HotmailExcerpt: ‘Rejected’ by Letterman and Conan
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So Wednesday morning I woke up at 9:00 A.M., called Conan’s hipster internship coordinator, and told him I needed to take the day off — I was feeling a bit sick. He understood and told me to rest up and feel better. I thanked him, put on my cool Letterman ID, and headed back to Letterman’s offices to return to their internship program.
Surprisingly, at the end of my second day at Letterman, which was exactly like my first day, I didn’t have my answer. Obviously, then, I needed one more day at Conan — to really settle it all out. But after nearly a full week of going back and forth, I could barely function. The deception was contaminating my soul. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. I was out of Klonopin. My boyfriend Amos tried to get me to calm the hell down and just make a g--damn choice already, but I was spiraling into that dark vortex of uncertainty like I’d never spiraled before.
Still, on Thursday morning I somehow managed to make my way back to Conan’s offices. I’d forgotten to wake up early to call in sick at Letterman, so I wearily wandered away from the intern station to look for an abandoned cube with a working phone. Instead I snuck into an empty conference room with even more privacy and called Letterman’s coordinator.
“Hi Janice. It’s Wendy ... again ... I know this sounds insane, but, um, I have another conflict.”
“Uh- huh.”
“I need to see the doctor today. It’s the same stomach thing. I don’t think I should come in.” I lied for, like, the twentieth time.
“Wendy, if you’re sick, why are you calling from 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the NBC building?”
This was before the widespread use of caller ID.
“I ... I am seeing a doctor in midtown, and ran into the building to make a call from their phones?”
“Wendy, you’re calling from Conan’s offices. I see their extension on my screen here.”
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“Hey, um, I got a call from the internship coordinator at Letterman. It appears you have been attending both our internship programs. Simultaneously.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that is really, really weird. You should probably leave. Like now, I guess?”
The next thing I remember is upchucking in front of the front doors of the building, where the Christmas tree stands in the winter. Not only was I deeply ashamed, and deeply humiliated, but I was sure I’d never be able to have a family because I’d never be able to support them as a single parent.
I started seeing a very schlumpy therapist who wore beaded ankle socks and moccasins. Instead of trying to calm me down, she insisted she could get my internships back! All she would have to do, she said, is call the coordinators and explain that I was suffering from an extreme amount of indecision, which was a symptom of OCD, which was a legitimate disorder under the DSM. They’d have to take me back, otherwise it would be discrimination. While I appreciated the fact that she wanted to remedy the situation, her apparent lack of understanding of the entertainment industry annoyed me more than her beaded ankle socks and moccasins. And she seemed genuinely uninterested in addressing the issues that had caused the severe spiral in the first place. So I stopped seeing her.
Instead, I went on various anxiety medications, officially gave up trying to be behind the scenes, and attempted to just write and perform my potentially amusing stories. Even if it meant sending my future kids to public schools in Brooklyn, where I’d probably want them to go anyway.
Excerpted from “Rejected” by Jon Friedman, introduction and compilation editor. Copyright © 2009 by Jon Friedman. Excerpted by permission of Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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