I Don't Care About Your Band (3 page)

It was at the age of eleven or so, soon after I lost that role in
Annie
, when I realized that my ability to sing, dance, and generally captivate an audience including but not limited to my father in the front row was not a guaranteed means of seducing dudes. Twenty years later, once I’d abandoned musical theater to be a comedy writer, I would learn that being funny wasn’t either.

 

I WAS
at sleep-away camp, playing Rusty Charlie in boy drag in
Guys & Dolls
, when I sang the bafflingly titled “Fugue for Tinhorns” number, bedecked in an oil-paint mustache, a man’s tweed jacket, and a French braid that a counselor tucked beneath a plastic derby hat. It was as though I was the recipient of some perverse challenge that dared me to feel pretty. But at the time, I was wholly confident that my performance, mustachioed or not, would close the deal with the boy whom I’d, until then, had only flirted with at socials. His name was Evan Pringsheim, and he hailed from exotic Chappaqua. We were paired off once I told my bunk I liked his face, a gossip morsel my campmates broadcasted to Evan’s friends, who chanted, “Do it!” until he was literally pushed, red-faced, from of a lineup of his contemporaries, into my general direction, like a cannibal tribe’s offering of a virgin into a volcano’s simmering maw. I was delighted. Mine, all mine!

I’d pulled out all the stops with Evan during our five-p.m. encounters, telling him jokes I’d stolen from the “Truly Tasteless” collections I’d browsed at B. Dalton and about the time I lost that tooth. All the while, I was clad in my fail-safe boy bait outfit: the neon pink T-shirt that bellowed LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA in banana yellow all-caps, and my “fancy shorts.” It was a lethal combination—a veritable bustier-back/seamed stockings combo—but Evan hadn’t kissed me yet. I knew that once he saw me work that round in “Fugue”—the one where all of the gangsters are singing over each other about the horses they think are best to wager on—he would belong to me.

So, I was wrong. Wrong like Hitler was wrong. But for a couple of hours that night, while I was blissfully distracted onstage at sleep-away camp, I missed my father less. Evan didn’t say anything after the show: I think he was being kind, in a way, pretending it never happened. Like he didn’t have to sit there and watch his girlfriend in mustache makeup singing,
“Just a minute, boys! I’ve got the feed box noise! It says the great-grandfather was Equipoise.”
Maybe he figured out that he if pretended it never happened, one day he’d be able to get an erection.

Evan had alchemized something embarrassing into something invisible, and his nonreaction to my pursuit marked the first of a lifelong trend. As long as I can remember, I’ve had to fight off urges to chase and conquer boys who seem blasé. It’s decidedly unladylike.

Men who disclose obsessions with girls from day one are Don Juan or Alexander Portnoy. But I am amorous the way fat people are hungry. When I have a crush on someone, I feel like Divine in
Hairspray
, warning everyone in her proximity that her diet pill is wearing off. My enduring pursuit of the opiates provided only from male attention, glorious male attention, has destined me to a lifetime of displays of unseemly and comically humiliating behavior.

 

 

EVAN PRINGSHEIM
of Chappaqua was the first of many would-be beaus unable to circumnavigate the wall of Daddy I’d erected on all sides of me, its bricks held together by the mortar of song and dance. When Evan dumped me at the end of the summer, I wailed like I did in my dad’s car, taking refuge back home in the comfort of my parents and my brother, who told me, after what was ostensibly my first breakup, that “Men are slime.”

I took to heart that christening philosophy, but it didn’t make me feel any better after I’d been let down. I’ve just always wanted a boyfriend, OK? Just like I wanted Cookie Crisp on my birthday and that Barbie named Miko who was supposed to be Hawaiian and came with her own tie-dyed bathing suit.

But boys and roles aren’t things you can tear from shelves and take to the cash register.You have to put yourself out there, sing your eight bars, and then wait to hear if you’re the one who makes sense for the gig. And if it doesn’t work out? Well, then you’ve got to make sure that somebody who loves you is around to remind you there will always be another show.

 

 

 

W
hen
The Muppet Movie
aired on network TV in the early 1980s, my family used the VHS tape that came with our first-generation General Electric brand VCR to record it. I wore that cassette down to its black plastic casing, repeatedly delighting in the travails of Kermit and his friends on the lam from frog-leg baron Doc Hopper, and grooving right along to the Electric Mayhem. I was in preternatural awe of the character actresses in the film: Madeline Kahn, Carol Kane, and Cloris Leachman all had cameos, and I still credit that movie for my Austin Pendleton crush. But more than anything, as a little girl, I wanted to be exactly like Miss Piggy. She was
ma héroïne
.

I was a plucky little girl, but I never related to the rough-and-tumble icons of children’s lit, like Pippi Longstocking or Harriet the Spy. Even Ramona Quimby, who seemed cool, wasn’t somebody I could super-relate to. She was scrawny and scrappy, and I was soft and sarcastic. I connected instead to Miss—never “Ms.”—Piggy; the comedienne extraordinaire who’d alternate eyelash bats with karate chops, swoon over girly stuff like chocolate, perfume, feather boas or random words pronounced in French, then, on a dime, lower her voice to “Don’t fuck with me, fellas” decibel when slighted. She was hugely feminine, boldly ambitious, and hilariously violent when she didn’t get her way, whether it was in work, love, or life. And even though she was a pig puppet voiced by a man with a hand up her ass, she was the fiercest feminist I’d ever seen.

I took my cues from Piggy, chasing every would-be Kermit in my vicinity with porcine voracity and what I thought was feminine charm. I was aggressive. I never went through a “boys are gross” phase—I’d find a crush and press my hoof to the gas pedal. I wasn’t the girl who couldn’t say no—I was the one who wouldn’t hear it. I left valentines on the desk of my first- grade crush, Jake Zucker, weeks into March. I cornered Avi Kaplan in the hallway and tried to make him kiss me. I begged my mom to tell Ben Margulies’s mom about my crush on him in second grade, in hopes she’d put in a good word for me, like that has ever worked.

I didn’t think of myself then as I do now, in retrospect; as a pigtailed, red-faced mini-Gulliver, clomping around in Keds and a loud sweater, my thunder thighs tucked into stonewash casing. I’d catch the scent of “a
MAAAAAAAN!
” and want to club a cute boy I liked on the head and drag him by the hair to a cave, where I could force him to like me back. But at the time, I thought of myself as a
pig fatale
. Miss Piggy wanted what I did, which was to be famous and fabulous and to be loved by her one true frog and occasionally Charles Grodin. But looking back, I realize Kermit was, for lack of a better term, just not that into her.

So much about Kermit the Frog is intrinsically lovable: his sense of humor, his loyalty to his friends, his charm and confidence in who he is, despite the challenges of being green. But at the same time, Kermit has a distinct indifference to the overtures of his would-be paramour that I came to expect from the boys who crossed my path from grade school on. I think watching Piggy chase Kermit gave me an odd sense of what men and women do, in real life, when they’re adults. I figured that if you—glamorous, hilarious, fabulous you—find a boy who’s funny and popular and charming and shy, and you want him, you just go out and “Hi-Ya” yourself into his favor. Piggy and Kermit represented the quintessential romance to me. And I don’t know how healthy that was.

Watching
The Muppet Movie
again recently gave me a feeling of déjà vu, and not in the way you expect when you watch a movie you loved as a kid. As I watched Kermit haplessly biking down the street without a care in the world, about to be smushed between two steamrollers, I thought, “Oh my God. I know that guy. I’ve dated him.” Kermit, beloved frog of yore, suddenly, overwhelmingly, reminded my adult self of vintage-eyeglass-frame-wearing guys from Greenpoint or Silver Lake, who pedal along avenues in between band practice and drinks with friends, sans attachment, oblivious to the impeding hazards of reality and adulthood.
“Oh my God,”
I thought. Kermit is one of those hipsters who seem like they’re afraid of me.

It all came together.

Remember how content Kermit was, just strumming his banjo on a tree trunk in the swamp? That’s the guy I’ve chased my whole life, killing myself trying to show him how fabulous I am. Remember how, on
The Muppet Show
, Kermit used to politely laugh at Miss Piggy’s earnest pleas for some kissy-kissy, or fend off her jealousy after flirting right in front of her with one of his pretty guest stars? Piggy had to canvas relentlessly to get herself a good part on that show, while Kermit was always the star. Because she loved him, Piggy would always take whatever he felt like giving her. And it was never anything too fancy, like the jewels she’d buy for herself. Pearls before Swine? More like bros before hos.

Kermit never appreciated what he had in Piggy, because she was just one great thing about his awesome life. He had the attitude women’s magazines try to sell to their audience: that significant others are only the frosting on the cake of life. But everybody knows that cake without frosting is just a muffin.

Kermit didn’t want to devote his life to making Piggy happy—he just wanted to host his show and enjoy hanging out with his friends. Anything more she’d ask of him would warrant a gulp. Do you remember
The Muppets Take Manhattan
? At the end, Piggy actually tricks Kermit into marrying her, subbing in a real minister for Gonzo in the Broadway show that calls for Kermit and Piggy’s characters to get fake-married. This shit goes down after Kermit tears Piggy to pieces in front of all their friends, deriding her about how no frog like him would ever go out with a pig like her.

He gets karate-chopped, natch, and if you want to be technical about it, he wasn’t Kermit then because he’d lost his memory, but this was after he’d made Piggy suffer throughout that whole film. Our poor porcine heroine had to watch her beloved carry on with a mousy human waitress (the one whose coworkers were actual mice) while she stalked him in the bushes. And she knew the whole time that Kermit’s priorities lay with making good on a promise he made to his friends that they’d succeed with their show over making anything work with her.

Even after they’re married, Kermit cheats Piggy out of their swan song. The two hold hands, freshly wed, and right before the movie fades out on the two of them riding a crescent moon, Kermit musters the most romantic sentiment he could possibly come up with to sing to his wife:

His
friend
? What the ass???

I remember thinking that line was the sweetest thing ever when I watched it as a kid, and now I’m just horrified. I don’t mean to forsake the romantic notion of a spouse being one’s best friend, because obviously that’s tear-jerking, nor to undermine the natural comedy of a frisky woman chasing a timid man—obviously that’s funny, and it always has been, from Looney Tunes to Joan Rivers’s perennial stand-up act about being unfuckable. But as children’s entertainment, the Muppets were a parable to me. Those movies weren’t Fractured Fairy Tales: they were the originals. And I think, just as I strove to emulate Piggy—resplendent in feather boas, lavender mules, and rings over opera gloves—I wonder how many guys from my generation looked to Kermit as an example of the coolest guy in the room.

How maybe they think it’s OK to defer the advances of the fabulous woman they know is going to be there no matter what, while they dreamily pursue creative endeavors and dabble with other contenders. How maybe they learned the value of bromance from Kermit’s constant emphasis on his obligations to his friends before his ball and chain. And how maybe they figured out that if you’re soft-spoken and shy, but you know how to play a musical instrument, girls will come in droves. That you don’t have to learn how to approach a woman or worry that she’ll do anything but fly into a jealous snit if you talk to other girls in front of her. You just keep your creativity flowing and your guy friends close, and you’ll have to beat the ladies down with a stick.

Sometimes I suspect Kermithood may be the model of modern masculinity. If it is, it doesn’t match the matehood expectations of a generation of Miss Piggys who, at least eventually, want more. After all, since we were little, we were taught that the only point of chasing frogs is the hope that they turn into men when you kiss them.

Maybe Piggy would have been better off with Fozzie. Gonzo was a pervert and Rolf, another musician, would have been beholden to the demands of the road. And sure, stand-ups have their own problems, but I’ll bet the bear at least could’ve made her laugh. And Piggy probably could’ve stood a chance to feel a bit dainty next to him, too, Fozzie being fuzzy and barrel-chested and all. There’s nothing like a spindly-legged, amphibious boy who weighs less than you do to make you feel like a real hog.

Piggy’s self-esteem didn’t seem to ruffle from rejection after rejection, but that bitch is like Beyoncé, who is made of steel, and possibly from outer space. But when I look back and I think about chasing Jake Zucker back and forth on ice skates at his birthday party, or praying that Ben Margulies got my signed note informing him that he had a “secret” admirer, I wished I’d given myself a gentle nudge in the direction of more self-preserving endeavors. Like maybe how, if you want to be the star of a show, you should make your own effing show. Or that you need to walk away from a guy who doesn’t care that you’re jealous when he flirts with other people in front of you. Or maybe you’ll just find out one day that instead of a popular charmer with a talent for playing the banjo, what you really want is a guy who digs you like crazy; who makes
you
feel like the star.