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.
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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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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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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