When he invited me over the day of the garden tour, I think I not so subtly asked him what his parents did, because I couldn’t believe someone could have this home without family money.

His ceilings must have been 30 feet high, and his parties had bartenders. When I finally saw his house and his life, I could understand how getting caught sucking dick at a party with mostly Tecate being served would be appealing, or at least a change of pace. It seems so college to have someone walk in while you are hooking up during a party. I wondered how that must have felt to him. But he was handsome, and I knew from friends he was successful - at the time, anything above a yellow basement seemed really appealing. It truly was a bad-looking room, but we were both drunk, and I was too confident to know how insecure I was. I lived in a cement basement that, for some reason, I had painted yellow. We hooked up for the first time at a huge house party I had that was filled with other early- to mid-20s people. I was 21 and vaguely dating a 50-year-old guy I had met through friends. I didn’t say “hi” to her, but now I think I would have. I never would have gotten to follow Laura Dern around a garden tour of Los Angeles's Venice neighborhood if I hadn’t dated older men.