I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star (20 page)

It took a while for Buckley to feel at home in our house, personalized dog bed or not; it seemed he was just going to keep
sleeping until he got moved to a different place again. I worried that he would never assimilate, that I would never be able to make him feel safe and loved. Until one day. I ordered pizza
a lot
, and I would just leave the front door wide open and the pizza guy would usually just walk up to the door and say hi and I’d come running at him with a fistful of cash. The first time the pizza guy saw Bucky lying on his dog bed in the house, he reacted with an “oh, shit,” but when my massive beast didn’t budge, he wasn’t scared. Well, about three months in, the delivery guy showed up and Buckley stood up on his bed and barked. Really barked. I had never heard that sound before, so I came running. This time there was an all-caps “OH, SHIT” out of the delivery guy, and when I saw Buckley protecting the house and me in it, I was touched. I was really moved. I probably even cried a little, because that was the moment I could finally tell that Buckley knew he was home, and this was where he was staying.

He lived a rough life on the Eastside. He was poisoned, hit by a car, maybe even shot—he has some weird scars. He still flinches sometimes when I reach to pet him, but at least since that day he barked at the pizza guy, he’s known he was here to stay. And I have always felt his presence made my house a home. It was hard to have people over at times, if Buckley’s stomach was acting up. If a date was dropping me off, I would have to go in alone first before inviting him in for a nightcap, just in case the smell was too putrid and it would reflect poorly on me. The girls in my book club would often request that he relax in the bedroom or out on the deck during our meetings. He farts audibly, belches out loud, and leaves a trail of coarse white hairs everywhere he goes. But it was always a good gauge. Could a date handle the other man in my life? Would Buckley turn his back as a sign of submission or just sit and stare in judgment? Would my book club demand a different location? How irritated would a new friend
be requesting a lint brush before leaving my house? Buckley has a lot of qualities that I admire in a person. He’s mellow, likes to be outside, but is happy to just sit and watch TV as well. He is a good listener, honest, enjoys a good meal, patient, and he really likes to stop and smell the roses, literally. Who would have thought that eight years ago a dog fart would change my life, but it did, and in the best possible way.

HOW DO YOU WRITE ABOUT BEING SO IN LOVE WITH
someone that you cry almost every day because you can’t believe it happened to you and you are so happy and you love him so much … without making people vomit their last four meals up? (I’m crying right now, by the way.) This is the most difficult essay to write because every time I think about it I cry and can’t see the computer screen. Also, I can’t write it in public, because people stare and ask me if I’m OK and it’s embarrassing. Are you vomiting yet? I don’t blame you. It’s annoying. I would be annoyed, too. In fact, I am often annoyed because the fact that I cry about it all the time has really been a problem. Disclaimer: I’m a crier. I have always been tear prone. I cry at auditions when I am not supposed to cry. I cry driving,
a lot
, I cry at the movies, I cry at commercials, I cry describing movies or commercials. The second season of
Grey’s Anatomy
?
Forget it!
I was a mess for weeks. You get it. It’s constant and a daily activity for me. However, since I met Dean Johnsen, it’s gotten really out of control. I can’t even use my tears for manipulative purposes with him anymore, because he’s immune. Everyone in my life is immune at this point. I get further by not crying. Still barfing?

I have tried to figure out why I have this reaction to my relationship. I have always been emotional, but this is different. I don’t know exactly what to blame it on besides Dean Johnsen coming out of the woodwork and taking me by surprise. But it was a slow surprise, like if you walked into a surprise party and it took the guests a few months to yell the word “surprise.”

I don’t believe in love at first sight. Love at first sight has historically gotten me in a lot of trouble. I have had long relationships that should have been one-night stands because of “love at first sight.” It’s not really love. How can you love someone you don’t even know? It’s chemistry, it’s hormones, it’s that time of the month, but it’s not love. I wish someone would’ve told me that—OK, a lot of people told me that, I just didn’t listen. But I spent a lot of time with men trying to get that feeling back after more sights. Or trying to justify jumping into a relationship because I wanted that feeling to be real, or I wanted it to mean something, or mostly because I didn’t want to feel like a slut. And I must have subconsciously figured that if I jumped into a relationship with a guy and then realized I’d made a mistake, I would be able to justify the mistake by saying it was something bigger than either of us—it was the universe, the gods, not Ketel One.

The second mistake I made over and over again was not believing people when they told me that relationships should be easy. My mom told me when I was younger that relationships were work, but I took her literally. She was telling me this in response to people she knew getting divorced without working on their marital problems first. I know now that she was trying to teach me to be a good partner, a team player. She meant you have to work at keeping relationships good and healthy and strong, not that you had to work to make a bad relationship good. Oops.

People ask Dean and me all the time if it was love at first sight when we met, if we just “knew” because we met on a blind date
and are so perfect for each other. Together and separately we both give the same answer every time. No. I remember so vividly the moment I first saw Dean Johnsen. It wasn’t on Facebook, I don’t have that. Or Instagram, or Twitter, or even MySpace, Friendster, or the microfiche at the local library. It was the old-fashioned, 100-percent blind-date way. When I opened the front door. He was tall. He was handsome. He smiled brightly, and his eyes were happy. He seemed nice. Did my stomach do flips? No. Did I feel like I was having an out-of-body experience? No. Was I excited that he had a bottle of wine in his hand? YES.

We had a totally normal first date. A predinner glass of wine on my deck, where we discussed different landscaping options (yawn) while Buckley sat next to Dean panting and staring, never taking his eyes off him for a second. Then we went to dinner at a loud, dark sushi restaurant and tried to make small talk, but it was too loud and too dark. When we finished dinner, we both had to use the bathroom before leaving, which was down a hallway that was even darker than the restaurant. The ladies’ room was just as dark as the hallway, and my eyes never really adjusted as I waited in the hallway for Dean to come out. There was a man standing there waiting for his date, just staring at me. I stared back for a second, but I quickly gave an uncomfortable smile and looked away, nervous Dean would come out of his bathroom and see me staring at another man in the hallway and be offended. But Dean was taking forever. All this time I could have been primping, I thought. I hurried so I didn’t seem like the kind of girl who took forever in the ladies’ room, even though I am totally that kind of girl. I was starting to get worried. What if he was allergic to something I ordered and was really sick? What if he went to the valet to get the car? Wait, what did we agree on? Was I supposed to wait in the hall for him? Or were we to meet at the valet stand? What if he left altogether because I was screaming all through dinner
because it was so loud? Shit. And as this was all running through my head, this guy was still staring at me. “Fine,” I thought, “I can stare too.” Finally, the guy said, “Should we go?” SHIT! Shit, shit, shit, that is my date! Did I actually forget what my date looked like, even though I have been staring at his face for the last two hours? Yes. I squeaked out a “Sure. You?” And Dean answered, “Yes. Unless you want to hang out in this hallway longer?” “No, I’m good,” I said. We walked. I cringed.

For the record, I would have gone out for a nightcap with him anyway, but after that debacle there was no way I was ending the night there. It was the Guinness across the street that finally loosened us up. About a year later I told Dean about that moment in the hallway and was thrilled to find out he was having the same panic attack I was! I guess the whole concept of love at first sight kind of slipped us by, considering that neither of us had any idea who we were staring at on our first date anyway.

A book I read once quoted a man saying, “It wasn’t love at first sight, but it is now.” And I always think of that when people ask me about that first blind date. I really had no idea what he looked like, but after getting to know him on the phone for a few weeks prior, I decided it didn’t really matter. I liked talking to him on the phone. He made me laugh uncontrollably before we even met, and when I saw his number on my caller ID I picked up, no matter what. Still do, actually. Yes, when I opened my front door and he seemed clean and didn’t look like he had a record, I was pleased, but honestly I would have been excited to go out with him anyway.

When I say that realizing I was in love with him snuck up on me, I really mean it. I just found myself making room for him in my schedule. I wanted to tell him good news first, and I wasn’t embarrassed to tell him the bad stuff. He was easy and fun to hang out with. We didn’t fight. He made me laugh really hard
every time we spoke on the phone. He wasn’t jealous or competitive with me. He never judged. He was the first real grown-up I had ever dated, and it was easy. But the aha moment was when I was talking to my friend Sean about him and Sean said, “You know how I know he’s the one? Because you’ve never asked me what I think about him. Because for the first time you don’t care.” Aha.

I told Dean I loved him for the first time waiting in line to use the bathroom at a restaurant in Austin, Texas, it seemed like the perfect place, it was another dark hallway, but this time I knew exactly who I was talking to.

I
’
VE YET TO HAVE A PROBLEM SO HUGE THAT A MIDNIGHT
trip to a twenty-four-hour drugstore couldn’t give me at least a few moments of calm and clarity. I began my drugstore therapy in earnest during college. I lived dangerously close to a twenty-four-hour Walgreens, and my roommates and I spent many nights procrastinating on our schoolwork by scouring the shelves for some late-night beauty inspiration. It is where Janet and I would buy fashion magazines, which would then inspire another trip out to purchase the items required to make us look exactly like the models on the pages. It didn’t always work (tip: don’t try to dye your hair from brown to platinum blond using a box of hair bleach, or at least don’t let Janet do it), but we had fun, and who cares if my hair turned pink and orange? We were in college. My life was easier then, when my issues weren’t as big, but even now, while my problems are getting grander in scope, a new tube of lipstick or a travel-size body lotion still has the power to lighten my stress load a considerable amount. I’ve had this experience to a lesser degree at malls in the past, and trust me, if there was a mall open at 11:00 p.m., I’d probably hit that up too. But shopping decisions are bigger at malls, and I’m safer on
a smaller scale. If I hate my lipstick the next day, it’s a less costly retail mistake than buying a new dress.

Maybe it’s the aimless wandering under the fluorescent lights or the hopefulness that a new pack of pens promises. I’m not really sure, but CVS might just be my happy place. And not because of the abundance of ice cream and candy bars; in fact, I don’t usually buy food. Usually. For me, the draw is the products. Skin care, makeup, hair accessories … I am wired to believe that somewhere in those aisles the solution to my problem will be found. A new bottle of Nivea might make the girl who got the part I auditioned for pass on it. Revlon’s Orange Flip lipstick could very well make my ex-boyfriend fall down a flight of stairs (where he would turn up injured, not dead, jeez, I’m not that evil). Even a three-pack of Pilot fine-point pens purchased at 1:00 a.m. will probably make the network decide to pick up my pilot, or at least make some footage that was never filmed miraculously turn up in the editing room. WHAT? THESE THINGS COULD HAPPEN!

OK, I know they will not happen, but there is something about a late-night drugstore run that promises change, and in these moments, all I
really
want is change. I want to not have the problem I am having. I want to be a different person, and maybe if I were different, my problem would be solved, or better yet, not exist at all. If I were cleaner, if my nails were Revlon Red, if my hair was coated in Moroccan oil, if I used Cetaphil to wash my face, as all dermatologists recommended and all celebrities claimed they did in the magazines also purchased in these late-night runs, my life would be hassle-free. I even went on my wedding day, although this trip was
not
to solve a problem, or to check out for a while, it was to savor a few stolen moments with my girls before the wedding would take over the day, as weddings tend to do. Everyone was telling me to steal a few moments with
my groom during the reception, but what about my best friends? And what better place to do it than in the Walgreens across from the hotel? Besides, I “needed” some face wash before I walked down the aisle, duh. I bought all of their favorite products, and while I used them up in the following months I thought of Janet, Kelly, and me walking up and down the aisles talking about our favorite lotions—not that I was about to walk down a more serious aisle at 5 p.m. that evening. We bonded and I felt calm and excited for this next stage of my life. For a while, my trips got a little crazy. I was producing and starring in a TV pilot about my life, and every night before I went home, I told my husband I had to “run an errand,” which was code for a drugstore run. He knew it, I didn’t need a code, but there was also an element of secrecy that I needed from it too. I didn’t want to be running a real errand; I wanted to be selfish about my trip. I wanted it to be my secret place where I could lose myself in whatever was catching my eye. Not on a mission for Ziploc baggies for tomorrow’s school lunches, I wanted to wander, I wanted to discover, I wanted to silence my phone, be by myself, and think of nothing. I don’t know how else to describe this to a man, except to say it’s my sports.