Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences (12 page)

“But the highlights look great,” Jeff offered. “They really look great on camera, and so did you.”

“Do you think they cut me ’cause I sucked?”

“Probably not. It’s just what happens on sitcoms. Happens all the time: they always cut stuff from guest spots and costars;
if it’s not having to do with the regulars, they figure it’s extraneous. Don’t worry, there’ll be other gigs.”

And there were. Even on
Seinfeld
, where three years later I appeared again, in two episodes of the ninth and final season. By that time, I had figured out
I needed to grow out my bangs, as well as the advantages of Final Net. I wish I felt proud or even just happy about being
a footnote on one of the most successful shows in the history of tele vision, but I don’t. Whenever it’s mentioned, I feel
the same emptiness that I did sitting on that crummy Ping-Pong table in Nichols Canyon.

My father and I never spoke about it again. It became one of those verboten subjects, glossed over, ignored, as if it had
never happened in the first place. My mother told me that sometime after the episode aired, they ran into a lawyer they knew
in a hotel elevator, whose actor son had become a big star. My father congratulated her for her son’s success; she thanked
him, saying, “Yes, we are very proud.” The woman then asked, “Isn’t your daughter in the business too?” Apparently, my father
could only nod and glumly look down at the floor. “It was so hard for him,” my mother said. And I’m sure it was.

I would later find, in a box in my parents’ bedroom, a series of fuzzy pictures, four frozen frames of me in the Jon Voight
episode. Two were of me, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards; one was of me in close-up with my hair in my face; and one
was of my name in the closing credits. It appeared that someone had first videotaped the episode, then snapped a photo of
each of these frames. I have since wondered if the photos were my father’s handiwork, or perhaps an offering from some cousin
on Long Island for whom those faint glimpses of a family member on television were worthy of a craft project.

As for the rubber tits: one day, on the Disney lot, in the depths of the San Fernando Valley, I pulled them out of the car
trunk, where they lay dormant and roasting. The burning silicone actually scalded my finger. I went in for the appointment
titless and got a callback, so I never used them again. Years later, when I was moving from one apartment to another, I came
across one of them, its mate nowhere to be found. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, but I couldn’t take it with me
either, so I wrapped it in Saran Wrap and left it in the fridge.

6. More Mud: Mud Season (Reprise)

After four months
of house-sitting in Nichols Canyon, I moved to my second home in Los Angeles, also in the Hollywood Hills, a section loftily
known as Hollywood Heights. My agent, Robin, had finessed an apartment swap with another of her clients, whereby the client
would take my place in New York, I would take hers, and then we’d reassess. We agreed on a six-month commitment, which was
about all I could wrap my mind around at that point.

I went one gray afternoon in early December to have a look at the place: a teensy basement apartment in a charming, ramshackle
cottage built in the 1920s, overgrown with gnarly vines of night-blooming jasmine and sheltered by a huge wisteria tree. When
I arrived, someone was listening to the original Broadway sound track of
Company
, and as I parked the car, I could hear Elaine Stritch bellowing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” A tall, boyishly handsome guy of
about forty with sky blue eyes and a sly grin greeted me at the door. It was Jimmie, my apartment swapper’s best friend, who
rented the upstairs part of the cottage with his wife, Mary, and their two young daughters.

“Well, I know I’m in the right place if you’re playing Stritch,” I told Jimmie, and he laughed.

“Stritch is
heaven
,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolute
heaven
.”

After Jimmie showed me around, I decided the place would be fine. I went back to New York to collect my cat, Max, who’d been
staying for a few months with a friend, and returned to my new home in early January in the midst of a raging storm that locals
quaintly called El Niño, Spanish for “little boy.” I quickly discovered that the heating was faulty and the bedroom flooded.
Mold flourished in various areas of the soggy wall-to-wall carpet, and the bedsheets were musty and dank. I poured Max—still
strung out on kitty dope—out of his bag and took in the scene. My first gander at this place had been so fleeting, it felt
like I was only just then seeing it for the first time. Known as a “mother-in-law apartment,” it was configured like a railroad
flat: rooms spilling into each other, with the kitchen at one end, the bedroom at the other, and the dining area, bathroom,
and living room floating betwixt the two. From the bedroom window, there was a view down the hill of the Hollywood Holiday
Inn, whose green neon letters I could still make out through the fog.

Heavy, dark furniture of some forgotten era was wedged into every corner, dwarfing the space and accentuating the freakishly
low ceiling. It was like a cheap, dilapidated dollhouse saved from a roadside tag sale. There was a great deal of mismatched
china housed in a whitewashed Shabby Chic–style cabinet, some of it chipped and junky, some of it fancy, as though the person
to whom it belonged had over the years fallen in and out of hard times, hocking the good stuff now and again, or perhaps just
losing things with every unforeseen hasty move. In the living room, a sad sofa, some kind of Jennifer Convertible on its last
gasp, smelling vaguely of bergamot, mildew, and ylang-ylang, was outfitted with scarfy crushed-velvet fabrics and various
silk shawls, giving it a Stevie Nicks
Tusk
Tour vibe. I sat on it with Max that first afternoon, listening to the pelting rain, dispirited and shivering, reading yellowed
aromatherapy books until dark.

The next morning, following a brief respite from the downpour, I went out in my rented Nissan to pick up groceries. Pulling
into the perilously sloped driveway, I yanked up the emergency brake and started to grab my stuff, then heard a tap on my
window. It was Ned.

“Well, howdy, neighbor,” Ned grinned, hands stuffed in his pockets. I hadn’t seen him in two years, since we’d been caught
on another coast, in another driveway, frantically trying to escape the mud. He had tried to reach me many times after that
ill-fated trip—sending me cards, letters, chocolates—but I’d blown off these attempts until eventually he’d stopped.

“Ned! What are you doing here?” I said, hugging him a bit tentatively.

“I live here! Two houses up! Renting a real sweet little guesthouse. All wood. Very Mission style, which, as you know, is
my yen.”

I couldn’t get over the randomness, to say nothing of the awkwardness. Here we were in Los Angeles—huge, sprawling, colossally
spread-out Los Angeles—on a
minor
hill, not a
major
Hollywood hill, mind you, but a teeny little offshoot hill of no import. And of all the neighbors on all of the hills in all
of Los Angeles, who happens to be my two-doors-down neighbor?

Ned had been living in his rented guesthouse for a couple of months. He had run into Mary one day, who’d told him that an
actress from New York was moving in—maybe he knew her?

“So I’ve been waiting for you to show up! Kept looking in the driveway to see if there was a new car—gosh—for at least a week
now. Startin’ to feel like a Peeping Tom . . . or a Peeping Ned!” he blurted, laughing easily. Despite internal eye-rolling
at his familiar corniness, I laughed too. Why not? The whole thing was just absurd.

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

How had I been
. It was a simple question to which there was no simple answer. In the midst of this latest transition in my life, I was at
once elated and forlorn. I was terribly lonely and frequently overwhelmed, but as much as I hated to admit it, I loved L.A.
I loved driving; I loved the weather; I loved the smell of jasmine everywhere. As a person with absolutely no sense of direction,
I felt like a genius in L.A. because I knew that if I was facing the hills, I could take a left and be at the beach sometime
before the end of the day.

“Find the hills,” my Nichols Canyon roommate Jeff would intone. “That’s all you gotta do.” Things like this made me feel like
I was on track with everything else. New York agents and casting people had always maintained, “Oh, they’d never get you in
L.A. Never!” Yet from the beginning, every time I went in for a meeting, Robin would call me up and shriek into her speakerphone,
“IT WAS A LOVEFEST!” I was getting work, making money, stockpiling credits with which I hoped to transform my career—it was
all happening.

And yet, I couldn’t shake the insidious depression that clung to me like thick early-morning smog draped over the Santa Monica
Mountains. Like Pigpen in Charlie Brown, my dark, dirty cloud preceded me and lingered when I left. There was no reason for
it and every reason in the world. Along with the various successes of my first few months in L.A., there were some abysmal
moments as well. Within weeks of my arrival in September, I fell back into bed with the Jazz Musician, who happened to be
in L.A. for some gigs. I assured myself it was all “fine.” I could be
casual
; I lived in
Hollywood
; I was
working
; I had
call times
and
trailers.
But the truth was I hoped we would get back together, so when, at the end of our two-week sex bender, the Jazz Musician departed,
I was once again devastated. If it’s “once burned, twice shy,” then surely the third time around is a metaphysical holocaust.

Then Robin announced that she was leaving her big Hollywood agency and moving to New York. She wanted a husband and was convinced
that unlike Los Angeles Jewish Men, who were nothing but smarmy lookists, New York Jewish Men were kindly and deep and didn’t
care if you had a big ass. She took a job at a midlevel agency—a big step down from where she had been—moved in with a gay
guy, and waited for marriage proposals that would never come. For a while, Robin and I continued to work together from opposite
coasts, but casting people started telling me I would need to get someone new in town if I planned on staying. I was shattered.
I had finally found a compassionate, interested agent who believed in me and got me auditions, and now she was gone. I signed
with someone else, but it wasn’t the same. For all the exciting feats of the fall, I could now only focus on my losses; while
on the plane back to L.A., with my drugged cat in a bag under my seat, I listened over and over to the plaintive strains of
Ladies of the Canyon
on my Dis-cman, weeping disconsolately.

I didn’t tell any of this to Ned, though. I told him I was fine, and he said it was great to see me, and even though I probably
hated him, would I have lunch with him? I told him I didn’t hate him and without hesitation agreed to lunch. We ate at A Votre
Sante, a vegan place down on La Brea, and within minutes we were once again “pals.” What ever weirdness might have been lurking
quickly evaporated; I easily forgot
why
Ned and I had stopped speaking (again), and apparently, so did he. I knew he was sorry it had all gone the way it had, and
in that moment I was too.

“Hey,” he said as we tucked into our fake Chocolate Satin Pie. “I missed you. A whole lot.”

I saw the earnestness in his watery green eyes. They were, as usual, rimmed with the faintest red—the by-product of his habitual
Wake ’N Bake—making them even greener.

“I missed you too,” I said, and I had.

“I won’t lie to you and say I don’t adore you and wouldn’t be delighted to get down your pants, but if I say I’ll behave,
can we still be pals? I mean, we
are
neighbors.”

I laughed. “And you might need to borrow a cup of sugar?”

He grinned. “If that’s the only kind of sugar you’re willing to put out, then, yeah!”

Ned, since last I had seen him, had clearly begun an ascent in his career, and yet he was still the same ol’ Ned. He hadn’t
changed a bit and in that moment, it was a source of great comfort. When I looked across the table at him, I saw Ned, a person
from my past, with whom I shared memories, some good, some not so good. But I also saw myself, the me Ned had taught, the
me whom Ned had such enormous faith in, the kick-ass me I used to be, but of late had trouble not only accessing but even
remembering. He was my past, but he also inspired my hopes for a future that, after many years of effort, could in the end
work out: Ned had recently won the role of a lifetime, the role that would ultimately make him very rich and very famous.

“Finally, after all these years, I figured the whole fucking thing out,” he told me as we finished our meal. “They were gonna
pass me by, so I flew myself to New York—on my dime—auditioned for them again, and as I was leaving, I told them, point-blank,
‘Don’t make a mistake, fellas. I’m the guy.’ ”

The story didn’t surprise me. Two years prior, right before the Maine Mud Fiasco, I accompanied Ned to the premiere of a movie
in which he had a small, supporting role. Most of his part, however, ended up on the cutting room floor. Walking up to the
after-party, we came to a press line. A few of the stars preceded us down the line, shutterbugs snapping away, flashes going
off like the Fourth of July. But as soon as they had their shots of the stars, they stopped shooting, seeing Ned and me as
an opportunity to reload. Ned stood there for a few seconds, waiting for them to take his picture.

“Ned,” I whispered, “they’re not gonna take our picture. We should just go in. Come on. We should keep walking . . .”

Ned was outraged.

“Fuck them,” he fumed, grabbing my hand and storming up the press line, back where we had come from, furiously bumping into
people.

“I’m not going to their stupid fucking party. Fuck them all. I am going to be a BIG, FAT, FUCKING MOVIE STAR. THAT’S IT! I’ve
had it!” It was then that Ned focused his laser: he knew what he wanted, said it out loud—demanded it, even—and made it happen.

Even so, he seemed unchanged by the results. This was certainly a far cry from the other people I knew who had moved to L.A.
from New York, a strange and remote, weirdly paranoid, and hard-to-reach group. Some people didn’t resemble their former selves
in the slightest; they were all new noses, new hair colors, new names, new personalities. People who had always been dramatic
actresses were all of a sudden comedians; standup comics were playing it straight; playwrights were suddenly sitcom writers.
A director I knew who claimed to have regularly partied with John-John Kennedy was now a Hasidic Jew. Pathological liars who
had made crazy claims about Pacino and De Niro were actually doing jobs with Pacino and De Niro. It was like that line in
My Man Godfrey
: “All you need to start an insane asylum is a room and the right kind of people.” At that moment, I thought that Ned and
I were the only two sane people in the whole Wild West. Little did I realize how much we fit in.

“I think this is a
sign
,” my mother said ominously when I called to tell her the story later.

“Of what?”

“What do you
think
?” she asked superciliously. My mother was quite possibly the least spiritual person I had ever known. Yet in moments like
this—when she wanted me to do something—she liked to adopt an enigmatic, otherworldly tone.

“That you should give this one a try,” she continued. “You’ve never really
tried
with him. And now here he is,
literally, on
your doorstep
. I think it’s a great story.”

“Sorry to ruin the ‘great story,’ but I don’t think we really have that much actual chemistry. I mean as a couple.”

“Oh, horse shit. You never really tried!”

“Plus, he’s a complete weed freak . . .”

“So? No one’s perfect!”

“He’s a total sexist . . .”

“Oh,
please,
what man isn’t? I mean, this guy is on the brink of some great things. He’s goin’ places. You really don’t want to miss
that
boat!”

My mother was right about one thing: I hadn’t tried. And as I sat on my sodden bed staring at the Hollywood Holiday Inn’s
neon sign, I tried to remember all the reasons why. I knew everything I needed to know about Ned and why the boat to which
my mother referred was a sinking one, but nostalgia is a corrupting sentiment: you imagine half-truths; you resort to magical
thinking.

In the weeks that followed, Ned and I spent a lot of time to-gether, eating “healthy Chinese” at the Mandarette on Beverly,
occasionally seeing movies, and, weather permitting, working on auditions on his back patio. We would drive down the boulevards
at night in his convertible, with the top down and the heat blasting, laughing and arguing over various script analyses. I
promptly forgot all about Ned’s antediluvian attitudes, his potential for cruelty, his selfishness, his inability to listen
to anything offstage, and his peerless penchant for pot, and one night, when he put the moves on me, I didn’t even stop him.
There was no sense asking myself what I was thinking; I wasn’t thinking anything at all. It was very simple: I was lonely;
Ned was lonely too. Ned still pined for Binky; I still pined for the Jazz Musician. We knew better, and yet for some reason,
Ned and I, in our thirst for love, clung to each other, both hoping that what we already knew could somehow be unknown. While
Ned set about trying to turn me into the girly-girl of his dreams by obsessively buying me, not lingerie from Victoria’s Secret,
but rather, long flannel nightgowns edged with lace that buttoned up the neck into Annie Sullivan–esque Victorian choke holds,
I meanwhile tried to (a) overlook the fact that I had never, in my entire life, worn a nightgown and (b) convince myself that
“growing into” passionate love was possible, even preferable. Perhaps then, I theorized, I wouldn’t lose myself so entirely
as I had done in the past, abnegating every last bit of my power, holding fast to the fiction of soul mates and true love.
And how could I know if any of this was possible if I never tried?