Divorce, Drinking and Dating

by Danielle Prahl

  One of my best friends growing up, Terri, was from out of town. Her family moved to Laramie, and she joined my third-grade class at the beginning of the year. She had jet black hair and wore tie-dye clothes, which was unlike anything I had ever seen. Terri’s family was different than mine and different from the rest of the people in town, and I loved every second of that. They all had dark-colored hair and eyes, and fair skin that almost made them look like they had perpetual bags under their eyes, making them seem even more mysterious.

  Terri and I became fast friends. I spent many a night over at their house listening to the stories of the places they had visited and learning about her mom’s journey as an artist. They had a garage sale once, and they graciously gave me a Katherine Hepburn autobiography on audio tape and a gold kimono. I had no clue what a kimono was at the time; I just thought it was a really cool bathrobe that rich people wore, and I often threw it on in the mornings when it was cold, to eat breakfast in before school.

  Little did I know that the garage sale was a preamble to them moving away. After a South Park marathon on a snowy Saturday, Terri spilled to me that they would shortly be moving to Sacramento, California. I was devastated. It seemed again that California was haunting me. We made plans that I would take a bus to see her after she moved (because a plane was too expensive and a bus just seemed more logical), but neither of us realized that they didn’t allow third graders to travel via bus alone, and that my allowance money wouldn’t get me to the bus station, let alone halfway across the country.

  My mom was a sheriff deputy, and one of her cases happened to be a murder case that gained national attention. A young man named Matthew Shepard was beaten to death, not far outside of the city limits of our little town. I remember finding some paperwork about it, one early morning, on our kitchen table. My mom must have been up late, because she forgot to put it up. It wasn’t anything spectacular or serious, but I do remember seeing Matthew Shepard’s name on the paper and not thinking much of it. It was 1998, and Matthew ended up dying. I was 11 years old.

  This caused a lot of serious heartache for many people connected to the case, not only his family, but also his friends and our town. It was like dropping a pebble in a puddle of water; it simply rippled out from there. Matt was HIV-positive, and my mom, being the first person to respond to the scene, was giving him CPR trying to save his life. The department she worked for had ordered cheaper gloves than usual that kept breaking, and, in her high-pressure situation, she ran out and went ahead with CPR anyway. I like to think that this act bought Matthew a few more days on this earth. They may not have been conscious ones or the time you would hope for, but enough time for his family to be able to come and be with him before he passed.

  Unfortunately, my mom was exposed to HIV when she tried to save him, as she had cuts all over her hands from building a lean-to for our llamas. (I tried to tell you we were country folk that lived in the middle of nowhere.) She had to be put on AZT drugs and would be tested months down the line to make sure she had not contracted it. During this time, I remember her being scared, afraid to touch us, afraid of what may happen. She was sick all of the time, vomiting, her hair falling out. She couldn’t work even though she loved her job, as she spent most her time in the upstairs bedroom on the floor near the toilet.

  My stepdad was now granted the glorious job of caring for three girls who did their best to give him a run for his money. I even blew up a casserole dish once while trying to make mac and cheese with my friend. I didn’t know casserole dishes couldn’t go on the stove top. I just thought it was a “pretty dish,” and didn’t know why we never used this to cook in on the stove. Now I know.

  While she was dealing with the misery of being poisoned at the cellular level to hopefully save her life, the case garnered national attention, and the media was all over it. There were many aspects to the case that people were interested in. For one, Matthew was openly gay (and I don’t care what anyone said, that was not the norm in our town at the time), plus it was starting to come out about his HIV, among other things. My mom now had to deal with being sick from the medication, as well as getting calls from the media, people questioning how she could be so stupid as to risk her life to save a “gay,” or praising her as a hero. It was a strange dichotomy and a stressful time for us, yet I can’t imagine what Matthew’s family must have been going through at the time.

  A doctor in Denver heard about my mom’s story and offered to pay for her to get some sort of advanced early blood screening to make sure that she didn’t contract HIV, so that she could stop the drugs early and continue her life. It was truly a blessing. I was too young to remember his name now, but wherever you are, sir, we are in a great deal of debt to you. She hated taking those drugs, and we could finally find out one way or the other the fate of my mom’s health and life. I am happy to say that her test came back negative for HIV, and it seemed that life could resume for us as normal. Yet, normal it was not.

  A theater company wanted to make a play out of the story and ended up visiting our home. It was the first time I had met actual people who were actors, writers, and directors for their real full-time jobs. I was fascinated by these people from New York and asked them question after question when they came to our house to interview my mom. My mom didn’t really want to talk to anyone at the time, but I guess they had gotten in touch with her and, with encouragement from my grandma, there was something about them that made her feel their intentions were in the right place.

  I was late to the party, because nobody told me that they were coming. I had been out doing early trick-or-treating with a friend and walked into our living room dressed as a dead bride with fake blood all over me, to find a bunch of well-dressed New Yorkers in our house. I loved them immediately. I wanted to be an actress at that age, and I’m sure I bothered them incessantly about everything I possibly could.

  The play they wrote went on to be The Laramie Project, which is still being performed all over the world. HBO later decided to make a movie out of it, and because my mom was a character portrayed, she was invited to Los Angeles for the press conference that year for all of HBO’s upcoming shows. My mom hates the press, doesn’t like to talk to strangers, and is an extremely private person. Her immediate instinct was to say no, but I caught wind of it and all I heard was California, so I begged her to go and bring me with her.

  After much back and forth, she decided to go (I know wholeheartedly it was mostly for me) and somehow convinced them to allow me to come with her and my stepdad. We would be making the trek out to Pasadena, California to the Ritz Carlton for the press conference, and my mom would be speaking as a panel member. I can recount so many things about that trip: how at age 13, I flew first class and rode in a limo for the first time, how I got to meet Monica Lewinsky, how Alec Baldwin taught me how to take a selfie (before selfies were even a thing), and how I got to sit at a table with the head of HBO and eat fancy food I couldn’t pronounce the names of.

  What really stuck out to me about that trip, though, was a feeling that I would never forget. As I sat in my hotel room and looked out the window at the lights of Los Angeles beyond us, all I felt was magic. These sparkling lights of the skyline at night pumped something into my veins that felt like pure opportunity, excitement, and yet somehow also felt like home. This experience cemented in me that I could do and be and have anything I wanted in life, and that California was where I was meant to be. I could barely sleep the rest of the trip and sat up for hours with the radio on, looking out at those lights, dreaming of the woman who I would become living in this beautiful place.

  Chapter 3:

  Our Love Story

  I moved from Laramie to Denver, Colorado pretty much as soon as possible after high school. After I finished up some courses at the University of Wyoming, I headed to Denver and enrolled in hair school. Going to hair school full time was extremely hard, and I balanced it with working an additional 40 hours a week as a waitress at night, with doubles on my �
�days off.”

  Why Hair? Why Denver? Denver was the closest “big city” near to my small town. That and everyone told me I was nuts and would never make it in California, it seemed like a safe enough in-between to see if I could survive. Being a good two hours from home and experiencing a taste of the city life was great; the problem was that I didn’t want to follow a traditional career track in corporate America. I just felt there was something much, much larger that I could do. Growing up, I always had a strangely close bond with my hairstylists, and being a stylist seemed to offer the opportunity to be creative and to work for myself. I didn’t know quite what it was I was called to do yet, but helping women feel good about themselves and being my own boss seemed kind of on the right track, so hair school it was. I was a large proponent of self-help and working on my mindset long before that was a buzz word.

  When I was in hair school, living in a studio apartment with a bed to my name and a computer I bought for $100, my mom sent me a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. Before that I fell in love with Jack Canfield’s success principles. Marianne Williamson’s A Woman’s Worth is still to this day one of my favorite gifts to give to women I connect with, who seem to be at a low point when I know their highs have SO high to go. I’ve always envisioned a life much bigger than the one I currently had.

  After completing the 1800-hour cosmetology program and passing my licensing exam, I sublet my downtown Denver apartment and decided to head home for three months (to save money before I finally made the trek to California). I got my old job back from high school and moved back in with good ol’ mom. Even though it seemed like one step forward, two steps back, I knew ultimately it would allow me to leap ahead.

  Everyone told me I would fail (except my ever-encouraging parents of course, even though they weren’t thrilled), but I packed all the clothes I owned into the backseat of my Ford Mustang and drove straight through to California. Initially, I stayed with the one person I knew in the area from my hometown, who had graduated years earlier. He lived about an hour outside of LA and while that would be a bit of a trick, he was gracious enough to let me live rent-free until I found my own place. Due to sheer perseverance and lady balls, I landed a job at a super high-end salon and found a shithole place to live within three months. (For real shithole, as in a room in damn near South Central that had bugs in it. Gotta start somewhere, right? Welcome to Hollywood, what’s your dream?)

  It was a fateful night in Hollywood the evening I met H, the man who would later become my husband. By this time, I was living in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Koreatown and spent most of my time at work. To celebrate a coworker’s fiancé’s birthday, we all went to a nightclub called Echo. I was basically the 13th wheel in a group full of couples, so I had a few drinks, meandered around making friends, and made my way to the dance floor.

  The next thing I knew, a tall and strikingly handsome man grabbed my arm and, beneath his low tipped baseball cap, said to me, “Hey, want a drink?” Of course, I said yes. We were at the bar waiting to get our drinks when it seemed this guy knew everyone in the place. I believe he introduced himself at some point, but I was not exactly listening. The lady bartender knew this mystery man as well and handed us shots across the bar for no reason (Patrón, which I don’t care for, but hey, free drinks).

  We were dancing and having fun, caught up in our own little world. This guy asked me for my number, and I handed him my phone. We chatted a bit but not about anything important. To be fair he wasn’t particularly my type, but I hadn’t really been on a date or met anyone I liked much, even though I’d been in California for some time now. All I really did was work, work more, work some more, attend stand-up comedy classes, and go on hikes or to the beach. That was my life. I looked around and realized that my friends were no longer at their table or on the dancefloor for that matter. I tried calling one of them and was informed they had made their way back to the hotel, which meant I had been left at Echo. It wasn’t too far, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but I decided it was time to call it a night as well.

  Somehow, mystery man, whose name turned out to be “H,” convinced me to let him drive me home, as his car was across the street and I didn’t live very far. This was not normally something I would ever agree to, but he somehow convinced me that this was a totally reasonable idea. I had my keys between my knuckles for safety and 911 on speed dial, so I guess as a 21-year-old girl in a huge city, it seemed fine.

  We walked over to the parking garage and climbed in his Range Rover. I was sitting in the passenger seat when two more guys climbed in the back, “Hey, H, can you drive us to Studio City real quick?” H told them no at first, but eventually they wore him down, and he asked if I was cool to take a quick drive. My home was a few minutes away, and Studio City was not. There was no way in hello I was going to Studio city “real quick” with these people, and wasn’t even convinced taking a ride to my house was a great idea. Now, I’m not great at math or anything, but I was counting the number of men in the car in comparison to me and something didn’t add up. I swiftly hopped out of the car, chucked him the peace sign behind me and scurried out of there. One short cab ride later, I was safe at home.

  The next morning, I awoke to a text message of H’s abs with an accompanying text, “This is what you missed out on last night.” I responded with a screenshot from the Internet of a girl tied up in a basement and say, “No, actually, this is probably more what I missed out on last night.” You know, given the awkward circumstances we left on. He sent that text at around 3 AM, so I dismissed it as a drunk text and got on with my day.

  Over the next several days, H reached out to me pretty regularly. We had good banter back and forth, He didn’t shy away from my sadistic humor responses and actually seemed to have a decent sense of humor himself. He asked me out quite a few times, and I more or less brushed the subject under the rug. Truthfully, he wasn’t really my type. Sure, he was good-looking (from what I remember, it was dark and he was in a hat for Christ’s sake), but physically he was different from most people that I’ve dated. I could get over that, but more unforgivably, he seemed to think highly of himself.

  Late one night, my mom called while my roommate at the time was out (she was never really home), and I was telling my mom about how lonely I had been. Sure, I had made some amazing friends in LA and was always working, but I wished I could meet someone to date, have fun with, maybe make-out with once in a while. I almost felt like a prisoner who hadn’t had any sort of human contact in ages. Getting my hair washed at work was really the only time I had another human touch me, as people aren’t really touchy feely in LA. Living in a major city can be weird that way at times, being constantly surrounded by people yet feeling so alone, especially as a new person in town without familiar faces to run into. Even a random friendly hug would be nice. As warm as it was outside, it felt...cold.

  “You said you met a guy a few weeks ago that keeps inviting you out, why don’t you just go out with him?” My mom brought it up in a fashion that only mothers can.

  “Yeah, I know Mom, but he just isn’t my type.”

  “Isn’t your type how?”

  “He just isn’t. I can’t really explain it.”

  “Well I’m sick of hearing you complain that you are lonely. Someone is adamantly asking you out, just go! Hell, if nothing else you’ll get a free dinner! Have a little fun.”

  I decided she was right. The next time H asked me out, I would accept his invitation. Two days later at work, I got a text from him inviting me to dinner (because, you know, people only text these days and have lost the ability to make an actual phone call). I told him I couldn’t that night, but I’d be happy to the next night on Saturday, if he was around. I wasn’t a last minute date type; either he would take 24 hours to wait and put some shit together, or he sucked at life and we weren’t going out at all. He said tomorrow was great. The next day, we had our usual banter about absolutely nothing, and H informed me that we were going to dinner around
8 PM that night. “So, what time should I pick you up?” he asked.

  “Umm, no thanks. I’ll drive.” I couldn’t get my possible kidnapping in his car last time out of my head. Plus, it just didn’t really seem safe. I know that was all gentlemanly and such, but I’d rather have my own car and be able to leave when I wanted.

  “Alright, fine, you can park in my parking garage, I’ll text you the location.”

  “Can’t you just tell me the address of the restaurant? I’d rather meet you there…” This started to make me feel paranoid.

  “LOL you are really on one, aren’t you? Listen I’m not trying to trap you or something. Since you won’t let me pick you up, you can park in my parking garage at my building. It’s free. There’s a visitor’s area and you can come and go when you want. The restaurant is across the street but street parking is horrible and your only other option is expensive valet.”

  Well, shit.

  A few hours later he texted me again, “Hey cutie, send me a pic.” Ugh. I loathed this text message more than anything on this earth. If I wanted you to have a picture of me, you would have one. That would be because we had actually spent time together or knew one another. The only thing guys use pictures for is their weird mental fantasies, to ask their friends’ opinions, or to brag later on. No thanks.

  I sent back a picture of the creepy guy on the tricycle in a mask from the Saw movie. “No for real,” he responded, unamused. “Send me a picture…”

  “Why, you forgot what I looked like already? That’s okay. I forgot what you looked like, too.” Which was true, I really couldn’t quite remember at this point what the guy looked like. Sure, I remember thinking he was attractive, but it was dark, I was drunk, and his hat was covering most of his face.

  That text seemed to shut him up. As I arrived per the instructions at his building, I pulled into what appeared to be a Bed Bath & Beyond parking structure and found an empty spot. I headed toward the elevator to find an attractive man standing by the exit the doors. I immediately recognized it was him. He gave me a hug and made funny comments, and I felt at ease immediately. I was nervous beforehand about the date, the logistics, all of that stuff, but that melted away the moment we met up.