Authors: Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
By day three, no one had heard from my mother. The hope that she’d have regretted her decision and come right back to get me had faded, and I was becoming accustomed to the routine. Other than Tammy, I hadn’t really talked to many kids. But I’d been given store privileges and spent some of the five dollars I had on a pack of Hostess Snowballs, which I snuck and ate during “group.” These days the pros would call it therapy, but at the time it was more of a rap session.
If it was possible to have a favorite part of the day, group was it. People were encouraged to address why they were here during the session, which was run by a resident counselor who’d for three straight days worn the same dingy jeans and gray fisherman’s wool sweater. I started to suspect that this was his uniform to make the kids feel like he was just like them. I found this vaguely comforting, along with his habit of never being able to get his glasses to sit straight on his nose in spite of endless adjustments. The best thing about him was his laid-back demeanor. He never pressured anyone to talk, but if you did he listened as if there could be a pop quiz. Plus, he smoked cigarettes compulsively—about a pack an hour—which seemed to somehow draw out even the toughest, moodiest among us. Maybe his compulsive side made him more human, more relatable, or maybe the steady secondhand nicotine just eased the anxiety. Most of the kids staying there were pretty sad cases: unwanted, molested, wards of the court, bounced from foster home to foster home with the shelter serving as a holding cage between nightmarish situations. I suppose it made me feel better about my life when I compared myself with them.
Jeremy, the guy I’d noticed on the first day, turned out to be fifteen and on the run from his fourth abusive foster home. Another kid was there because his father had recently been arrested as a suspected serial killer. This sort of put things with my stepfather in perspective. I considered recategorizing him as “menacing but manageable.”
I definitely was falling for Jeremy, mainly because he thus
far hadn’t showed the least bit of interest in my existence—a highly attractive quality in a potential mate considering the strongest feelings I’d harbored for a boy to that point had been Matt Dillon. I watched Jeremy out of the corner of my eye and tried to imagine what he smelled like and what it would be like to run my fingers through his hair. At closer inspection, the ratted tangles made me realize I’d definitely need to brush it first, but somehow that only added to the intrigue.
I popped a little foamy marshmallow with coconut coating into my mouth and—possibly due to the sugar high—began feeling some hope. Just two more years and I could legally work and get the hell out of this city. Maybe I’d move to Los Angeles. Maybe I’d go find my dad. Maybe I’d be an actress and become famous so everyone would know I was somebody—somebody worthwhile. Maybe my mother would see then. Maybe she’d know what she was missing.
Around day five, dressed in a flawlessly broken-in pair of Levi 501’s and a purple-and-gray-striped Izod sweater, I called a meeting in the room I still shared with Tammy. “Listen, guys. I think it’s bullshit that we get to watch only an hour of TV a day even if we’re at level three. I can live with some of the other rules, but I feel it’s our God-given right to watch television and we should fight for it.” The other kids looked at me intently, if a bit suspiciously. Most of them were certainly up for a good fight. They just needed a ringleader, and this was my specialty—a way to get in with the group and get them to at last see past my embarrassing possession of two married middle-class Jewish parents.
“I’m ready to start a petition,” I chirped. I’d been listening to Pat Benatar’s “Hell Is for Children” over and over on my Walkman and I was pretty riled up.
“I’ve been back here ten times and nothing ever changes here except the staff,” said a boy who’d I’d never heard speak out loud before. I chose to take him talking at all as encouraging.
“Look, if enough of us argue for it, we can make them see things our way. But we should start small. Let’s just ask for two hours of TV a day.”
“And that people on every level should be allowed dessert,” Tammy piped in, voicing her pro-sugar platform. “We’re not in jail.” The truth of the matter was I’d been holed up in Connie-Sue’s basement watching hours of MTV every day and was in serious withdrawal. I would’ve traded my later bedtime privilege for even half a J. Geils or Bananarama video. I was that desperate. But the shelter didn’t have cable, which was another thing I wanted to add to the petition. Cable TV was a necessity as far as I was concerned. Really, at that point, I was dying to tune out—as we all were. Some had found other ways to do it.
The shelter was strict, but pot was abundant. I was offered a chance to “smoke out” with at least half the kids, including Tammy, whom I wasn’t entirely sure should be mixing marijuana with her mood-stabilizing meds. I passed on the pot: I found being stoned the opposite of relaxing. Unless I was by myself, surrounded by food and in no danger of any social interaction, I was okay, but that was rare.
So instead, I threw myself into reworking the shelter privilege system. I wrote up a petition outlining the reasons we should be allowed to watch two hours of television as opposed to one. With Tammy’s help, I went around to each resident and asked for a signature. I even camped outside the bathroom to wait for Greg, a brand-new arrival, to come out of the shower. I meant business, and if that entailed seeing a little “accidental” nudity I wouldn’t let that stand in my way. Last up was Jeremy. He took the paper out of my hand, signed it, handed it back, and looked me in the eye before shutting his door. He may as well have asked me to the prom. Things almost couldn’t have gotten any better when Tammy yelled,
“Dinner!”
I’d been in the shelter a little over a week when I went to Gladys’s office to present my petition. She seemed out of breath and a touch sweaty despite the fact that she was just sitting at her desk doing paperwork.
“Gladys, some of the other kids and I feel that we should be allowed a few more privileges. I understand that you have to have rules around here and make things fair, but it really feels like we’re being punished. Maybe just some extra TV would go a long way to making kids feel more at home. So, um, we signed a petition.”
“You can’t fight the system, honey.” Then, without warning, she sprang the news on me that I was leaving. Most runaways could only stay for two weeks max and the main problem for me, and apparently the state of Massachusetts, was that I didn’t run away. There wasn’t enough funding to keep a kid in the system who had other viable options. My
parents had been called and alerted to this fact. My mother had reluctantly agreed to pick me up the following morning. Gladys asked me how I felt about it—the eighties were a time big on feelings.
“I don’t know,” I told her honestly.
“Is there anything I should know when I make my report?” I looked down at my fingernails. As a chronic nail biter, my ragged cuticles were often bleeding and the whole look was something of an eyesore. But I noticed they were actually starting to grow a little. Maybe in a few weeks I could actually paint them.
“About your home life?” Gladys pushed.
“I don’t know.” Again, I really didn’t know. I’d long since given up hope that anyone could really help me. But, my spirit wasn’t broken, maybe just badly bruised. Deep inside I didn’t believe I was such a bad kid. Somewhere buried beneath the self-centered, stupid, ugly, difficult, contrary label I’d been given was a very small voice—so small I had to be very, very quiet and calm to hear it—that voice said gently, “You’ll be okay.” That’s all. The voice couldn’t tell me what I’d do for a living or if I’d ever find a husband or have a house or children. The voice just told me I’d get through the next few minutes, the next month, the next year. What I did know was this past week had contained the least drama I’d experienced in a long time. To call it peaceful might be stretching it, but it was close. And shit, I’d managed to work myself to a level three in my short time there, I could go to bed at eleven if I felt like it, and I sort of had a boyfriend.
“No, I guess not.”
“Well, then pack your things. Your mother is coming for you in the morning. And I’ll think about the television, Stefanie. But don’t get those kids’ hopes up.”
Driving away from the shelter with my mother the next day, we didn’t speak. It was then that I knew I’d lost her. During the week I’d been gone, she and my stepfather had bought a house, and we were on our way there now. In the fall I’d be starting at a new high school. I’d be in my junior year. I thought about the kids I’d just driven away from. Were they starting school, too? Would any of them be at my new school? My mother put the radio on to a talk station and stared straight ahead, navigating her way to our new place while I stared out the window watching completely unfamiliar surroundings buzz by at thirty-five miles per hour. I thought about Tammy and smiled to myself. I knew she’d love my periwinkle sweater that I’d left behind for her on her bed. But I knew she’d enjoy the four Kit Kat bars I’d wrapped inside the sweater even more.
E
very comedian dreams of landing his or her first shot at performing on television, and I was no exception—so it was a highly pressurized night at the Improv comedy club in Hollywood the evening of the
Star Search
auditions. About seventeen of us comics—all at different levels of experience—had made it onto a list to audition for the producers of the show, and most of us were completely freaking out—even the pros—but especially me. I was cursing myself because I’d accidentally taken some cold medicine earlier in the day to combat a lingering sinus headache, and I was still dealing with the ugly aftermath of a bad pseudoephedrine high.
The two glasses of wine I’d already downed at the bar weren’t taking a bite out of my nerves, and standing in the hallway with the other comedians wasn’t helping, either. A Jerry Seinfeld look-alike was cursing to anyone who would listen about the comic currently onstage.
“That asshole just did my joke. He knows I do that bit! Now I can’t do it. It’s my
opener
!” I knew that any comic listening to him would be secretly pleased. It’s a competitive business and another’s misfortune only gives the rest of us a better chance. Annoyingly, at least three comics were “warming up” before their set. I’ve never really gotten the whole Rocky Balboa shadow boxing or deep knee bend before a performance. It’s not an athletic event. Looking at them, I couldn’t help but think that as comedians, we’re standing onstage in front of a microphone talking. It’s either going to be funny or not. Being extra limber doesn’t seem like it’s going to make any difference. But, I wasn’t going to dare tell that to the impressionist standing by the men’s room doing lunges—comics take their comedy very, very seriously.
I’d been struggling doing stand-up for at least four years already when I got this big chance. And dammit, I deserved it. I’d endured more than my share of humiliation performing in sports bars while people ate chili fries and watched a Lakers’ game over my head, cheering not for my jokes but for Robert Horry’s three-point buzzer-beating game winner; screaming out jokes at a county fair while standing on top of stacked speakers from the bad Fog Hat cover band who played before me; attempting to humor teens at a drug recovery center while they sat twitching and detoxing from narcotics—and those were some of the better gigs. Any comedian who brags that he or she can work with any audience has simply not performed enough times in front of enough audiences. Try being the only Jewish female comedian at a born-again Chris
tian “Bible Comedy Night.” When my friend Lisa, a hilarious stand-up comic, gets asked, “Wow, stand-up sounds so hard. Do you ever bomb?” she always answers the same way. “Of course! Sometimes I’m super funny and sometimes the audience sucks.”
By ceaselessly doing any stand-up gig I could to practice, I’d eventually worked my way into a few regular spots at the local bigger clubs and that eventually led to the
Star Search
showcase.
Out of the bunch of us auditioning, we all knew that only a couple of us would be chosen to fly to Orlando and get that highly coveted spot on what was at the time still a highly rated show.
Twenty minutes later, I’d just walked off the stage where I’d managed to get through my five minutes and had taken a seat at the bar, when a well-dressed man walked up to me and stuck out his hand. “I’m Sam Riddle from
Star Search
and I’d like to invite you to perform on our little show.” I was speechless. Nothing that exciting had ever happened to me in my entire life. I was going to be on TV for the first time. And it wasn’t even cable. It was network television, baby. Finally, my hard work had paid off—in spades! Now it was just a matter of time until I had my own sitcom. I wondered who they would get to play my mother or wacky neighbor and whether I would have any say in the casting process. I did have someone in mind for the role of the quirky best friend, although she was a little green, but I thought if she got into acting classes soon enough she could be ready. I wouldn’t be
one of those people who forgot where she’d come from once the big paychecks started rolling in. When I was rightfully living in a gated community next door to people like Mariah Carey, I’d still have the same friends, only now I’d be able to get them work—even if that meant just being my driver. Of course, being my driver would be a big responsibility and
would
require a clean driving record. But there would also be opportunities in merchandising and eventually the handling of my clothing line. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my being famous was going to require a lot of work and good managerial skills.
But right now the ticket to my success was standing right in front of me waiting for a response.
“Thank you so much, Sam. I look forward to it.”
This was big time, so my friends and I celebrated over cocktails and three orders of deep-fried Buffalo wings. I wouldn’t be getting my own show for a few months, so I figured I had plenty of time to hit the gym.
A few weeks later, I was flown to Orlando, Florida, where the show was taped in front of a huge studio audience. My flight wasn’t “officially” first class, but I did get a window seat, so the pampering had already begun. Plus, there was a driver at the airport to personally take me to the Disney World hotel where I’d be put up for the duration of my stay, which could be long depending on how many shows I won. Let’s just say, I did not pack light.
Once I was settled into my hotel room, I got a call from one of the producers to give me my schedule and go over my
jokes with me. I’d get only about three and a half minutes, so I needed to make that time count. I’d gone over and over my act—the act I’d pieced together with surgical precision—on the five-hour plane ride (nonstop!).
“Tonight you’ll get taken to a local club to practice your set, if you like. The crowds in Orlando are incredible. Then tomorrow morning you’ll be taken into the park to do a quick ‘pretape bit,’ and then tomorrow evening it’s showtime. Any questions?” I wanted to ask,
“
Does the network that airs your sitcom hire someone to answer your fan mail, or is that something your personal staff has to deal with?” but I figured it could wait until after my first performance. Plus, my mouth was full of the mint I’d found on my pillow.
Later, at the local comedy club where I was to perform my act with the other comedians scheduled for shows that week, I found out I would be competing against a friend of mine, Keith, the following night on the big show. Keith went on a few acts before me and he killed—the audience couldn’t get enough. Damn. I instantly felt bad. I mean, poor Keith deserved this chance as much as I did. He was an extremely funny guy, but besides that he was also a really nice person. And if this was a “nice person” competition, I wouldn’t have stood a chance, but it was a talent competition so I really hoped Keith had a backup plan.
The next day was a flurry of activity. I went into the main park with some of the other contestants from my show for a couple of hours. I tried to befriend the reigning Female Vocalist champion, Angelina, but after securing a place in the
semifinals she’d already begun acting like a diva and was out of touch with what the rest of us were going through.
“Were you nervous?” I asked her, trying to be friendly.
“Please. Have you heard me sing? The judges love me.” When she said the word
love,
she dragged out the
o
like she was suddenly speaking Italian. “I got four stars for every performance.” And with that she turned to her friend, the latest Spokesmodel winner, and ignored me.
“So, I take that to mean you don’t get nervous,” I said into thin air. And for the life of me I couldn’t fathom how the Spokesmodel won, seeing as she had bigger teeth than Gary Busey’s. I would have killed to see who her competition could’ve been.
“I get nervous,” said a small voice behind me. It was an adorable nine-year-old, Yvette, who was competing in the Junior Vocalist category—finally a friend. The two of us immediately hit it off like gangbusters and sat together at the over-the-top catered lunch while we talked about how excited we were about the show, which parts, if any, of the Spokesmodel hadn’t been surgically altered, and of course, boys. The only problem was Yvette’s mom had to hang out with us the whole day. She followed us around everywhere like some kind of obsessive stage mother. It was sort of embarrassing since she was old—like
my
age.
Before I knew it, I was having my makeup done backstage, where I was offered coffee, tea, Red Vines, and finger sandwiches. To be honest, the last thing I wanted was coffee, but a beer would’ve been nice. If I’d known it was going to
be a “dry” studio, I would’ve snuck one from the minibar in my hotel room. I also wanted my makeup toned down a bit since with the bright orange blush and overly smoky eye shadow I looked like I could’ve been auditioning for the part of a streetwalker in a Broadway musical or possibly a flushed raccoon. But when I brought it to the makeup lady’s attention, she assured me it would look completely natural on camera.
From backstage, in my makeup chair, I was able to watch the show from a monitor while it was in progress. My category was coming up, and I was being ushered toward the stage by a person with a walkie-talkie while the Vocalist Group was on the stage. They were good but they were no Limited Warranty.
Finally, it was my time to shine and, although nervous and sober, I walked out onto the stage, wireless microphone in hand, and landed my first joke—to a semitepid response. I had planned a set of my best “single girl in a nightclub” jokes, but as I scanned the crowd and saw mostly families in jean shorts and fanny packs, I got the sinking feeling none of these people had been single or in a bar since VCRs were invented. But I was determined to win them over, so I smiled big and muscled through, managing to elicit a decent laugh on every joke and even a huge applause break on my last bit. The clapping was ear shattering when I said, “Thank you, good night.” I hoped Angelina was watching.
See you in the semifinals, bitch!
Next, it was Keith’s turn to take the stage. I waited back
stage while people congratulated me. I also gave little Yvette a little pep talk because the poor thing was a bundle of nerves, then I watched the last couple of minutes of Keith’s performance on the monitor. I really hoped he’d do well because if you’re going to lose, you still want to give a good show. There was a joke about helicopters in there that seemed to go over very well with the crowd and then he called it back at the end, which the audience
loved.
Keith and I held hands while Ed McMahon asked the judges for my scores. And here’s where things took a surreal turn. One by one the four judges turned over their scorecards. My first score was three stars out of four, not too bad, but my second score was two stars—pretty bad—then things went a little fuzzy, but my final score was two-and-a-half stars. Then Keith’s scores were read off, and he ended up with something like three-and-a-half stars. Keith was declared the winner, while I stood there paralyzed and humiliated with a frozen smile on my face.
The second we walked through the door of the stage into the backstage area, Keith was immediately surrounded by hoopla and fanfare. If my memory serves me correctly, someone may have baked him a congratulations-on-kicking-Stefanie’s-ass during the time between our scores being announced and our arrival backstage. I, on the other hand, was suddenly as popular as a skin rash.
“We’re booking your flight home. The next plane leaves at six p.m. There’s a bus waiting to take the losing contestants back to the hotel so you can grab your stuff in order to make
your plane on time,” the travel coordinator said, only glancing up long enough to hand me my “get the hell out of here” printout itinerary.
“I’m kind of hungry. Can I just have a few of those finger sandwiches now?” I asked, seeing as my blood sugar felt at an all-time low. Could I have just caught diabetes from this experience? If so, maybe I could sue.
“We can’t let the losing contestants back into the main backstage area, so you’ll have to eat something at your hotel or wait for the plane.” I didn’t get to see little Yvette take the stage, but I gave her a rueful smile before I left. I hoped she would be okay—she was so young and show business was a fickle mistress.
The come-down was difficult, but as I sat on the plane (aisle seat) on the way home, thinking over the events of the past few days, I realized something pretty positive. This business was all about who you know, and I knew Keith—there was a very good chance if he got his own show I could get a job as his driver. I had a perfect driving record.