Yes, My Accent Is Real (2 page)

Fast-forward
seventeen years. Season three of
The Big Bang Theory
. We were prepping an episode called “The Psychic Vortex,” and I picked up the script and glanced at the casting list. One name caught my eye: Danica McKellar.

The actress who played Winnie Cooper.

Holy shit. Danica was slated to play a character named Abby, and I flipped through the pages of the script to see if I would get to share any scenes with her. I learned that my character, Raj, would meet her at a party, bring her back to Sheldon's place, and then, in the episode's final scene, they would make out.

I was going to get to kiss Winnie Cooper.

And this meant only one thing: God is real.

I'd like to say that as a professional actor I was far too mature to geek out over this, but the reality is that I immediately googled her. I learned that in addition to acting, she had written well-received books about math, including
Math Doesn't Suck
and
Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape.
I also learned that she had a husband, which immediately took any actual romance off the table; that's a line I would never cross. But still, even if it's totally innocent and just pretend . . . I was going to get to kiss Winnie Cooper.

On the morning before we were to meet at the table read, I spent no more than seven hours thinking about what to wear. I decided to dress down. So, in true LA fashion, I wore a pair of expensive torn jeans, white T-shirt, sneakers, and to really complete the look, I wore one of those ridiculous LA beanies that hipsters wear in the summer. I didn't shave, because I wanted a little bit of scruff; it takes a lot of effort to show you're not expending any effort. Such is life.

I casually strolled into the table read, avoiding her, hanging around the breakfast buffet, and making small talk with the writers. I was saying things like, “Hey, Dave, really hot today, huh?”

“Um, then why are you wearing a beanie?” Dave said.

“Because I'm having a bad hair day, obviously.”

Meanwhile I'm looking over his shoulder for any sight of Danica. Everybody has been to a party with “That Guy” who talks to you but really isn't interested in what you're saying; he's just saying words in your direction while scanning the crowd for more desirable company. Today, I was totally That Guy. The writers were probably thinking,
What the frack is wrong with Kunal?

Did I want coffee? No, no coffee. I didn't want to be jittery. I wanted to be cool. Just a cool guy in a cool beanie on a hot day.

Finally I saw her . . . and she looked exactly the same as Winnie. She was perfect. She wore a white dress and had her hair up in a band. Her hair smelled like Head & Shoulders in the best possible way, though I'm sure it wasn't Head & Shoulders.

I introduced myself. “Hi, I play Raj, my name is Kunal.” Funny that I said that in reverse. “That's me,” I said, pointing to my assigned seat at the table, which had a big card that read “Kunal” on it. I tried not to giggle like a schoolgirl.

She smiled, we made some chitchat, and for the most part I avoided saying anything creepy. We sat next to each other at the table. When the director introduced the guest actors for that week's episode, I clapped harder than everyone else when her name was announced, and nudged her with my elbow.
Dork.
During a table read you don't actually kiss, but when we did get to that blessed scene in the script, I did a silent happy dance for myself. You know that dance, the one you do in your heart, just for yourself, for no one else to see.

I
spent most of the week hogging her time, chatting, soaking up every second of her glorious smile. “I understand that you've written a bunch of math books,” I said casually, not mentioning that I found this out through Google at 2 a.m. “It's so nice that you're on the show, because we have a big following of math and science fans.” Was I laying it on a little thick? Maybe. But anything was better than getting nervous and blurting out, “Danica, oh sweet Danica, the first time I ever kissed a girl I closed my eyes and pretended I was kissing you, and I fantasized about you for most of my boyhood and sometimes still do even now in my adult life.”

And honestly, even though I had this massive crush, it's still my TV show (along with the rest of the cast and crew, of course), and when someone is my guest, I'm going to take care of that person. I want them to be at ease. I want them to be comfortable. I was just happy to be a butterfly in her lovely presence.

Kiss Day was Thursday, during the show's run-through. They served Lebanese for lunch—hummus, tabouli, tzatziki—yummy!—
Hell no, I'm not touching any of that!
I even avoided coffee so I wouldn't have coffee breath, and then I popped seventeen Altoids. My brain hatched all these scenarios of things going tragically wrong: she'd be repulsed by my breath, I'd be overly aggressive, or maybe accidentally miss the target and kiss her on her nose or left ear or eyelid. . . .

And then the moment arrived. No more excuses. It was time for the big scene. Sheldon enters the apartment, he doesn't get along with his date, and then Abby sits on Raj's lap. (
She's sitting on my lap!
) As soon as the director says “Action!” we're supposed to start kissing.
While Sheldon is talking to his date, Danica and I
have
to kiss for the entire time in the background. (Note to the writer of this episode: I owe you a Rolex.)

“Aaaaaaaaaand . . . action!” said the director.

Before he even finished saying “And,” we started kissing.

Allow me to point out that stage kissing, in itself, comes with an inviolable and highly sophisticated set of rules that must be honored 100 percent of the time. The number-one rule of stage kissing: No Tongue Without Permission.
^III
There was no way I was going to push the boundaries or do anything disrespectful, so I erred on the side of caution and kept my lips sealed like a fish. It was a long, loooooong kiss.

Take two! We kissed again. Take three! We kissed again. And again. And again. When it was all said and done, we did six takes. And, to be honest, I was kissed out.

Okay!

I don't have any illusions that it meant anything more than just a stage kiss, as she was married and she's a pro. This is what pros do. They make out passionately and pretend to fall in love with each other and then they go home to their happy wives and husbands. That said, I do happen to know that exactly nine months later, Danica had a baby. Did she race straight home from our kiss and make passionate, unrestrained love to her husband? I'm not saying that's what happened; I'm just saying we have no evidence that that
didn't
happen.

“You know, this might sound funny,” I finally told her the next day, “but I have you to thank for my very first kiss.”

She looked at me. Those eyes. “Really? How?”

I
told her a short version of the story, playing up the angle of “I learned to close my eyes from your scene with Kevin,” and glossing over the specific facts of “I visualized you and replayed the scene on an endless loop.”

“That's a really cute story,” she said, much to my relief.

Look, all these years later, I'm still in love with Winnie Cooper. I think
every
guy born between 1974 and 1985 is still in love with her. But it got me thinking. More than just Winnie, and Danica, and the stage kiss we shared, more than the beanie and the coffee and the seventeen Altoids, I just can't stop thinking about how life comes full circle. There are forces in this universe that are beyond our control; they're nonlinear, and they can't be explained by science or mathematics. You see, just as I thought about Winnie Cooper when I kissed Ishani, I thought about Ishani when I kissed Winnie Cooper. It brought back that memory of us sitting side by side on the bed, of the lights flickering on and off, of that twelve-year-old boy who knew so little of the world.

I hadn't thought of Ishani—my first crush, the first girl who broke my heart—in years. So after the Winnie Kiss I wondered what had become of her. I searched for her on Facebook, I googled, I asked my cousin about her. It turns out that she married one of the seniors from my high school, a kid who wore Doc Martens and smoked cigarettes out the window of our school bus. I wonder if she's happy. I wonder if she'll read this. I wonder if she ever thinks about our kiss.

And as for Danica? She was recently on
Dancing with the Stars,
and to the surprise of no one, she still looks incredible. She was partnered with the dancing coach Valentin Chmerkovskiy. I can't
help but wonder if perhaps, twenty years ago, Valentin Chmerkovskiy saw an episode of
The Wonder Years
in which Kevin danced with Winnie for the first time, and if when twelve-year-old Valentin danced with a girl for the very first time, he closed his eyes and thought of Winnie Cooper. Maybe life came full circle for him, too.

I
. Many houses in New Delhi worked that way: my mom, dad, brother, and I lived on the ground floor, and my aunt, uncle, and cousin lived in a separate residence on the first floor.

II
. I vomited the first time I smoked. It didn't stop me.

III
. Though on occasion you can probably get away with 10 percent tongue.

MY CHILDHOOD WAS SPENT IN
an all-boys school. Nothing about
that is cool. We basically stood around and scratched our balls and thought about girls and giggled. Girls were never around. And what happens when girls aren't around? Boys begin to act like maniacal hooligans. We were so full of pent-up sexual aggression that we took it out on each other by playing a game called “India and Pakistan,” which, I suppose, is sort of like “Cowboys and Indians,” except instead of make-believe whooping and yelling, we threw actual stones at each other. My face was hit by many rocks. (Which is probably why today I play an astrophysicist and not Romeo.)

Just as in America we also had science fair projects, but in our school we had to actually
present
our work in front of the entire student body, giving a speech about hydropowered generators or whatever. In theory, the rest of the students would listen to the presentation, admire the hard work, and ask insightful follow-up questions to further our understanding. In reality, we used this as an opportunity to ask questions to screw up the presenter. We took notes, looked for weaknesses, and tried to figure out the
trickiest question that would stump them. One year this kid gave a presentation on, well, hydropowered generators. I scribbled notes and worked on a good
Gotcha!
question. After forty-five minutes I raised my hand and asked, “So, what exactly
is
a ‘hydropowered generator'?”

The kid didn't blink. Calmly he said, “If you had listened to the presentation, then you would know what it was, so obviously you weren't paying attention.”

The crowd let out a collective “ooooooooooooh.” I had just gotten a smackdown. At least there weren't any girls around. Because we didn't have any interaction with women, our only hope was to organize PG-rated parties at each other's houses, invite the one girl we knew (she had a mustache and helped out with cricket practice), and then ask her to bring her friends from the adjoining all-girls school. This often resulted in a ratio of forty-five guys to two girls. And one of them was almost a dude. All we did was dance in one big awkward circle. Everyone was too scared to talk to the girls, really, so we tried to win their affections with superhuman feats of endurance and strength.

“Who can drink this Coca-Cola the fastest?”

“I can!”

“No, I can!”

“I can!”

“One, two, three, go!”

We jumped onto a table and guzzled a bottle of Coke, somehow convinced that if we drank it the fastest, the girls would melt with desire.
Watch me. Want me.
Chug, chug, chug . . . I chugged that damn Coke so fast that it exploded through my nose, sending saliva, snot, and blood everywhere. Ever had a nosebleed from Coca-Cola? I did. I think it was even coming out of my eyes. The
two girls were grossed out and I never saw them again. Who cares? They were probably weirdos anyway.

“How many cartwheels can you do?!” someone asked at another party.

“Let's see who can jump the highest!”

“Who can do the most push-ups?!”

It was sort of like medieval times, or what I know of medieval times from Disney cartoons, where you hope to woo the village maiden through manly acts of valor. It never worked, though, because I can't imagine any girl ever thinking,
I wonder which boy can jump the highest? I wanna get with HIM tonight.

The camaraderie in an all-boys school is epic. We really felt a sense of brotherhood. So when the seniors graduated each year, it was a very emotional moment. The juniors would throw the seniors a good-bye party. In my junior year, about four girls came to this party, which made us very proud, and I gave a speech to honor the graduates.