Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party (12 page)

Will my husband know?

Will he think my vows were insincere?

Where do you draw the line

between love and adultery?

If you’re a friend of mine,

can’t I hold your hand?

Where do you draw the line?

Do you think it’s okay

if I tickle your ear this way?

Or if I lick the lint

out of your navel with my tongue?

Will the neighbors talk?

Will they misconstrue?

And think that you are not just my best friend

but that I am in love with you?

Do you think it’s okay

if our clothes accidentally fall off,

When you come over to be comforted

because a family member died?

Or if we cuddled under the covers of your bed

because my heater wasn’t working

And it was really, really, really, really,

really, really, really, really cold outside?

If we’re the last two people on the earth

and had to perpetuate the species,

Or if a Mafia hit man ordered us

to sleep together one day?

Or what if the doctor said

I had a terrible disease,

And the only way to cure it would be

to take a shower with you naked?

Where do you draw the line?

Where do you draw the line?

Fran Dresher (before she was The Nanny) entered my Tulsa hotel room. She whined her famous nasal whine, “Victoria, there’s nothing to do here. Ya wanna go to a Weight Watcher’s meeting?” I don’t know if she went or not, but she’s thin and I’m not, so maybe she went.

I decided going to see a movie with Weird Al was a sin, but dancing with him at the wrap party wasn’t. I had danced with Lea Thompson at our wrap party for
Casual Sex?.
Years later in my divorce proceedings, A.F.K.A.S.’s lawyer accused me of committing adultery with Al, so maybe dancing is where you draw the line. Maybe dancing is adultery.

A limo picks me up at 4:30 p.m. for my eighteenth
Tonight Show
appearance. I feel confident. I’m not faking it. Johnny Carson asks me (referring to
SNL
), “So how do you feel being on a successful TV show?” Remember, he knew me back when.

“Well… I have two houses,” I warble. “And some people don’t even have one… so, I feel kind of guilty.”

What did I just say?
I instantly realize that Johnny Carson has a million houses. What’s he going to say? I just put egg on his face. There is no witty comeback to my horrible statement. How is he going to gracefully get out of this one?
Click, click, click
. My brain is a computer. I wait for it. The tension lays thick in the air. Suddenly, the data has been processed and out of my mouth spews, “For about a minute!” A huge wave of laughter breaks the tension.

An hour later, in the limo with my friends, on the way to the Improv on Melrose to celebrate my success by seeing and being seen, I turn to my entourage chief Joseph Gunches and say, “It went good, don’t you think?”

He smiles and pours me a chardonnay. “To Victoria,” he says.

I almost spill it when the limo turns a corner and we say “Whoa!” in such a happy way. We don’t care if it spills. We are celebrating. My small group of buddies know me. They know I’m a Christian who feels guilty about drinking. They know I’m insecure about my body. They know I work out and I cry. They know I’m a great mom. They know I smoke cigarettes secretly and feel guilty. They know I pray. They know I have done drugs. They know I go to church. They know I invite them. They know how difficult it is to be calm and funny and successful in this competitive world of show-biz.

Gunches grew up in LA. He’s the Jewish drummer/director/ manager of jugglers and sword swallowers. He understands. He respects me even though I showed up to audition for the play he was directing,
Lovers and Other Strangers,
wearing glasses with no glass in them because, as I explained, “I think I look better in glasses and I don’t want to be fake.” He gets me.

Bruce Weinstock is my Jewish lawyer. He is handsome and carefree and smiles all the time. He has a blessed life. A.F.K.A.S., my Jewish husband, is next to him and I’m not mad at him yet. I still have the hope that he will come around. He isn’t too jealous of me yet. For now, he’s just enjoying the ride. He is my piano accompanist whenever I need one, and getting famous too as the “fire-eater husband.” We sweep into The Improv and all eyes are on us. Everyone in the stand-up world is aware of the number of my Carson appearances and confounded by my success. I enjoy dining at The Improv because, not so many years ago, they didn’t believe in me. It feels like, “Na, na, na, na, na, na!” but in a more sophisticated way. And I’m not mad at them. I agree with them. I ain’t so bright. We are all mystified at my success and celebrating it. America is a great country.

The waiter approaches and pretends not to recognize me. He’s being cool. I say, “Um. Do you have
Robert Mondavi
?” That’s the only wine I know except
Pouilly Fouisse
. He nods.

“I’ll have a big double of that and a Chicken Caesar salad.”

My Jewish boyfriends order cheeseburgers and beer and they toast me again. Several comics come up to congratulate me. They all know the inside poop. They are waiting for a spot on the Carson show themselves. My Scarlet is being babysat by my favorite twenty-year-old, Siobhan, a few miles away at my house in Lookout Mountain, my favorite place in the world. I will be there soon watching my performance on
NBC
. A.F.K.A.S. knows how to tape it. I’ll watch it five more times and critique my outfit and every word I say, not out of pride as much as for critiquing purposes. I have learned that white makes you look fatter on TV. Black makes you look thinner. I have noticed that when crossing your legs, it can appear that you have cellulite even if you don’t. Also, looking into the camera is effective if it isn’t too often or contrived, but looking completely at the host will limit your face time and just give the television audience lots of close-ups of your ear. Every TV appearance can be the door to a bigger opportunity, so you must maximize the six or less minutes you are given and appreciate them immensely.

When my adrenaline finally starts to dissipate, I head to bed, peek at my little sleeping angel, kiss my husband, and look forward to the morning when we will walk our dogs up the canyon roads humming The Mamas and The Papas’ greatest hits.

I don’t think about criminals chasing me, or needing to tinkle. Everything is just right.

Celebrity

A little green orange was getting big.

He thought, hey, I’m so juicy I could dig

Eating myself.

And so he tried.

And when he swallowed himself

He died.

I
am a traveling salesman. The product I am selling is me. So I have to tote it everywhere, and pass it around. I have to dress it up and show it off and hope people want to keep buying it. Most of the trips are to NY and LA, but people in the rest of the world buy me too, so I end up going everywhere.

I’m standing in the airport, looking around. I need to kill time. I don’t like to kill time. I like to use time. Spend time. Enjoy time. But here, I have to kill time. The gift shop has nothing I want: no handstands to add to my collection. I already have fourteen magazines and three books:
The National Enquirer
,
Star
,
People
,
Vanity Fair
, Billy Graham’s
Decision
magazine,
WORLD
, and some
World Vision/Compassion International
material; one book is
A Million Little Pieces
, by James Frey, one book is
Dry
, by Augusten Burroughs, and the other book is about how to get closer to Jesus.

This was my reading material, pre-Obama. Now, post-Obama’s election, my carry-on bag contains
The Manchurian President,
by Aaron Klein,
The Greatest Hoax,
by Senator James Inhofe (about the anthropogenic global warming myth),
Brotherhood of Darkness,
by Dr. Stanley Monteith, and
The Communist
, by Paul Kengor. Oh, and my leather-bound Bible devotional from the Kirkland family. And the tabloids of course. My shoulder is sliding off with the weight of intellectual stimulation that I am about to squeeze into my (already) fully capacitated brain.

I am wearing my airport terminal armor: laptop, ukulele, books, pens, tabloids, cell phone, Coffee Nips (hard candy that stays in your mouth longer and is less calories), bifocals, iPod, passport and plane ticket tucked into my bra so I won’t lose them. I glance up from
Star
’s latest Kirstie Alley photo, and look at the restless, the weary, and the foreigners around me. I realize that God loves each one of them as much as He loves me. Chris Rice’s music in my earbuds blots out the loud beeping noises, the jet engines, and the cursing people. The idea of dying in a plane crash flits into my brain and then flits away.

When I was thirty, I had a very real dream once that I died in a plane crash. I saw my body lying on the ground and I watched a flight attendant carrying baby Scarlet away from the wreckage. I was thinking,
I should be very, very sad that I died and my baby lived and I can’t be her Mommy anymore.
But it felt
so
peaceful. I felt deep joy and security. I saw the big picture. Scarlet and I were safe. Suddenly, in my dream, I thought,
Oh, I’m going to meet God! I’m going to meet God face to face now. How exciting!
As I started to wake up, I was beginning to assemble the questions I’ve always wanted to ask Him. When awake fully, I was amazed at how real it was. I wondered if it was a premonition.

I told my Dad the dream and he said, “Well, you’re still alive, so I guess it isn’t true that when you dream you die, you die.”