Lynda Curnyn - Engaging Men

Monday: Rise and Shine, which I only get through at six o’clock on a Monday morning by telling myself that I am going to buy Backstage this week and begin to search for that great film or TV role I plan to land now that I have TV experience on my résumé and union cards from both AFTRA (for TV—see what a few leaps in front of a camera can get you?) and the Screen Actor’s Guild. But what usually happens is, I bypass the newsstand on the way home from the studio and pay a surprise visit to Kirk at his home office, where we eat bagels and lox until Kirk realizes he has too much work to do to sit around all day eating bagels and lox and sends me on my way.

Tuesday: Rise and Shine. Maybe breakfast with Colin. Maybe I buy Backstage today, but usually just go home to watch a movie (we have a hell of collection, mostly due to Justin) or read the complete plays of August Strindberg (if I really want to depress myself) until I realize it’s 2:10 and I’m never going to make it to Lee and Laurie on time for my three-to-ten shift. Rush to shower and change, arrive at Lee and Laurie at three-fifteen. Leave work at ten, take the crosstown bus to Kirk’s (thus securing myself sex and saving myself a transfer to the Second Avenue bus, which never comes every ten minutes like it says it will on the schedule posted at the bus stop).

Wednesday: Rise and Shine. Sometimes Rena wants to have a planning meeting, and then Colin and I have to sit and listen to her drone on and on about her dream plans for Rise and Shine. Go to lunch with Colin, complain about Rena (whom Colin defends), until it’s time for Lee and Laurie. Get off at ten, go to Kirk’s.

Thursday: Rise and Shine. Maybe breakfast with Colin, after which I decide that that the edition of Backstage on the stands is too old and not worth spending the cash on. Sometimes I go home to clean my apartment (a fruitless endeavor with Justin as a roommate, but I can’t seem to stop myself), or sometimes I find myself lured in to some treacherous sample sale, where I spend the afternoon trying to convince myself of the utter necessity of owning yet another stretchy black shirt. If I’ve dawdled in midtown long enough, I usually just go straight to Lee and Laurie. Sometimes I’m even on time! And guess where I head afterward? Kirk’s, of course.

Friday: Rise and Shine. And since I have no shift at Lee and Laurie and no desire to start any self-actualizing project, I find some way to waste the entire day. Like renting the complete movies of Bette Davis. Or giving myself a pedicure. Until Kirk and I go out for dinner, or simply sit around the apartment like the old married couple we are (not that he realizes that).

Saturday: The dreaded ten-to-four shift at Lee and Laurie. After a day like this, can you blame me for going straight to Kirk’s, where we order takeout and while the evening away in front of the TV or at the movies?

Sunday: Day of rest. Except when my mother manages to convince me of the utter necessity of my coming down to Marine Park for family dinner. Kirk comes, of course. After all, he loves my mother’s cooking. Kirk never says no to a Sunday in Brooklyn.

Now do you understand how I’ve gotten so wrapped up in being wrapped up every day of the week? Kirk and I might as well get married at this point. What would be the difference, anyway?

“The ring,” Michelle explained somewhat impatiently when I complained the next day about how much I am suffering and wondering, really, what it’s all going to get me.

“When a guy buys you a ring, it means something.”

So I sat tight for yet another night, telling Kirk I had a monologue I was working on. “Oh yeah?” he said with surprise. Of course he was surprised. I hadn’t done any auditioning since Rise and Shine became a cable-access phenomenon. Why should I? I was on the road to superstardom in a yellow leotard.

But suddenly there I was, reverting to my former self. The actor who had played Fefu in Fefu and Her Friends. (Don’t let the name fool you—this was a serious role.) The woman who had once wowed crowds at the Classic Stage Company with my powerful rendition of Miss Julie. In case you were wondering, I was once a force to be reckoned with. But an actor has to earn a living….

“What are you doing home?” Justin asked, loping in from God knows where. He’d turned down the last production gig he’d been offered, so I knew he hadn’t been working on the set all day. In fact, he seemed to be working less and less ever since he had landed a few commercial spots for a long-distance telephone service a year ago, which I thought was pretty ironic, considering the number of long-distance relationships Justin had been in (yes, Lauren wasn’t the only one. Denise, his previous girlfriend, was from Oak Park, Illinois, Justin’s hometown—a place Justin hadn’t lived in himself since he was twelve, although his romance with Denise had begun on a visit to relatives one summer when he was in college). The commercial, which featured Justin looking frazzled and gorgeous as he ran across a campus and up the dormitory stairs, all in time to pick up a long-distance call from his mom, was so well received that they made two more. One in which Justin leaped across buildings to pick up a call, and another where he hijacked a campus security cart. His success had mostly to do with that utterly beatific smile on his face as he picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, Mom.” Ironic, too, since both of Justin’s parents had been killed in an auto accident, leaving him an orphan at the tender age of twelve, shipped off to live in New York with his aging Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Burt, who were now gone a good nine years themselves. Maybe there was something of the yearning I knew he still felt for his parents injected in the smile he projected from the small screen once he picked up that telephone. Whatever it was, the commercial ran so often—it even made Superbowl Sunday slots—that Justin was still coasting on the pile of residuals money he’d racked up. Perhaps that was making it harder and harder for him to get out of bed for the odd production job that came his way.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I replied, defensive. Sometimes the ease of Justin’s life annoyed me, I have to admit.

He ignored my irritated reply, plopping down next to me on the couch.

“Where’s Kirk?” he asked. Even Justin realized my life was so intimately entwined with Kirk’s that my being home on a weeknight meant something.

“Don’t know. Home, I guess,” I said, picking up the remote and surfing through, hoping my expression showed my indifference. I didn’t really want anyone to know what I was up to, especially not Justin. It was downright…humiliating. But utterly necessary.

Then the phone rang and I was completely unmasked. “If it’s Kirk, I’m, I’m…not home,” I blurted as Justin reached for the receiver.

He turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, as he spoke into the phone. “Hello? Hey, Kirk, my man, what’s up?” he continued, his voice belying the suspicion in his eyes as he gazed at me. “Angie? Naw, she’s not home. But then I didn’t check under the rug….”

I glared at him, despite my humiliation.

“Okay, I’ll tell her you called,” he said. “Take it easy.” After he hung up, he turned to stare at me full in the face.

I ignored him, lost in my own quagmire. “What the hell is he calling me for anyway? I told him I was busy.”

Justin’s eyes widened. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing!”

“God, Ange, don’t tell me you’re playing games,” he said. “I didn’t think you were like that….”

“I’m not!” I insisted. But suddenly it seemed glaringly apparent that I was one of those women I despised.