Spur of the Moment (18 page)

32

Acting on Instinct

S
aturday morning Ana awoke to a head-splintering hangover. Despite her vow never to drink again and the fact that alcohol was strictly forbidden from her weight-loss plan, she'd been drinking like crazy over the last week. She parted the curtains, hoping the sunny sky would rejuvenate her and give her the will to do something productive. Instead, it was gray and snowing. It looked as bleak as she felt. Winter had finally made its way to Denver.

Ana spent the next couple of hours in bed staring at the ceiling and feeling sorry for herself. She thought of various things she should do to further her career: Work on a stand-up routine and work the open mike night at Comedy Works. Refine the sketches she wrote for the show, tightening them up and making the parts the audience didn't find funny, funny.

She might have stayed there all day except for a phone call she got from Ram, asking her if she could pick him up from work since Nick was in L.A. for business and he just couldn't face riding the bus in this weather.

She thought of having to scrape the ice and snow off her car, navigate the slippery roads, face the brutal cold. It had all the appeal of surgery without anesthesia, but at least it would get her out of bed. Maybe that was all she needed to start feeling better. “Sure, I'll be there. When do you get off?”

“Two-thirty.”

That gave her an hour to take a shower and down a pot of coffee, several pain relievers, and a cup of detoxifying tea. “See ya then.”

Ana went through her post-drunken-debauchery rituals and still felt like crap.

She got to the bookstore a few minutes early, and since she was able to find a parking space near the door, she decided to wait for Ramiro inside.

Ana knew she should never go anyplace where money could be spent when she was hungover. She had no willpower or restraint in this state. So when she passed by the book about the history of
Saturday Night Live
called
Live from New York,
she picked it up and read about half of the first sentence of the jacket flap copy and decided she simply must have it, even though it was a hardcover and she never let herself splurge on hardcover books. In the point-eight seconds it took her to give herself permission to buy it, she reasoned that it would help her with her career. It would inspire her, give her tips on the biz, and surely help her reach her goals that much faster. Anyway, you were supposed to spend money to make money. That was all she was doing: Investing in her future.

She paid for it and, as she waited for Ram by the door to the employee lounge, she started the book. She'd only gotten a few pages by the time Ram grabbed her in a bear hug, lifted her off the ground, and yelled, “You are the best! You are my hero!” but she was already hooked.

“Whatcha got there?” he asked.

“It's the book that promises to share all the dirty little secrets about the history of
Saturday Night Live
from the writers, producers, performers, execs, everybody.”

“You know I could have bought the book at twenty-five percent off.”

“I know, but I figured I'll just read it and return it. I don't know. I'm crazy hungover and not able to think straight.”

“You're not feeling well? You should take the night off. The four of us can handle a show without you.”

“Really? You think?”

“I do.”

“Maybe I will.”

At home, Ana changed back into her PJs, crawled back into bed, and delved into her 600-page book.

Once she started, she couldn't put it down. She'd always admired performers from
SNL
and Second City. (You'll remember that she cracked a joke about how
SNL
wasn't funny on the poster for Primordial Stew. Her rationale was that it was sometimes true, and damn it, it was a joke, get over it already.) She was particularly in awe of Tina Fey, who was the first female head writer in
SNL's
twenty-five-year history. Marin had gone to Upright Citizen's Brigade theater in New York over the summer when she'd visited her family.
SNL
member Amy Pohler was one of the founding members of UCB, and both she and Tina could be found there some Sunday nights.

Ana read until midnight, mostly because, even though she was exhausted, her heart was racing like crazy from all the alcohol she'd consumed the night before. She was at the part in which Lorne Michaels flies out to The Groundlings theater in Los Angeles to decide whether to hire Julia Sweeney or Lisa Kudrow. Each of them performed three sketches. Julia got it. Lisa said she didn't let it get her down, she just thought about how she didn't get it because she was supposed to get something else. And boy did she ever.

Ana would have been devastated if she hadn't gotten a job on the show that catapulted the likes of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Joe Piscapo, Jon Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler to fame and fortune. But look how Lisa Kudrow turned out. She was making something like a million bucks an episode on one of the most popular shows in recent history. Not bad.

Maybe the same thing applied to her and Marin. Marin got the job in L.A. because Ana was supposed to get something else, something better suited to her personality.

Throughout the book, performer after performer and writer after writer kept repeating that doing the show was absolutely exhausting. They always stayed up all Tuesday night and worked crazy hours the rest of the time as well. They repeatedly mentioned how competitive it was, with all these performers battling to get airtime to show what they could do and all the writers struggling to get their scenes picked to be on the show. Larry David, who would later become the co-producer of
Seinfeld,
only got one or two sketches on the entire year he worked there. Ana thought it was bad when she had to rewrite brochure copy twelve times before going to print; she couldn't even imagine how frustrating it must be to go without sleep for twenty-two weeks only to have her sketches scrapped or cut at the last minute every single time.

Maybe Ana just wasn't tough enough for this business. Maybe she was just someone for whom comedy and performing would be a hobby, something she could talk about at dinner parties when she was married and had left all her lofty ambitions of fame and fortune behind.

Ana shook her head when she got to a part in the book where it said that some of the performers had been “failures” because they hadn't gone on to make zillions of dollars in the movies after leaving the show. Hello, they'd managed to get on
Saturday Night Live,
probably only something like .00000000000000000002 percent of the population could say that. It was no easy feat. You had to have serious talent to get there. That was the thing, though. If you're a little fish working at Spur of the Moment in Denver, Colorado, and you don't make a movie or the movie you make stinks, you don't have every journalist in the world declaring you a talentless has-been. But if you achieve enough success to get on the popular-culture radar, you opened yourself up to public ridicule for the slightest infraction.

Ana put the book down at last, turned off the lights, and wondered if she had what it took to get on
SNL
. And if she did achieve some degree of fame, would she be able to handle the inevitable hate mail and scathing articles about her that would follow? Or would she do what John Belushi did after reading a negative review of himself for his work in
Continental Divide,
abusing drugs and alcohol after two years of abstinence until he died at the age of 33?

Ana felt suddenly very old, like the window of opportunity for her to make it was closing. She needed to move to New York and take classes at Upright Citizen's Brigade—get her face known with the powers that be in New York comedy. She needed to be prepared for anything, whether it was to have a store of characters she could draw on if Lorne Michaels decided to stop by at the last minute to see her perform, or to be able to whip out one hilarious sketch after another, week after week. She needed to improve her acting skills. She needed to get stand-up experience. She needed to learn how to sing and play the guitar and write funny songs. She needed to know how to write movie scripts like Adam Sandler. She needed to . . .

As she listed all the ways she needed to improve lest she become a washed-up, talentless old hag before she even turned twenty-five, she finally fell asleep.

A
na wished she were the kind of person who couldn't eat when she was depressed. She got the “couldn't sleep” part down pat, but becoming miraculously skinny without even trying was not hers to be had. She was of the eat-to-feel-better variety.

But she was enjoying her workouts with Chelsey. Chelsey worked muscles Ana didn't know she had, and while Ana was inevitably a little sore after their sessions together, she liked to believe that burning pinching pain in her ass or wherever was the feeling of thousands of calories being consumed by muscles working overtime.

She was eating well during the day, but at night when she came home and her evil trio of skinny male roommates bombarded her with offers of wine or beer or foodstuffs drenched in butter or cheese, it nearly killed her to make a veggie burger (110 calories, 2 grams fat) with a whole wheat bun (120 calories, 1 gram fat) with mushrooms and onions sautéed in Pam (15 calories, no fat) with a bowl of vegetable soup (100 calories). Chelsey said in six weeks, as long as Ana stuck to the plan, she would get over her cravings for fat and calories. But as Ana longingly watched Scott devour a heaping plate of nachos, washing it down with one beer after another, she feared this was a cruel lie. How could she ever not salivate over the sight of nachos and beer?

After the first couple weeks of drinking heavily after Marin had gone to California, Ana was back to abstaining from alcohol. It just sucked watching everyone else have fun after the shows while she drank water with lemon and felt sorry for her fat ass.
This is the price of fame,
she kept repeating to herself.
This is the price of fame.

Ana washed down three glasses of water to trick her stomach into thinking it was full. Then she went up to bed to feel sorry for herself some more. Self-pity had become her new hobby.

After a few minutes, Scott came in and slid into bed next to her.

“You've been little Mary Sunshine lately.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“It's because of Marin?”

“It's because I'm fat and untalented and hopelessly ordinary.”

“Ana, you are gorgeous and wickedly talented and you couldn't be ordinary if you tried.” He turned on his side, propping his head in his hand, his elbow against the bed so he could really look at her. “God, you really believe all those horrible things about yourself, don't you? Let's start at the beginning. You are not fat. You're one of the sexiest women I've ever known.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“I've always thought you were totally hot. You're busty and curvy and if you weren't my best friend, I'd ravish you. You can ask Jason. I always used to groan to him about how hanging around you gave me perpetual blue balls.”

“It's nice of you to lie, but I've been friends with Marin for six years and guys hit on her like mad and ignore me totally.”

“Marin is cute, I'll give her that. But she's totally skinny and her tits are way too small. Guys hit on her because she's open and friendly. You always look stressed out about something. You scowl like 98 percent of the time.”

“I do?”

“Guys are terrified you're going to claw their eyes out if they try anything with you.”

“You really think I'm sexy?”

“I think you're gorgeous. You're beautiful. You're stunning.”

“Beautiful? Stunning?”

“Beautiful. Stunning.”

Ana thought about this. “I can't believe it, but that actually makes me feel better.” She chewed her lip, contemplating this revelation some more. “But if you think I'm so hot, how come you never put the moves on me?”

“Because you've had a crush on Jason for six years. I can't compete with pretty boy Jason.”

“I think you're cute.”

“Not as cute as Jason.”

“I'm over Jason. He's too perfect. It's exhausting.”

“So I can put the moves on you?”

Ana considered this. They had made out that one time, and it had been a wonderful time. Plus, it had been such a long time since she'd gotten any. Ana nodded.

“Should we have sex?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“I'll get to see your tits?”