The Situational Crush

I just got a beautiful email from someone who told me she loved my writing and remembered this piece in particular. I wrote it in 2006. I didn’t even remember it. I had no recollection of it until she wrote me. I went back and re-read it and tears of laughter streamed down my face. Thank you so much, letter-writer, for reminding me of this piece. I just got to re-live it. And thank you so much for the kind words about my work. It seriously means more than I can say.

I had what I call a “situational crush” on Kyle. I do that sometimes, if I’m bored and need to liven up my daily routine a bit. I’ll create a random crush on, oh, the guy who gives me my coffee every morning. So I can look forward to seeing him, have a flirty-flirt, and go on with my day unscathed. It breaks up the routine. I will also create a situational crush if I’m having a particularly great time in my life doing something that is out of the ordinary routine. Sometimes the situational crush will blossom into something significant – but more often than not, it’s just something to pass the time in a more pleasant way. I believe that a lot of actor marriage breakups begin as “situational crushes”. As in: Okay, I am making this movie in Mozambique, and I am out of my ordinary routine for 4 months, home is far far away, I am SO busy doing this movie … and so …. hmmm … my costar … let me just get a little crush on him to make my time here even MORE fun and sparkley and shimmery, etc. If you’re married, then the Mozambique situational crush can turn into a tabloid debacle – but if you’re not married? Have at it!!

Situational crushes don’t need to go anywhere. Situational crushes don’t need to be referred to, spoken about, or acknowledged. You do not ever need to declare yourself to your situational crush (ie: “I have a wicked crush on you. Will you please kiss me before I go insane?”) . Nothing even needs to HAPPEN with the situational crush. It is just there to be enjoyed, savored. Situational crushes are also good if you are bruised a bit from heartache, and don’t feel ready to risk it all again – and yet don’t want to traipse through the boroughs of Manhattan having sordid one-night stands. Because there is very little risk in the situational crush. You can pretend you’re 13 years old again (but without the baby fat, and crank calls, and horrific social rituals). You can have a crush without needing ANYthing from it. You can just enjoy the other person, and get a little stomach fluttery at the thought of seeing them … A situational crush can remind you, in key moments, in low moments, that you are still alive. That you are still capable of having those feelings again. Again: without the risk. Did I mention that part? Without the risk. That’s my favorite part.

I think sometimes people THINK they are having a situational crush … they THINK they can handle it … but then they get all nuts, and they ride a roller coaster of emotion … and they end up sobbing drunkenly at a party because the situational crush is now making out with the prop girl … and what about your feelings for him??? What do you do with that crushy feeling NOW?? Uhm, not that I’ve done that or anything.

You can mistake a situational crush for the real thing because the emotions are so intense. Especially if you’re in a vulnerable spot. You can mistake the sweep of 13 year old flirty-flirt for “soulmate comin’ towards ya”. This is the huge danger with the situational crush. You can get CRUSHED by the situational crush which defeats the whole purpose.

Situational crushes, basically, are not for amateurs.

I have honed my craft. I have it down to a science now. I may not know how to do many things but I know how to do THIS. I have slipped up a couple of times, but I treated those failures as learning experiences. As in: Oh. Okay. I truly thought he was my soulmate, when really – I’m just a wee bit bored right now and I love how he smiles at me when he hands me my beer … and I am mistaking that friendly bartender smile for true love … only because I am BORED and looking for excitement. (Again: that is just a hypothetical. Ahem.)

But Kyle? By the time I met Kyle, I was a true expert in this fine art. I knew what I was doing. And I knew it as I was doing it. I was having a particularly intense and important experience (working on my thesis project in grad school) and I wasn’t in love with anyone, or dating anyone … and I just felt that yearning to have a crush. I wanted to add romance to the mix desperately – just for excitement. Not to have anything HAPPEN. But just for FUN. To heighten everything. (withouttherisk. Member that part? withouttherisk)

And then along came Kyle, the stagehand, and after our first conversation I knew I had found my crush for the run of the show. I had been looking for someone – and voila, he appeared. I had been in the cloister of grad school for 3 years. I knew all the guys. I was either not interested in them, vaguely disgusted by them, full of white-hot hatred for them, or they were involved with someone else. I had my sometimes makeout buddy, but that was just par for the course, and I didn’t have a crush on HIM. That was just “needs fulfilled” and he was perfect in that role. (“Wanna come over and make out?” “Give me half an hour.”) But other than that, it was like being a senior in high school when the dances lose their shimmer and excitement because … uhm … who ya gonna meet that you haven’t met already??

If you don’t understand the lure of the situational crush yet – either your constitution is not cut out for it (and a lot of people are like that – nothing wrong with that – different strokes and all) or I haven’t explained it well enough. My interest in Kyle had no GOAL. It was the equivalent of meeting up with Keith M. in the hallways between class, and having a brief amusing conversation before the bell rang. I had no expectation that Keith M. and I would be Homecoming King and Queen. Or Jack and Diane. Or Brenda and Eddie. No. Seeing him in the hallways was something to look forward to, something that gave the monotony of high school a shimmer. Innocent. With no needs. Nothing put on it. It was nothing other than what it was: a crush. Beautiful. I think when we reach adulthood, with our experiences, our heartbreaks, we forget how to do that. There is nothing so lovely as an innocent crush.

And that’s what I had on Kyle. He was a stagehand, as I mentioned. He wore baggy battered jeans and big ruined Doc Martens. He had a beaten-up leather belt with tools attached to it, all the way around. Like Harriet the Spy. Kyle was the go-to man, as all stagehands should be.

“Kyle – I need to cross by back here in the dark … can I get some glow tape?” Kyle whips the glowtape roll off his belt and bites strips of it off – to place along the floor in the darkness so the blind actor can see her way.

“Kyle – any idea why this door is stuck? I need to throw it open when I enter but I always have to jerk at it!” Kyle whips a small oil can off his belt and oils the hinges so the door flings open.

“Kyle – I need brain surgery – can you remove the tumor before I have to go onstage?” Kyle whips out a scalpel from off his belt and begins to cut open the actress’ head.

He could do ANYthing – and every tool he needed was on that belt.

Kyle was shlumpy. Blurpy. The epitome of “my type”. I do not believe he ever darkened the doors of a gym. But he was sturdy. He could lift entire flats by himself, he could carry an entire single bed on his back (I saw him do it), but he would never be seen pumping iron somewhere. He wore thick Elvis Costello glasses, he was pale – pale like some small glowworm you’d find under a rock – he had a shock of curly blonde hair – and he was from Alabama so he had a mellifluous accent. Not to the people from Alabama, to be sure, but to me it was a beautiful accent. He also was absolutely NUTS. He would show up at cast parties, having changed out of his battered jeans – into black leather pants. He would dance so hard that sweat would literally fly off of his golden locks as he gyrated around. He would do copious shots of tequila in the kitchen with Anya, the gorgeous actress from Russia with the nosejob and the Brazilian wax who weighed 63 pounds. But then there he would be, the next day, in his battered jeans, marking out glow tape all over backstage for the blundering night-blind actors. Kyle was WILD.

Perfect for a situational crush.

I would be sitting in the house, during tech rehearsal, waiting for them to call me – and he would make funny banter-y comments to me as he strolled by (carrying a damn bed on his back, or whatever). He always said Hello. I cherished those moments. Let it just be said here, so we’re clear: I was so BUSY, and so all-consumed with my project … that I didn’t want to get all involved in a love affair. I wasn’t trying to make anything happen. I didn’t give him a second thought outside of our interactions. That would have defeated my purpose. I knew that I was going through a once-in-a-lifetime thing: my thesis project!! And it was, to put it mildly, kind of a struggle to make it all happen. I was consumed with my work. I didn’t need any complications, any distractions. But to fully enjoy, in a stomach-fluttery way, Kyle’s flirty-flirts with me as he staggered by beneath an armoire? Hell yes.

I don’t want to make this into some big build-up. Because the moment I am moving towards probably lasted less than a second – maybe a second – if that. But if you’re going to have a situational crush, if you’re going to decide to focus your 10 minutes of free time a day on some random person – then it might as well end up in a moment of utter perfection. A moment of, dare I say it, art. I have always made my love affairs into art. Maybe it’s just a matter of perception. How I see things. Like Meryl Streep’s character in Postcards says, “I want life to be art.” So do I. And you know what? More often than not, it is. It’s just how I see it. Sometimes it is an unbearable burden. Because then every random guy I meet becomes a piece of art. But I can’t help it. That’s how I see it. That’s how I make my way through the maze. My encounters with these people are art. What Kyle did to me was art. I think “art” in its purest form, whatever form it takes, is perfect. That’s what I’m leading up to here. Not a makeout session, or a relationship, or a love affair – all of those things which may be beautiful, they may be fun and exciting – but they are always flawed. What I am leading up to here in this story is a moment. Just a moment. And a moment can be perfect.

I guess that’s why I remember it. No other reason to remember Kyle, the classic situational crush .. I’ve had a million of them, and 99% of them I don’t remember – but I will ALWAYS remember Kyle … because the whole thing culminated in a perfect second of art.

I was playing Maggie in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall, based on his marriage with Marilyn Monroe. It was a rigorous part. I had done a shitload of work on it … and by the time we opened, all I needed to do was just sit back, relax, and be present onstage with my scene partner. But there was most definitely a certain headspace I needed to be in to do this part – it took up a TON of space in my life. I couldn’t just roll into the theatre half hour before curtain, slap some makeup on, and go onstage. Or maybe I could have … it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if I HADN’T had that time … I’m sure I would have stepped up – but where I was at at that time in my development: getting ready for the show that night took up half my day … at around 1 or 2 pm, I’d start to get into the headspace of Maggie, and then just keep it percolating until curtain time. Not boiling over, of course not. Boiling over was for the audience. But the percolating always started early in the day. I’ve done parts where it takes me 5 minutes to get into the headspace of the character. Maggie – just like her character in the play – took up a TON of room. And I gave her that room.

I had two costumes. Now this will be important later.

My first costume was: a skintight champagne colored dress. It was zippered up the back and it was made of a thick almost upholster-y fabric. Very early 1960s. It was gorgeous. I had on little white kid gloves. I had on pumps. I also had on a head scarf over my bouffant-ish hairdo. There was jewelry involved. I wore cat-eyed sunglasses. It was a perfect outfit. Based on a couple of different Marilyn Monroe stills taken by Sam Shaw. I gave that image and a couple others to the costume shop – and they executed my version of it brilliantly. It’s one of my most favorite costumes I have ever worn. I don’t mind saying that I looked perfect – and by that I mean: exactly what I dreamed. That’s what you want your costume to be. You want to be able to step into your own dream of the character when you put it on. When I put that dress on – it did half my work for me. I didn’t have to turn myself inside out, or “work” on Maggie. The dress did most of it.

My second costume was much simpler: big striped men’s pajamas. Bare feet. Nothing else. This was Maggie coming unglued. This was Maggie at 3 a.m. In her sugar daddy’s pajamas. Drunk. Insomniac. Desperate. Terrified. In a hotel room. She has no home. She is famous. But she has NO ONE TO CALL at 3 a.m. She is beloved by the masses but she is the loneliest person in the world. She doesn’t even have her own pajamas. The pajamas were my idea. The original costume sketches came to me and I saw the revealing negligee that had been designed and I thought: Uhm. No. That’s not right, it’s too on the nose. It has to be counter to what you expect. The way I saw it was: she’s not a sexpot – like her public image – she’s a lonely little girl, swimming in pajamas that are too big for her. Men’s pajamas. Which, even unexplained, give a kind of pathetic air to her – also sort of … it hints at the casting couch which is near Maggie at all times. She deals with the casting couch, she accepts it, she uses it … but … at 3 a.m. – all of her choices start to catch up with her. NONE of this is said in the script – but I thought men’s pajamas would point to that subtext. You wouldn’t NEED the words.

I had a 12 second costume change between these two costumes. I had to go from the full dress to the men’s pajamas in 12 seconds – and be back onstage in time to pick up my first cue. All of this would happen in the front lobby of Circle in the Square Downtown and I would be assisted in this feat by two members of the costume crew. I would exit from my first scene and then stand totally still as they whipped the dress off me and put the pajamas on. All I would have to do, pretty much, would be to step out of my shoes and then lift each one of my legs into the pajama bottoms. I would not be in charge of any of the dressing itself. Not enough time. We worked it out during the first tech. We had our own costume-change rehearsal, it needed to be run as its own thing. Everyone had their job. Eileen would unzip my dress, I would begin to wriggle out of it, she would whip it off me. Meanwhile, Anne would be squatting beside me, holding open the pajama legs, all scrunched up, so I would just step my foot into the hole and she would pull them up. Zoom! At the same time, Eileen will have tossed the dress aside and held open the pajama top for me, I hold out my arms, she puts my arms through the sleeves. I buttoned it myself, only 2 buttons. Off with the earrings. And then BOOM! Onstage for the next scene! Completely changed! 12 seconds!

Of course, during that frenzied costume change, I am also silently gearing up for the next scene, which required a completely different mood than the first scene.

First scene? I am wandering through the park, I’m kind of a lost little girl, I meet this man, I’m overwhelmed by his kindness, I attach myself to him (a stranger) forevermore. So first scene I needed to be totally open, and guileless. An innocent. There is a sense that she could be taken advantage of at any moment. A softness. A vulnerability.

Second scene? Totally different. She’s drunk. And it is a couple of years later. She is now a celebrity, famous. But she has nightmares. And she is terrified of the closet. And she is having a full-blown panic attack when the scene starts. So you get the change that needs to occur within Maggie in between those scenes? It’s massive.

But I had done all my homework, we had rehearsed it like crazy so I did my emotional transition as Eileen and Anne were whipping clothes off of me and throwing clothes onto me. I lifted my feet up, wriggled my body a bit to get the dress off over my hips, lifted my foot up, lifted my other foot up, held my arms out, buttoned 2 buttons … all going into my Scene 2 Mindspace.

I have strayed far from Kyle, my blurpy crush, but I needed to do the set-up – because the moment of perfection would be meaningless without the set-up.

I would arrive at the theatre early and go to the dressing room. I was usually the first one there. I would set my hair in a leisurely manner. I would take the curlers out. Do a bit of teasing. Spraying. No rush. All the time I’m moving slowly into performance mode. I would put on my makeup. It was a ritual. I put on my eyelashes. Then on came the costume. By this point, it was half-hour. So all the other actors are arriving. But I’m done. I would put on the finishing touches and then go out into the backstage area, quiet, shadowy, blue-lit, deserted, and sit in a chair that I had put back there. I could hear the audience start to come in out in the theatre. This was my quiet meditative gearing-up time.

Okay so now we MUST bring Kyle back in because he was such a big part of this blue-lit backstage time.

It was his quiet time as well. He had nothing to do. All glow tape had been placed. All door hinges had been oiled. All beds carried to their proper backstage spot. All brain surgery performed. So he just hung out on the sidelines, a dark hovering presence, quiet, alert. Once the curtain went up, this man would be busier than ANY of us. Moving furniture into place, striking props, sliding flats from here to there … but for now? He waited. As I waited.

He’s used to theatre people (after all, this is his job), so the first night that I sat in that chair backstage, he whispered to me, through the blue light, “Break a leg. Is it okay if I talk to you?”

Stomach fluttery crushy-crush. “Sure. It’s okay. We’ll have to stop talking in 10 minutes though.” (Like I said: Maggie was a demanding bitch!)

So every night it was a ritual: I would come backstage before anybody else. I sat in the blue light wearing my va-va-voom champagne-colored dress, my pumps, my head scarf, my sunglasses, and he would stand right in front of me, fidgety in his blurpy body (he had a lot of excess energy) and he would crack jokes and make me laugh. He flirted with me. He would silently show me his new “dance moves” which were too funny to even describe, and I would whisper at him, “Please stop …” because I was afraid I’d start to laugh so hard I would cry my fake eyelashes off. He was so unselfconscious. I loved that about him. He was a perfect situational crush. No demands.

Then, I knew when we would have to stop talking because the noise of the audience out front was more intense, louder, curtain-time was probably 10 minutes away, and I needed to just do my actress thing so I would whisper, “Okay. We have to stop talking now.” And suddenly, he would disappear. He’s an experienced stagehand. Actors have their process just like he has his. It takes both sides to make this show happen. Stagehands (good ones) keep doing what they have to do, double-checking props, murmuring to the stage manager on headset, stepping around the actors doing their silent thing. It’s a beautiful collaboration.

Kyle totally got that. I didn’t have to patiently explain to him, “Okay … you need to stop talking to me after the 15-minute call to places … because I need to get into performance mode …” I only had to say once, “Okay. No more talking” and POUF. He disappeared in a cloud of smoke. hahahaha But that was our ritual, every night for the run of the show. A whispered hilarious flirty-flirt ridiculous conversation, bathed in the dark-blue and midnight-black of backstage – all colors disappeared – my skin glowing blue – the lenses of his glasses reflecting bluely at me – his pale glowworm skin taking on a bluish tone – and the rest of his body swathed in blackness … He would make me laugh. He kept me loose. I didn’t tense up. I just sat back there, and enjoyed the 5 or 10 minutes of innocent banter. It was one of those small gifts of the run of the show. It’s funny the things you remember. I might have gotten overly serious if I hadn’t had Kyle to distract me in those moments. I might have over-thought things. But he and I would just sit back there, giggling about, oh, Calvin and Hobbes … and it was perfect.

Like I said before: relationships are never perfect. But situational crushes can be – IF YOU RECOGNIZE IT AS A SITUATIONAL CRUSH and don’t try to make it into something more. It’s the “something more” that causes all the problems.

Now comes the split-second of utter perfection. Since it was a situational crush and I recognized it as such – I didn’t start behaving like a lovesick girl around him. I didn’t hover near him at a party, hoping to talk to him. I didn’t angst about it. I didn’t think: “Hmmm. Maybe this can go somewhere!” (Good thing I didn’t – because it turns out the entire time we had our blue-lit flirty-flirt, the entire run of the show – he was having a TORRID love affair with someone – and it actually ended up being a long-lasting relationship … so I would have just got my heart broke, and who needs that? Not from a situational crush. No no no.)

But the whole thing culminated in a moment of such … almost cinematic perfection … that I still think about it sometimes, and it always makes me laugh. It makes me thankful that the moment happened. Because … what are the odds? How many people EVER get to experience such a thing when they are having a situational crush?? This could ONLY happen in the theatre – where fantasy and reality don’t just blend. They are totally the same thing.

The show was up and running. Everything was going beyond my wildest dreams. And one night – after the first scene – I came rushing off through the audience into the empty lobby – where Eileen and Anne stood, frozen like statues with my next costume in hand (Anne already squatting near the ground, holding out my pajama bottoms). I stood in my position, kicked off my shoes – Eileen went to unzip my dress – and immediately: terror. The zipper stuck. It stuck. Now we only had 12 seconds. So every second was essential. I felt the zipper stuck – we all felt it – I heard Eileen murmur, “Shit” which was enough to send panic flood-waves reverberating through the lobby. The dress was so tight that I could not pull it up over my head, I could not wriggle out of it – I was trapped in my champagne-colored creation. What follows feels like it took 15 or 20 seconds – but it honestly could only have been 2 or 3. How is that possible? So much happened – and I remember it all, every moment. It was Eileen murmuring “Shit” that escalated everything. Okay – Eileen is murmuring “Shit”?? We’re in big trouble. The next scene started with me. I couldn’t be late. How could I get out of this dress? Eileen kept yanking at my zipper. I wanted to RIP MY DAMN DRESS OFF WITH MY BARE HANDS. I immediately was out of my mind. “Oh my God … ohmigod ohmigod … get it off me … get it off me …” Eileen kept yanking at the zipper – I was wriggling around – the music cue out front was nearing the moment where I was supposed to enter … Someone save me!! How will this all end???? I MUST GET ONSTAGE. I would have had to do the second scene in my dress – if push came to shove – which would have ruined the entire effect and made for a very confusing audience experience. (“Uhm … it’s 2 years later … but she’s still in that same dress??”)

There were other actors in the lobby waiting around to make their entrances and they sensed the panic in the 3 of us, and they all moved back, watching nervously. (Funny – my friend Eileen said to me later, “Somehow I just knew – that when you went on for your second scene after that disaster – it was gonna be so damn good … Like: Uh-oh. Look out.” )

The zipper-struggle felt interminable – Anne had given up her squat-position and had joined Eileen behind me – looking at the zipper, trying to yank it out of its stuck position. I was almost whimpering. I admit it. I have never felt so trapped. “oh god oh god please get it off me get it off me ….”

At that moment, Kyle entered the lobby, in the middle of his scene change. He was carrying a bench and a lamp and a bureau. He was basically loaded down with furniture. Eileen hissed, “Kyle – her dress …”

In a flash, Kyle had put down all the stuff he was carrying – and was there – behind me – Eileen whispered, “It’s stuck – the zipper …” Kyle held onto my arm, whispered to me, “Hold still, baby,” (uhm, anything you say, sir) – and I saw him whip his retractable razor blade off of his belt – his awesome belt – I heard the click of the razor come out – Eileen whispered, “Don’t move” – and in one quick movement, one flashing movement of his wrist – he sliced my dress off of me – down the seam so the costume designer wouldn’t have to remake the entire dress. Let me reiterate: I stood as still as I could (it took a superhuman act of strength not to wriggle), and Kyle – the guy I had a crush on – the guy I felt all stomach-fluttery about – sliced my dress off of me with a razor blade.

I think lots of people enjoy simple little crushes – with a bartender they see once a week, with a co-worker who comes in from out of town once a month, with the guy at the corner deli who sells the newspaper … But I think very few women actually get to experience having their crush slice off their dress with a razor blade. It was one of the most delicious erotic ridiculous moments in my entire life. Of course I didn’t have time to revel in what had just happened. We were all too intent on just getting me out onstage.

But there was Kyle – a savior with a tool belt – and then whoosh – my dress came off me – and then on went the pajama top the pajama bottoms and I raced onstage – absolutely hysterical – and yes, Eileen was right. I was in such a crazy state that pretty much anything I did in that second scene was correct.

It was only later that I could linger over, in my mind, the absolute perfection of that moment. Kyle and I laughed about it at the cast party later that night – we re-enacted it 5 times, we regaled everyone with the story, we told it in tandem (“Okay -now you tell YOUR part!!”) – it was a great story – one of my best “quick change” stories that I have. Being cut out of my dress.

Oh – and Kyle’s cut was so accurate and so sure – that all the costume designer had to do was put the damn thing under the needle again and sew the seam back up. Kyle, in that fevered moment of urgency, with a wriggling panicky actress under his hands, hadn’t cut into that fabric. He had 5 million things going on in his head at one time. First of all: he was in the middle of a set change. He had 3 other things to do before his OWN job was complete. But an emergency came up and he had just the tool for the job. He had to get me out of the dress – that was priority #1 – and if he had to rip the fabric, then so be it. But Kyle also had in his head the costume designer’s priorities – so he aimed for the seam – and sliced down it in a straight line. The dude amazes me. The whole thing amazes me to this day.

To be sliced out of my dress in ANY romantic situation is an awesome thing to contemplate. It’s like a movie. Where people don’t worry about fabric, or whether or not you can replace something. RIP IT OFF.

Like I said in the beginning of this essay, this is not a story with a big finish. This is a story about a breathless moment of almost baffling perfection, gone in a flash, not meant to last … but it has a reverb in my memory. I was not ever hurt by Kyle. My crush stayed where it needed to be in order for me to enjoy it. But in one tremblingly alive moment, in one panicky moment of need, he – in the most matter-of-fact, and most gentle way possible – holding onto my arm to keep me still – whispering in his soft commanding Alabama accent, “Hold still, baby” – sliced off my dress with a razor blade.

If you’re gonna have a situational crush, you might as well have one who can do THAT!

I want life to be art. And in that moment it was.