Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: Everything was good. Then came the text I never wanted to get
My father spent the 1970s selling hunger to America: soda, waffles, chips, anything that promised satisfaction in 30 seconds flat. He also weighed 450 pounds and was always on a new diet with me as his little diet coach. All his best material came from our kitchen table: “L’eggo my Eggo,” “Once You Pop, You Can’t Stop,” “Coke Is It” — the lines he’d toss out between bites.
My grandma Beauty did the opposite. She fed me comfort, one recipe at a time, until I believed emotions had a flavor. My dad could sell the American consumer comfort, but he couldn’t quite give that same safety to the girl sitting across from him. Between my dad, who treated cravings like a religion, and my grandmother, who treated food like therapy, I grew up thinking connection was something you could taste before you could name it.
So when I met my Bumble date years later after my divorce, it wasn’t fireworks. It was something quieter. A sense memory. A familiar click in the body before the mind catches up.
The first meal we ever shared was at Dan Tana’s: rare steak and shrimp swimming in oil and garlic. He ordered quickly, confidently, passing plates back and forth like this was something we’d always done. Somewhere in that meal, I felt that oyster-like disbelief when something simple tastes better than expected, and you pretend not to notice because the surprise feels too intimate to say out loud.
After that night, we slipped into a rhythm. We went out to dinner a lot. Before I could even open a menu, he’d tell the waiter, “Sauce on the side, she eats like a celebrity,” making me feel adored, not demanding.
The dishes were always exquisite. Slow-roasted bone marrow, branzino laced with herbs, the kind of flavors that made us lean in and feed each other. He’d study my face and say, “Love it or hate it?,” shooting me a warm smirk.
On quieter dates, we watched movies in bed, talked about our kids, anything except for whatever was forming between us. On the nights I slept over, he’d bring me matcha lattes in the morning casually like it was no big deal, and every single time, I felt like I’d won an Academy Award.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!” I’d exclaim.
And he’d shake his head, amused. “You’re too easy to please.”
But what he didn’t realize was remembering that I liked only a splash of milk and an extra shot of matcha fed a hunger in me I didn’t know I longed for.
Our banter was fun, constant and warm. Everything worked except for when a question leaned into the future. That’s when something tightened, a brief, instinctual clam-closing and then loosening again just as fast. But I kept going because the present was good. Because we laughed a lot. Because the world felt softer when I was with him.
Then one Sunday evening, I asked, “What are you doing for the Jewish holidays?” He gave a quick, unreadable flicker. It was gone before I could interpret it. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t need to. We were both leaving for our own family week. When I returned excited to see him and celebrate a big work milestone I’d helped him prepare for, I got “the text.” Careful. Polite. And at the end, a line that blew a hole through my chest.
“I don’t see a romantic future with you.”
I read it again and again until my body revolted. A wave of heat shot through me. I wanted to scream but I just stood there frozen, unable to breathe, like someone had cracked open my chest and scooped the air out.
Suddenly, I wasn’t a grown-up woman living in Hollywood. I wasn’t a mother, not a nutritionist, not someone who has taken care of people for years.
I was 9. I was in Chicago. It was 1975. I was in my grandma’s kitchen, the place I loved most in the world. The only place I ever remember feeling safe. My fingers were gripping her apron. The smell of dill wafting through the air. Her soup was bubbling. Nourishment, comfort, stability in the form of broth and steady hands. Then my mother’s voice sliced through it: “Dawn, get in the car.”
As I was pushed into the station wagon, there were boxes everywhere. Clio Awards, stacks of Playboy magazines with my dad’s byline, and when my mother slid in after me, she bumped into my dad’s cigarette and the ashes ignited the map — burning a hole straight through the Midwest. My stomach was in knots. I kept reaching my hand toward my grandmother.
“Don’t make me go.”
My mom, irritated, honked the horn, and my dad stepped on the gas.
Standing in my kitchen decades later, looking at the text message, the same feeling of nausea washed over me. The ground shifted. My friends, trying to support me, started texting me. “Don’t you dare text him.”
But I did.
“Hi.”
He responded immediately. We met for Japanese that night, and without trying, we fell right back into our rhythm over Santa Barbara uni and lamb chops cooked exactly the way we like them, crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, the kind of dish that cracks when your knife hits it and then gives way like warm silk. We were not awkward. We were not mad. We were not resolved. We were two people who kept finding each other at a table, even when everything else was uncertain.
Then, somewhere between courses, he looked up and said, “You remind me of my mother.”
The words hit something in me I couldn’t name. Not a wound, an internal flinch. He always told me his mother was unpredictable. Warm one moment, stormy the next. Comforting and chaotic in the same breath. I was none of those things. And I knew instantly that whatever he meant was tangled and that my warmth might feel like comfort to him, but also, unconsciously, like danger. That being cared for and being overwhelmed lived very close together in his body.
I didn’t take it personally. I took it as information. Maybe I felt familiar to him in a way that carried both safety and alarm. A green light and a red light at the same intersection. And the strangest thing was, in that same moment, he reminded me of my father, a man who could charm a room, feed America slogans that defined a generation, win awards and still feel shaky where it mattered most — with me.
Two grown-ups sitting across a table, mirroring childhood patterns that neither of us fully understood.
Later, when he drove me home, he dropped something heavy: his story, not mine to tell. The kind of truth that shifts the room without explaining the entire plot.
Sitting there in his car, I realized it was never just the two of us. We both brought our ghosts, and they probably showed up before we even opened our menus. Maybe that’s the real story. You can share the same cravings and still have to adjust the salt and heat as each new combination of flavors come together and unfold.
The author is a nutritionist who wrote the bestselling book, “My Fat Dad: A Memoir of Food, Love and Family, With Recipes.” Find her on Instagram: @DawnLerman.
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.
Editor’s note: On April 3, L.A. Affairs Live, our new storytelling competition show, will feature real dating stories from people living in the Greater Los Angeles area. Tickets for our first event are on sale now at the Next Fun Thing.
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Chicago with host Peter Sagal, judge and guest scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest Phil Pritchard and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Adam Burke, and Dulcé Sloan. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
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The Don Vs The Poppa; World’s Worst Doctor; Should We Eat That?
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Our panelists tell three stories about someone missing a huge opportunity in the news, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: Phil Pritchard, the NHL’s Keeper of the Stanley Cup, answers three questions about the other NHL, National Historic Landmarks
Peter talks to Phil Pritchard, the NHL’s Keeper of the Stanley Cup. Phil plays our game called, “Let’s Go Visit The NHL” Three questions about National Historic Landmarks.
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The Trump Dump and Air Traffic Control Becomes Animal Control
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Paul W. Downs can’t help it that even on the weekends, his life intersects with “Hacks,” the HBO comedy he co-created and co-showruns with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their friend Jen Statsky. (He also appears on the show as Jimmy LuSaque Jr., the besieged manager of its two stars, played by Emmy winners Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.) The fifth and final season of “Hacks” premiered last week, but on Downs’ days off, he often finds himself at its previous filming locations or hanging out with cast members who have become like family.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Downs moved to Los Angeles in 2011, but soon after, he and Aniello were hired to write (and for him to act) on the über-New York show “Broad City,” keeping them away from the West Coast for years. Now the couple live in Los Feliz, which they enjoy with their young son.
“I love Los Feliz because it’s a real neighborhood with restaurants and bars, but also feels close to nature with Griffith Park,” Downs says. “Also it’s very central to my Eastside friends and Westside agents.”
And if he had to live at a local mall, like the character Ava Daniels did in the third season of “Hacks,” which would he choose?
“It would be the Americana, obviously.”
Here’s how he’d spend a perfect day in L.A.
10 a.m.: A late rise and a li’l barista
I’m sleeping in if I can, which I can’t because I have a toddler, but let’s say I can sleep ’til 10. That would be insane.
Then I’m making coffee at home. I’m making it with my 4-year-old because he likes to make my coffee now. He always wanted to help, now he really wants to do it on his own. I’m still there to supervise, but he does do a lot of it.
I do batch brew. I’m doing Verve Coffee that I’m grinding there, and then I’m brewing four cups because I need my coffee. I had a Moccamaster for a long time, but I recently got a Simply Good Coffee. There’s no plastic — it’s all glass and metal.
11 a.m.: Chocolate croissants for everyone
We’re driving to Pasadena and we’re going to [Artisanal Goods by] CAR, which is the place to get the best chocolate croissant, I think, in the world. I don’t just think in L.A., I think they’re better than Paris. I’m going there with my wife and my kid and I’m having another coffee and some pastry. We’re ordering three [chocolate croissants]. We’re not doubling up.
11:45 a.m.: The family business
We’re driving to Fair Oaks in Pasadena. There’s a place called T.L. Gurley. We shot “Hacks” there, actually. Not only in Season 1, but also full circle in Season 5. We’re going to shmay around and look at antiques. My kid is going to want to play a vintage pinball machine. We’re going to find a little piece of art for the house or what have you. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the hunt. It’s to pass the time and to have some fun. If I could do anything and have a leisurely day and take my mind off work, that’s what I’m doing.
People love to interact with my kid when he’s there. We’re really training him to appraise things at a young age. My parents are part-time dealers of antiques. My grandmother bought and sold antiques. It’s kind of a family business.
1:30 pm.: Baguettes and books
We’re driving to Larchmont and we’re getting a sandwich at Larchmont Village Wine, Spirits & Cheese. I’m doing prosciutto-mozzarella-basil on a baguette.
Then we’re going to Chevalier’s Books. What’s sad is that I’m often not looking for leisure material. I’m looking for something that I’m interested in learning more about or writing about, or that they’re turning into a show I want to audition for. But we’re also doing Little Golden Books for my son. He’s obsessed. We’re not huge on screen time, so we really encourage the book-buying.
2:30 p.m.: Cast pool party
We’re having some family fun in the pool and we’re doing that until evening. We invite people over all the time. My sister-in-law is a New Yorker, but she actually wrote last season on “The Rooster” and she’s often writing on shows in L.A., so she’s often here and she’ll have a couple friends come over. I know this sounds like a piece of PR or something, but we’ll really literally have Hannah [Einbinder] and maybe Mark Indelicato from “Hacks” come over to swim. Jen, our co-creator of “Hacks,” will come over.
6:00 p.m.: Family dinner
Sometimes we’ll order Grá to the house, which is a pizza place in Echo Park — excellent sourdough crust pizza. But if we don’t do that, an ideal evening is an early dinner at All Time on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. We’re ordering the ceviche and my son is having all of it and not sharing with anybody at the table.
8:45 p.m.: A thrilling ending to the day
After putting my kid to bed, my wife and I, in an ideal world (full disclosure: we haven’t done this in two years), we’ll watch something together that we’ve been meaning to watch. We have a long list of movies and we either want to revisit or that we haven’t seen that we need to watch.
We don’t watch a lot of comedies. It’s a dream to watch a “Black Bag” or a little espionage thriller. We really like that because it’s so different than the stuff that we’re working on in the day.
Often the things we watch are things that we admire. We like deconstructing it as fans of film and television. We do like talking about the making of it, but it’s less of a critique and more of a listing of the things we appreciated about it.
10:30 p.m.: No work tomorrow
And then it’s lovemaking ’til morning on a perfect Sunday. If it’s a perfect Sunday, there’s also a Monday that’s off.
Jay (not pictured) found himself alone and hopeless in a jail cell when a fellow inmate’s unexpected words of comfort changed his life.
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When Jay was 22 years old, he was a self-described loner. In this story, he is being identified by his nickname to allow himself to speak candidly about the following experience and his mental health. He says the few people he did hang out with at the time had questionable morals.
”I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions,” Jay said.
One evening, when he and his friends were out drinking, someone suggested they should try to break into the chemistry building on his college campus. Most of the group shrugged the suggestion off, deeming it impossible, but Jay was convinced he could pull it off.
“The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it,” Jay remembered. “And I didn’t get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards.”
At around 1 that morning, Jay was placed in the county detention center. Sitting alone in his cell, reality began to sink in.
“I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over, and I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it.”
Jay made a plan to end his life. As he prepared himself, he began to cry.
“But just in that moment when I was ready to do it, I heard a voice coming from the top left corner of my cell, from a little vent. And someone called out to me and said, ‘Hey, is this your first time?’”
The man who called out was an inmate in the cell next door.
“I collected myself a little bit, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Can I pray for you?’”
Jay had grown up religious, but had stopped going to church years before. In that moment, though, he knew he needed support. He said yes, and listened as the man began to pray.
“I wish I could tell you that I remember the [exact] words that he said to me, but what I remember is that his words landed with me, and instead of wanting my life to be over, suddenly I saw hope,” Jay said.
The interaction happened nearly ten years ago, but it was a pivotal moment in Jay’s life, and one he thinks about all the time.
“[Now], I have a good job. I have a girlfriend who loves me. I have a life. But I have a life because somebody who was in the same situation I was in had the courage to talk to a fellow inmate and be kind.”
Jay says that he wishes he could meet that man again and express his appreciation.
“[I would] shake that guy’s hand, give him a hug, and tell him what his small gesture meant for me, how he changed the course of my life.”
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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