During the week, I’m a web developer at New York Magazine, toiling in the JavaScript trenches. My boyfriend Marc is an attorney. But every week on Saturday night, for .3476 seconds, we become the SNL Opening Credits Kiss Couple.
If you watch SNL and you don’t know what I’m talking about, you blinked at the wrong moment. But if, right after the introduction of Chris Redd, you spotted a handsome fair-headed guy passionately kissing a woman with a mane of dark curly hair, then you’re witness to our small-screen debut (and, let’s face it, probably the lifetime sum total of our small-screen careers).
You’re probably wondering how this went down. This past September, Marc and I had been dating for a few months. We’d met on Hinge, and after 567 or so first dates that year (are there awards for this sort of thing?), I was elated to be dating someone who felt just right. We had eaten dinner in Soho and were taking a stroll down Broadway, pausing every so often to engage in totally shameless, egregious PDA sessions. After one of these, a young woman with a clipboard and a sheepish smile stepped out of a parked van and approached us. Good things usually come out of unmarked white vans, so our interest was piqued.
“So … I’m a production assistant for SNL. We’re here shooting background video for new opening credits and we saw you two kissing,†she said. “We thought it was pretty cute, so we zoomed and got some good footage of it. You’ll probably end up on the cutting-room floor, but there’s a chance we’d use it.â€
We signed her release forms, since it’s our policy to say yes first and deal with any consequences later (that policy got us onto a dais at a fairground dressed as a 19th-century widow and her boy toy in front of an audience of hundreds the previous weekend, but that’s a story for another day).
A few weeks later, on the night the first SNL of the season was going to air, Marc and I met up for dinner with his college friends. Afterwards, because the Royal Palms in Gowanus had a wait-list for its shuffleboard court (lame), we ended up at a dive bar. At a few minutes before 11:30 p.m., Marc asked the bartender to turn on SNL. We watched what felt like an eternity of credits, and disappointment had already set in when, suddenly, THERE WE WERE.
And just like that, we ended up in the opening credits of season 44 of SNL. I like to think the palpable chemistry of our kiss made the cutting-room floor an impossibility, but maybe they were just hard up for filler.
Either way, the effects of our newfound stardom were swift and profound. For example, I achieved a personal lifetime record for likes on a Facebook post. The comments on said post ranged from “get a room†to “FYI I told my parents about this and my dad has even specifically watched the credits to see what the hype is about.â€Â Also, Marc and I were both stars of our respective work Slack miscellaneous channels for a hot minute.
Even my parents look forward to seeing us get hot and heavy on TV weekly, which I would have found pretty awkward a few years ago, but for some reason now seems fine (#personalgrowth amiright?).
And Marc and I? Several months later, we’re still steaming up street corners all over NYC.