by Babe Walker
“Yes, and I was really impressed by your bravery. It’s an excellent book. I’m serious. I had no idea that you were even a writer.”
I must have looked like I was going to faint or puke, because Robert put his hand on my shoulder.
“Babe, chill. It’s fine. I get it.”
“But you know everything now. You know how deeply I felt for you. You know that you’re the one person who made me realize I might want to say ‘Happy tenth anniversary’ to someone someday. I’m embarrassed.”
“Don’t be! You made me realize the same thing, but back then, I had no sense of what had gone wrong. One moment things were amazing with us, and the next you were a different person. I told you I loved you, and you immediately changed. You’re the first person I’ve really been vulnerable with and your reaction scared the shit out of me. It was really tough to lose you like that. I lost faith in love for a while . . . Don’t get me wrong, I still think you’re a little bit insane, but at least now I have a frame of reference.”
Whoa. Hearing Robert’s relationship monologue was slightly overwhelming, but he was still sitting next to me, so I was still happy.
“I thought I was going to come here today, make amends for everything that I put you through, drink some juice, and leave,” I said. “My goal wasn’t to convince you of anything or change your mind about me, Robert—I just wanted you to hear my side of the story. But I guess you already know it, so . . .”
There was a long, pregnant pause, during which Robert and I just moved our respective glasses of water around the table. It was really weird, but I could feel our hearts healing. After that little moment, it seemed like he was about to tell me something else, but then Purple came over and asked Robert what he wanted to order.
“You should get the ‘I Am Opulent.’ It’s filtered water enlivened with essential oils of grapefruit, lemon, peppermint, ginger, and cinnamon to calm digestion and uplift your being. It’s a bit on the heavy side, but I usually get it after traveling.” I smiled.
“Sure. I’ll have that.” He smiled up at Purple, then looked back to me. “So, your childhood sounded ridiculous. Did Marilyn Manson really perform at your twelfth birthday party?”
“Totally. I thought he was going to bite the head off my kitten, Percy.”
Robert let out a huge laugh. “That’s insane. I love it. Listen, is it too soon for us to start hanging out again? Even just as friends? I don’t want to mess anything up for you.” He looked genuinely hopeful.
“It’s not too soon. I wouldn’t be here if it were,” I explained.
We spent the next hour just catching up. I mostly asked him questions about his work and he asked me about my life in Utah. I only thought about him naked once. Robert was very impressed that I had stuck it out in rehab for so long. He told me that my skin looked radiant (which it did) and that he still eats at the same sushi place where we had our first date. Actually, I thought about him naked four times. Honesty.
After lunch, he walked me to my car, gave me a sweet kiss on the cheek, and we made plans to meet the following morning for a hike at Runyon Canyon. Anyone who knows anything about love knows that going on a hike with a guy is basically code for spending the rest of your lives together. Yes, somewhere in between sipping juice and making amends, I had fallen madly in love with Robert. Again.
Of course, the next morning when I woke up it was pouring, but Robert texted that he was still up for a hike if I was, and we arranged for him to pick me up at ten a.m. When we got to Runyon it was still raining pretty hard, so we just sat in Robert’s rental car, which was a weird Ford midsize SUV scenario. I was unclear on the vehicle, but it was oddly romantic. We were just two normal people in a totally normal-people car having a real moment. I was wearing a really cute Stella McCartney for Adidas top and pants that I’d purchased when we’d first started dating. Robert was the first person whom I’d ever allowed to see me sweat, besides my trainers and Mabinty.
He immediately recognized the Stella.
“I can’t believe you still have those gym clothes. I remember buying those with you in SoHo.”
“I know. It’s part of my recovery. I’m not really shopping right now,” I said proudly.
“Well, they look just as good on you now as they did back then. Maybe better.”
I laughed so loud that I kind of snorted.
“Did I say something funny?” asked Robert.
“No, I’m just happy,” I said. “I had forgotten what this was like. I feel like the end of us was so incredibly disappointing that I rarely think about how amazing things were in the beginning.”
“I know what you mean,” he agreed, exhaling harder than normal. “This just seems too good to be true.”
It was too good to be true. We were re-clicking on all the right levels. Robert’s sense of himself, his sense of humor, his belief that I had so much potential, left me feeling more confident than I had in years.
At this point we’d given up on the hike, and we just sat in the car chatting about books, ujjayi breathing, and the effect the Kardashian family has had on professional basketball and hip-hop culture. As Robert talked, he kept reaching across and putting his hand on my leg and my shoulder. At one point, while telling me a story about how tiny a certain NBA star’s penis was, I laughed so hard that a piece of my hair came out of my chic little topknot. Robert reached out to my forehead and used his middle finger to tuck the rogue strand back behind my left ear before resting his soft, strong hand on my cheek. Then he looked right inside of me and said, “I’d forgotten just how beautiful you are when you let your guard down.”
Full. Body. Chills.
I normally hate when people touch my face. I don’t really even touch my own face, but that thought didn’t cross my mind. I leaned in to him, and we had the most incredible (second) first kiss in the history of kissing. It was simple and perfect and everything I had hoped it would be.
That is, until Robert turned his beautiful face away from mine and said, “I really shouldn’t have done that . . . I’m engaged.”
four
BE THE PEACE YOU WISH TO CREATE AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS CAR.
Have you ever been at the doctor’s office, waiting in the examination room in your socks and paper gown, silently surveying your cuticles, and had the doctor walk in and tell you that you have cancer . . . and HIV . . . and you’re pregnant . . . with triplets? That’s how it felt to hear the words “I’m engaged” come out of Robert’s mouth.
My brain was on fire. I started to sweat, shake, and convulse all at once. But only on the inside. On the outside, I was cool, calm, and collected. Rehab taught me that trick.
“Oh. Um, okay. I’m so . . . I’m sorry. Congratulations?”
“No, Babe, I’m sorry,” Robert said. He slammed the steering wheel with his fists. Then he reached across the car to grab my hand, but I pulled it away. “I should have said something. But I also knew that I—that I— Fuck, Babe. Seeing you again has been really confusing . . .”
Silence.
I could feel all the rage and hate and love from Old Babe bubbling up in my chest.
“How goddamn dare you,” I whispered.
Robert looked at me with a mixture of apprehension and fear. I needed to pull it back a bit before I totally hulked out. Be the peace you wish to create and get the fuck out of this car. I smoothed my leggings down with my hands, took a breath, and looked up into his eyes.
“So, this has been really fun catching up with you, Robert. And I wish you well on your path to matrimony. But I need to go home now.”
“Okay,” Robert said, starting the car. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“Noooooo, that’s okay,” I said, forcing a smile. “I’m just gonna walk! It’s so nice out.”
“Babe, it’s pouring. Just let me give you a ride.”
“Nope, gotta go.”
Then I got out of the car and ran away. Like, really ran. “Sprint running” I think is what it’s called. Once I knew I w
as out of his sight I downgraded to a slow walk, dashed into some bushes, and threw up that morning’s smoothie. The engagement news and exercise were too much for me to handle. I tried to pretend that the rain was the universe sending me a message of renewal and purification, but this is LA and rain is filthy here.
Tears were pouring down my face. How could Robert do this to me? On one hand, his being engaged was horrible, but on the other hand, he definitely still had feelings for me. I knew this because I sensed the presence of a boner while we were kissing (a skill you obtain when you really start to pay attention to the world around you).
I was glad that I’d escaped the situation before I’d totally lost my shit. It took two hours, but I walked all the way to Bel Air in the pouring rain with my hoodie pulled over my face so no one would recognize me on my death march. Once I was back at the guest house, I showered for three hours, put on a super flowy white Chloé dress that looked like a nightgown, and wandered barefoot around the property, lightly trailing my fingers along the walls, sitting silently in corners, and floating face up in the pool for an hour. After that, I went to sleep early (at 7) in an attempt to distract myself from thinking about Robert and everything that could have been.
I awoke fifteen hours later dying for sustenance, so I threw on a robe and made my way to the main house to satisfy my cravings. Mabinty, my dad, and Lizbeth were all in the kitchen drinking coffee and going over a new landscape design scenario that they were considering for the summer. I politely contributed that the concept was unpleasant and depressing, and that I hated it, but that I wasn’t going to get involved in the reconstruction or maintenance of anything besides myself. I didn’t need any more distractions at this point in my already shaky recovery. I made a hearty glass of celery, kale, and lemon juice infused with spirulina, parsley, and a hint of cayenne, and got the hell out of the kitchen.
As I walked back to the guest house I felt uneasy—you know that weird, creepy feeling you get when you think you’re about to be murdered? I get that feeling every time I take a taxi and every time I take a shower, so every day. But I was especially overcome with this emotion as I entered the guest house. I walked into my bedroom cautiously. Everything seemed to be normal. I picked out my ensemble for the day and went into the bathroom to take a long steam shower. That’s when I saw it. Written in black lipstick, scrawled across the length of my entire fucking bathroom mirror:
You’ll never be with him because you’re too fucking fat.
Maybe I should cut off your love handles, make a smoothie out of them, and force you to drink it.
TTYL
All I recall after that is the sound of glass shattering as my green juice dropped to the floor.
five
I’M NOT WEARING A CUTE DEATH OUTFIT.
“Genevieve?!” I screamed. “I know you’re in here somewhere. I can smell your Tory Burch flats. You have five seconds to come out and apologize.”
Silence.
I speed-dialed her cell.
“Babe, I’m not in the mood to fight. I’m in a much better place today.”
“Fuck. You.”
“What?”
“Where are you?”
“Um, in Beverly Hills? Why, where are you?”
“At home, staring at my bathroom mirror.”
“Okay . . . ?”
“Do you think I’m stupid, Genevieve? I know what you did.”
“Well . . . don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been getting a colonic every Saturday morning for the past two months. And I’m obsessed. It’s like having anal sex but you lose weight instead of just feeling like a slut afterward. There, I said it. I love colonics. What are you doing later? Want to come over and lay out? I forgive you for the whole Jonathan thing. And for being such a raging cunt at the party.”
“I’m not talking about your sick colonics habit, Gen. I’m talking about that shit you wrote on my mirror.”
“Exsqueeze me?”
“How’d you do it? Did you break in while I was sleeping?”
“What the fuck are you talking—”
“The black lipstick was a nice touch, but it’s so ‘not you’ that it totally gave you away. Congratulations, you’re the rudest person I’ve ever met, and we are no longer friends.”
And with that, I hung up. I didn’t need to hear Gen’s desperate protests. I was totally frazzled and I wasn’t willing to accept that she might not be the creepy note-writer.
If the black lipstick note wasn’t from Genevieve, then I didn’t know what the fuck to think. I had to tell myself that she was feigning ignorance; otherwise the possibility remained that a murderous stalker had snuck into the guest house, written that horrible note, and was now watching me, waiting to kill. “Cut off my love handles”? Terrifying.
I called my dad and cried about the note. He told me to “get a bodyguard.” While bodyguards are unarguably chic, hiring one is a two-to-three-month process that requires tons of interviews and background checks. I wasn’t about to put myself through that. That being said, I also wasn’t about to sleep alone in the same house where I’d been victimized. Looking around my bedroom, the entire space felt compromised, like everything had been moved two inches to the right. I had to go somewhere safe, somewhere I could be me, the new me, the simpler me: Chateau Marmont.
I needed privacy. I needed space. I needed to have one bedroom to cry in and another for sleeping. I needed two bathrooms. I needed a sundeck that let the light filter in ever-so-slightly, enough to keep the room warm but not hot. I needed plants. I needed big windows. I needed a huge fireplace. I needed my own carport. I needed to feel like I was my own housewife. So I had to stay in Bungalow 1.
I called Chateau and reserved the bungalow indefinitely. Then I called Roman.
I tried him on his house phone because I find calling house phones classic and graceful.
“Hey. Are you okay?” he said. Not the hello I was expecting.
“I’m fine, of course I’m fine. What do you mean?”
“I mean, you haven’t answered any of my texts, you’re calling me on my house phone, which no one does, and when you left the party the other night we weren’t on very good terms.” He actually sounded concerned.
“Oh, I’m over that,” I half lied.
“Really? Because it’s not like you to ignore my texts. I figured you needed space to, like, adjust, or whatever?”
“Yeah, dude. Really.” I don’t know why I said “dude,” it must’ve slipped out as part of my charade.
“Dude?”
“I know, I heard it too. Let’s just move on.”
“Okay . . . what’s . . . up?” He sounded like he was getting dressed or engaging in some other activity that involved long pauses for decision making. I was annoyed that he wasn’t devoting all of his attention to me.
“So, Romie. This is going to sound nuts, but I’m in danger and my dad thinks you should be my bodyguard.”
“Wait. What?”
“I know. Someone broke into my house and wrote a heinous note on my mirror and I think I might get serial killed if I don’t get out of here so I’m moving to Bungalow 1 at Chateau. And you’re really big and strong, so I want you to move in with me.” As I said the words into the phone, the reality of the situation started to settle in.
“Holy fuck. Insane!” he said. “Do you want me to pick you up? Oh my God, this is so intense!”
“I know!”
“And actually kind of fun!”
The moment he said it I realized he was right. Having a stalker might actually be super dramatic and fun. Was this a sign that I’d made it as an artist?
“You really think I’m big?” Roman asked.
“You’re huge, babe. Huger than ever,” I said, finally starting to feel like myself again. “And don’t come get me, I’m fine. Just gonna grab some stuff, throw it in a bag, and head to the hotel. I’m stopping to pick up a juice, you wantsies?”
“Duh. Thanks.”
“See you in one to six
hours.”
“Love that. Text me.”
That evening, once a moving truck was loaded with the twenty pieces of luggage (Vuitton this time) that I was bringing to Chateau, I got the fuck out of that plagued guest house. It felt like running from a fire, but not a scary fire. More like a giant, beautiful explosion, incinerating my dark past and igniting the spark of my next chapter.
Bungalow 1 was bigger than I remembered from the last time I’d been there, and also very, very, very, very chic. But not Babe chic, and not even gay chic. Imagine a sparsely decorated, art deco-y apartment, with a maroon-tiled kitchen, vintage appliances, and an empty refrigerator. Now imagine sliding doors in both the master bedroom and living room opening out to a quiet sitting area that looks out onto a lush green lawn enclosed by tons of gorgeous greenery. Now imagine two bedrooms, one with a queen-size bed and one with two twin beds. Obviously that wasn’t going to work, so I relocated to Bungalow 2.
Bungalow 2 was a cottage situated right next to the pool and the valet area. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an enormous patio that reminded me of the solarium in the guest house. This scared me, so I re-relocated to the two-bedroom penthouse, where I finally started to feel safe. It had a dining room, a living room with a piano and another living room with no piano, two beautiful bedrooms with king-size beds, and a 1,500-square-foot terrace. Perfect. My room was all beige, which I actually loved for me, a blank slate. I knew I wasn’t going to be living at Chateau long-term, but still, it was nice to feel at home. Basically, the penthouse would be chic enough to provide the perfect setting for my daily inverted meditation practice, a routine I needed to ramp up if I was going to unscramble my increasingly malnourished meridians and reestablish a balanced chi.