Romantic Comedy(55)
When I look back, I simultaneously think it’s fine that Mike and I got married, no animals were injured, etc., AND it seems like we did it for terrible reasons—at best, in order to cross off what we perceived as the biggest item on the to-do list of adulthood, at worst, because we were scared of life after college. Or maybe those are the same thing, or maybe I just mean I was scared. In theory, I wanted to move to New York or LA and write for TV, but I didn’t know anyone in the industry and I was too chicken to go to one of those cities alone. I suppose I wanted to absolve myself of responsibility for my own happiness—I could blame Mike for trapping me in NC.
Every July, while working at AdlerWilliams, as a secret annual rite that no one besides Mike knew about, I submitted a sketch packet to TNO. The first time I ever did this, the head writer, who was then Ollie Toubey, called me eight weeks later and said something like “We can’t make you an offer right now, but you’re talented and we encourage you to apply again.” It was a three-minute conversation that was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I kept applying and being rejected for the next few years （and not hearing directly from anyone again）， during which time Mike graduated from law school, we moved to Charlotte, and I got a new job as a writer at a magazine for a high-end credit card （Luxuries Monthly? Perhaps you subscribe? Against your will?）。 And then in late September 2009, on a Monday, I got a call from Ollie saying, “Can you come to the TNO office tomorrow to interview?” And I said, “Oh, wow, this is amazing, but I live in North Carolina.” And Ollie said, “Cool, can you come to the TNO office tomorrow to interview?” I spent $880 on the ticket, which was the most I’d ever spent on anything. And I made a reservation at the Holiday Inn Express at the Newark airport, but I went straight from getting off the plane to the 66 building, so I was dragging my suitcase. I interviewed with Ollie and his deputy, Ursula, and they were the smartest and funniest people I’d ever met, then they told me to wait outside Nigel’s office to meet him. I waited for seven hours, which as you might know is unremarkable—Henrietta had to wait outside his office for three days （the day I was there, he was taking a helicopter in from the Hamptons）。 I finally met him at ten o’clock at night, we had a very anodyne exchange that felt like it was over before it began, and I spent most of it describing working for Luxuries and for AdlerWilliams’s newsletter （which was called Heartbeats）。 I assumed that he couldn’t have found me more boring. I left his office after about eight minutes and sat in the hall again, and Ollie and Ursula went into his office for an even shorter time than I’d been in there then came back out, led me to Ollie’s office, and said, “Can you start tomorrow?” Even now, I don’t have the words to express how shocked and thrilled and overwhelmed and disbelieving I was. It was like swimming in the ocean and feeling something shift under you and the next thing you know, a gigantic magical sea creature that you never knew existed is rising out of the water with you on its back.
After this, outside 66, my suitcase and I got in a cab to the Holiday Inn Express, and I was shaking with excitement as I called Mike and told him the news. In this very subdued voice, he says, “It’s too bad you can’t do it,” and I’m like, “Why can’t I do it?” and he says, “Because we live in Charlotte.”
Me: Why can’t we move?
Mike: Because I’m licensed to be a lawyer here.
Me: Then why can’t I commute?
Mike: Because what’s the point of being married if we don’t live in the same place?
（Long silence.）
Me: If you aren’t willing to move to New York, why didn’t you ever say that while I was submitting packets to TNO for the last five years?
Mike （matter-of-factly）： Because I never thought they’d hire you.
I could say a lot of other things about this, but the salient ones are that 1） Mike did have a sense of humor and actively liked comedy. We went to see stand-up together, and we watched TNO and comedy specials. 2） He read my submission packets every year.
Although I realized somewhat belatedly that he didn’t think I was funny or talented, Mike wasn’t a jerk. He was a very calm, responsible, quiet person who believed he’d married another calm, responsible, quiet person. And, as my cab entered the Lincoln Tunnel, I thought to myself, Thank god we don’t have kids because that will make our divorce much less messy. Sidenote: He still lives in North Carolina, is married, and is now a father of two.
My narrative instincts tell me I should take a breather here, that we should have some kind of palate-cleansing epistolary sorbet, or at least I should give you the chance to respond, but my wish for resolution propels me forward, to Part 2: The Mindfucker, which at least is far more succinct than Part 1: The Husband.
As you and I have already partially covered, in my second year at TNO, I developed a raging crush on a fellow writer （spoiler: It was your buddy Elliot）。 I half convinced myself he had a raging crush on me, in part because he wasn’t especially hot. That is, to my eye, he wasn’t out of my league. At the season finale after-party, I told him （in a way that deserves a solid 9 out of 10 on the Martin Biersch Awkwardness Scale） that I was in love with him and he said, “Sally, you’ve confused the romance of comedy with the romance of romance.”
I’m still not sure if this was a brilliant or supremely douchey thing to say. Maybe both? Certainly he was within his rights in not reciprocating my interest, and I soon concluded that if we’d dated and broken up, it could have ruined TNO for me, and if we’d gotten together and married and had kids, that could have ruined TNO for me in a different way. I decided I’d never again try to date anyone at TNO, which admittedly might have been a bit of a tree falling in the forest situation.