Guest Post! by Tim Coyne
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 11:45PM Homies, treat time. Today we have a guest post from my good friend, Tim Coyne. Among other things, he’s an incredible actor, writer and podcaster here in Los Angeles. Tim and I have many things in common including our love of margaritas and beer and the enjoyment we get from sharing our stories from the city of dreams. When you’re done, check out his site, The Hollywood Podcast. Drink up.
The Violinist
One of my part-time gigs is to drive around two kids for a family. I’m the driver. These kids also have a violin teacher. She’s the violinist.
A few weeks ago the mom set me and the violinist up on a date. It wasn’t a blind date, technically. Once, I was dropping one of the kids off, and she was giving the other kid a violin lesson. I peeked into the room for a second. Our eyes met. I liked what I saw and apparently she liked what she saw --enough to agree to the date. So I had some confidence going in.
But you can’t really compare the ability to drive with the ability to play an instrument, and on top of that I knew her previous boyfriend was a doctor. Doctor. Driver. Again, there’s really no comparison.
So I decided to bounce this off the 16-year-old. Over the last four years she had occasionally provided some good counsel, guiding me through some precarious dating scenarios, and she rarely pulled her punches.
“Her last boyfriend was a doctor,” I said. “Not sure if I can measure up.”
“Come on,” she argued. “You’re not getting married. It’s a date. And you’re a good guy.”
Right. I’m a good guy.
So I decided we should meet for drinks at my favorite bar. Just drinks. On stools. No tables. No tablecloths. Shoulder to shoulder. Knees to knees. NBA playoffs in the background. My perfect setting. My sweet spot. My wheelhouse.
Home field advantage.
My mantra for the night was “ask questions.” I even wrote it on my hand, “ask questions.” If I ask questions I don’t spend the night talking about myself. But I obviously wasn’t prepared. What’s a guy supposed to do when his date talks for two hours about her ex-boyfriend, the doctor?
On a first date, you listen. You suck it up and listen.
“He broke up with me because I had a little too much to drink and puked on his bed,” she said. “Can you believe it? He told me that he didn’t realize I was that type of girl, that he thought I was more in control than that.”
I made some lame vomit fetish jokes and after another hour the listening finally paid off. The details came out. The truth emerged.
The violinist is a gifted, working musician, a prodigy for as long as she can remember. But she never intended to play the violin for a living. She never wanted to. She wanted a husband, a picket fence, and babies. She wanted the violin to be a hobby.
I had no chance.
Not long ago I came across a letter my mom wrote me in 1990, during my freshman year of college. My parents had divorced a few years earlier, and my mom was just starting dating. She was excited. It was scary because my 45-year-old mother was acting like a lovesick teen.
When I re-read that letter I could feel in her words the hope and optimism that, after a life of struggles and a failed marriage, finally she would be able to take a breathe.
“I want you to meet Bill,” she wrote. “He’s very, very good to me. I am driving his car this week. He’s in Denver until Sunday. He sent me roses today. I really enjoy being spoiled this way.”
This was the time of my mom’s life when my dad had completely flaked out and wasn’t providing her or us with a dime. She was on her own and she had visions of a guy coming along and saving her.
Bill didn’t save her. He broke her heart. And so did a couple other guys.
No guy is going to save her and she knows it and I know it. She saved herself. She saved me and my brothers.
My mother hasn’t dated in over 15 years and in some ways I’m sad that she is alone. But I’m also glad. She falls apart around guys. She falls into a needy role, one she thinks she needs to play. She loses her strength.
I want to go back. Back to when I was a boy. Back to when it didn’t matter “who” I was, how great a provider I might be, what my earning potential was. Back to when being a “good guy” was good enough.
Mostly, I just want to have drinks with a girl. I want to ask her questions. I want to bump shoulders. I want to make-out.
I don’t want to save her.
Reader Comments (15)
Wow.
Wow.
This...was a good post. Really.
But who am I? Some 34 year old sitting in Hawaii...wondering if I'll ever buy a house, stop puckering my butthole from debt and how long will Il be slaving away working for a Corporate Restaurant...sigh.
Sorry...My Whine Fest is over...
Hip Hop Hippie....Awesome choice for guest post!!
Simpler times. I want those too.
Hey Tim, very nice writing!
Sorry you had to deal with that nonsense of her talking about the stupid doctor. He probably was a loser doctor, like a chiropracter or an optometrist.
I can relate to this myself. Saving someone is a big responsibility to heap on someone or to be landed with. And things were certainly easier when dates were about meeting a person and learning about them without having to have your guard up or your inner anxieties show through. When it wasn't about the future so much as the now. No one wants their future mapped out in a first date, they just want conversation and drinks and relaxation and good times.
My mother had a similar situation at a similar age to yours - where she found herself free of my dad after years of unhappiness and like yours, she saved us and herself. But she just prospered after that. Took trips places she'd always wanted to go, owned her own apartment, made new friends, called the shots for once. It was inspiring. She had one boyfriend she still has to this day. They don't live together and she likes it that way. I hope I can be half as strong as that.
I don't want to be saved, I want the strength to save myself if necessary. I don't want to go into something with a plan, I want to see where it leads.
Maybe your violinist wants a date and some fun, maybe more. I guess all you can do is go with the flow!
Great guest post.
Good idea to have a guy guest post (postman?)... gives a nice balance to the ladies poibt of view on stuff. Whodaknown that 'they' can be so sensitive, huh?
All, so happy that you're enjoying Tim Coyne's post! Isn't he incredible? Be sure to check out his site! Hot shit.
Oh Tim, you and your dating. Good writing-cast
Loved it :) Great post.
You need to find someone who doesn't need saving. Although, at certain times in our lives, I guess we all need a little bit of saving. It's all about timing. Good luck! Great post.
I once had a dream where I was in a rowboat, slowly drifting toward the lip of a waterfall. As I began to row away from the danger I noticed another person in a rowboat who was drifting toward the edge. I thought, "I should warn that person." I knew that if I helped the other person I would also be in grave danger. Then I thought, "You know, it really is every man for himself."
Not exactly Buddhist compassion, but it all made a certain undeniable sense.
I love you Tim.
WWLGAAS?
Or; What would the "Love Goddess" Amy Alkin Say?
She'd say this:
Dear Tim; the violinist is obviously still hung up on the doctor, and even though she seemed (to you, at least) to have one of those instantaneous animal attractions to you when your eyes first met (Or perhaps she was looking at that little piece of food stuck to your upper lip and didn't have the heart to tell you it was there), in the end she still wants a male credit card to take care of her and feed her guccci shoes, white picket fences, and a nice suburban home, much more than she wants to make out with her violin student's driver. And, no, she doesn't wanna get nakked and do the animal thang with you, she wants to commiserate with you as if you were her little sorority sister about her failed childhood dream of being a stay at home mom to a well off and possibly handsome money making machine she calls "my hubby". And what you want is to actually have a real conversation with a real woman you like, maybe play some tonsil hockey, and possibly even get a G-I-R-L-F-R-I-E-N-D. So....the answer is obvious; Run, don't walk. Sharks patrol these waters. And about your fear of rejection for being a driver: get yourself a nice big fat dose of self esteem....because the girl you're looking for obviously doesn't give a rat's ass about your day job and the fact that you're a struggling actor. To her, that's a huge turn on. And she's sitting somewhere right now, wondering when she's gonna meet you.
With Love, sarcasm, and a hint of the absurd,
Rosamond, masquerading as Amy Alkin.
Tim, I'd love to go on a date with you, screw the violinist. :)
There's a good lesson here with the story about your mom, especially for women, about choosing carefully early on in life, but I'm not seeing the connection with Violinist. Women who want to build families just want to be saved? Obviously you know from your Mom that being a Mom is a tough job, one of the toughest, and one that no one can ever really be "saved" from. (And who would want to be?) People can be saved from a lot of things, and it sounds like your mom wanted a meaningful companion to save her from simply being alone romantically. And as she gets older, good men become rarer, so its understandable for her to try to hold on to what she thought was a good thing. "Mostly, I just want to have drinks with a girl." Sounds like you just want to casually date, and that's great! You know what you want. But don't label women who want families as wanting to be saved, just because you want something else. Having a family takes hard work, maturity, commitment, character, and compassion, at least if one is to be good at it. Maybe you'd really like to be saved by a nice pretty lady doctor...Keep that pretty face, you'd make a nice piece of mancandy/househubby.
Tim, not sure if "landscapeofthebody" understands your point. She (assuming she's a she) has a really great point, but I don't think she understood yours. I could be wrong, but I think I'm right. We have to save ourselves before we can even begin to have a healthy relationship or a family. We can't expect someone else to do that for us. We need to enter into something whole or else it's just dysfunction city and heartbreak. I love your writing and I love this piece. And I agree with Landscape, you are very attractive. :)