10086 Sunset Boulevard

I felt heartened while watching the Oscars on Sunday night. Lots of folks with natural faces. Lovely Laura Linney showed no signs of Botox or Collogen having been injected into her face to distort things. Helen Mirren looked stunning and classy, as she always does. George Clooney is maturing magnificently. Nicole Kidman was questionable. Her face seems to keep getting tighter and tighter and it looks uncomfortable. Seems like it would be hard to act with a frozen face.

No one looked downright scary though, but what some of them go through before the Oscars seems to borderline on torture.

Power-bleaching (I’m hoping that’s something they do to their teeth, not their skin), armpit botox, stiletto foot surgeries and last-minute liposuction, are some of the procedures the stars go through these days for big events like the Oscars.

Underarm Botox? Why? Does it paralyze the sweat glands? That could be good, but that stuff has got to come out somewhere.

And cleavage buffing…… is that something only done in Hollywood, or are well heeled women all over the world having their cleavage buffed? Can you do it at home or does it have to be done by a professional? Does the professional have to have a license to buff cleavage? And what about buttocks? Is there such a thing as buttock buffing? Is it the same as a good scrub in the shower, or is this something completely different?

Too many things. If you want to read about all the rest of the stuff these people put themselves through, go check out Ashley Pearson’s article in the Daily Mail.

Rising at seven, she dressed, put fresh sheets on the bed, walked to the bakery and picked up croissants, a newspaper and purchased a large bouquet of tulips from a vendor on the corner. Returning home, she put the coffee on, arranged the tulips in a crystal vase and headed to the shower. She went through the usual ritual of shaving her legs, oiling and scenting her skin and then slid between the clean sheets to enjoy the sweet anticipation of her Sunday Morning Special.

Arriving after his morning run, he looked in, through the doorway at her and smiled. He would join her shortly, after he showered. Soon he was there, warm skin on warm skin until eventually the dance started, the caressing, the loving and for a few blissful hours under the covers they existed only to please one another. At some point he would get up and bring them coffee, juice and croissants on a tray. Fortification for the next round of love making.

Their time was almost up and he would have to return to his home. He started to dress and then turned to her and said “I’ve been thinking”. An uncomfortable feeling grabbed her in the pit of her stomach. She enjoyed this relationship tremendously, free of any strings. It was how things should be, or so she thought. Full time relationships had not worked out well for her and she had no desire to ever enter back into another one. Seeing someone once a week made sure they’d never be entangled in each others daily grind, never fight about money, never grow tired of each other’s habits. She didn’t want any changes. She braced herself against what he would say next.

“We could do this on Saturday morning too”. In an instant he’d ruined a good thing.

Life was perfect as it was, all under her control. She took yoga classes four times a week, to keep her body limber for her Sunday morning workout between the sheets, she shopped at the farmer’s markets three times a week, went to plays and attended charity events. She played tennis and golf and lunched with clients. Her days were full and all through her busy week, she looked forward to the luxury of Sunday mornings.

Now they would have to stop. He had been the perfect choice, so she thought, believing that his prior commitments would ensure that this never happened. What would be next? A couple of evenings too and then what, he’d want to move in? Oh no, that wasn’t going to happen.

She’d redecorate her bedroom. She’d shop for a new bed set and drapes. The Twilight Jasmine candles she would light on Sunday mornings would have to be replaced with a new scent. Everything would be fresh, new, ready for her to start over.

She would do all of that as soon as she broke it off with him him and sent him home to his wife and kids.

Waiting at an airport was her favorite way to spend time, it was the time during which she felt suspended from her life, a time when she felt safe away from her reality. She’d arranged to get there early, just so that she could enjoy a good four hours of aloneness in the busy airport. Going back and forth between Oklahoma and Sacramento so much the past year had afforded her this luxury more than usual. Her sister, who financed these visits, lived in Auburn, just an hour’s drive from the airport and would pick her up on her arrival and bring her back after her visit.

Here she was again, heading back now, to Oklahoma. This would be the last visit for a very long time, the last chance to enjoy the airport. While she waited, she imagined herself as someone else, someone with a far more desirable life than hers. A jet-setter, although her cheap shoes and vinyl handbag would have been a dead giveaway to any passer-by that she was not a woman of means.

This trip was a little different though. Her sister had been working on settling her parents estate, since their passing a year ago. She had a cashiers check in her purse for $12,875.22 and in her current situation, this seemed like a small fortune. It should have been $52,875.22, but she and Maurice had borrowed money from her sister over the past two years, totaling $40,000 and of course this money was subtracted from her share of the estate as repayment of the debt. She could have really done something with that extra $40,000. But it was water under the bridge, or rather, bourbon under the bridge.

She and Maurice were drunks. Maurice also had a nicotine habit, to the tune of two packs a day. And then there was the dope he’d started smoking to try and counter the pain from all the physical ailments that came along with a diet rich in alcohol and carcinogens. He didn’t have much success at holding down a job and her infrequent employment with the temp agency didn’t help towards getting them out of the rut they’d dug themselves into.

It was mid February and she was heading home to him at her least favorite time of year. Her “coat” was a thick sweatshirt with a hood. She used to joke that they drank away their new shoes, their winter boots and new winter coats and she’d make guzzling noises to accompany it all going down the drain. Maurice used to laugh. So did she, but inside she ached and mourned her former lifestyle. One she had known years before he had come into her life. It was a life filled with beautiful clothes, warm coats, fine dining, vacations and choices. All those wonderful choices that still lay ahead. But she had made some bad choices along the way and things were different now.

Now she was shackled. Shackled to a man who only saw her in terms of what she meant to him and she knew that when she returned, instead of allowing her to pay the rent a few months in advance, he’d tell her to hold on to the money, put it in the bank, because they might need it. It would be siphoned off for the usual array of anesthetics he deemed necessary and she’d be right back to living in fear of eviction.

Happy people were all around her, going to exotic destinations, meeting exciting people. She stared down at her feet. When did she buy those shoes? Jesus, they had been bought by her ex husband eight years ago. She was still wearing those shoes, because she had never been able to afford new ones. She was heading back to one of the worst winters on record and she had no coat and no boots. Then she noticed something else. There were no shackles around her ankles. None.

She got up, went over to the coffee shop and ordered a large white mocha, a double. She sat by the window and watched planes take off and enjoyed her seven dollar coffee. When the blast from the sugary caffeinated mixture hit her full force, she marched up to the Southwest ticket counter, plopped down her ticket and asked “what do I have to do to turn this into a one way ticket to Hawaii?”.

Relationships are complicated. My relationship with Mitch was not, but its been a long time since we got together, too long and I’ve been hanging on to the hope that we’d meet again soon. Hanging on for too many months now.

Mitch has disappeared and I’ve had no success in tracking Mitch down. My efforts to do so borderline on stalker activity. Some suggest that maybe Mitch doesn’t want to be found and it’s time for me to move on. I have to admit that they may be right.

It’s difficult for me to imagine finding someone new. Mitch understood me, Mitch knew what I wanted. Two hours with Mitch and I felt like a new woman. I know women understand how precious that kind of relationship is and how rare it is to find someone who satisfies one’s needs. Someone who really listens and then strives to give you just what you want. Mitch always succeeded in doing just that.

Valentine’s Day is coming up and there is just no sign of Mitch. I’ve got to move on, I need to find someone new, someone to replace Mitch.

It’s not going to be easy.   She was the best damned hairdresser I ever had.

So, about the picture that appears at the top right hand corner of this website….. I’m somewhat reluctant to tell you what it means to me, because it’s been more fun to read the emails and hear what some of you speculated it might be. I do realize that not everyone has viewed the movie Sunset Boulevard – to those who are familiar with it, the floater in the swimming pool is an obvious nod to the movie. William Holden’s character floating face down in the pool in the opening is a classic scene in movie history.

When I began work on the logo, I wanted an Oasis feeling to the art. Once I added a pool to the picture, my thoughts went to the swimming pool in the movie and figuring out how to also make it symbolic of my situation, but not mine alone.

Now, what the picture means to me, on a personal level. Well, it’s nothing macabre. I’ve made the fellow in the pool part of the background, not the foreground. It represents past, not present. Relationships come and go, and when they are gone, they leave us changed in some way. Most likely we view life differently than we did before these people came into our lives. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes we just have to work with the changes and try our best to understand our new perspective. It’s just part of the process.

The picture is a collage of a combination of real objects and created objects, put together in Photoshop. The street sign which is color enhanced, is from a black and white photograph of the actual street sign that graced Sunset Boulevard (the street and the movie) in 1950. The figures and the backdrop were created in Poser 6, something I am still learning. I love this program and I hate this program. I love it because of how much it will help me to illustrate my website with my own unique pictures and I hate it because it feels like math class. It’s a more complex program than I have used before, and just when I think I have the hang of it, I’ll export a picture and realize the figure’s eyeballs are on the floor. I have no idea how that kind of stuff happens. If you’d like to see some of the earlier attempts and some of the processes along the way, I’ve arranged them on Flickr and added comments.

Click here to go to the Flickr Photos.