THURSDAY, 1:08 A.M.
I was walking toward the elevators to leave when I heard someone say, “Hey, Sally.” When I turned, Elliot—the head writer, who was married to the multi-platinum-album-selling singer named Nicola—was leaning out of his office.
I paused.
He said, “Nice lineup on the corkboard.”
Because he’d been part of the meeting where the first round of sketches had been selected, I said, “If you’re offering me the opportunity to thank you, I’ll hold off ’til the live show.” I didn’t point out that I’d never know if he’d argued for or against any of mine.
“I’ll be shocked if at least one doesn’t make it to air,” Elliot said, which didn’t seem particularly encouraging. He added, “I just wanted to say—not to touch the third rail—I hope—” He paused, and I was reminded that, although he had over time remade himself into a well-groomed, successful cultural arbiter married to a pop star, he was still, fundamentally, an awkward writer.
And though I myself was no stranger to awkwardness, I wasn’t going to help him out. “You hope—？” I repeated.
“That someday you’ll be able to let bygones be bygones.”
If I’d had any acting skills, I’d have said, “Meaning what?” But of course I knew what he was alluding to; even though he was wrong, I knew. Elliot had started at TNO the year before I had and was legendary for landing what became a wildly popular sketch on his first episode ever. By the time I joined, he seemed like a beloved veteran. In contrast, my first year had been bumpy and confusing, I’d often been too intimidated to even speak, only two of my sketches had made it on air in the whole season, and I hadn’t known if I would be invited back. The week in August after my contract had been renewed, a few months before the next season started in October, I’d run into Elliot at the Strand, next to a table of novels in translation, and we’d ended up getting coffee and having a surprisingly frank conversation. I had confided all the insecurities I’d been wracked with—my total lack of experience in stand-up or improv, the fact that I hadn’t attended Harvard—and he’d matter-of-factly said that was all normal, almost everyone felt insecure, even people who had lots of experience with stand-up or improv and people who had gone to Harvard, and his trajectory was more anomalous than mine. TNO liked raw talent, he said. Nigel preferred hiring people for their first TV job because then the show could mold them. Elliot pointed out that I didn’t always submit a sketch for the table read and asked if I was writing them and not submitting or not even writing them. The former, I said. He said that I should never be the one to preemptively reject my ideas; I should force other people to. In fact, I should submit a minimum of two sketches each week, even if I didn’t think they were in perfect shape. There were so many variables affecting a sketch’s outcome—the host, the national moment, Nigel’s mood—plus an idea could always be drastically improved in rewrites. Also, Elliot said, I should seek out cast members who’d started around my year, who were as green and hungry as I was, and we should pool our talents and climb the ranks together. Our time might not be now, but if we persisted, it would come. The only way to learn, he said, was by doing it. He didn’t put it in these terms, and I’m not even sure if he knew this was what he was saying, but his message was: Act like a guy. It was a message that turned out to be invaluable.
At that time, he was years away from being named head writer—we were part of a writing staff of twelve—and we became close friends. We didn’t write together, but for my second season on the show, we were editors of each other’s work, brainstorming ahead of time and punching up early drafts, and our compatibility had the unfortunate effect of making me think we were in love. I hadn’t dated anyone since my divorce, which had become official a few months after I’d arrived at TNO. Unlike in the dynamic with my ex-husband, Elliot and I shared a shorthand, a general sensibility, and the same incredibly weird schedule. After holding in my feelings for seven months, I half-drunkenly confessed my love to him at the after-party following the season finale of my second year, he rebuffed me, I cried to a writer named Stephanie while she ate a plate of grilled sesame shrimp and scallions, and I never again was close to Elliot. For the subsequent seven years, while frequently attending the same meetings and passing each other in the studio, we’d spoken only when necessary.
But I neither longed for nor resented him, as I’d always sensed he believed. Though I’d been hurt and humiliated by his rejection, it had, I soon realized, freed me and offered clarity. I would never again risk poisoning TNO for myself by falling for or trying to date anyone there. And this decision made me see that there was a different way I wrote when, even subconsciously, I was seeking male approval, male sexual approval: a more coy way, more reserved, more nervous about being perceived as angry or vulgar. It was the syntactical equivalent of dressing up as a sexy zombie for Halloween. From my third season on, I’d embraced my anger and vulgarity. I’d been a gross zombie.
I began writing about ostensibly female topics—camel toe and wage inequity, polycystic ovary syndrome and Jane Austen, Do-si-dos and Trefoils and mammograms and shapewear and Dirty Dancing and the so-called likeability of female politicians. By October of that year, I’d written my first viral sketch, Nancy Drew and the Disappearing Access to Abortion, in which Henrietta played the amateur detective. By December, I’d written my second, My Girlfriend Never Farts, which was a digital short that interspersed men at a bachelor party remarking on how their girlfriends and wives always smelled great and were hairless interspersed with shots of the women grunting and sweating as they moved a couch up a staircase, writhing on the toilet with explosive diarrhea, and giving instructions to an aesthetician who was waxing their buttholes. I didn’t try to be disgusting for the sake of being disgusting, but I didn’t try not to be disgusting.
A few years after not reciprocating my feelings, Elliot appeared to develop an almost identical friendship with another new female writer except that I had the impression they were hooking up, but it didn’t last. The same season that Elliot became head writer, Nicola Dornan was a musical guest on the show, they began dating, and a year after that, they got married. This development did seem to vindicate his apparent belief that he shouldn’t have settled for me. Quite a few people from TNO had been invited to the wedding, and I hadn’t been one of them.
All of which was to say, as we stood in the hallway outside his office, below a framed photo of a legendary TNO alum from the first season dressed as the Easter bunny—many such photos adorned the halls—I knew that Elliot was saying he hoped someday I could get over him.
I tried to sound persuasively non-defensive as I said, “Really and truly, Elliot, the Danny Horst Rule sketch isn’t about you. It’s not revenge for you marrying Nicola.”
The expression on his face was sympathetic and disbelieving, which made me realize I’d have vastly preferred unsympathetic and believing. Somberly, he said, “You have good qualities, Sally. You’re not out of the game unless you think you are.”