“Dunno,” said Bernie with a shrug. “But it’s probably getting around now that you and her were up late at the restaurant together.” After a short moment, Bernie’s eyes lit up and he stared over at me. “Hey, did you find out if she was actually flirting with you, Tab? Did you find out if maybe she swings toward the ladies?” He grinned and dripped with enthusiasm.
“As a matter of fact, I—“ I said and then stopped myself. I couldn’t believe I was just about to tell Bernie about Corinne. She had specifically told me not to let her secret out and even more specifically she banned me from telling Bernie. If it was that easy for me to spill it to him, I knew that keeping this secret was going to be rather difficult. I was used to telling Bernie just about everything. I kind of hated to admit it sometimes, but the idiot was probably my best friend. “Nope,” I corrected myself finally. “I think she’s into the boys.”
“Aw shucks,” said Bernie. “I was really pulling for you there, Tabby. But, at the same time, I knew it was too good to be true.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She’s like a total sexpot bombshell on screen,” he said. “You’ve got to channel that attitude from somewhere.”
How wrong Bernie was. It took everything I had to not set him right, to tell him that I had in fact found out that Corinne was a lesbian, that we had exchanged phone numbers, and that we were going to go out together sometime. Usually I could bitch to Bernie about dating, let him into my private life of love strife, complain that there were no good women in the city who weren’t focused more on their career than they were on maintaining a relationship. I could give him all the dumb excuses of why I was single and he’d coddle me for it like a good little buddy. But not this time. I could see that this situation could get a bit sticky.
“I mean,” I said, looking away. I had to fight it. “You’re probably right.”
“She was sure fun to have around the set last week,” he said. “A lot of fun to look at.”
“Okay Bernie,” I said. “I get it.”
“I think you’ve got a thing for her,” he said with a knowing smile. “Tab, I know you. You and I go way back. I can see it in your face when you’ve got it bad for somebody and you’ve got it bad for Corinne. That’s why you’re so messed up today.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “You’re right, she’s straight. Forget whatever I said last week about feeling like she was coming on to me. It was just me being stupid, a total starstruck fan girl drooling over a celebrity.”
“Tabitha Bloom,” he said, grinning, shaking his head. “You’re unbelievable.”
“What?” I said innocently.
“Do you think you can get her out of your head sufficiently this week to focus on our task at hand?” said Bernie. “Or is it going to reflect hard in your sketch writing this week where it will be so blindingly obvious that you’ve got a crush that we’re going to field some really weird sketches?”
“The latter, I think,” I said.
“I can see I’ve got my work cut out for me,” said Bernie. “Can you do me just one favor?”
“Yes,” I acceded.
“Just don’t resuscitate Dweebie Darla,” he said.
“She’s a funny character,” I said. “And Audrey loves playing her.”
“Dweebie Darla is totally cringe worthy,” said Bernie. “And you know she’s just a thinly veiled you trying to work through your problems at our expense.”
“No,” I said calmly. That’s all I could get out because Bernie was most certainly correct in his summary.
“You can’t hide from me,” he said, a laugh creeping out of his mouth, looking at me incredulously. “You yourself played a very similar character back when we were in Chicago. What was her name? Nerdy Nancy?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, feeling caught. “It was Nerdy Nancy.”
“Oh God,” said Bernie, flipping through his memories. “I remember when you had that really bad breakup and did that Nerdy Nancy sketch about it. It wasn’t funny, Tab. It was just kinda sad.”
“Okay, stop it,” I said, slapping both my palms on the couch. Bernie was getting me flustered, something he was quite good at it. “No Dweebie Darla, no more talk about Corinne, let’s just move on and focus on this week’s show and make sure Justin Trumbull has a good time.”
“Agreed,” said Bernie with a calm smile.
Each of us picked up our notebooks and opened them, pens in hand, trying to keep it placid, keep it cool, get back to work. But gradually my mind returned to seeing images of Corinne, her bright smiling beautiful face looking back at me, and I couldn’t focus at all on the page in front of me. Looking up, my eyes met with Bernie’s and I could tell he knew exactly what I was thinking about.
*
I was laid out on my couch, my back propped up with a thick pillow, laptop in my lap typing away furiously. Against Bernie’s advice and better judgment, I had come up with a Dweebie Darla sketch and I just had to pound it out quickly to purge it from my brain. And hey, Bernie wasn’t the arbiter of funny. This could be good. We’d run three Dweebie Darla sketches up to that point, the audience thought they were funny, so who cares if the other writers thought they were facile humor for idiots? Can’t put a stopper in my creativity.
The light was low in my condo, the large windows peering out over Manhattan, revealing the beautifully clear evening sky. You could see all the bright, magical lights of the city beaming out in every direction. However, instead of traipsing around the city, out at a fancy meal with my lover, I was holed up in my condo alone with glass of wine on my coffee table next to me, sweatpants covering my legs, frantically tapping my fingers over the keyboard trying to get my ideas down. It never ends. You think that once you make it, once you hit the big leagues — and head writer for This Saturday was definitely the big leagues — you think, then, life is going to change and you’re going to be happy and you’re going to have everything you want.
Nope. Still single. Still alone in a city of eight and a half million.
I guess it wasn’t that bad. I had this fancy condo in a fancy building bought with my fancy paychecks. I lived in Manhattan, which was always a dream of mine. And hell, I grew up watching This Saturday on television and now I was almost running the show. But no matter how successful you get in your career, you’re still you. You’ve still got the same issues as always. And when it comes to love, I’ve definitely got issues.
For starters, I totally have a tough time opening up with all those feelings and emotions and such that you get when you’re with another person. I’m more prone to make a dumb joke and stick my tongue out than I am to tell a girl how much she strikes me in the feels. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel those things, I just don’t really say them, that’s all. That’s lead to a string of bad relationships ending with me coming off as the emotional unavailable one, the one more focused on my career and success, the one who ends up saying stupid things making my girlfriend think I don’t really love her all that much. Then I dig myself in a hole and only see daylight when I climb my way back up only to find the air I’m breathing is that familiar perpetually single air.
If I got lucky enough to shack up with Corinne Holmstrom, you better believe I was going to read every book out there on successful relationships, assertiveness, guilt, love, whatever they were all about, and bust my ass to woo that amazing woman. Can you imagine Corinne and I walking barefoot through the white sands of some tropical island resort, laughing underneath our sun hats? The cool ocean breeze blowing through our flowing dresses and cooling our warm sun kissed skin? The two of us heading back to the hut, or whatever, to turn the sexiness up to eleven and put an end to my gettin’ busy losing streak?
Well, I could imagine it all. And I happily did as I took a plaintive sip of my wine.
My reverie was interrupted by the buzz of my phone on my coffee table. I knew that it was most likely Bernie, coordinating with me on a some sketch, as we often spent our evenings texting one another to bounce ide
as around. At first his wife was concerned he was cheating on her, texting some floozie all night. Once she found out it was just me, she was like, “ugh, fine, just turn off your new message sound then.”
I picked up my phone, worried that I’d have to tell him I wrote another Dweebie Darla sketch, but my eyes widened and I almost dropped my phone when I saw the name listed on the screen.
It was a text from Corinne.
I just about burst. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, okay, she said we should hang out but it never felt like it would be a reality. It took me a moment before I fully opened the text up. I think I was just nervous. Silly, right? That’s just how I operate.
“Tab!” said Corinne’s text. “What are you doing tomorrow?” I wasted no time in replying. I wanted to make sure to engage the conversation and get her typing back to me immediately.
“Day? Rehearsal and rewrites,” I wrote. “Night? Nada.”
“Perf,” was her response accompanied by an emoticon smiley. Normally I wasn’t a fan of emoticons but, um, I could deal with that for her. “Pencil me in. Let’s go out!”
“OK!” I responded. “What should I wear? Sweatpants? Clown suit?”
“LOL!” typed Corinne. “Just casual and nice. Something you won’t be embarrassed by if caught by cameras.” It really hit me as I read that text from Corinne. Despite my job, and my occasional appearance on the show when we needed a warm body to fill in, I was relatively unknown when out in public. Unrecognized anyway. Going out with Corinne, we might end up running into paparazzi and I certainly couldn’t be caught wearing sweatpants or a clown suit.
“Right,” I responded. “Where do you want to meet?”
“Text me your address,” she wrote. “I’ll pick you up.”
“Perf,” I replied with a goofy looking emoticon face. I was poking a little bit of fun at her and I hoped she found it endearing. I then quickly put in my address and sent it her way.
“Thx!” Corinne texted. “See you tomorrow night!”
“Yay!” I texted back. And that was the end of it. I watched my screen for a few more moments more, hopeful that we might keep chatting, but there was no way Corinne was the type to mindless talk over text. She probably had a hundred better things to be doing. Maybe she was just on break from some shoot or she was about to be ushered backstage for some Broadway show to meet with the star of the play, who just so happened to be a famous British actress with “Dame” in front of her name. I kept coming up with outlandishly wild scenarios about what Corinne might be doing instead of continuing to text with me when I suddenly realized: hey, idiot, you’re going out with Corinne Holmstrom tomorrow night!
I began kicking my legs up and down on the couch in excitement, causing my laptop to slide off my lap and crash down onto the floor below.
“Crud!” I called aloud to myself, quickly reaching down to pull it back up. But I really didn’t feel like crud at that moment. I felt like I was tingling.
*
The next evening after work I sped home, avoiding as much small talk as I could with all the various people who want to stop you and hold you up when you’re obviously in a rush. It’s like they know you don’t want to talk to them, like you definitely have something else better to do, and they latch on to it because, hey, maybe you’ll let them tag along. No, assistant to the network guy’s assistant, I don’t want to talk to you because I can’t even remember your name. Move!
Because I’ve got one of those behind the camera jobs, I’m often fairly dressed down and that spills over into my everyday life. But I’m not ashamed to admit that I was eager to dress up a little bit for my date with Corinne. Was it a date? Yes, I think it was. So I tore through my closet to figure out what would look the nicest, while still having that casualness that says, “yeah, it’s cool, we’re just hanging out or whatever.” No fancy dress or anything. It’s not like we were going to some crazy dinner party or ballroom event. So, instead of wearing my usual jeans, button down shirt, and a blazer, I slipped into…
A nicer pair of really dark blue jeans, a brand new button down, and a freshly dry-cleaned blazer.
So I’m not the most inventive when it comes to fashion. My creativity is in the funny! It didn’t matter, I still looked pretty good. A nice pair of blown leather flats. A slight curl to my hair. I even cleaned the smudges off my glasses — and not on my shirt, either! I used a microfiber clothe to do it like a civilized person. From the outside looking in, you’d be able to tell I was trying to make a good impression. Bernie would know. I wanted to tell Bernie so bad. It was wearing me down. But no, I had to stay true to my word with Corinne, I had to keep her secret if I wanted this whole thing to work out.
As I primped, as much as I was capable of primping, I thought about my past relationships. The most prominent one that came to mind was Amy. The two of us had got together when I first started at This Saturday. She was a comedian in the local New York stand up scene and we had a lot of fun together at first. But let’s just say that she was a bit too in love with the alcohol-infused nightlife coupled with a bit of promiscuity. So that ended. We were together for almost a year and we were close to doing the whole move in thing, but I’m glad we didn’t. Breaking up with someone you live with is pretty hard. I don’t recommend it.
I did that back when I lived in Chicago. Her name was Jen and, uncharacteristically for me, she wasn’t into comedy or acting. She was some kind of engineer — software engineer, maybe? I guess I should know because there’s a big difference between a software engineer, an auto engineer, and an engineer on a train. Yeah, I think she did computer coding stuff. Anyway, we lived together and it was going swimmingly for a while but we split because of a similar reason that Amy and I split. This time, however, it was because I was too into the late night comedy and drinking scene when I was first riding on my training wheels in Chicago improv. Jen worked her 9-5 day job and then spent her nights, what, watching TV? Meanwhile, I was out in Old Town, running around with my comedy buddies, staying out sometimes until the sun came up.
That was a hard breakup. Mostly, though, because I was broke and after getting kicked out of Jen’s place I didn’t know where to go. After I found a place with a pal from the improv club, things got a little easier for me.
Of course I’ve had plenty of other relationships. You don’t get to my age, still single, without hopping into plenty of beds. But as I’ve gotten older and more successful in my career, it’s been much harder to meet women who make a good fit. If I happen to meet a younger woman who has comedy aspirations, the relationship can get a bit skewed because, well, I write for quite possibly the most well-known comedy show there is. That can get tricky because it’s like, are you with me because of me or do you just want to get on TV?
Other women I meet are in hiding. Like, they’re married to a man but they’re looking to exercise their lesbian side to actually, you know, be themselves. “This is Hollywood,” they say. “Everybody’s living a secret life!” Ugh. I hate that. I mean, first I live in New York and not Hollywood. Second, I knew the film and television world was one great big facade before I joined up, but I wasn’t prepared to the extent, the depth, of how secretive some of these people were. I don’t want to live in that world. I want to sit outside at a bistro in the West Village, scarfing down my avocado toast with my girlfriend sitting across from me laughing because I’ve got some green crap on my lip. I did my time in hiding, it was called middle school, it sucked, I’m an adult now and I live my life.
I guess, on that note, Corinne was another one of those hiders. But at least she wasn’t married to a man to pretend she was straight. It was reported in the usual Hollywood rags that she was at times dating this male lead or that male lead. But what’s reported in Hollywood isn’t necessarily reality. It could be that Corinne’s PR team and the guy’s PR team got together, created this “relationship” to mask the fact that both of them were gay, and concocted a story to please the American populace. Pick up one of those Hollywood magazi
nes in line at the grocery story and I guarantee that most of those stories are false or greatly exaggerated.
Smoke and mirrors. Hollywood is always acting.
But that’s all getting off topic. My point is that I’ve found it increasingly difficult to find and maintain a real relationship as I’ve become older and more successful. The struggle is real. There’s a reason successful people in the industry often date others at a similar, or greater, level of success. These people get it. I should have just hooked up with a normal person, like Jen, and married her. The scene I’m in now is definitely not what I had expected.
Suddenly my condo phone emitted its jarring ring and I snapped out of my daydreamy, navel-gazing pondering of past love. I leapt up from my couch and rushed over, eagerly picking it up.
“Hello?” I pleaded into the phone.
“Ms. Bloom,” said the voice on the other end. It was my doorman Reggie. “This is the front desk. There is a car waiting for you outside.”
“Thank you, Reggie,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
After replacing the phone on its cradle I turned around and looked at myself in the mirrored doors of my foyer closet. I straightened my blazer. I flipped my hair out. I adjusted the glasses on my nose. This was it. Dweebie Darla heading out for a date with a movie starlet. Does it get any more crazy than that?
*
It was a fancy black Lincoln SUV waiting for me in front of my building. The windows were tinted. The driver was standing near the door wearing a suit, waiting for me to arrive. I found the whole thing pretty absurd. I mean, this was about what you’d expect, right? It might have been a little more cliched if it had been a limo waiting for me or something. I took a deep breath, feeling my heart race, as I stepped up closer to the car.
“Ms. Bloom?” asked the driver.
“I’m her,” I said with a nervous smile.
Sweetheart Starlet: A Sweet Lesbian Romance Page 5
