Our last YouTube upload racked up a dizzying 418 views, so we’re feeling quite high on our success and just the right amount of cocky to capitalize on it. We’ve roped in our fellow theater nerd Sharon, a Chinese-American girl with literally the best deadpanning skills you’ve ever seen in your life, to help out with a topical sketch I wrote before all the screenplay competition stuff kicked off. It’s essentially making a mockery of the “selfie pay” system MasterCard want to introduce – more silly than cuttingly satirical, but sometimes I’m just not in the mood to produce work of SNL quality.
It starts off with the following announcement over a bank’s loudspeaker: “Issues with selfie pay, up to and including dissatisfaction with the quality of your own face, are unlikely to be resolved in branch. Thank you.”
And then in walks a dude with a bag over his head, claiming that he is in fact also having problems with selfie pay. Obviously the branch manager is all, “Well, sir, on first diagnosis I’d say the paper bag over your head might be the issue.”
Anyway, it transpires that the disgruntled customer was involved in a cycling accident – a head-on collision with a Crisis Prevention truck. Because plausibility is not a great concern in skit-writing (which is precisely why I love it), this has left him with ISIS imprinted on his cheek. He’s all: “I uploaded a photo to my Facebook page and was contacted by an alarming number of admiring jihadis. Next thing I know, the FBI are on my doorstep. For some reason they found the truck story pretty far-fetched. After police tackled me to the ground outside a subway station, I thought a precaution couldn’t hurt. Hence the paper bag.”
Then the bank manager tries to get him to register a new face to his records, and he gets pretty mad at the whole fiasco. Like: “Will this override my previous face? It’s important you understand that I won’t be walking around with ISIS stamped onto my cheek indefinitely. Just until the swelling goes down.”
She won’t listen and he ends up yelling about how he’s an upstanding member of this country and how he’s fairly devastated that his own face is now a billboard for the gangrene of humanity. It’s all very touching stuff.
So as you can see, my brand of humor relies heavily on farcical events. But it actually feels pretty good to do something comedy and writing related in the midst of all the chaos. It kind of . . . centers me, if that makes sense. I know who I am when I’m writing and filming and telling jokes. And it’s always nice to have people laughing with you, not at you.
Danny is last to rock up, so I run through lines with Sharon while Ajita messes with lighting – a very professional and advanced combination of desk lamps, overhead chandeliers and one lonely light reflector. Once the set is all sorted [it’s in Ajita’s father’s study and not very convincingly banklike, but what can you do with no budget?] we just have to wait for Danny to arrive with his camera and mikes.
Ajita’s phone buzzes and she looks at the name on her screen discreetly. I wonder if it’s Carlie. I feel kind of terrible for still not addressing this possible romance with Ajita herself, but it’s been a crappy week and I’m so emotionally overwhelmed. I know it’s not an excuse, though. I need to be a better friend. She’s been so great with me over the last few weeks, and I should repay the favor. I make a mental note to check in with her next time we’re alone, even though it might be kinda uncomfortable for both of us. Emotional conversations are not our strong suit.
Eventually Danny arrives, flustered from hauling the tripod on foot, and barely looks at me as we fumble with the equipment. That’s when I remember how pissed he is about the mangled-flower fiasco. Should I mention it to him? Should I brush it under the rug? Should I leave for Mexico sooner than first anticipated? There is just no right answer.
Maturely I decide to crack a relentless stream of “your mom” jokes at him until he softens [not like that, stop it]. The genius thing about this tactic is he really cannot crack any back on account of the fact my mom is dead, so it would just be unnecessarily cruel and harsh.
However, the only effect this has is making Ajita laugh so hard a little bit of wee comes out, and she has to go for a shower to sort her life out. Thus leaving Danny and me making small talk with Sharon, who is lovely but deadpan in real life too, so it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. It could just as easily be “wow, my new friends are so cool and original” as it could “what a bunch of morons”. There is just no way of knowing.
While Ajita’s showering and Sharon is changing into costume, I take the opportunity to ask Danny, “How’s Praj doing? Anything we need to worry about?”
Danny shrugs, not really looking at me as he tinkers with a mic. “He seems okay. Focusing on his next track meet. Still seems kinda lonely, though. I’m hanging out with him at some point next week, which is helping, I think, but I still want him to make some friends his own age, you know?”
“I do. You’re a good friend, looking out for him,” I say, and I mean it. There aren’t many eighteen-year-old dudes who’d hang out with their best friend’s little brother just to make sure he’s doing okay. It reminds me why I’m friends with Danny despite all the melodrama.
Part of me suspects Danny enjoys being around Praj too. Like I say, he doesn’t have many guy friends, and if things are rough at home it’s probably serving as a nice distraction. And he really loves Mario Kart.
Once Ajita has washed away her rogue urine and hopefully found a diaper to wear, I call action. Despite my love of performing, I do secretly love to direct, even though I have a tendency to whine about it. Mainly I just enjoy bossing people around, but there’s something so satisfying about seeing your creation come to life on screen. I get a strange little flutter of excitement at the idea of doing this as a career.
I check my emails for the millionth time today, hoping for news about the screenplay comp despite the fact it’s only been a few days since I sent back my revised script. Nothing.
Then it hits me. What if the judges have seen the nudes?
8.50 p.m.
Honestly, what a self-obsessed drama queen I am. Why would hotshot comedy producers and a panel of professional screenwriting judges be scouring the internet in pursuit of teen nudes? If that were the case, surely they’re the ones who should be embarrassed, not me.
Get a grip, O’Neill.
10.14 p.m.
Danny and I cycle back from Ajita’s together. Our neighborhoods are pretty close, even though his is so much more expensive it might as well be another world.
We’re at the junction and about to part ways when he says, “Hey, why don’t you come to mine for a bit? My mom’s been nagging me to invite you over for months. It’s been so long.”
To be a hundred percent honest, I’m super tired and just want to get home to Betty, Dumbledore and my cozy bed, but I don’t want to spark another argument by saying no. Plus I remember what Betty told me about his parents’ rocky marriage, and the way he dismissed me when I probed him about it. Inviting me back to his is a big show of trust – one our friendship definitely needs right now. And it would be nice to see his mom, Miranda. She was my mom’s best friend, and she always has the best stories.
Which is how, nine minutes later, I’m sitting in the living room of their fancy four-bedroom house, making polite conversation and wishing I was in the comfort of my own home.
Their living room is super formal. It has stiff Chesterfield sofas with tiny, firm cushions, and the floor is pale marble topped with a giant Persian rug. The fireplace itself is bare and unused, but the mantelpiece bears an antique clock and several miniature statues of Jesus and his disciples.
Miranda Wells is beautiful, but in a plastic surgery kind of way. Her forehead’s a little too tight and her lips are a little too plump, but she’s always impeccably dressed. It’s hard to imagine her and my mom being best friends in college. My mom was apparently a total hippie type, by all accounts, all tie-dye and weed and protests. Maybe Miranda used to be too, but she’s been the way she is now for as long as I can remember.
“So Izzy, how’s school going?” she asks, folding one leg tightly over the other and taking a sip of chilled white wine. “Have you figured out which colleges you’re going to apply to yet?”
Here we go again. “Actually, I –”