You're Just the Girlfriend...

Bruce and I had been dating a year. We went to Sausalito in Northern California for the weekend. He planned every minute of the trip. One might even say he "produced" it, including the presentation of the pretty gold necklace with a small inset diamond. It hadn't been easy to get the weekend off. The scheduling shrill at work had been determined that whenever Name That Tune taped I had off and I worked most weekends. Nice!

I was spending many nights at Bruce's place in Encino. Truth be told it was inconvenient on several levels. My little abode in Toluca Lake was much closer to NBC and I was always leaving something behind or forgetting to bring it. I think at some point I had a "drawer". The classic girlfriend dilemma. How much do I leave and how much do I take? I took this anniversary as a sign that we did, in fact, "have a future" and asked Bruce to spend a night or two at my apartment. Never happened.

Spending most of our time at his place had its' pros and cons. He had his daughters just about every other weekend but now that they were both teenagers their social lives were impressive. As were their acrylic nail appointments. There's something wrong when your boyfriend's thirteen year old daughter has nicer nails than you do.. on so many levels. The girls liked me, more or less. As I was around more, it sort of became less. Their comments about their mother increased with the frequency of my time around them. Honestly, had I been dealing with half a deck I would have raced off to find a therapist, but instead I accompanied Bruce on visits to his. Joan was a very nice woman. Competent but conflicted. She'd been walking Bruce through the past five years of his separation and dating extravaganza's and wasn't quite sure what to do with the grief stricken younger woman who insisted everything would be "just fine if Brenda would stop calling twenty times a day." Exaggeration all around!

But Brenda did call a lot. There was always an emergency if we had a weekend trip planned or even a special dinner and somebody knew about it. Bruce was a good father and played in to every single manipulation, especially after he filed the divorce papers. Everything seemed to escalate at that point. Especially his guilt.

I wish I could say I handled things well. I was a whirling dervish when it came to my idea of "fairness". Of course these three women, his about to be ex and his two daughters were threatened by the new one in the mix. Had I been older, less in turmoil over my own unresolved issues perhaps I would have handled things differently. At least I surely hope I would. Instead I became demanding, too. Up to and including a conversation with Brenda "staking my turf". What was I thinking? I'd been in the picture a little over a year and I'm dealing with pain and confusion taking up close to two decades, expecting my position to make sense to anyone.

I wish I remembered what I said to elicit this response.

"I'm his ex-wife and the mother of his children...you're just the girlfriend."

The stakes got raised again...big time. I don't think Bruce knew what hit him.

Where do I go from here?

Hindsight is always 20/20. If I'd understood more about loss and grief I might have done things differently. Losing two thirds of my family in such traumatic, dramatic ways over such a short period of time had a devastating affect on me. Yet on a day to day basis I functioned quite normally. I went to work, I spent time with friends and my relationship with Bruce moved forward.

A few months after my brother died, following Bruce's proclamation that "we have a future", we decided it was time to let my bosses know about the relationship. Bruce was Executive Producer of Name that Tune and I was one of the censors assigned to work on the show to ensure it wasn't rigged. Our relationship could have been construed as a "conflict of interest" and one of my bosses was the inventor of term "conspiracy theory". He was the former FBI agent I told you about earlier, and felt every issue concerning honesty on NBC was as important as national security. Allan took things very, very seriously.

Each season, prior to the first taping, there would be a "song" meeting at Ralph Edwards' house. Ralph Edwards had created a show called "It's Your Life" and from there went on to be uber successful in the early days of television. He owned a production company, Ralph Edwards' Productions and Bruce was the head of it at the time. Name That Tune was one of their shows.

Here is an, I swear it's true, example of Allan's serious nature when it came to his work. Before the beginning of the season there would be a "song" meeting. The producers, Ralph Edwards and several senior members of Compliance and Practices would select the songs/sheet music for the $100,000 competition at the end of the show, if a contestant had qualified for it. The sheet music needed to be put into agreed upon categories - "easy" "medium" and "difficult"- and were then locked away for use during the season. This would ensure if a contestant was going for the $100,000 no switches could be made. The producers were allowed to determine whether or not the song would be "easy" "medium" or "difficult" based upon how much money they had given away during the season .

So, that meant the songs had all been pre-chosen as to their degree of difficulty and the song to be used that taping would be randomly selected by a member of the C&P department just before the final segment of the show was taped. When the song was chosen the piano player would practice the notes from the selected sheet music, while a C&P person was be sequestered with the contestant to make sure they didn't hear the music. No one would have access to the songs after the meeting. Seriously, they were locked in a safe. Seriously.

At this meeting the music sheets were laid out on the floor of Ralph Edward's den. As you would imagine this was a large house on a large piece of property. The music sheets were being placed into three piles, "easy", "medium" and "difficult". Suddenly, Allan jumped up, yelled "watch out" and threw himself on top of the piles, scattering the sheets everywhere. The other people in the room looked at him questioningly as if he'd lost his mind. It was actually kind of the way people looked at Allan a lot.

"Look, there's a gardener outside the window", Allan responded, flailing around on the floor, with sheets of music scattered all around him.

"Allan", Ralph replied, "he's least fifty feet away, he's mowing the lawn and he doesn't have ex-ray vision."

It really happened...seriously. So, it seemed prudent to let him know I was now dating the Executive Producer of the show. It was determined I wouldn't work on Name That Tune again and the woman who did the scheduling wasn't happy about it. "Tune" was a long day. We met the contestants when they first arrived and went on field trips to make certain there was no way they could hear the band rehearsing the music. After taping five shows it was normally a twelve hour day. Most of us in the department loved working on "Tune" but we didn't get paid overtime so it was a labor of love.

The woman who did the scheduling had a pernicious personality. With no discernible cause you would find yourself working the graveyard shows and turning around to a really early morning call the next day. Midnight Special always ended taping around 11:00PM. Wheel of Fortune had their contestants arrive at the studio at 8:00AM. Get the picture? Since she'd gone out with Bruce a couple of times and had just broken up with her boyfriend, I had quickly gone to the top of her shit list.

My short fuse was shorter than ever so I would call her on the inequities of my schedule. Her excuse was, "Well, you can't work Tune so this is the best I can do." Since Bruce had to be at all the Tune tapings it seemed she went out of her way to make certain our schedules were quite conflicted. Clever girl!

It almost worked!

Why Me?

A couple of weeks and a few dates after I met the parents Bruce said he wanted to talk about something important. Wasn't that the woman's line? We went to a fondue place - most likely the start of my battle with cholesterol - and he took my hand. No simple feat with a pot of boiling oil between us.

"You know we haven't been exclusive, right?", he asked.

OK, I thought, this is it! Another loss...strike three. I'm done.

I think I mumbled something intelligent like, "uh huh"....

He went on quite quickly..."I've been seeing this woman, Sandy, for about four years. There have been quite a few others but I've been seeing her consistently."

WTF? Couldn't you just say we're not seeing each other anymore? Do I REALLY need to hear all of this?

He continued...."I think you and I have a future together. I want to end it with her."

In hindsight, I wonder why he didn't end it with her first and then have the warm and fuzzy talk with me about the future? But I would come to learn over the years that Bruce always loved the back-up plan.

That night I felt elation, joy, excitement and WOW! This is the one, finally!

Breaking up with Sandy was no easy task. Apparently, Bruce had been helping her financially as well as guiding her aspirations as a singer. She was tall, she was beautiful, she was blatantly belligerent about the breakup and she was black. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but while all knew about "Sandy" few had actually met her. This was pre OJ and Nicole, remember. Racially mixed couples caused attention. Sandy had been the "other woman" in the background even though Bruce and his wife were separated.

I remember many phone calls from the answering service during the next several weeks . Again, no cell phones. Then it seemed Sandy accepted the inevitable. They were done. He and I would live happily after. Not so fast, Cinderella. Now that Sandy was out of the picture, the "almost ex" realized that perhaps her role as #1 Woman in Charge might shift. And that did not sit well with her. The drama would escalate whenever we had something special planned. A trip to Hawaii for a Four Preps reunion had been planned. But now the "girls" - his daughters - wanted to go with Dad. Would I understand? Sure, I'll even drive you to the airport. My car wasn't big enough, nor was Bruce's, so I actually drove them in Brenda's - the "ex". You might be thinking, "she's nuts", and I probably was, but at the time I could rationalize just about anything into making sense.

The night before they left Bruce gave me a beautiful gold lighter - smoking was cool then. A song by Debbie Boone was at the height of its' popularity...he'd inscribed on the lighter "you light up my life". I was over the moon.

I brought back the car and Brenda invited me in for a cup of coffee. I think she felt it was time to get to know the one that didn't look like she was going away so fast. As we sat together talking about nothing she took out a cigarette. My lighter was on the table so she picked it up and looked it over.

"Bruce gave you that?", she stated more than asked.

Before I could happily reply she added, "He gives lighters to every one."

Game on, Biatch!

Meet the Parents

When you're about to have a monumentally important event occur sometimes it is best to be unprepared. I knew a bit about his parents. His Dad had been a minister. They were from Chicago. His father had been one of the early "radio evangelists" with a very popular show. His parents had divorced. His father moved to California. His mom and Bruce and his brother had stayed in Chicago living with the in-laws (OY!). After four years his parents reconciled, his father got a church in West Hollywood, they moved to Los Angeles and got married in Las Vegas on the way to their "new life". And nobody mentioned it again for years and years and years.

Meeting them was major but having no time to think about it also meant I had no chance to worry. His parents seemed as surprised as I was at the event. I learned later that Bruce had said he was stopping by but hadn't mentioned me. Yet, they were charming. Lovely. And as years went by my opinion of them would never waver. His Dad had a stately demeanor from years on the pulpit, and his Mom was a small little bird of a woman with a wicked sense of humor. She played the Gracie Allen part well but was truly sharp as a tack.

We left after an hour and I have no memory of where we went or what we did.

I do remember I wondered why Bruce had made this decision. And when I found out why I was not 100% thrilled - at all!

Step by Step...

It wasn't easy. Losing my Mom had broken my heart. She was young, she was vital and then she was gone. Losing Jody splintered both my soul and my spirit. It made absolutely no sense. It would be years before I put together most of the pieces of that horrible puzzle.

But I had silly game shows and the like to monitor and a new relationship to focus on. And focus I did. I really liked Bruce...a lot. He was cute, he was funny, he loved life and laughed a lot. We had good times together. We saw each other a couple of nights a week which made me realize this wasn't exclusive - at least for him. One Saturday he'd been taping one of the shows he produced and called around 6PM. We weren't supposed to get together but he said he had somewhere he wanted to take me. Completely casual. Forget playing hard to get. I was available and curious. I had on a pair of good jeans - oh, the standard studio outfit for our Compliance and Practices crew were good jeans, silk blouses and heels...yes, heels on concrete studio floors. My back doth protest. But, I digress.

He picked me up in his little red, Mercedes convertible and we headed toward Encino where he lived. Remember I had this cute one bedroom apartment in Toluca Lake catty corner from Mr. Bob Hope's house. Encino was about twenty minutes away. We passed the exit to his house and I finally said, "just where are we going?" He didn't respond.

Perhaps I had mentioned earlier that Bruce was (and still is) 14 years older than I. He had (and still does) two daughters...12 and 16. And an ex-wife...well, an almost ex-wife as I had recently discovered. While they'd been separated for four years no one had seen the need to make it "official" by getting a divorce. The ex had a boyfriend - a great, larger than life Italian Guido named Richard. Gold chains and all. There was quite a bit of drama as Bruce and Brenda (the almost ex) "co-parented" but it would be a while before I realized it would involve me.

A little background for future reference.

Bruce and I drove down a friendly neighborhood street and stopped in front of a house I'd never seen before.

"I want you to meet my parents," he said, and as we walked up the path to the front door he looked at me and said, "I've never done this before."

The stakes had just gotten much, much higher.