Lady Parts (16 page)

“
D
amn,” said the emergency room nurse. “Your vein exploded.”

She gathered up her needles, tape, and vials and stormed out of my curtained-off cubicle in the emergency room at the hospital where I had just been admitted. I followed her out to the nursing station, where she was asking a male nurse if
he
knew how to draw blood.

“Umm, excuse me,” I said, “that sounds bad.”
An exploded vein. What will happen to me now? Will the rest of me explode?

Angrily she responded, “It will hurt for a few days, and you’ll have a black-and-blue mark and bruising on most of your arm.”

I waited for even a suggestion of an apology. None came. She commanded me back into the cubicle, and to sit and not move as she pulled out another set of pain-inflicting tools. She took hold of my arm, with its now ballooning
vein. I tried another mode of communication, the “I hope you recognize me and will treat me more kindly ’cause I’m an actress and I’m shooting a TV series, so it would be great if you would be gentle and maybe use a needle that you use for children, ‘cause I don’t want to have bruises on
camera
.” No acknowledgement. Nothing.

“That’s what I
am
using,” she snapped back. “Now sit and stop clenching your fist.” She stuck the needle in the front of my hand this time and wistfully smiled.

“Damn,” she said, “you have beautiful veins.” Even that was my fault. I had disappointed her. I had allowed my beautiful veins to be exploded. She finished drawing blood and left the cubicle. I then overheard her joking loudly with three other nurses in the hallway. “So anyway, he touched me and then he stuck his tongue down my throat.” Gales of boisterous laughter in the hallowed halls of emergency. “I didn’t even know him. But hell, he was cute, and I was hammered, so I stuck my tongue right back down his.”

By now both injection sites on my arm were turning purple. Soon I would look like the Elephant Man. “I’m a human being, Nurse Ratched,” I wanted to yell, “not an animal.” But instead I asked tentatively through the curtain, “When will the doctor be by?”

She yelled back, “I don’t know. He’s busy.”

I had driven myself to the emergency room at 7 a.m. that morning. At 2 a.m. I had woken with sharp pains and
a tightening in my chest. I paced around my home for five hours, all the while moaning and scared. When I finally went back to bed, I was convinced I smelled toast and was having a heart attack, so I drove myself to the hospital. And there I sat for the next five hours. X-rays of my heart, EKGs, blood samples, and a CT scan of my lungs showed nothing irregular. And yet I couldn’t breathe. And the pain was not subsiding. As I waited for a diagnosis, Nurse Ratched popped her head back into the cubicle.

“Hey, one of my co-workers said they recognized you from that Greek movie. Were you in it? The aunt? ‘What do you mean you don’t like meat, I’ll make you some lamb?’ Is that you?”

“Yes,” I replied weakly as I held on to my arm, “that’s me.”

“Hey, Bob,” she shouted, “it
is
her.”

Three other nurses were now standing in my room, staring and laughing.

“You were funny.”

“Are you still acting?” one of the nurses asked. “I don’t see you in anything anymore.”

I held up my arm, which now looked like the offspring of a Goodyear blimp and an eggplant.

“Yes, I’m still acting, and will the swelling go down?” I asked.

“Probably. If it doesn’t, see a doctor.”

“Hey, what was Nia Vardalos like? My father’s friend knows someone who knows her.”

“She was lovely,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t mean to change the subject, but I’m not having a stroke, am I?”

Before they could answer, the doctor appeared with my chart. “Ms. Martin. Now I know who you are. I’ve been racking my brain to figure it out.
SCTV
?”

“That’s correct, doctor.”

“I haven’t seen you in anything lately. Are you retired?”

“Yes,” I said, lying, determined to put an end to the career interrogation and get to the important matters at hand, like my death.

“Doctor, are my symptoms serious? Do you think it’s my heart?”

“No, all the tests came back negative. You had a bad case of indigestion. Gastroesophageal reflux. But you were smart to come to emergency. The symptoms are often confused. You’re fine to go. By the way, Catherine O’Hara and my wife went to high school together. She’s so talented. She’s
always
working.”

The next day, back on the set of my TV series, my swollen arm and bruises were camouflaged under makeup and a long-sleeved shirt. When the crew and cast asked me if I was okay, I told them I had been diagnosed with “indigestion.” Believe me, I would rather have used the more glamorous and exotic term “gastroesophageal reflux,” but who the hell can pronounce
that
name either. Oh, to be twelve years old again, with the
mumps.

I
am in a double banger right now. That’s show-biz talk for a trailer/Winnebago that acts as a dressing room for actors while they are shooting on location. Each banger, divided by a wall, houses one actor. Double banger, two actors. Triple banger, three actors.

A banger is a cozy little cubicle (on wheels) with windows and comes complete with microwave, refrigerator, sink, small couch attached to the wall, toilet that you flush by pushing a pedal, plastic-encased shower, and table with a large mirror and makeup lights surrounding it. It’s not a bad place to spend an hour, but hair-pullingly claustrophobic if you’re forced to stay in it any longer. It’s a little roomier than the hole in which Saddam Hussein was found, but only slightly.

Years ago, I shared a double banger with another actress. After she ate anything, she desperately tried to work off the
calories by jogging in place in her banger, simultaneously shaking mine. Bangers have thin walls. You don’t want to confide anything to anyone while you’re in your banger, let alone have sex.

That’s another experience I had in a banger while shooting a low-budget made-for-television movie in the ’80s. I shared a double banger with an actress who was dating a big movie star. He was married to someone else. That didn’t stop them from having clandestine lunchtime sex in her banger, twice a week. The banger would vibrate, and I would be forced to eavesdrop on their explicit sexual encounters. It was like listening to an episode of
Homeland.
Banging in a banger. One step up from banging in a car. Two steps up from banging in an airplane washroom.

All of those locations have their advantages, and all are dangerous and steamy. I’ve enjoyed sex in two of the aforementioned locations in my life, but having sex in a banger is something I’ve yet to cross off my bucket list. My lunch breaks on film sets, so far, have consisted mainly of devouring barbecued ribs from catering and taking a food-induced nap.

I am a guest star today on
30 Rock,
the NBC sitcom written by and starring Tina Fey. We are somewhere in Queens, though I don’t know where. And it doesn’t matter. Everything I need is in a one-block radius: my trailer, the makeup trailer, the wardrobe trailer, the set, and most importantly, the craft services table (“crafty,” it’s called).
Crafty is a little cordoned-off section near the set where you can find coffee, water, candy, cookies, nuts, granola bars, fruit, bread, peanut butter and jelly, and more candy, at all hours of the day. We are on location because the scene I am shooting calls for a banquet hall, and the
30 Rock
studio, where the show is usually shot, is too small a space.

I am thrilled to finally get to work with Tina Fey. Both of us began our careers with Second City, albeit twenty years apart, and I have been a great fan of hers since watching her on
Saturday Night Live.
Every word in this script, from start to finish, is hilarious. This is
30 Rock’
s last season. In fact, it has one more month to shoot before its ends its seven years on the air.

In 2006, while I was appearing in
Young Frankenstein
on Broadway, I was offered the part of Tina Fey’s mother on the show. I had to decline because we were in previews and I couldn’t get off the necessary shoot days from the musical. I was, of course, disappointed. Over the years, I had hoped there might be another opportunity to do the show, but one never materialized until last week, when I was offered this hysterical part of Bonnie Badamath (think
bad at math
)
,
the chairperson at an awards ceremony and women’s event called 80 Under 80, Celebrating Women in Media.

Liz Lemon, Tina’s character, is receiving the top award, but Bonnie is less concerned with Liz’s award and more concerned about her husband, Gary, who has recently ditched
her to marry their realtor, who was in the process of selling Gary and Bonnie their dream house.

“I miss Gary so much,” Bonnie cries out. “I put his sweater on a body pillow and took it for a canoe ride.”

It’s not a big part but it’s funny, and I love being on camera interacting with Tina and Jane Krakowski, and taking direction from the brilliant writers and director.

I have been on many sets in my career, and usually pass the time, when I’m not needed in the scene, obsessively going over my lines and making return trips to crafty. I have never learned to use my time productively while shooting a film or TV show and have always marvelled at actors who can. But that requires multi-tasking, and it’s not something that comes easily to me or, by the way, at all.

Many years ago I was a guest along with Steve Martin on Marty Short’s sitcom. Steve would finish a scene on camera and then return to his trailer (
Mr.
Martin did not have to share a double or triple banger; he had a
trailer
all to himself) to continue writing his movie script, or his novel, or his play. It didn’t matter the genre because the point is he was multi-tasking. I’d be eating my fifth doughnut while he was completing the first act of an award-winning something. One of my favourite people, Seth Rudetsky, my musical director and a writer, actor, and popular radio personality, can be playing the piano, reading a book, and finishing his weekly column for
Playbill
all at the same
time. It is so annoying and distracting to be on stage with him during rehearsals and watch him read his book as I’m trying to remember my lines, and yet, on cue, he’ll put the book down and start accompanying me. I am so envious at his multi-tasking abilities.

So today I am experimenting. I brought my computer with me, and between takes and during lunch, in my banger, I’m going to write an essay for my book. This experiment is fraught with anxiety. What if I forget my lines because I won’t be going over them repeatedly? What if I get into another mindset, that of a writer, and can’t make the switch back to actor? What if I don’t return to the craft services table in five minutes and all the Twizzlers are gone? I guess you could say I’m doing a little cognitive behavioural therapy on myself. I’m trying to contain the anxiety that comes up when I am not doing the same compulsive thing I’ve always done. It seems to be working right now, until I think about the lines I have to say in the next scene, and worry that if I don’t repeat them ten times in a row, I’ll forget them when I get in front of the camera. If this exercise works today, and I write an essay
and
remember my lines, I will feel enormously empowered. I will go on talk shows and be lauded as the woman who rewired her brain over lunch and finished her book.

For every Broadway show in which I have ever appeared, whether it’s a one-night-only performance
or daily performances during a twelve-month run, I go over all my lines before I go on. I say them out loud, in my dressing room, in the wings, and right before I make my entrance. The brilliantly funny and confident actress Megan Mullally and I appeared in
Young Frankenstein
on Broadway together. One night before the start of the show, Megan came into my dressing room. We chatted a bit and then, slightly panicked, I announced that she had to leave because I had to prepare.

“Prepare what?” she asked.

“I have to get into character and go over my lines,” I said.

“You do?” She kindly left my dressing room, but I could hear her laughing all the way back to hers. After all, we were in our fifth month of the run. It was preposterous to think I still had to go over the lines.

Noise distractions are a big culprit in keeping me from staying focused. I never knew that sound sensitivity had a name, but it turns out it does: misophonia. I just read about this newly discovered disorder in the
New York Times.
Misophonia is the hatred of specific sounds—not loud noises, but small irritating noises: someone breathing or clearing his throat, water dripping. It’s something I’ve lived with for years. Someone chewing gum, someone sniffing, the TV on really softly, a goose quacking in
the distance, someone clicking a pen, Alicia Keys singing at any volume, anywhere, is enough to make me lose it. The other day I was on a plane and the guy two rows over was turning pages in a magazine aggressively (as I was trying to read a book), and the sound of the pages flipping unravelled me. I had to put my book down and put my hands over my ears as I proceeded to stare him down. He was completely oblivious that his page-turning was turning me into a killer. My mother always snapped her chewing gum, and it felt to me like the sound of someone writing on a chalkboard. My best friend, Deb Monk, was chewing gum when I first met her. I asked her to spit it out, and because she is so loving, she did. In fact, she always spits out her gum when she sees me because she knows my triggers. She is a true friend.

Now that I have a name for my extreme intolerance of certain noises—misophonia—I feel special and legitimate. I read that Kelly Ripa also suffers with misophonia. I wish it was Liv Ullmann who had this infliction. I would then be included in an elite artistic circle of fabulously sensitive Norwegian/Armenian actresses. Anyway, there’s comfort knowing I’m not alone.

By forcing myself to do an activity that is not routine—writing, for instance, when I ordinarily would be going
over my lines—I am also slowing down any age-related mental decline. Writing in my banger is a neurobic exercise. Neurobics involve using your senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste) differently from how you normally would. Neurobic exercises activate brain cell activity. Change is good, and healthy for your brain!

Other examples of neurobic activities:

I’m willing to try anything that will extend my life, except sorting out my cosmetics. Seriously, I can’t throw away any of my makeup. Eyebrow pencils, concealers, lipstick, rouge—that’s how long I keep makeup. No one even uses the word “rouge” anymore. I have tubes of lipstick I bought in the ’60s, my favourite being Cherries in the Snow by Revlon. They still make that colour, by the way, and I keep buying new lipsticks of the same shade, but I can’t throw away the half-used original tubes. I might be the only actress alive who still has a stash of Max Factor’s Clown White. And
amazingly, I used it recently, on stage with Geoffrey Rush in Broadway’s
Exit the King.

You never know when you’ll need clown white. And unlike milk, makeup doesn’t turn after ten days. It seems to have a shelf life of at least fifty years.

But back to neurobics and how to rewire my brain.

Next week, I start French lessons.

Today, I am going to drink my Starbucks coffee with my non-dominant hand.

And tomorrow I’ll take a different route to work.

I will reconfigure my brain, without drugs, without
therapy. I will live till I’m one hundred. But if someone doesn’t fix that fucking faucet in my bathroom, I’m going to rip it out of the wall.