I liked about Renee was that she didn’t seem to care. She was naturally pretty, but she didn’t know it. She didn’t give a second thought to her appearance. She was so happy to get the hell out of Catholic school and surround herself with normal people that she just took it all in. She was like a kid at Disneyland. She didn’t say much. She didn’t try to impress anyone. She just observed.
After striking up a conversation with her, I learned that this little fashion-deprived creature was actually quite intelligent. She knew a lot about music. More than anyone I’d ever met. I think she was so isolated at her previous school that she befriended rock and roll and never left its side.
I asked Renee once about Catholic school. She said that the kids were nice, just different. She told me that she wore an Aerosmith shirt to school on a casual day and all the kids teased her, chanting that Steven Tyler looked like an old lady. She said, “All I could think was that Steven Tyler was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen.” It didn’t bother her that the kids made fun of her. She just seemed genuinely confused as to how these people could view the world so much differently than she did. I think it was then that I fell in love with her.
Over time, Renee’s image slowly began to develop. We went shopping at the local favorites, Hot Topic and Newbury Comics. We bought blue mascara and purple lipstick, oversized moonstone rings and bicycle-chain necklaces. We replaced Renee’s skateboarder pants with tighter jeans, and her baggy band t-shirts with fitted ones. She grew out her bangs and put layers in her hair to offset the bush look.
And thus, Renee Evans was born.
Ironically, if you met Renee now, you’d never guess that she once dressed like a lumberjack. She has a very tall, modelesque presence, perfectly put together, like a stylist dressed her. Her thick hair is always immaculately curled, her makeup like a cosmetic ad, her scarves and boots matching the exact shades of her latest ensemble. But back then, Renee didn’t care what people thought of her. She didn’t try to fit in. Renee was who she was, without apology. And I loved her for that.
I fell in love with David Whitman the first time I saw him. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but trust me, no one thought the concept of love at first sight was more ridiculous than me. Up until David, I was a self-proclaimed serial dater. Renee was more of the relationship type, and she somehow managed to find great guys who also happened to be single. I never had such luck. I always found the ones who were single for a reason. Needy, jobless, womanizers, alcoholics, not-really-single-pretending-to-be-single, you name it. Deep down, I wanted to find true love, but it just never worked out that way.
Renee always teased me for my ever-changing love life, calling me a game player, telling me I loved the thrill of the chase. But the truth was, I hated dating. I hated the disappointments. That’s what dating was: one disappointment after the other. I guess I just hoped that eventually I’d find someone who would make all the bad dates worth it.
And I did. I just didn’t expect him to stroll through my living-room door with my best friend.
David Whitman. Renee had told me all about him. In fact, he had been the sole point of our conversations for weeks. When Renee had a new love interest, it was all she talked about. At the time, we were both seniors at UCLA, and Renee was interning at Pace, a local LA magazine. David was the sports editor, and every day Renee came home with a new story about him – what he was wearing that day, how he’d brought her a coffee, how all the girls in the office loved him. That was the funny thing about Renee. She called me a game player, yet she generally only liked a guy if a) he didn’t like her, or b) everyone else liked him. So essentially, she played games too, she just didn’t know it.
Before I met David, I wasn’t sold on the idea of him. Renee was a creative soul. A creative soul who was now dating a sports editor. She hadn’t mentioned a single thing they had in common, or that she found interesting about him. It seemed to me that she felt she had won the hunk of the office and wanted to parade around with the prize on her arm. Sure, he sounded nice and cute and all, but I knew Renee. Eventually, she’d want more than that.
When David walked through my living-room door that first night, everything in my body stood still. I understood now. None of his personal history or interests mattered. It was the effect he had on you. Those eyes. That smile. He could be a needy, jobless, alcoholic womanizer and it wouldn’t have mattered. You would have followed him to the end of the Earth anyway.
From the instant I met David, I felt an immediate connection that I had never experienced before. It was the way he looked at me. Maybe he looked at everyone that way, but he still made me feel like I was the only person in the room. Intense brown eyes and the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. Like he was looking through me. Like he knew that he could have me if he wanted me, even if it meant ruining a lifelong friendship. He had that power.
I hated him for that.
And at that moment, for the first time in my life, I hated my best friend.
Los Angeles, CA
January 2009
During our senior year at UCLA, shortly after Renee landed an internship at Pace, I landed one of my own at Sphinx, a local video-game company. I have no idea why they hired me, because I didn’t love video games. I didn’t even like video games. I was just desperate for a paying internship. But as it turned out, Sphinx was exactly what I was looking for.
After several major switches, I’d decided on communications because it allowed me to take photography courses, which had always been my true passion. I loved photography because it was the only art that allowed you to capture truth in the visual sense. Renee loved music because it captured truth in the audio sense, but for me, I loved the visual. The lens didn’t lie. It highlighted the little beauties of everyday life that were often overlooked, and there was something so raw and honest about that. But I also knew that photography was a difficult business to earn a living at, therefore I picked a major that included creative courses that still had a business aspect to them, such as marketing and media studies.
I had just completed an interactive marketing course on social media outreach, as well as a media literacy course in which we were assigned to read about the psychology behind role-playing video games. So when I came across Sphinx’s ad stating they were looking for interns with experience in online marketing and knowledge of video games, it sounded pretty perfect. I may not have been much of a gamer, but my last two classes had provided me with all the knowledge I needed for the position. Not to mention, it paid a lot. More than most internships.
Before I was called in for an interview with Sphinx, I was contacted by a local health insurance company, HCG, who was looking for an intern to manage their website and social media pages. I like to call these kinds of experiences “blessings in disguise.” Because if I hadn’t had the opportunity for comparison, I never would’ve realized how utterly perfect Sphinx was for me.
The HCG office was located next to the LAX airport. I was greeted by a man named Jason Porter, who introduced himself as the Human Resources Director. He cleverly referred to himself as the resident “herd,” then had to draw me a verbal map to his joke, spelling out the acronym for Human Resources Director: HRD. He chuckled at his own irony. I did not find him funny.
Jason brought me to his spacious office, then sat down at his desk and motioned for me to take a seat across from him. He began
