“You almost ran me over!” I yelled back. “You should really watch where you’re going.” Okay, it was a whitish lie. He almost ran over my husband and dog, not me. But he could have run me over. He wasn’t watching where he was going because he had his head cocked out the window.
Damon and Mary stopped on the sidewalk and stared at the scene in puzzled horror. I continued walking toward them, my back to the furious driver. I glanced over my shoulder at him, wondering if he was aiming a gun in our general direction. Luckily he was not, but he did reach under his dashboard. Maybe that’s where he keeps his gun, I thought. But then I saw his trunk pop open. I’ve seen enough angry white man movies to know this means “I’ve got a crowbar (or baseball bat) in my trunk and I’m not afraid to use it.”
“Are we gonna do this?” he barked.
Do this? I thought. That doesn’t make any sense. How can I “do this” without a crowbar of my own? That’s like challenging a guy with no legs to a kickboxing match.
“Go fuck yourself, asshole!” I yelled and turned around. “Let’s go,” I said to Damon under my breath. “Now.”
We were just a block away from our apartment, where we would be safe from any more confrontation. Damon looked at me as though a third nipple had just sprouted out of my forehead. “What the hell just happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I have some anger issues.”
“You think?”
We both laughed nervously. I took this as a good sign that Damon wasn’t considering divorcing me for being a complete lunatic. But then I realized if I were a nutjob whose car was just firmly thumped, I’d probably drive around the block to see where the two gays with the little white dog lived. So that’s when I said to Damon in a low but firm voice: “Pick up the dog and run.”
“What?” he said.
“Pick up the dog and run, before that guy has time to make it around the block!”
But, no, he didn’t run. The man who does some form of cardio about five days a week won’t move his ass faster than a leisurely stroll when I tell him to. He’s on his own, I figured. I grabbed Mary’s leash out of his hand, scooped her up under my arm like a football, and hightailed it down the street.
When I arrived at our front door, I saw that Damon had quickened his pace to a light trot, the way grandpa might power walk around the mall for exercise.
“Hurry up!” I yelled, holding the door open for him.
“I’m wearing loafers,” he said.
When he finally made it inside, I looked around to make sure the angry driver hadn’t come around the corner. “Whew, that was close,” I said.
Damon seemed more amused than concerned about retaliation. “This is really not like you.”
“Yeah. No shit.”
I could hardly sleep again that night, not because of the dog. But because I let someone get under my skin. And because of that I acted aggressively toward someone who may or may not have deserved it. If you’re the guy whose car I kicked that night, I’m sorry. I feel like the turd in the punchbowl for doing it. Please forgive me.
FREAKIN’ FABULOUS, THE SITCOM
As far as I can tell there are only two activities in which I participate for no purpose other than fueling ridiculous fantasies: buying lottery tickets and writing sitcom scripts.
At any given time a half-dozen Mega Millions tickets lie crumpled at the bottom of my briefcase or gym bag, completely oblivious to the fact that they have zero chance of ever being scanned or manually checked against winning numbers in a newspaper. What’s the point? I know my odds of contracting chlamydia from a Peruvian nun are greater than those of winning a hundred million dollars, and I don’t care. I pay the Idiot Tax—you gotta be in it to win it!—so I can spend the following hour, sometimes more, sometimes less, thinking about all the philanthropic and completely selfish things I’d do with the money, stuff like opening a sanctuary for neglected dogs, paying for my nephews’ college tuitions, buying an apartment in Paris, and, if I win the really big jackpot, buying Twitter just so I can unplug the fucking thing.
Creating sitcoms serves a similar purpose. I’ll stay in bed for the weekend, usually only if the weather’s crappy in Connecticut, scribbling away with my favorite pen in a Moleskine notebook and bringing to life silly characters loosely based on people I know. I’ll imagine which actors will play the roles, what the sets should look like, which lines will get the most laughter when delivered correctly. And when I’m done, I throw the notebook in a drawer, never to be opened again.
Damon occasionally suggests that I show a script to my agent, but I can’t be bothered, I say. Hollywood will just ruin everything. Some prepubescent network executive will suggest the main character, a sexually repressed, middle-aged physics professor, be played by Khloé Kardashian or insist that instead of San Francisco the show take place in Wichita because San Francisco is “where all the gays live—doesn’t play well in the red states.” I prefer to let these things live in my mind, where I control everything.
Here, I’m including a sitcom script about a makeover show I wrote during a sleet storm that lasted two days. We could barely step outside the house because everything was covered in a solid inch of ice. Even our dog, Mary, was getting frustrated trying to pee. In her canine urinary crouch, she’d slide down the driveway like one of those Olympic curling stones. It was hilarious. In the evening over a bottle of port, Damon and I joked that we should bring a couple of brooms outside with us and furiously sweep the ice ahead of her to see how much speed she could gain. Maybe see if she could knock down a few frozen squirrels set up like bowling pins.
Just FYI: Don’t try to read between the lines for hidden digs at my What Not to Wear coworkers. Seriously. It’s complete fiction. No, seriously.
CHARACTERS:
CHETLEY MELBOURNE, 45, hails from New Canaan, Connecticut. He’s a clothing stylist with a penchant for breaking into Broadway show tunes. He’s quirky, slightly snobby, mildly insecure, and impeccably dressed in an Old Hollywood style. Chetley began his career as a wardrobe intern on “Miss Saigon” and moved to Los Angeles when the show’s star, Lea Salonga, was invited to sing “A Whole New World” at the Oscars. (“They sent me there to steam her gown and I never looked back!”) Ever since his divorce two years ago, he’s been unable to find love because, as he says, “When you’re a gay single man over the age of 35 in Los Angeles, you might as well be a straight single woman over the age of 35 in Los Angeles—invisible.”