Angry Conversations with God (19 page)

I knew the lingo—I could fake it. But then the guest speaker shared her story. “Sophie” was just like me: my age, churchgoer,
faker, drunk. When she called on me to share, I burst into tears. It was the bottom-feeders who came over and lifted me up:
“It’s okay, sweetie. Just take it one day at a time.” Sophie came over and gave me her number. I promised her I’d be there
tomorrow.

At four p.m. I called Sophie in tears. It had been a frustrating day. I’d been driving all over town. Coming home I neared
the supermarket and lost control of the wheel. Someone took over my body, went into the store, and bought a single-serving
bottle of crappy Chablis and drank it. Why did I drink when I wanted so badly not to? Maybe the day was too much. Maybe I
was scared. Maybe I was a loser.

“It’s okay,” Sophie said. “You didn’t drink because you’re a loser. You drank because you’re an alcoholic.”

I was hit with a one-two punch of relief and horror. Relieved I wasn’t a loser; horrified I was…an alcoholic? No, no! I drank
responsibly for thirteen years. I only binge-drank for two years. That’s only, like, two-thirteenths of my drinking life.
Couldn’t I stop for a while and go back to normal drinking later?

“Do you want to risk hitting a lower bottom?” Sophie asked.

I’d started with food. Now it was booze. What was next? Heroin?

I met Sophie at that bottom-feeder meeting again the next day. And the next. And the day after that. I stayed sober for a
week. Then two. I liked the program’s spirituality. I couldn’t handle church yet. But they waffled about God. They said I
could pick whatever god I wanted, as if the Supreme Being had a job vacancy? How lame, I scoffed. They may have been sober,
but I knew the real God.

Then one day a huge thug got up to share. He’d gone to a party, drank and used, got into a fight, and drew a gun. Nobody got
hurt, but he could have killed someone. He dissolved into tears, some guys got up and hugged him, and the next guy got up
to share. As if that kind of brutal honesty happened all the time in those rooms. It did. Had I ever been that honest? No,
I wasn’t
really
bulimic; I only threw up
sometimes.
I didn’t drink
that
long; I only smoked ultralights; I knew the
real
God. Know what I was? A fake. A fake who didn’t think she was a fake. Meanwhile, these bottom-feeders with their waffly gods
were more honest and repentant than I was. I kept going.

I got thirty days of sobriety. The alcohol was out of my system. I was no longer numb. I started to feel what I’d been drinking
about. Now I understood why I wanted to be numb. I still missed Pedro. I felt violated by that Roidhead. I missed being close
to God. I didn’t feel safe in church. I had degraded my body and soul. I had squandered two years of grad school. I had lost
a shot at an agent—she liked my writing and I drank it away. I had drunk the last three years of my life away!

Why had I ditched God again? Then I remembered.
One: The church preached a gospel of passivity.
Maybe. Or had I picked passive churches to fit my preexisting passivity? After all, sometimes it was easier to wait on God
and then blame him for the outcome.
Two: The church screwed me up about sex.
Maybe
my
church and
my
family had tweaked my ideas about sex. But even if I ignored every Scripture warning against premarital sex—which would take
a lot of ignorance—I could not ignore the effects in my own life. Sex erased my objectivity (which identified Butler as a
player). It erased my self-respect (which happens when you get involved with a player). And it erased my sense of direction
(which happens when you become glued to some James Bond wannabe instead of following what God wants for your purpose and direction).
The church didn’t screw me up: I did it all by myself!
Three: The church held me back artistically.
Yeah. But now I squandered my imagination on fantasizing that Butler cared about me. I wasted my brain cells on alcohol.
I used my creativity to find ways to abuse my creativity. I had wasted three years of my life, and they were never coming
back.

Rudy sat silently, waiting for me to speak.

Susan: Aren’t you going to quote me that verse about God redeeming the time or restoring the years the locusts have eaten?

Rudy: (Shaking his head) Too often we quote those verses to get God to erase our blunders. What if you had driven drunk, crashed
your car, and become paralyzed? God could restore your emotional life, but you’d never get your legs back.

Susan: And I’ll never get those years back.

Rudy: No, you won’t. (After a moment) How do you think God felt through this?

Susan: Please don’t. Not yet. I can’t face him.

Rudy: You can’t face his ire, or you can’t face his love?

Susan: I can’t face myself. My first concern isn’t over the pain I caused him; it’s over what I lost. I can’t even repent
with a clean heart.

Rudy: If your heart was clean, you wouldn’t need to repent. You’ve got to talk to him.

If I closed my eyes I might see the Nice Jesus, brokenhearted. I might see God profoundly (and rightly) disappointed. I left
my eyes open and stared at the carpet.

Susan: I’m sorry, God. I know I screwed up. I blamed you for what happened at that church. But what I did to myself was far
worse. It’s okay if you’re angry. It’s okay if you hate me, because I hate myself.

God: Susan, stop.

Susan: Stop apologizing?

God: You apologized years ago and I forgave you. This is the same thing you did when you were eighteen: “I know you’re angry
and you hate me; I’ll do everything right so you’ll love me.” I didn’t hate you. And I never loved you because you were good.
I loved you because you were mine.

Susan: So you didn’t see anything in me worth loving?

God: No, Susan. I refuse to let you characterize me like that.

Rudy: Nice answer. May I say something?

God and Susan: Please.

Rudy: Susan, I think you keep apologizing because you haven’t accepted forgiveness. You haven’t given it either.

Susan: Like forgiving Butler? There’s nothing to forgive. He never advertised himself as anything but a rake. It’s my own
fault.

Rudy: That’s not forgiveness; that’s just shifting the blame.

Susan: What else am I supposed to do? Say you steal my money. Either you have to pay me back or I eat the loss. But somebody’s
got to feel the hit. Forgiveness feels like I’m supposed to let the other person get away with it. God must be okay with what
happened to me because I’m not worth making it right.

Rudy: Sin is never okay, Susan. Sin cost you a part of yourself. Sin cost Jesus his
life.
Forgiveness means you turn the burden of justice over to God. Let him take it. You can’t mete out justice yourself.

Susan: Look, I don’t want to punish Butler or my dad or those churches. But if I let go, then the losses will finally be real.
Irretrievable, irredeemable.

Rudy: Aren’t they real enough already?

Susan: Where do I take the loss? Where does it end?

God: Oh, Susan. You know the answer.

I did. It was the same place my mother took her grief every Communion Sunday. It was in the bread and the wine. It was in
the body and the blood. It was there in Jesus—not in his sober face but in the marks on his hands.

BEFORE I MOVE ON I SHOULD RECAP MY LIFE AS A PROFESSIONAL
actor. Only 2 percent of SAG actors were able to make a living just from their acting wages, and I was in that 2 percent.
Granted, there was a galactic divide between my income and that of, say, Julia Roberts. But I booked one day on a commercial
and earned forty grand in residuals. I dissed those mindless commercials, but they made the schlepping a lot more palatable.
In the end, I survived on my acting wages—that and the encouragement I got from industry insiders and friends.

“Why don’t you have your own sitcom?” asked a costar on
Seinfeld.
“It’s just a matter of time,” a director said. Church people had more churchy ways of saying it: “I see God’s hand on you.…The
Lord is going to use you in a mighty way. You will stand before kings and princes.” Biblical or secular, they prophesied success
and I lived on those promises. (And the residuals.)

But there were heartbreaks too: getting cut from
PT&A,
nearly landing a TV series that proceeded to get canceled, the
Addams Family
nightmare, quitting the Groundlings and seeing my friends on SNL.…Maybe it was bad luck or bad timing. Church people had
more churchy ways of saying that too: “You aren’t ready.…Maybe you love acting more than the Lord.” And my personal favorite:
“God protected you from success.” Please. He should be so negligent.

I often wondered: Should I try harder, or not try at all? If God closed a door, should I wait for him to open a window? Or
was it time to play “Expunge the Mystery Sin” and wait for the trapdoor to drop open?

Just when I was ready to give up, another job came along. “Praise Jesus, a sign from the Lord!” Sometimes it seemed like a
sign; sometimes it seemed like just another job. And sometimes I wondered if it would have been easier if God never opened
the door. I never quite got to the inner sanctum of regular employment. It often felt like God had merely let me into a foyer
where I could hear others playing my note in another room, with no way to get to the music. And that’s really what I wanted
to do. I wanted to play my note. I wanted to do the thing that made me feel alive. The fact that I felt most alive on TV in
front of millions of people was beside the point, wasn’t it?

I answered an ad in the
Hollywood Reporter
reading, “BIG LAUGHS! LOW PAY!” Les had been the head writer on
The Tonight Show
;
Love, American Style
; and many other classic sitcoms before retiring. I went to work for him balancing his books, paying bills, and organizing
years and years of jokes.

Les had a gap between his two front teeth that gave him a perpetually comical look, as if he found the whole world ridiculous.
Maybe he did, because his house was filled with silliness: plastic frogs at the front door that ribbeted when anyone approached,
gumball machines, rubber band-propelled airplanes—toys to delight children and annoy adults. Les doctored every expletive
with a flourish. “Oh, shit…
as you would say.
” I started laughing again around Les. He was the nicest, funniest, most encouraging man I had ever met. And Les was an atheist.

Ironically, he loved to talk to me about God. He asked questions, listened, and offered his own thoughts, always with respect
and a smile. “You believe all that stuff because you’re a naturally good person.”

“You should have met me two years ago.”

Les also loved my writing. I brought him stories, spec scripts, and the essays I started writing after I got sober. “I like
your essays much better than your scripts,” Les said flatly.

“Why? Are my scripts that bad?”

“No. Your essays are that good. I don’t suffer fools, Susan. Write more essays.”

“But what can I do with them?”

“Beats me. I’ve been out of the business too long. But you’re a terrific writer. Keep writing.”

Les had been accurate about the job. It was low pay and big laughs. But he didn’t advertise how valuable it would prove to
be. It had been years since I’d had a tough, loving mentor who heard my note and encouraged me to play it.

Writing essays and working for Les were two good things I did for myself that year I got sober. The other was to get a cat.
Honey had been abandoned. Pick her up and she purred—she knew where she had come from and was grateful. It was good to have
someone to stay sober for and remind me what gratitude looked like.

I also did myself a favor and skulked back into church. Gwen was trying out a new place in Malibu. I hated it. “This is like
Baywatch
Goes Biblical,” I complained.

Gwen was more forgiving. “Yes, the people look like Barbie and Ken, the pastor is arrogant, and the music is too hip. But
I want to be around Jesus on Sundays.” Gwen was a schoolteacher, not an addictive, perfectionist
arteest.
I gritted my teeth and went. Even at its worst, it was better than sleeping off a hangover.