Chump Change (21 page)

Then I heard myself speaking. For what seemed like five minutes, my voice was the only sound in the room. And although I was the one speaking, I couldn’t believe my ears.

First, it seemed, I was talking about the history of television. I was pontificating to a roomful of TV professionals upon the genesis and origins of their own medium, in which I was a stranger, an interloper.

“When TV first came out,” I was saying. “People dressed up to watch it, they wore suits and ties and Sunday dresses. Eventually, they relaxed, and wore casual clothes.”

My point, apparently, was this: the evolution of television was an evolution towards being more and more relaxed, and the Cosmodemonic broadcasts were too stiff and formal, a stuffed shirt in a suit and tie reading the news from behind a desk. That was strictly ‘50s, I said; a holdover from radio. We needed deskless anchors, more live bits, more action and movement.

In short, I launched into a sweeping critique of every facet of the organization that had just hired me, particularly singling out the various all-powerful anchors sitting around the table.

“Well, thank you very much, Mr. Henry,” Nigel Trotts said ironically, when it seemed to be over. A wave of disbelief swept the room. Never before had they witnessed such a pyrotechnic display of impromptu self-destruction and career suicide. They were united in a single thought, I knew, and it was this: whew,
am I ever glad I’m not that fucking fool. At that moment, if a huge trapdoor had opened in the floor in front of me, leading down to a festering pit of poisonous snakes, I would gladly have jumped in.

You know who came to my defence? Reed Franklin.

“I think what he’s trying to say,” Franklin began, in his deep, authoritative voice — and in a couple of deft sentences, summarized my rambling statements. He wrapped it up by saying it was “something to think about, anyway.”

That was the moment I think you could say I fell in love with Reed Franklin. What a beacon of integrity. Of course he would step in when everyone was laughing at his lackey. He wasn’t “the most trusted man in Canada” for nothing.

The meeting moved on to other topics. Later, I approached Nigel Trotts at his desk, at the helm of the Cosmodemonic flagship.

“Listen, Nigel,” I said. “I’m no public speaker.”

“So I observed,” he said drily, with his
haute-Oxbridge
accent.

“I’d like another chance, I’d like to try to put my thoughts in writing.”

“That might be a good idea.”

“O.K. Good. I’ll write you a memo.”

I slaved over that memo, trying to make it as eloquent as possible. Nigel Trotts passed it around to some of the hotshot flagship writers who, of course, treated it as a joke. Once, I half-heard a writer use a phrase out of my memo as an example of an idiotic proposition. It had obviously become an old chestnut, a stock dinner-party joke among the writers on the flagship program. Cynical bastards, I thought. What do you have to say for yourselves? What are your thoughts and ideas? Go
ahead and laugh. They laughed at the Wright brothers, too. Of course, “they” also laughed at all the people before the Wright brothers, the ones who jumped off cliffs frantically flapping wooden wings or clutching their propeller beanies. I just had to pray that in my case, anyway, they were wrong.

Luck was on my side, though. One day, a Friday, I was sitting at my computer, working away. Writing the continuity for Saturday’s show.

“When we come back,” I wrote. “More chips off the Communist bloc.”

I was looking it over, double-checking my work, when suddenly I felt a shadow across my computer screen. I craned my neck around. Frizell, my boss, had slipped up behind me and was looking over my shoulder. I felt my scalp tingle.

“NOW THAT’S THE TYPE OF WRITING I LIKE TO SEE AROUND HERE,” he said in a loud voice.

Everyone in the immediate vicinity went silent, stopped their frantic typing. Even the eternal BING-BONG of the phone seemed to be suspended for a moment. Having gained their attention, Frizell read my “throw to commercial” in the same loud voice.

“WHEN WE COME BACK, MORE CHIPS OFF THE COMMUNIST BLOC. I LIKE THAT. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, DAVID.”

He moved on, continuing his Friday-afternoon review of the troops. Sitting in my chair, I felt a flush of pure unadulterated happiness. Approval from the boss: there’s no rush quite like it, is there? Neither drugs, nor sex, nor even the afterglow of a smoothly executed bowel movement beats it. Among earthly pleasures, it’s second only to losing your wallet, then finding it again, in my opinion.

A murmur went up among the flagship writers. One of them, a normally sour-pussed, taciturn woman named Susan Bowden, leaned over to me and said:

“More chips off the Communist bloc. That’s good.”

Looking back, I still have some misgivings about the line. I mean, it’s a bit of a mixed, or misapplied, metaphor, isn’t it? “Chip off the old block” refers to something different entirely. But what the hell. When you’ve got it made in the shade, enjoy your moment in the sun. You can’t tell if a gift horse is a Trojan horse by looking it in the mouth.

Then, a few weeks later, I wrote another celebrated throw to commercial.

It was Christmas, and I was filling in for someone on the flagship program. The Christmas Day newscast is known as “Jews’ news,” because everyone else wants it off for a holiday. But even though I’m Christian, I hate Christmas. All Henry family gatherings are sheer torture, but Christmas is by far the worst. Having to work was a good excuse to bow out gracefully.

The Berlin Wall was just coming down, and both East and West Berliners were celebrating on top of the Wall. You may remember the famous footage. They were beside themselves, drinking champagne on the Wall, festooning the Wall with Christmas decorations, hugging each other. I wrote:

I wrote WALL in capitals to get the anchor to stress it, but the producer took the caps out, and the anchor, a handsome reporter who was filling in for Peter Rockwell, read it wrong. He read it straight: “When we come back… they-decked-the-
Wall-with-boughs-of-holly,” and my pun was lost on the ears of the masses.

Frizell caught it, though. The first general editorial meeting after Christmas, he asked:

“Who wrote that line, ‘They decked the Wall with boughs of holly?’”

I raised my hand modestly.

“Excellent, excellent,” he said. “Good work, once again, David.”

People were starting to look at me differently, I felt. Wondering, maybe we’ve misjudged this huge fool? Is this naïve, friendly, obviously challenged giant perhaps some sort of
idiot savant
of news writing?

I never thought of my new job as particularly cool or glamorous — for one thing, my colleagues were the most venal, petty, nasty crew it’s ever been my displeasure to work with. I realize every office has its share of assholes, but in the newsroom the proportions seemed all out of whack. Most offices, I’ve found, break down something like this: 5 percent of the people are cool or “allies”; 10 percent are assholes; and the other 85 percent are indifferent, neutral. But in the Cosmodemonic crackhouse, it was more like: 5 percent cool people; 85 percent assholes; and 10 percent real fucking assholes. Horrible people, without a sense of humour to share between them. The only time they ever seemed to laugh, or crack a joke, was when some nun was skewered in a freak accident, or an innocent peasant village was buried under a deluge of molten lava.

“AR-HAR-HAR!” they’d say. “I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS!” Or: “GUESS THEY’LL BE HOT UNDER THE COLLAR FOR A WHILE, HEH-HEH-HEH.”

The type of thing that passes for wit in newsrooms across the world. I know it’s supposed to be journalistic gallows humour, a way of releasing tension in the face of dealing with everyday horrors, but it didn’t strike me that way at all. To me, it seemed more like these were pricks in the first place, who were drawn to TV news because they knew they could act like
pricks, yell and scream, snap, blow their tops, and get away with it, put it all down to stress.

Also, I was just a cog, a tooth on a cog, in the vast Cosmodemonic machinery. All the glamour, all the accolades went to the on-air personalities, the “talent.” They even call them that, right in front of everyone: “Can someone get out here and powder the talent’s nose?” I was a behind-the-scenes-guy, a roadie, a techie, a spear-shaker.

Which suited me to a T. This was just something to tide me over until I got my shit together and returned to my true vocation, writing. It was just a day-job.

Au contraire
, the world said in unison. Writing is your hobby, a self-indulgent pastime. TV news writer: now that’s a great gig.

TV: it was amazing the power those two little letters had, when added as a prefix to my job description of writer — especially on women, all women, from the comeliest coeds to the dourest dowagers. It had a powerful, Svengali-like effect on the young ones; it was as if I’d blown some magic aphrodisiac powder in their faces. For the older society matrons, it was as if I’d suddenly enwrapped myself in an invisible cloak of respectability, legitimacy and eligibility. “Ah,
TV
writer, you say? Hmmm…very good, I believe. I would like you to meet my daughter, Dowagina.”

I remember the first party I went to after getting the job. I wasn’t at my best that night, jet-lagged from the night shift, with bags under my eyes you’d have to check at the airport. I didn’t know many people at the party, so I was knocking back the drinks: stand, sip, stare, sip, stare, stand. Soon, I was heavily, stuporifically drunk, slurring my words. The few people I talked to quickly made excuses and moved away. One girl simply said “Excuse me,” and then moved five feet away — not
to talk to anyone else, just to lean against a pillar and sip her drink away from me.

Towards midnight, I was sitting by myself on the couch, battling all kinds of booze-induced hallucinations: tunnel vision, the Doppler effect, the willies and the whirlies. Suddenly a sexy girl in a regulation little black dress plopped down next to me. I turned my bovine stare on her.

“Hi, my name’s Trish,” she said. “Who are you? What do you do?”

“Well, right now I’m a televishion news writer,” I slurred at her. “But thass jus’ my day chob, whud I really wanna do is —”

“Hold it. Wait a second. Did you say TV writer? But that’s so interesting. How did you get that?”

Half an hour later, she was breathing hotly in my ear, she had an arm around my shoulder, one leg carelessly slung over one of mine, and I’m thinking how beautiful it is when two young people fall in love. Every time I relaxed my concentration, my focus split and there were two Trishes on the couch. I realized I had to go. I lumbered to my feet like a slumbering mastodon. I disentangled myself from her grasp — it was like trying to unknot a tangled shoelace — and I told her I had to go.

“Well, Trish, nice to meetcha, but I godda go home an’ hidda hay.”

“That’s too bad,” she said, fixing me with a smoldering stare. “I’d like to get to know you better.”

With that, she reached into her purse, withdrew a business card, and sultrily slipped it into my breast pocket.

“Call me,” she said in a husky whisper.

Not too long after that, I went to a dinner party at Max’s parents’ mansion by mistake. The mistake was Max’s. Max and I
were going out that night and I was supposed to pick him up at his family’s house. But when I arrived, Max answered the door with napkin tucked into his shirt-collar, and a glass of wine in one hand.

“What’s this?” I asked him. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” he said,
sotto voce
. “My mother roped me into staying for dinner. I told her we were supposed to go out, but she said I should invite you, too. You want to join us?”

In general, I try to avoid Max’s mother whenever possible. The feeling is mutual. We both think the other is a bad influence on Max. On the other hand, free food, free booze! It’s my proud boast I’ve never knowingly turned down either. I think “free open bar” the most beautiful three-word phrase in the English language, followed closely by “set for life” and, of course, “I love you.”

“Alright,” I said.

Inside, a WW II-generation dinner party is in full swing. Mrs. Stapleton sits at one end of the billiard-table-sized dining-room table, her husband, Max’s father, at the other. On either side sit their guests: the family dentist, his wife, one of Mr. Stapleton’s colleagues, his wife, the family lawyer (a bachelor), Max and myself. Max’s younger brother represented the MTV generation by keeping his mouth shut, except to say “Pass this” or “Pass that.”

Mrs. Stapleton conducts the conversation. That’s the only word for it, she’s like a symphony conductor, you can almost see the invisible baton in her hands. And you, Mr. Higgins, how is your practice going? Good, good. And you, Mrs. Dingle, how are your fuchsias coming along, easy, easy, watch me, watch me. And you, Dr. Dingle, how is the lumbago? Good, good, bring it up a bit.

I kept my head low, and munched my dinner. I knew she
was working her way around to me. Over the years, Mrs. Johnson has only ever had one question for Max’s friends: “What are you up to these days?” She doesn’t ask out of interest, rather, it’s a challenge, flung in your face, like a drink. A question which has always made me wriggle and writhe like a fish on a spear, as you know. But with Mrs. Stapleton it was the worst.

I had a bit of a surprise in store for her this time, though.

“And you, David?” she asked, pointing her invisible baton towards me, David Henry, the timpanist. “What are you up to these days?”

Everyone at the table froze, heads swivelled towards me. I, David Henry, the timpanist, raised my fuzzy drumsticks and prepared to bring them crashing down in my big solo.

“Actually, I’m working as a TV writer right now,” I said.

“Really? Where?”

Some rinky-dinky little cable station, perhaps? her tone seemed to imply. A pirate broadcaster, transmitting from a tugboat moored somewhere offshore?

I told her: the Cosmodemonic Broadcast Corporation, National and International News Division.