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. Iwas 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 andfound 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
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. Iwas 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 andfound 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
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