Mom must have spent a fortune on these three carnations for my eighth-grade graduation.
Let’s just get this stuff out in the open: As a kid, I was ugly, I was freckly, I had short, wiry orange hair, and when I walked down the street, boys in my class would bark. (To this day, when my dogs do it, I turn my head.) And the torture didn’t end when the school year did. One summer, my parents treated my brother Johnny and me to a horseback-riding lesson. The instructor said to Johnny, “Let me get a smaller horse for your little brother.” Ouch. It was a blur after that, because I literally became hysterical and cried at him, “I’m a girl! I’m a girl!” for about twenty minutes straight. That guy really earned his five bucks. It’s why I wear lots of makeup and fake eyelashes today: I know that there’s a horse instructor walking around somewhere who thinks I’m Andy Dick. I’m a girl! I’m a girl! I have my period and everything!
And it wasn’t as if I was going to find comfort and solace at Catholic school for being different from all the other girls. At St. Bernardine’s the nuns never liked me. Especially Sister Mary Bitch-and-a-Half. I think that was her biblical name. She really tortured me. I’m telling you, she was out to get me. It really gave me an education in how to deal with people in authority who have it in for you, something that would occur again years later when I started doing plays and had a director who really hated me. But I can thank those nuns, just like the lyrics of that Christina Aguilera song, for “making me a fighter,” because they knew how to pick on someone. If it wasn’t me, it was Brian Czech, the shy kid who’d spend his time drawing all day. This nun would gun for him just because he was vulnerable. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like organized religion of any kind. They have too much authority. There was no oversight committee. No Barney Frank.
Now, I never saw a kid get physically abused by the nuns and priests, which my siblings claimed to have witnessed, but I do remember something that happened to one boy that really chilled me. He was being rambunctious, and the nun said, “Go get your coat.” He had a winter jacket with a thin fabric hook on the back, and she hung him by that hook in the cloakroom until lunch. And there he was, just hanging by his own jacket, and nobody questioned it. No parents ever came and said, “Did you really hang my kid in the cloakroom?” At that time, it was, “Whatever you say, Sister.”
Never mind a nun coming to a kid’s defense against other kids. It was a dog-eat-dog world at St. Bernardine’s from the get-go. Starting in first grade I had to band with other outcasts to protect myself from the cute, straight-haired mean girls. I may have been a dork with Bozo hair, but those girls were vicious. I remember getting my ass kicked by them one time when I’d said the wrong thing to piss off a couple of the mean girls. I don’t even remember what it was, but when they decided it was payback time, you were done for. This was on the school premises—on the stairs—that I was being roughed up, and I swear a nun nearby did fucking nothing but watch. I mean, they were kicking me in the ribs. I’m not saying I had to go to the hospital, but when I could see an adult—who could have stopped it in a second—wasn’t going to do anything, I had what Oprah would call my “lightbulb” moment: “Oh, I see. Nobody saves you.” Then immediately I started thinking, I have to see them in homeroom tomorrow! It was like learning a tribal mentality. How am I going to survive with Mary O’Hanrahan and those bitches?
I knew I wasn’t physically strong enough to fight back. I couldn’t kill them with kindness, because that doesn’t come naturally to me. I couldn’t kill them, either. Which really felt natural. But I did think I was smarter than them, and was pretty sure I was more clever. So I decided I was going to be openly sarcastic, and make a joke to their faces in class. I did my homework, too. I remembered that once in class, Mary had been chosen to answer what the capital of Romania was and had gotten it wrong.
So the next day when my ass kicking was being savored by Mary and her gang, I said loud enough for all to hear, “Well, Mary, I guess I’ll have to move to a place you’ve never heard of … like Bucharest?”
It was my EF Hutton moment. Remember that old commercial? “When EF Hutton talks, people listen.” There was a beat of silence, and then her friends laughed. The class laughed, too.
(Very important point, by the way. Everyone has to laugh. Otherwise you just get your ass kicked again.)
There was something like a tacit agreement after that. They never made me their friend, but they did something better. They left me alone. And in return, I would occasionally make them laugh, and not necessarily at their expense. But I just thought, If I can keep them laughing, they’ll get off my back. And they did.
Brian Czech, the boy who sketched all the time, who I swear didn’t talk for eight years, became one of my good friends in grade school, and he had his own way of protecting himself. He would draw guitars all day on thick pieces of cardboard, cut them out, and put them on his pens with tape or a rubber band, so they all looked like guitars. And he did it for all the kids in the class. Even the most popular kid would come up to him: “Hey, Brian, would you make me one?” He would just nod, and then produce this incredibly ornate cardboard guitar for the kid to put on his pen.
To this day, if I have a type, it’s quiet guys. Guys like Brian. Turns out, I do enough talking for both of us. Of course, back then I was determined to get Brian Czech to talk to me. I just persisted until I found out our common ground was that we both loved Night Gallery. (Perhaps you remember my crush on Rod Serling?) Brian would come in on Monday and I’d say, “Did you see the new one? With the twins? The dead sister who had the tap-dancing school and you could hear her tap dancing after she died?” (I never did see Brian after St. Bernardine’s. Hey Brian, if you’re reading this, you can find me on Twitter. Twat me!) I make fun of my mother for her sympathy illnesses from Marcus Welby, M.D., but like I should be talking. After that disturbing Night Gallery with Laurence Harvey as the guy whose murder plot with a brain-penetrating caterpillar backfires on him, for ten years I thought I had an earwig. AND IT LAID EGGS!!!
I can explain. I was in a play. Honest.
Did I mention I watched a lot of television?
My dream to be in showbiz took all forms from a young age. If there was any reading aloud in class to be done, my hand shot up first. Even the corny Nativity pageant bullshit every year got me all psyched. Outside of school, I was always dragging kids from the block to do plays with me in the yard. Anything for attention.
For the Griffin household, I naturally had my own one-woman shows that I would perform each night during dinner. I’ll be honest, I just stole my theme song from The Tonight Show. Then I’d move into a topical, cutting-edge monologue about what happened to me that day—lemonade stands, five cents a cup, you call this a living?—and then go into my tap number. I was a kid living with a lot of denial about my tap-dancing abilities, when all I was really doing was stomping my foot around the floor. Then there might be a reading from my favorite Judy Blume book, or a dramatic reenactment from Love Story. (I played all parts.)
The family, meanwhile, would just be anxiously eyeing their Hamburger Helper, wondering when the floor show was going to end.
It was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, though, that gave me the first inkling of what place I could have in the entertainment world. When that legendary sitcom first came on, I naturally had to check it out because I loved Mary from The Dick Van Dyke Show—that hilarious Dick Van Dyke was, like Rod Serling, another husband candidate in my mind—and I’ll never forget that awesome apartment with the big M on the wall, and how beautiful Mary was. But when Rhoda burst through the door in her Gypsy headscarf, billowy caftan, and hilariously abrasive delivery, I was like, “Who is that? Oh my God!” That’s when I fell in love with wanting to be the sidekick. Everything out of her mouth was hysterical, yet she was vulnerable and human. I remember my family fell in love with her, too.
That’s who I wanted to be. She had all the jokes.
I knew I could never be Mary—just like when I watched The Brad
y Bunch I knew I could never be Marcia. Let’s face it, I was Alice even when I was ten years old. (It doesn’t help when your mother has this horrible expression she unleashes every once in a while: “You’ll always be cute, but you’ll never be pretty.” The Irish think it’s just like saying, “Hi.”) But in any case, I knew I could totally be Rhoda. She battled with her weight and had funny comebacks, and things didn’t go her way, but she always got the laugh. I loved her.
Before I had gays to do my hair.
After eighth-grade graduation, my parents were hell-bent on sending me to the local all-girls parochial high school, but I wanted to go to public school. It was a lot bigger, and there was a huge drama department. And it had boys. Hmmm, how was I going to win this argument? I tried crying. That didn’t work. I told them about all the plays I would try out for. That didn’t work. Then it came to me: “Public school is free!” That got ’em.
When I entered Oak Park High School, my mind was blown because I was going from a graduating grade school class of thirty-four to a freshman class of over a thousand. The school had three theater programs, and I signed up for all of them. The auditorium held 1,700 seats, and I remember seeing Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio—remember Scarface and The Color of Money?—and Dan Castellanata—the voice of Homer on The Simpsons—in Camelot there when they were seniors and I was a freshman. They were the queen and king of the drama department. When Mastrantonio went on to Broadway from Oak Park, I told myself, “Don’t fuck around. There’s good people here.”
The numbers game is intense at a school that big, so when there was only one picture of me in the freshman yearbook, I was determined to get my picture in the sophomore yearbook so many times they would have to add another line for me in the index. Pathetic, I know. It’s really no different than how I am with US Weekly today. I guarantee you I went to maybe one meeting of student council, but I was there on picture day! I was a cheerleader, too. Don’t get excited. I was a soccer cheerleader. It doesn’t get nerdier than that. I was fired from the soccer cheerleading squad after one year, which I believe to this day is unprecedented. You have to understand, no one went to the soccer games. In fact, I believe part of my duties as a cheerleader was to bake brownies for the team. Then I became the only person who couldn’t read music to get into City Chorus. I joined everything I could. I also told myself that when I graduated, I was going to speak at the commencement service, no matter what. And sure enough, I’d bullshitted my way into reading some ridiculous poem. That was my big thing, getting my name out there, a credo I still live by today. You may not like me or embrace me, but I’ll bet you’ve heard of me. The best thing about the D-List show is that people who didn’t like me so much, or simply found me annoying, watched the show and came around to my side. But step one has always been, “They’re all going to know my name!” Looking back, it sounds like I was going to go postal on my school, but I wasn’t. I was just focused!
I make jokes now about Hollywood being like high school, because it is. It’s the same hierarchy. You had to know your place, but you could easily be fooled into thinking somebody was your friend when they clearly weren’t. If I were alone with any of the jocks or popular girls, sure, they’d talk to me. I could even have a conversation with someone like homecoming queen Christie Grisaffi. But every time I’d walk through the hall and be like, “Hi, Christie!” she’d act like I hadn’t said anything. Or I’d be in science lab next to a football guy, and think, He seems cool in class! Maybe I shouldn’t judge people! The next day, he would act like he didn’t know me. I know, John Hughes nailed it, right?
This is how I discovered what I now lovingly refer to as “my gays.” I sought refuge in musical theater. The safe haven! I truly loved the drama clique, where I felt welcomed. I tried to be involved on any level, from watching rehearsals to printing programs. And the cliché is true, once you’re in and you look around, it’s a bunch of straight girls and gay guys. (You’d think one of those football players would have half a brain and sign up for the play and get laid constantly.) Tom Murphy was my high school boyfriend. When I look at his yearbook picture now, he does remind me a little of Zac Efron or Chace Crawford. Mom would say to his face, “Tom, you’re so damn pretty, it’s a shame you’re a boy!” Good old Maggie. Always direct. He was sort of flamboyant, and my friends and I would tease him about being gay, but he did make out with all of us girls in the drama department. We just … you know … never went all the way. For some reason. I’m pretty sure people didn’t start being gay until I was in high school. I’ll have to check with GLAAD about that.
I’m lower right, and my boyfriend Tom is in the blue-and-white-check shirt. Why doesn’t he want to go all the way with me?
Today it’s different, of course. If I meet a guy and I think he’s gay, I’d probably just come out and ask him. So my girlfriends and I may have good-naturedly ribbed guys like Tom about boys he had crushes on, but we didn’t pursue it, and we certainly weren’t mean-spirited about it. It was all pretty innocent. (Although I do think the guys were all fucking each other.) My idea of a date, meanwhile, was Tom picking me up from my job at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor and walking home in my gay-nineties’ outfit and Styrofoam hat through the cemetery, talking about theater, dance, the Bee Gees, the Donna Summer concert we were going to stand in line for, how we both wanted to be Karen Lynn Gorney in Saturday Night Fever. Other times we would hang out in the Griffin family den singing songs from Gypsy, Guys and Dolls, or the ultimate, Funny Girl. Yes, the gay boys and I could lip-sync the sound track to Funny Girl in its entirety. Sometimes we would try to copy a dance routine that we saw on a variety show: the Osmonds or Jackson Five. We did plenty of gay stuff; we just didn’t know how gay we were at the time.
I was so used to hanging out with gay guys that when I had a real high school boyfriend, I couldn’t believe that he wanted to actually fool around and have sex. His name was Nick. He was shy and cute and third string on the basketball team. And I couldn’t believe he liked me. One time we had a date and he tried to feel me up over my paisley button-down shirt and olive green elephant bells, and I was appalled. Tom Murphy never tried to go that far with me. To this day, the behavior of straight men is something I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. Have you ever met one? They’re really weird. Sometimes they want to have sex without A Chorus Line playing in the background. Yuck. How is that even possible?
So while straight guys may have mystified me, I was a girl who knew what she wanted in terms of fame and recognition: a lead in the school play. I scratched and clawed my way to starring in the big shows my senior year. I was Rosemary in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the part that Michele Lee played in the film. (Now, of course, I’d never take that role, because it’s not the funny sidekick.) I was also Hodel, one of the daughters in Fiddler on the Roof, a production in which I believe there was only one Jewish girl. Very multi-culti. Even then, I wanted my school to think outside the box. Why weren’t we doing For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf?
My senior year I started having vicious, tearful fights with my parents about why I didn’t want to go to college. They couldn’t figure it out. They’d saved for it. Joyce, John, and Gary had all gone.
But I knew that I had to try to be a real actress, and start as soon as possible. I certainly wasn’t going to follow the paths imagined by my parents, who never took my show business yearnings seriously. They kept trying to talk me into being a dental hygienist, so I could meet a nice dentist, who would then take care of me. That was after I got braces, which means it probably occurred to Mom after she bitched and moaned about the price. The second option to consider was being a “stew.” In other words, stewardess. They said if I became a “stew,” I could fly for free. You can see where this is going.
“That sounds like you just want to get free plane tickets,” I said.
“No, no, you’d be great!” They beamed.
In any case, I’d already had a t
aste of “the biz” when I got to appear in a commercial while I was still in high school. My parents had a friend who did local voice-overs, and that friend’s son announced one day that he was going to be an extra in a commercial for the Chicago White Sox, and did I want to do it, too? “You come, you sit in the seats, they film it, and you get twenty-five dollars.”
I’d be rich! Sign me up!
The shoot was held at the old Comiskey Park, where the White Sox played. I was outfitted in braids, a red-and-white-check gingham shirt, and a Sox cap. I got to sit in the crowd and sing the team’s anthem, which was the oldie “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Good-bye” but with a chorus that ended in “good times.” That day I had the time of my life, and then, sure enough, they decided to put me in a small group shot. So out of the whole crowd, they zoomed in on me, my parents’ friend’s son, and two other people. I didn’t even know I was recognizable until the commercial started airing. “Hey, you were in the Sox commercial!” I’d suddenly hear when I was at school or walking down the street, which thrilled me to no end. I had become a famous face!
My first award, for second best singer in a talent competition. Yeah, I rocked Genoa City, Wisconsin. Next stop, Hollywood!
My parents may have pooh-poohed my career aspirations, but they were cool enough to foot the bill for my first headshots. I needed them, too, because after that commercial I went and signed with every talent agency in Chicago. (No one cared about exclusivity there.) They were corny shots—me with a handbag in a Sears catalog pose, as a counter girl in a generic fast-food restaurant, and as a tomboy in OshKosh B’Gosh overalls—but the idea was to show a range of what I could do.
Despite my efforts, I didn’t get booked for anything else.
I knew I had to move to Los Angeles. That was where it was going to happen for me. I had talked my parents out of college, and now other factors made the notion of relocating also attractive to Mom and Dad. Kenny was already out in California touting the place, Joyce was looking for a change of scenery, my parents were now old enough to retire, and the winters in Chicago were really starting to kick my mother’s ass. So after living six decades in one city, my parents up and moved to a place where they didn’t know a soul. Joyce and I headed out a month later, driving across the country together. I was eighteen.
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