LABELED: Podcast Girl by Timmy L'Heureux
The following story is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
I work at a sketch comedy theatre as a Stage Manager and I do scene changes between sketches. Basically I’m a ninja in the dark moving scene furniture. I dance like no one’s watching. Except, everyone is actually watching, no one can see me though because there is a live band playing cover songs and I’m wearing stage blacks. Actually, I don’t wear black, I wear dark blue jeans and a navy T-shirt.
I had to work a show on Valentines Day and I fell during a scene change. The sketch ended, black out, I opened the comedy door and ran full speed across the stage. I tripped and fell over a black futon couch. Thing is, I set the couch and knew full well it was there. Just in this moment I forgot. My body slammed hard on my side and it knocked the wind out of me. The guys in the tech booth said they heard my body slam onto the stage floor over the sound of the band.
It took me a second before I could get up. I had to figure out how badly injured I was before I could move. Slowly I got up and assessed my situation and finished the scene change.
I went home that night in pain and iced my left knee, my ribs, and my right arm/shoulder. My ribs hurt the most. You don’t realize how much you use your rib cage until its injured and you can barely move. Everything makes it hurt. Laughing. Couching. Getting up. Sitting down. Laying on my side or my stomach.
Earlier that day I sent a picture of a rose to a girl I had a crush on. Let’s call this girl Cat. I know Cat from an improv class we took together. I got Cat’s number a few nights previous at a bar with some of our other improv friends. One of these friends is important in this story. Let’s call her Jory. I even asked Jory if I should tell Cat that I liked her. She said go for it.
The text said, “I have a crush on you, your secret admirer.” She responded pretty quickly, intrigued. We texted back and forth for a while until she finally figured it out. I told her I was having a party at my house tomorrow night and that she should come. She said she would.
Friday night. Party at my house for my two neighbors whose birthdays it was. One of my neighbors, we’ll call her Lizzy, I had a love affair on and off again on our birthdays. Not every year but often enough that it was a thing. And just at Christmas Lizzy and I hooked up and then she said she had feelings for me and I said that I didn’t. So, there’s that to add to this story.
Cat, Jory and a few other friends from the improv class came to the party. First thing Cat does is jump on me. She has no idea that I’m injured. It hurt so bad. I told her that I had fallen the night before but played down the amount of pain I was in. Then Jory ran off and made out with one of my other neighbors. Let’s call this neighbor Seven.
Eventually, Cat and I find ourselves on my neighbor Lizzy’s couch and I just come out with it. I tell Cat that I have a crush on her and she says, “No, don’t like me.”
“I can’t help it. I think you’re beautiful..”
Cat proceeds to tell me not to like her, that she’s crazy, but her body language is saying something else. We are getting close. Right then my neighbor Seven walks into the apartment and hits me in the balls so hard. I fall to the ground, on my bad side of course, and collapse in pain. Seven announces to the party, “somebody paid me a dollar to do that.”
Instantly I knew who paid him to do that, my other neighbor, Huck. Huck is Lizzy’s roommate. Huck was always doing things like this to me when I was around a girl that I wasn’t making a move on. Once, Huck threw a melon at my front door when I was drunk with a girl and wasn’t making a move. I did not hook up with that girl.
So, I took Huck’s advice this time and kissed Cat. Meow. It was hot. She kissed me back and we made out on the couch for a while. We were that drunk couple at a party shamelessly making out on the couch. It was a dream come true for me.
About an hour or so later Jory says she’s leaving. Since Cat and Jory came together, Cat says she going to go with her, but then says that I should come with. So I did. I left the party at my apartment complex, hopped a bus and went back to her place.
Interior. Cat’s Bedroom. Night. On the wall is a picture of Commander Riker. My crush was complete. I liked this girl. Cat sits me down on the bed and we start to make out and fall on our sides. On my bad side, of course. I did my best to pretend. I’m an actor. I can perform through this. Nope. Everything I did hurt. Needless to say things did not happen. Like so many times before, I did not seal the deal. Then she passed out in my arms.
I couldn’t sleep because of the pain. The next morning was awkward. We cuddled a little but it hurt. Then she was trying to get tickets for Comic Con It was weird. We didn’t even kiss. Then I finally ask her for a ride home and she said no. Cat said she had an important meeting soon and couldn’t miss it and that it was going to take an hour or two. So, she have me a $1.50 in quarters, a magazine, and a cookie and told me where the bus met.
When I got home I went to my neighbor Huck and Lizzy’s apartment. All my neighbors were there and wanted to know where I went. So, I told them. Huck proceeded to hit me in the balls again. Later, I found out Lizzy saw me making out on the couch Of course, it was her apartment. I felt like such a jerk. I apologized to Lizzy multiple times.
The plot thickens with Cat when I call her a few days later to ask her out on a proper date. She declined saying again that I shouldn’t like her. “Don’t date me. I’m the worst.” Yeah, she is. But the fool that I am kept pursuing. After the third turn down I stopped.
About a month later Cat, Jory and some friends from the improv class started a podcast about dating men in LA. The first episode, about twenty minutes in, the girls start to talk about me. I should have known better. Jory flat out asks Cat about the guy she hooked up with the other night.
I found out that Cat just wasn’t into me. She didn’t have that spark. Jory and the other girls told Cat that that’s what she should have told me that rather than saying “don’t like me.”
It was humiliating to learn this information on a podcast, but it was also funny. I laughed pretty hard. It was fun to hear her side of it. Cat contacted me after that to make sure I was okay with the podcast. I told her I was. In fact, I thanked her for providing me with this crazy story.
