Our meet was not cute; he wrote psychological thrillers, not rom-coms. I appeared in his suggested profiles on Instagram. He followed, and I, a wannabe actor who shrewdly noted the CAA tag in his bio, followed back. No matter how much this city jades you, that hope of getting “discovered” is stubborn. I ignored all the other starving female actors he followed. I ignored the absence of tagged posts and friends in his photos.
On our first date, I was 10 months sober in AA and I had been celibate for a year and a half. I had sworn that the next time I had sex would be antithetical to all the sex I’d had before: sober, consensual and with genuine trust and care for each other.
He took this oath seriously, and I was grateful. After two months of hand stuff and dry humping, Malibu hiking, making out at Yamashiro and dressing up for Cinespia at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, I finally let him put the P into the V in an Airbnb in Joshua Tree. We had sex under the late October stars, and in the morning, we went at it again on top of a rock in the middle of the park.
He bought me vegan Van Leeuwen on the drive back, and from then on, we were sufficiently hooked.
He spoke of his past infrequently, but would answer when asked. He was born in Virginia, he told me, where I am also from. But shortly thereafter, he moved to Beachwood Canyon with his parents and younger brother. He promised to one day show me the house he grew up in. He went to UCLA and had been living in Hollywood with his brother ever since they graduated. He mentioned a few friends, but I never saw them.
I reasoned that he was in his 30s, and he worked in a lonely, every-man-for-himself kind of industry. And he had his brother, with whom he was supremely close, though I had yet to meet him either.
By Christmas, I was getting antsy.
He told me he loved me just as the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve. A week later, the January wildfires came. We escaped together, and my worried father on the East Coast paid for a hotel room further south. We made romance out of tragedy and took our time on the way back when the Sunset fire evacuation orders were lifted. Driving up PCH, he flipped a U to pull into a shake shop.
“We used to go here all the time as kids,” he said. Then he grabbed his credit card and instructed me to order us two shakes. I figured this nostalgia must have distracted him from the fact that my weak stomach could not handle dairy in such large quantities.
Still, I ordered one — I didn’t want to put a dimmer on his inner child indulgence. Later, I threw up, but it was worth it; I was grateful to be included in such a joyous memory of his.
The initial chaos of the fires subsided, and I had still yet to meet anyone in his life. We were nearing six months. I never felt suspicious though. Just restless.
He took my impatience in stride and spoke of plans for me to meet his younger brother soon. Later, he reasoned that he was waiting until after my birthday — he didn’t want to ruin my celebratory state with the truth.
An anonymous woman online struck first, just one week before. It was in one of those Facebook groups. You know the one: Are We Dating the Same Guy? Los Angeles LA.
He was in my bathroom when I got the alert. He didn’t grow up in L.A., the woman wrote. He lived with his twin. He didn’t go to UCLA. He’ll never commit to you.
When he returned, all I could do was hand him my phone. He didn’t pull away from the screen in shock. He simply sat on the bed, took a deep breath and repeated the same monologue he’d delivered to all of the young female actors before me.
It was true. His brother wasn’t two years younger, but two minutes. They were twins. He didn’t grow up in L.A., but in Virginia and then all over the U.S. He didn’t go to UCLA, but to a university in Virginia.
He said he and his twin were in cahoots on this bizarre lie. They had been telling it to women for years. He said the industry would take him more seriously if he were from here. He said people had prejudices against male twins. (Huh? I thought.) He looked at me with his sad baby blues and shared how he told these innocuous falsities, ultimately, out of deep-seeded self-hatred.
My pity outweighed my pride, and we stayed together another month and a half. I fought for us. I wanted to fix him, to give him the love he claimed to never have gotten. I too had done horrible things to quench my self-loathing. But look at me now!
Being a positive influence became a new addiction. I gave him bell hooks’ “All About Love,” which emphasizes the necessity for honesty in all partnerships. I gently suggested therapy. We distracted ourselves by maximizing my AMC Stubs to see all the Oscar-nominated movies.
But questions kept coming, and my trust was crumbling. It wasn’t the content of the lies, but the ease and frequency with which they were told.
“What about that shake place?” I asked one day abruptly. “It was just a random shake place.” He smirked. I’d like to say that was the end — the realization that he let me make myself physically sick for his lies — but it wasn’t.
That same month, I moved to Silver Lake, and he helped immensely. He went on tours with me, built my bed and schlepped all my clothes over from Hollywood. And that’s what’s so frustrating: As much as it was sick, it was also sweet. As much as he may have appeared psychotic, he was also romantic. Just like this city.
Eventually, my suspicions outgrew my compassion. I finally called him out for all the Instagram baddies he followed, and he blew up, accusing me of self-sabotaging. The sad part is I believed it. It took a long call with my sponsor to understand my misgivings were valid and that I deserved someone who would put in the work to regain my trust when they’d broken it. He wasn’t capable of that.
We went no contact for a week and then met for take-out Thai food in Silver Lake Meadow. He had finally read “All About Love” (allegedly) and claimed he’d made a therapy appointment. I told him maybe in some time he could call me. It was bittersweet and strangely cinematic. We kissed and then walked off in opposite directions.
I cried for a week and I had hope for about a month. But just like with substances, the situation looked increasingly strange and seedy the further I got from it. We did meet up again in the summer. He had quit therapy and started smoking, and I caught him stumbling in some random lies again. I ended it for good over text.
Early on, he joked that “the worst thing you can call someone in L.A. is a poser.” I wish I’d noted that line as foreshadowing, but just like any good mystery, the clues are only evident in hindsight.
The author works as a freelance production assistant and at the front desk of a local yoga studio. She lives in Silver Lake. She’s on Instagram: @margaretkeanee.
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 [email protected]. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
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