If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother by Julia Sweeney

Author:Julia Sweeney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, Humour
ISBN: 9781451674040
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2013-04-02T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Fan Letter

Dear Reader, I married him.

—Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre

About seven or eight years ago, I wrote a dramatic monologue and I performed it for more than a year in New York and Los Angeles. It was called Letting Go of God. Ira Glass, who produces the public radio show This American Life, asked me to record a segment for a show he was doing. When this show aired, I got hundreds of emails from people. They were flooding in, and it was hard to keep up with them.

At the time that my segment on This American Life aired, I was working as a writer on the TV show Desperate Housewives. I would run into my office between story meetings and read a new flood of emails about my radio segment. It was thrilling.

The subject line from one of the emails caught my eye: “Desperately Seeking Sweeney-in-law.” And the note said, “I am writing to you to propose marriage to you on behalf of my brother who doesn’t know I’m writing to you. I would propose to you myself, but I’m gay and I live in San Francisco so I don’t think it would work out between us. But I am proposing for my brother because his big deal-breaker with women is that they must not believe in God. They cannot be religious in any way. Everyone has their deal-breakers. That is his. When I saw your show, I knew you were the perfect woman for him.”

The letter went on to inform me that his brother was a scientist who lived near Chicago. There was a picture and a phone number.

It was a funny, really well-written letter. And the picture featured a handsome man. I read it to the guys in the office next to me, but I didn’t respond to it because—what was I going to say? All I wanted to say was “Hey. Great letter!” But I figured he’d say, “So, why don’t you call my brother?” I wasn’t going to call his brother who was a scientist in Chicago. C’mon.

Then I went to New York, where I was performing Letting Go of God off-Broadway. One day, after a show, I was turning in my microphone to the sound guy when I ran into a woman coming out of the restroom. She had just seen my show. She wasn’t expecting to talk to me. She said, “Oh, my friend wrote you a letter several months ago, proposing marriage on behalf of his brother.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” I said.

“I just want to vouch for those two,” she said, “I’ve known them for thirty years, since high school, and they are really funny. And smart. And Michael, the brother, he’s cute and you should write him.”

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“You should,” she said.

“Maybe I will!” I said.

“Do it!” she said.

But I didn’t.

Then, several months later, I was doing the show again in Los Angeles. I came out after a performance and a tall, handsome man was waiting to talk to me in the lobby of the theater.

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