This Will Only Hurt a Little(55)
I got cast in the Broadway workshop for Cry-Baby and went to New York for two and a half weeks at the end of January. Craig and I were occasionally talking on the phone, and I felt like maybe we could still be together. I tried to have sex with one of the actors in the workshop, but it ended up just being awkward bad sex in the freezing basement studio apartment he lived in. Craig called and said he was thinking maybe he would fly to New York to see the performance, but then he didn’t.
“I would have liked that,” I said.
Back in L.A., I met him at a bar called Star Shoes for a drink to catch up. I thought that this was when we would get back together. I don’t know why I thought that. I had made it up, I guess. We sat across from each other—I was already three vodka sodas in when he showed up—and I put my hand on his leg and told him that we could work through whatever it was and that I was ready to give it another try. I knew I could be better and more supportive. I would be. He cocked his head to one side and put his hands up, as if to say “Don’t shoot.” And then he said, “Busy. No. That’s not happening. Like EVER.”
? ? ?
I don’t remember getting outside—I barely remember getting a taxi. I do remember asking the driver through my sobs if I could smoke in the back seat. How many sad girls in Hollywood did that cabbie let smoke in the back of his cab, I wonder? It’s so basic, really. It’s barely special. It’s the same for everyone. And yet, it feels unique when it’s you. And you can’t imagine anyone has ever experienced what you’re feeling.
The premiere of Blades of Glory was two and half years later. I was on ER at the time and, humiliatingly, had actually gone in and auditioned for the part we had imagined I would play in the movie when we were working on it. I auditioned for and didn’t get the part I had written for myself.
Needless to say, I didn’t want to go to the premiere. Why would I want to subject myself to that? I’d heard that one of the producers had been saying I was basically a jilted ex-girlfriend who forced my way onto the script for the credit. I should have pointed out, I was the only one who had a fucking IMDB page before this movie. I wasn’t the one who NEEDED THE CREDIT, dude.
Anyway, my new boyfriend Marc, a successful screenwriter in his own right, basically forced me to go. “You don’t know what it’s like for writers, Busy. No one is going to care who the fuck those guys are. People are going to see your name and freak out. Trust me.” I did trust him. I’ve never been more nervous on a red carpet. I hate the pictures of myself from that night, only because I can see how tense I am in all of them; I basically have no neck, my shoulders are hunched so far up. But I made it through the movie and even enjoyed parts of it. One of the biggest laughs was something I know I came up with, which also felt great (not that you should be in the habit of keeping score of whose ideas are whose but come on—they started it).
At the after-party, Amy Poehler grabbed me. “Girl,” she said, “Seth Meyers told me the story of what those dudes did. FUCK ’EM! You rock and are so talented. Come here! Sit at our table!!” The rest of the night was insanely fun, hanging with Amy and her friends and the cast of The Office, who had come to support Jenna Fischer, and all of them were so impressed that I was one of the writers of the movie. At some point, I turned to Marc and said, “Should we go find those guys and just, I don’t know, say hi?” So we left our star-studded table and found Craig and Jeff at their own table in the back, lit by one heat lamp, with their dad taking pictures of them. We said hi and I congratulated them, and then Marc and I headed back to where the real party was.
YOUR EX-LOVER IS DEAD
(Stars)
“Busybee! I was just going to call you! I have news, too. Guess what?”
She didn’t have to tell me. I knew.
“Oh my god, M. How many weeks?!”
I had called Michelle to tell her about a part I’d landed in a pilot with Peter Dinklage. Michelle had worked with Peter in the brilliant movie The Station Agent, and I was so excited to work with him too.
She was barely pregnant. The kind of pregnant where you only tell your best friend and the father. I started crying. Michelle was living in Australia with her boyfriend, Heath Ledger, whom she’d met while they were filming Brokeback Mountain. He was working on a movie there. She said Heath wanted to fly me to Sydney to hang out with her while he was working. She was just doing yoga and eating Australian yogurt, which was all she was craving, and could use a friend.
As soon as I was done with the pilot, I flew to Australia to be with her for a week. Heath introduced us to a show he loved called Kath & Kim and we started saying, “LOOKATME LOOKATME LOOKATME,” which was our favorite line from the show. I had started running in my breakup devastation and since I was so jet-lagged in Australia, I would wake up at dawn and jog from their house in Bondi Beach to Bronte Beach, along the cliffs overlooking the ocean, listening to the Arcade Fire album Funeral and feeling like maybe the future would be okay and maybe I could recover from what was certainly the most intense heartbreak I’d ever experienced. Maybe there was more out there for me, even if it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I wasn’t even twenty-six yet.
When I got back to L.A., I started to fill my days with running at the gym with Jennifer Carpenter and our other friend Candi, and meeting Abdi for lunch at Hugo’s. I filled my nights with going out to bars and clubs and concerts with other friends. I went out on a non-date with a producer who was very persistent about dating me, but I wasn’t into him. Not my type and the date ended with a handshake and a chaste kiss on the cheek. Years later, I would find out he told people he had fucked me, which was annoying, but I didn’t particularly care. I mean, if you’re so pathetic that you have to lie about sleeping with me, you have bigger issues. It made me really roll my eyes when he came out in such strong support of the #metoo movement last year. Like, okay, dude. Yeah. I guess if you just lie about fucking someone, it doesn’t count? I tried to get this cute musician who had recently moved to town to date me but he had a longtime girlfriend back in Boston who, while they were technically on a break while he was in L.A., he was obviously deeply committed to. So we agreed to be friends instead.