Lady Parts (15 page)

I
had my handwriting analyzed by a graphologist recently at a birthday party.

She asked us to write out our names, and then she interpreted our signatures. The birthday girl instructed the graphologist, Paula, not to alarm anyone with what she saw. The way in which someone wrote a g, for example, might indicate that person was a serial killer, and no one wanted to spend the evening in fear of being strangled in the powder room. Paula could also tell by your handwriting if you were confused about your sexuality and/or you were a liar and a thief. In fact, companies hired her all the time to screen prospective employees. She looked for traits of honesty, reliability, and intelligence, and the ability to be happily exploited. For instance, would you be content with a small desk and an office with a partition but no real wall? Her track record, she proudly stated, was great. She travelled
the world and was hired by corporations, government, and spas—and for birthday parties.

She showed us Donald Trump’s signature, which was thick and persistent. It was written with a heavy hand and heavy ink. It looked like a locomotive in motion. Jacqueline Kennedy’s signature was neat and pretty, but Paula said it showed aloofness. I liked it because it was legible. Osama bin Laden’s signature was ornate and insistent and confident and scary. It looked like the writing of a madman. Albert Einstein’s was small and didn’t take up too much space, yet he changed the world. We were all impressed and excited to see what our names would reveal.

She kept her analysis very short and complimentary.

“Very, very smart,” Paula said as she studied the way I wrote my name.

“Creative, independent, very literary. You are a writer.” That was
really
reassuring, having just signed a book deal. She was about to move on but stopped abruptly and blurted out a zinger. “Oh dear. Look at the way you cross your t. You are very, very sensitive to what people say about you professionally, and personally you have a tendency to be defensive.” And then she cheerfully went on her way to analyze the nervous woman on my right.

“Wait just a moment,” I said defensively. “I don’t think I’m that way at all. I’ve worked hard not to care about what people think of me. Is there something I should be doing differently when I write my name? Should I change my signature?”

Paula, who had twelve more women to get to, ignored my line of questioning, smiled knowingly, and creepily moved on.
Maybe
she’s
a serial killer,
I thought. No one would ever know. Who could read handwriting in
that
group, a bunch of drunk women over fifty? Besides, what Paula said was bullshit. She was, after all, an elaborate party favour, one step above a singing telegram.

In any case, I took down her number. I also chose not to walk back to my car alone.

I
’m already planning my escape. I am huddled in the guest bedroom, checking my watch every ten minutes. I have been up all night, not able to sleep in my new surroundings. I am the guest of a husband and wife, two doctors I met in New York. They are lovely, generous, intelligent people, and it’s always fun to dine with them in Manhattan, which is really the only socializing we have ever done.

They invited me to stay at their beautiful sprawling farm in Maine. Even though I grew up in Maine, I have never spent time in farm country, and I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to see more of the state and have a little excursion at the same time. They own a working organic farm along the northern coast. Guinea hens roam freely around their 135 acres, goats munch on grass to keep the ticks away. Belted cattle graze in the distance. Vegetables and herbs sprout everywhere. It is late May, and the lilacs are
still in bloom this far north. There is a wooden wraparound porch, a stone labyrinth by the front door, unspoiled vistas, and miles and miles of manicured lawns as far as the eye can see. It is green, bountiful, expansive, peaceful, idyllic. But my only thought is
When the hell can I get out of here?

I arrived just yesterday evening, at five o’clock. I pulled my car into the gravel driveway and instantly panicked. I wanted to back up and speed away before my hosts could see me. In hindsight, I should have made some excuse when I landed in Portland, something like,
My plane was delayed and now I really think it’s too late to drive the two hours, by myself, to your farm.
But instead, I got in the car and drove the two hours. At the time, I was proud of myself for honouring the invitation and not copping out. But that was last night. Now it’s 6 a.m. and I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept. I need a cup of coffee. Do I stay in my room until the proper hour? What
is
the proper hour to leave my bedroom and go down and get a cup of coffee? I’ve got the chamber of commerce free magazine
Discover the Jewel of the Maine Coast
next to me on the bed, and I’m mapping out my next destination, if I can just sneak out and, like El Chapo, hide myself in the laundry basket, get in my car, and speed away. Then I could find a cute little café, sip my latte, and sit alone blissfully.

I’m not a prisoner here. I could leave of my own accord. Steve McQueen is not my cellmate, though I wish he were still alive and we were sharing this room. It’s not like I have
to dig my way out of a tunnel using a metal utensil. I am a free agent who could easily go downstairs and make a cup of coffee and wait for her hosts to get up. Or maybe they
are
up. I’m too scared to find out. And yet I really need caffeine. Maybe they are still sleeping and I won’t have to make conversation. I am the house guest from hell.

I think it’s a morning issue. I need to get my bearings before I start the day. I need solitude, to arrange my thoughts. What do I think is going to happen if I just tell them how I feel, that I’m tired and in need of privacy? I think every host should be required to put a
How to Be a Good Guest
manual in each room. Then we would know what was expected of us. Airlines give you guidelines.
Put your seat backs in the upright position. Fasten your seatbelts. Shut off all electronic gadgets. I’m speaking to you, Ms. Martin, in seat 3F, you with the iPhone 5, whose light you are trying to conceal by putting the phone under your leg so you can type one last text before the flight attendant walks by.

It would be so comforting to have direction. Everyone would be on the same page.

I wish the following guidelines had been left on my pillow last night:

Have I lived alone too long? Am I just no longer flexible? No adventure left in my gypsy soul?

I didn’t used to be like this. I’ve travelled and lived in many places.

Paris, for two years. Morocco for six months. Missouri for one year. Boston for two. Maine, Toronto, Los Angeles, eighteen years in each place over the span of sixty-five years. Been there, done that.

But now I’m planning my escape. Who am I? Django Unchained? To escape what? Me?

You know what they say: “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Fuck them. Who are
they
anyway? Some bohemian acid-tripping writer from the ’60s? Who coined that phrase?

The Maine Eastern Railroad has an excursion in the summer. Sounds like so much fun. And I can do it alone. Be on the train for two hours as it travels from Rockland to Brunswick. In a restored antique car. And seniors travel for only $17 round trip. I am now one of the seniors I see pictured in all the train brochures, but with darker roots, and outrageously expensive highlights. This is my next fun
adventure. A really slow two-hour train trip in which the train travels one mile every fifteen minutes. Chipmunks walk faster. But at least I’ll be able to spot one.

At 6 a.m. the next morning, I escaped. Yay for me. I’m in a bed and breakfast in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Alone. I left the farm early. My hosts were very understanding as I lied and said I was called back to New York for a meeting. I had a good night’s sleep. I feel rested and restored and inspired to write and explore. I have a crisp white flannel bathrobe on, compliments of the inn, left for me in my cozy little room. I just poured myself a cup of coffee from my very own coffee machine. Birds are gently tweeting outside the sliding French doors, which open to a tiny balcony overlooking the harbour. It is gorgeous. Quiet before the tourists awake and begin walking up and down Main Street. My favourite time of the day. I feel bad about lying. What a cowardly thing to do. Maybe I’ll write my host and hostess a letter, in which I’ll tell them the truth.

I will never send it.

And now it’s time for my delicious free continental breakfast. I walk into the dining room and am greeted by the sombre, mannish innkeeper.

First I ask her politely if I can have a late checkout, just thirty minutes more so I can leave at 11:30 instead of at 11:00.

With a feigned smile she replies, “No. We have to do the sheets.”

I continue cheerfully, “Would there be any way
my
sheets could be collected thirty minutes later?”

Still smiling insincerely, she replies, “No.”

I then ask if she knows of a hair salon that’s open that morning.

“There’s Capella’s, a ten-minute drive, but they might be closed.”

“Oh,” I say pleasantly, “do you think you could call and find out for me, especially since you know the people?”

“No,” she says, “I’m leaving right after breakfast. But
you
could phone later.”

The final exchange goes like this:

Mannish innkeeper: We are serving a mushroom quiche and a blueberry cobbler this morning. Please let me know if you have any allergies.

Me: The quiche sounds wonderful. But are there onions in it? Mannish innkeeper: Yes.

Me: Oh, I can’t eat onions. Would you be able to make one without onions for me?

Mannish innkeeper: By allergies, I mean gluten-free, or lactose intolerant, or diabetic, but not something you don’t like. There’s a difference between allergies and food you don’t like.

Me,
through clenched teeth:
Oh, I see, well, thank you for your help, mannish innkeeper. I’ll have the quiche, pick out the onions, eat rapidly, return to my room, pack between phone calls to hair salons, shower, and check out, so that I can be back on the road in thirty minutes.

Wherever you go, there you are.

F
or whatever reason, and I’m sure only the Lord above knows why, out of the blue I got a terrible strep infection that abscessed deep inside my parotid gland and then deeper inside my jaw, behind my ear. On June 15, 2012, three days before I was scheduled to perform my one-woman show
Final Days, Everything Must Go!
in the new cabaret space at the legendary club Studio 54, I was rushed to the hospital with a high fever and excruciating pain. I stayed in the hospital for five days as tests were run. The doctors finally determined that I had a parapharyngeal abscess in my neck and needed an operation. In my hospital bed as I awaited surgery, and dreamily sedated with Valium and Percocet, God’s candy, I wrote the following email:

My darling male friends, and Deb,

I am going to attempt to bring you all up to date.

It is 7:40 a.m., day five at the hospital. I’m in my cubicle. Anne Frank’s room was bigger. But at least I don’t have to share it with an entire Jewish family.

I am supposed to have surgery today, or as they euphemistically call it, a procedure. The most handsome Israeli doctor, the head, no pun intended, of the Head and Neck Surgery Department at the hospital, just left my room. If I weren’t so hard of hearing, I would have been soothed by his soft-spoken manner. Immediately I felt confident when he started to speak. First of all, he sat on a chair in front of me and looked into my eyes, which none of the attendant physicians had done. They always enter en masse, like they’re in a Seth Rogen film, and stand around my bed, then one person speaks and the rest just stare. But this doctor sat like we were having cocktails, and though he had twenty-eight surgeries scheduled for the day, I felt like I was his only patient. I love an Israeli man. Sexy. Swarthy and good in combat. He explained that the kind of infection I have and where it is in my mouth is rare and very serious. He asked me if I had been in a foreign country in the last year where I might have contracted TB. I said no, and then thought maybe the Playbill cruise Broadway on the High Seas was the culprit. Maybe as I was performing Prickley in Corfu, a Greek bug flew in my mouth. Whatever the cause, the result is crazy pain that has gone on now for twelve days. The infection is deep inside my mouth/head, and so they have to give me general anesthetic, not a local, which would be so much easier to recover from.

I am on a waitlist for surgery. Or in show-biz terms, a shortlist. Think of it this way: they have asked for my availability. So I don’t know when the surgery will be scheduled, but I do know I can’t eat or drink anything until they do it. I can’t have coffee, and so my head is pounding from the lack of caffeine. They brought me a sponge on a stick and dipped it in water, and I use that to swab my mouth. That’s what’s on the menu for today.

When they do the surgery, they will make an incision in my neck. They will then work their way to the infection, drain the abscess, put in a plastic tube, leave it there for two days, and do a biopsy on the tissue, sending it to a laboratory to find out if a tumour is the cause of the infection. I will then stay in the hospital for three or four more days as I heal, and then they will close the incision. That’s if everything goes well.

I know this is more information than any of you, my actor friends, should know, even an actor who has played a doctor on television. But I wanted to give you sweet people in my life the whole picture. Of course, this is only part of the picture.

I had an MRI yesterday. They put a blindfold over my eyes, stuck my head in a tight-fitting helmet, then moved my entire body into a machine that looked like a tunnel, and for forty-five minutes, and I’m not exaggerating, my head became a construction site of loud incessant jackhammers and drills pounding in my ears. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the years of meditation technique I learned at the
Golden Door, I don’t think I would have survived it. I kept breathing calmly, counting, thinking of my sons and, occasionally, why the hell I couldn’t get an audition for the role of Miss Hannigan in
Annie.
Waterboarding would have more pleasurable.

When I finally was taken off the table, I said to the technician that the procedure was torture, and he replied, “I’ll tell you what torture is: having dinner with my son.”

There’s a lovely elderly toothless lady named Miss Cooper, who brings me my food. I don’t want to be mean because I know the entire nation of Africa would call this five-star dining, but honestly, it is swill. Maybe that’s a good thing, since I can’t chew, so why be tempted? I was thinking also that it’s a blessing that I’m not dating because I would not be able to service any fella’s penis right now. The only thing my mouth can open wide enough to blow is a toothpick.

As many of you know, who might have purchased tickets for my New York debut at 54 Below, I had to cancel. I am still laughing, not an open-jawed laugh but an internal one, at Scott Wittman’s remark. When I was crying and telling him how bad and embarrassed I felt about cancelling, he said, “Oh, for God’s sake, it’s cabaret, one step above a flea circus.” I love you, Scotty, for that. And Nicky, our darling friend in a wheelchair, offered to help. He called and said whatever I needed; he could be there in a little over two hours.

My dear BFF, my angel, Deb Monk, has been by my side from the moment I entered the hospital. Last night when I got the results of the MRI, I was distraught and scared and crying. Deb, in the most compassionate manner, held my hand and whispered, “I’m cancelling everything tomorrow to be with you.” Snapping out of my distress, I said competitively, “What the hell do you have planned for tomorrow?” She then showed me her calendar, and sure enough, she is going to cancel her walk.

And Sean Hayes, my darling, thank you for your heartwarming email:

I’m
abscessed
with your infection. Abscessed. I can’t stop researching it.

I so want to be there when they cut that fucker open and watch all that shit come out of you. There’d be nothing more satisfying. It’s like you have a constipated boil in your jaw. Love it. All right, joke’s over. Get better already. We love you.

Seth and James have texted me every second, and I adore the updates on their busy lives and hate that I’m not decorating their apartment and picking single socks off the floor. The thought of buying chairs and carpet and wiping out their saving accounts is keeping me going.

Nathan, thank you, my sweet angel, for the call, the cookies, and the personal appearance in my hospital quarters. All the nurses
recognized you, and because of that I got more melted ice cream at lunch.

Okay, now this is sounding like some acceptance speech.

Fuck all of that.

Just know, Sean, Scotty, Nicky, Victor, Scott, Marc, Nathan, Seth, and Deb, I love you. Thank you for being the best crew I have ever worked with.

Wait.

Thank you for being my friends.

Later that day, after sending out the email, I received a slew of responses from my friends. I won’t reprint all of them, but Marc Shaiman’s in particular was priceless:

You may have got a terrible infection, but you also got your new act. Where the hell were you when
Catch Me If You Can
needed a punch-up?

Well, I hope to God you are at least going to make use of the time under and have them do a little cleanup work. Hopefully not by the Israeli doctor, for he might read the instructions you write out for him backwards and end up
lowering
your face and tits.

My surgery, which took four hours, was scheduled for the following day. As I was about to be wheeled into the operating room, my oldest son, Jack, appeared. He had flown on the red-eye from Los Angeles to be with me.

“Hi Mom, it’s Jack,” he whispered. “Everything’s gonna be all right. I’m here now. I love you.” He held my hand. “I’ll see you when you get out.”

The pain in my jaw was so intense by then, I couldn’t speak. I wanted to yell, “Hey, nurses, doctors, patients, this is my son Jack. He is a music editor and just finished a big movie and isn’t he handsome?” Instead, I squeezed his hand as tears ran down my swollen cheeks. Jack’s smiling face was the first I saw when I got out of surgery. Jack stayed with me in New York for two weeks after I left the hospital, and made me laugh continually by pointing out that I looked like Mrs. Cartman on
South Park
because one side of my face was paralyzed and only the right side of my lip curled up.

After a six-week recovery period, I could move every part of my face again. Seven weeks later, I was starring in a Hallmark Movie of the Week, and eight weeks after that, I was training on a trapeze. I’m happy to report that the surgery was a success. I’m completely healed. The four-inch incision on my neck has faded and now looks like an eyebrow in a Hirschfeld drawing. When I smile, I no longer
look like a character in an animated cartoon. My life-threatening infection is a thing of the past. I don’t talk about it anymore. Not because I’m not grateful to my doctors and friends and family for their concern, expertise, love, and devotion. And not because it doesn’t make a dramatically harrowing story.

I just can’t pronounce “parapharyngeal.”