Chapter 5
Another early episode of Honeymoon Stage features a clip of Maggie from The Tiger Crew paired with old footage of Jason on the mound.
In order to establish our leading man and woman, we have to understand where they’ve come from.
In Maggie’s case, it is a stage with can lights and choreography that heavily involves the rotation of her elbows, other preteens in massively oversize sequined shirts and equally large grins.
Jason’s arm is also the star of his early career.
In home videos of his Little League games, he’s blurry in an aquamarine T-shirt, his mother overloud as she cheers behind the camcorder.
Shots of him on the mound when he played for the Phillies, people lined up in Dean jerseys while holding homemade signs.
Jason, on top of the world for the few years that he was starting.
And then you hear our show’s signature sad music—a couple of lines a guy in a studio plunked out in probably ten minutes on an electric piano—over a montage of Jason’s injury: that first time he stopped the game and walked off clutching his elbow, images from rehab with his arm stuck in ice, the comeback game when he threw seven scoreless innings.
And then the famous footage from a game three weeks later when his curveball went into the stands.
He squeezes his eyes shut, loosens up, and tries another.
He winces. The ball barely leaves his hand before the whole stadium knows from the look on his face that he’s done.
They don’t make him face the press until a few weeks later when he announces his early retirement.
“What will you do, now that baseball is over?” Jason sits alone behind the table with the microphone, and it’s clear he doesn’t know.
I kept talking with Gabe after our trip to Home Depot, at first under the guise of checking in on the release I knew he wasn’t going to sign, and then with no pretensions at all, simply because I liked talking to him.
Gabe had been the one to reach out the morning after our tow truck date with a tepid Hi.
sent to the work email address I had on my business card.
I was online, checking in with Lauren before heading out to Calabasas, but of course I had to pause getting ready for work to analyze his brevity with Celia and Jen.
“He wouldn’t have reached out if he didn’t want to talk to you,” Celia said, voice raised over the shower. “He probably doesn’t realize how weird it is to send an email with just hi and a period.”
“Is it weird?” Jen was brushing her teeth. “Or does it mean he knows grammar? Would you think it was weird if he had said it over AIM or MSN Messenger?”
Celia dropped her voice an octave to imitate Gabe. “‘Hey, hottie, loved getting plywood yesterday hope your bumper hasn’t fallen off from all the rough stuff I’ve done to your car.’ No punctuation.”
Jen spat into the sink. “‘I’m so excited to do rough stuff to you,’ comma, ‘if you know what I mean,’ period.”
“Ew.” I frowned. “You’ve ruined it.”
I didn’t respond until I was hunkered down with Dan in Video Village later that morning, email open as I messed around with spreadsheets.
Hey. Fun times with the tow truck yesterday. You changed your mind yet about my release? Then I made a little smiley face out of a parenthesis and colon, to let him know I was at least kind of kidding.
Yeah came back immediately. He must have also been at his computer. You know, I’ve actually decided why stop there? You can cast me as her personal assistant. Very good for my career.
I looked up at Dan, who was talking to someone via headset. I could continue this if I wanted to. I pictured Gabe, thought What the hell, and hit the ball back.
You never really filled me in on said career. How can I cast you if I don’t know your full range of talents?
Unicycle
Unicycle?
Yup, that’s all I’ve got.
I laughed out loud, which meant Dan noticed me, which meant I was sent off to xerox signs.
Ugh sorry, I’m at work. More detail please later. I gave him both my AIM screen name and my personal email.
Gabe wasn’t the first guy I’d flirted with in LA, but as the weeks went on, he was the most consistent.
Our conversations were unserious. We talked about his bandmates and the things that we found weird about LA.
We liked the pop-up street food, bemoaned the lack of refrigerators in most rental apartments.
Gabe told me his parents were in town and wanted to ride on a double-decker tour bus.
I told Gabe that I missed weather. He asked if I was only happy when it rained.
Oh I forgot you’re in the Kool Aid club.
It’s nice here, you should drink some.
He didn’t say much about his music, and he extended no invitations to come hear him play.
I did, however, complain about my own job.
As promised, it had taken over my life, which meant that I was much less focused on whatever was happening between us than I surely would have been had I still supported myself by walking famous dogs.
It also meant we struggled to find time to get together in person.
Things on set were nonstop, which was funny since there never seemed to be all that much happening.
On the few sets I’d sat in on, crews were under time pressure to get a particular shot or finish a take.
Someone was always yelling out Five more minutes, and there were people swooping in to touch up makeup just before the director yelled Action.
Things were either obviously in progress or finished or else, to everyone’s chagrin, still to come.
On Honeymoon Stage, we were rolling with the punches.
Nothing was ever finished, because nothing was ever planned.
Dan would be in Video Village keeping an eye on all the still cameras, and if he saw something he thought looked promising, he would round us all up to go in for cross coverage.
For every eight hours of shooting, the show would use about one minute of footage, which could be both a relief and a pain in the ass.
I was surprised to find how good I was at rolling with the punches.
I could pivot with the best of them, sometimes preempting Lauren in knowing how to feed into a cast member’s reaction or center a scene.
I’d put on muscle from all the equipment I’d been carrying, and though I hadn’t hit the gym in weeks, I felt good about my body.
I was competent and strong. When I called in sick with food poisoning, Lauren seemed truly distressed. The crew liked me. They needed me.
I had the most fun when we were off site.
Being part of the film and TV industry gave me access.
I liked exploring parts of LA that were previously off limits to me—restaurants with menu items I couldn’t pronounce, black cars that I couldn’t afford, charity golf outings and VIP rooms at exclusive clubs.
Jason and Maggie were going to Mexico for their anniversary, which would wrap up our season, and though I hadn’t been officially invited, I was angling to join.
Maggie traveled a lot on her own—to give concerts and film commercials and occasionally audition for TV or film—but she didn’t always bring along a crew.
The show, after all, was about her and Jason.
People wanted to see them together doing—or failing to do—normal married-couple things; they were less interested in her actual career.
This meant that when Maggie was at home, the crew was always on top of her.
We caught her doing crunches in her home gym or trying to sort laundry.
Her mother would visit, and they’d gossip about somebody’s boyfriend, using made-up names.
Occasionally she’d practice choreography, or screen an early cut of a music video, or sit scribbling down an idea for a song, all under the eyes of the cameras.
Often, she and Jason would sit together on the couch, watching baseball and bantering.
In their 1970s-style sunken living room, they had a wraparound sofa that could comfortably seat up to twenty people, and they’d lie with their legs intertwined while Jason dissed some player’s strategy and Maggie nodded along, pretending to care.
Maybe she actually did care. They seemed to watch a lot of baseball for a couple only one of whom liked the game.
About two months into my Honeymoon Stage tenure, I was at the house while Maggie and Jason got ready for a charity dinner—likely something for poor animals, which this town much preferred to poor people.
Jason had just gotten back from working out and was going to take a quick shower, and Maggie was already up in her room with her team.
One of the running jokes of the show was that Maggie was forever getting ready while Jason yelled up the stairs that it was majorly past time for them to go.
On-screen, this played as him pacing the front hall, growing progressively more frustrated.
In reality, he’d watch TV, or take a call, or once he even made eggs while the car idled out front and Maggie put on her finishing touches.
Maggie had her own personal hair-and-makeup people on call, and they were constantly in and out of the house.
Brent, Maggie’s hair guy, was a hoot. He had first come to LA to be an actor, and while he didn’t have the constitution for the regular rejection, his impressions were spectacular.
Sally Ann was always down to gossip, and between the two of them, they’d keep Maggie grinning through her prep.
Much of what they discussed was too dirty or salacious to air.
It gave me the feeling that the house was a safe space, that there was a circle of trust in which not all Maggie’s relationships were merely transactional.