Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party (16 page)

“Paul, when are we going to get married?”

“It’s in my Bible.”

Paul got his old beat-up Bible out and flipped to Ephesians 5:22. There it was, in my handwriting, in the margin next to the words “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her”—December 19, 1979, with a heart next to it. So December 19, 1992 it was. But we couldn’t wait until our big December church wedding, so we snuck off to the Justice of the Peace in September and made our consummation legal and holy. One night in Connecticut our passion broke the bed. My mom, who was there babysitting, heard a loud crash and ran in to find us on the floor, embarrassed. Her surprise turned into a happy smile and she tiptoed back into her room. She had always approved of this one. I wrote:

Ravished

I was loved like a baby who is wanted and cherished,

I was touched like a rose upon a cheek,

I was heard like a sermon on spiritually hungry ears,

I was looked at as a lady of the week,

I was enveloped like a fetus in a womb,

I was treated like a Pharaoh in an Egyptian tomb,

I was lifted up as a sacrifice to God,

I was kissed by a man who made me feel like a lifetime,

I was kissed by a man who made me feel like a lifetime,

I was kissed by a man who ravished me!

We’d been engaged twice, in 1978 and in 1992. We were married twice, at the courthouse, and in church. During this time of being “twitterpated,” a low note on the piano was faintly pounding in the back of my skull like a warning.
Bong, bong, bong.
Choices involve risk and loss. The logical section of my brain (it’s a very small area), tried to give a speech. I heard bits and pieces of it.

It was something like this:
How, oh how are you going to leave everything you built up on that mountain in Laurel Canyon? Every tree and every bird are music to your soul. All the city of LA is a pulsing, creative heart full of brave dreamers. This is your land. You know the curves on the mountain roads so well, and each mansion by heart. As you speed to each audition, you gulp up each redwood on Coldwater Canyon. There’s Aaron Spelling’s hotel-sized house hidden in the trees. Your friend Tina designed their landscape. There’s naked Warren Beatty’s white gate. There’s the parking lot where you got held up with a gun at 1 a.m. in your cigarette girl uniform. There’s where Valerie Bertinelli’s alcohol-free beach party was. Memories from each
Tonight Show
appearance sing to you when you drive through Burbank. What you were wearing and saying fly around in misty patches, dancing, harmonizing, tickling your synapses like a drug with no side effects, like a bunch of really good dreams having a big party together in your head; pink satin, Jack Lemon, Sidney Lumet, your green suede miniskirt suit, Weird Al’s jacuzzi, the limo, Doc Severenson’s band joining you on the last stanza of your song
Angry Woman
when you flipped on the balance beam and the crowd went wild, the beaded vintage dress you found for $30 that you thought God picked out for your second Carson appearance, the pet store where you got your first puppy, Reggie, the black cockapoo; faces of big stars you admired, smiling back at you with respect; people you’d be afraid to ask for autographs share dialogue with you in a scene. That big billboard at Universal City had your face on it one time. Remember that? There’s Los Arcos. Here you are on Wilshire where you used to drive home alone, on your moped from Hef’s to your hovel in the ghetto—look at the roses, they grow wild—Jimmy’s loft downtown was so big you could roller skate in it; your photo shoot in the big flowered hat with Leslie, the photographer, who wore a bathing suit while she worked…

This lecture was drowned out by the loud beating of my heart that demanded to stay in charge of all my decisions. I had always impulsively followed it, and it wasn’t about to be suddenly upstaged by common sense. When I prayed, I thought God was presenting me with a huge blessing: a Christian husband to love and take care of, and who would take care of me and Scarlet.

The day I married Paul was the happiest and saddest day of my life. The five major causes of depression are (1) loss of job (2) moving (3) bankruptcy (4) divorce, and (5) death. When I married Paul, I left
SNL
, my homes, and lost all my money in the divorce. In one day, I received almost all five major causes of depression. So that’s how I got to be sobbing and sobbing in my Saab. Everyone in Connecticut has a Saab. No one in Miami has a Saab. I had no career there. No auditions. No one even spoke English. Why was I here again? Oh yeah, hot sex.

So, I’ve been having hot sex here in the hot Miami suburbs forever. Even without the sex, it’s very hot and humid. Lots of sweating. I rush from my car air-conditioner to my house airconditioner and
vice versa
. When I take the family out of town for work, or just to find coldness somewhere, I ask my neighbor to get my mail, “Yo en aeroplano en cielo y bye, bye. Por favor, las cartas y los periodicos?” Lots of smiling and nodding are involved.

Being a suburban housewife is work. Paul said his dream wife would be a
Victoria’s Secret
model who’s deaf and dumb and knows how to cook.

I said, “Paul, get me pregnant again. Remember the good old days when I made you that flank steak and
au gratin
potatoes because I was pregnant and couldn’t do anything else fun except spoil you?”

Paul says, “Yeah, I remember the good days. You made me dinner once.”

“But it was good, right?”

Aubrey, age four, enters the room pulling our big suitcase, and pushes me outside. She’s wearing cowboy boots and a long pink dress, over which is draped a Barbie nightshirt with fresh ketchup and chocolate stains all over it. Lipstick is smeared from cheek to cheek. She tells me she’s Ethel, and her horse is Hunter. “Mommy, get on my horse.” I glance around to see if anyone’s watching, and mount the suitcase for a ride. When I look at my children, this is how I feel:

I Am Not Worthy

I am not soft enough to touch my baby.

I am not big enough to protect her from all foes.

I am not smart enough to prevent future disasters.

I am not worthy to wiggle her toes.

I am not good enough to be her example.

I’m helpless and I worry when she is ill.

I hug her too tightly or sometimes don’t listen,

When she’s waxing poetic by the windowsill.

I’m easily distracted from her fleeting enchantment,

By shallow diversions and useless detail.

I can’t stare at her long enough when she is sleeping.

I can’t keep her quotations, my memory fails.

I can’t paint a portrait of her perfect profile,

My talent is not Bouguereau’s.

I can’t find the phrase for my love of her freckles,

And I am not worthy to wiggle her toes.

Housewife

I have many thoughts on love,

And many are confused.

I have tasted true love,

And I have been used.

I believe that love can last,

Although it may sound quite naïve.

All the poets…

…they believe.

S
o, I’m on the back of Paul’s motorcycle, 1994, and we’re flying to Sundowners in Key West to watch the sunset and sip chardonnay. My stomach churns, threatening regret. While leaning into a loop, I relive that heavy moment at the crossroads of my life where I had to take the road less traveled by. I had to choose between Hollywood and pretend love or reality and real love. I wanted the best of both worlds. Everything pales in comparison to the excitement of
Saturday Night Live
. Paul’s biceps are big, but the ’burbs are boring. My children are radiant, but homemaking is repetitious. Real love is rapturous, but it’s… real. And nobody respects a suburbanite. The loud
thickety-thack
of the engine vibrates between my thighs as I lean awkwardly forward—triceps braced, torso angled on Paul. The passenger-unfriendly Mitsubishi racing bike creates a rhythm:
thickety-thack, thickety-thack.
Words tumble into my mind. They begin to rhyme. Twisting troubles into poems and songs gives me a sense of control and creases pain into pleasure.

Nobody respects a suburbanite.

They think you’ve settled for the lowest form of life.

You must not be ambitious if you’ve got a house, a car,

Two kids, a dog, and you are someone’s wife!

But, ohhhh, if you were a lesbian,

You would be so cool,

Breaking every rule!

And if you wanna get a kick,

You kiss your lover on the street,

And knock the Baptists off their feet,

(I’m a Baptist so I can say that)

And then you could be the lover of a lesbian rock star, or tennis star, or talk show host,

And travel all over the world,

And then when she dumps you

for another lesbian lover (or a man),

You could write a book about her,

And make a million dollars,

And get pregnant by an aging, ex-drug addict, ex-singer,

And move into the sub-urbs!… but,

Nobody respects a surburbanite

Et cetera, et cetera…