True Story

Once upon a time in 2002 I lived in Hollywood and had a boyfriend with a dog.  The dog was an adorable Basset Hound named Jojo.

When Jojo was a puppy I used to walk her in the Hollywood Hills near the Hollywood sign, a well known place called Runyon Canyon. 

One day I was walking Jojo and some old guy wearing a baseball hat and ugly 90’s sunglasses came up to talk to me, ostensibly about the dog but really he was flirting with me and it I wasn’t into it.  He was short and overly friendly.

As I was walking away having brushed him off awkwardly I was thinking about how odd it was to have your perfect white teeth off-centered.  Looked familiar, but I couldn’t place how I recognized that smile.

And then the guy’s two middle school age kids came running up to him, one a brownish haired girl and the other a mixed race boy.

And then I realized that I had just met, chatted with, and brushed off Tom Cruise.

This is how he looked that day, but with a hat and glasses.

But then he started dating Penelope Cruz.  And then the whole TomKat thing happened.

Coulda been me, maybe. 

He didn’t look like this.