#23 HOW I MET THE STELLA ADLER ACADEMY ACTOR
How I met this handsome guy who’d lived in New York who further (unintentionally) destroyed my self-esteem
In a previous post on RHSG, we established that naming the boyfriend I’d call the “Stella Adler Actor” Dorian would be easier than typing out SAA over and over – and probably better reading-wise.
I was at the “upscale” cocktail bar in downtown Valdosta called Bas Bleu one Saturday night in March 2010, a bar on the square across from the courthouse. I’m not sure if Dorian had come downtown because he was new to the university or if he’d been invited by mutual friends. He was continuing his undergrad degree and I was in grad school. But either way, he ended up at a table with my friends and me.
I remember him wearing something like a plaid shirt, jeans, a hoodie, and a blazer on top and maybe Converse or some such trainers that were a little casual. It was an unusual combination, especially in the South, and that unique fashion sense plus his handsome face – even though he was maybe only 5’10” – stood out to me. He talked sort of like a stoner and surfer and, despite having grown up in Georgia, he didn’t have any trace of a Southern accent.
He told me he’d just gotten back from living in New York where he’d graduated from (and been accepted into) a prestigious acting academy called the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, which had had notable alumni such as Sean Astin, Warren Beatty, Salma Hayek, Candice Bergen, Marlon Brando, Mark Ruffalo, and many others.
He harboured dreams of making it big in New York or Hollywood but for whatever reason, even though he was from Augusta, Georgia and hadn’t wanted to live in Georgia ever again, he was in the south for the foreseeable.
He had moved to Valdosta and had already started acting in a play downtown and working on some student films. Many of our early texts are of him saying he’s leaving the set and asking if he can see me variety. He seemed impossibly cool and different because of the New York connection and the fact he was also handsome and muscular.
I was shallow and even though I later referred to him un-generously as “hot but dumb as rocks” it didn’t occur to me at that time to chase people who I was actually compatible with. It was okay that we “looked” compatible. Our personalities, however, were not in the least compatible nor was my bad habit of trying to mould him into the “perfect boyfriend.” For what? I have no idea. To keep up appearances for my non-existent audience? To help my ego? Boy did that backfire.
I wanted him as arm candy. I made him dress in matching outfits with me, which looking back is laughable, insufferable, and utterly ridiculous.
Twenty days after we met, Dorian and I went to a party together. By which point I’d already had time to semi-forget about him and date the very handsome, tall Scandinavian Lit Professor I met (and full-on unashamedly flirted with) at a literary conference who came to visit me in Valdosta during fall break and then everything blew up in a cloud of drama. More on this later, of course.
A night of drinking with Kentucky Gentleman
Jimmy (who was DJ and Landon’s now-PhD-having friend), Dorian, and I hung out together in April at my house before Dorian and I were dating. Jimmy played the guitar and brought a handle of Kentucky Gentleman and a bottle of Coca-Cola Zero (didn’t realise that was a thing back then because I always went for full-sugar Coke which I could get at Supersize every day at McDonald’s for a dollar to wash down with my morning Red Bull). We all drank the night away, chatting, and laughing. Intellectually, Jimmy (like Landon) was amazing company. I kissed them both that night. One of my drinking glasses got smashed. They must have slept on the sofas or maybe in my bed but I don’t remember. My bed wasn’t that big – but I do know the night was left at kissing.
Like with HSS, so much “bad blood” happened with Dorian that it’s difficult to remember the early, “happier” times – of which there was probably a month. I found some texts from March and April that I’d typed into my email.
Yes, I used to spend time retyping my texts from the dozens of people I seemed to correspond with but not my side of the conversation so I’m left with a lot of blanks as to what I was saying to this other person, which makes for amusing reading, maybe? (I may share these texts as bonus material with pseudonyms for my paid subscribers – maybe that would also be utterly boring to read.) That’s also why I have the original exchanges with Bramwell, except in those excerpts I typed my reply in my email.
This time seemed to consist of me getting texts asking what time I was going to various parties, what parties I’d heard were going on, people asking if they could park at my house as campus parking was notoriously difficult (and I lived a close walk to campus), and then Dorian – and others – asking me out or for hookups at 3 am (including ATC).
Dorian asked me to go for a drink and then interspersed with HSS texting me and getting upset that I started seeing someone new and asking if I was planning to spend the night with him or he could come over and stay instead (promising not to try anything). And then HSS angrily texted me that he thought I’d looked beautiful that day and he just enjoyed my company and wanted to be friends and hang out (it was exhausting) – and then another text where he’d found out I’d kissed his roommate who we’d gone to high school with (he was a football and soccer player and the brother of one of the most popular hot seniors in school when I was a freshman). But because said friend was super Bible-belt-relgious, HSS had said the news had upset him but kissing [friend’s name] was “like kissing a nun.” I’d always found the friend handsome as he looked a little Clark Kentish but he was the wait-until-marriage kind and that ship had long sailed for me. I think he’s now a successful married accountant with two children.
The gym, the grill, his health-hazard apartment
Dorian loved going to the gym. He was fit and muscular but super weird about food. His diet consisted mostly of lean ground turkey, lean chicken, cottage cheese, eggs, rice, and a bit of veg – and lots of wine (counterintuitive maybe). He would hate it if I asked him to eat chocolate, dessert, or anything of the sort. It made me feel weird about food as if my just “eat everything diet” would be judged. He used to use a George Foreman grill to cook the meat which he never seemed to clean so it got increasingly more disgusting as time went on.
We’d go to the gym together at the YMCA which I didn’t pay for. Instead, I’d sneak into the gym with him until I got caught and was so embarrassed I never went again – as in, the people at the check-in desk simply asked for my gym membership card and I just turned around and walked out the door and drove off. I mean I didn’t need to pay for a gym membership because my amazing (and better) on-campus gym was free with tuition and fees and had an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a full-sized track above the basketball court, all the cardio machines you could want, fully equipped machines and free weights, and a rock wall.
As I progressively got unhappier, I ate my feelings and got chubbier which made me feel less worthy.
I remember that his apartment was really filthy – or got super filthy. At one point, he had blocked the toilet and instead of getting the apartment complex to fix it, he just taped the toilet lid shut with duct tape and just pretended it didn’t happen. Then, he’d piss in the shower and go to the gas station for a shit. And I think I ended up staying at said gross apartment for too much of my time. What was I thinking? It had been a nice apartment complex with a pool – also the complex where I found First Kiss revisited at a party the following year.
The tragedy of Mr Fuckups
Dorian’s father was a psychology professor or some such and had a PhD, which did Dorian zero good as his attitude to his son seemed to have been to throw money at him and move on. He’d since remarried after Dorian’s mother had sadly died of cancer when Dorian was in high school. He felt that loss (understandably) acutely. I’d always been bad with death in that I’d only ever had my great-grandmother Eva die and not anyone I was close to so I wasn’t sure how to comfort him but that had been years before. His friend group from high school and New York called him “Mr Fuckups.” The name was fitting.
His father supported him financially and he wasn’t very good at money – so in the label in my Gmail with Dorian’s name on it, it’s also a list of money he owed me for various things like paying his rent, covering the tabs at the bar, paying for our dates, which started to get old fast but I was so desperate to keep together the facade of dating this handsome person that I ignored the many, many red flags and incompatibilities – and the fact that he was emotionally and financially draining.
He reminded me of the firefighter neighbour who totally sponged off me, too. Dorian would get the allowance from his father and blow through it. Why I thought it was my job to help him out and why I was stupid enough to do that I’ll never know.
Lesson to young people: relationships should never feel one-sided or spongey; they should be mutual, fun partnerships. When you’re no longer having fun – not just the new car smell wearing off and missing that feeling of the chase sorta fun – then get out!
Dorian struggled with dyslexia. He couldn’t spell anything properly and he was probably of normal intelligence but compared with all of my grad school friends he seemed a little lacking. He struggled with his classes. It took him hours longer to do homework or make progress but he did persevere with it.
I remember going to a party with my friends to cheer up after the Scandinavian Lit Professor (we’ll call him Henry) had ended things and I was miserable but then there was Dorian to lift my spirits. This series of parties was thrown by my grad school friend, Will, which started with Febtoberfest and kept going. Will was one of the seven of us invited back by the English department for our funded Master’s degrees and graduate assistantships and he was a lovely human and only one of two of the English department guys in grad assistantship thing.
These parties were cool and dress-up-themed. I remember wearing a toga thing to one and recycling my fairy crown from my ATC days and Dorian was wearing a skimpy toga-type costume which perfectly highlighted his muscular arms, which made me swoon at the time – or maybe I just wanted to show him off (to whom I have no clue) but I seemed to think it gave me validation somehow to date this attractive, muscular person. HSS also happened to be at the party with his new girlfriend. Sigh!
My therapist, Lorraine, after discovering that I have been a serial dater since HSS until now with few breaks in having sex or seeing someone, asked me to examine what it was that made me seem to go for people who were handsome over people with more substance or compatibility, rather. I’m still working on this revelation. (Or maybe the fact that I fancy the pants off my husband and think he’s very handsome means I won’t ever learn this lesson?)
Asking me out in May
I debuted Dorian at Heather’s housewarming party in April 2010 and an International Boys party across the street as if he were some kind of trophy.
Dorian officially asked me out in May 2010, about two months after we’d met. He had seen me at the Bleu Pub not long after our first meeting with Henry (the Scandi Lit Prof) and had told me he had liked me but thought that it was cool I was seeing someone else and that he’d wanted to be my friend.
It took me a while to sleep with him at first because he was on the smaller side – well, smaller than ATC and HSS who I was still sleeping with at the time and smaller than Henry who I’d just slept with in between meeting him.
And also I had something in between with this one guy who went down on me, he was bad at it, I told him to leave (very mean of me – why was I so callous with some men’s feelings?), and he texted me obsessively because he’d left a sentimental watch at my house, which I returned – as if he thought I’d flog it at auction or something. A thief I have never been!
In May, I received the only complimentary text I seemed to receive from Dorian on one day at 10.01 pm that said, “You are sexy.” He never made me feel sexy at all after that.
Things had already started to fizzle but I wanted to make it work. This was now the eighth person I’d slept with and the only “serious” relationship since HSS and I wanted someone to care about me in the way that HSS had but without all the suffocation.
He called me “babe” all the time and had a phrase like, “you hold on tightest to someone with an open palm.” True statement and most definitely directed at my clingy, anxious attachment self; however, I didn’t get the gist and maybe he’d read it on a fortune cookie because he wasn’t that deep.
Some incidents I recall…down memory’s winding lane
Once I was sick and my Russian roommate made Dorian make me soup because she seemed to think the “caretaker skill” was essential for boyfriends. He was entirely useless and now had an audience of Brittany, me, and my Russian roommate as he didn’t know what to do with a pan, hot water, and a packet soup mix. I guess he could only work the mechanics of the up-and-down George Foreman grill. I kid, of course.
I only found this entry after writing the above, but Brittany wrote a hilarious blog entry for her Idle Inklinks blog about the incident at the time which I read to Michael (who makes 99% of our meals and is an amazing cook) and he said something like, “is this like those people who can’t boil an egg?” The dialogue was perfectly captured about his sort of puppy dog demeanour at the time and how he seemed sweet and well-meaning at first.
In May 2010, I semi-forced him to go to my baby sister Hannah's school to have lunch with her and see her sports day. He was completely weird about the very shitty non-nutritious lunch of a hot dog, gloopy bright yellow mac and cheese, the obligatory milk carton, frozen fruit, and tinned green beans. Hannah was thrilled (at six years old) to have us eating lunch with her in the cafeteria along with her best friend, Jessie, so I ate the hot dog. Dorian just didn’t eat anything as if a hot dog and some Velveeta mac and cheese would clog his arteries on the spot. He was good with kids, though, and he was a hit in Hannah’s class among the first graders. He was, thankfully, always sweet with Hannah, which always meant a lot to me.
I remember other times like when we’d argue about him eating my restaurant leftovers – you know when you go out for the day and come home wanting to eat that very thing only to find the polystyrene box in the trash? – or how he’d eat food in my house fridge in the middle of the night. Once, Brittany and I had made a huge pot of chilli (a la Kristy’s recipe) and we would have eaten that for a week, only to find most of it was gone in the morning. Naturally, Brittany and I both considered the situation less than ideal. I just found all of these displays really thoughtless, especially since he’d never have eaten any of those meals during his regular operating day.
He’d disappear in his apartment for a day or two and I remember him yelling at me when I’d gone over to surprise him when I’d finished class. He did apologise, though, as those sorts of outbursts weren’t typical. He was usually quite calm and zen. I found out he’d buy these massive jugs of cheap red wine and drink himself into oblivion. That was a huge trigger for me as I didn’t understand his behaviour.
On Halloween, roughly two months after he’d broken things off with me and we got back together (or maybe we were trying the whole friendship thing?), I bought his Superman costume so Darcy, Dorian, and I could dress up as Superheroes: I was the Black Canary (which I’m sure my friend Chester helped me choose because he knows all things superhero comics), Dorian was Superman, and Darcy was Wonder Woman. We went to Charley O’s that year at the end of the night where I saw HSS dressed like Russell Brand (which he always did convincingly), ATC dressed like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and various other people we knew from campus.
I clearly still had latent feelings for ATC as there’s a pic of us with me grinning foolishly pressed up against him. Out of unhappiness or whatever I proceeded to get super smashed. Normally, I’d drink to blackout level but never to sickness level.
I proceeded to vomit as discreetly as possible in leftover plastic drink cups on various outdoor tables, dotted around the bar’s massive back porch (sorry to the employees who then had to throw those cups away). Then, when Dorian got me home and I’d removed my corset and wig, I vomited all over my legs in the bathtub whilst still wearing my fishnets; I’m sure this lovely image inspired him to know exactly why we’d gotten back together.
The drinking thing was the difference between us (among many). I was a blackout drunk and I often drank a lot very quickly (sometimes on an empty stomach) and then would stop. I’ve only thrown up from drinking twice (this time and another Valentine’s Day with Michael later). But I was never a solo drinker. I never kept liquor in the freezer and I never pre-gamed alone. I was a social drinker. Dorian’s wine jugs he bought contained at least four bottles of wine and he drank them secretly and alone.
That time I almost got a DUI
When we’d go to parties or the bars, he’d usually make me be the designated driver (the DD for English audiences who wouldn’t really understand this being a thing with buses, taxis, and trains accessible to all) and one night we’d not established who would be DD and I’d drunk my usual four Long Island Ice Teas but I was also good at stopping at midnight or when I felt sick and he’d driven us to the bars. We had this huge fight where I was so pissed off that he wanted me to drive home in his car that I didn’t know well. Most American cars are automatic but still, you get used to your own car.
I hadn’t switched the headlights on (an unfamiliar car and my lights had been automatic) when I was making a left turn and I saw flashing blue lights in the rearview mirror. I made the left turn and pulled over to the right to this giant parking lot where I was first told by the police to walk straight on one of the parking space lines in my super short dress and blue (faux) suede Candies heels or maybe it was another pair of coral heels I had – I removed them anyway. I was super rude to the police which undoubtedly did not help my cause in my irritation at Dorian and told them I couldn’t walk a straight line sober, never mind after having something to drink. Then, they asked to breathalyse me and I remember them saying how ineffective I was at blowing in the breathalyser and telling me it was “just like blowing up a balloon” and didn’t I know how to do that? I blew just below the legal limit but they wouldn’t let me drive the car back to Dorian’s apartment, so I got someone to pick us up. I don’t remember who now – probably Darcy as she’d texted, “?” at 2.37 am and “Need me to come get you?” at 2.38 am as she’d been at the bars with us that night.
Another time, we went to my friend Austin’s film premiere. Then, Dorian was in a play and I went to an award show with him where his castmate took him out for drinks and I could tell that he really thought I was the dead weight and would have rather had Dorian to himself.
The time of the 63 roses where I didn’t even have enough vases…
Before my birthday in June, Dorian lavishly bought me 63 roses which I thought was so wonderful and sweet. He probably hadn’t paid me back for whatever he owed me and here he was buying me presents. Plus, a few carrots for Brittany’s rabbit, Peter. Another time, he left a sweet note on my office door that said, “To Professor Frieman.” (I was a TA and as far from a professor as you could get in the academic world.) Then, for my birthday, I asked him to get me an iPod with my name on it. He wrote, “Love, Dorian” on the back. That sucked because the relationship had a shelf life. Anyone need a “vintage” red iPod as I still have it in the attic eaves?
Kitty time! (Not euphemism)
A week after my 23rd birthday in June, we adopted two kitties from Kristy who had rescued a stray mama cat on campus (she kept the mama and one of the kitties she named Rothgar), so now I had Jack and Lily living at his apartment, which I then had to visit regularly because he was barely awake enough to feel them and look after them. This was semi-inspired by the fact that he’d adopted a kitten with his ex who I think he still secretly missed but she’d broken things off for whatever reason. I think she’d maybe moved to New York with him and then moved home and got another boyfriend but I don’t remember.
But anyone who knows me knows I absolutely love cats and people with cats and other people’s cats (and cat videos). I can’t wait until Michael finally agrees to us adopting two Maine Coon kitties (but we travel too much for that right now).
On a random side note: when Brittany and I moved to Columbus, we took Jack and Lily with us but Lily went missing. (When I was transitioning in the move, they had moved in with my mum, baby sis, and stepfather.) I’d like to think she was stolen because she was such a beautiful cat. She became Brittany’s cat really with a bird-like chirp (to communicate with B), her tabby fur, very small kitten-like size, and her cropped tail – and she just adored Brittany. She liked to go outside and explore unlike her brother Jack-Jack; one day a neighbour told Brittany that she’d been hit by a car but we looked everywhere for the body with me even practically climbing into the dumpster to see if someone had put her in there and we never found her, which made us both sad. Jack-Jack was my cat. He was sleek, black, anxious, and loved me so much.
After Dorian and I broke up, I had to have an awkward convo with Ms Georgiou, the little Greek landlady, to ask if they could move in with me, promising they wouldn’t be destructive to the house (which actually they were not). Brittany now takes amazing care of Jack with her boy kitties, Rupert and Riley, and her girl Aisling, her latest in the bunch – and I’m thankful to her for that as I couldn’t take him when I moved to Germany. Plus, when I visit my mama this year in November, Hannah and I are taking a road trip to Columbus and I’ll get to see Jack-Jack again, although he may have long forgotten me by now.
Our limited travel life
In late June, Brittany, Dorian, and I had a disastrous road trip to St Simons Island to see his best friend from high school who had been living in New York since and I could tell he didn't want me to be there. The friend, who was tall, also handsome but also intelligent, was some kind of director or Indie filmmaker and was proud of dating a model and Dorian’s stories made it sound like the relationship was a toxic rollercoaster.
I’ve trama-blocked most of the trip. Brittany and I went back to the hotel and Dorian and the friend both came in blind drunk in the middle of the night by which point, I crawled into bed with Brittany so they could sleep in bed together. But that was not after another time that weekend (or week or whatever) where we were introduced to the best friend’s parents. We had gone to this exclusive St Simons Island club for dinner with them where they proceeded to make unsavoury, racist jokes. They were the southern old money types but without the manners.
I tried hard for everyone to get along as Brittany was my best friend and never liked anyone I dated and my dates forever spent time trying to get B to like them which she never did. But I also had the sense that Dorian’s interest had waned, so it was fraught – not that anyone would have known my internal machinations from the pictures or even by my actions over the trip. I always did have the need to make the facade look shiny.
Visiting Augusta, Georgia
In August, we went back to his childhood home in Augusta, Georgia (of the golf course fame to non-Georgians) to visit his other childhood friend (not the New York one from the St Simons trip) and while we were getting drunk and high with his friend and the friend’s pretty, petite girlfriend the friend told me I was so much bigger (emphasis on the big part) than Dorian’s cute, petite, manic-pixie-dream-girl-like ex-girlfriend. Seriously, the ex was small with a slightly turned-up button nose, a dark bob, and had those big brown doe-eyes and looked younger than her years.
That combined with the fact that Dorian and I rarely seemed to have sex unless it was from behind and even then infrequently crushed my self-esteem further, since I’d always had a hangup about being much bigger than other women in every dimension (see pic of me on Halloween next to one of the “Gorgeous Tennis Player” lot). And then I found out that he very much preferred to wank off to porn instead of having sex with me further adding insult to injury.
Why I didn’t end things and break it off, I’ll never know. Why I didn’t boost my ego by sleeping with people who didn’t find me repulsive, I’d also never know. It made me feel not good enough, compounding all past insecurities. And my faithfulness (yes, the fact that I didn’t cheat) baffled even me, especially in that prior to having this boyfriend, I’d enjoyed at least the sexual freedom of a few people – even if the emotional questioning sometimes didn’t make it worth it.
The Colorado trip to see my uncle and aunt
For Fall break, I probably paid for him to go with me to visit my Uncle Tim and Aunt Brooke and my little cousins in Colorado. My aunt and uncle are wonderful, fun company – everyone loves them and their cool vibes and bubbly personalities – so we had a nice time (or I had a nice time being with family) but he barely touched me during the entire trip, a continuing trend. I felt that if this handsome person wasn’t into me and we were barely a quarter of a year in, there was something wrong with me. Yet I posed for the pictures as if all was rosy and okay.
For his birthday (and I think that was maybe July), we had this big 80s-themed party at his apartment which I spent ages cleaning and decorating for (definitely before the toilet-duct-tape incident). I remember someone stole the jewellery I’d bought at Claire’s that day – I’d never ever had anyone we knew steal from me before so I think it must have been people he’d invited that I didn’t know. I’d bought some random jewellery for my costume along with pink clip-in hair so I could tease it and it could look like it had streaks. I wore a sort of lingerie corset top and mini skirt but because I’d been eating my feelings I did not look good in this outfit (and this was before body positivity).
HSS also happened to be at that party too. Why he even wanted to come I’ll never know but as you may be getting the gist is that my goldfish bowl was small and all of my friend groups intertwined and connected like seven degrees of Kevin Bacon.
I also remember a really cool thing happening (or it seemed cool at the time). My uni organised a free Jason Mraz concert (of the 2008 hit “I’m Yours” fame) but this was 2010, remember? And I’m sure that was the only song I knew. I went with Dorian and we spotted HSS there with his gaggle of pretty girls that seemed to follow him post-split (which I was arrogant enough to think was to rub it in my face). I remember them (and HSS) giving Dorian and me dirty looks the whole time, so I made sure to act as if Dorian and I were just having the best time at the concert. I wasn’t. But I did like the music.
Floating in the pool
Dorian’s 80s-themed birthday party night was also the night I got so drunk and went for a swim in my undies in the pool and almost drowned, floating face down, feeling very peaceful and serene, until friends dragged me out and took me inside to strip off and dry off. Then, the girl I’d had the threesome with, Jewel, and her new boyfriend, we’ll call him Greg, and Dorian and I all had sex in the same room except Dorian couldn’t maintain his erection and I was just left feeling sexually frustrated and despondent that I wasn’t attractive enough to hold his interest – and wishing that I was having sex with Jewel and Greg instead.
Then, Dorian broke up with me before I started teaching as a graduate teaching assistant for the first time (like, the very night before) and two months after that crashed my car. More next time.
Next up, let’s continue the breakup and car crash tale, which will lead into the RHSG story.
Don’t forget to check out the other twenty-two posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter in the first place.
Have you ever dated someone who was a bad fit just because of the way they looked?
