Reflections of a Cool Girl, entry #11: On Ghosts, Clowns and the Loneliness of Mirrors

The gate yawned open, a row of skinny black iron spears, decorative but unwelcoming.
Inside, I heard the scratch of a resistant microphone and saw people gathered under a ballon arch next to a makeshift hamburger stand in the driveway. I peered through the arch/people and saw even more crammed into rows of plastic chairs set up in front of a large projector against the house. Others were scattered across the lawn/makeshift stage. I didn’t spot my date, who’d I’d been invited by and whom I was meeting for the first time, so, I lingered near the arch, where the other late comers had also accepted their fate.

The house belonged to a group of his friends who apparently held a monthly backyard showcase of homemade comedy shorts. It was their excuse to indulge in passion projects, the sort that kept their creativity and spirits alive while they scraped by (or didn’t) in the real film industry, a world that had long since traded soul for survival. 



“You don’t mind the first time we meet be an event, at your friend’s house?” I had asked over the phone the night before, a little skeptical that was the best scenario for a first time meet up. 



“It’s usually about 100 people in the back yard and I have a feeling it might change your life… sounds very much like your type of creative circle and community,” he’d assured me confidently. 



He’d been a monk for 15 years. 

Then a carpenter and chef. 

Now, he was a therapist. 

It was a personal history that raised my eyebrows with intrigue.

His father had been a Hollywood director, someone who’s name carried weight in the hills and hollows of Entertainment. 
I had the feeling this had everything to do with why he’d gone off to become a monk.



He bore a resemblance to Alan Cumming (dimples and all) which was the primary reason I’d responded to his dating app message in the first place.

I’d just started watching a tv show with Alan Cumming and the timing struck me as too coincidental to resist.
I’d always thought he exuded that elusive “this is yours to want, not to have” appeal.
Over the phone my date had asked what had attracted me to him and the above was my real answer but I knew most men where fragile and didn’t fully understand the whims of women so instead I’d said, “cos it looked like you knew how to read”.

One could argue that wasn’t any better, but I’m not the sort of girl who makes herself attractive for anyone.

I’m reflective.
I don’t trim my honesty for anyone’s ego.

Not even my own.
The only people who interest me are the ones who don’t flinch at their own reflection.
Or better yet, grin back at it with pride, teeth and all.
So what if that coincided with them also being pretty, that wasn’t my fault lol.

There had been absolutely no street parking near the cute, 1900s style American Craftsman, so I’d had to settle for a spot four Hollywood blocks away after circling the neighbourhood for 30 minutes like a desperate predator. 



It was a Motley crew of characters, in the yard, and I say characters because I couldn’t help but notice the bright yellow fog of Masking.
Not a whiff of Authenticity.

I could spot in an instant who armoured themselves in caricature, all quips and inflated bravado, and who didn’t.

I had a lot of compassion for people who felt they needed to Mask, as I was an expert myself, but instinctually, my heart sighed, “aw, these are not my people”.

It wasn’t until half way though the screening that I got a chance to peek deeper into the yard and caught a glimpse of my date, laughing with exaggerated enthusiasm.

I almost left then.
The crowd’s energy had already prepared me that he’d probably give me the ick lol.

But, that wasn’t to say I wasn’t enjoying myself.
I laughed, I applauded, I was impressed and moved.
There was real talent here.
I just didn’t belong to it.

This was a sanctuary for people who used art as a hiding place, not a mirror.
And me?
I was the kind of person who’d peel back the curtain in a glance. 



I stayed the full two and a half hours.
Not for him, but for the art.
He’d warned me up front he’d be busy helping set up and playing host to pay me any attention during.

“Fine,” I’d said, “I’ll be prepared to be social, but do come find me in the crowd.”
What’s a first date without a little sexy chase?



The clapping for the final screening turned into the low roar of mingling.
And he never came.
Not even a text.

That was when I really knew this probably wasn’t going to work.
He was too busy basking in the communal glow of mutual ego-stroking, too enamoured with his place in this little ecosystem to be bothered to let an outsider in.

Even if that outsider came in a considerably nice package.

Instead of ghosting, I was benevolent and sent a dagger wrapped in silk: 

“So, are we meeting or am I making the pilgrimage back to my car?”

He replied immediately, “very, very back”, and I cursed myself for going to him instead of making him crawl to me.

But, curiosity had its hooks in me.

I’d not found myself in a situation like this before and was too committed to the plot to not be willing to be made martyr.
Savour the absurdity, even if only to laugh about it later.

It felt very human.
Look at my generosity. Lol.



He was so awkward when we met, which surprised me.
The man had been around for fourty-nine years and had toted himself as an eye contact enthusiast but barely had the will to look at me, even though I knew he liked what he saw.

Over the phone, he’d sung my praises, claimed he could tell (from talking the little we had) how much smarter, sharper, self aware, and karmically superior I was to most people.
His assessment, not mine.

I knew this was true, but always found it suspicious when men took to me so instantly.

I was firmly on the side that believed truly knowing someone took time, years even, no matter how intuitive you were, and it was the knowing that was attractive, not anything else.
Sex appeal was great and flirting was fun but I was looking for a long-term partnership and understanding on a star dust level.

I wanted connection etched in bedrock, not just sparks.
So, I distrusted eagerness, yet clung to the naive hope that someone might see me as instantly as I saw them.
The only way to differentiate was in person, so here I was. 


The night before, he’d sent me a photo of himself unprompted.

A lot of men did this when what they really wanted was a photo in return.

I couldn’t care less about participating in this modern exchange ritual and always ended up sending unhinged photos back as my way of warning that I wasn’t the type of girl who was going to do what you expected.

When he finally saw me in person, he gave me a slow up and down and said,
“The way you felt like you had to make a scary face in your photo last night…”

He said it like he was diagnosing a symptom rather than flirting, but he did look me in my eyes then.

My initial reaction was to think: First of all sir, I didn’t feel like nothing lol, that was a CHOICE, but instead said, “What do you mean?”
I blinked slow, like a cat assessing prey.

He looked me over again. 

“You don’t have to hide or be insecure,” he said in a tone that mistook condescension for insight, “…you’re beautiful.”
I stared at him with the pity of a shark noticing an earthworm had challenged it to a duel. This man really thought the twelve-year age advantage he had on me and that therapist licence were doing something.
I leaned into my truest, trollish self.
“Oh honey,” I purred, tossing my hair like a drag queen mid-read, “I know.”
He was knocked back by my confidence, 
“I’m just a completely unserious person,” I explained.

He blinked many times very quickly and didn’t seem to know where to go from there so I asked, “Are you a serious person?”
A funny thing, I thought, given the comedy crowd of freaks and weirdos but he just looked back at me with the most serious expression and said, “No. I am not”.

I laughed.
He didn’t.

I felt like I knew all of his traumas in that instant.
Maybe not all of their shapes, but definitely their weight.
The way he held himself just apart, the careful choreography of his indifference. 
How he’d sanded down his edges and varnished himself into something presentable, but the cracks still shone through.
And he knew I saw them.
We were never going to click because he was still trying to hide, despite all the work he’d done to make it seem like he wasn’t.

His friends descended then, liqueured and loud, their personas polished to a high gleam. 
They circled me, a dissonant note in their scene, too high fashion, too unapologetic in my designer and leather. 
Where he retreated, they leaned in, a pack of hungry curiosities. He melted back into the crowd while I became a little bit of a spectacle: a woman (novelty enough), but also, one who wasn’t bothering to perform.
Where their banter was a rehearsed volley of punchlines tossed like coins at a wishing well, my laughter was mine, unscripted.
My wit landed blunt and dry.

I watched their eyes flicker with awe and unease at the thrill of something real, especially at a party of Hollywood facades.
Their admiration was flattering, but empty.
Like being handed a bouquet of already dead flowers.
Still pretty, but nothing I’d ever take home or waste a vase on.

One boy in particular, with medium length blonde strands grazing his shoulders, body lean and restless like it was built for fleeing or chasing, wore his clothes like a museum of other lives. He had a workman’s bomber with patches stitched on with the care of some else’s hands. Construction cargos that were frayed at the knees from labor he’d never done. A thin white tee with vintage graphic cracked and faded, whispering of a decade before he was even born and an oversized wooden cross around his neck. 
He was a collage of borrowed time and art, as if he’d dressed himself in the artefacts of strangers, trying on their stories to see if any fit.
He began to flirt with me and my date did nothing to interfere.

He’d turned from his side conversation once to become a spectator of our back and forth, but that was it.
When I circled back, he said “Well, I still have other friends I want to talk to…”
delivering the line like a bad actor remembering his cue.

I raised my eyebrows in delightful shock. 

Audacious. A masterclass of self-sabotage.
“Ok, I’ll leave you to it then, I guess…”

I couldn’t believed he’d accepted the ‘L’ so easily.

After talking all that talk too.

All that performative “self-awareness” and therapist certified openness collapsing because I’d actually taken him at his word.
He’d folded like a man who’d spent years studying vulnerability but never practiced carrying its weight.

An attractive midwestern woman came up to us and he introduced her as one of his costume designer friends. 
She had a genuine sparkle behind her eyes when I asked her about her work, a rare glow of unguarded passion.
Different.
Interesting.
I decided if my date couldn’t muster the energy to flirt, I’d happily redirect mine toward her.
Her boyfriend eventually joined the conversation and we all got along so well that they invited me to join the community choir they were in and hugged me goodbye with a lingering, “we really hope we see you again”.
My date sighed, watching more of his friends adore me and asked if I’d parked far.

“A month’s journey,” I deadpanned. 

He just looked at me like that was really unfortunate and said, “It was nice to meet you”. 


I had a fuller picture of him now.

I wondered if the monastery had been his first rebellion or his first hiding place. 

He was a man who’d traded one script (Hollywood son) for another (spiritual seeker), after another (therapist, carpenter, chef) without ever asking who he’d be off-book.

He’d spent 15 years praying to disappear and now, here he was in a backyard full of people screaming to be seen, and he was still just…gone.

He’d been the ghost in this story, all along.
It gave clown energy, honestly.
And that wasn’t even a dig, he actually was a clown.
Had gone to Clown School and everything.

I thought he’d been kidding when he’d told me but he’d been dead serious.

He was the first man in all my years of dating that hadn’t offered to walk me out.
So, I sent my location to my friend and texted live updates as I made the journey back to my car. Beside a police helicopter circling above, blasting warning + spotlight at a suspect on foot, and a homeless woman who threw a shoe at me, I made it unscathed.

While I walked, I considered the lesson.
I had gotten exactly what I’d came for: a full diagnostic of another soul and a lot of charcter study. He had abandoned me to Hollywood Boulevard’s nightly gauntlet of action-movie-worthy activity, but, I saw how growing up in a Los Angeles without an awareness of what “East Los” was, meant he had come from a very different walk of life. We did not have the same POV, but I’d walked through sharper for the wear.
Maybe that was gift.
Not the connection I’d half hoped for, but the cold clarity of walking away from a man who thought disappearing was depth, who mistook a therapist’s license for wisdom.
The universe wasn’t teaching me, it was confirming what I already knew.

This was the curse of living in a city of dreamers: everyone was so busy auditioning for their next identity (Dating App Protagonist, Tortured Artist, Enlightened Soul, Clown), that they forgot to exist when the spotlight dimmed. 
When someone’s gaze (mostly mine) stripped them of their costumes.

I was too good at spotting performances because I was a performer myself, but I was also comfortable enough to admit it.
And that, more than anything, was what made finding equals hard.

I never confused costumes for skin.

Mirrors are lonely places when everyone is too busy rehearsing to look.