Cowboys, Celebrities & Walking Contradictions

“You only fuck celebrities,” said an ex-lover of mine, who was trying to get me to sleep with him again one lonely night last winter on the Santa Monica Pier.

“That’s not true,” I replied. “I have only been with two or three men who happen to have notoriety in some worlds, and one of them was really just a friend who wanted me to join in on a threesome.”

The truth is, prior to that night my romantic history of the last two years could have been chronicled on imdb.com. However, this was not something that I was consciously aware of, nor did I want to make it a habit. I lived for passion and excitement, and the men I was spending time with provided that.

I’ve never cared about money. I’ve been with the most starving of artists to the highest paid actor in television. At the end of the day, the bottom line is always the same. When it comes to matters of the heart, the heart is all that matters.

A man’s fortune won’t stomp through the city with me hand-in-hand, exploring endless possibilities for love and adventure into the night. And a man’s fame won’t brush my hair out of my face, look deeply into my eyes, and take me in his arms like I am quite possibly the most precious and desirable thing he has ever touched.

So where and when did my taste for loving so hard and long in Los Angeles arise? I suppose it started with my affinity for cowboys and the Wild West.

I have always believed that whatever we fall in love with as children, we continue to love as adults. We may forget what these things are, but when faced with reminders, the love rushes back with a vengeance.

I was obsessed with horses when I was a little girl. In addition to dancing until a pool of sweat surrounded my shoes on the dance floor, and skating until my quads turned to jello, horseback riding made me feel free.

Who better to ride with than a cowboy with grit and sensitivity, someone to kiss the fire and salt off my lips, caress my spirit and shoot straight from the hips? I thought I found my cowboy not too long ago when I dated a man who played such a character in an early ‘90s flick. But it was just a movie. It was just a fairy tale. Mr. sensitive cowboy was not a real person, and my Golden Globe boyfriend was simply playing a part.

It’s quite possible that I’ve spent my entire life looking for someone to take his place, the cowboy character not the actor. The thing with cowboys is they are often trouble, something not unfamiliar to me.

I was somewhat of a wild child during adolescence. I used to roam the streets in the bad parts of my hometown until 4:00 a.m., carrying a pint of Jack Daniels, a can of Mountain Dew, a pack of Marlboro Reds, and a jack knife. I hitchhiked and I stole things. I spray painted Pink Floyd lyrics on the wall of my high school gym. I lost my virginity at far too young of an age in a cornfield across the street from the engineering plant where my Dad worked.

That phase of my life lasted for only a brief period of time, but the urban angst and appeal to chaos stayed with me for many years. My friends in college used to say my attraction to rebels and misfits sprung from my desire to “nurture and save all the lost cowboys.” These are the same confidantes who nicknamed me “Vixen,” and said I was a femme fatale – so smooth and in control of every guy who dared pursue me. Looking back, I suppose I did come across that way. Like that Flaming Lips song, “I thought there was a virtue in always being cool.”159627088_a05470f092

However, I was really just one giant walking contradiction, as so many individuals with such brazen bravado are. I have never been smooth or in control. And I wasn’t always a wild child. There was a time when even I was a rainbow-unicorn-pink-muffin girl. Underneath the Hollywood battle scars, she is still in there, and she’s looking for someone daring enough to understand her wild child, her Vixen, and her pink muffin girl.

I don’t want to “save all the lost cowboys,” but I love the idea of riding alongside and lying in the arms of just one.

Here’s the catch. I am horrible at relationships. I either give too much or not nearly enough. I either dive in head first, or I walk along the edge of the water, while my reflection and my lover both stick their tongues out at me. I am not the slightest bit domestic. I don’t cook. I don’t clean. And you can forget about asking me to fix anything around the house. An ex-boyfriend of mine once called me the “consummate bachelor.”

“You’re practically a guy,” he said one night as I opened my pathetic excuse for a refrigerator, which occupied one item – a bottle of vodka.

I lack staying power. I’m a workaholic. I make mistakes – a lot.

But I have loved deeper than my depth, and I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t do for the chance to love and run free with Adventure’s Son.

So what’s a girl who is so clearly a tragic yet hopeful walking contradiction to do?

The only answer I can surmise is, keep her eyes opened and her heart aware of someone who could possibly be a walking contradiction as tragic and hopeful as her.

No actors or rock stars, please.

Image by Kevin Zollman.