Girl Walks Into a Bar (12 page)

Cut to, now we are juniors in high school, long after our awkward junior high breakup, which consisted of me coming back from the summer and saying I thought we should break up (even though all we ever did to “date” was chat on the phone) and then ignoring him because of my own massive awkwardness. I was in a play, and after the show, Chris gave me flowers with a note that said “
From your not-so-secret admirer
.” The Nicest of the Nice was back.

We didn’t run in the same crowds, per se. We were both in the smart classes, but like I said, I hung out with more the jock/party-in-the-woods crew. (Fun Fact: Many of them are named in the “Sully and Denise” sketch we did on
SNL
with Ben Affleck.) I bumped into Chris in the hallway soon after the flowers incident, and he asked me out on a date. By now we were sixteen or seventeen, but I may as well have been
thirteen with my level of comfort in dating. Then came the moment in my life I wish I could take back. I’m sure there’s more than one, but I think this one haunts me because I was young. It’s the sort of moment from your youth that you wish you could go back with your adult brain and fix for yourself and, more importantly, for the injured party.

Lest you get the wrong picture, Chris wasn’t only Nice. He wasn’t some milquetoast character from the movies. He was really smart, and he was funny too, and he was a cute guy. He called me up to set up our date. By now, my thirteen-year-old fear brain had taken over and I wasn’t looking forward to the date. I really don’t know why. Because he showed such fervent interest in me? Because I needed that danger or swagger in him or a feeling of inferiority in myself to feel interested? When he called to set the date up, though, he was turning on the charm. He had given a lot of thought to this and he suggested dinner and a movie—dinner at Bel Canto, one of the Italian restaurants in town. This was the classier joint with white cloth tablecloths, a step above Mario’s, which had vinyl red-checkered tablecloths. I remember he said that we could get a romantic table in the corner or something like that, a concept that sent me mentally fleeing. In the middle of this call, the other phone line rang. I was on my parents’ phone with Chris and said, “Could you hold on a sec?” and picked up the “kids’ line”—the ancient equivalent of call-waiting. It was my friend Eve. “Eve! I don’t know what to do! Chris is on the other line and he’s talking about this date. He’s making it all romantic and stuff. What should I do? Now I don’t want to go!” I don’t quite remember the words but it was something along
those lines. “He’s talking about a romantic table in the corner! Oh my God!”

I flipped back to Chris to continue begrudgingly making these plans. “Hi. I’m back.”

“Hi. You know, you can hear through to the other line on this phone.”

“Huh? … Oh.”

My mind didn’t comprehend that this could be true. What was he talking about? Was that really possible? In a slight panic, I went forward, not addressing what he had just said at all. Here’s where I wish I had some adult judgment working for me and had actually addressed what had happened.

I awkwardly hurried off the phone with Chris. I discovered in the next few days after running some tests that indeed, through a glitch in the phone system, you could hear the other line. I didn’t mention it to Chris, apologize, explain, attempt to make an excuse, anything. I simply ignored it. We did go out to a movie and it was hurried and perfunctory. By then I was in full dread mode, only compounded by my gaffe. We went to see
Airplane 2
and didn’t go out to dinner before or after. I was treating it like an unpleasant appointment I had made and just had to get through.

Class act that he was, he never held my immaturity or rudeness, depending on how you want to frame it, against me. Our senior year, he signed my yearbook. I was with my friends after school, hanging out on the benches, when I sat down to read what he wrote. It was the first time I can remember crying not out of sadness but from sweetness. This is what he wrote:

“Rachel—There was a time when I would have done anything for you, and I mean anything. I wanted to be, and I guess I still do, your Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, and Indiana Jones all rolled up into one. You are a truly beautiful person. You will wow ’em wherever you go. Remember that scene from
Raiders of the Lost Ark
where he lassos the girl and pulls her in to him? Well … that’s what I’d like to do with you.”

I
know.
I was a damn idiot.

Scarce few men
have said anything that sweet or poignant to me since then. Chris appears to me regularly in dreams where I am trying to right my own wrong, not just to him but to myself, I imagine, for not accepting that kind of sweetness and love. In my dreams I always say to him, “Oh my gosh! I have dreams about you!” He never says anything back. Do I have to keep having this dream until, within the dream, he responds? After years and years of these dream appearances, I Googled him and discovered through my rudimentary detective work that he married his college sweetheart and is a lawyer with two kids who at some point lived in New York City and, I think, even converted to Judaism—you can learn quite a bit from Google.

I passed up many nice guys after Chris too, opting instead to fling myself into a world of charismatic guys to be “won over,” a world of Fonzies. “Aaaaay!” Guess what I learned. Dating Fonzie sucks. I was ready to find myself a Richie Cunningham. I’d even settle for a Ralph Malph.

Unfortunately for me, it took years to learn this lesson. I
was off on my unconventional career path, which meant I was surrounded by people for whom staying out ’til four in the morning on a Wednesday night was perfectly normal and acceptable, if that’s what you felt like doing. While everyone else, like my friends from home and college, was finding love, partnering off, and starting families, I dated the Three Addicts. I was never so into substances myself, ever since I had eaten a “space cake” in Amsterdam at age twenty and thought I was going to die. I at once took a solemn vow to never ingest another drug that can’t be undone—i.e., ’shrooms, coke, ecstasy, black tar heroin … never touched the stuff. I like the fact that when you are demurely sipping a glass of red wine, you aren’t going to suddenly take one sip that makes you think the tiles on the floor are moving.

With no history of addiction in my family, I don’t know how I managed to ferret these gentlemen out, but ferret I did! I dated the alcoholic (since recovered, dear friend), the pothead (a stand-up comic—an even worse choice of boyfriend than an improviser. When you think about it, an improviser has to relate to people and be part of a group mind, while a stand-up just has to be willing to travel to Florida by himself and stay at a Days Inn), and finally, because I’m a comedian and adhere to the Rule of Threes, I rounded it all out with a sex addict. (Rule of Threes: If you do something two times in a scene, you have to do it a third time to get the laugh.) I didn’t even know this guy was a sex addict while we were dating. And I had my antennae out too! He didn’t drink or do drugs—a virtual teetotaler! But I found out later I had done it again and
found another addict. Rule of Threes! By the time I had finally learned my lesson, I was thirty-eight years old.

SNL
had always served as a handy excuse to myself for why I didn’t have a boyfriend. “I’m too busy!” I’d tell myself. During the workweeks, we were indeed too busy to have much of an outside social life, but the fact is that we did have plenty of weeks off during the year, plus the entire summer. No matter, I could always rely on the old phrase “It will happen when you’re not looking!” That’s what people would always tell me anyway. These people are NEVER single, by the way. Have you ever, ever had a friend who is single say to you, “It will happen when you’re not looking”? No. You haven’t. The people that say it always have a bright smile, happily ensconced in a relationship.
“It will happen when you’re not looking!”

Well, I could “not look” like a champ! Not looking is easy! You just do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. Of course, this strategy completely goes against the other 50 percent of the time when
those same people
tell you, “Get out there! Don’t sit at home!” or “My cousin went on
Match.com
and now she’s
married
!”

I personally went in waves, between shut down/not looking and getting out there. Then, when I could no longer stand “getting out there” another minute, another night at a bar I didn’t want to be drinking in, another party on a night I felt like staying home and watching TV, another evening with my not-usual crowd, I would duck back into the comfort zone for a while. Then the comfort zone would start to scare me and I’d hurl myself back “out there” again. Until someone again told
me, “It’ll happen when you’re not looking!” Oh, they’ll keep saying it. The only more incomprehensible statement I can think of is when people say, “Well, he died doing what he loved,” and they take comfort in that. “Did you hear? Joe was killed in a hang-gliding accident.” “Well, he died doing what he loved!” I’m sure Joe would rather have lived while cleaning his toilet than die hang gliding.

But now here
I was—post-Addicts, post-
SNL
, post-
30 Rock
, post-any-employment-whatsoever. I had no excuses. I was ready to tackle dating with the hard-earned maturity of an adult and, feeling I was trying to start fresh, with the wide-eyed naïveté of a sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old dancing around the gazebo, without the teenaged boobs to match. At the same time, and Horsemeat didn’t help, I had the bitter, seen-it-all cynicism of a WWII vet: Something in me was pretty sure that by the time I was this age, my early forties, all the Nice Guys who wanted a real relationship had already married their college sweethearts and converted to Judaism.

“She’s Siiiinngle!”

One night in the midst
of this determined state, I was a featured guest on a live talk show that took place in a theater. It was similar to a live Conan or Letterman—a funny host and an audience, but not televised, just a theater piece. During the interview, the host asked me if I was dating anyone special. I said no, I wasn’t. He turned to the audience and yelled, “You hear that everyone? She’s siiiinngle!”

The interview ended and I walked back to my spot in the audience to rejoin my friend Ryan at our seats in this small theater. No sooner did I sit down, having just been announced as a single lady, than a gentleman appeared next to me in the darkness. The show was still going on and he leaned over and whispered, “Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thanks,” I said, ever oblivious to an opportunity.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, but thank you.”

He walked away toward the bar, and Ryan turned and hit my arm. “Hey, he’s cute!”

Huh? Is he?
I thought about it for a moment. I guess so. I don’t know. Not really my type. My type, however, had not worked out for me in the past and should probably have been manually shifted out of its stuck position in my brain. Maybe it was time to go against my type. This guy was your standard NYC Jewish-looking dude that I never went for. He sported a goatee and a newsie cap.

And all of a sudden, he reappeared.

“Here. I got you a water.”

“Oh, thanks.”

This guy was persistent. I said I didn’t want a drink, but I think he must have been, dare I say, hitting on me? I mean, the host had
just
said I was single not five minutes before. He started talking to me, quietly, as the show was still going on. He told me he was a writer for
Gotham
magazine. As the show was ending, he said, “Well, I’m gonna take off now, but here’s my card. Call me. We’ll go have some fun.” Those were his words. “Call me. We’ll go have some fun.”

This was proof that I just needed to get out of my usual routine! Change it up a little bit. Meet new people. Get out there. Ryan was way into this guy for me, telling me that I
had
to e-mail him.

The next day, Ryan kept pestering me. “OK, did you contact the guy? Did you?”

“No. Not yet.”

Ryan is one of my inner-circle gays. We first met at my audition for
SNL
. He worked in the talent office, booking the musical guests. He’s of Japanese descent, Mormon-raised though not practicing, Hawaii-born. Remember I said that I
lucked out because, for my audition, some people from the office had gathered in the back, so I had people to laugh at my audition instead of a silent void? Ryan was one of those people, and his laugh is loud. Ryan can be so loud, in fact, that sometimes when we are out in public, I have to remind him to use his “restaurant voice.”

Our friendship grew at
SNL
because during the time between the read-through and the “picks,” that painful three hours when you are operating on no sleep and waiting to see if you will be in the show that week, Ryan would have access to a supply of wine reserved for the talent or perhaps even for Lorne himself—I never knew. But I was a willing participant in its consumption with Ryan on Wednesday nights. It’s hard for me to believe it, but Ryan and I overlapped at
SNL
for only one year. Our friendship grew from there, notably on one day in particular. Ryan moved to LA and was visiting in NYC. We had dinner with a group of friends near my apartment on the Upper West Side. Ryan was supposed to stay with a friend in Brooklyn, but the friend was sick and so Ryan asked if he could crash on my couch. We were really just “work friends” at this point. We didn’t hang out much on our own. I said sure and he stayed on my couch. The next morning when we woke up, it was 9/11. His mom called him up early and we spent the day watching TV together, seeing the towers collapse there on live TV. Ryan brought the only second of levity to the horrible day when he went to the grocery store to get some supplies. He returned forty-five minutes later, hands flying in an exaggerated gay thing he puts on for laughs, and screamed, “They are
hoarding
at the grocery store!”