The Rubber Pants Projects
July 11th, 2008 | 8:33 pm
The people you meet at Bronson Canyon, colloquially the real-life Bat Caves, are exactly as weird as what you'd
expect them to be.
There are the folks with their BatMan belt buckles snapping photos with their cellphones. There are the
requisite hippies with unleashed dogs and hacky-sacks who always seem to be hanging out wherever
something famous once happened. There's a family from the mid-West, bright pink and consulting a map. And
there's someone asking you passionately to sign a petition for something about the Patriot Act and yet,
unfortunately, they don't have a pen.
A friend and I were there with our dogs for a short hike, and stifling our giggles. Freaks are funny, especially if
you've been one yourself. Even the dogs seem to notice the insanity. But what we didn't expect to see was the
young couple who woke up that Saturday morning with him saying: "I have a dream to make a movie and you're
going to help me."
We saw the him of the couple first. He was methodically pushing a small grocery cart through the dark cave.
The cart contained a skateboard, a boom-box, and two rolls of paper towels, among other things. And he was
wearing a white puffy pirate shirt open to the nipple and long brown rubber pants. If we were on the Venice
boardwalk, he'd be easily just another long-haired person on drugs and part of the scene.
But it wasn't the he of the couple, trudging along with the cart. It was the she of the couple, waiting at the other
end of the cave tunnel, patiently, with a movie camera aimed at him, that hit me in a soft spot. She was filming
him, taking his direction, following his orders, even, and getting absolutely nothing out of the project except
knowing that she was helping her latex pirate boyfriend with his dreams for stardom in a homemade movie that
involved a cave, a skateboard, a boom-box, and two rolls of paper towels.
I've been thinking a lot about these Rubber Pants Projects we take on when we get entangled in relationships.
From my very first boyfriend, who became my first husband, it was standard operating procedure for me to take
on these projects:
"We" needed to graduate college, so I wrote his papers for him in two English classes. Then "we" needed to
buy a house, so I asked my grandmother for help with a down payment. Then, after I supported him for a while
with my first job, he finally got a job selling insurance, however since he worked for one company, he could only
sell their products, so "we" needed to get licensed, too.
The "we" of course meaning me. Yes, at age 23, I took a six-week class to get my life and health insurance
salesperson license, while working my real job. And I scored the highest grade in the history of the strip-mall
insurance school. They even asked me to be an instructor. But the licensing was just to keep the peace in my
marriage. There was nothing about having an insurance license that I wanted, except to make my husband
happy.
Then there was the Amway, and another pyramid scheme involving a diet drink powder, and a huge investment
toward resistance ropes that you hang over a doorway for exercise. I didn't understand. I just participated. It was
part of the project of being in a relationship with him.
Then came Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. #1 decided that we would be vegetarians and only eat recipes
we prepared from the Moosewood cookbooks. So I dutifully went shopping, bought all of the ingredients,
removed all traces of animal products from the refrigerator, and set about to working full days and then coming
home and cooking entire meatless meals from scratch. Inevitably I would find out that he had no appetite
because he had gone out to a big lunch that day with his co-workers... for chili dogs.
Later, there was the depression. This became #1's main project. He decided he wanted to eventually quit his
job selling insurance and go to Medical School to become a neurologist to better understand his own brain. He
bought all of the study books and I helped quiz him nightly when I wasn't stuffing envelopes for his insurance
business or making his cold calls for him.
He became convinced he had a brain tumor and paranoia set in that everyone was against him. Never once did
I say: You're fucked up. It's probably because of your mother. Take a Paxil and go to work.
No, I just participated in the projects until one day shortly after I miscarried a baby. I just decided I was done.
When I said that, he was relieved and left. And that was that. The projects were over until the next man.
With #2, a boyfriend who was a paraplegic and an admitted alcoholic, the projects were kind of obvious: Let's
Find Wheelchair Accessible Bars, Let's Try Not to Get DUIs, and Let's Try Not to Have Diarrhea in the Bed.
#3 was the worst, because he did work, he just never made a dime doing anything. Like the latex pirate, #3's
project really was "Let's Make a Movie... for Free" and I worked my ass off. I typed contracts and set-dressed and
made copies and edited scripts and emptied the dump tank on the star trailers. I even acted. I. ACTED. And I
still went to work every day at my real job. Then #3 decided he was quitting all of the movie pursuits and that he
would ride in the Tour de France. At age 35. Having not trained for such a thing EVER. And all he needed for me
to do was to buy him a racing bike. And I did. That was near the end.
With #4, the real project became evident as I grew up and finally became self-aware:
I am the real project.
The project is not called Let's Get Him Over His Depression or Let's Build Him a Website or Let's Help His
Career or Let's Overlook His Lies and Infidelities.
The real project is called Please Like Me.
And up until a few months ago, I made it my life's work. I'll support you financially, emotionally, intellectually,
physically... if you just, well, like me. I concentrated so much on their happiness, just so they'd feel grateful to
me. If they liked me, I'd be happy. Right?
My Eureka moment came earlier this year. I think it was a combination of prozac and running and feeling
shat-upon long enough. I finally decided that this particular project, my life's work, Please Like Me, is a
one-person pursuit. And I don't have to eat tofurkey or sell you life insurance or wash poop sheets or empty
poop tanks or read e-mails from The Other Woman or play mind-fuck mystery games or fly thousands of miles
for a date if I don't want to.
The only person I need to participate in the Please Like Me project is me.
And I'm all in.
Now I might go back to Bronson Canyon, to the real Bat Caves, and make a movie about myself. You can come,
too, but the movie will star me, and be directed by me, and is all about me. Just bring the paper towels.
Comments
July 11th, 2008 | 8:33 pm
The people you meet at Bronson Canyon, colloquially the real-life Bat Caves, are exactly as weird as what you'd
expect them to be.
There are the folks with their BatMan belt buckles snapping photos with their cellphones. There are the
requisite hippies with unleashed dogs and hacky-sacks who always seem to be hanging out wherever
something famous once happened. There's a family from the mid-West, bright pink and consulting a map. And
there's someone asking you passionately to sign a petition for something about the Patriot Act and yet,
unfortunately, they don't have a pen.
A friend and I were there with our dogs for a short hike, and stifling our giggles. Freaks are funny, especially if
you've been one yourself. Even the dogs seem to notice the insanity. But what we didn't expect to see was the
young couple who woke up that Saturday morning with him saying: "I have a dream to make a movie and you're
going to help me."
We saw the him of the couple first. He was methodically pushing a small grocery cart through the dark cave.
The cart contained a skateboard, a boom-box, and two rolls of paper towels, among other things. And he was
wearing a white puffy pirate shirt open to the nipple and long brown rubber pants. If we were on the Venice
boardwalk, he'd be easily just another long-haired person on drugs and part of the scene.
But it wasn't the he of the couple, trudging along with the cart. It was the she of the couple, waiting at the other
end of the cave tunnel, patiently, with a movie camera aimed at him, that hit me in a soft spot. She was filming
him, taking his direction, following his orders, even, and getting absolutely nothing out of the project except
knowing that she was helping her latex pirate boyfriend with his dreams for stardom in a homemade movie that
involved a cave, a skateboard, a boom-box, and two rolls of paper towels.
I've been thinking a lot about these Rubber Pants Projects we take on when we get entangled in relationships.
From my very first boyfriend, who became my first husband, it was standard operating procedure for me to take
on these projects:
"We" needed to graduate college, so I wrote his papers for him in two English classes. Then "we" needed to
buy a house, so I asked my grandmother for help with a down payment. Then, after I supported him for a while
with my first job, he finally got a job selling insurance, however since he worked for one company, he could only
sell their products, so "we" needed to get licensed, too.
The "we" of course meaning me. Yes, at age 23, I took a six-week class to get my life and health insurance
salesperson license, while working my real job. And I scored the highest grade in the history of the strip-mall
insurance school. They even asked me to be an instructor. But the licensing was just to keep the peace in my
marriage. There was nothing about having an insurance license that I wanted, except to make my husband
happy.
Then there was the Amway, and another pyramid scheme involving a diet drink powder, and a huge investment
toward resistance ropes that you hang over a doorway for exercise. I didn't understand. I just participated. It was
part of the project of being in a relationship with him.
Then came Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. #1 decided that we would be vegetarians and only eat recipes
we prepared from the Moosewood cookbooks. So I dutifully went shopping, bought all of the ingredients,
removed all traces of animal products from the refrigerator, and set about to working full days and then coming
home and cooking entire meatless meals from scratch. Inevitably I would find out that he had no appetite
because he had gone out to a big lunch that day with his co-workers... for chili dogs.
Later, there was the depression. This became #1's main project. He decided he wanted to eventually quit his
job selling insurance and go to Medical School to become a neurologist to better understand his own brain. He
bought all of the study books and I helped quiz him nightly when I wasn't stuffing envelopes for his insurance
business or making his cold calls for him.
He became convinced he had a brain tumor and paranoia set in that everyone was against him. Never once did
I say: You're fucked up. It's probably because of your mother. Take a Paxil and go to work.
No, I just participated in the projects until one day shortly after I miscarried a baby. I just decided I was done.
When I said that, he was relieved and left. And that was that. The projects were over until the next man.
With #2, a boyfriend who was a paraplegic and an admitted alcoholic, the projects were kind of obvious: Let's
Find Wheelchair Accessible Bars, Let's Try Not to Get DUIs, and Let's Try Not to Have Diarrhea in the Bed.
#3 was the worst, because he did work, he just never made a dime doing anything. Like the latex pirate, #3's
project really was "Let's Make a Movie... for Free" and I worked my ass off. I typed contracts and set-dressed and
made copies and edited scripts and emptied the dump tank on the star trailers. I even acted. I. ACTED. And I
still went to work every day at my real job. Then #3 decided he was quitting all of the movie pursuits and that he
would ride in the Tour de France. At age 35. Having not trained for such a thing EVER. And all he needed for me
to do was to buy him a racing bike. And I did. That was near the end.
With #4, the real project became evident as I grew up and finally became self-aware:
I am the real project.
The project is not called Let's Get Him Over His Depression or Let's Build Him a Website or Let's Help His
Career or Let's Overlook His Lies and Infidelities.
The real project is called Please Like Me.
And up until a few months ago, I made it my life's work. I'll support you financially, emotionally, intellectually,
physically... if you just, well, like me. I concentrated so much on their happiness, just so they'd feel grateful to
me. If they liked me, I'd be happy. Right?
My Eureka moment came earlier this year. I think it was a combination of prozac and running and feeling
shat-upon long enough. I finally decided that this particular project, my life's work, Please Like Me, is a
one-person pursuit. And I don't have to eat tofurkey or sell you life insurance or wash poop sheets or empty
poop tanks or read e-mails from The Other Woman or play mind-fuck mystery games or fly thousands of miles
for a date if I don't want to.
The only person I need to participate in the Please Like Me project is me.
And I'm all in.
Now I might go back to Bronson Canyon, to the real Bat Caves, and make a movie about myself. You can come,
too, but the movie will star me, and be directed by me, and is all about me. Just bring the paper towels.
Comments
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