Idiot - Laura Clery Page 0,41

party at Shane Black’s house—he’s the director of all the Lethal Weapon movies. He has this crazy gaudy mansion that has like six floors, a huge dance floor, and an elevator.

We walked in the front door and were so confused when it seemed empty. We asked someone (his butler?) where the party was, and he answered, “Up the elevator, of course.”

Oh, of course.

At this particular party, I saw this man across the room. He was tall and handsome, and he was holding the tiniest black Chihuahua I had ever seen. I had to talk to him. The dog, of course.

I went up to him and introduced myself. His name was Rudolf and he had a slight German accent and a formal, upright demeanor. The man, I mean. The dog’s name was Comet.

“This is Comet. He likes to go to parties.”

He also had a Germanic knack for describing things with complete, literal accuracy. Later on in our relationship:

Me: How was your flight?

Rudolf: It was efficient.

His favorite joke was:

Rudolf: You know what they say about German sense of humor?

Me: No, what?

Him: It is no laughing matter.

He would then leave the room straight-faced, but I would hear him chuckling from the other room.

At the party, he asked me out on a date. We went out a few nights later, and as I got ready, I suddenly became overcome with nerves. I mean, he was seventeen years older than me. I was eighteen at the time so . . . there was almost a whole ME in between our ages! I assumed this meant that he just knew everything better than I did, that he was just better than me at life.

This is all to say that I simply didn’t know what to wear to this date. What do older people wear? Jewelry and stuff? I opened my jewelry box and pulled out every piece of jewelry I had and slipped them all on. Fourteen bracelets and four necklaces. The more bracelets I had on, the older I would look.

When he arrived, I jingle-jangled over to his car and got inside. He saw me and said very matter-of-factly, “That is a lot of bracelets.”

I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Thank you.”

That was the gist of our relationship. I tried to ignore things, cover things up, and pretend to be something I wasn’t. He called things out for what they were. He didn’t let anything slide. I loved him very much and I quickly moved in with him.

He was the sweetest man, with a genuinely kind heart. You can imagine how huge of a departure this was from Damon. I think Rudolf could easily see that I was living an immensely chaotic life and he did his best to help me step away from it. He wanted the best for me, and for the first time I had some structure in my life. After my drug-and-alcohol-filled insanity with Damon, I ate up all the structure Rudolf could give me.

For the previous six months in LA, I had gotten so far away from what I had originally come to LA to do. I wanted to act, but I had gotten so distracted. Rudolf helped me focus again. He was against drugs. He loved to have a glass of wine with dinner, but he was in no way an alcoholic like I was. It was amazing to witness.

I slowed down on my partying ways and started getting up early every day. He would swing the curtains open in the morning and pull me out of bed in order to get some morning sun, as he called it.

I would squint angrily at him. “Dude. It’s seven a.m.”

“You are correct and we are late for the sunrise. Get up, get up, get up!”

“No!”

“We need our ten minutes of vitamin D.”

No, I would not do anything for the D. Sorry Rudolf. He literally dragged me out of the house, while I engaged in passive resistance. I was not a morning person at the time. But slowly I started to change. I started to like the stupid early morning sun. It felt kind of . . . good. Damn it.

He taught me how to cook and eat right, and that healthy eating didn’t mean binge eating a bunch of carrots after binge eating a bunch of Cheetos. (Orange foods cancel out, right?)

“Go to yoga. It’s good for your head.” He handed me two dollars. Two dollars? He continued, “Yoga at the Jewish Senior Center is only two dollars. Also, it is wonderful.”

So

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