I came to my Comedy Central gig “Indecision ’92” to make it in the big city having no idea how groundbreaking it would be.

No love affair could be more forceful than how hard I fell for NYC. (Though there is the matter of meeting dear Alex, that came later). So there was something in it for me.

But on a grander scale, it was the first time the Democratic and Republican conventions were covered comedically. Here’s Al Franken’s take on what we were doing in a CSpan interview.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4676499/user-clip-al-franken-1992-comedy-centrals-convention-coverage

The Democratic National Convention bled into the Republican. Meanwhile, I’d been living out of a suitcase and crashing at a women-only hotel. (Grammarly insists there’s no such thing, but trust me, no men were allowed).

But I didn’t need a man. I was in love with the city that never sleeps.

A bed was merely a matter of ceremony, especially when we had a show to put on. There’s nothing like the build-up, hopping in a cab to get to the HBO studio seconds before the show began, working up until the final moment. Calling it quits at midnight.

Being so wired, we’d all meet up at Cafe Des Artiste for pear champagne and hard-boiled eggs (a story for another time) that only the poor souls who had a significant other would miss out on.

I went home for the weekend between shows and came back to do it all again for the Republican convention. Once more, I checked into the women’s hotel. It had worked just fine the previous week.

Only, the woman took the keys from the front desk and escorted me up the elevator to a different floor. She was doing her best to act like she were a concierge at a real hotel.

She walked me to the very end of a long dark hallway. She unlocked the door and proudly showed me the room pointing out the bed and the spit sink. I played along, though I couldn’t bring myself to ooh and ahh.

She opened the only other door in the place to show me the closet teeming with roaches that were knocking into themselves to put on a show of their own.

My insides froze around my words, “I’m not staying here.”

She cocked her head and said, “Why not?”

“There are roaches EVERYWHERE.”

“Oh, you just step on the roaches like that, see.” She said in her poor English and did a little dance to show me how to do it.

“You can step on the roaches all night long,” I interrupted her death, stomp, “but I’m not staying here.”

She reluctantly took me to another room a few doors down the hall as if those roaches couldn’t come too. I slept with the light on and checked out as soon as daylight would allow. I showed up to work with my bags.

It was just a funny story to tell, and then I got back to work while Mom feverishly called her friends to find me a futon to crash on. It turned out a friend of a friend had one on the Upper West Side.

So I showed up that night on her doorstep. She was a pretty girl, not exactly a head-turner. I probably knew a slew of girls just like her. She introduced herself and invited me in; we both must have felt a bit like we were hitchhikers.

She reiterated our phone conversation–she preferred to live alone, but she wouldn’t mind me crashing for a few nights. It was a simple enough rectangular-shaped layout with a kitchen, tiny eating area, bathroom, and Living Room on one side of the wall and her bedroom on the other.

During the tour (it lasted a few seconds longer than the one with that lady in the hotel), she pointed out my futon, where I’d sleep.

And she said, “My boss needs me sometimes. So, in that case, I might have to leave.”

I had the most fun staying there. I’d come back from work with my Rays Pizza to watch TV on the futon pulled up to be a couch until I reclined it.

Meanwhile, my roommate for the week would tinker around her bedroom until the phone rang. It would be brief. She’d end it by saying, “okay.” She’d shower and come out of her room with a fresh outfit and makeup, nothing sexy, but not work attire. And then she’d say, “Goodbye.”

I worked up the story in my head. The boss paid for her apartment. Since she hardly looked like the type of woman who’d have an affair, the wife wouldn’t have suspected it would be my roommate.

If we had passed on the street, I wouldn’t have suspected it either. This story was juicier than anything I could have drummed up on TV. A real-life affair and I didn’t even have to leave my futon.

And then I’d be back at work, in the midst of a far better love affair of my own. There was nothing secretive or clandestine about it—just pure love for our groundbreaking work.

Only the week came to an end; it was time to dismantle the dream that we had created. Our few weeks of fun and my rendezvous with the city came to an end.

We were freelancers, after all—nomads at heart. We stayed as long as the show would have us, and then we packed up and moved on. There’d be talking about, “What are you doing next?” A bit of lingering to make the goodbyes last longer.

We knew it would never be the same magic, the same chemistry. One show was never the same as the next.

We’d carry the thrill of it in our hearts, which kept us coming back for more. What a freelancer said best, “Don’t you just love the romance after a late-night show, you’re walking home, and it’s just you and the streetcleaner and the empty streets ahead of you.”

Sharing moments like that where we had the city all to ourselves, we’d had that sense of mastery. We knew the city more intimately than it knew itself.

And my boss called me into his office. He said he was going to stay on to gear up a daily news comedy show. It was the first of its kind. It would just be the two of us for a while until we got it up and running, but he asked me if I’d like to stay on.

I smiled, not being able to contain my happiness. I burst out of the room and went back into my office and fake-screamed while I did a roach dance of my own. I remember calling Mom and telling her with my stoic-shakey voice that I had just gotten my first job!!!

Say goodbye to not knowing where my next job was coming from. Say hello to not knowing where I’d find my next futon to crash on.

I came to my Comedy Central gig “Indecision ’92” to make it in the big city, and I came out knowing that NYC would be my home, on whatever futon that might be.