20 The Times Magazineend of a long line of people, smiling and
waving in all my short glory. And then... three
tall men stepped in front of me. They were
clearly more famous than I was and certainly
more high status. It was understandable that
they wouldn’t notice I was there.
I was faced with a choice. Do I honour my
position as the new kid on the block and let
them step in front of me or... F*** it. I’m not
even gonna pretend I was faced with a choice,
because of course I instantly stepped in front
of them and kept on waving.
Four years later, a newspaper came to
the Crazy Ex set to take a photo of me and
Aline. It was accompanying a new piece they
were doing about our partnership. As in the
UpFronts four years previously, I was told to
bring something nice to wear. By that time
I had a stylist, and she picked out the perfect
outfit for me along with perfect heels and
perfect jewellery.
But I didn’t want to f***ing wear it. I had
been shooting all day and my feet were tired,
and I could feel a pimple sprouting because
my hormones were so f***ed from the wonky
travel schedule, and I was behind on writing a
song, which I couldn’t do because of this stupid
photoshoot. I didn’t want to fake a smile and
pretend to be something I wasn’t. I didn’t want
to hide my exhaustion, because the exhaustion
was the work and the work was the point.
So I said to Aline and the publicists, “I’m
gonna wear this sweatshirt for the photoshoot.
I will wear no shapewear under it.”
And they all said, “Good with us.”After Crazy Ex ended, I told myself that I
would stop pushing through my emotions for
the sake of putting on a show. I would put my
health and happiness above everything.
But then, a couple of months later, it was
the second night of the Creative Arts Emmys.
I was in a musical number that opened both
nights of the awards show, but only because
it had been offered to someone way more
famous and they turned it down. (I get a lot
of gigs this way. Keep ’em comin’!)
On the second night of the awards, I was
on a high because my songwriting partners
and I had just won an Emmy the night before.
It was one of the greatest evenings of my life.
I had an unhealthy need for the validation
of this award.
We were all hanging out in my dressing room
and partying when the stage manager told
me I had 20 minutes until the show started.
I went into my bathroom to change into my
show dress. As I took off my red-carpet-gown
Spanx to transfer into my show Spanx (man,
I couldn’t wait to get home and put on my
more comfortable pyjama Spanx), I saw it.
Blood. Blood in the crotch.
Context: at the time, I was three months
pregnant. The day before, riding my Emmy-winning high, I had announced the happy
news to the world. So when I saw the blood
in my Spanx crotch, my first thought was: f***.
I jinxed it. I flew too close to the sun, and the
evil eye that assumedly lives in the sun saw
me flying by and was like, “Oh no you don’t.
I’m a sentient eye; I’m coming to get you.”
I stripped down entirely and sat on the
toilet to do some literal digging. (Note: gay
men might want to skip this paragraph.)
Maybe it was just dried blood that I saw in my
Spanx? I put a wad of toilet paper against my
vagina, held it there for a few seconds, then
looked. “Putting toilet paper up to your vagina
and hoping that there’s blood” is a monthly
ritual that some women reading this may
know all too well. That little spot of red means
we don’t have to make a trip to Planned
Parenthood this month.
For the first time, though, I didn’t want
to see the red spot in the toilet paper. But
I did. And lots of it. This wasn’t just a spot;
this looked like a full-blown period.
I started to panic. I heard someone say,
“Fifteen minutes, Rachel,” as if we were in a
Forties movie. I called in my husband to help
me, as if he’d know what to do. When that
of course proved useless, I had him fetch the
closest thing to an expert I could think of:
my friend Sarah, who was hanging out in the
dressing room with us and who had recently
had an early miscarriage. Sarah came into the
bathroom, unfazed to see me buck naked onthe toilet. Sarah looked at the toilet paper,
took a big doctor-type breath, and told me
that, honestly, this wasn’t a lot of blood. She’d
learnt a lot about miscarriages from her own
recent experience and, in her opinion, this
didn’t look like one. Sarah calmly asked me
if I’d had sex recently. Yeah, I answered, that
morning; my husband really gave it to me
good. Sarah asked me if I had any pain. I said
no. She then said, OK, the sex was most likely
the cause of the moderate amount of blood
she saw. Slightly pacified by Dr Sarah, I then
had enough presence of mind to call the
after-hours doctor at my gynaecologist clinic.
No answer. I left a message.
I was faced with a choice. If there was,
say, a 10 per cent chance that I was having a
miscarriage, should I bail on the Emmys and
just go to the emergency room? Wa s there
anything to do if I was having a miscarriage?
How do miscarriages work?
When I heard, “Five minutes,” my show-
pony instinct kicked in. I numbly put on my
costume, allowed myself to be mic’d, andfollowed the stage manager up the stairs.
I stood backstage and, from a distant land,
heard someone say, “Please welcome last
night’s Emmy winner, Rachel Bloom!”
I walked on stage and did it. I did the
number. I don’t remember it at all, but it
seemed to go fine. It went so fine that they
used that night’s performance on the official
broadcast. I still haven’t watched it. I don’t
want to see what I look like when I’m slapping
a smile over terror.
When I got back downstairs after the
performance, the bleeding had stopped. If
you’re medically curious, I found out at the
clinic the next day that the bleeding was
caused by my amniotic sac momentarily
separating from my uterine wall – something
that is actually supernormal in early
pregnancy. Ms Foetus was A-OK.
Did me going on with the show that night
despite the bleeding exhibit good self-care?
I don’t know. If I’m really being honest with
myself, going on with the show is sometimes
how I care for myself. I love what I do. It
makes me really happy.
Plus, if it had been a miscarriage, I don’t
think that abstaining from a two-minute
musical number would have stopped it
anyway, right? Right? nExtracted from I Want to Be Where the
Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom, which is
published by Coronet on November 17 (£16.99)OH NO! AM I GONNA END UP ON ONE
OF THOSE ‘WORST DRESSED’ LISTS?
Writers Guild Awards, 2016SHUTTERSTOCK