Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [38]
I felt normal, which for me was nothing short of euphoric.
It was Monday, and in a few hours I would have to go up to Lorne’s office and pitch ideas to whichever host sat in the leather chair next to Jim Downey. I had no ideas and knew it didn’t matter. Weeks ago I would’ve been up pacing my apartment racking my brain for ideas for the looming pitch meeting. I now knew better. The pitch meeting wouldn’t start until after nightfall. I didn’t care about the pitch meeting; all I cared about was that I had felt normal all night long.
I cautiously made my way to the shower. I stood there and let the hot water run down my back, noting that soap was soap, towels were towels, doors were doors, and they weren’t making me nervous. As I dried myself I looked in the mirror and noticed that I was ghastly thin. “Good,” I thought, “’cause I’m starving.”
I got dressed and walked across the street to St. Mark’s Café and ordered a 5:00 P.M. breakfast. I looked around the restaurant and wanted to hug everyone in it. I paid the bill and boarded the N/R subway to go to the office for the pitch meeting. It wasn’t until I got off at 49th Street that I realized I merely felt like I had ridden the subway, nothing more, nothing less. Coming out of the stairwell from the subway, I was almost blinded by the sun, and I wondered how long it had been there.
It was 6:30 P.M. when I arrived at the seventeenth floor. When I stepped off the elevator, Mike Shoemaker was passing by, mumbling over his shoulder that the pitch meeting was about to start. I put my backpack down on the couch in my office and made my way to Lorne’s office. His door was still closed, so I sat on the hallway floor and waited. I wanted to be one of the first ones there so I could sit on the big couch across from him. If I were going to be fired for having no ideas, I was going to be sitting down when the ax fell.
I have no memory of who the host or the musical guest was that week. I’d had such a life-altering experience that day that the show suddenly seemed laughably small. Lorne’s door opened and people began shuffling in. I sat on the couch and looked into the faces of everyone else in the room. They all looked beaten. Defeated.
As the pitches worked their way clockwise around Lorne’s desk, I heard David Spade say the words that would henceforth cut my weekly anxiety in half. When Lorne asked David for a pitch, he said, “I’m gonna work with Fred on his idea.” I was startled by the revelation.
Bullshit! I thought. He doesn’t have any ideas this week either! Fred and David were buddies, so this was simply a safety net Spade grabbed to save his ass. “I’m gonna help Fred with his idea.” Fred didn’t seem to mind his position as the guy being gravy-trained at all.
I thought back to all the pitch meetings and all the times I had heard that sentence. How could I have been so deaf? When it was my turn to pitch, I looked around the room for someone with actual ideas who had already pitched them who I was friendly enough with to pull the sentence on. Attell!
Lorne looked at me and said, “Jay?” All eyes were on me, and because I was sitting on the couch almost everyone else was standing, looking down at me.
“I have a few things I haven’t fleshed out yet, but I’m working with Attell on his idea,” I said confidently. No one called bullshit on me and Attell just nodded his head. He could have blurted out, “No you’re not!” But he didn’t. He just nodded his head and saved me from being fired. Bless his heart.
Even though I was now medicated, everything I said seemed to make things worse. My entire life I have talked too much. If there was one thing I could change about myself, it would be my inability to close my mouth. My manager, Barry, would constantly tell me, “If you don’t say anything, you can’t say the wrong thing.” He was right, of course, and I always knew he was right, but I continued to speak without thinking first. It’s what got me into