"Attention! Would the owner of this building please report to the central office."

All seats are filled in the VIP frontal lobe section of my cerebral cortex edifice, with disconcerting film editors, critics, and directors viewing the preview of my own reality show and scrutinizing it reel by reel. My upstairs theater contains two parts: my personal office located in the back of my brain, where I create scenarios between myself and other people before they actually happen, and the central office in the front half of my noggin in which the infamous Cranial Committee reviews and castigates my work.

The committee usually announces an emergency board meeting whenever I have an important life decision to make. There is a P.A. system just inside my ear that they have built in order to conveniently notify me whenever I’m not living my life according to their high standards.

I’m not sure who hired this committee. I think it was the resident super-ego intendent, who felt that I wasn’t qualified to run my own life, feared the operation would collapse as a result, and smuggled in a few experts while I was asleep one night. My second theory is that the committee members were transferred in via the mouth of the first boy I kissed. Either way, I have had a higher power monopolizing my brain ever since then.

I was skating down the Venice boardwalk furnishing my narcissistic need for attention when I ran into an ex-lover. Unable to confront my poignant past, I tried to ignore him and make a quick roller dash in the other direction. But he grabbed my arm, fast, and turned me around to face him.

"Hi!"

"Hi."

"How are you doing?"

"Fine."

I purposefully gave him one-word answers to hide the fact that I was still crazy about him. It was all I could do to act as uninterested as possible. It was one of those situations where one person liked the other more. A hopeless situation at best; I tried for years to convince him that I was the one, all in vain. The only reason he kept me around was because the sex was so good and, quite ingenuous at the time, I thought I could turn lust into love.

"I came by your house and discovered you had moved," he said.

I kept my sunglasses on to hide my weak, forlorn, eyes. I was so freaking nervous I thought I was going to pee in my pants. "Ya, I know. I moved."

"I just said that," he said sarcastically.

"I cut my hair."

"Ya, I can see that." His voice was even snottier. He was with a friend and was obviously getting a kick out of humiliating me. Why did he have to be so nasty? Couldn’t he see that I was shaking in my roller boots? I just wanted to cry. I hated myself for being so weak around him. I held back the tears and tried to look as if I didn’t care. I think this amused him; it made him feel superior and, most importantly, it made him look cool around his friend.

The Cranial Committee made its first announcement for the day:

"You're just some chick he screwed in the past, hence undeserving of any respect as a human being. At most, you're a piece of shit, but he’ll string you along on the chance that he'll get one last poke. It makes no difference to him; you are just another hole to grind. What the hell else would he want to do with you? All you are is a worthless garden-variety writer, still struggling to make ends meet. Until you've won the Pulitzer or the Nobel prize, you are unworthy of his company. Besides, he just wants to drown you with his own self-importance. He never gave a shit about you, and he never will."

"Shut up!"

Despite the incessant chatter of disapproval going on in my head, I gave my ex my number. We did an awkward bumping of the heads; we hugged good-bye and he said that he would call me.

"Ciao!" he said, raising his bushy eyebrows and waving goodbye.

Ciao? Was that supposed to sound sophisticated? Was I supposed to be impressed? A white Southern Californian surfer boy, freaken speaken Italian? If you are in Italy, fine, speak the language, but you are not in Italy and you are not Italian. You are in California, the United States of America, and I would appreciate it if you would speak English. I was already getting irritated with him. Or was it that I was just really nervous about seeing him again? Maybe I was creating this agitation as an excuse not to.

Three days went by. I started obsessing. "I want him to call; I don’t want him to call. That asshole, he better call! Should I screen the call? I don’t want him thinking I’m sitting around with nothing better to do than wait for his call. No, because what if he doesn’t leave a message and never calls again? Should I call him? No, he’ll think I’m desperate. I didn’t ask for his number anyway, I was so nervous at the time. Shit, I’m freaking out; this is driving me nuts. What do I do? Eat? No, I can’t eat. In fact, due to worrying about this so much, I can’t sleep either."

The phone rang. I nearly pounced on the receiver, but I didn't pick it up until the third ring, which is generally accepted as non-desperate.

"Hello." In my sexy voice.

"Linda Poo, is that you?" my mom said. "I didn’t recognize your voice."

"Yes Mom. It’s me," I said, rolling my eyes.

Yap, yap, yap. She went on about how the neighbors' tree was blocking my parents' view of the Pacific Ocean and they refuse to trim it down.

"Your father and I are seeking legal action."

What does she want me to do about it? She's just using this as an excuse to talk to her baby girl. I yawned. "Mom, I’m going to go to sleep now," I finally said. "Can you call me tomorrow?"

"Oh sure honey. Kiss, kiss!" Oh brother.

"Oh and don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead tonight. Spring ahead, fall back."

"Yes mom. Goodnight."

"Good night, sweetie."

My ex probably tried to call while I was on the phone with my mom. I don’t have call waiting. I got rid of that nonsense a long time ago. I can’t stand the modern clicking-back-and-forth thing distracting me in mid-thought as I talk to another person. He probably heard the busy, busy, busy buzz and gave up.

"Attention all board members. Due to irreconcilable differences between the committee and the owner, the show will not be going into production. Hence there will be no coffee date with the ex-boyfriend."

Whew, what a relief!

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