The saying “two worlds colliding” has its roots in Kipling, the odd duck responsible for the Jungle Book stories of Mogli and Rikki Tikki Tavi. What Kipling was trying to describe was the feeling of culture shock, the unnerving uprooting of one person’s mindset amidst somebody else’s. When two worlds collide, there is always a subsequent tenuous period. When two worlds collide, often there is misunderstanding. When two worlds collide, the outcome is seldom pretty.

The previous day I had run into some former co-workers I shared job duties with at Chiat/Day advertising, one of whom – a wallflower named Amy – had always captured my attention despite her rather plain appearance and demeanor. There was something undeniable below her surface, a frightened girl at odds with her smoldering sexuality. I’d always thought there might be a way to flip the internal switch on Amy and reveal the woman inside who she kept walled up, but I had a self-imposed rule about not dating co-workers. Call it disaster aversion; the last thing I needed given my speed dating style was to be in an office filled with exes. But now that I no longer worked there I was free to pursue whatever course Amy was willing to take, and when I ran into her at Starbucks I leapt at the opportunity to ask her out for the following night to dinner, something simple, something I could ease her into. Amy’s type couldn’t be rushed, as it would only cause her to retreat further behind the wall she put up. She would have to be calmed coaxed and moved along at a comfortable rate. Amy wasn’t long for the Los Angeles social scene and its parties, clubs, or long rosters of dateable people. She was very un-L.A, unlike myself. We were from two different worlds. […]

Amy is an average woman in every sense of the word. Average height, average build, average facial features, average boob size, average ass size, average personality. Two specific features defy the rest: Her smile and her legs. Both are stellar and almost out of place when compared to the rest of her. Amy is a shrinking violet, the kind who stays out of the way at parties yet yearns to talk to anybody giving her more than a quick glance. Amy is a small town girl who was once “Miss Corn Fair” in some backwater county of Middle America. Amy was married once but is now divorced, maybe because her husband didn’t show her enough attention, or possibly because every now and then he smacked her around and told her she was no good for anybody, even herself. On the day she last saw him he swore that nobody would ever love her and said the kind of hateful things that make a person die a little inside. Amy moved to the big city to get away from him but in many ways never moved on. She still shies away from a person’s touch and most times won’t hold your gaze for long.

Amy is stunningly beautiful when you look past all of those things. She is the only one to strongly challenge my “no dating co-workers” rule when I worked at Chiat/Day. And now Amy was standing in front of me outside a Starbucks in West L.A.

“Reed! It is you!” she exclaimed as she threw her arms around me in a loose embrace. The hug ended almost as soon as it began as she pulled back quickly, sensing the contact and privately scolding herself for letting it play out too long. […]

A strange personal chemistry quirk: I do not get drunk enough to vomit repeatedly or black out. Long stretches of time don’t go unexplained as I usually remember everything and remain in control of myself. I do get hangovers the next day, however, and currently I was grappling with a pretty bad one.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a bloody mary or something like that? You know, hair of the dog,” remarked Paul Sorvino after seeing me sucking wind trying to make it over from the fairway.

“Normally I would say yes, but right now the thought of any alcohol is revolting.”

“You kids, you have to watch what you do to yourselves.”

“Uh huh.”

We needed a fourth that morning to round out our group of Paul, his neighbor Mickey Vance, and myself. The regulars were busy and couldn’t make it out last minute, so the two turned to me and I knew of only one person who golfed and would be awake that early: My friend Devin. But there would be conditions. […]