Cindy Guidry - The Last Single Woman in America

T his is not a courtroom transcript!

The essays contained within were written over a period of many years. They were written for me. Writing is my way of making sense of myself, and the world around me.

There is far more fact than fiction on these pages, but under oath, my account of these events would be somewhat different. This is creative writing, and I have used creative license in telling these stories. In some cases Ive exaggerated the truth to make a point, other times Ive done it just for fun. Some names and identifying details have been changed, some characters are composites, and in some instances time has been compressed or otherwise altered for dramatic effect. Whats important to me is that these stories are all emotionally true. I am more interested in conveying feelings than I am in presenting cold, hard facts.

That said, truth is a funny thing. Ask two people about the same event, and theyll give you two different stories. When emotions are involved, those individual truths will diverge even further. The passage of time poses additional challenges; memory is not an airtight storage container. Even if I were trying to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I could only hope to give an accurate account of my truth. These stories are simply my retelling of certain events, creatively altered through my own internal kaleidoscope. And they werent all written in real time, some were based on memories.

You do the math.

E veryone told me to quit saying Id been fired. They insisted that I should tell people Id been let go or downsized. In addition to this, I was supposed to act like I was still on great terms with my former employer. I couldnt understand it for the life of me. Theyre assholes, Id respond. I was wrongly fired and given a shitty severance package to boot. Why should I justify someone elses unjust actions?

The truth is, in the film business, injustices are the norm and terminations occur willy-nilly. It was probably just my turn, but that didnt make it any easier to stomach. Indignation was my prerogative. Id earned it and no one was taking it away from me. I was Fired, after all.

When I persisted in bandying the F word about, my friends started throwing Mom-isms at me. Youre cutting off your nose to spite your face, theyd warn. But really, I wasnt. Trust me, nose-cutting is something I know a thing or two about: Ive elevated it to an art form. And until I come up with something else I do just as well, Ill probably keep doing it.

Their warning didnt apply. Bad behavior is de rigueur in this town, and usually rewarded, so even if I ran around Los Angeles bad-mouthing my former employer to everyone in sight, it wouldnt have been nose-cutting. And it wasnt like I was telling anyone anything they didnt already know, anyway. Variety, the entertainment industry trade paper that everyone reads every morning, had already openly announced that I would no longer be working for the film studio that had employed me for the better part of ten years. It was no secret that I was on the streets with a hobo stick. There are no secrets in Hollywood.

So why pretend? Sure, I was told that they were letting me go due to downsizing, but they didnt downsize everyone. When I told them I didnt have to go, they still made me go. And just for the record, I dont think my fellow downsizers were all that concerned about me at the time, anyway. They simply didnt want the F word rubbing off on them. But hey, everybody, guess what? We were all Fired!

F inding myself job-free, I delighted in a smorgasbord of arts & crafts by day and flitted off to parties every night. My friend Dylan dubbed me the poster child for unemployment. He was amazed at the way Id blossomed in the wake of a pink slip. I dont know, maybe they did me a favor, Id confess. But I still think they suck.

My happiness was both a mystery and an affront to Dylan. He too had been downsized, but, unlike me, the event absolutely devastated him. While I was merrily making stickers of my own happy face on my new color printer, he was experiencing such a heightened and unrelenting degree of panic that, frankly, just being in the same room with him made my palms sweat. He would spend all day typing up wildly inflated rsums and calling everyone in town begging them to shoot off an e-mail to this person or that in the hope of landing an interview. Then hed spend all night dreaming up more lies that he could add to his rsum and wondering if there was anyone hed forgotten to call. I told him that while I couldnt give a definitive answer as to why Id been visited by the spirit of joy, I could make a pretty good guess as to why he hadnt. Youre letting some stupid job define you, I said. Chill out. Something will happen.