Save Karyn

by Karyn Bosnak

  After calling my parents and telling them that I was okay, I called my sister Lisa at work. She cried when she heard my voice.

  “I’m so glad you are okay,” she said, sobbing. “I was so scared. I tried to get through to you, but the line has been busy.”

  “I’m absolutely fine. What you are seeing on television is southern Manhattan. I’m about four miles north of that. I’m okay.”

  “You should go home, why aren’t you home?” she asked.

  “We had to make sure all our guests were in their hotels and safe. I’m totally fine. I’m in a short building on the third floor. I’m going to be okay. I’m not even at CBS.” As I said these words to my sister, I was shocked at how strong I was. Me, the biggest crier of all, didn’t cry.

  For the rest of the day, I stayed at work and watched as the rest of the day’s events unfolded. Everyone did. No one really went home. We didn’t work, but we stayed. I think we all felt safe in our short office building.

  That night after watching President Bush’s speech, I finally packed up and left. As I walked out onto 57th Street, I was shocked to see how quiet it was. I was one of the only people outside. That same calm that I felt after the storm last night was again present. I hopped onto the crosstown bus and the driver gave me a free ride home.

  That night I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning watching the live news coverage. I wondered if the storm from last night had just occurred twelve hours later if this would have all happened. What if the flights were delayed? Even canceled?

  One by one I listened as people played voice mail messages from loved ones that were trapped in the towers. Message after message I listened. Around three in the morning a woman called up in tears to say that her brother was in a tower. She said he left her a voice mail message and she wanted to play it for everyone to hear. She wanted everyone to feel the pain that she was feeling. She wanted everyone to hear the fear in his voice. Just then, a frightened man’s voice came through my television set.

  “Hi, it’s me,” he said. “I just want to tell you that I’m in the World Trade Center and I’m going to die. And I just want to tell you that I love you. And if there’s anything that I ever did to hurt you or Mom and Dad, then I’m sorry. I’m so sorry if I’ve ever done anything to disappoint you. I love you.”

  It was then that I finally cried. I cried for him and I cried for all the other voices that I heard that night. Voices that were scared. Voices that knew they were going to die any moment. Voices that put so many things in my life into perspective. He was going to die and he knew it. And the only thing that mattered to him was his family. Not his clothes or his shoes or even his job. At the end of the day, at the end of your life—the most important thing really is the relationships that you have with the people in your life. Nothing else really matters. Everything can change in a moment. And life is too short to be unhappy. And my doctor was right—if the worst thing that was happening to me at the moment was a crappy job, then I didn’t have it too bad.

  FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS as I went to work, I saw Army men with rifles on every corner. Tanks would drive down 57th Street—past Bergdorf Goodman, past Otto Tootsie Plohound. New York was like a different city. I felt like I was living in a war zone.

  As for The Ananda Lewis Show, it was preempted by news every single day for almost two weeks. And as much as everyone tried to get back to work, how do you even begin to do that when what you do for a living really doesn’t matter in the long run? How do you justify trying to produce a fun lighthearted show? What do you do? How do you pick up a phone and try to book a makeover show when honestly, the cut and color of someone’s hair really doesn’t matter? So for a few weeks following the eleventh, we produced some shows relating to disaster, and slowly we tried to get back to producing some upbeat shows.

  When the show did finally start airing again toward the end of September, the ratings weren’t that good. Ratings in all of daytime television seemed to take a dive because more people were tuning in to news stations like CNN and MSNBC, including myself.

  It was then that our executive producer, Jose, announced that he was leaving the show to move back to Los Angeles to be with his family. He had planned on going back and forth between the two cities, but after everything that had happened, it seemed like Los Angeles was where he needed to be. And Mary also announced that she would be moving on and up into development for King World. We were going to be getting new bosses. The plan was to relaunch The Ananda Lewis Show in November during sweeps.

  So, just as I was getting ready for this big change at work, I also was getting ready for a big change at home. October was approaching, and it was time for me to pack up my bags and leave Manhattan for Brooklyn. A new chapter in my life was about to start.

  EXILE TO BROKELAND

  Thankfully, as planned, my landlord was able to sublet my apartment for October 1, so I didn’t have to worry about trying to pay double rent for a couple months. So I started to pack up my apartment, and being the CEO of my own life I even took a day off work to move.

  Even though my new apartment was much larger than this one, my new bedroom was much smaller. I knew it wouldn’t hold my cherry wood sleigh bed—or armoire, or nine-drawer dresser—so I had no choice but to get rid of it. I really wanted to sell it because I could have used the money, but since my mother bought it for me as a gift, she wouldn’t let me. She instead paid to have it shipped to my sister. She wanted to “keep it in the family,” she said.

  The week prior to my moving, some of the doormen saved boxes for me so I wouldn’t have to buy any. They were all so nice and I was so sad to go. I kind of felt like they were family. They were the people that I saw when I came home from work every day.

  ON MOVING DAY, as I was packing up my apartment, I was amazed at how much stuff I had accumulated over the past year. I had knickknacks on every table, pictures on every inch of the walls, and vases full of silk flowers. I was truly amazed at how much stuff a 475-square-foot apartment could hold.

  To make things easier on myself I hired a moving company. I don’t drive U-Hauls, and I didn’t really have any friends who were too eager to help me move, so it seemed like the logical thing to do. It cost me $400, but it was worth it. In less than an hour, they packed up my entire apartment. My entire New York City life—from my bike to my shoes to my nighties—was out of my Manhattan apartment and on its way to Brooklyn. I even took my lock. Damned if I was gonna let the super sell it back to the next sucker. After they left, it was just Elvis and me.

  With a tear in my eye, I said good-bye to my short fridge, good-bye to my three big windows, good-bye to the chandelier people across the street, and good-bye to my two empty closets. One last time, I took the elevator down to the first floor, and said good-bye to all my favorite doormen. Sam, Osei, Edson—they were all there that day. And as I jumped into a cab and headed downtown toward Brooklyn, I said good-bye to 57th Street.

  Elvis and I got to my new apartment much quicker than the movers, who were stopped and searched before they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. So for about an hour, the two of us cleaned the apartment. Well, I cleaned and Elvis hid in the corner. He wasn’t too happy to not be at home. I tried to explain to him that this was our new home, but he wouldn’t listen.

  I looked at the apartment so quickly last time that I seemed to have missed a few details. It seemed that I was now living catty-corner from the Brooklyn Penitentiary, as in a jail, as well as down the street from a boys’ home—a delinquent boys’ home, where the bad kids lived. I also lived a few blocks away from a rather large housing project. Now nothing is wrong with living in a housing project, but we all know that they aren’t the safest places to be. Sure, the neighborhood was up-and-coming, it just wasn’t quite there yet.

  But other than that, it was great. The building that I now lived in housed six apartments. Three of them, including ours, consisted of the first floor and the basement. But the basement had windows, so it wasn’t your typical dark, yuc
ky basement. It was only halfway in the ground. The other three apartments were on the second and third floors. Some people that Scott and I knew from Chicago, which is how he found out about the apartment in the first place, occupied the apartment on the second and third floor directly above us.

  The first floor of our apartment was a large living area and open kitchen. Past the kitchen was where my bedroom was located. It had a bathroom in it, as well as a door that led outside to the backyard, which was all ours. It measured about sixteen by twenty-five feet and had actual grass! After one year in Manhattan, I couldn’t believe how impressed I was by grass! Our two downstairs neighbors had small yards just like us, and a short wrought-iron fence separated each one. The fence was big enough to keep each separate, but short enough to keep it social. The downstairs floor of the apartment was really just one big bedroom and another bathroom, which was Scott’s. It was a bigger space than my bedroom, but I didn’t really want it because it was too dark for me.

  The movers arrived the same time the 1-800-Mattress guy did. Not thinking, I accidentally sent my mattress and box spring along with my bed to my sister. When I realized my mistake, I was disappointed, yet somehow strangely proud of myself for remembering the 1-800-Mattress number from the commercial. Just dialing the number alone made ordering a mattress fun!

  After all of my stuff was unloaded, I slowly started unpacking. Just then Scott showed up with his stuff in a U-Haul. I was kind of freaked at the thought of having a roommate, because I had lived alone for over five years. But the more I thought about it, the less worried I became. Scott was pretty cool.

  As he jumped out of the driver’s seat, I noticed that he seemed to be fidgeting with something down by the ground. A few seconds later I saw the most spastic dog rip around the corner. Her name was Veda, and she was an eight-month-old Jack Russell terrier. You know, the kind of dog on Frasier. Except the one on Frasier is calm and Veda was a maniac.

  With her tongue hanging out of her mouth, she kept trying to run forward but was stopped short by her leash. So her front legs were flailing wildly in the air while her back legs were still planted firmly on the ground. Her head was thrashing in every direction, and I think that her eyes were crossed. But the funniest thing was that she had a smile on her face. Dogs smile, they do. And she had a huge one! She seemed to be having the time of her life just hanging out on her leash! She wasn’t at the zoo. She wasn’t at the dog run. She was just on a leash in Brooklyn.

  “She gets reallllly excited,” Scott said, laughing.

  “Um, I can see that,” I said. Poor Elvis wasn’t gonna know what hit him.

  “She’s a big partier,” he said

  “Apparently so,” I replied.

  For the rest of the afternoon, I helped Scott unload his truck and Veda and Elvis partied. Well, Veda partied, but Elvis wanted no part of it. Every so often we would hear the sound of Veda’s paws running across the floor, then a hissssss sound come from Elvis, and then a pop, pop, pop—which was the sound of Elvis whacking her in the head with his paw. He would do it repeatedly back and forth—kind of like on the Three Stooges. After a while, Elvis finally found a hiding place in the back of the closet and didn’t come out for the rest of the day.

  That night we met our neighbors, a married couple who had moved to Brooklyn one year ago from Texas. Their names were Allan and Diane, and they were in their early thirties. They both worked in the hotel business. Diane worked in sales at the Waldorf and Allan was a manager at the Hudson Hotel, the same place we’d had our launch party. And I do mean he was a manager, because he recently lost his job due to layoffs that occurred after the eleventh.

  Allan and Diane had two big-ass dogs, a Doberman named Uwe (pronounced OOO-vay) and a wolf named Jazzy. Jazzy really was a husky, but she looked like a wolf to me. Every time Veda ran outside that night, Jazzy stared through the fence and licked her chops and slobbered a bit. So did Uwe, but Uwe did it because he had a crush on Veda. Jazzy did it because she wanted to eat her. Allan said she would chill out once she got used to her.

  For the rest of the weekend, Scott and I finished unpacking. Well, I didn’t exactly finish unpacking. I decided that I wanted to live a simple lifestyle. I didn’t want knickknacks everywhere and a bunch of stuff out cluttering up my life. So I only unpacked what I needed, and shoved the rest of my boxes in a huge front closet. So my bedroom consisted of a mattress on the floor and clothes in my closet—that was it.

  Since I now lived in Brooklyn, I had to take the subway to work every day—the stinky subway. The let’s see how many people can cram into one car at eight in the morning subway. The I know I didn’t put any deodorant on this morning, but I’m gonna lift my arm and shove my pit in your face subway. As a precautionary measure, I started to carry around antibacteria gel with me and frequently applied it to both my hands and the area underneath my nose. The thinking that went behind the “area underneath my nose” part was that I hoped it would kill any yucky germs before they passed through my nasal passage.

  As much as I didn’t want to move to Brooklyn, I decided that it wasn’t that bad. And for some strange reason, I felt like I had been there before. I am a big believer in déjà vu. You know, when you all of a sudden think you’ve been in the exact same situation that you are in at that moment before. Every time I have déjà vu, I feel a sense of relief and security. Because for some reason, I think it’s a sign that I’m supposed to be where I’m at. No matter when or where the déjà vu takes place, I think it’s a sign that I’m on the right path, that I’m doing the right thing. And almost every day since I moved to Brooklyn, I had déjà vu. So I thought that it was God’s way of telling me that I was going to be okay and I was doing the right thing. In some strange way, I felt like it was part of a larger plan. I felt a sense of relief. Maybe it was just the cut in rent that relieved me—but I like to believe it was something else.

  Oh, and also since Brooklyn began with the letter B, I felt it was only appropriate that I end up there. I was the fifth B in the sixth B, so to speak. I know it’s kind of schizophrenic of me to think that way, but whatever made you think I was sane? I just charged up $25,000 in clothes and bikini waxes in a year. I have a tendency to act a little crazy at times.

  F#$^#@!!

  Shortly after Scott and I moved in, we had a sidewalk sale, and I pulled out some of the stuff from my boxes and sold away! I was planning on using the new money to buy myself a bed frame. I wasn’t a huge fan of sleeping on the floor. All was going well until we hit a bit of a snafu and Scott had to close the sale down early. It seemed that I’d gotten a little carried away and sold the microwave.

  “You sold the microwave?” he asked. “Why did you sell the microwave?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I just got a little overzealous. Someone offered me money for it.”

  “Yeah, great. Um, but now we don’t have a microwave, Karyn,” he said. “And we’re going to need to buy a new one.” Oops. He was right.

  So he closed down shop early and that was the end of my sidewalk sale days. I did however make a few hundred dollars, and used it to buy myself that new bed frame. It was nothing fancy, but it was very low and modern. It was simple and it matched my new simple lifestyle.

  Around the middle of October, the big management change finally took place at work. As Mary moved up, and Jose moved home, two guys named David and Ed moved in. David was a very young executive producer in his early thirties, who also came from the world of talk. Ed did as well, but his big claim to fame was creating the show Fanatic for MTV. Because of that, he never had to work another day in his life, and only came to the show because he was a friend of David’s—David needed all the help he could get to try to save the sinking ship of The Ananda Lewis Show.

  As sad as I was to see Mary and Jose go, I was excited that we had new bosses who would give the show a fresh start. Despite the fact that I still hated my job, I decided to stick it out. For one, the job market in New York was at a standstill. N
o one was hiring. And for two, I finally felt like I had a firm grip on my finances, so I would be able to concentrate on work. And with my rent being lower, and the paycheck that I was bringing home still pretty high, I would concentrate on paying down my debt as quickly as I could.

  By now most television shows had gone back to their normal selves as best they could. David Letterman was back on the air, so was Jay Leno, and people started to feel like it was okay to laugh again. It was okay to have fun. We would always be changed people, but it was still okay to watch silly daytime shows. It was still okay to give someone a makeover, because sometimes people needed a lift.

  Because of the initial low ratings of the show, we had to perform big in November sweeps. So just like the beginning of the season, the pressure was on to perform again.

  The first show I was assigned from the new management was called “Cosmopolitan’s All About Men.” Each year, Cosmopolitan magazine came out with an “All About Men” issue that dished dirt on men’s likes and dislikes, and picked one hot bachelor from each of the fifty states. So to promote the magazine, we were going to produce a show along the same lines as the issue. And I was the lucky producer to be assigned the show. And it was a big show.

  For the next week my team and I worked feverishly. We had life-size pictures of the bachelors in the issue blown up to hang in the studio. We created games to play like “Name the top five erogenous zones on a guy” (see answer below).* We set up a girl on a date with three guys and had each one tell her what she did wrong. It was a hoot and a holler, and a whip and a slap.

  As the show grew nearer, the pressure became greater. I worked more closely with Ed than with David, and I really liked him. He expected me to work hard, but was very easygoing and approachable. He reminded me of a big cartoon character that you just wanted to put your arms around and squeeze. I wasn’t attracted to him or anything (he wasn’t on my team anyway), I just liked him a lot.