I’m doing yoga at Palisades Park in Santa Monica with a friend, when a tall, thin guy with long hair and carrying a guitar approaches. He has that aging rock-star look, which I find … hot.
He says, “Hey, y’all, can anyone join your yoga class?”
Southern drawl? Also, hot. “Oh, it’s not a class,” I say. “Can anyone get a song on your guitar?”
He hoists the guitar and launches into a beautiful ballade. I feel the late afternoon sun on my arms, smell the ocean breeze. I’m reminded why I love Santa Monica, where I moved to from New York after my divorce, looking for a fresh start, and where I’ve remained single ever since.
After the song, the stranger, Clayton, tells us that he moved to L.A. from Georgia in his 20s. He says he got “the biggest signin’ deal of any first-time recording artist.” Now he’s working on the score for a movie with the “biggest producer attached.”
Is this true? I want it to be true. It’s hard to meet a straight guy over the age of 45 who’s successful, single … and has hair. We exchange numbers, but I can’t tell if he’s interested in me romantically. I’ve been single for so long, it’s hard to feel appealing. As a child, I knew I was special, and I knew why: because my mother told me.
But I don’t live with a praiseful parent or a supportive spouse, no. And I work at home; no office mates say, “Cute shoes!” Or “What healthy lunch choices.” I live with a praise deficit, in a vast compliment desert.
The next day Clayton calls and asks me out on a date. Over coffee, he says, “I can write an entire movie script in one week. My agent has never read such good scripts.” Later that week, over drinks, he says, “I got into the Atlanta Boys Choir on my first try.” As if it took everyone else multiple tries.
He picks me up from Los Angeles International Airport — an act of chivalry that deserves knighthood. He has his guitar in the car. Inching home on Lincoln Boulevard, he plays a song he’s composing while steering with one knee. “This song is gonna to be a huge hit,” he says.
Clayton is cool and kind and a big braggart. When I mention that my stomach is bothering me, he says, “I’m gonna cook you the best dinner you’ve ever eaten!”
This brag worries me. I worked as a food critic in New York City. There’s no way Clayton’s very seared salmon with watermelon radish can top a Jean-Georges chocolate mousse.
I finally snap: “Clayton! No one talks this way. You don’t hear me saying, I don’t know, ‘I scored so high on those standardized tests in high school, my score went right off the chart. They couldn’t even keep my score on the chart, that’s how high I scored.’ ”
And then I stop. I had totally forgotten about my excellent test scores. They used to give me a lot of confidence, but I never talk about standardized test scores now because I’m an adult. But since I don’t, they have disappeared from my story of myself. I am more versed in my deficits than my strengths these days.
Clayton is on to something. That night, I call my yoga friend. “We need to start bragging like Clayton,” I say. “But also, keep our friends.”
We hatch a plan: We will start a weekly bragging practice. It will be like a meditation practice but more aggressive. Bragging is not like some tepid self-affirmation; it’s competitive. It’s like my mother.
We decide to begin that Saturday. We have plans to work in the morning, walk to the Korean spa for a scrub, then go to a friend’s improv show where Clayton will join us. As we’re walking to the spa, my bragging buddy is supposed to start. I see her struggling. “Uh. I am really good at … uh, walking down the street?” she says.
“You do have a nice walk,” I say. “And me? I’m really good at, um … It’s so cool how I’m always carrying a cup of coffee around everywhere I go. Like I’m just so comfortable here … in the crosswalk … drinking coffee?”
Bragging is not easy. After a lifetime of being pleasant, polite and self-effacing, trying to brag is like taking a final you haven’t studied for, given in a foreign language.
We arrive at the spa late, but they charge us for the whole hour anyway. After the scrub, I realize I left my phone at home and can’t call Clayton with the improv’s address. I feel bad about all this, but I have made a commitment to brag, so I have to see how these snafus reflect positively on me.
Then I do see it. “You know, I pack a lot in one day,” I say. This is true, but without the bragging practice, I would not have seen it.
My friend and I stick with our bragging practice for six months, longer than the relationship with Clayton lasts. But the experience left a positive impact.
Later, I have plans to travel back to New York City, and my lodging falls through. A friend says, “You have nowhere to stay. You should probably cancel your trip.”
This seems like reasonable advice, but after all that bragging, it sounds off. Is he suggesting that even though I lived in New York for 20 years, I don’t have any friends there I can crash with? I say, “A lot of people want me to stay with them.”
This brag becomes true. I wind up splitting my time between my friend Ben’s on the Lower East Side and Katie’s on the Upper West. As I’m dragging my suitcase down the subway stairs at midnight to switch apartments, I think, “This was a stupid plan.”
But then I hear a Southern drawl in my head. I look around the empty station and say, “I am good at dating, because I learn something valuable from everyone I meet.”
I track down Clayton this spring to make sure he’s OK with being written about. He’s back in Georgia, with “a great new band,” he tells me. About the story, he says, “Go ahead. If you got it, flaunt it.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But my story is about you, um, kind of being a big braggart.”
He pauses and then tells me that when he was young, he had a chance to play guitar with an older, impressive musician. He denigrated his own skills. The older man stopped him, saying that how you talk about yourself becomes your reality. Clayton has been making an effort to speak positively about himself ever since.
It’s easy to think guys in L.A. are egotistical or narcissistic. But this was a reminder that men struggle with these issues too. We’re all out here doing our best, trying to find someone to love.
The author is an author, journalist and budding stand-up comedian in Santa Monica. She shared a version of this essay at the L.A. Affairs Live storytelling event in April. Find her on Instagram at @wendypariscomedy.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
