Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: We have a good thing going on. So why do I keep calling him by my ex's name?
The first time I called Scott by my ex’s name, we were lying side by side. The morning air was already heavy with the salty tang of Redondo Beach’s humidity. “It’s OK,” Scott whispered in saint-like understanding; seemingly unbothered by my blunder, he suggested we get out of bed and salvage our day.
We had been together for six months, and even as we grew closer, met each other’s families and became the couple known as “Scott and Cathleen,” I continued to call him Paul. At the grocery store, in front of friends and when we were alone. With a dramatic wag of his finger, he would issue a “You did not just call me Paul … again?” To which I would throw up my hands, as if Scott were the one to blame.
Why was I sabotaging my relationship with Scott, a man I loved so completely I felt whole, by invoking the name of a man I once loved so poorly? I knew it was more than a cognitive glitch. My broken, eight-year relationship with Paul held meaning: He was supposed to have been the one I was going to marry and start a family with, and I found it impossible to let him go.
Paul and I met on a weekend trip to Palm Springs. He was brainy and clever and had a way of saying my name that sounded songlike in concert with his shy smile. He had a good job and was unlike any of the men I had dated.
He was the first to comfort and protect me. Falling for Paul was akin to having earned the respectability to be seen and feel worthy of someone’s adoration. Our relationship became my gold standard, and the word “Paul” began to define love for me.
Quickly I became the dutiful girlfriend waiting for the ring I was sure I wanted and the husband my friends told me I deserved. I set aside my yearning for a less structured livelihood to chase a traditional career housed in a glass-walled building in downtown Los Angeles.
The first two years slipped by quietly. It was as if I were trying on clothes without looking in the mirror. When I finally glanced up, the suit I was wearing was all wrong.
Paul and I were good at parties but not at home. In public, he held my hand and kissed my forehead. In private, he told me I was stupid, and I fumed because he was lazy. He criticized me for things I said, like calling rain “spit,” and I repeatedly begged him to sleep with me, vulnerable in my prettiest underwear.
Our relationship lasted six years longer than it should have, allowing his name to entrench itself in my vernacular. The word “Paul” became my substitute for endearments. I’d co-opted his name, and it encapsulated my longing for love.
During our final year together, my desire to leave was my dirtiest secret. Too embarrassed to admit my failure, I fantasized about cheating because I couldn’t initiate the breakup on my own. The closest I came to being unfaithful was awkward flirting with a co-worker on a ski trip to Big Bear.
“How was your weekend?” I asked as I breezed through the door, my cheeks a golden tan from the goggle line down. “Dad’s in the hospital,” Paul said, his jaw clenched in a hurt we both knew I couldn’t comfort.
One Sunday, after I’d spent much of my day on a solo bike ride in the hills above Malibu, my grandmotherly neighbor, Gail, greeted me at the curb.“I noticed you don’t spend much time together,” she said, nodding in the direction of Paul’s white pickup parked in the driveway. With her age-mottled hand, she brushed at a strand of hair that had fallen across my cheek, then caught my chin between her thumb and index finger. “It’s OK to leave,” she whispered.
Her permission to surrender ignited the intensity of my yearning for a mate and the magnitude of my failure. Paul had become the large outcropping in the middle of a tangled landscape, the one I used to navigate my way home when I strayed too far. “He was my boyfriend” became “He was my Paul” and represented an intense ache I carried forward.
The end came with the help of a counselor who facilitated our goodbye. I kept our cats and moved into a 600-square-foot apartment that overlooked the Pacific.
There, my life was as loose as water — its direction influenced only by my indifference. I spent weekends running the sandy bike path from Redondo Beach to Manhattan Beach and back, sampling expensive wine and losing myself in books about someone else’s adventure. Slowly I rediscovered myself.
Twelve months passed before I felt confident, and a parade of first, second and third dates reconnected me to the world beyond my front door. I called these men by their given name, never making the mistake of misnaming them Paul. I knew they weren’t worthy.
When I joined a kayak trip a friend had thrown together, I was paired with Scott, a professional photographer with rugged good looks and hair as long as mine. For 12 days, we shared every moment and, surrounded by the kind of beauty only a remote bay in the Pacific could afford, I felt something unfasten in my chest. The real “Paul” had come along.
The author is a freelance writer with a penchant for adventure. She now lives in central Oregon. She’s on Instagram: @CathleenCalkins
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live midway through his 8th season with the long-running, late-night comedy sketch series.
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Comedian Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live midway through the season, his eighth with the long-running NBC late-night sketch comedy series. The performer is scheduled to participate in his final show Saturday, which will be hosted by Wicked star Ariana Grande. Cher is the musical guest.
Yang has not publicly shared the reason for his abrupt departure from SNL. In a social media post on Saturday, the comedian thanked the team and expressed gratitude for “every minute” of his time with the show.
“I loved working at SNL, and most of all I loved the people,” Yang wrote. “I was there at a time when many things in the world started to seem futile, but working at 30 Rock taught me the value in showing up anyway when people make it worthwhile.”
Yang, 35, was one of SNL‘s most prominent recent cast members.
His most famous work on the show includes “The Iceberg That Sank the Titanic,” a “Weekend Update” segment where Yang personifies the infamous iceberg; a commercial spoof co-starring Travis Kelce — “Straight Male Friend” — advertising the benefits of low-stakes friendships; and his recurring impression of expelled congressman George Santos. At one point, Yang also performed a sketch in which he played an intern on NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series.
Yang has been nominated for five Emmy Awards for his work on the series. Beyond SNL, the performer’s credits include the 2022 romantic comedy Fire Island, the musical Wicked (2024) as well as its sequel, Wicked: For Good (2025), and the remake of The Wedding Banquet (2025). He also co-hosts the Las Culturistas podcast with actor and comedian Matt Rogers.
Yang, the show’s first Chinese American cast member, rose through SNL‘s ranks after joining the show as a staff writer in 2018. A year later, he was promoted to on-air talent and eventually became a series regular.
Yang talked about the natural turnover at SNL and hinted at life beyond the show in an interview with People earlier this year. “It’s this growing, living thing where new people come in and you do have to sort of make way for them and to grow and to keep elevating themselves,” he said. “And that inevitably requires me to sort of hang it up at some point — but I don’t know what the vision is yet.”
He joins other cast members who have recently left the show. Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim and Devon Walker are among those who departed ahead of the 51st season, which launched in October.
Yang’s reps did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment. The series’ network, NBCUniversal, referenced Yang’s social media post, but provided no further comment.
Though uncommon, there have been a few other mid-season SNL departures in the past, including Cecily Strong, Dana Carvey and Eddie Murphy.
Fellow entertainers have commented on Yang’s departure on social media. “Iconic. (Understatement)” wrote actor Evan Ross Katz on Instagram in response to Yang’s post. “Congrats!” wrote comedian Amber Ruffin. “Please make more The Wedding Banquets.”
NPR critic-at-large Eric Deggans called Yang’s departure, even if inevitable, a setback for the show.
“SNL thrives when it has a large crop of utility players who can pull comedic gold from the dodgiest sketch ideas,” Deggans said, counting Yang among the most talented in recent seasons of the show’s cast to fill that role.
“No matter what he was asked to do, from playing the iceberg that sunk the Titanic to playing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he was able to wring maximum laughs and patch up SNL’s historic lack of representation regarding Asian performers,” he added.
But Yang, Deggans noted, may have reached an apex of what he could achieve on the show, “and it might be time for him to leave, while his star is still ascending and there are opportunities beyond the program available to him which might not be around for long.”
Tekashi 6ix9ine
Home Invasion Suspect Arrested
Published
A suspect has been arrested in connection to the scary invasion of Tekashi 6ix9ine‘s home … TMZ has learned.
Pedro Roriguez — a 19-year-old man — was arrested and charged with armed home invasion robbery with a firearm, false imprisonment, grand theft and posession of marijuana with intent to sell or deliver … according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities say Rodriguez is just one of several suspects … and, the investigation remains ongoing.
We broke the story … four gunmen ransacked the rapper’s Florida crib last month with video capturing the invaders slipping in through the garage and holding Tekashi’s mom against her will.
The clip shows one person standing guard over Tekashi’s mom, who can be heard on the video begging and pleading with the men … while the crew tear through the house looking for valuables.
We spoke to cops at the time … and, they told us the men wanted cash and car keys. They sped off in a getaway car before authorities arrived.
President John F. Kennedy, left, looks at a model of what was later named the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC., in 1963.
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On Thursday, the Kennedy Center’s name was changed to The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
By Friday morning, workers were already changing signs on the building itself, although some lawmakers said Thursday that the name can’t be changed legally without Congressional approval.
Though the arts venue is now closely associated with President Kennedy, it was three American presidents, including Kennedy, who envisioned a national cultural center – and what it would mean to the United States.
New signage, The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, is unveiled on Friday in Washington, D.C.
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The Eisenhower Administration
In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower first pursued building what he called an “artistic mecca” in Washington, D.C., and created a commission to create what was then known as the National Cultural Center.
Three years later, Congress passed an act to build the new venue with the stated purpose of presenting classical and contemporary music, opera, drama, dance, and poetry from the United States and across the world. Congress also mandated the center to offer public programs, including educational offerings and programs specifically for children and older adults.
The Kennedy Administration
A November 1962 fundraiser for the center during the Kennedy administration featured stars including conductor Leonard Bernstein, comedian Danny Kaye, poet Robert Frost, singers Marian Anderson and Harry Belafonte, ballerina Maria Tallchief, pianist Van Cliburn – and a 7-year-old cellist named Yo-Yo Ma and his sister, 11-year-old pianist Yeou-Cheng Ma.
In his introduction to their performance, Bernstein specifically celebrated the siblings as new immigrants to the United States, whom he hailed as the latest in a long stream of “foreign artists and scientists and thinkers who have come not only to visit us, but often to join us as Americans, to become citizens of what to some has historically been the land of opportunity and to others, the land of freedom.”
At that event, Kennedy said this:
“As a great democratic society, we have a special responsibility to the arts — for art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color. The mere accumulation of wealth and power is available to the dictator and the democrat alike; what freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and spirit which finds its greatest flowering in the free society.”
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Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline were known for championing the arts at the White House. The president understood the free expression of creativity as an essential soft power, especially during the Cold War, as part of a larger race to excellence that encompassed science, technology, and education – particularly in opposition to what was then the Soviet Union.
The arts mecca envisioned by Eisenhower opened in 1971 and was named as a “living memorial” to Kennedy by Congress after his assassination.
The Johnson Administration
Philip Kennicott, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, said the ideas behind the Kennedy Center found their fullest expression under Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“Johnson in the Great Society basically compares the arts to other fundamental needs,” Kennicott said. “He says something like, ‘It shouldn’t be the case that Americans live so far from the hospital. They can’t get the health care they need. And it should be the same way for the arts.’ Kennedy creates the intellectual fervor and idea of the arts as essential to American culture. Johnson then makes it much more about a kind of popular access and participation at all levels.”
Ever since, Kennicott said, the space has existed in a certain tension between being a palace of the arts and a publicly accessible, popular venue. It is a grand structure on the banks of the Potomac River, located at a distance from the city’s center, and decked out in red and gold inside.
At the same time, Kennicott observed: “It’s also open. You can go there without a ticket. You can wander in and hear a free concert. And they have always worked very hard at the Kennedy Center to be sure that there’s a reason for people to think of it as belonging to them collectively, even if they’re not an operagoer or a symphony ticket subscriber.”
The Kennedy Center on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
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Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Kennicott estimated it will only take a few years for the controversies around a new name to fade away, if the Trump Kennedy moniker remains.
He likens it to the controversy that once surrounded another public space in Washington, D.C.: the renaming of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in 1998.
“A lot of people said, ‘I will never call it the Reagan National Airport.’ And there are still people who will only call it National Airport. But pretty much now, decades later, it is Reagan Airport,” Kennicott said.
“People don’t remember the argument. They don’t remember the controversy. They don’t remember the things they didn’t like about Reagan, necessarily. . . . All it takes is about a half a generation for a name to become part of our unthinking, unconscious vocabulary of place.
“And then,” he said, “the work is done.”
This story was edited for broadcast and digital by Jennifer Vanasco. The audio was mixed by Marc Rivers.
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