HBO headquarters was like stepping into an even more modern version of the Jetsons, with space-age furnishings and electrifying color everywhere. I couldn’t exactly tell the chairs from the tables and sofas. I’m almost positive, looking back, that I sat on a fuzzy hot pink watercooler by mistake.
After a thirty-minute wait, in which I nearly died of six heart attacks, Rob and I cruised with pretend calmness into the offices of two vice presidents young enough to be our children. They gave us Fiji water and fifteen minutes of their valuable time. I got all nervous and couldn’t shut up, but Rob called his agent afterward and said, “It went great. Couldn’t have gone better. It’s a good thing Susan flew up for this because a phone conference wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as them meeting her in person.”
Two weeks later we heard the news from Rob’s agent.
“They loved your TV treatment and thought Susan was fun and entertaining, but overall felt there wasn’t enough sex in the story lines.”
Oh, my mother would be so proud.
After less than two days in California, it was time to pack everything up and head back home. My thirty-six-hour trip to LA. Gone in a sneeze.
To think I was a guest in a fairly famous screenwriter’s home—a beautiful semipalace with its own basketball court and swimming pool right outside my bedroom window. To think I cleaned every speck of dirt from that room and properly made the bed before I left, extra careful I’d left nothing behind except a KitKat on their pillow, the toilet tissue pressed into a beautiful triangle at the tip.
To think I’d done everything right and then…then…Oh, no, please let it not be so!
Almost as soon as I returned from my quick little mission, I felt something punch my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. No. No. Please, God. I searched the suitcase a hundred times. The Mee-Maw panties had gone missing. I’d better call Nancy Grace. She’d understand. She’d do a segment for six weeks. I know she would. God love her and the time she takes with missing people and maybe even Amber Alerts for lost undergarments.
OK, don’t panic. Think, think, think.
Think “spin.” Write the hostess a letter. It doesn’t matter she’s perfect and rich and wears Dolce & Gabbana intimates. Deep breaths. Pen and paper. Good, thick paper, not the cheap kind from the Dollar Mart.
Dear Robert and Lady Tate Miller
I must thank you so much for the warmth extended during my brief visit to your lovely city. The guest quarters were more than any weary traveler could ever hope to enjoy. I thank you for the pleasure of staying in your inviting and tastefully exquisite home and the charming company offered. Please know you are welcome in western North Carolina anytime.
Again, many thanks,
Susan Reinhardt
P.S. I imagine this may sound odd, but as I placed my suitcase under the bed, I did notice a rather large nylon garment somewhat the size of a tablecloth, bunched about near the headboard. I figured it was part of your delightful Great Dane’s bedding and left it alone. Again, you guys were the best!
Erma Bombeck Country
I called the airport to confirm the ticket for a flight to Dayton, Ohio, leaving Asheville on a chilly March afternoon. The man on the other line couldn’t understand a word I was saying, nor could I figure out most of his native tongue.
OK, for the record, no one swoons over an accent the way I do. For some women, it’s men in uniform; for me it’s an accent. I don’t care if it’s drawling Southern, Australian, Jamaican or Brazilian. Talk to me all day, honey pie. That is, unless I’m trying to get my plane ticket confirmed and figure out a friggin’ way to get a unicycle on a small Delta carrier.
The gig I was headed for I was afraid I wasn’t qualified to handle. Somehow, through too much wine and a crowd of rowdies, I ended up becoming one of the keynote speakers for the semiannual Erma Bombeck National Writers Workshop in Dayton and was leaving on a jet plane, though the ticket man couldn’t understand my Southern and I couldn’t understand his Burmese.
For those who never knew and loved Erma, she was quite simply the best—my personal columnist hero. Every two years in her city of Dayton, the Writers Workshop bearing her name has a three-day hoopla of activities, sessions and keynote speakers attended by hundreds worldwide.
Dave Barry—The Dave Barry—was to be one of the keynotes. And I somehow got roped into “following” his act the next day. He gets the nighttime tipsy crowd. I get the hungover or tea-totaling lunchers. How does ANYONE follow a great like Dave Barry?
I knew I couldn’t repeat my Malaprop’s Bookstore wine-infused performance. My body tolerates alcohol about as well as a vegetarian can swallow a Hardee’s Angus Thickburger. A couple guys from the paper were filming my wild, tipsy speech, and I sent in the tapes and was hired.
Oh, my gosh. Here I am headed for the airport and will have to follow Dave’s act as well as that of a big-shot columnist at USA Today : Craig Wilson.
I was thinking, “How does a girl top Dave Barry?” Well, she doesn’t. Then I remembered my unicycle and figured he couldn’t ride one while throwing candy and condoms to the crowd.
This is the point at which I called the airline’s 1-800 number and I tried for half an hour to converse with the representative of unknown cultural origin.
“May I take a unicycle on the airplane?” I asked, trying to speak slowly, knowing my hick vowels would throw him for a loop.
“Yu wunt do dake whut?”
“Do you know what a unicycle is?”
“No, ma’am. I do not know such wud be called dat.”
I thought a moment. “Do you know what a clown is?”
“Shu I do.”
“Clowns ride YOON EEE CYCLES. Day have ONE WHEEL.”
“I see. Vedy gud.”
He put me on hold for twenty-two minutes while I passed the time eating an entire bag of Extra Cheesy Doritos, and returned to say I could pack my one wheel and head on to Dayton.
“Yu gong haff to take off de pedals fust.”
“What? How do you take off the pedals?”
He grew silent, processing my Southern language and question. “I know nutting bout dat. You also gong put yoon-e-cycle in box no bigger dan twenty von by thutie tree.”
I politely thanked him and decided I’d let Dave Barry rule the show. After all, he’s earned it. I’ll just stalk him instead of trying to top him.
My plane, minus the unicycle, arrived late, but I managed to sit in the fancy black car in the exact spot Barry’s slender and probably firm ass had sat. I figured that’s as close to the man as I’d ever get. I told the driver to “Please hurry,” and was able to catch the last half of his act and, boy…was he good. No, he was great.
Naturally, I put him on my Stalking List. But so did five hundred others at the conference, so the line to get to him during his book signing was a mile long. I waited, mingling with other writers and then held out my book to him. I had bought Boogers Are My Beat , thinking that would be right up my entertainment alley. He must have been exhausted, but he was more than gracious and smelled like Tic Tacs and good cologne, and I just knew he’d read How to Climb the Bestseller Ladder: The Secret Is Grooming and Hygiene .
After he signed my copy, pretending to have actually heard of me, I rushed up to my room, excited about what he must have written with his hot little pen. Perhaps it was, “Loved your first book!” Or maybe, “Ditch Tidy Stu and Run Away With Me.”
I locked my door and took a deep breath. And there it was. “To Susan Reinhardt: A Goddess. Dave Barry.”
Oh, mercy saints alive! Is this