I Hate Everyone, Except You(6)
“Hot out, huh.”
“Yup,” I’d reply.
“Dirty windows, huh?”
“Yup.”
“That’s what you get for living next to a bridge.”
“Wait. This is a bridge? I thought you were all waiting in line to go to hell.”
“Eh, fuck you.”
I’d shake the mop in his direction as if to say, Don’t make me use this thing on you, because I will.
Once, a woman in the passenger seat of a minivan rolled down her window to ask me where York Avenue was. I pointed east with the mop, dripping some soapy gray liquid on myself in the process. “I told you so, Hal,” she barked at her husband. “I’m sorry,” she said to me, “my husband is an idiot. I hope one day you get a better apartment.”
Jennifer’s apartment was a bit more posh than mine; it was a sublet in the high-rise famous for its cameo in the opening credits of The Jeffersons. Every time I entered the lobby, I imagined myself as the meat in a George-and-Weezy sandwich, him proudly strutting on my left and her on my right, regarding it all in wide-eyed wonderment. I’d press the elevator button and fantasize about the dinner Florence would have waiting for us, maybe meat loaf with a side of sass. And perhaps tonight would be the night Mr. Bentley would let me walk on his back.
The first few times I visited Jennifer, I’d sing The Jeffersons’ theme at her apartment door: “Now we’re up in the big leagues, gettin’ our turn at bat!”
She’d inevitably shush me in her politely paranoid way; she didn’t want to bother the neighbors, lest they rat her out for her not being on the lease.
Jennifer had quickly become my best friend in New York. We met a few years earlier while we were both working as home-shopping hosts for Q2, a short-lived offshoot of QVC that broadcast live from Silvercup Studios in Queens. She was gorgeous, and I hated her on sight. When an executive for the company introduced us, Jennifer gave me a weak smile and kept her arms folded across her chest. She thinks she’s better than me, I told myself. I’m going to make her life miserable.
The next day she apologized for the lukewarm reception. She explained that she was hungover, the air-conditioning was too high, and she was wearing a thin bra. “Boing!” She pointed her index fingers away from her boobs. I knew we’d be friends forever.
Her sofa was nice, I supposed, a seafoam-green convertible, smallish but the right size for her alcove studio. I had helped her pick it out, mildly jealous the whole time we shopped because she could afford one while I was still sleeping on a futon. She was making more money as a commercial actress than I was as a freelance writer and editor. I had given commercial acting a shot but quit after my first audition, which Jennifer’s agent—at her prodding—had set up for me. It was for Boar’s Head Turkey.
The casting director, a blasé gay-ish guy maybe a decade my senior, pointed a video camera in my direction and took a seat behind an industrial folding table. “You’re a radio announcer,” he said, “and your line is, ‘Boar’s Head Turkey.’?”
“So you want me to say ‘Boar’s Head Turkey’ as though I’m a radio announcer.”
“That’s what I just said, except in reverse.”
“Gotcha.” I cupped a hand to my ear (the way radio announcers do?) and produced my most resonant tone: “Boarrrrr’s Head Turkey.”
“OK, do it again.”
A little more gusto this time. “Booooarrrrrrr’s Head Turkey!”
“Again.”
Maybe I wasn’t accentuating the right syllable. “Booooar’s Head TUR-key!”
“Again.”
“BoaRRRRR’s Head Tur-KEY.”
“Again.”
“BOOOOOARS Head Turrrrr-key.”
“Again.”
“Boarrr’s HEAD Tur-KEYYYY.”
“Again.”
I was stuck in a sadistic loop with this fucker. He knew I’d never get the part, but he was making me repeat this damn line over and over. I couldn’t think of any new ways to say it! I was barely intelligible at this point. It was like that scene at the end of The Miracle Worker when Anne Bancroft gets Patty Duke to say “water” but it sounds like “wwwaaaaaauuhh-waaaahhhhwuh.”
I refused to be the first to quit.
“BWOOORRRS HEHD TUH-TUH.”
“Again.”
“TURRRRRRRR GA-BWAW BWAH.”
“Again.”
“BUHHHH HUH TURRRR TURRRR.”
“Again.”
A knock at the door. His assistant, asking if he was ready for the next auditioner.
“Yes, send him in. Thank you Mister . . . Kelly.”
“You are . . . welcome.”
I waited years for that commercial to make its way to television, just so I could see who beat me out for the role of self-loathing, turkey-loving radio announcer, but it never aired. While Jennifer opened a bottle of wine and assembled a cheese platter in the kitchen, I perused the magazines on her coffee table. I had already read that week’s People and Entertainment Weekly, so I flipped through another I had never heard of: Marie Claire.
Opening to a feature story titled “How Many Men Have You Slept with This Week?,” I was instantly sucked in, so to speak. But I was even more intrigued by the women holding up signs with big, bold numbers like “3” and “0” and “1” and “27.” By the time Jennifer came back to her new sofa, I had gobbled up every word of the article.