Why Not Me? (6 page)

That is what Sigma Delt was doing to me. I finally understood how guys felt.

So I met Jeanette and Risa at the Dirt Cowboy to break up the right way. Before I could say anything, Jeanette coldly asked if I was an only child. I said no. “I’m very surprised,” she said. As an education major, she said I displayed qualities that an only child would have. Risa was less angry, and was just sad. “It’s just … you’re so funny. The impressions. The song parodies. Who will make us come our pants?”

There was a long silence during which I suspect I was expected to cry. I couldn’t muster up tears, but I did do some low moaning, like this decision was causing me physical pain. “Ohhhh, this sucks,” I moaned. “It’s so unfair!” I said, as though the choice to leave was somehow being forced upon me, a trick boys would later employ on me to extricate themselves from dating me. Karma, I guess. Finally, though, I couldn’t beat around the bush anymore, and guiltily asked: “Can I please sign the paper to deactivate?” I signed it, they left, I finished my hot chocolate, and I never set foot in Sigma Delt again.

I thought I would like an environment of all women, where I was deemed the “funny one.” But it took me twelve weeks to realize that I don’t really like organizations where people are “deemed” things. I should mention that I did learn a few undeniably useful things at my sorority, like: a) the trick to getting any guy to fall in love with you is to laugh at everything he says and touch your mouth a lot, and b) in a pinch, you can wash your bras in a salad spinner. The problem with joining a sorority was that I was a person who wanted to make friends based on common interests. And our common interests had to be more than simply wanting to make friends. As someone who enjoys secrets, exclusivity, and elitism (I basically live to one day meet someone who owns an American Express Black Card), I was surprised and sad when I realized I was never meant to be Greek.

Ultimately, I got out of the Greek system unscathed. Later I would read accounts of pledging at Dartmouth where it seemed like everyone was given alcohol poisoning and then ordered to set fire to the music library in the nude or something. I did not have that experience, and I know many friends who loved their sororities. I wasn’t traumatized. I was just bored.

¹
This has never before been said in the history of humanity.

²
This sentence has also never before been said in the history of humanity.

(MINOR) FAME HAS CHANGED ME

W
HEN I WAS
on
The Office
, I was the perfect kind of famous: a little bit famous. Double-take-at-the-airport famous. Occasionally someone would come up to me and excitedly say, “That’s what she said!” and I would smile knowingly and respond, “Steve’s great, isn’t he?” implying that Steve Carell and I are very close friends who vacation together.

Now things are a little different. To clarify: I’m by no means
famous
-famous, like Rihanna or a Kardashian or Nicki Minaj’s butt. Those are people who have to wear makeup when they exercise, which is a whole other tier of fame.

Being known is really fun, extremely strange, and not very important. This is what it’s like.

THESE ARE THE THINGS I CAN NO LONGER DO NOW THAT I’M FAMOUS

Bargain for Stuff

Like every normal person, when I go to a flea market, I don’t want to be the chump who pays the asking price for anything. But recently, my friend B. J. Novak pointed out that loudly bargaining in public is unbecoming for actresses with their own TV shows. His theory is that people think I’m filthy rich and no one wants to see that either a) I’m not rich, and how alarming is that, because what kind of drug problem could I have where I frittered away all my TV-show money and now have to bargain at the flea market?! or b) I’m rich and cheap, which is universally regarded as the worst thing you can be.

Say Offensive Things

Look, would I love to be able to freely spout the gently racist/sexist stuff that sometimes crosses my mind when I’m the worst version of myself? Sure! That’s part of my candid, first-generation-immigrant charm! One Saturday afternoon several summers ago, I went to visit my friend Brenda in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Provincetown has a large gay population, and during the summer there are even more gay tourists. Brenda and I were trying to walk down their main street, and we were slowed down by throngs of gay tourists walking very slowly, taking in the sights and sounds. Frustrated, I wanted to say,
Man, this place is gay as hell!
but I didn’t. I didn’t want people to go home and tell their friends that that girl from
The Mindy Project
found something “too gay.” I would never want a homophobic reputation, for many reasons, the most important being that I am aspiring to be a tragic gay cult icon. Also, it is wrong. So I just let out a frustrated sound and said, “Crowds!” I actually think this new self-awareness has made me a better person.

Online Dating

Sadly, I believe the legitimization of online dating coincided with my becoming a little bit famous. Even in the mid-2000s, my friends online dated but acknowledged that they felt like slightly desperate creeps doing it. Now even my coolest friends are online dating. But not me. I live in fear of my public profile being published online for everyone to see. Especially since I am such a liar. On a dating profile page, I would pretend to be a completely different person. You would see me loving live music and hiking. You basically leave the date thinking I’m an outdoorsy Stevie Nicks.

Frown

About a year ago, I had lunch with Reese Witherspoon in Brentwood
¹
to discuss a project we were thinking of working on, and when we walked out to our cars, a couple of photographers were waiting to take her photo. She whispered to me, “Smile.” “Why?” I asked. “We’re just walking to our cars.” Reese responded “No one who sees a photograph of us wants to see that we are anything other than totally happy all the time.” At first I thought that couldn’t possibly be true, but then, on the drive home, I realized how correct Reese was. When I see a photo in
US Weekly
of Angelina Jolie-Pitt walking back to her car from the pharmacy, I feel a little irrationally miffed if she’s not smiling. She has a great life and, like, twenty gorgeous kids! Why are you not smiling, Angelina Jolie-Pitt?! If you’re not grinning ear-to-ear when you’re sleeping with Brad Pitt every night, then how shitty is
my
life?

So now I get it, and I have tried to train my face to be a smile in repose instead of the low-level grimace I’ve worn my whole life. Also, I comb my bangs over my acne and wear aviator sunglasses like Tom Cruise so people will really be psyched when they see an impromptu paparazzi photo of me. Stars are just like us (but they are super happy and grateful every moment, even when they are picking up UTI medicine)!

Complain

This is related to frowning. Nobody wants to hear that any aspect of my awesome life is bad. I get that.

But there are days, maybe two or three times a year, when I get completely overwhelmed by my job and go to my office, lie on the floor, and cry for ten minutes. Then I think:
Mindy, you have literally the best life in the world besides that hot lawyer who married George Clooney. This is what you dreamed about when you were a weird, determined little ten-year-old. There are more than a thousand people in one square mile of this studio who would kill to have this job. Get your ass up off the floor and go back into that writers’ room, you weakling.
Then I get up, pour myself a generous glass of whiskey and club soda, think about the sustained grit of my parents, and go back to work.

I know that made me sound like a tortured alcoholic, like Don Draper, but I swear I’m not.

OK, I’m done complaining, because
of course
there’s lots of cool stuff I get to do now that I’m famous.

THINGS I
CAN
DO NOW THAT I’M A LITTLE BIT FAMOUS

Contact Jai Courtney If I Need To

Listen, it’s not like I have handsome Australian action star Jai Courtney’s phone number on speed dial or anything, but if there was a life-or-death emergency, or, more reasonably, if I was dying and my dying wish was to have “Make-a-Wish”–style sex with Jai Courtney, I bet I could swing that. My friend Ike knows him.

People Sometimes Send Me Stuff

For my birthday last year, McDonald’s sent me a sweet stack of $10 gift cards. If you follow me on any kind of social media you will see that I’m constantly eating McDonald’s, and not in a campy, skinny-actress way where I go when I’m on my period and “being bad!” I go regularly enough that the woman at the Crescent Heights & Sunset McDonald’s gives me ranch and buffalo sauce packets for my McNuggets without me having to ask. I think McDonald’s was hoping I would share my gift cards with my cast and writers, but I don’t.

Guys in Prison Email Me

Ever heard of Corrlinks.com? No? Neither had I! Probably because Corrlinks is the official email system used by the federal penitentiary system. It’s for inmates who want to communicate with the outside world. About two years ago, a month after
The Mindy Project
premiered, my inbox was flooded with emails from this mysterious site called “Corrlinks,” requesting that I accept their invitations for communication. At first my mind went to “cuff links” and I thought it was some fashion-related website. Nope.

I guess
The Mindy Project
was popular in certain federal prisons and because of that, coupled with the fact that my email address was incredibly easy to guess (I have since changed it!), I was getting a lot of requests. At first I was kind of flattered and amused; I liked thinking of all the guys in the prison rec room quieting down when the show came on. “Shut up, you guys!” one inmate would menacingly shout to another one, who is playing Ping-Pong. “I hope Mindy manages to find a good balance between work and dating!” “Danny is soulful and closed off, just like my cellmate!” “Where’s the old doctor?” “Why do they keep changing the cast?” “The warden isn’t looking, let’s riot!”

But then, just as I was beginning to enjoy it, it became a little scary. I would return from set and there would be more and more emails requesting to initiate contact with me. Guys with names like “Robert Lee” and “Rufus.” I imagine the flipside of an unrequited prison crush is prison rage. I also don’t live in any kind of gated community, and my house is very easy to break into. I’ve broken into it twice when I couldn’t find my keys, and I’m not even a hardened criminal (yet)! So, with a heavy heart, I went through the process of blocking requests from Corrlinks.

I do like the distinction that these were federal prisoners trying to contact me, not state prisoners. Federal prisons are way more fancy, so, in my mind, these were fairly classy guys. Large-scale drug traffickers and
Wolf of Wall Street–
type guys rather than stab-and-grabbers. I mean, no offense to stab-and-grabbers, especially hot ones.

Be Compared to Other Famous Women

One rite of passage I experienced is that I am now known enough to be featured on a magazine’s “Who Wore It Best?” page. “Who Wore It Best?” is incredibly popular because we, as consumers, are not completely satisfied with our scrutiny of women’s appearances in TV and film. We also find it enjoyable to pit women against each other in fashion Hunger Games.

To determine who wore it best, a group of strangers is polled on the street on their way to lunch somewhere in midtown Manhattan (if I have learned anything from watching TV, it’s that stopping people on a busy Manhattan street is the fairest and most democratic way to get the true answer to something).

“Who wore this Stella McCartney dress better?” a tired magazine intern asks, presenting two photos of actresses wearing the same dress and secretly wondering if taking a semester off from college to work at this publication was the best use of her time. “Was it comedy TV actor Mindy Kaling? Or was it internationally famous supermodel Gisele Bündchen?”