Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: I wanted a deeper connection with this man. Did he only want me for sex?
I don’t do casual sex. My labels are demisexual and sapiosexual, or some combination of the two, which makes being attracted to someone when there is no intellectual or emotional spark improbable, if not impossible. Ironically, I also have a very high sex drive. This unfortunate condition — that my lady parts have some morality clause I didn’t sign up for — has left me sexless and single for more years than I care to admit.
But when I met a successful author whom I admire (and have had a decade-long crush on) by chance while having dinner at the Tower Bar in West Hollywood, I once again gave the whole casual sex thing the old college try. After all, I knew the inner workings of his mind, and that’s half the attraction riddle solved. But there was something else. He felt familiar when I shook his hand. I unwittingly held onto it for longer than was socially acceptable. He let me. Instant chemistry.
Current trends debunk instant chemistry and familiarity with a potential mate, branding it as the obvious wrong choice. Familiar is bad, Instagram Reels tell me. And “butterflies” mean you’re destined to repeat the dysfunctional patterns of your relationship with your parent with your new lover— a fast track to heartbreak.
I don’t buy it. I am a fully formed, grown-ass woman who has navigated the vast landscape of my mind and consciousness through drugs, meditation, Buddhist psychology and sheer neurosis management. I refuse to discredit an immediate connection with someone as inherently dangerous and resign myself to passionless dating and relationships because “boring” is good and safe.
So, in the spirit of chasing the spark of chemistry and intellect (for me, lightning in a bottle), not long after meeting author guy for the first time, we were sitting on his hotel bed. He tried politely to get the requisite small talk out of the way, and despite my nervousness, I was game.
He was surprisingly open, though trying not to be. He said he would write his first short-story collection soon but wanted to get his latest book optioned into a movie. I said I was trying to find an agent for the YA novel I wrote from the point of view of my pit bull. Although we barely covered the basics, we did all right. Afterward, I laid my head on his chest, saying, “I’ll leave; just give me a minute,” and then added, “Insert Billy Crystal’s line from ‘When Harry Met Sally’ here.”
A short while later, we stood on Sunset Boulevard at the entrance to the Sunset Tower Hotel. The 15-story Art Deco building in Zigzag Moderne is my second favorite building in the world. Its shades of pink, cream plaster and bronze shift in the ever-changing light L.A. is famous for, from sunrise to the golden hour. We talked about the building, and I lamented that the plaster friezes weren’t lighted. Why wouldn’t the owner take the time to up-light the friezes? Seems like a shame. Like keeping a precious gem in the dark where its facets can’t shine. I asked a manager who happened by. He shrugged as if to say, “We just leave well enough alone.”
Author guy and I fumbled through an awkward goodbye. “I have your number,” he told me, which I was pretty sure translated to, “Don’t call me. I’ll call you.” And so, I didn’t. But when he texted the next day, I could still smell him on my skin, and I knew I wanted an immediate redo of our time together. Once we got to know each other, I was pretty sure the sex was going to be transcendental.
A month later, I invited him to my suite at the Pendry in West Hollywood. We still didn’t talk much, but when we said goodbye, I made my request in the lobby near the transportive Anthony James light sculpture.
“I know you’re busy, but I want to get to know you. There’s a connection between us I’d like to explore. Let’s talk on the phone if you can carve out some time.”
He didn’t call, but a few months later, there was an impromptu third time.
“We have great chemistry — the kind I haven’t had in most relationships. I mean, the sex is pretty f— great, don’t you think?” he asked, focusing his intent gaze on my own.
“It can be better,” I responded, looking away to make the honesty slightly less potent. “I need to know you and to be known. What we are doing doesn’t work for me. I need a little more for the sex to be truly great.”
“I guess I can call you when I have some downtime between writing,” he mused, adding, “I’m glad this happened.” We kissed goodbye, awash in the moonlight that casts Franklin Hills in a silvery, ethereal blue. After he drove away, I stood hopeful on my balcony, my gaze fixed on the beautiful, lit-from-within crown jewel of the Hollywood Hills — Griffith Observatory, the brainchild of a raging alcoholic who shot his wife in the eye. Star-crossed lovers. I wondered if they had great chemistry. Did he give her butterflies?
A day later, author guy texted. But he didn’t call. Hopped up on oxytocin and potentiality, I sent an overzealous voice memo, mentioning (again, ugh) that I wanted to have some repartee, shoot the s—, have a meal, add some talking to the sex, and that I definitely wanted to have more sex. He sent a long, panicked text in response. He liked me, but his schedule was full. And his anxiety and borderline depression were keeping him from calling anyone but his close friends.
I said I was disappointed. More than I thought I would be, but I understood.
In his mind, I was a liability, and in not taking the time to get to know me, he had averted disaster — or just left well enough alone. In my mind, a potential L.A. love affair (with great sex) ended almost before it began. In the end, author guy went with the short story. Seems like a shame. It could have been one hell of a novel — enough to base a movie on.
The author is a writer’s writer, copywriter and astronaut of the self who splits her time between Encinitas and Los Angeles. After writing this, she called Jeff Klein, owner of the Sunset Tower Hotel, and asked him to light the plaster friezes. She can be found at @sage_the_writer on Instagram and on LinkedIn.
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.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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