He is beyond generous, and when he kisses me over Heinekens at 2A in the East Village where we’ve met to talk about my story, I realize, oh yeah, that’s why.
You have to realize, this kind of attention is all new to me.
When I got married to James, I never wore makeup or watched my weight or dyed my hair or even got my eyebrows done. I wore clothes either far-too-old-for-my-age dowdy-professional or retro thrift, as if I hoped to seduce Eddie Vedder should I ever get a time-travel machine to 1993. I never played games at all with men. Ever. Unless the game was to act like the kind of nightmare who hysterically cries at the drop of a hat and relies on a man for all manner of self-validation, self-worth, and approval to fill that giant gaping hole inside.
But when James broke my heart, he broke all of my idealism as well. I pulled a complete one-eighty, a total George Costanza in terms of how I approached men, dating, and relationships. Had I made fun of The Rules before? Well, fuck it, this time, I was going to read it with an open mind. Did I never date conservative guys as a rule but instead gravitate toward anyone who would bring up Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky within the first ten minutes of small talk? Well, why not date a union-busting corporate lawyer instead and “yes and” every Darth Vader illustrative anecdote he made over chardonnay as I fell down drunkenly on his boat?
Nothing mattered. The dream of true love was dead, and I was ready to position myself as a player. Now, sixty pounds lighter, hair much more bleached, makeup much more applied, clothes much more tweaked for sex appeal, ideology completely shredded, I was suddenly a piece of ass. And it was the strangest feeling of power, one I had never quite experienced before.
With Liam, I am open to romantic possibility, but after the one daytime date we have, seeing Brokeback Mountain in the theater, complete with awkward hand-holding, I realize I like him more as a friend than anything else. I so want to have that immediate-boyfriend-in-New-York experience, but there’s nothing lonelier than trying to convince yourself that a friend is something more, when your heart knows differently.
Out at Liam’s stand-up showcase one night, I meet Andy Borowitz, the humorist and creator of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, who has enough money to retire on forever but enjoys doing stand-up at small showcases in the city. He tells me I look ten years younger than my age, kisses me on the cheek, and gives me his number when I ask if I can ever use him as a source for a “future piece.”
Ever the eager networking rube, I take this not-even-an-overture overture and leverage it with another pen-pal friend of mine, the then relatively unknown and future creator of You’re the Worst, Stephen Falk, who had reached out to me as a fan of my blog a year ago. Stephen would check in from time to time to see how my New York adventures were going. He had heard national radio pickup in LA on my “dinner whores” piece and wrote me about teaming up to bring in one of my future articles to option to his agent.
So how do I respond to Stephen?
“Yeah, sure,” I demur. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just want to work for The Daily Show . . . Maybe sometime I could call you and we could chat. I also think the creator of The Fresh Prince wants to bed me so maybe that will take care of everything. Ha ha.”
Question: Is it possible to die from literally cringing at yourself? Because I just did. A million times over. Why—specifically?
1. Because I idiotically didn’t realize that Stephen was handing me actual gold on a platter (anyone reading this: Know there is no better way to “break in” to Hollywood as a journalist than to have an established screenwriter option one of your pieces).
2. Because I dismissively swatted his idea away like the moron I was.
3. Because I instead took the opportunity to go on about various flirtations that existed largely in my mind—as if that meant anything. Honestly, I think because I had never experienced this kind of male attention before, I actually thought this was part of my résumé.
Stephen writes me back, true to hilarious form, and says, “That’s so funny. I got my first agent by fucking the guy who created Head of the Class. Sure, let me know what your schedule is and we’ll set up a phone call. So official!”
After my article “How He Blew It” comes out, I receive an inquiry from a guy named John who says he is a movie producer who can get me into William Morris. Almost daily, I write him nauseating emails trying to represent myself as the Carrie Bradshaw/Samantha Jones ice queen I think he envisions me to be (versus the crumpled-up identity-crisis mess I actually am). In writing this producer (I just googled him now; his career consists of one low-budget film no one saw in 2010), I even make Dr. Tom out to be this dramatic Romeo because I know I need some kind—any kind—of Mr. Big figure in the messy shit show that is my life.
“You’ll be pleased to know I had two heartwarming conversations with The Doctor this week,” I email John. “For the sake of The Hollywood Ending, of course. Also got approached about doing a stand-up showcase in March. Should be fun.”
My emails to John contain every excruciating nook and cranny of every development in my life. Someone wants me to write for a literary collection. Should I do it? My story for the next day’s paper is about spooning positions people sleep in, so insert shitty joke here, keep an eye out for that one!
God, I feel so lonely and unhinged. Little do I realize, John is pretty much doing to me the same thing I am doing to everyone else: parlaying. Neither of us is a player (no matter how many times he talks to me about getting “Dane Cook or Jennifer Aniston attached”). But we just keep mentioning enough dribs and drabs to convince ourselves (and, more important, other people) that we are.
Here’s how you parlay—in a nutshell. You try to pique the interest of someone else by inspiring the basest of human desires: jealousy that the other person is going to miss out on lightning. I’ve got this BIG EXCITING THING going on, and this person and this person are interested, and boy wouldn’t you be bummed if you didn’t snatch this/me/it/whatever right up? What I failed to realize at the time was this: It’s not about the connections. It’s only about the work. Only. If you don’t have work that stands up on its own, you are toast. You are an embarrassment. You are as see-through as Saran Wrap.
The exact same theory applies to dating and romance. You want this guy and that guy and the other to be The One, but if you haven’t done the work on yourself? World of hurt, baby. World. Of. Hurt.
Soon after John’s inquiry, an agent from ICM named Kate Lee contacts me after I feature her then client Nick Kroll. True to form, I keep up my roll of great decision making.
Kate and I get together for lychee martinis and conversation (during which I make sure, of course, to relate every interaction I’ve ever had with anyone who has so much as glimpsed the Hollywood sign). Then I do a conference call with her and her team, who wisely tell me that no one has heard of this movie producer “John” I keep mentioning. For my grand finale, I tell her I am going in a different direction.
Brilliant.
Should you ever want to break into the entertainment industry, I’m about to save you a lot of time and tell you the only two words you need to know (which an executive finally told me years later): deal memo. Or here’s one more: contract.
Everything else means nothing. It’s just talk. Treat it accordingly.
In the midst of all this, Fashion Week descends on the newsroom. This is a time when the models showcase the upcoming seasons and every lifestyle editor wants to jump off a cliff due to the insane workload, late nights, and tens of thousands of photos filing in.
Steve says he has a potential assignment for me. Would I be interested in being body-painted nude while modeling a Vivienne Tam design and writing a first-person piece about it?
“Yes,” I tell Steve. “But if I’m going to be naked in the paper, I’m not going to eat until it happens.”
“You weigh like twenty pounds already,” Steve says.
The day of the body-painting is surreal. While being brushed in oily black and red painted peonies, I
scratch notes on my pad in pencil, including what is to be the lede: “My breasts look fantastic. That’s what people keep telling me anyway.”
The piece continues, “I am wearing nothing but a Cosabella thong and pasties. All of my bits have been shaved. I am so glad I went to journalism school.”
When it comes to editing, Steve fights hard for every joke I write that the copy desk flags or red-pens. If you ever want to know what to look for in an editor, it’s this: someone who is a writer first.
But Steve also has to fight for something else. During the painting process, I make a huge mistake. I never once ask to look at what the makeup artist is doing to my face. I am so self-conscious already, I don’t think I have a right to demand to see what is happening. Someone says, “Fierce,” at one point, so I think that’s a good thing?
But when I finally go to a mirror I see it: I am nightmarish. The Post (like any mainstream media) relies on hot photos of hot women being hot. And I didn’t look hot at all. I looked frightening—like a red-and-black Kabuki freak.
When Steve pulls up the photos in our system Merlin, I watch his eyes as he clicks through the hundreds of shots. Then I watch as he does what a good editor does.
He doesn’t make me feel bad, but he is honest—and he saves the story. (In the words of one of my Washington Post mentors David Von Drehle, “Don’t try to make an A+ story out of C- material.” And that’s what those photos were.) After he makes some calls, the publicist messengers over a CD filled with other art options of drop-dead-beautiful naked women covered in body paint that we can use for the cover—instead of me. Next to one of them on the features cover, I am inserted as a tiny little inset. “My Brush with Fame: The Naked Truth About Becoming a Body Paint Model.”
It is humiliating, but it is also instructive. Never trust a makeup artist. Never trust anyone when it comes to pictures. If you think something looks weird, say something. Throughout a photo shoot, check in. Go with your gut. Need to start all over? Fine. Do it.
After the piece comes out, I keep up my aggressive parlaying streak.
I text Nick Kroll. Does he want to go to the body-painting-model-filled after-party with me? He is in LA. I call up Andy Borowitz, and he agrees. We walk through the party in the Meatpacking District as naked gorgeous women pose provocatively this way and that in silver, bronze, and gold body paint.
Outside the party, we pass by a newspaper box on the street. I put in a quarter to get out the paper and show him my piece.
“I got a few funny lines in it,” I say, as I show it to him, proud of myself in a small way after listening to his impressive anecdotes.
I hold up the spread for him to see. He examines it momentarily.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s not a good picture of you.”
My heart sinks. I feel so stupid. Only I could be in the paper naked and look like shit. So much for the piece-of-ass trajectory.
* * *
PERFORMING STAND-UP IS never something I plan to do in New York, but that one drunken night out with Dr. Tom changes all that. When I am booked to do a show at a gay Thai restaurant in the Meatpacking District, I nervously prepare as best as I can, trying to build up the fake confidence that a real performer gains naturally by going up at clubs five nights a week.
Inside the venue a few minutes before showtime, I walk up to a young man whom I ask, “Hey, are you on the show tonight, too?”
He is.
“I work at the Post,” I say, chatting him up nervously.
“Okay,” he says.
Then, all of a sudden, he turns to me in the middle of my wandering spiel. His face pinches up. He asks, with disgust and disbelief, “Did you just fart?”
My face turns red, and then I laugh.
“Yeah, I totally did.”
He pauses, stone-faced at first, then cracks up, shaking his head in disbelief. Onstage, I do not kill—at all. Halfway through my set, I look like a deer in headlights, and it shows. The young man I have been talking to before tears it up, however.
His name is Hannibal Buress.
“What are you doing now?” he asks me after the show.
“Nothing,” I say. “Want to hang out?”
It feels like we are both just trying to figure the city out, and we spend the rest of the night together. We soon find out we have something in common: We both have Chicago roots. I went to Northwestern, and he went to Southern Illinois University, where he says that after the first time he got a few chuckles, he got that rush any new performer gets, where you feel like Chris Rock or something. Little does he know that he is just a few years from being in the same major leagues as Rock himself.
A few days later at the Post, I get a call from Hannibal.
“You going up anywhere tonight?” he asks.
I hadn’t planned on going up anywhere again. But I meet him at a Lower East Side bar, where I get to see Eric Andre do stand-up in his earliest days of performing. Eric is modest about his talents, immediately bringing up that maybe Zach Galifianakis already has the music-and-comedy thing covered. Not a chance.
Hannibal calls me when he is hosting shows, and I get to do my own shitty stand-up. This sets my new intermittent pattern.
“What are you doing tonight, Miss Mandy?”
“Nothing.”
“Going up anywhere?”
Well, now I am.
One night after a show, he says he has nowhere to stay so I invite him back to the lesbians’ apartment to crash. We lie platonically in bed together, and he says after an awkward silence, “You’re cool as shit.” We make out for a little while, then fall asleep.
We text stupid shit throughout the day that makes me genuinely happier than most things in my life at the time.
Hannibal: Was yesterday our first date?
Me: yes—only 29 more to go and then we do it.
Hannibal: Taxi!
Me: hahahahha
Me: I also like your ipod franz ferdinand joke—& I like that it tests ur theory of all u need 2 do is say franz ferdinand 2 hipsters & they laugh
Hannibal: I’m full of hipster references. I’m buying your hat today.
But I never take him seriously. He is twenty-three. I am thirty.
Besides, it’s also incredibly clear that we should just be friends.
Still, my phone chats with Hannibal are far smoother than my other attempts at connecting with men.
During one night out on the town with Jessica Cutler after profiling her in my blogs-to-Hollywood piece, we notice David Cross out at Three Kings, and go up to him and say hi. He has totally heard of the Washingtonienne’s infamy in blog-land, and I offer to buy everyone drinks and expense them.
“Can you really expense them?” he asks, seeing through my bravado. “Because otherwise, I’m buying.”
He talks about the crappy sound guy who screwed up his set with Jon Benjamin when the two of them danced around to “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About,” and before too long we all move on to a place called the Magician on the Lower East Side.
Jessica doesn’t have her ID with her, though, so she gets left behind. Inside, we meet Gavin McInnes.
“Wait, Gavin from Vice?” I ask after he introduces himself.
“That’s the one,” he says, smiling, as it’s clear he’s done many times in response to the question.
I have this theory that Vice is evil (old indoctrination from my husband), and after leaving the bar, walking with David Cross solo now back to his apartment, knowing what comes next, I tell him exactly that.
“Vice is evil,” I say by way of small chat.
“If you think that, you can just leave right now,” he says and stops walking.
Whoa.
I take it back, and we keep going.
Back at his apartment, I make myself comfortable on his couch, then we kiss for a little while, and all I can think of is the many images of his face in my head from watching Mr. Show. Am I in a sketch? I cannot believe this is happening. There are few great
er gods in comedy to me than David Cross.
We take a break, and I pick up the Wonder Showzen DVD he has lying out.
“I’ve never seen it,” I say.
“Best show on television,” he says.
“Oh, hey, I’ve got an idea, why don’t you put on MTV?” I say. “I can dance sexy.”
He gives me the kind of look that a man gives when he fears you might actually be a crazy person. This makes me nervous, which inspires me to keep talking, change the subject, really open up.
“I probably shouldn’t have sex,” I continue, filling the silence. “Because I just got my period for the first time in like six months. I’m so excited.”
His face has now definitely changed. I am for sure a crazy person. What is happening? Why can’t I stop talking?
“Can I use the bathroom?” I ask, trying to make him forget all the weird shit I’ve just said. I go into his bathroom, look at the chipped toilet cover, and think to myself, This is David Cross’s toilet seat. He’s just like us. I splash water onto my face and try to will myself to stop saying stupid things.
I am literally the worst starfucker ever. I am a self-cock-blocking one by virtue of the insanity coming out of my mouth. I return to his living room. I sit on the couch. I keep to my pledge of silence.
“Hey, it’s getting late,” he says, and it is—it’s nearly six in the morning.
“Okay,” I say. “Do you want my number?”
He replies, with a distinctive question mark in his voice: “Sure?”
I jot my still-773 digits down on the back of my business card and leave it on his coffee table.
Then I stumble in as dignified a manner as I can muster out of his place, beeline straight to a bodega that is open, get a pint of double-fudge ice cream, and eat the entire thing on the cab ride home.
So begins a pattern. My deeply destructive binge-and-fast cycle. Since my period is so erratic, I finally go to yet another doctor, who tells me plainly what is wrong.
“You’re anorexic,” he says. He is not amused by my recounting of the Divorce Diet.
I deal with his diagnosis by getting wasted and sloppy drunk during the evening, then telling myself that eating a ton of food is actually good for me.