An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(14)
So they brought me back up to the front of the plane and I plopped myself down next to a middle-aged balding man, which is what first-class humans seem to mostly look like. I got a mimosa before we even took off, but the little TV built into the seat in front of me was broken and just showed a bunch of numbers and colors. I tweeted a picture of it:
@AprilMaybeNot: On my way to LA and got bumped to business class. My little plane TV is broken though, so I want the money I didn’t spend back!
I was virtually a social media celebrity now, and so I had to let the entire world know every time I experienced any inconvenience!
Shortly after liftoff I discovered that I do not have a hard time sleeping on planes; I have a hard time sleeping in uncomfortable chairs. This chair turned into a literal bed. Business class was all dreams, baby.
We landed just a few hours before the shoot, so we had to rush through the airport, which became impossible when a group of students came up to Andy and me and every one of them wanted to get a separate photo.
Andy’s dad finally dragged us out of the knot of kids and toward the baggage claim. One of those guys in suits was standing at the base of the escalator with a sign. The sign read “Marshall Skampt” (Andy’s dad), which was a little disappointing. Still, I definitely snapped a picture of him to Maya, realizing I hadn’t yet texted her in all the hubbub since we landed.
The drive to the studio was overwhelmingly composed of Andy being extremely excited. He was just a lot more into this whole thing than I was.
OK, that’s not entirely true.
Andy was into the spectacle of it. He believed in entertainment culture in a way I never have. There’s an appreciation that stretches beyond enjoying content and into worshipping all the bits that come together to make the content. I still saw it mostly as a necessary chore. I wasn’t excited by any of it, but I was interested in what it could do for me. Our different outlooks started to cause some friction.
Here’s a scene from the greenroom of that late-night talk show.
“Y’know, you don’t have to hate everything, April.”
“Have you ever seen the way I look at cheesecake?”
“You know what I mean. Like, this is the only time in our lives anything this cool is ever going to happen, and you look mostly like you need to poop.”
“Stop thinking about my poop.”
“So many people would kill to be on TV . . . to get to do all the things you’re doing. Just look at it objectively, you’re getting treated like a VIP and flown around the country and we’re basically famous and you’re determined to hate it!”
“Andy . . .” I paused to compose myself. “I don’t watch TV. I have never watched TV. I do not know anything about this man we are about to talk to. But more than that, I haven’t slept more than five hours at a time since Before Carl, I don’t like planes, luxuries make me uncomfortable, and my life is so upside down that I fucking forgot I was getting my period so I had to ask a stranger for a tampon just now.”
“They didn’t have tampons in the bathroom?”
“I didn’t even think to check because I’m NEW AT THIS.”
And, like that, we were laughing again.
“I’m sorry, Andy, I just don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I’m being asked to be something I’m not. Why, of all people, are they asking me about this stuff? I’m barely anything. But I also like it, sometimes. I like it that people think my opinion matters. It’s just . . . I don’t know if it does.”
Andy thought about this for a long time before he said, “April, I think you’re doing a good job.”
I looked him in the eyes and almost said something dumb and snarky but then instead just said, “Thanks, Andy.”
* * *
—
This was the night it all changed for me. After that conversation, I realized something: I wasn’t ever going to love the entertainment industry the way that Andy did, but he was right that it was an amazing opportunity. And my lack of interest gave me a kind of power. I honestly didn’t know that there was a difference between being on cable news and being on network late night. To me, TV was TV. I had no idea that what I was about to do was a big deal. For all these reasons—the practice of the week before, my immunity to its power over me and the pull of the power it offered—I suddenly became pretty good at television.
Here’s how things went that night. (It’s fun to be able to recount some of the conversations I had verbatim because of how there were, like, twelve cameras pointed at me while I had them.)
“Everyone! April May and Andy Skampt, the discoverers of New York Carl!”
We walk out to applause. We had mostly been doing more newsy stuff, so this is a bit different.
“How’s life been for the last week?”
I tended to do most of the talking, so I start out, “Pretty weird, Pat. Pretty freaking weird.”
“My name is not Pat.” Pat laughs.
“Honestly, I’ve just started calling all the newspeople Pat because I can’t keep you all straight.”
Andy chimes in here, “April is new to the institution of television. She’s spent her entire life being entertained by novels from the 1860s.”
Chuckles from the audience.
“Not true, my friend! I have spent a fair amount of my life being entertained by cheesecake.” The callback to our previous conversation was intentional. There’s some more robust chuckling from the audience.