“Mostly female singer-songwriters. My mom liked Linda Ronstadt, Patti LaBelle, Joan Armatrading, so we listened to them a lot. Dolly Parton, of course. And Sade. And then my taste sort of segued into more countryish like Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris. And then, you know, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Dar Williams, or more recently Brandi Carlile. Oh, and Janelle Monáe.” I glanced over and said, “My favorite singers of all time are the Indigo Girls.”
“Yeah, they’re incredible,” he said.
I looked at him—we still were side by side, perhaps six inches apart—and said, “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“A lot of people—meaning male writers here—would use the Indigo Girls as a punchline. Or have used them as a punchline, to make a joke about something that’s very female or that’s lesbianish or that’s earnestly political. And I fucking hate it. Partly because it’s sexist, but even more because it’s not funny. It’s lazy. The Indigo Girls are super talented and have been doing what they do for a long time, on their terms, regardless of cultural trends, and now that we’re a budding autocracy, it’s a little harder to mock the people who have always stood up for the rights of the disenfranchised. Plus, they just have such beautiful, complementary voices.” I paused. “That’s why you came to my office, right? You were hoping for a rant about the Indigo Girls.”
“I love rants about the Indigo Girls. Have you seen them live?”
“Yes, a bunch of times. Have you?”
“I performed with them at a fundraiser in L.A. years ago. And Amy does backup vocals on my song ‘East Matunuck.’ I’m trying to think if they’ve ever been on TNO.”
Of course he had played with them, of course he was on a first-name basis with them. But how had I not known Amy Ray was on one of his songs? “Funny you should ask,” I said. “They haven’t been the musical guests, but there was once a spoof of them where the cast members playing them were dudes. This was before my time.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“It’s my ninth season. Another fun fact is that TNO and I are actually the same age. I was born the month of the premiere, in October 1981.”
“That seems auspicious, right?” Noah said. “I was born in September ’81, so you and I are the same age. If you’ve been here nine years, I take it you like it?”
I had to admit that, for all his cheesiness, he had impeccable social skills. Most hosts were charismatic and many were polite; some were curious about the history of the show; but almost none would ask a writer multiple questions about herself. It didn’t seem rude to me that hosts registered writers the same way the outside world did, which was far lower in the hierarchy than cast members. A lot of writers aspired to be cast members, and some had auditioned for the cast at the same time they’d auditioned for the writing staff, but I felt liberated by not wanting more. It wasn’t by accident that I had never appeared on camera.
“For sure, this is my dream job,” I said. “Even with the baked-in sexism, even when I’ve barely slept. I just can’t imagine a job where I laugh more, or the people are more talented and hardworking. And to get paid to make fun of stuff that deserves to be made fun of and have this huge platform—what more could a misanthrope from Missouri wish for?”
He laughed. “Are you a misanthrope from Missouri?”
“Yes and yes.”
“I feel that way about my music—like, This counts as a job? Sometimes I get scared that someone is going to tell me the jig is up. I fooled everyone for a couple decades, but now they’ve realized I’m a fraud.”
“What’s the fraudulent part? That you don’t really know how to play guitar?”
He laughed.
“That could be a sketch, actually,” I said. “With you just sort of wiggling your fingers on the strings.”
“Actually,” he repeated. “See? You do say it a lot. But no, the fraudulence is being rewarded for something I’d gladly do for free. You’d have to be super, super entitled to experience that and never second-guess yourself or at least be amazed by your luck.”
“The thing I worry about is overstaying my welcome,” I said. “There’s supposedly a TNO curse where if you stay too long, you get stale here and you miss the boat on the next stage of your career. It only applies to writers and cast members, though. A lot of the producers and wardrobe and makeup people have been around forever.”
“What’s the boat you’d miss by not leaving? Like, what’s your next act?”
“I’m going to write non-condescending, ragingly feminist screenplays for romantic comedies.”
He glanced at me. “What makes a romantic comedy non-condescending and ragingly feminist? Besides an Indigo Girls soundtrack.”
“Mostly the quality of the writing. And related to that, the character development. When one of those movies doesn’t work, it’s usually because it’s horribly written and/or the script hasn’t done the work of convincing you the couple is attracted to each other, so then you don’t care if obstacles get in their way and keep them apart. Another of my pet peeves is that the female characters used to all be sort of cutesy, like having flour on their nose after they baked cookies and not knowing it. And now they’re all a mess, like waking up really hungover and getting fired. I want to create characters who aren’t flawless but also aren’t ridiculous or incompetent at life.” After a second, I added, “Wow, was that two rants in a row? I swear I’m actually not a total asshole.”
“You actually don’t seem like a total asshole.”
“I think I’ll leave at the end of next season, thirteen months from now.” Oddly, I hadn’t told this to anyone else yet, including Viv, Henrietta, or my agent. “And then I will have been here exactly ten years. But who knows if I’ll really be able to cut the cord?”
“I’m glad you’re here now, tonight.” Noah pointed at my computer screen. “To save me from myself.” After a pause, he said, “I have to ask—” and he leaned forward and tapped the piece of paper with the two lists of words.
“The first column is words the network censor has allowed in sketches,” I said. “The second column is words the network censor said were offensive and had to be changed. It’s almost like there’s a double standard for terms related to men’s sexuality and terms related to women’s, huh?”
“That’s crazy. Even pink? And wet?”
Hearing Noah say pink and wet together—I felt an unprecedented sympathy for the censor, who, as it happened, was currently a woman in her fifties named Janice. Aloud, I said, “It’s all contextual, of course. Obviously, you can have somebody say ‘That’s a nice pink sweater.’ The problem with the standards rules is that they aren’t even rules. It’s just at the discretion of one person.”
“Do you think getting censored has ever forced you to find a workaround that’s better than what you originally had?”
“For sure,” I said. “But I still don’t like the hypocrisy.”