24

"Talent"

If you ever want to experience the feeling of another person letting you finish a complete thought, to communicate an entire idea without interruption, you have to find someone who wants you. Libido driven attention is total, and adoring, and, while it's happening at least, seemingly honest. They are truly interested, engaged, absorbed by and in your surely thought provoking observational musings. If you don't think someone giving you this gift is every bit as precious as them sharing their genitals, you're fooling yourself. Every human alive will be fucked more than they'll be listened to.

I'm thinking this while Doug is telling me today's agenda, blah blah blah whatever, until he mentions freeze dried cheesesteaks for lunch, and for the first time I feel like maybe this day will be worth being semi-conscious for. Then, before I can tune out again he reminds me that today on set we're doing our serial pervert show and tell. Oh great joy, the sweet sweet chaos, what a treat.

When Charlie had seen my glee at serving up this potential fiasco, he started to say, like, “Hey, this is your career we're talking about…” then remembered who he was talking to, didn't bother to finish.

As we are leaving for lunch, I stop and check my phone while the security guard returns fire at a pick up truck driving by and I'm relieved it's not windy because I am trying a new hair gel and I don't know how it will stand up to adverse weather conditions.

Nodding out in the back seat of Lincoln Towne Cars is so much a part of my daily work routine that I could put it on my resume, but a person would be crazy to ignore the benefits of a bottomless expense account so brazenly as to skip the all important business lunch, and taking anything speedy kills the appetite. Charlie once started to admonish me saying “you can go to any restaurant in the city and all you eat is shit! Why don't you…” but then he remembered who he was talking to, didn't bother to finish.

Lunch is a blur. Afterwards, there is airy, crispy meat in my teeth. I brush them while the speed starts really kicking in, I spend I don't how much time removing any percieved imperfections from my hair, and get out to the sound stage so I can look involved and in control even though the only real duty I feel I have is to try to not grind my teeth too much in front of people.

There's people with rifles in plain sight and people with rifles hidden from view and I wish I would have paid attention to the instructions given to the audience by one of the producers but I am completely distracted thinking that if I were to be killed I would deeply regret dying having never gotten past the third chapter of the book “Infinite Jest”even though I don't like it but for some reason I really, really want to.

Maybe that's how Allie feels about me, wherever she is. It's really the best I can hope for.

Standing by craft services backstage I'm joined by our somewhat angry but very funny warm up comic named Greg Bauch, who hands me a rum and coke and tells me he's been destroying our show in his blog about reality shows his wife makes him watch. I tell him he's welcome, we clink our glasses together, and the swelling music tells me it's showtime. Oh boy, here we go.

I'm chewing Valium cause I went overboard on Adderall and feel like I'm eating my face. Zoe has done her intros and the contestants are ready to show her their performances; Imagine the talent portion of the Miss America pageant if the girls were all in cages.

First is Carter Pressman, who acts out a scene from Pulp Fiction, playing all the characters, including Uma Thurman’s. A much lesser dancer than John Travolta but unsurprisingly believable as a paid killer.

Kit Rubinski, sporting an obvious erection, drew her a picture of an even larger breasted version of herself having fire engulfed intercourse with a dragon. He explained the significance of this, it's not worth repeating.

BTK did a demonstration of how to bind a person with a huge variety of knots. He had the second of what would be three noticeable erections on the evenings broadcast. Someone in the audience threw and hit him with what I believe was a tater tot. They were removed forcibly and I told myself to see that they get a t-shirt or something.

Sammy Norwell showed her how he made his own recipe of sausage in his special brand of unique casing. He was allowed a grinder and some kind of tenderizing mallet, but no knives, so cutting was done with his teeth, which he was unusually adept at. It was gross.

With the evenings third boner, Charlie McChesky Juggled. Have you seen juggling? It was that.

Brad Jarbone had made her some kind of clay pot, but it cracked, so he smashed it into a million pieces and cried.

Last up was Darren Craig. He was given a very nice acoustic guitar, and made amazing use of it. He performed a song, singing in ( in complete contrast to his speaking voice) a nearly pitch perfect falsetto, a song called ‘Holocene’ by the group Bon Iver, and by the time he sang the line “…and at once I knew, I was not magnificent " huge swaths of the audience, the crew, and Zoe herself, were visibly moved. I even saw noticeably shaking hands on an assault rifle held by a man who looked like he may have killed more people than our contestants, complete with the bobbing Adam's apple that occurs when a dude is fighting back tears. My face is, of course, numb, but I suspect it may not have been dry either. This was a man, in no uncertain terms, very literally singing for his life. It was…well, it was fucking heavy, and it seemed to work on its intended target.

The segment ended, the stage lights lowered, and in the break between segments, as the viewers at home watched commercials and a highlight recap package, Zoe approaches Darren's cell, and as he is talking to her, I can't help but notice that she is totally, adoringly, honestly listening.