Happy Accidents (15 page)

It wasn’t about being famous, like it had been when I was a kid. Back in Dolton, when I was writing letters to Hollywood agents, my objective was to be adored, fawned over. I wanted people to scream for me, like I remembered screaming for the Monkees when I saw them in a mall. Had I become famous as a younger person, it might have been a disaster for my insecure self. I would have been swayed by the public’s opinion, pro or con, and my sense of self-worth would have been at their mercy. I’d have believed the hype and the trash talk, and probably would have trusted the wrong people. But once I’d reached my thirties, I just wanted to work. I didn’t need to hang around for very long, so short-term gigs were fine. Just as with my relationship dalliances, I was happy to get in and get out fast.

And that seemed to be how my romantic relationships were going, when they were happening at all. After all the drama of coming out to myself and then to my family, my sex life lay fairly dormant. I was just starting to be good at friendship. I was really taking my time with the intimacy thing.

I did have a four-month-long relationship with a woman who felt curiously familiar and deeply psychologically attractive. Growing up with a Swedish-leaning mother, I’ve always been attracted to the cool breeze in the room, and this icy woman fit the bill. I even accidentally called her “Mom” several times. She was rather emotionally cut off to say the least, which left me plenty of room to project onto her the image of a deeply compassionate and wise soul who would nurture me. Imagine my disappointment when all my need came crashing down on her and she headed for the hills.

My mourning over the loss of this four-month relationship was nearing the two-year mark when a friend sent me to her therapist, Nicki.

Nicki was fabulous: openhearted and sensible and not afraid of my neediness. Yet she was also hilarious and deeply soulful and not in the least bit phony: she had come through the dark into the light via her own battles with addiction and self-worth but still had great reverence for the shadow. Just like Don, my Jungian dream analyzer before her, she saw its great gift. She had a lyrical quality when she spoke about the psyche. Every session was like spending an hour with Auntie Mame, and I couldn’t wait for my next appointment. Working with her, my idealization and preciousness about intimacy got slapped down. There was no room for it. When I would start to romanticize about how relationships should be, she would question and dismantle my defenses. She helped me understand what was
really
in my heart. I began to believe in my own goodness, and to disregard my self-contempt. She laughed at my jokes and we both laughed at my foibles. At the end of each hour, she would hug me. One day she said, “Caring for you is my job. The love is extra.” She was tailor-made for me. She loved me until I could love myself.

When I was training for the AIDS Ride (a seven-day bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for the LA Gay and Lesbian Center), I told Nicki about an extremely frustrating encounter I’d had on the bike path in Santa Monica. Cyclists are supposed to pass to the other cyclists’ left. It’s
understood.
But one Sunday, I was passed on my right,
continually
. As I was retelling the story to Nicki, I became more and more enraged. “It’s inconsiderate and it’s dangerous!” I fumed. Nicki started to laugh, and then so did I. “You have to write a monologue in this voice,” she said. Thus was born “The Angry Lady.”

The following week, I read Nicki a rough version of what would become the first character I ever purposefully created from deep within my own shadow. I made productive work of the less attractive parts of my insides.

I visualized performing her like this:

Seething with rage, The Angry Lady could barely speak above a whisper. She wore a redhead wig with tight, angry curls, one of my mom’s old Janet Reno suits in a breezy red polka dot, and a store-bought surgical neck brace. To Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” a single spotlight followed as she slowly and painfully made her way to a microphone at the center of a bare stage.

I performed it for the first time at a night of solo comedy acts at Highways in Santa Monica. I either knew personally or knew of almost everybody there. Kathy Griffin and Nora Dunn were among those performing that night, and I was humbled and nervous to be among their company. This night was all solo artists who did their own thing, and it was not lost on me that I was entering a whole new rank. The energy was electric, but loose. We walked through the tops and bottoms of our acts for light and sound cues before the show. I had done this hundreds of times in the past, but this time I was going to be alone up there.

I had never written anything before, and there I was in a wig and a silly costume with my Valkyrie music on a cassette tape, about to perform for a theater full of people expecting to laugh. I had no idea if this piece would work, absolutely none. The Angry Lady moved and spoke v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, so I had to have the audience with me from the start or it would have been a horrendously painful ten minutes. I was scared to death. And my pits stank with fear.

To my relief, it all worked perfectly. They laughed from the first moment and throughout the piece, at all the right times. Taylor Negron, an incredibly funny performer and writer, walked up to me after the show and said, “You’re a writer. And you
know
things.” I was flying high.

The Angry Lady’s first tale of woe was, of course, a recounting of the bike path incident. I had it occurring on Presidents Day because I thought “you ruined my Presidents Day” would be a funny line. Subsequent monologues would always have three elements: a holiday, an injustice, and a humiliation (she would always end up wetting her pants). Even within a world I created, I had to have rules to follow. It’s how I roll. I would write two more tales for The Angry Lady, sporting two more injuries (an eye patch, then a splint on her broken middle finger), so I had three total.

It turned out my work with Nicki was more productive than any acting class I had ever taken. I learned the essential lesson that all the material, everything, I will ever need to create characters who are true and effective is in me already. Nicky would tell me not to back away from the dark stuff, but to “lean into it.” I believe that in creating The Angry Lady from within my deepest self, my work became really good.

I was experiencing a greater satisfaction in all aspects of my life. I was also finally cultivating some real friendships. I found that I didn’t need quantity, just quality. Though I can “act as if” in big groups, I’m really a one-on-one person.

I was newly signed with Jeff Danis in the voice-over department at ICM. Clients would come into the office to read voice-over copy for radio and television commercials sent by advertising agencies. We would record the auditions in recording booths at Jeff’s office. Every day when I went in, the other women in the waiting room ignored me. The guys were welcoming and playful, but the women actually shined me! It was such a silly and insecure thing to do, and in the past I might have found it hurtful, but I was able to find it curious instead. Then one day, I came in later than usual and there was only one woman on the couch, but instead of ignoring me she smiled right at me and said, “Hi! You’re new. I’m Jeannie.” I told her she was the only woman there who had ever given me the time of day. And then, apropos of nothing, she asked, “Do you like sushi?” I did, very much in fact, so she told me about Crazy Fish on Robertson, where the fish is fresh and the portions are huge. So after my auditions, I headed over to Crazy Fish for lunch, and there was Jeannie at the end of the bar. “Join me,” she said. I did.

As I would learn that day, Jeannie is a food enthusiast. Anyone who knows her would agree that that’s putting it mildly. Her eyes have been known to well up with tears when describing a wonderful meal. She had Crohn’s disease as a child and spent much of her youth in the hospital, unable to eat, so as an adult, she made up for those lost meals. She would not waste one of them on a subpar experience, so she was forever sending food back. When we first started getting meals together, I was mortified. The good girl in me thought you should not make trouble and should eat what they give you. She said, “Fuck that, I’m paying for it.” Before digging into a meal, another friend would always ask Jeannie first, “Can I eat now, or will you be sending yours back?”

Jeannie’s priorities in life were simple: relationships and food. Everything else she did was a means to those ends. In a town where everyone is striving to be something or somewhere they are not, she was happy just as she was, where she was. She just wanted to be with the people she loved and have enough money to eat well and travel . . . to places where she could eat well.

Like Laura before her, Jeannie was all about connection. She was so inclusive, and invited me everywhere. She was also the best listener I’ve ever known. Because she always came from compassion, the direct “no bullshit” way she communicated would never sting me, and I’m a tender person. She felt
with
you. I thought I was empathetic, but she was past me by a mile. I’d be dating someone and I would feel put out by something and want to break it off. Jeannie would be able to deal with my feelings and be compassionate to the person I was about to leave, and in doing so she would help me see how judgmental I was being. But where we really differed was how we dealt with boundaries. Whereas she wouldn’t take on other people’s pain, I would not only take it on, I was still looking for ways to be responsible for it. She was more interested in finding solutions than in wallowing. I devoured her wisdom and even today will ask myself,
What would Jeannie do?
There are some who might find her brand of care intrusive. It just made me feel loved and yes,
gotten
.

Jeannie became my everyday friend. My need for her wisdom and take on everything going on with me was becoming so important and valuable that . . . I began building a case against her, looking for a way out. When someone meant a lot to me, it became even harder to be direct, and instead I became resentful. I decided I was getting fat because when she would overeat, it made me do the same. I resented that her intestinal issues gave her a metabolism that moved at the speed of light. She also decided where every meal would be and what we would order. I was feeling controlled and I started to rebel—all indirectly, of course. I became snippy and resentful, and at one point I just stopped calling her. The relationship would have to end. After a few weeks, I ran into her at ICM and she got right in my face and said, “What happened to
you
?” I said something about feeling that she controlled what I ate. “I realize that you’ve pushed me away,” she said. “And whatever your reasons, I just want you to know that I’ll be here.” And she told me that if we ever ate together again, I could choose the place. It was clear that she respected and valued me, and my protests to the contrary seemed very silly all of a sudden. When it came down to it, I missed her. “Let’s have lunch,” I said.

To be honest, I really didn’t know where I wanted to eat. She knew all the good restaurants. Also, I really didn’t care about being the one to decide. I’m a great follower; I don’t like the pressure of leading. She was so good at leading. So when it came to food, just like everybody else who knows her, I let go and let Jeannie.

While we were overeating together at the restaurant of her choice, she taught me the lesson of “proximity.” “You don’t have to throw people away,” she said. “You just have to decide how close you want them. Not every person in your life needs to be your best friend: some can be friends or just friendly acquaintances.”

Proximity. I decided to keep Jeannie close.

A smiling Jeannie pretending not to be planning her next meal.

Photo courtesy of Jeannie Elias

S
tanding on the edge of a sheer cliff in Monterey, looking down a hundred-foot drop into a raging ocean crashing against jagged rocks, I inched toward oblivion as a man with a beard and long, stringy hair screamed at me in a German accent, “Move closer to da edge!
Closer to da edge!
”

The reason I wasn’t yelling back something rather harsh of my own was because the guy yelling at me was the big-shot director of the commercial I was shooting. He was dressed in sun-spectrum colors—orange, yellow, red—that reflected his affiliation with a religious sect that I’d heard he’d joined because the sect’s guru was helping him keep his terrible temper in check. At this point, it didn’t seem to be working—he seemed utterly unconcerned that I was so close to plummeting to my death, and bellowed furiously at me. As he continued to yell at me to move closer to the edge,
closer to da edge
, I dutifully shuffled as far as I possibly could. I tried not to think about how far there was to fall and how sharp those rocks seemed as I looked into the camera swinging at me off a crane and calmly spoke my lines: “I . . . am every woman.”

Although shooting it was a rather bracing experience that I wouldn’t care to repeat, when it came out, this national commercial for Nexium paid me enough money to buy my first house. It almost killed me, but I loved the house.

There are many ways for actors to make money in Hollywood, and in the late nineties, I was doing most of them—voice-overs, guest spots on TV shows, and commercials. I had played everything from a guitar-strumming small businessperson for American Express to a Buick-driving mom on a camping trip. Commercials can be an easy way to make good money, as I found out promoting Nexium on the edge of that windblown cliff. But the biggest benefits aren’t necessarily monetary.

Although it might seem counterintuitive, sometimes acting in a commercial can put you closer to the work you really want to be doing, the work that would satisfy you artistically.

Case in point: I never would have thought that flacking Frosted Flakes could do so much for my career—not even when I went to a callback for a Frosted Flakes commercial and saw Christopher Guest listed as the director on the sign-in sheet.

A couple of years prior, while I was visiting New York, I had gone solo to the Angelika theater to see Christopher Guest’s film
Waiting for Guffman
on opening day. I sat next to a couple of gay guys who were apparently on their first date. The one sitting next to me loved the movie as much as I did, and we guffawed and elbowed each other all the whole way through, while the other guy sat there like he was at a wake. I doubt there was a second date.

Later that summer, I rented the video of
Guffman
to show Laura. She was still living in New York City. Trixie was long gone, and she had just broken up with her latest love. Wanting to spend some quality soul time together, just Laura and me, we met up at her parents’ home in Darien, Connecticut, on our way to visit Martha’s Vineyard for a week. “You have to watch this movie,” I told her. We rewound it over and over, laughing and punching each other. I said to her, “Oh, god—this is what I want to do. This is how I want to work.” This was the stuff that tickled my funny bone and touched my heart—it was human and flawed and raw and funny. All the characters were so real, and they all had one thing in common: they were striving to
be someone,
to
count
. I knew that feeling so well.

I would have done anything to be in a movie like it. But what were the chances? I sighed and filed this thought under Preposterous Fantasies.

Fast-forward one year to the audition for the Frosted Flakes commercial. As I was signing in, I said out loud, “What the hell is Christopher Guest doing directing commercials?” Someone standing nearby told me he did them all the time, adding that any commercial you’d seen on television lately that actually made you laugh was probably directed by him.

Somehow, when I met him, I managed to keep my excitement in check and act nonchalant, even though my heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Effusive is not a word I’d use to describe Christopher Guest, and if I’d bounded all over him like an excited puppy, I doubt the feeling would have been reciprocated. He was very polite and charming, and at one point during my audition he kind of snorted through his nose, which I would later learn meant he was amused. After all was said and done, Chris walked me out the door and said, “Good-bye.”

I don’t remember much else about the casting session, just that some of the
Guffman
cast were there waiting to audition as well—Michael Hitchcock, Deb Theaker, Don Lake. They each had had such stupendously funny moments in
Guffman
, and I longed to be among them. This may have been the first time in my life when my ambition was actually right on target, and not something that fate would eventually pull me away from to show me where my real place was, like when I was cast in The Second City while trying to enter the world of serious theater.

When I got the part, I was ecstatic. I was to play the wife, and the husband would be played by Sean Masterson, a great guy I’d known since my Second City days. We shot the commercial the way Chris shoots his movies—no script, just some plot points we had to hit in each scene to tell the story.

Unlike with any other commercial I’ve shot, the client, Kellogg’s, was present but nowhere to be seen. Chris ran his own ship, and if you wanted to work with him you had to follow his rules. Sean and I did four spots playing a couple that was earnestly stalking Tony the Tiger, waiting outside the company’s headquarters, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

When we broke for lunch, as I was walking with my tray, looking for a seat, Chris stopped me and said, “You know, I do movies.”

“Yeah, I know. . . .
Guffman
was—”

“We shoot them like we did today. No script, no rehearsal . . .”

“Okay.”

“Maybe we’ll get to work together again.”

“Yeah, I’d like that.” And he was gone.

It was around this time that I was starting to put together a show of my own. Now, when it comes to performing, I’m a group person. I do enjoy the spotlight, but only for moments at a time, and I would prefer to have others in it with me. It’s one thing when you’re sharing performance anxiety with a group, and another when you’re out there all by your lonesome.

I think my mom’s disdain for show-offs, braggarts, and know-it-alls loomed large in me and had always put the kibosh on any desire I might have had to produce
The Jane Lynch Show
. Of course, I was cast all the time as a person whose central attribute was delusional cockiness, and for those women, doing a one-woman show would have been perfectly natural, if not inevitable. But for me, being out there by myself was a daunting prospect. Perhaps through playing those parts, my inner show-off, braggart, and know-it-all got all the exercise it needed.

Now that I had begun creating characters and writing my own material, I was forced to confront this fear of going it alone. It was like I was yelling at myself to go “
closer to da edge
.” I had to steel myself and calm some fears in order to feel entitled to take up the audience’s time. After performing The Angry Lady that night at Highways in
1997
and writing the two pieces for her, I tried my hand at writing for other characters that had been kicking around in my head. One summer day in
1998
, I took everything I had written over to my friend Marla’s house.

Marla had run the recording booth at my voice-over agents’ office. She was one of the most interesting and funny people I knew, so I picked her to be the one to whom I would read what I had written. This is something I never liked to do because when I write, I intend the words to be performed on a stage, in costume, with music, etc. (If I was performing this book, I promise it would be much funnier.) I needed someone who could imagine those things while I read, and Marla was my choice.

We sat out on the back porch of her West Hollywood home, and I read every one of my monologues out loud to her as she listened and smoked.

It only took about thirty minutes to read them all, which startled me because it had taken about six months of hard work to write them. When I was done, Marla put out her cigarette and paused just a moment before asking, “The Angry Lady. How old is she?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said sharply. It was a stupid question, completely irrelevant, and I suddenly regretted choosing Marla for this mission.

“Okay, okay,” she said, backing up, and then, after that aborted start, she proceeded to shape the entire show before my very eyes. She gave it not only a flow, but also an emotional through line. As she spoke, I was hit with the inspiration for a general theme I hadn’t previously seen. This show would make fun of that which I used to take dead seriously, trolling the murky waters of feminine self-discovery. Each of my characters would have her own hero’s journey of having gone through hell and come out of it with a firm understanding of her inner goddess. The passionate navel-gazing that had occupied more than a few of my years would become my playground.

It would be called
Oh Sister, My Sister!: Deeply Feminine Tales of the Deep Feminine.
Sandra Ragsdale, a character I had been doing in sketch for years, would be our host for the evening. She was a former TV
Dateline News
investigative reporter who had been fired for hypocrisy and crappy work. She had a nervous breakdown and was now reinventing herself by recasting it as a nervous break-
through
. She had been reborn as a new-age guru and self-styled “entitled child of God.” She saw it as her duty to chronicle other women’s journeys, telling the stories of women who had overcome, as she had. Really she was bitter and not that smart, and desperate to get back on TV. She had just written a book called
Listen to Me I’m Talking to You.

In her quest to document the stories, Sandra would take us to meet The Angry Lady as well as others, including Judith, a radical lesbian folksinger, with a different “life partner” every time she appeared.
Brokenhearted, betrayed, and to great laughs, Judith would be the one who sang
I Gave You the Gun to Shoot Me
, the song I had written in dead earnest back in early sobriety. We would also meet the South Side Lady.

In homage to my mom and my beloved aunt Marge, the South Side Lady was the first character I ever created who was free of cynicism. She was recently widowed and went out on a date with a widower she’d known in high school. She came home and found that the Blessed Virgin had fallen off her favorite pendant at some point during the evening. She felt that this was a sign that she hadn’t sufficiently mourned her late husband and the Blessed Virgin was letting her know in no uncertain terms.
No, she didn’t just fall off. She got disgusted and left.
The South Side Lady was also an opportunity to use some of the phrases I grew up with, like “There’s no one here but the gas and that’s escaping” and “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse and chase the rider.” I would switch it up sometimes and use the more grisly “I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”

Following Marla’s specifications exactly, I put the show together quickly, typing it up on my first computer, an old Mac desktop that Sue, my brother’s new wife, had given me. I was blown away by how easy it made writing. I had never taken my mom’s advice and learned to type, but I was speedy at the hunt-and-peck. The minute I finished the script, I went to Kinko’s and made a bunch of copies. I really did not want to go it completely alone, so I asked a handful of friends to act supporting roles and produce it with me. Then I rented eight Wednesday nights at the Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood. I moved so fast I didn’t have time to think and let the fear stop me. I put my head down like a bull and barreled forward.

Both Soloway sisters jumped in and helped me out. Jill directed and put her brilliantly funny mark on the script. She also made the stage bill so hysterical that the audience was laughing even before the lights went down. Faith let me use her nonsensical power ballad “If Wishes Were Rainbows, So Am I” for
Sandra Ragsdale to sing in closing the show. Everything they added was worth its weight in gold to me.

As I was waiting to pick up those hilarious programs at Kinko’s on the day of opening night, I noticed a pungent smell. I assumed it was the chemicals from the copiers until I realized that the smell was faintly familiar, and it was coming from me. I reeked of fear.

That first performance was sold out, and it flew by fast and furious. I felt at the top of my game and in my power, going from scene to scene, character to character. The audience was with us the entire time. I’d sent out lots of invitations, but I hadn’t wanted to know who was coming, so I never checked the RSVPs. When I went out to the lobby after what felt like the triumph of my lifetime, I was floored by the number of familiar faces I saw. I was absolutely elated and felt like I was in a dream. I was beside myself with joy. I remember that it was the exact feeling I’d had watching my parents perform at
Port o’ Call
way back at St. Jude’s.