Unwifeable(30)

On Friday, I see Jim Norton perform, and at the after-party at the strip club Headquarters, I sit down next to a tall, good-looking guy in a nice suit.

“So, what’s going on in your life?” he asks.

“Well, I’ve been kind of depressed lately and calling phone sex lines,” I say.

He laughs.

“That’s refreshing,” he says, and introduces himself as Jonathan Brandstein, Norton’s manager.

“So where do you live?” Jonathan asks.

“Park Slope with two lesbians,” I say. Then I add, “I pay my rent in pussy.”

He laughs, and I mumble, “Just kidding.”

Jonathan then says one of the most profound things anyone has ever said to me about comedy: “Don’t step on the punch,” he says.

And I get it. Own it. Just like in writing, in comedy—and in romance. We are both not filled up on strip club food, and when I mention I’ve never been to a Gray’s Papaya, he insists. We travel outside, and he tells me hilarious celebrity stories, like how Richard Grieco supposedly likes to pretend to read Nabokov in bars to pick up chicks.

As 3 a.m. nears, he grabs me a cab.

“You know something I like about you?” Jonathan asks as the taxi pulls up. “Your height. That’s very Our Bodies, Ourselves of me, isn’t it?”

“Wow,” I say. “Nice reference.”

He kisses me good night, and in the days following, I tell Norton about my crush, who texts me asking if Jonathan and I are in “looove.”

“Not quite,” I text back. But I do like him.

Over the next few days, Jonathan asks if my job will be sending me to Las Vegas for the upcoming comedy festival there.

“No . . .” I say, “but I could probably go for fun.”

We make last-minute plans for me to join him on the trip, and I arrive in Vegas complete with an overpriced $800 Cole Haan leather jacket I’ve put on my charge card to give me a confidence boost. Jonathan takes me back to his room, offers me a drink, and we both kind of laugh uncomfortably.

“This is kind of weird, isn’t it?” he asks.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” I say, “just so you know.”

“That’s fine,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

He sneaks me into the greenroom, where I stand next to Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel, who are cozying up to each other; then I get a few quotes from Ray Romano for Page Six about his wife being horny. I walk around the party and begin talking to an older man bathed in the light of a tiki lamp hanging above. Jonathan whispers to me, “That’s George Schlatter, the guy who founded LaughIn.”

George takes one look at me and says my height reminds him of an old vaudeville joke.

“Here’s what you need to tell guys,” he says. “You say, ‘It’s easy . . . you make two trips.’?”

After the festival in Vegas, Jonathan and I talk fairly regularly. But then the calls become less frequent. When one of my friends suggests I play hard to get, I don’t answer. Then, when I call him back a full two days later I can’t reach him. Then I don’t hear from him for days upon days.

I start to regard my phone as this thing of dread. I turn it off, then obsessively turn it on for a few minutes, then back off, then just hide it.

During that time, I hit upon a discovery. I can simply change Jonathan’s name in my cell phone. From Jonathan to the catchy “Was Lucky That He Even Knew Me and Would Be Lucky if I Even Picked Up the Phone if He Called Again.”

I tell the secret to my girlfriends, and they start doing the same. One friend changes “Richard” to “Doesn’t Feel the Same Way.” Another updates “Robert” to “Lives with Girlfriend.” My friend can’t help but be tickled when his latest text to her pops up as: “Lives With Girlfriend: What are you up to?”

When my phone does finally ring and the long acronym WLTHEKMAWBLIIEPUTPIHCA that I’ve entered for Jonathan comes up, I am pretty chill, I have to say. We decide it’s better for us to just be friends.

Which is lucky, because Jonathan is the big brother I’ve made out with a few times I never had. When I start dating a comedy writer, Jonathan gives me all manner of advice. Mostly to just be myself and not play all those stupid phone games again.

The comedy writer is fine and all, but after I take him to the absurdly lavish News Corp Christmas party at the Hilton, I mention offhandedly my awful night where I blacked out and hooked up with the comedy TV producer.

“So you don’t really know what he did to you,” he says. “He could have fucked you in the ass with a razor blade for all you know.”

I slink away and tell him that incidentally I’m “off” sex for a while. He breaks up with me shortly after that.



* * *




CAROLINE HIRSCH SENDS me a bottle of Veuve Clicquot after my New York Comedy Festival coverage and an invite to her club’s holiday party. I have a great time, and Norton suggests I text Jonathan inquiring as to his dick size, which is always a good look. But somewhere between my first glass of cabernet and my tenth one, everything gets fuzzy.

I remember instructing the cabdriver to stop at McDonald’s so I can get fries. Then at a bodega so I can get a Chunky bar. And I definitely remember the cabdriver screaming at me when I realize I’ve lost my wallet to get the hell out of his cab.