Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) (11 page)

M
y SAT tutoring gig lasts until I realize that I’ll have to drive to places like Palos Verdes and Pasadena in order to do two hours’ worth of work. I hadn’t even heard of Palos Verdes before, let alone driven the forty miles there from West Hollywood. But at least one of us has a full-time job. Matt’s working as an assistant to two agents who represent “below-the-line talent,” or in non-industry speak, people like cinematographers, set designers, makeup artists, and so on.

Via Craigslist, I discover that a gym within walking distance from our apartment is looking to hire a part-time receptionist. The description says that as an employee, I will have free access to the gym and its classes. I apply that afternoon and am quickly hired for the bargain price of $8/hour. (It’s almost embarrassing just typing that number, but, hey, unlimited free classes! Just imagine how effortlessly thin I was going to get.)

The gym is called Train. And it is home to every Los Angeles cliché one could think of, from the valet parking, to the too-skinny women, to the trainers who meet with their clients in between auditions, to the muscled men throwing back
protein drinks, the majority of which originate from my post behind the reception desk.

“Yo, Amelia, toss me one of those chocolate Pure Protein shakes, would ya? And put it on my tab.”

“No problem,” I say, before chucking a canned shake up to one of the male trainers.

Sadly, Train can only give me fifteen hours a week, so I keep applying for jobs, and a little less than a month later, I find a second receptionist gig at the School of Rock. It’s a rock-music school for kids, whose name may ring a bell, as the original one had been featured in a documentary film called
Rock School
, which then spawned a scripted comedy starring Jack Black. Because of all this free publicity, the school is opening a bunch of new locations across the country, including this one on Hollywood Boulevard. The job pays $12/hour, but there’s a chance of making $15/hour after three months.

I don’t realize how early in the process of opening the school they are until my first day on the job includes driving my boss, Carl, to IKEA to buy furniture for the office. The next two days of my job include a combination of putting together IKEA furniture and blanketing neighborhoods with flyers announcing the new school.

Once the school officially opens, however, I mostly just sit at the front desk from three p.m. until nine p.m., do some light bookkeeping, and greet the kids who come in to take their lessons from Carl or the musician friends he’s hired.

The thing about Carl is, he’s possibly younger than thirty, and up until this point, has been making a living strictly as a musician, having toured with the likes of Perry Farrell and recorded with Wyclef Jean. He has shoulder-length wavy hair
and always wears jeans, Converse sneakers, some manner of T-shirt, and a black studded belt. In short, he’s a musician first and a director of a music school second, possibly third. It’s kind of like working for a high-school kid whose dad has just handed him the keys to the business.

One of the friends he hires to give kids guitar lessons is the ex-singer and lead guitarist for Frank Zappa. His name is Ike. He looks to be in his fifties, with graying hair and that kind of weathered, Keith-Richards-esque look specific to aging rock and roll stars.

On Ike’s first day, he arrives twenty minutes late and then collapses onto the couch in the lobby/waiting room area, seemingly exhausted. From his supine position, he bellows to me, “Hey, sweetheart, can you run out and grab me something to eat?” Before I can even answer, he adds, “Thanks.”

I look at Carl, my eyes asking, “Who does he think he is?”

But Carl just shrugs apologetically. “Use the petty cash.”

On his second day on the job, Ike arrives on time, but excuses himself to the bathroom, where he spends the next twenty minutes. After the lesson, he approaches my desk and uses his newly invented nickname for me, which I suppose is better than
sweetheart
but not much. “Hey, Mealy, can I get paid?”

“Oh, uhm, I don’t handle payroll. The Philadelphia office does all of that—they should cut you a check in a week or so.”

“I don’t need all of it. I just need twenty bucks for gas.”

“I’m sorry, Ike. That’s just not the protocol.”

At which point, Carl overhears our conversation and tells me to go ahead and give Ike twenty dollars from petty cash. “Just this once,” he adds.

I find the little key for the petty cash and hand him a twenty-dollar bill.

As for my other receptionist job, I’ve become a bit of a persona non grata at the gym as I’ve had to change my schedule in order to accommodate some of my hours at the rock school, which annoys my boss, who had just hired me with that schedule a month before. Then, during one of my routine tosses of a protein drink up to one of the trainers working on the second floor, I misfire and break a large neon sign that is (was) hanging in the window. Everyone finds it funny except for my boss, a muscular Asian woman who looks exceptionally good for her age. When she doesn’t fire me on the spot, I’m surprised, and to be honest, a little let down. The male trainers are too chatty for me. One of them grills me with questions about my life on a daily basis; when he finds out that I’m an aspiring writer, he starts bugging me to bring him something I’ve written. Plus, the clients, who are primarily wealthy, bone-thin women, aren’t exactly sweethearts to wait on. (“Can someone come and wipe down my bike? It’s
disgusting
.”) But I need to hang on at least long enough until my raise kicks in at the School of Rock.

A few months later, Carl and I find out that after his lessons, Ike has been asking a few of the parents if he could borrow some cash. Then, one of the parents tells me that Ike called her at home to ask for money. How he even got her number, I’m not sure.

Needless to say, we aren’t going to be able to work with Ike anymore. We also can’t work with Carl’s European-born
friend who apparently doesn’t have the papers he needs to work in the States. One of our regular teachers, Justin, can no longer work with us either because he’s going on tour with Miley Cyrus, et cetera and so on. But hey, this is a rock school, is it not? And three months in, I’ve gotten the hang of it as well as the three-dollar per hour raise, which finally lets me give notice at the gym.

My boss there is beyond nonplussed. “I don’t know what happened. You seemed like such a promising hire and then you broke that sign.”

At the same time, however, Matt and I are finally figuring out a way to balance our day jobs with our creative pursuits. A short piece I write about my paternal grandma is accepted at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Matt and Geordie are finishing up editing the pilot episode of
Urban Angling with Brooks Hoffstadt
. I watch it and am impressed with what they’ve done. The show is informative, hilarious, and wholly unique. I’ve also moved on from taking improv classes at The Groundlings to a place called ImprovOlympic West, which feels like a better fit. I’m enrolled in the third level class there and have even formed an improv team with some of my classmates. Plus, with my mornings to myself, I’ve managed to finish writing my coffee table book and have begun looking into the process of querying literary agents.

For the first time in a long while, I feel like quitting my production job wasn’t, in fact, a horrible decision.

Two months after my raise kicks in, I’m at Target when I get a call from Carl.

“Hey, so, I’m really sorry about this, but they’ve hired someone to replace you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, you’ve been really great, but
uhm
, they need someone who can take over more of my responsibilities and who is basically like, an accountant.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s a bummer. But she’s gonna be here on Thursday, so if you could train her a little bit on the day-to-day stuff before you leave, I’d really appreciate it.”

After hanging up, I take a fresh look at the items I’ve collected in my plastic basket: printer ink, gummy bears, mascara, wooden hangers, toothpaste, and athletic socks. I grab the gummy bears and—to be fair—the toothpaste, leave the rest, and head to the checkout.

W
hen Matt and I drove out to Los Angeles together from Pittsburgh, I didn’t exactly clarify our relationship to Mom and Bruce, who may have believed that we were just two high school friends conveniently moving to Los Angeles at the same time. But over a year later, Mom and Grandma are coming to visit me, and I know it’s time to properly communicate, to make sure we’re all on the same page.

I practiced what I was going to say, even writing down a few different options of how I was going to tell my mom. But then, one day over the phone, I simply blurted out: “You know that Matt and I aren’t just friends, right?”

“Well,” she paused. “Bruce had wondered about that a couple of times. I said I didn’t know.”

“I know you guys would prefer that we didn’t live together.”

“Well,” she paused again. My mom often lets sentences drift off into nothingness, and I thought this was one of those times, but then she surprised me with: “Have you found a church yet?”

“No, not yet. The churches are different here,” I told her, which was true.

The Presbyterian church we went to as a family in the suburbs of Pittsburgh was a beauty: gothic architecture, church bells, and stained glass everywhere. In Los Angeles, the closest comparison I could find looks-wise was the Beverly Hills Presbyterian church, which I went to one Sunday, finding a very poorly attended and lackluster service.

But that wasn’t really what she was getting at.
Have you found a church yet?
was WASP-speak for: “I’d prefer if you could find a less Jewish boy to date.”

It was OK, though. I understood that change didn’t happen overnight. And at least I’d done my due diligence. She knew what was going on, she just needed a bit of time to digest it.

A month later, when she and Grandma come to Los Angeles for their inaugural visit, Matt and I try to act like the normal boyfriend and girlfriend couple that we are, showing them all around our favorite places. We shop; we eat; Matt gives them his famous driving tour through some of the fancy Beverly Hills neighborhoods. Grandma really wants to go to the Crystal Cathedral in Anaheim, so, on Saturday, the four of us get in my little car and drive the sixty miles there, to a veritable Christian tourist trap. We don’t attend a service or anything. We simply take a look at the glass structure, tour the premises, and eat at the attached café. (Neither Matt nor I are impressed.)

But then one night, on a walk through my neighborhood to the grocery store to pick up dessert, Mom and I are alone for the first time on the trip, and she takes the opportunity to ask me: “So, have you met anyone special out here?”

I’m so confused by the question. Had she forgotten about our conversation, about
Matt
, whom she’d spent all weekend
with? Had she misunderstood what I’d told her the previous month? Did I need to spell it out for her?

But all I say is, “No.”

I don’t know who to blame besides Hollywood and romantic comedies for my warped perception of how one becomes engaged to be married, but by the summer of 2006, I’m ready for Matt to propose. We’ve been together for almost two years and have known each other for ten. We’ve discussed getting married on more than a few occasions, and during these conversations, I’ve told him that I’d like a vintage engagement ring that “doesn’t even have to have a diamond in it.” For good measure, I even send him some links. I’m not bold enough to actually go ahead and ask
him
, so as far as I’m concerned, I’ve taken this particular task as far as I can.

If my life were one of those romantic comedies, the next few months would be summed up via a montage of various moments where I’m waiting for Matt to ask me to marry him and he is going about his life as usual. When we go on a fancy Caribbean beach vacation with his family, I think he might take me out for a picnic one day and do it there. Nope. Our two-year anniversary comes and goes. Nothing. My twenty-fifth birthday follows soon after. Still nothing. I’m getting annoyed, but I don’t let myself say anything. I don’t want to ruin the romance of it, the
surprise
factor.

But in late October, after receiving a phone call from one of my best friends on the East Coast who has just gotten engaged to her boyfriend of little over a year, I can no longer restrain myself. I gush my congratulations, hang up the phone, march
into the living room and ask Matt, who is watching television, what’s
taking
so long.

The question hangs in the air as he looks around the room, seemingly searching for a clue as to what he was supposed to have been doing while I was on the phone with my friend.

When he finally understands what it is I’m asking, he bombards me with a list of things he wants to accomplish before proposing. “I want to be set up first. I want to sell a script. I want to be able to buy you a really great ring!”

I don’t think I can say the following in any higher of a pitch: “You want to sell a script first?!”

I may have only been in Hollywood for two years, but it’s long enough to know that that might
never
happen.

We fight for a while, until I realize that this is one fight I’m not going to win.

And so, I do what I do best. I try to hurt Matt the way he has hurt me. I tell him I’m going to move back to the East Coast. I know I’m being dramatic, but as I explain it to him, it starts to make sense to me. “What am I doing in Los Angeles anyway? I have a stupid job as a receptionist at the School of Rock. All of my friends are actually
your
friends. And they all work in the
industry
,” which I say using air quotes. “And if I have to hear one more story from them in which all of the people are referred to as so-and-so’s assistant, I am going to flip out!” (Of course, I am already flipping out.) What I don’t say aloud but also know is: I’m no good at improv (I quit at level three, after hitting a self-conscious streak where my face turned red at the drop of a hat); my coffee-table manuscript is getting rejected daily by literary agents; I have no family in Los Angeles and am pissing off the family I do have
because
of
this relationship. In fact, as far as I see it, all that I really have is Matt, and if he doesn’t want to marry me, I have nothing.

By the time the fight winds down, it’s decided. I’m moving out. I call my brother and his girlfriend in North Carolina to tell them. I’m not sure where I’m headed yet, I say, but definitely the East Coast. Maybe even North Carolina. (Do they need a roommate?)

Twenty-four hours later, I call my brother again, this time to say that Matt and I are getting married!

I don’t have a ring (nor a very romantic engagement story), but Matt and I have reached an agreement. It’s November, and by the New Year, Matt promises we will be properly engaged. We even pop champagne and call his parents with the announcement.

Mazel tovs abound.

Well, for the moment. We still need to call my mom.