You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again

by Heather McDonald

  As embarrassing as that whole scenario was, it also made me realize that I really liked Dan. Even though I had only been doing stand-up for a few months, maybe a fellow comedian was what I really needed. The bonus was that he went to USC, too, just like Phil. I liked dating guys who went to USC. It kept me in that postcollegiate realm and somehow felt like home to me. I liked that Dan had a day job that provided him with a good income. He owned a cute house and took me on very nice dates. One included a helicopter ride over LA straight out of a reality dating show. Instead of two other female contestants, we were with another couple who were his clients. I loved it and I felt so sophisticated. There I was talking in the headphones: “This is amazing! This is so surreal! Look, is that traffic? Wow. Oh my, is that a landfill? Oh never mind, that’s just Santa Monica Beach.”

  When he invited me to a party of an associate, I was thrilled. I loved going to cocktail parties where I knew no one but my date. It was my opportunity to wow the guy by showing how I could talk to anyone. In these situations, I liked to pretend I was a senator’s wife. I love role-playing, even if I am the only one in on it. I was just the stunning woman behind the powerful man, cordial and pleasant to everyone but never outspoken. When we arrived at the beautiful colonial home, I felt so regal in my navy Nicole Miller halter dress and gold Chanel knockoff hoop earrings. As we easily found parking, I was a bit surprised that there was no valet, but hopefully it meant these people were down to earth. We approached the dimly lit porch and I began to think, What kind of dull dinner is this? Dan rang the bell and a harried mother holding a tired toddler opened the door.

  “Dan, what are you doing here?” she smiled.

  “Oh my God, Sheri, was the party ...”

  She cut Dan off. “Ah, the party was last night! We wondered where you were.”

  “Hi. I’m Sheri?” She said politely as she wiped her toddler’s snot off his nose and rubbed her hand clean on her mom jeans.

  Wait a minute. This guy, my smart divorced dad, Dan, got the day wrong of a major event that I bought a dress for and put on a credit card that had 17 percent interest and a balance of $8,563.64? Now I was pissed, and even my best impression of a senator’s wife could not hide my disappointment. Sheri’s husband stepped into the doorway and said, “Hey, Dan, come on in. You’re only about twenty-five hours late.” Dan started to shake his head, laughing, while he began to head in.

  “No.” I pulled on Dan’s hand. “I’m sure you’re exhausted from last night. We’re so sorry we missed it.” I was appalled that Dan actually wanted to hang out and have drinks and leftover appetizers while we were dressed to the nines and they were in the middle of putting two small children to bed. When we got in the car, I tried to save the evening and my expensive dress, which would cost me more each day it sat on my credit card balance. “Since we’re all dressed up, let’s go out to dinner, someplace really nice,” I suggested, knowing now that a senator’s wife usually had many plans on a given night and had to choose between black-tie charity events.

  “No, let’s just get takeout and go back to my place,” he said. I was pretty disappointed but tried to tell myself that Dan just didn’t want to share me with an entire restaurant.

  As we started to drive back to his place, I knew we would get in the same “I’m not sleeping with you tonight” conversation, and I began to ponder if I should just be honest with him. I brought up the party again.

  “Isn’t it going to be bad for your business that you had the wrong date and missed that party?”

  “Who cares?” Dan said casually. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to move back to San Diego, anyway.”

  “You are?” I asked. This was the first I had heard about it. What about us? And more important, what about the stand-up room he ran on Thursdays? Dan went on to say that he had already been offered a job and found someone to lease his house. As I followed him back to his house, I thought to myself: This guy has not considered me once in his future plans. I’m just some fun young girl to hang out with. I didn’t know what I was going to say or do because I still really liked him and started to feel sad that he was moving.

  I began to reason: San Diego is only two hours away. Maybe it could work. I could go down on the weekends that he didn’t have his son and then eventually maybe he would introduce me to him and possibly say, “Now Heather is not going to try to replace your mom. She could never do that because she is two whole dress sizes smaller.” I was being very quiet as we entered his house.

  “Can I hang up my coat?” I asked.

  “Of course. There’s a closet right there,” he said as he headed into the kitchen with our take-out dinner. I was still a little dazed by how the night turned out, but nothing could have prepared me for what I found next. As I opened the hall closet door, there it hung, a USC Marching Band uniform. Ew, Dan was in the marching band? As much as I loved rocking out to the marching band at games, it was a certain type of guy who was in the band, and that type of guy was not my type. Dan knew it and that is why he didn’t tell me. Well, if he chose not to disclose his affiliation with the marching band, then I was certainly not going to disclose my affiliation with virginity. I decided then and there that we were done. I pulled out the marching band uniform and walked into the kitchen with a sense of purpose and said, “You were in the marching band and didn’t tell me? Yet I’m not good enough to meet your five-year-old son—me, the former social chairman and co-vice president of rush. I don’t think so, buddy! See ya!”

  When I got home, there was a message from Dan explaining that he had played the trumpet in high school and only did it because a partial scholarship was involved. I didn’t even want to hear the rest of it. I was glad it was over. He wasn’t my type and had a lot a baggage and trumpet paraphernalia. I thought I was doing some charitable work by dating him when he—who was in the band and probably only dated the girls who also wore the polyester band uniform throughout college—still didn’t think I was girlfriend-worthy

  I continued to send my head shots out during the day to various casting ads I’d read in Dramalogue, a weekly magazine for beginning actors to find out about open calls for shows and plays. The thing about this magazine was anyone could put an ad in it. No one was doing background checks on advertisers, and I didn’t have John Walsh’s personal digits. It was a little sketchy. Finally, I got a call for an independent nonunion short film. It required that I Rollerblade, which I could, but the producers wanted me to come down to North Hollywood (which is not even near the real Hollywood) and bring my blades to show off my moves. I felt hopeful about the audition. It was my first one since I was fired from Robinsons May, and I got it without an agent! What a go-getter I was. I knew the gig was unpaid, but I would get the tape from it, and any talent agent wanted to see you on film before they would sign you. The catch-22 was that without an agent, it’s very hard to book an acting job where you could get that precious tape. I hoped that this gig would give me what I needed.

  When I arrived at the “production” office, it was a small non-air-conditioned room in a two-story dilapidated building. Inside were framed posters of movies I had never heard of like Turtle Nation and Mucus Island. The producers explained that these were their movies and that they go straight to video and do really well overseas. After they watched me Rollerblade up and down Lankershim Boulevard for ten minutes, they broke the amazing news that I had the part. “What exactly is the role I’ll be playing?” I asked. I wanted to really prepare and find out what made this Rollerblading character tick, create a backstory, find her motivation … gee, did she even have an accent?

  The older man said, “Sadie here wrote the film, and it’s based on a dream she had. That’s all you really need to know.” Sadie was a redhead in her late thirties who looked like she’d been ridden pretty hard.

  “So you don’t have a script I can read?” I asked.

  “No. Just meet us here on Saturday at ten a.m.,” she said firmly. “We’ll all drive together to the location.” She added
, “Oh, and bring a couple of string bikinis, preferably G-strings that wardrobe can look over.” In the end, all I knew was that I was going to be Rollerblading and wearing a bathing suit. I only brought one-pieces, assuring my stomach would not be featured. I thought it didn’t sound so bad and that it might actually be a good clip for my acting reel. Maybe there was a guest spot on Baywatch Nights in my future?

  I arrived at the offices at my precise call time of ten a.m. only to sit outside for another thirty minutes before the old man arrived. He had long gray hair, a beard, and was probably in his late fifties. He looked like a member of the Grateful Dead. When it was time to go, Sadie, the cameraman, the old man, and I climbed into a compact two-door Honda Accord.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I put my Rollerblades in the hatchback.

  The old man, who was driving, said, “We’re going to pick up Cassie.” Another person was going to fit in this tiny car? Where was my left thigh going to go? We drove for about forty minutes until we stopped at a gas station. The old man announced, “Hey, get anything you want. It’s on me.” This was his idea of craft services. I was still trying to be the cool hardworking actress who never complained, so I took a little bag of nuts. At the gas station, as I sat in the car nibbling on my cashews, my window was tapped and a cute brunette about my age was standing there. I opened my door and she introduced herself as Cassie. I didn’t know if she lived at the gas station or what, but I felt a little relieved that another girl was dumb enough to be doing this gig.

  I sat on the hump between Cassie and the cameraman, and my head kept hitting the roof as we drove up into a bumpy wooded area until we finally parked. “OK, this is it,” the old man said gleefully. We followed him past no trespassing signs and then did some serious crouching down through a broken chain-link fence that caught onto my ponytail and pulled me back so that I fell on my ass and dropped my skates.

  “How much farther?” I asked nearly out of breath.

  “Oh, it’s right down here,” Jerry Garcia said as he steadied his balance on a tree branch. I looked up and saw an empty reservoir. We had to slide down on our butts to get to the bottom. This was just paying my dues, which was essential to making it in Hollywood, right?

  The next thing I knew, I was Rollerblading up and down the reservoir wearing only a high-cut sparkly blue one-piece bathing suit, warming up my skating skills for the big shoot. Then the cameraman told Sadie and the old man that he was ready to shoot. Sadie said, “OK, Heather, you need to put this on.” And she handed me a huge frog mask that covered my entire head down to my collarbone. It looked very familiar to me and I realized it was in one of those movie posters in their office named Frog Freaks. It did not occur to me to object to putting a thick rubber frog head on in 100-degree weather or to bring up the fact that we could be arrested for trespassing on government property. The same way I didn’t say anything the time a male masseur worked out all the knots in my breasts. I did as I was told, put on the mask, and did some turns as the cameraman, who was also on skates, followed me. Besides barely being able to breathe through the green rubber, I could hardly see. My peripheral vision was impaired and I could not see my feet or the bump that was just ahead of me that made me fall straight onto my face. Luckily the warts on the mask protected my forehead. Now I was injured and my knee was bleeding. “The crew” tossed me some paper towels, but all I cared about was whether you could tell it was me. Was I really just another five-foot-ten-inch-tall 34C-size frog on Rollerblades in the Sylmar reservoir?

  On our ride back, Sadie handed Cassie and me a script. The old man said, “I’ve got some doctors who want to invest in this one, so I have to start shooting next week. Maybe you girls would like to read for it.”

  “Does it involve either frogs or Rollerblading?” I asked.

  “No, this is the real deal, a feature.” I started reading over Cassie’s shoulder. One page in, I read a stage direction that said, “Carla applies suntan lotion on Stephanie’s back. Stephanie turns over and Carla applies suntan lotion on her naked breasts.”

  “Wait, so do Stephanie and Carla have bathing suits on?” I questioned.

  “No, but it’s very tasteful,” replied Sadie.

  “Well, I’m not doing anything where I’m nude or which involves nudity. It has always been in my clause when I’ve done legitimate work that involved having a clause of some sort,” I stated matter-of-factly

  “Oh, come on. Everybody does nude scenes. What? You don’t think Michelle Pfeiffer was sucking cock on film before she was in Grease 2? You think you’re going to win an Oscar, Heather?” Sadie argued.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t want to win a PAC [Porn Academy Award].” There was an uncomfortable silence. I didn’t want to be totally unhelpful, so I piped up: “In case you guys are looking for a location, I know a great house in Chatsworth with a fabulous pool and a really springy diving board. I can get it for you for a discount!”

  Once home, I literally licked my wounds. I decided that until I had an agent or a manager, I would go back and work for my parents selling houses during the day and do my stand-up at night. I found out about a six-week class on getting more real estate business and improving your overall life. What caught my eye was that at the end of the six weeks everyone went skydiving. I guess the idea was to inspire us to look down at all the real estate we’d be selling. I had always wanted to go skydiving and felt this was the perfect opportunity because my parents agreed to pay for the course under the pretense that I was learning the business and it was, of course, a business write-off.

  Daniel Penn ran the class. He was the poor man’s Tony Robbins. He was from the South, very tan, fit, blond highlighted tips with a fresh set of capped white teeth to top off his look of success. He began the class with a story about his early days in real estate: “Don’t y’all just hate door knocking? Well, my first day in real estate, my office manager told me to go door knocking. So the first house I knocked on, when the owner answered, I said, ‘Hi. My name is Daniel Penn, and I want to sell your house,’ and he slammed the door in my face. So you know what I did? I ran around to his back door and knocked, and when the man opened that door, I said, ‘Hi. I’m Daniel Penn, and some jerk just slammed the door in my face.’ Well, he laughed and we had coffee, and I sold that house and three others for him, because you know why? One, conceive it, see it. Two, believe it, say it. Three, achieve it, be it! People, that’s right. Because I wasn’t always the most successful real estate agent in the San Fernando Valley making over four hundred thousand dollars a year, no. But today I am, and you can be, too!”

  For the next six weeks, Daniel went on to tell us how he woke up every morning at six to meditate, work out, and write down his plan of attack for the day. He lost credibility with me when I called him at nine a.m. to ask him a question. Finally, after four rings, he picked up the phone, and his voice sounded so groggy I couldn’t even detect his Southern drawl. He tried to sell the class on private life coaching sessions. I think it takes a lot of audacity to call yourself a life coach. Every life coach I’ve ever encountered has been divorced at least once and only became a life coach because they failed at their other careers in life. What qualifies them to be a life coach? They like to shop at the Container Store and label shit? I didn’t care to associate with Daniel Penn after the class ended. All I cared about was the field trip to Perris, California for skydiving.

  Once I arrived in Perris, I was shocked to find out it was going to cost me $185. I was under the distinct impression that it was included as part of the life-changing real estate course. What was I going to do, not put my credit card down? Besides, I wasn’t paying cash. It was on a credit card to be paid off in the way, way future, unless I died while skydiving, then essentially the skydiving was free because as a dead person I was never going to pay off the card. I didn’t complain, especially because I was a little hungover from the night before. It was tandem jumps, so I would be attached to an extremely experienced sky-diver trained and cer
tified to do these jumps. I would be in front with my skydiver behind me like a human backpack.

  As long as it wasn’t up to me and it was someone else’s responsibility to save my life, I felt relieved. I feel the same about a person bobsledding. I’d be fine so long as I am the person in the back hunched over praying. We watched a little skydiving training video and then they taught us how to pull the string to release the parachute. After the fifteen-minute training session concluded, I had a few hours to kill until my group went into the plane. I laid out on a blanket and fell asleep working on my tan until I was awakened by Carol, one of the other realtors in the group.

  “Come on, Heather. Our group is up next. You have to get into your jumpsuit.” Within minutes our plane was taking off. I must say, in my jumpsuit I looked a lot like Jaime Sommers, aka the Bionic Woman. It wasn’t my typical outfit. Instead of my platform wedge heels, I went for the combat khaki hiking boots they provided. It was a bit of an adrenaline rush just being all hooked up like that. The plane was specifically designed for skydiving. We all sat on a hard metal bench facing one another like we were real Marine paratroopers ready to invade the Middle East. It wasn’t until this point that I was completely sober and realized that this was not a Six Flags Magic Mountain ride. I was jumping out of a fucking airplane. As the plane continued to fly higher, my skydiver, Amy, a cute twenty-five-year-old girl just one year older than me, began to attach herself to the straps around my torso. She was like hugging me from behind. As she did this, she started to talk to Mark, the skydiver attached to my friend Carol. We had been told Mark held the world record for the most tandem jumps ever.

  Amy said, “Mark, I’m so pissed. It’s three-thirty and it’s my first jump of the day. That’s bullshit.”

  Mark replied, “Amy, you just got certified this past Sunday! You are on the bottom of the totem pole because of your lack of experience. Of course, they’re going to give the veteran divers more tandem jumps. It’s only fair.”