I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star (23 page)

This is
not
the best advice I’ve ever gotten—it’s not “follow your dreams” or “only compare you to you,” and if you’re planning on having a make-out session with a fellow waiter after work when you’re nineteen and you think that kissing
might
lead to his hand reaching up your skirt and feeling a pair of full-bottom panties over your tights, don’t do it. He will get totally weirded out, and there is no amount of explaining that will ever make him look at you the same again. Not that this ever happened to me, no way, I just have a really vivid imagination. But otherwise, my mom’s right, it really does keep your tights from sagging.

She said this to me and Marla Sokoloff at one of our lunches when I was being a whiny baby about all the bad decisions I had made in the past. She’s right. For example, yes, it would have been great if I would have broken up with what’s-his-name three years ago, ideally moments after becoming his girlfriend, but I still did it, and that’s what counts today.

I took acting class when I got to L.A. with Jeffrey Tambor. In one class he played us that song by Frank Sinatra and told us to think of acting that way. Don’t stress, don’t push, don’t act hard, just do it nice and easy. I think it works for a lot more than acting.

This is not necessarily advice, but in my mind it applies. You know that crazy person in your life? Friend, family member, in-law, whatever, who always has crazy things happen to him or her? And you’re always like, “What? Again? How can this much weird shit happen to this one person?” That’s why. Don’t waste your (my) time trying to figure it out.

I want to make this my number one piece of advice, but that would make me seem shallow. I’d also like to add that this is a good barometer for how drunk you were the night before, if you washed your face or not before bed, but that would make me seem like a lush.

If someone is a wild card, best to just leave him or her be. I’ve told this to a lot of people regarding breakups and responding to/initiating e-mails/texts/calls.

This isn’t advice that was given to me personally, but a favorite quote of mine from
Arrested Development
. But I’m sure it applies to someone somewhere.

Correction: I think
this
should always be my number one piece of advice.

I THINK 2012 WAS MY ALL-TIME LONELY. WHICH IS
ironic because it started out as my all-time happy. I had just gotten married, I had a string of great jobs, and the people around me were healthy and doing well. Maybe that’s why. Maybe I was finally so happy with my life and the people in it that I didn’t want to leave it anymore, for the first time I wasn’t looking for anything different, I didn’t want a change, I liked what I had. Before I met my husband, I always jumped at the chance to work far away. I thought I would find what I was looking for somewhere else, some great discovery that would give my life meaning and change me for the better. It was my favorite thing to do. I wanted to do it more often. I would jump at the chance to leave town and reinvent myself for a month.

It’s different now. I have a harder time away. Now I’m married, I am in love. I have stepkids, and even though I know they don’t need me, I need them. I miss home. I miss my dog. I miss sleeping next to Dean Johnsen. It took me so long to find him, and I hate every day we’re not together making up for lost time. Now work really feels like work. My friends with small children always tell me to cherish the time alone, and do I know what they would
give for even a few days alone somewhere? Yes, I do, because that’s what I would give to be home with my family. I know the grass is always greener, so I try to enjoy it, but it’s different now. These last few jobs have been particularly difficult. I knew that I was feeling pretty bad when I decided to get some fish while I was on a six-month job in New York. I was sick of being all alone in my little corporate rental apartment. I thought goldfish would be the perfect antidote. I could get two fat-bellied little fish that would hang out in a round bowl on my kitchen table and keep me company while I ate and worked on my lines. I would name one Michael Dorsey, after Dustin Hoffman’s character in
Tootsie
, and the other Dorothy Michaels, after the character Michael Dorsey played in
Tootsie
. (I’ve always had a fantasy of finally seeing them together, even if in fish form. You know if
Tootsie
was made now, it would totally be a Tyler Perry movie.) I went to the pet store and asked the man to help set me up with everything I would need. Well, the pet store man was not on board with my plan. It might have been my fault. I was trying not to cry, so I was brief with my words and staring up at the lights in the ceiling a lot (that works by the way, if you don’t want to cry). He basically told me he wouldn’t sell me two goldfish. He told me they were stinky and that I would have to change the water every single day. He asked me how large my apartment was because if it was small, Michael and Dorothy were sure to overwhelm the place with fish stink. I remembered years ago checking out a one-bedroom sublet on the Lower East Side that had a turtle in it, and that apartment did smell like turtle. I hated that the pet store man was right. He told me I should get a betta fish. One betta fish. Well, I didn’t want
one
betta fish. They’re mean and they kill their own if you put them together; it’s a bloodbath, I’ve heard. He wanted to set me up with a whole betta fish system. They sold them in kits. It was a tank you plugged into the wall, and it had a motor and a
filter and everything. This was not my plan. What happened to the days when you could throw a couple of goldfish in a bowl and feed them every day? Is that not a thing anymore? The fact that the betta fish have to be alone in their tanks, that I couldn’t get two, made me feel even lonelier. Now me
and
the fish would be on our own? I’ll admit that I was suffering from PMS and my mind was starting to spiral, but I couldn’t help but think, what if I was like a betta fish, and I can’t be in a tank with another fish because I will kill it? Is that why I get so many jobs out of town? Is the universe trying to tell me something? I left the pet store empty-handed and feeling worse.

A few days later I took the train to Boston from New York to spend the night with my friends Scott and Jojo, who had just moved there from L.A. They had nothing in their apartment yet except two beds and two cats. I am allergic to cats, but when Jojo told me that the baby cat, Larry, might sleep with me if I lured him into my bed with some sliced turkey meat, I got so excited I took a precautionary Benadryl. I was starved for something real and furry to cuddle with. That night I got all ready for bed and got my turkey plate ready. I gave him a few pieces in the kitchen and walked with the turkey into the bedroom. He didn’t follow me as I had hoped. I could sense that he was lurking in the hallway but not ready to come into the room yet. I pretended to be really engrossed in an infomercial about an airbrush makeup kit (backfired because now I need it, obviously) in an attempt to play hard to get with the cat. Unfortunately, I overdid it with the playing hard to get and fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the plate of turkey, untouched, on the pillow next to mine. This is my all-time lonely. Trying to lure a cat that I’m allergic to into snuggling with me by leaving a plate of deli turkey meat next to my head. At breakfast that morning Jojo told me their other cat, Steven, only
likes fresh turkey slices, or he might have come in. But since the meat was a few days old, I was stuck with Larry. Great. So not only was I sleeping with deli meat, but it was several-days-old deli meat. Larry’s an asshole. I think I’m going to try for a plant next time, or possibly a Roomba.

THIS IS HOW I THINK I CAN BEST DESCRIBE WHAT IT
’
S
like to be a new stepparent: Have you ever spent the weekend at a friend’s house who has kids? You know how you wake up in the morning and wander into the kitchen in your houseguest jammies and walk directly to the coffeepot and pour yourself a hot cup of coffee and then ask your host if there’s anything you can do to help? You don’t really mean it, because you don’t know what to do or where anything is, but you offer because it’s the polite thing to do. Your host says no, but thanks. You wander with your hot steamy cup of coffee to the bathroom, and take a long, hot shower, and get ready for your day.

Well, take that memory, but now the host is a tall, hot guy, and instead of saying, “No, but thanks,” he kisses you and says, “YES! Could you make a turkey sandwich for Lucas, a lunch for Emilee, she likes peanut butter and jelly, maybe start some scrambled eggs and bagels for breakfast, I’m going to hop in the shower real quick, oh, and if the exterminator calls, can you talk to him and see if he can come at noon on Monday, but if he can’t, ask him
what days he’s free, and then we’ll figure it out. Oh, and did you decide what you wanted to do about that broken dresser? Do you want me to call the place and see if they will switch it out, or should we just try to fix it? What should we have for dinner tonight? I can make turkey burgers again, if that’s easy? Oh, wait, you’re not eating meat right now, shit, OK, well, let’s talk about it on the phone while I drive to work. I have to get in the shower, I love your ass big-time!!” And then you spill blazing-hot coffee all over the front of your new, kid-friendly jammies when you lean in for your express kiss. That’s what it’s like.

As an adult, I always had a hard time imagining my future with any real clarity. It was always vague, nothing concrete. There were assumptions—I assumed I would get married, I assumed I would have kids, a job, a house, friends, and be moderately healthy. Yet I didn’t know where, how many, what, or who. There was one specific, ongoing fantasy that involved Matt Damon, traveling the world, having long straight hair, and being able to speak French, but who doesn’t fantasize about Matt Damon? I never imagined I would marry someone with kids, but I never imagined I wouldn’t either. I just had no position on it either way. Lucky for me, Dean Johnsen’s kids are awesome and easy and seemed to like me well enough, plus, he’s nice (and hot), so I dove into the deep end, even though I’ve never been a strong swimmer.

I’m a perfectionist by nature, so naturally I wanted to be the perfect stepparent. The only problem was I had no clue what I was doing or what I was supposed to be doing. I couldn’t even find any books on the topic (turns out I didn’t look hard enough; there are thousands), but with reckless abandon I was ready for my new life! My therapist at the time warned me that it could be a real challenge, that I would have all the responsibility but without any of the authority. This is a catchphrase I find myself using a lot at parties when describing what my role is, but I’m not sure
I believe it anymore. Did it mean that I can’t let them set something on fire, but then not discipline them if they try? I wasn’t sure what the challenges were that I could look forward to, but at the time I believed “what does not kill us makes us stronger,” and as long as his offspring didn’t literally kill me, I would manage. (I would like to add here that I no longer subscribe to that philosophy. I think it’s a lie, and I’ve thrown out all my inspirational artwork that states it.)

I was thrilled that his kids were older—nine (Lucas) and thirteen (Emilee)—so I wouldn’t have to change their diapers, make sure they didn’t cut my dog with scissors, or keep them from beating the shit out of each other. They were already too far along in school for me to be able to help with homework, so with that out of the way it would be easy, right? They had their own lives; I just needed to be around to feed and drive them. And, in the beginning, those were the biggest hurdles. I was a bad driver and an inexperienced cook. I didn’t know where anything was located where they lived, and neither did they. Early on, I volunteered to drive Lucas to his friend’s house, and we got in the car, I started it and said, “OK! So, where is Kyle’s house?” and Lucas shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” Well, duh, of course he didn’t know. He was nine. Nine-year-olds don’t know where stuff is. They don’t have addresses in the contacts of their phones; they don’t enter all their playdates in their iCal. Amateurs.

I remembered how afraid I was of middle school and high school students when I was in middle school and high school. Kids in general freak me out. I have a terrible sailor’s mouth (no one told me “crap” was a swear word!), I had no idea what they did in school all day, so I couldn’t ask them about it, and I’d never turned on a Disney movie or kid channel in my life. I can’t bear the TV shows on those kid networks, and I found myself getting really judgy about the acting and story lines. I wanted my “steps”
to have better taste than that. I learned to stomach
Good Luck Charlie
because I had worked with the dad on that show, Eric Allan Kramer, and he was cool;
SpongeBob SquarePants
because it was so weird; and
iCarly
for I don’t know why, it was just always on and I started to get sucked in, that Miranda Cosgrove is really charismatic. I didn’t understand why they didn’t like what I liked, since the stuff I liked was so cool! Also, and no offense to kids in general, but for the most part they are terrible conversationalists. You ask them about their day, they say either fine, nothing, cool, or OK. Actually, if you ask them about anything, they say it is fine/nothing/cool/OK. And if I’m being really honest, I was scared of them. And I think they knew it; I think they could smell it on me. I hadn’t been around that many kids, I was inexperienced, and I was terrified they could sense it and use my weaknesses for evil as I would have at their age.