The following is not what’s foremost in my mind about the night. It’s not what I got the most mail about. But it is what I got the most urgent, searching mail about.
My friend Lauren easily, overtly loves the Oscars more than anyone I know. But even though she’s up on movie-everything and celebrity-everything, I don’t think we’ve ever really talked about, like, ‘shipping’. Which is why I was amazed to get a message from her that read:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!
But my amazement lasted only a split second before it turned to urgent longing and furious anxiety about possibly never discovering the truth because this.
LOOK AT MINDY KALING AND BJ NOVAK.
Look at these two who have been teasing and titillating us for years with their maybe-could-we-almost-Sliding-Doors flirtatious non-romance, who actually probably became more well known earlier on because they had this whole will-they--won’t-they thing going on.
Because they behaved LIKE A ROMANTIC COMEDY COME TO LIFE. They’ve always been good at teasing us. They got a $7.5 million book deal to write about their relationship and I am waiting thirstily to devour it. The more I write the more I realize their relationship is basically part of their work lives? Like it’s actually part of their mutual career paths… or plans?
A lot of people want it to be real because it would be super cute and super unconventional for about six different reasons. But it’s been easy to look at them and go, ‘yeah I had a close-but-ultimately-inappropriate person at work when I was in my 20s too.’ To think that was all in the past, and they’re just friends, and Mindy’s a new mom and just having a fun night out. Which is what they said in a Snapchat – and what ‘a source’ said about them, because apparently everyone is as rabid to want there to be something going on here as I am.
But we’re not finished forensic-ing this yet. Because look again at that photo up above - it’s released by Vanity Fair, not them. So I’m sure there were a lot of photos to choose from, you know? What if that was a candid moment the cameras caught? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
But of course they’re social-media savvy, and they probably get picture approval or at least get veto power over something they didn’t want up. And they know they can toy with us this way. And that it will result in me being way more interested in both of them for the next three weeks because I only like things (and ship things?) I can’t have.
So are they trolling us, or teasing us? I want there to be enough answers for this to be a satisfying puzzle to look at and solve, but not so easy that they can’t keep doing it. I would quite like to continue to be obsessing about these two when we are all in our late 50s and they do a movie about what happens when millenials become empty-nest swingers.
