baby hump dance to Good Vibrations. How she kicks her feet when sitting in Nat’s lap, pointing her toes with bunny might.

The alleyway behind my house. I don’t know, I just love it. Jacaranda trees, banana leaves, craftsman roofs with red trim. Power lines like party streamers. Lollipop palm trees and hummingbirds.

The built-in shelf in my shower, perfect for a shower beer after the beach.

Ben’s salsa garden. Ben’s salsa! Ben having mezcal cocktails in the harbor.

Three pale pink Naked Ladies, in a shell, around a candle.

My neighbor’s pale pink roller skates.

My yellow parking permit sticker.

The black fox dog that belongs to the yellow and white house on the corner.

Talking about how people are actually doing personally the first five minutes of every virtual meeting call. Even if I am a little uncomfortable.

Listening to Natalie make a very serious fitness trainer laugh.

Disco queen story on poster board.

Rounding the corner of Butterfly lane, smelling jasmine, and clocking giant agave outlined by the Pacific.

Sitting on Butterfly beach, getting tar butt, and looking like you shit your pants on the run home.

Patiently waiting on the wine bar on the corner of Cota to complete their outdoor patio construction and getting a rush of pleasure when you think about going there.

Tiny pleasures are happening everyday. I am listening for them.

Ladies, have you been called crazy?

How about “fucking crazy?”

In navigating single Pandemic Apocalypse Land, much of dating consists of protected chit chat. You small talk about sourdough starters and haircuts and then dive into personal history at some point. I have to admit, I do perk up when the conversation meanders to  why the previous relationship went bad. Since I now have a personal POV on the matter, I am eager to hear what my Mars brethren have to say.

So far the overwhelming response from 30 something males has been the pantomimed index finger circling an ear: she was crazy.

Unfortunately crazy is a spectrum, and my informants aren’t as gregarious as my girlfriends. Is it the garden variety drama of tears over cocktail hour crazy or up-leveled to a frenzied all night pharmacy search party adventure? Sorry, both sound fun. Maybe that makes me one of the crazy ones.

How are all these sweet simple good guys so inexorably drawn to the siren slaughter? Did every lady ex conceal the poison apple of her nutty center until climax? Should we be sharing psychological evaluations up front in addition to sex papers?

Rick Marin’s 2001 style section take challenges the single party blame game. He quotes Dr. John Gray’s analysis of this phenomenon: ”Men tend to become judgmental and critical, and when they’re not getting what they want, they think: ‘She’s nuts. She’s crazy.”’

Maybe women are only crazy when men get caught.

My friend once told me a story about a girl he knew while we were in college. I knew her too, but only slightly. She worked at a coffee shop in our small college town and was wonderfully noticeable. She was tall and slender, with astonishing eyes. They were blue, but not blue like the sky or blue like Billie Holiday. They were an icy, fiery blue. They were so blue that you kind of wanted to pee yourself when she looked at you and asked languidly, “What kind of milk?”

She also had a mane of blond hair. It sprouted up from her skull defiantly and rippled down to the middle of her back in oddly perfect waves. Sometimes she’d weave a brown feather into the curls. You could see it bobbing up from behind the Marzocco. She was striking.

This girl dated somebody equally striking sophomore year. He wasn’t honest about it though. He wore vintage pinstripe vests and girl’s pants. His black hair, streaked with amber and bleach, flirted with his eyeliner. He called himself by his first name, twice. Evan Evan.

After spring break he and his pocket watch decided they liked another girl. He returned to school and told mi amor he wasn’t interested anymore. I wonder what fierceness the blue took on when she looked back at him.

“So…I don’t love you anymore and I’m in love with another girl. Her named is Alexandra Alexandra and we are very happy. You understand.”

Fire. Eyes.

A following evening, our blond heroine could not sleep. Everybody knows the bleak insomnia that comes with nocturnal anger. The last time I tried to go to bed angry, I fell asleep at 4 am watching Halsey interviews after zombie eating a burrito.

Fire eyes whips out of bed, throws the covers off, and goes in to full vengeance mode. Evan Evan had left one of his fancy, gleaming guitars at her place. It’s shiny wood, oiled from Evan Evan’s forehead grease and Oil of Olay make up remover, sprung an idea from her head like Athena out of Zeus.

She grabbed it’s thin, strong neck, and smashed it to splinters, courtesy of her driveway and the months of frustration stored up from Evan Evan asking her if his eyeliner was even.

She then gathered the pieces and marched to his door. She dunked them with gasoline, and let out a banshee scream. Evan Evan arrived to the bonfire like Evita to the balcony and watched his baby burn.

Burn, baby. Burn.

I don’t feel particularly attached to property destruction, but I wonder how Evan Evan reflected on this chain of events. Did he feel so betrayed by the universe? A lamb to the slaughter? Did he comprehend Newton’s Law at last? Or maybe Evan Evan finally saw his true reflection in the light bouncing off her fire eyes. I’d imagine it was the most captivating sight he’d ever seen.

Oof, she’s been a bitch tonight.

Man I can barely write I am so sad.

If you told me at 32 I would be laying of the floor of my childhood bedroom, tears and snot ruining my naturally dyed baby Alpaca throw pillow (one of the staple home pieces I managed to salvage from when I flew the coop) I’d have said ABORT whatever you’re doing and PRESERVE THE FANTASY.

Preserve the Fantasy. Meaning play act the supposed linear version of events to the best of your ability that will enable this future. Marble farmhouse style table with long reclaimed wood benches, Sambada ringing in the morning and fresh squeezed orange juice for all? Family dinners on Sundays and children’s birthday parties in relaxed Ganni dresses? A writing desk for mama and jute rugs abounding, Saturday morning farmer’s market with cold brew and mothers with pursed lips smelling heirlooms in unironic Lululemon?

Anyone else?

I think I am just so smitten with all my highly detailed, yet entirely unspecific possibilities I completely lost sight of um, reality.

Preserve the fantasy also meant living carefully. It’s like me in roller skates–tragic.  Just accept it. Just change it. Just change you. Just do it. Just take it. Yep okay a little more to the right…just a smidgolaaa more…keep going…OKAY GREAT.

Dial the expectations down, then dial that in. Okay you’ve reached a new low? Let’s try this one more time…

And the thing is…it still feels good. It still feels good when the promise land of dinner parties and his-and-her sinks seem like it’s only one more compromise away.

But the marker will always move just a little bit more. And with that small parts of your precious untamed person get eroded. Until you’re shaved down to your soft little artichoke center thinking, “Is it worth it?”

And then, “Am I worth it?”

The Fantasy is great. It’s comforting. It’s silly. It’s a good way to spend a daydream. It’s palatable enough to drone on about; when people ask me what I see for myself in my future, I can usually get away with describing a party I’d like to throw for my nonexistent husband’s 50th Birthday Party. (Hotel Citroen–tropical shipwrecked chic; it’s a resort on island where Steve Zissou rescues Alistair Hennessey from pirates in The Life Aquatic).

But the Fantasy is dangerous if I allow it to rip me away from what’s most interesting about my current moment.  As my father would say, time is a construct. All that exists, both past and future, is now. I don’t want to spend so much time pricing a copper pan set that I miss out on the spectacular and prickly sensations of my present.

In my twenties I lived for what was to come.

In my thirties I only want what is here.

So let’s see how this decade goes.

Citrus and Vine

eating lemon sorbet
with my little ferret hands
in the velvet of summer.

Thinking about freeways
lollipop trees across the lane
pineapple mezcal stinging
and what eve babitz would say.

so, you showed up.
Ready for apple blossom lipstick.
a chance for heady sight
a freedom in the heat
with sheets made out of kite.

Yet. Cool is not from comfort.
an olive in the brine
Burn your sour on the tongue
and cross the great divide.

—

Malibu

Dad says
change is the constant
Also, of my desires:
Like you’re getting surgery?

heat flashes across freckles
as I take him in
Folding my hands without irony
into the hem, so neat and prim.

Okay. So we will try this again.
Let’s ride across California
or even just the sand.
Maybe the winds are coming
or maybe just me, dear friend.

—

Curbside Pickup

Ripe and uneven flesh
One step down from the curb
One million miles away from the right

sounds of spanish moss
Funny, because we thought it muffled
debt works in mysterious ways
those who have not yet given
will remain unchanged.

About 45 days into the Pandemic, I switched up my daily routine of staring blankly at the wall for hours with listening to a long time favorite podcast: “Babe?!” My heroine host Lara was doing a “wellness check” with fellow icon Tierney Finster, full of sugar and spice and absolutely zero vocal fry.

Somehow we (I am including myself on their journey) got on the topic of an Actor who did the early aughts quite well. Super famous. Lots of starlets, papp-ed club exits, un-ironic bowler hats, collarbone cleavage, and a few Golden Globes.

The women were discussing his past wiles and talent, and one was surprised to be reminded of his party boy past. She remembered him more as a quirky character actor with a particularly expressive brow.

No, Lara countered, he really went for it. I’m paraphrasing, but he did the whole drinking, dancing, laughing, falling down, smoking, open-mouthed kissing, tattoos, cellphones, sweating, vomit and blood; a real reign of terror in Lala Land.

Huh, Tierney thought.

Lara elaborated she gleaned some of these insights from said Actor’s ex girlfriend’s glittery memoir.

Then she said “I guess you don’t really know everything about a man until you hear from the women who’ve loved them.”

Huh. I thought.

Huhhhh. I thought again, later.

I was recently on a References Check phone call for an ex co-worker who had reached the final stages of getting a new job. As I droned on about his ability to build out the ideal Marketing Technology Stack for scrappy and efficiently run software sales teams, I drifted back to the Lara’s take.

Navigating 32 as a recently single woman myself, would it not behoove me to be able to access any potential beau’s Ex Files? I mean, wouldn’t that just be the quickest way to understand the potential. I imagine an “Ex Reference Check” could just a part of the Social Contract. And like Meeting the Parents or Cooking Dinner for Two, it presented as a socially accepted milestone that took place after First Good Sex but before I Love You.

How enticingly masochistic.

I ran it by my mother, who scoffed.

“Wha?!” My indignant reaction. “I’d say positive things about my {Ex}. I’d just tell the truth! The truth is good! I can explain why we didn’t work and maybe that will help the next girlfriend.”

She did have a point. Depending on how the whole thing ended and your new beau behaved, the Reference may not be capable at the time of said call to communicate in the manner of reflective and affectionately sentimental.

But that could be the actual gold. Maybe one does not need to send out the ex bat signal to a previous love. The most interesting intel is not about what the Ex has to say, but how your new love tells the story of the past.

To that end, you really should run an intimate swab test reference check, but with your new partner exclusively. The narrative they concoct may tell you everything you need to know.