This Story Might Save Your Life(37)
“That’s what Keller said, yeah.”
More muttering.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I’m driving up the hill, and there are people inside Joy’s house.”
Joy Moore
EXCERPT FROM UNTITLED JOINT MEMOIR WITH BENNY ABBOTT
Four Years Ago
“A comedy survival podcast,” I said, finishing my margarita. “And by survival you mean…”
“You know,” Benny said, “not dying.”
“And this is funny because…”
He tilted his head as if the answer were obvious. “Because it’s us.”
It took me a second. “I’m sorry, what? You want me to do this with you?”
“It’s the only way it can be done.”
I still didn’t understand, so he explained it to me like I was five. We’d start by covering the worst-case scenarios our younger selves thought our adult selves would be tackling on a regular basis: quicksand, lightning strikes, killer bees, flesh-eating bacteria, that sort of thing. Each episode would follow a basic format: One of us would introduce the deadly plight of the day, and the other would toss out ideas, having done no research at all, as to how they, if faced with said scenario, might respond. We’d riff like we always do, and when the guesser ran out of ideas, the person leading the episode would then reveal the best tactics for survival.
Eventually, if the show caught on, we’d set up a submissions page on our website so we could draw from our listeners’ own unique survival stories. No topic unwelcome.
I could think of a thousand reasons to say no. I didn’t have the time. We didn’t have a space to record in. No one would listen. We weren’t funny enough. And the biggest: Xander. “Why us?”
He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Let’s say you’ve just reunited with your best friend after three excruciatingly long years, and you’re so desperate to spend time with her you come up with a ridiculous podcast idea. But the thing is, it’s not ridiculous, and if she says no you might die of disappointment. What do you do? Do you get down on your knees and beg?”
I twirled my coupe by the stem, heat blooming on my cheeks. Best friend. I was still his best friend. “And you want to call it what?”
“This Story Might Save Your Life.”
I blinked. “Might?”
“We can’t make any promises.” He shrugged. “This story might be funny.”
“You might be terrible at naming podcasts.”
He let out a full head-tilt bellow of a laugh. God, how I’d missed that sound.
“Give it a month,” he said. “One month, and if no one listens, no big deal.”
And so it began.
Even in hindsight it still shocks me how quickly it all transpired. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect us to be a success. I only said yes because I wanted a standing date. We recorded “How to Survive a Narcoleptic Attack” at Benny and Luna’s house in the Hollywood Hills. I pulled out my best stories (sleep disorders are not without their benefits), and we were giddy and silly, and Luna thought it was so funny she passed it along to a client friend she’d recently ushered through a divorce. This client friend, an almost-famous TV actress, enjoyed it so much she posted a rave review on social media. A few of her Very Famous friends then shared her post, and by the end of the week our silly little forty-five minute rant debuted as the number three Top Comedy Episode on iTunes.
Xander couldn’t believe it. He’d been playing the entrepreneurial lottery for years with very little success, and here we were, two idiots with mediocre voices, accidentally hitting the jackpot.
Within months, we had so many amazing listeners (we you!) rating and reviewing and subscribing and, most importantly, contributing. Your stories. Swoon. So many stories, all expertly told with a twenty-twenty hindsight sense of humor. You’re all writers, you. It blows my mind how many extraordinary situations you’ve encountered. Bear attacks, aneurysms, dental treatments gone wrong, hauntings, comas, robberies. I thought we’d run out of topics, but as it turns out there’s no end to the horrors of this world. I’m humbled that survival is the common denominator. We’ve all survived to tell our stories. We’re all surviving. It fills me with hope.
But I digress again! As wonderful as you all are, our podcast’s meteoric rise was not all rainbows and unicorns. With sudden popularity comes sudden responsibility. Benny and I grappled with the business side of things. It was a lot at once. The website, the planning. So many emails, so many messages to reply to, so much paperwork for ad sponsors and merch and blah blah blah. I’m boring myself, so I must be boring you. Let me condense for brevity and say that Benny and I are both right-brained. And while we wanted to handle all of this ourselves in theory, we struggled. Neither of us had quit our “real” jobs yet, and there simply weren’t enough hours in the day.
Which was why, six months in, Xander volunteered to take over as producer.
We’d moved our operations to my apartment in deference to my schedule, and we’d just wrapped episode twenty-six. Benny was packing his things. “Nah, man, we’re okay.” He didn’t meet Xander’s eye. Hadn’t properly met Xander’s eye, in fact, since the flaming margaritas. Though I’m sure he’d wanted a showdown, I’d begged him to let it go, explaining that Xander was only trying to protect me, and yes, he overstepped, and yes, I too was angry about losing the last three years. So angry. But it wouldn’t do either of us any good to pick at the collective wound. We had to move on if we wanted to move on together.