The days were winding down. I’m making this seem like it was a two-month shoot in the desert or something. No, remember, I was there for only two weeks. What more could go wrong?
The final night of shooting! Hooray! Tomorrow I get to go home! I’m sitting in my trailer—we are shooting at night. I hear about five pops! like firecrackers. Hmm. About fifteen minutes later, a knock on the trailer door. “Hey, we’re escorting everyone to set. There was just a homicide around the corner.” Ta-daa!
But there is one more addendum. Another cherry on the grim sundae that was this shoot. We finished at five A.M. They were going to give me a ride back to my hotel. Who should appear to drive me back to the hotel but Bush Viewer!? NOOOO! I had skillfully avoided him for the entire shoot—two whole weeks and I hadn’t seen him again. Now I got to bookend the whole experience with an awkward and silent car ride in the wee hours of the morning for my final moment.
When I left New York for Sacramento, I had high hopes of finally graduating to the best-friend role. Instead I was faced with a straight-to-video experience that included accidental exposure, an on-set meltdown, a clash on the finer points of what’s in a name, and a homicide. And when I left New York for Sacramento, I had a boyfriend, albeit an all-wrong-for-me, introduced-me-as-Rachel-not-my-girlfriend-Rachel kind of boyfriend. I returned home from Sacramento to New York as a single woman. I’d have to regroup and eventually turn off the Sinéad O’Connor. Maybe down the road was that perfect movie role for me that could break me through to a whole new level. And maybe down the road I’d find a nice guy who I thought was fantastic and who, just as importantly, felt the same about me. I believe this was the point at which I swore off dating the actors and comedians and the charismatic performers. I didn’t need that anymore. All I needed was a regular Joe … or Abdul (hee-heeee!) … or Mohammed (haaa-haaa!) … or Shaquille (bwahh haaa-haaaaaa!)….
Hey, Baby!
Back to my dating crusade, and trying to keep hope alive: The third date that came my way was with a man I met doing a night of new screenplay readings. He was the producer of the evening. I had been invited to a friend’s party afterward that was going to be my usual crowd—the marrieds and gays. But this was the new, proactive Rachel who opts to go out with the group of people from the reading! We all went out to a bar, and the producer and I chatted the night away. This guy was cute, age appropriate, smart, creative, seemed fun, no ring. … I referred to him as the Hot Nerd.
Hot Nerd thought I might be right for another reading he was producing about a month later, so we exchanged info. The next day, he called and we chitchatted. Kinda flirty. Shy, retiring, I was ready to hang up after the basics had been exchanged, but Hot Nerd kept the conversation going. He asked how an audition went that I had mentioned. We talked about that. Chatted some more. He told me more about the upcoming reading. And then? … We hung up. That was that. Gone were the days when I would ever ask a guy to do something. If a guy was really interested, he would find a way. I immediately gave up on the idea of Hot Nerd.
About a month later, Hot Nerd called back to give me an update on the reading. We chatted some more about this and that. At the end of the conversation, there was a bit of a pause. “Well, we should go get a drink sometime,” he said.
Did Hot Nerd just ask me out? Yes, I think he did! “Yeah, sure!” I said. I was leaving town for a week, so I told him I’d call him when I got back. When I returned, I gave Hot Nerd a call. I got his voice mail and left a message, your standard “Hey, I’m back in town, so give me a call.” A week went by. Hmm. A whole week. At this point, picture in your mind the frame of a house sitting quietly and then picture a single beam falling off of it and swinging, perhaps with a cartoon sound effect. That’s what happened in my mind when he took a week to call back.
When he called back, he left a message on my voice mail. When I listened to this message, I was walking down a loud New York street—so loud that I couldn’t quite make out the voice mail he had left, which was a bit garbled anyway. All I heard was “Hey just checking in” or something like that. I went straight to a hair appointment I had. I texted him back. “Hey, I’m getting my hair cut but will call you in a bit.” I was going to be leaving town for another week, so I should see this guy soon, before any momentum wore off. He texted me back. “I thought we agreed only I could cut your hair.” Flirty! Cute! Random! I called back, got voice mail, and said, “Hey, I’m actually leaving town again. I don’t know what your tomorrow looks like, but I’m free then.”
He didn’t call back. Two days passed. Another beam falls off the house. I was leaving town that day and I needed to look up a phone number that I had saved in my voice mail, so I listened to my saved messages. Oh! What do ya know? I had saved that garbled message from when I was walking down the street. Only now that I was in my apartment, I could hear it a little more clearly.
“Hi, Rachel. Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I had a baby a couple days ago BLAH BLAH BLAH WHITE NOISE WHITE NOISE WHAT THE @&*&^%!!!”
No. I could not have heard that correctly. I actually thought, wait a minute, he’s a producer and writer; he was probably referring to some project he was working on, like “I’ve been so busy working on this thing, it’s my baby!” I listened again. Nope. Sure enough. This guy just had a baby. “… took me a while to get back to you. I had a baby a couple days ago. Well, I didn’t have the baby, but it’s my baby! So I’ve been on the front lines here BLAH BLAH BLAH MEOW MEOW.”
Oh … my … God. I was stunned. A baby? This dating thing really wasn’t working out at all. I guess this never was a date, was it? Was this one all in my head? Did these guys just want to hang out with someone who had been on SNL? Were they interested in me or Lorne Michaels?
In my defense, I don’t go through life thinking dudes are hot for me. By this point in my life, I had become quite cynical. When meeting new guys, I would just assume “not interested” or “attached,” and move on to a state of pleasant surprise if signs pointed to the contrary. And now, I was learning, signs pointing to the contrary still had to be viewed with a heaping dose of cynicism.
Just to be clear: When someone asked me out, I used to assume that meant they were asking me out. Between Gay Starf***er and Hot Nerd, I guess that assumption no longer applied.
Even before all this, on the rare occasion when I’d find myself flirting with a cute guy who seemed single, I’d still have my warning systems on for when that G-Bomb might drop. The G-Bomb—he has a Girlfriend.
It could come up sometimes late in the conversation, or even after it had ended. “Hey! That guy George is really nice! He’s cute!”
“Yeah!” my friend and eternal wingman, Lisa, would say. “He was totally flirting with you. He told me he likes you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! But I think he has a girlfriend. I don’t know what’s up with it. All his friends want them to break up, but they’re trying to work it out.” Blah blah blah blah blah G-BOMB.
If dropped too late in a conversation, the G-Bomb can come with crushing disappointment. I remember the worst case of this in recent memory took place at a film fest. I was talking to this cool guy—a graphic artist who was cute and really laid-back. We were chatting the night away, just the two of us, as other film types buzzed around the party. The summer night air was balmy, the wine was flowing, the stars were out. Graphic Artist was so easy to talk to! In my mind, I was already telling my friends about the cool guy I met at this party. Oh, and my friend who would be joining me at the fest wasn’t arriving until the next day, so I was alone at the party. Therefore, I was also already creating the “reward” story in my head, about how if you go somewhere alone and buck your social fear, you will surely meet someone. “Look how great this worked out!” said my optimistic self to my cynical self. About a half hour in, we were discussing travel.
“Oh, you’ve been to Italy! I love Italy! I was there just last summer!” I said.
“Yeah, my fiancée and I are going t
here in June.”
Your … fiancée? Am I hearing things? Did you just jump the G-Bomb and go F-Bomb on me? After I logged a good thirty minutes of scintillating conversation with my flirting A-Game? Granted, my flirting A-Game is another woman’s banter when ordering a sandwich at Subway, but I told you, I’m behind the curve on this stuff.
When you are in a committed flirting relationship with a guy at a party, and telling your friends about him in your head, and then you hear that word fiancée, the F-Bomb—at that point, your brain sends an “Emergency! Emergency!” alarm to your mouth. You have to expertly and swiftly throw a smile onto the projector that is your face.
“Ohhh! You’re engaged?! Congratulations! When’s the wedding?” when inside, you are saying “AWWWW NO F’ING WAY! ARE YOU F’ING KIDDING ME?!”
The fine art of keeping that painted-on congratulatory smile while your innards are imploding is a true skill. This particular time, I felt like I was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon; you know, when your whole body cracks into pieces and slowly falls to the floor in chunks, leaving just a cartoon smile suspended in midair. “Ohhh! You’re engaged!? Fantastic!” says the Mouth. Then all your teeth fall out one by one, until just one tooth is left swinging, with a tiny little cartoon swinging noise to accompany it.
Regarding the Hot Nerd: When I finally went to do the reading, I got some interesting scoop quite by accident. I was talking to this woman, and she was speaking very highly of Hot Nerd.
“He’s great,” she said, in a way that made me think she may have had a crush on him at some point. “Yeah,” she went on, “I knew him for, like, four months before I ever found out he had a wife and two kids! These showbiz guys, they like to keep their private life a secret.”
AHA! I wanted to scream, stand up, and raise my arms in triumph. Vindication Station!! I wasn’t crazy! I was just a hapless casualty in Hot Nerd’s MO of reckless flirting. And so, once again, the Rule of Threes kicked in, and my dating crusade came to a disappointing close. I would retreat back into the comfort zone where I concluded I belonged, at least for now. You know what they say: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me three times, ya married gay cannibals, shame on me.
A Real Dog
After the Dating Crusade, I decided to give up on talking to strangers and making an effort and just let things naturally take their course, and wouldn’t you know it, I was downright seduced by someone. That’s right, it happened when I wasn’t looking. Only thing is, he was a real dog. Not a guy like “he’s such a dog.” I’m talking a black Lab. His name was Burleigh. He started out gently enough, all kisses and romance. As the relationship went on, though, I discovered his dark side. He was prone to mood swings, even violence. In the end, he went back to his old girlfriend.
We met in a vacation spot, where you only see someone’s good side. It was Park City, Utah—an idyllic ski town. Burleigh was living there at the time. He was athletic and the mountain air suited him. I was a guest in his home (and the home of his owner, Ida, who was my friend’s cousin). Burleigh didn’t get a lot of attention in the home. You might say he was completely ignored. I felt pretty bad for him. There was a new baby, and as far as I could tell, Burleigh was crated for much of the day and did not get to enjoy long walks. He was let out for a few moments to do his business and called back in. He slept on a dog bed in the corner. In times of stress, he would eat diapers.
The big thing I noticed was that nobody ever seemed to pet him. Ladies, listen to me good. You’d best pay attention to your dogs or they will go get it somewhere else. By “it,” I mean ear scratching.
The first night, as the evening wound down, I was settled into my guest bedroom, lying in bed in the dark, with a hint of moonlight coming through the window. That’s when I heard the door swing open. I felt someone climb onto my bed, oh so brazenly, in spite of the fact that he knew he wasn’t allowed! Not on that clean white duvet! But he didn’t care. It had been so long since he had felt the human touch.
I was lying on my side, and he came up and lay right next to me. I felt his hot breath as he put his face into mine, with his chin pointed down a bit so he could look right into my eyes. Then, still gazing into my eyes, he actually put his paw on my shoulder, assuming what I would call a lover’s pose. I chuckled to myself. Never before had I been embraced by a dog! I wanted to call to my friends so they could check out this scenario, but their rooms were too far away, and besides, it might have ruined the moment. I rolled over on my other side, and Burleigh kept his paw on my shoulder. OK, this was too much. I was being spooned by a dog.
The next morning, the only evidence of our forbidden encounter was the fact that the duvet cover was completely covered with black strands of fur. I told everyone about this sweet moment and was informed that Burleigh was not supposed to be on the beds. “Uh-huh. Oops. OK,” I said, knowing full well that I would be defying that rule. This could be the only loving he got all year, and I secretly knew he had an all-access pass to my boudoir and to my heart.
When we left Park City, I told Ida that if she ever thought dog ownership was too much, I would gladly take him off her hands. She didn’t respond, “Absolutely not! He’s my best friend!” She actually seemed as if she might consent to Burleigh and me starting our beautiful life together. But it was not to be … at that moment.
Two years later, Ida and her family had moved to DC and had another baby. The report came from my friend—“Poor Burleigh!” “What do you mean?” “He’s always last man on the totem pole. Strangers pay more attention to him than his own family.” Let me add that this friend is extremely stoic and Norwegian. If I may translate from the Norwegian to Emotional Jewish her true meaning: “It’s an emergency! You must save him!”
I had a dog, growing up—a collie/shepherd/husky mix who had run up to me on our lawn when I was twelve years old, and we ended up keeping her. In spite of my father’s hatred of dogs, he gave it the OK because he could see how attached to her we already were. The first night she was allowed to sleep in our house, she had diarrhea all over the dining room floor. Her rocky beginning notwithstanding, she ended up being the member of the family that was the easiest to get along with, and I think we would all sign on to that statement. Even my dad ended up loving her. She has been gone for more than twenty years now and I still miss her and have dreams about her. So having a dog is something that’s always been on my list of life things, except with my long work hours, I never had the time. Now, off of SNL, off of 30 Rock, with few auditions coming in, well, this could be the perfect moment for me to have a dog! I mean, if I were a big television star, I’d be too busy for a dog, right? Ha-haaa! Take that, Hollywood!
I sent Ida an e-mail—“My offer still stands!” She wrote back that I could take him for a month or two. It would be a summer vacation for Burleigh to get some attention, an experiment perhaps in non-dog-ownership for Ida, and a test run of dog ownership for me. Perhaps I could even look at it as a rent-to-own situation, if things worked out for all parties.
Girl Walks Into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle Page 10