“I ken, Ken,” Scott replies.
And I understand his point too. I really do. But again, I’m reminded of what might be available to me if we can just turn this little band into a success. If I can be “That Guy in That Band,” I can hide behind the artifice of celebrity and not have to worry about my failings as a human being. Then maybe someday I’ll be worthy of someone like Jess.
I want so desperately to tell Scott the truth about my anger. The reason behind my rage. His oblivious role in it. I want to ask for his advice and see if he knows a way to make it right. Because even after nine months of constant thinking about her, I haven’t come up with a single explanation for Jess that doesn’t make me sound like a lunatic. Or a liar. Or a lying lunatic.
He sees my sadness and reminds me that today is the day Alan—our manager—is coming over with the newly pressed EP. He also reminds me that if we had signed with the same label as Christian, we’d be doing things their way, releasing their music, standing behind him in blurry press releases. What we’re doing now, he smartly tells me, is creating music we actually care about. Music we can proudly own as ours. As if summoned by our talking about him, Alan knocks on the door of our rehearsal space and pokes his head into the room.
“Is now a good time?” he asks, dripping with civility.
Today, like every day, he’s wearing his brown suit and tie. The brown suit that looks like—and probably was—his dad’s, two sizes too big for his tiny, skinny, size-0 frame. He’s the kind of absolutely-bloody-lovely person who when he orders food sounds like he’s genuinely asking if it’s OK for him to have it. Whereas everyone else just barks instructions of what they want to people earning minimum wage.
“Yes, Alan. Now’s a great time. Please come on in.” Scott has an almost paternal way with Alan, talking to him in clear, comforting sentences. Whenever anyone in the band so much as thinks of a joke to denigrate him, Scott flies to Alan’s defense.
“I have something for you,” Alan announces, bursting with pride. He enters with a small cardboard box, about the size of an open laptop.
Brandon takes off his headphones and asks, “What’s in the box? What’s in the box?”—adopting a pretty spot-on impression of Brad Pitt at the ending of Se7en.
I ask, with my tongue firmly in its cheek, “Is it the severed head of Gwyneth Paltrow, Alan? Because we’ve talked about this.”
“Oh, heavens, no,” Alan replies, I assume completely unaware of any film that has a higher certificate rating than PG. Like clockwork, Scott shoots me the “Don’t be mean to Alan” look.
“It’s your EP!” Alan tugs ineffectually at the parcel tape before clawing at the flaps and leaving the box a mess. “Ta-da!” he says, handing out copies like he’s delivering welfare parcels in the Sudan.
The EP is a joy to behold. Exactly how I wanted it to be. The artwork on the front is three simple blocks of color—brown, purple, and green—lying on top of each other like a trio of concrete slabs. There’s no pictures of us, no T-shirt, jeans, and haircuts, just the artwork. On the back are the four tracks, all without a name—there aren’t any lyrics after all—just numbers: 1., 2., 3., and 4. It is anti-marketing at its finest and, as Scott would no doubt point out, is something we’d never be able to do within the confines of a big-money record label.
“What do you think?” Alan asks nervously, bracing himself for a negative response.
“Well…” I pause for dramatic effect. Scott sees what I’m doing and kicks me in the shin.
“We love it,” he says to Alan, but Alan is still eagerly looking for my confirmation.
“Alan,” I say, “we do.”
The relief that washes over him could drown a city.
“Thank goodness,” he says, “because I’ve already sent it out to a dozen radio stations.”
Brandon, Scott, and I look at each other, dumbfounded at the new cojones on Alan. That he would even have an idea about something without checking and triple-checking with us first is unheard of; that he’d actually follow through on that idea without telling us is completely mind-blowing.
“And?” Scott asks.
Something about Alan’s huge grin makes me pretty sure this isn’t the last bit of good news he has for us today. I turn the CD over in my hand and smile at the name of the EP—an in-joke for just me and one other person in the whole world.
12
Truth to Power
Jess
Kirstall Road, Leeds
May 19, 2016
The seated audience is fairly big. A sea of smiley, attentive faces. But not one person is here for me. Not a single soul thought, “Today, I’m looking forward to the comedy stylings of one Jessica Henson.” No. Instead, they’re all here to see a pre-record of Numbers and Letters, a TV quiz show that’s half crossword, half Sudoku. The host is a light-entertainment legend, so popular in the eighties he’s probably dined with Diana. Now, he’s relegated to half an hour at three thirty in the afternoon on a digital cable television channel. Still, I don’t feel too sorry for him, considering he earns at the very least thirty times more than me an episode. But then, my sorry mug will never even make it onto the screen.
I’m a warm-up act. A fluffer. My job is to get the audience in the mood for the recording, get them gee’d up for when the “talent” comes out. The audience is ninety-nine percent gray army with one percent accompanying relative, and so, I’ve been told repeatedly, the material must cater to such a demographic. Even as I walk out, I register how they view me—young, female, bags of energy—with the sort of skepticism usually reserved for political figures attending high-profile football matches.
I manage to get them onside by opening with a very safe routine about how “bus replacement services” should really be called “train replacement services,” but as soon as I get any momentum, Gloria, the set manager, throws me the Time Out sign.
“Alrighty!” I say, in the most enthusiastic way I can muster. “Please welcome, the man you’ve come to see, the host of Numbers and Letters, Mr. Kenny Davis!”
I like to think I’ve done my job properly as they erupt into applause. There’s even a few whoops, which I worry might be too energetic for the attending masses. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had a defibrillator incident this week.
It’s Thursday and they’ve filmed four episodes a day since I started on Monday. Any novelty or thrill I had at being surrounded by camera crew, grips, and live studio audiences vanished sometime around Tuesday morning. Now it’s just another job where I’m completely bored and thoroughly unappreciated. It does, however, pay the rent.
“All right?” a voice asks me from behind.
I turn to see a rather round, ruby-faced guy in his mid-fifties, with something of a seaside entertainer vibe about him. Judging by his lanyards, he’s clearly wandered over from the studio next door. He extends a hand for shaking and looks me up and down as if I’m the enemy.
“I’m Billy. Billy Hopkins. Fellow warm-up artiste.”
“Jess,” I reply, “Jess Henson.”
“Like the Muppets.”
I bob my head from side to side as if to suggest it doesn’t bother me that I’ve heard that a thousand times before, and usually from men about his age and complexion.
“Your first week?” Billy asks.
“It is.”
“Tough crowd?”
“A little.”
“I used to do this show. Nice little earner it was too. Till the powers that be decided they needed to ‘diversify.’ ” He sneers and makes bunny ears around the word; I grin dispassionately back. “Anyway,” he continues. “You want to know the secret. These aren’t old fuddy-duddies. You can be a bit blue with them. Make a few gags below the belt. They can take it. And anything at the expense of Lord Kenny Davis”—he points at the show’s host, who has the audience lapping up every word—“is
always guaranteed to be a hit.”
“I’m not sure if I—“
“Truth to power. Thought your generation was all about that.” His condescension is reaching Olympian levels. “Comedy’s about risk, love.”
Seconds after I’ve finished visualizing dropping a lighting rig on Billy Hopkins’s head, Gloria calls me back on to rouse the crowd.
“All right. All right,” I try in my most exuberant and cheerful voice. “A hand for Mr. Kenny Davis, please.” They do as they’re told, but their collective disappointment that he’s no longer on stage is visceral. I want to win them over.
“He’s like the grandfather I never had.”
This lame aside gets the biggest laugh I’ve had all week and I start to think maybe Billy was right. After all, they’re all here to see Kenny Davis. Maybe I do make him the gentle target of my material. I see Kenny handed a coffee offstage; he raises it to me as if to say, You’re all right.
“Kenny Davis. The Man. The Myth. The Legend.” The audience is grinning. All I can see is a sea of white dentures. “Messy, though, isn’t he? I know he looks all neat and quaffed on stage, but I’ll let you into a secret. Kenny’s dressing room…”
The mass of septua- and octogenarians titter and nudge each other.
I carry on. “Filthy. Absolutely filthy. I mean…you would not believe the amount of letters he gets from the Inland Revenue. Not one of them opened. Not like the bank statements he gets from the Cayman Islands.”
There’s a hush over the audience. And not a good one. I can hear each individual cough. The cameraman’s mouth is literally wide open in a way I thought only happened in the movies. Billy, the old pro who gave me such stellar career advice, stayed to watch and is beaming. His ruby-red cheeks positively aglow. I fell for the hook, the line, and the sinker. Gloria beckons me over and I feel like I’m in primary school.
As I approach, Billy waltzes past and blithely says, “That’s where quotas gets ya.”
“Oh, you total piece of sh—”
Gloria’s face is super stern. “A word, please, Jessica.”
* * *
—
When I met her, I’d have envisioned her office on the top floor of a skyscraper. In reality, Gloria’s workspace is basically a Portakabin in the car park of the studios. The glamour of TV. She sits in her thousand-pound suit, her hair and makeup so meticulous, and so at odds with her environment.
She opens with a compliment. “Your show reel was good. It’s why I hired you. There’s a great range of stuff on it, and the thing I liked the most, is how capable you were of being clean. Family friendly. Safe.”
“What wasn’t clean about what I said?” I protest. “I even edited myself. What I wanted to say was, ‘His dressing room is filthy. Hookers and cocaine all over the place.’ ”
She’s unimpressed, but I continue to fight my corner.
“How was I supposed to know he’s under investigation for tax evasion?” She raises an eyebrow as if to say, We both know you knew, and I try a different tack. “Maybe it’s good, what I said. Y’know, a little truth to power.”
She shakes her head, exasperated. “It’s daytime TV, Jess! Get down the docks if you want to start a revolution.”
“I’m sorry. Give me another chance.”
“You want my advice?” she asks, answering before I can. “Figure out who you want to be. It’ll make things a lot easier.”
As I slope out of the office a nine-month-old memory pops up. The last thing Tom said to me, before he was drugged up to the eyeballs, flashes into my head. “You should be you. I like you.” It hurts every time I think of it. It felt like such a genuine thing to say. Until I found out there was no truth to him, that it was just another line to get into my pants behind his girlfriend’s back.
Cemetery Road, Sheffield
May 19, 2016
After what should have been a thirty-nine-minute train journey turned into a two-hour journey, I stomp back into our flat and throw my bag down on the chair opposite the sofa. That’s pretty much it for the contents of our living room, except the desk that Julia is trying to beaver away at.
I huff.
She doesn’t look up.
I huff with added gusto.
Julia sighs and takes her headphones off.
“What happened?” she asks, head tilted to one side.
“Got sacked.”
“Why did you get sacked?”
“Because stupid, old, rich men can’t take a joke.”
She shakes her head but doesn’t seem the least bit surprised. Since Edinburgh, I’ve struggled to hold down a job for longer than a week. So far, I’ve been in a writers’ room for a shit sitcom which was so painfully unfunny I called it a shitcom and the showrunner overheard. I’ve been banned from three open-mic nights for “inciting violence.” (This really was an overreaction because all three times the bachelorette parties were quite obviously pissed past the point of no return. It wasn’t me that kept serving them, and it’s certainly not my fault if they find some of my material about the female uprising to be highly motivating.)
And that’s just the comedy jobs I’ve lost, saying nothing of the temp ones Julia has begged me to take to keep a roof above our heads.
“I love you, Jess, but we do need to pay the rent.”
“I know. Sorry. I’ll go see Dean tomorrow.”
Dean is our agent. He books us as a double act but also finds work for us individually. Although Julia is adamant she’ll only perform with me. She believes writing is her strength and that’s where her future lies. From the amount of commissions she’s got lately, I wouldn’t argue. For me, though, I need the stage. Without an audience at least once a week I’d go loco.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says. “Pub or café?”
It’s a test from Julia. I know it is. I’m desperate to have a drink (maybe even two) and get buzzy, especially after the misery of the day. The problem is, if we write at the pub we’ll get about an hour’s worth of work done and once I get tipsy I’ll start to write down everything we say, believing it to be groundbreaking comedy gold. In the morning, we’ll look at our notes and see it’s a pile of utter tosh. And we’ll also end up spending money we don’t have.
The café on the other hand is run by a guy who loathes me. Julia knows this. I dig deep.
“I think the café would be best.”
* * *
—
The volume of the radio in the café is way above an acceptable level for Julia. Her preference is for complete silence. Silence makes me want to smash things. I want to smash things mostly because then there will be the wonderful sound of things going smashy-smashy, thus breaking the awful, soul-crushing sound of silence. It’s win-win. Except, of course, for the things that get smashed and for the people those things belong to.
“I can ask them to turn it down if you like?” I offer.
Julia shakes her head. “You’re good. I’d rather not draw too much attention to our presence. Especially since all we’ve ordered over the past three hours is tap water.”
“Do you think that’s why the owner hates me?”
“I reckon that’s one of fifty reasons,” she says with a wink.
Feeling combative since my dismissal earlier today, I stand and skip over to the man behind the counter, doing my duty for my comedy wife. “Would you mind popping the music down a touch?”
Man-behind-counter sneers and fixes the volume to a more Julia setting. Then, for no reason other than wanting to show off, I add, “We’re writing.”
I wait. I’m not sure what for.
“We’re comedy writers.”
This provokes a look I can best describe as “Who gives a damn, love?”—which pisses me off considerably. I mean, how dare his eyebrows and facial muscles be so condescending!
“Do
n’t you think women are funny?” I attack.
“What’s that?” he asks in an American accent I hadn’t noticed when ordering, which infuriates me even more.
“Women?” I continue. “You don’t think we’re funny?”
“I think some women are funny,” he replies, treading on thin ice. He pauses and with incredible speed reels off, “Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Phyllis Diller, Lily Tomlin. I think they’re all funny. Joan Rivers, Whoopi Goldberg, Mary Tyler Moore. But you? I have no idea.”
I should be apologizing or at the very least introducing a new argument that lets me debate with this clearly pretty cool sixty-year-old café owner, but I’m distracted by Tom. That Tom. The Tom of last August. I have not been pining for him. Or his music. Or the fjords. Or anything. This woman does not pine, especially not for lying bum-cracks. But. But. But.
“Turn it up,” I tell Mr. Comedy Encyclopedia.
“What?”
“The music.”
“Turn it down? Turn it up? Make your mind up.”
I turn to Julia and yell, “This is his band!”
She rolls her eyes.
I turn back to the café owner as if it’s his fault. “This guy, this guy whose music you’re playing, is a cheating, manipulative scumbag of a person.”
“It’s the radio,” he reminds me, slightly affronted.
“Still! You should be ashamed, sir.”
Julia instructs me to sit down and leave the nice man alone. I do as I’m told, despite the fact I’m absolutely seething. She moves in time to the music and I offer her a death stare.
“Sorry,” she says. “It is quite good, though.”
She’s right. It’s annoyingly good. I don’t understand how his music can be so peaceful yet so completely unsettling at the same time. Then it hits me. Maybe it has something to do with him being a duplicitous, two-faced slimeball. I let out a small rage grunt. What was it I’d said to Julia after I finally filled her in on the awfulness of that night? I’m done with the opposite sex. Jokes before Blokes. I start writing, the music spurring me on. Sets before Sex. Land Jobs before Hand Jobs. Julia stares at my waggling pen and the paper underneath it, then up at me with a look that suggests I might need to be sectioned. Her expression is part disgust, part awe.
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