I was about to drop to my knees and propose to Liza but I just had to tell her about the game with Clyde first.
"I'm one half away from winning a one on one game on the Garden floor with Walt Frazier."
"Who?" She asked apologetically. It was okay. Even that couldn't knock one knot of wind out of my sails this day.
"He's one of the 50 greatest basketball players of all time. He was the guard for the Knicks in the seventies when they won their championships and he was my childhood idol."
"How do you get to play him?" She was getting excited now.
"I'm in a charity auction war with other people watching the Knick game. It's halftime now, I'm leading. Whoever has the highest bid when the final buzzer goes off, wins!"
"Wow! That's so exciting! How much have you bid?"
"Sixteen-five."
"What?" She didn't understand.
"It's at sixteen-five right now."
"Sixteen dollars and five cents?" She was so cute. Naïve, from Seattle.
"Sixteen thousand five hundred, honey." Her face slowly dropped,
"What's wrong?" I asked, my stomach seizing, sensing what was coming. Red blotches started forming on her face and neck which meant tears weren't far off and I wanted to punch her in the face. She started crying.
"If we have kids would you just gamble away thousands of dollars on a basketball game?" She was gone.
"It isn't a 'basketball game,' it's me playing my childhood idol on the floor of Madison Square Garden and the money goes to a kid's charity. And if we had kids and I made a million dollars a year like I made this year, yeah I would spend it on whatever I want. Would I take food out of our kids' mouths? Of course not. If I only made twenty thousand dollars in a year would I spend 16 thousand on this? Of course not." She was gone.
"My grandfather was a gambling addict and I just can't handle this." A fucking tsunami on my parade. I left and went home. We broke up a couple months later. I was on my knee with a ring in my hand and she said "yes," but then pulled her hand away in the strangest, sudden, knee jerk way when I tried to put the ring on her hand. Then she relaxed and let me. She called her mother which seemed to put even more doubt in her mind and we had to have a "talk." She explained she didn't want to stay in New York and wanted to move home and didn't want to "carry baby carriages up subway steps," which apparently we would have to do since I was a degenerate gambling loser who frittered away money on kids' charities. She said she wanted to think about it and that's what the engagement period was for.
"No, an engagement means your betrothed to your beloved and you're planning what color to make the bride's maid's dresses. It's not to decide if you're going to get married. That's what dating is for. If you say you need time to decide then we're not engaged yet and you need to take the ring off." She did and quickly handed it back to me.
"Well my parents were engaged and unengaged three times before they got married." I didn't really get her point.
"Yeah, not a goal I aspire to match." I left and never saw her again. After two-and- half years of Liza repeatedly asking when I would be ready to get married, I finally asked and she said "no."
Well "yes" and then "no."
I had been engaged for an hour. The closest I've ever come.
Three months later I was flipping through the channels and landed on my old pal Conan's show. Hey, no hard feelings. I had been on his show for each of my two first films. When my publicist called to get me booked to promote my third film I was amazed to find that due to my last appearance, one I thought went swimmingly, I was banned for life. Apparently I was abrasive and confrontational.
In my last appearance, Chris Rock was on before me. And though I loved him and knew he was going to try and bogart my segment, a move I would have made were I on first, I couldn't allow it to happen. He jumped in on Conan's first question to me. I turned to him armed.
"Excuse me Mr. Already Famous, you wanna give someone else a chance?" The crowd ooh'd as if I was now one up in a playground dis contest. I was so straight with my delivery Chris actually thought I was pissed.
"Sorry, man," he said apologetically.
"I'm just kidding. I love you and that's a snappy suit." He did look sharp.
"You give him a hard time coming on my show dressed like that?" Conan barked at me. I was doing my "shabby chic" look with a rumpled linen shirt and beat up black leather jacket.
"Uh, it's Agnes B? A famous French designer? Ever hear of her?" Conan looked at me and said...
to be continued
Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 2:23 PM