Cadillac of competition

I am competitive and I’m not competitive. For instance, I wouldn’t walk into a party and scan the room to see who has the best outfit and then hate her. Nor do I size-up attractive women with a sideways glance and a pursed-lipped sourpuss and then draw all the attention to myself by speaking with loud and false gaiety. This is common behavior in women who are in competition for the few non-Neanderthals left in the cave.

I’m not covetous and don’t need stuff. I especially don’t need the Cadillac of something. I don’t need the Cadillac of food processors or coffee makers or the Cadillac of dog beds or electric toothbrushes. I come from Cadillacs. That is, a Cadillac-owning working-class Jewish neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley in which owning a Cadillac was more socially, culturally and religiously important than what work you did or even a good zip code. I spent my childhood riding my bike around Cadillac de Ville fins and oversized Eldorados longer than their driveways – constructed, no doubt, by people who figured if you can’t afford a luxury house, you can’t afford a luxury car and have no need for a long driveway. They did not know the post-WWII Jewish mentality. By the 70s, the boringly boxy Seville really put an end to the Cadillac as the Cadillac of cars.

I’m also not competitive about what I know. I’m not a know-it-all and I feel a little sorry for people who are. I didn’t care if my children were earlier walkers or better in school than the next kid, and I don’t care that my poodles aren’t as perfectly groomed as other fancy breeds in my neighborhood. That’s the kind of non-competitive person I am. I also don’t play team sports or work in offices. I’m not a team player, so I compromise the salary, pension, and benefits of long-term employment for the unpredictable, but free, life as a freelance author and editor.

As a child I was not competitive academically; I played volleyball with skill but a lack of concern for the outcome; and I did not get a nose job like many of the other Jewish girls in the Valley. I did not have the Cadillac of grades, noses, or breasts -- I’ve been a lifelong 34AAA and didn’t bother stuffing my bra in high school or adding silicon later on.

I was competitive as a groupie. In the early 70s as a young teenager, I hitchhiked into Hollywood from the Valley enclave of North Hollywood (glamorously, but misleadingly named since it is as far from Hollywood as you can get) and discovered that winning the attention of a rock star over another groupie was powerful. I later figured out the feeling of power was linked to childhood sexual abuse. Every groupie I met had endured sexual trauma. In both cases – groupie, sexually abused child -- sex was a commodity, it’s what was valued, got a girl attention, made her feel needed and cared for and important.

But as a groupie, instead of being an unwitting and unwilling sexual object at an age when you didn’t understand what the value of sex was even about, you thought you were in control because you chose whom to pursue. Rock stars were the objects and groupies the pursuers -- the flip of sexual abuse in which the girl is the target. This is not really true because groupies were underage teenagers but it felt like that from our standpoint.

Being prized for my girl body rather than my skills or talents or sense of humor or simply as a child is what shaped my sense of competition as a sexual object then rather than, say, as an athlete or a good student. *

Now I am competitive with myself. Sometimes I use other people as props. What I mean is this, for instance: I look for other runners who I can outrun when I run the loop around Prospect Park. Granted, they may be 68-years-old, wearing tights and a long t-shirt from a vacation resort; holding a water bottle and a radio with an antennae – but they’re fair game. There are also plenty of young men who don’t really run but start out as if they do it everyday and they tire quickly. If I can keep outrunning people, I can make it around the park. I do the same on the treadmill at the gym and a guy might try for a short time to outrun me and then he’ll give up and pretend he meant to stop. I don’t always need someone to compete with but it motivates me if it’s an ad hoc, unplanned competition.

The other day I was on the F train coming back to Brooklyn from Manhattan. I got in the first car so when we stopped I was near the exit closest to where I live. I stood at the door as we pulled into the station, hand on the pole, when a man in business clothes got right next to me, in front of other men getting off at the stop. Before the door opened I knew he was going to cut me off and be the first out of the station. I was wearing a dress and heels, which made me want to race him out of there even more. I wanted to mess up his strategy because he made the assumption that I was not competition. The door opened and he hustled to the far staircase. I took the first staircase in twos, holding my dress in my hand. I beat him to the top. He noticed. I got to the turnstile before him and walked through s l o w l y with him aggravated behind me. He hit the next staircase. I was close behind. We made it to the top together. We were neck-in-neck. Then he dramatically pulled out his cell phone and slowed down in defeat. I won.
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*I’m collecting data and interview subjects for a book about groupies. If you know anyone who has been or is a groupie (groupies who pursue actors, sport or music stars) please contact me at robin.maltz@gmail.com.