In California, Love Often Means Having to Say You’re Sorry

The one thing I hate about living in California is that it is so hard to meet somebody nice and settle down.

After all, I am just a simple boy from Illinois, with simple tastes and a simple mind.

But when I went to a dating service, and they asked me what kind of California woman I had in mind, I asked for one who didn’t go out in public wearing white boots.

“Sorry,” they said. “Can’t help you.”

Then there was the girl I met at the Laundromat.

She ran out of bleach, and asked if she could borrow some of mine. I told her I’d run out, but that I had some more at home.

So, she came to my house, sat down, had a cup of coffee, then borrowed some bleach and left.

Next day, she filed a palimony suit against me.

Her lawyer said I had welcomed her into my house, made her feel like it was her own home, invited her to share things with me. He said she had become accustomed to my life style.

Since then, a judge has taken my estimated net worth and awarded her half. I figure she can blow the whole 50 bucks on a pair of white boots.

It’s with all this in mind that I can sympathize with some of my fellow Californians who have been having relationship troubles lately.

Take Eric Dickerson, the Ram running back.

There’s this lady, Rea Dawn Silva. She works in a department store. She’s also one of those model-slash-actresses you hear so much about out here.

Anyway, she and Dickerson saw one another. On “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Dickerson even called her his fiancee. He gave her a ring. He also gave her, she says, a baby, as yet unborn.

Dickerson says he was never that serious about her, that he just called her his fiancee to make her feel good, that everybody knows how he feels about marriage. He also says if the baby is his, he will be happy to see that it is well taken care of.

Rea Dawn Silva wants $7,500 a month. For 90 grand a year, plus anything she manages to earn herself, the baby should be pretty well taken care of.

As for visiting privileges, well, first Daddy will have to promise never to bring the .357 Magnum that Mommy says Daddy brought over there before. Even if people have been breaking into cars in the neighborhood.

Yes, relationships aren’t easy.

Consider Puppi Buss. That’s not her real name. It’s the name she legally took, though, after spending so much time in the company of Dr. Jerry Buss, the guy who owns the Lakers, the Kings, the Forum, the Pickfair mansion and, quite possibly, everything west of Denver.

“He was my whole life. He was my father, my uncle, my brother, my lover. He was my nest egg,” Puppi was quoted as saying in a recent interview.

Buss is not her husband, but nevertheless, Puppi wants her father, uncle, brother, lover and nest egg to fork over $25 million in palimony.

Not $90,000. Twenty-five mil.

I gotta tell ya, I have had some expensive dates in my life, but nothing like this. There was this girl Vilma who used to come over and eat TV dinners at my house and drink my beer. If she ever gets wind of this, she’s going to want half my estate.

Puppi Buss, the former Marsha Lee Osborne, says she doesn’t go out much any more. “Jerry is a tough act to follow,” she says.

If she wins this lawsuit, though, and with Marvin Mitchelson representing her I’d say she has a pretty good chance, Puppi is not going to be hard up for suitors, though. I, for one, intend to stand outside her window every night with a mandolin, serenading her.

Ah, love, American style.

Dating in California can be such an ordeal. I mean, even when it leads to marriage, you never know how it is going to work out.

Take Peter Holm, for instance.

Here he was, a handsome fellow from Sweden, a “former rock star,” as I understand it, and he happens to run into this swell-looking gal who works as an actress. I don’t know about the model or slash part, but she is definitely an actress.

For several years now, she has appeared on a popular television program called “Dynasty,” playing a very wealthy woman who likes to slap men’s faces a lot.

Well, this woman met Peter Holm and liked him OK and went out with him and even got hitched to him, at a swell little chapel in Las Vegas. Alas, the marriage didn’t work out. They split up.

Only one problem: The husband refused to split. He barricaded himself in their house, a cozy little place that rents for a mere $16,500 a month.

And then there are servants, clothes, cars, expenses, the whole works. Peter Holm wants alimony from his wife, alimony amounting to $80,000 a month.

I’m glad to see a man demanding some alimony in this day and age, and I feel confident that I, like Peter, could squeak by on $18,423.85 a week.

I’m just sorry that it had to come to this. All of these nice people could have saved a lot of time and trouble if they had just gone on “The Love Connection” and let the audience pick somebody for them.

They’d have to sign a pre-game show agreement, of course, but that’s a small price to pay for love.