Scott defrosts and I’m suddenly reminded of what this call was about in the first place.
“So, when are you coming home?” he asks. “When do we get to see you again?”
“I’ll answer the second question first. In one week. But that’s because you’re coming here.”
“I don’t ken, Ken?” he says, his curiosity stirred.
And that’s when I get to tell my best friend about our US TV debut.
29
A Pavlovian Response
Jess
Elstree Way, Boreham Wood
March 3, 2018
It’s become an addiction. Like a junkie craves heroin or Gollum worships the ring. I need them to hate me. As long as they still laugh, I don’t mind being the pantomime villain, throwing out acid-tongued one-liners on panel shows. Every time I open my mouth it’s a coin flip to see whether it’ll be the sound of a studio audience’s sharp intake of breath or laughter they just can’t contain.
Because even though the tabloids love to hate me (the Mirror dubbed me the Meanest Woman in Britain and I’ve been called every name under itself by the Sun), and even if the replies on my social media feeds could be used by police to spot potential offenders of any shape and size—the underlying truth is I make people laugh. That’s it. If my job description had objectives and goals and twice-yearly reviews, nobody could say I fail to fulfill my role. I don’t make everybody laugh. I’ve made some people cry. As is the way, I can recall instances of the latter much more easily.
The panel-show host turns to me and says, “Now it’s Jess Henson’s turn. Things you’d like to see in a box…”
I have fourteen seconds left to name as many as I can to get points for my team. The points don’t matter, of course, but once the show is over the panelists on the losing side do have to pay for drinks. None of us are going to miss a few quid, but we are dangerously competitive. Above all, though, we measure our proverbial dicks by the laughs we get.
“Things I’d like to see in a box. My deadbeat dad. My ex-boyfriend. The Prime Minister’s dick…”
Each gets a laugh and a “ding” sound indicates another point for my team. The host tells me I have five seconds left and without really thinking I mention the name of a little girl who went missing about five years ago and the audience howl with laughter and rage. I double down on it.
“What?! At least her parents would have an answer. I’m trying to do a nice thing!”
The host yells time and makes some joke about whether or not my last bit will make the edit. The truth is, if a man said it, they’d call him a boundary pusher. Me, I’m just an evil witch.
Before we’re finished, we have to re-film some bits for continuity. It’s a ball-ache because we’re having to repeat jokes we made five minutes ago, trying to make them sound fresh and spontaneous. That the audience still laughs in the exact same way for the exact same joke says more about them than us.
Once we’re wrapped, I head backstage to get out of my uncomfortable dress. The other (all male) panelists get to head out for drinks in the same stuff they wore on set. Not so for me. As I round the corner to my dressing room, there’s someone waiting. She’s holding a clipboard, a radio mic clipped to her jeans. I’m guessing she’s a runner or possibly an Assistant Floor Manager. The look on her face tells me she’s not here for an autograph.
“Enjoy the show?” I ask, giving her the performance she wants.
She has the face of someone who sucks lemons for fun. She snarls as I try to push past her. “My cousin went to school with the girl you just made fun of.”
“Really?” I say, pretending to be shocked. “My mum’s cousin went to school with Enya.”
“Who?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head and sigh. “So, what you’re saying is, because you have an incredibly minor connection to a tragedy, I shouldn’t make jokes about it? Is that right?”
She huffs. “No. You shouldn’t make jokes about it because it’s cruel.”
Her words and face and attitude combine to piss me off. I could just walk away, not rise to it. But then she wins, and why should she get to win?
“Did you give this little speech to Chris Sharman and Mark Simmonds? What about Richard Eves and Tony Smith? They say stuff far worse than me, week in and week out on this show. Or is your vitriol just reserved for the vagina’d?”
She shakes her head, like she’s got my number.
“You making mean jokes about dead people is feminism, is it?”
I only half believe it, but I say it anyway. “Very much so, thank you.”
She looks me up and down with scorn before delivering a line that still cuts, no matter how many times I’ve heard it. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”
Once Little Miss Righteous is gone, I enter the dressing room, get changed in under a minute and grab my things. Her words echo, but instead of getting quieter with each repetition they get louder. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night.” Before I go, I remember to open the drawer and take out the pills that actually do.
* * *
—
Now I generate headlines, I’ve become Dean’s favorite client. Before I might not hear from him for months, but now it feels like we speak every day. In fact, as depressing as it sounds, I think I talk more to him than my mum or Julia. He’s without doubt the most consistent male presence in my life, and that single thought makes me want to weep uncontrollably.
There have been men in the past twelve months. More than there were in the entire twenty-nine years before it, but none of them have lasted from sunrise to sunset. It doesn’t bother me. This is 2018 and I’m getting to enjoy what women in 2018 get to enjoy. There are zero strings on me. Except Dean. I appear to be tethered to Dean.
He comes out to meet me personally, like it’s a big deal he’s left his desk for seven seconds. Even before he says it, I know he’s going to ask how his favorite client is. Ready for this, I thought up a response en route. I deliver my joke about an octogenarian actor I know he represents and say I haven’t seen him since he gave me the clap. He laughs. Even though it’s not particularly funny. People seem to do this a lot lately.
As I take a seat, he offers me a drink, grinning as he does so. His happiness seems genuine. It scares me.
“How would you like to go on The Clive Charles Show in LA this week?”
“I wouldn’t,” I deadpan.
“Are you kidding me? He’s great! People love him!”
“Neither of those statements is true. And if the second one is, it’s because people are morons. He’s only famous because the year before last was such a horror show it left an opening for nasty, unfunny monsters to crawl into.”
I loathe my hypocrisy.
“Can’t you see it, though? You and Clive, head-to-head. Like a Battle Royale of shit-stirrers.”
I shudder as I think of the clips I’ve seen of him humiliating his guests. They’re all A-listers with millions in the bank so it’s supposed to be OK when he tears them to shreds. But all it really does is perpetuate the myth that the best laughs are at someone’s—anyone’s—expense.
Hi, Black Kettle and Pot, I’m Jess.
“Did you see that episode with Dani Hare?” I ask him.
“Remind me.”
“He got her housekeeper on and made her go through all these intimate and embarrassing secrets. Dani was nearly in tears. It was horrific.”
Dean shakes his head and then squints at me suspiciously.
“Jessica Henson. You’re not afraid, are you?”
“Get bent.”
“You are!” he yelps. “Well, this is a first for me. The fearless First Lady of Put-downs, too chickenshit to go on The Clive Charles Show.”
I know exactly what he’s doing, and he can do it all day for all I care. A couple of farmyard noises aren
’t going to persuade me to put myself in the stocks for an hour of car-crash TV.
“Ah, come on. I’ve already said you would. Don’t make me a liar. It’s you, some new young Hollywood starlet, the rapper Towerz, and some British band”—he checks his notes—“The Friedmann Equation?”
I have a Pavlovian response to the mention of their name. It’s not dissimilar to being on the top of a rollercoaster before a drop. Absolute elation coupled with the very real thought I may throw up.
Dean makes another chicken noise.
“Just book it, you dick. And try and get me first-class flights and a nice hotel.”
30
Not Bad Company
Tom
Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood
March 6, 2018
Scott’s asked to see me alone, before we meet up with the rest of the band. I’m pretty sure I know what’s coming and have prepared myself much better than last time. My appalling reaction to his previous announcement is one of the many instances of shame that play on loop in my cerebral cortex at three in the morning.
“Good flight?” I ask.
“You kidding? I just had twelve hours of the best sleep of my life. Hayley’s been in our bed all month. If we put her back into hers, she just waddles back into ours thirty seconds later.”
I want to ask why they don’t just shut her bedroom door but fear that may be the equivalent of questioning why they don’t put their child in some sort of clamp.
“I suppose I should get used to it, though. Which leads me nicely on to why I asked you to meet me before. Holly, Hayley, and I have some news.”
While it didn’t take Sherlock to figure out what the news might be, I don’t have to act surprised as he tells me they’re expecting not only their second but also their third child.
“Twins!” I say, with the requisite amount of shock.
“I know,” he replies, slightly scared. “I mean, we always wanted three, so it’s just speeding things along, really.”
I give him a proper hug.
“So,” I say, knowing we have to get to the next piece of news eventually.
News that I’m guessing I’m not going to be celebrating nearly as much as this first piece. If my instinct is right, and they’re here to tell me what I think they’re here to tell me, I haven’t a clue how I’m going to react. The idea of being on my own, truly on my own, isn’t something I want to think about.
Scott sees my worried expression and says, “Please, try and remember that this is just a discussion. No decision has been made by anyone.”
* * *
—
Brandon and Colin wait in the corner of the hotel’s bar, half-drunk drinks in front of them, two full pints by the empty chairs for me and Scott. It’s midday, and the place is pretty empty. Still, I wish we were back at the old warehouse. Everything momentous that ever happened to the band happened there. I want the symmetry of the band breaking up to be at the place where we formed. But alas.
Scott begins. “Like I said on the way here, nobody has decided anything. But we have been talking over the past couple of weeks and—”
I cut him off. “You’re thinking it’s time to call it a day?”
Brandon, Colin, and Scott catch each other’s eyes, playing tennis with an invisible ball, looking at each other for some explanation of how I guessed. I put them out of their misery.
“It’s just a gut feeling. The last rehearsal we had. You know if you’re all tired and you’re just not hitting it that day, or if it’s something else. It felt like something else.”
My calm reaction has them all perplexed. I can see it on their faces, Scott’s most of all.
“You really want to call it a day?” he asks.
“No,” I reply steadily. “I just don’t think I have it in me to change anyone’s mind. It’s what it is.”
The three of them look down at the ground. I’ve disappointed them somehow. Given them a reaction they didn’t predict. I get it. I do. This band was everything to me. But you can’t keep someone with you who wants to leave.
“Do you want me to persuade you?” I say, with a mild laugh.
It lifts them slightly. Scott says, “Yeah, I think we did.”
“But it wouldn’t have done any good, would it?” I ask.
Nobody answers. Everyone picks up their pints, takes a drink, and sets them back down at exactly the same time. Without another word being said, we know The Friedmann Equation is no more. After a healthy dose of silent drinking, we start to discuss our legacy like a quartet of absolute idiots would. Scott’s the first to speak, as ever injecting a bright, optimistic take into proceedings.
“Two studio albums? That’s decent. It’s all Stone Roses had. And Neutral Milk Hotel.”
“Not bad company,” Colin agrees.
“Who else?” asks Brandon.
The three of them bounce names off each other and argue the toss over each other’s choices. I stay quiet with a sadness I’m not brave enough to articulate. And a fear I don’t know how to explain.
“Some absolute hammer legends only got one,” says Scott.
“Thunderclap Newman,” says Colin.
Brandon offers up, “Minor Threat. The Monks…”
“I knew you’d say The Monks,” replies Colin.
I silently add to the list of two or less: Joy Division, Jeff Buckley, Amy Winehouse. The extenuating circumstances in each case isn’t something I want to think about right now. Therefore, it’s all I can. Even if I bury these fears way down, I’m sure they’ll crop up again in the early hours of the morning. To quieten my own mind—and to join the conversation for the first time in about five minutes—I add The La’s to our “One Album Wonder” discography.
These three men who I see as the embodiment of masculinity start to belt out “There She Goes” in a surprisingly harmonized way. That we haven’t had a singer in the last three years is starting to feel like something of a missed opportunity.
“The La’s?” Colin says. “I did not have you down as a soppy bastard, Tom Delaney.”
As Brandon gets Colin in a headlock and wrestles him off to the bar for the next round of drinks, it strikes me that despite the years of us all being together, living in each other’s pockets for short, sharp intervals of time, none of us really know each other. As men, we hide who we are. We put on a show. You only know you’ve got a true friend when they ask you what’s going on under the surface. When they ask questions like this one from Scott.
“How are you feeling about The Clive Charles Show?”
I laugh. “I hadn’t thought about it. Not in the last hour at least. Becoming a quasi-uncle for the second time and then realizing I need a new job have taken up most of my brain space.”
“And seeing her again?” he asks.
I offer Scott my best squint of puzzlement. There are only really two “hers” in my life and I saw one of them a few days ago. He clarifies who he means and it spins my head.
“Jess. This’ll be the first time you’ve seen her since when?”
“Why would I be seeing Jess again?”
Scott’s eyes widen.
“I suppose there are three bits of news, then.”
31
Fangirl
Jess
West Alameda Avenue, Burbank
March 6, 2018
He’s the reason I signed up to this root canal of an interview, but I’m still surprised to see Tom in the here and now. He looks different. Like there’s sunshine in his skin. The glow hasn’t transferred to his disposition, though. As he fiddles with his kit, I see the same worry lines around his eyes. I watch him for a moment, enjoying the dopamine hit of what could happen when I say hello. Before the inevitable letdown of hearing about his celebrity girlfriend and his new LA life. He looks up from behind his keyboard, s
ees me, and grins a big goofy grin. Maybe there is some sunshine in his character after all.
“Jessica Henson.”
I bow and address him in the same manner. “Tom Delaney.”
“How long has it been?”
My mind goes back to that New Year’s Day. The sniffly walk home where I wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone in case I lost it completely. The way I fell into Julia’s hungover arms. How she told me that however much some things might seem a right fit, sometimes the moment gets away. How, after that, I resolved to make life even more about the work. To become the BIG STAR Julia always believed I would be. I sometimes wonder who’s more disappointed with who I am now.
“How long has it been?” I repeat. “Ages and ages, I’d say.”
“Look at us now,” he says, far more melancholy in his voice than this phrase would suggest.
“I know, right? The Beatles and George Carlin both played this stage.” We look over to the presenter’s chair. “And now that douchebag is hosting. The world’s gone to hell in a handbasket, Tom.”
The studio audience start to enter and fill up the benches. We both jump and hide behind the curtain, not wanting to shatter the illusion of the guests being pampered Hollywood-style before the show.
“That was close,” Tom says with a smile.
Behind the faux-velvet drop scene hanging from the rigging to the floor, Tom and I are closer than we’ve been since the night we met. The night he rested his head on my shoulder. The night he almost kissed me.
I take a step back. “How’s the wife?”
“She’s good,” he answers. “Busy. Although, you know, we’re not married.”
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