Heaven’s Gate
4 Fine Tuning
“I SUCKED.”
“I’m pretty sure it was me who did the sucking,” Cassie laughed. “And you did not suck. They loved you.”
“They loved that we were giving them a party,” I said. “We can’t give a party for every audience. That’s like paying people to like you.”
“They knew and we knew that this was special,” Samantha said. “They were so impressed that you knew about their pledge competition to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. That is something we need to make sure we plug in every show. We need to know the group’s charity of choice and we should put a subtitle at the bottom of the screen that gives the address of where to donate. You’ve always had good luck getting people to contribute to a worthy cause since you did the talk show tour last summer.”
“They all filled out the surveys,” Sarah said. “I should have results tabulated tomorrow. I’m heading home now. I doubt we’ll need to keep surveying every audience, but I’ve got an idea that we might use for a weekly game. I’m too tired to talk about it tonight. ’Night-night.”
We wrapped things up and headed home. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I walked in the door and stripped. Even Chuck and Frankie peeled out of their clothes in the entry. I walked into the family room and found Dani nursing Xan in my big chair.
“Just who we needed to see,” Dani smiled. “Baby is all milky and needs Papa to dance with her.” Hannah went to the CD player and put on KD Lang’s Absolute Torch and Twang.
“Isn’t that a little lively for this time of night?” I asked.
“She loves it. Dance with her.”
I tossed a burp cloth over my shoulder and put Xan against it. We started two-stepping around the family room to the sound of “Full Moon Full of Love.” She had a big burp, but not much milk came up. In five more minutes, she was asleep in my arms.
Sarah had some good ideas. We’d try a game while the audience was being warmed up. I wasn’t sure about the whole warm-up concept yet. Sure, it was great to have Elaine the first night. The audience would have come just to see her. But how would we arrange an improv comic for every show? Elaine’s afternoon performances just didn’t seem to require anyone to talk to the audience before she came on. Warren would play some music and people would start feeling good, then he’d segue into Elaine’s theme song, and poof! She’d walk out on stage and rock the house. My music was definitely pre-recorded, though Warren was working on getting us a good theme developed.
“So, what we do is pass out a little quiz to the audience before the show,” Sarah said at our staff meeting on Tuesday. “We organize it like a game segment. You have a contestant from the audience try to guess what the audience answered to a half dozen questions. Not only will the crowd have fun, but we’ll get some pretty valuable audience profile information from every show.”
“Does that mean I need a writer with me for every show?” I asked.
“You can handle that,” Frankie said. “It’s not like you need lines to go with the questions. You’ll find something funny about whatever is answered.”
“I think when we get it rolling, though, we should collect a week’s worth of answers and then have the contestants on just the Friday show. That would give a target for people to watch and would also make it more difficult for the audience to share answers around,” Chuck said.
“I like that,” Sam said. “We need a few show features that differentiate XX/XY from other shows. Like Carson had Carnac and Letterman has the Top Ten.” Sam shifted uncomfortably in her chair and took a deep breath.
“We need to work on the opening monologues,” April said. “I don’t want to copy the camerawork we do on Chick Chat because then we’d start having a Hearthstone Style and I don’t think we want that. Elaine’s asides are uniquely hers. But I don’t want Brian to look like a statue up there either. I hate the fixed camera position concept. I’ve got half a notion to film the whole monologue from behind him and focus on the audience instead of Brian.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“I think we can develop something that isn’t quite so drastic,” Frankie said. “I’d like to consult with Nikki on our style.”
“You can bet April and I are talking to Hannah,” Sam laughed. “It’s great that we have mentors right here where we can talk to them.” She stretched again. “Let’s wrap this up and do what we need to in smaller groups. Next week is midterms and I know Brian has studying to do.”
“Sweetheart, are you okay?” I asked, catching up with Sam at the back door.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Apparently, a side benefit of having my shoulder blown to bits is that I can predict the weather now. My shoulder is a little inflamed.”
“You should see your doctor.”
“My next appointment is in eight days. I think I can stand it that long. I’m just thankful I can lift my hand above my waist. It’s just that every once in a while I don’t get it where I intend and I smack someone in the balls or a boob,” she laughed. “How about you? Do you have any residual pain like that?”
“A little. Mostly my physical pain goes away after I work out in the morning. Let’s go upstairs and I’ll rub an analgesic on your shoulder.”
“Why don’t we go upstairs and you can smear slippery fluids around on me where it will do the most good?”
“I love you, Samantha.”
“Good. We should have just enough time before you have to leave for class.”
“September 26, 1960,” Professor Nelson said. “That is the date that television changed the face of American politics.” I really enjoyed the Communication and Politics class. And Professor Nelson made the class interesting. He had tons of historical documents that he brought to class, even though some of them were framed and carefully displayed. Like the Chicago Daily Tribune that announced Dewey’s election victory over Truman.
“John F. Kennedy spent the day sunning on the roof of his Chicago hotel and reviewing his notecards with his aide and speech writer, Ted Sorensen. Nixon studied, too. But he was exhausted. He’d just gotten out of the hospital and was thin and pale. That night, the two of them went head-to-head in the first nationally televised presidential debate. In ten years, the number of households with television in America had gone from eleven percent to eighty-eight percent,” Professor Nelson said. “The attractive, fit, and articulate Kennedy looked like the leader of the nation. Nixon looked like a zombie. Those who only listened to the debate on the radio thought Nixon had clearly won. But close to seventy-five million who watched on television were turned to Kennedy.”
The lecture continued and Professor Nelson actually played a tape of a portion of the debate. Wow! I thought of the various politicians Elaine had interviewed on her show. Were people swayed to vote by what they saw?
“The burning question is, ‘Can the national media be trusted with the outcome of American politics?’ You will be part of the answer to that question.”
My twenty-third birthday was on Wednesday. It was just our casa celebrating and I intended to take Liz to bed for the night. She looked at me with the sparkle of a tear in her eye and shook her head.
“My period started today.”
That was that. She still wasn’t pregnant. Of course, I was surrounded by willing partners, but I elected to just hold and kiss my lovers and not have sex. Seeing Liz so sad just made me want to wait.
Those of us in school all relished the fall break on Friday and the younger clan members, most of whom were juniors, wanted a fire that night. It had been a great day with temperatures jumping up to near eighty, so we quickly agreed. I thought it would be a pretty lowkey celebration, but I didn’t count on our younger clan members. I think TK started it, but soon after the sun was down at six-thirty, people started getting naked. Well, it’s hard to stay clothed when you have TK, Judy, Susan, Pam, Nancy, and Addison dancing naked around the fire. It wasn’t long before everyone was naked, including Robyn, who was about ready to pop out her baby. I saw naked men and women that I’d seldom seen before. Theresa, Dawn, and Larry, along with both their kids. Sarah, Sugar, and Lamar. Unfortunately, Lionel had finally been shipped to start practice with the Bucs. Sugar planned to stay here until she knew where they were going to move to. It was funny to watch Leann try to keep hold of a nipple as Sugar danced with the rest of us.
I won’t say there were no little rubs and playing going on, either. Even Dawn got in the act when she backed up into me as we were dancing and made sure I had an erection pointing straight up between her cheeks. About nine, I was ready to go in, but TK grabbed my hand and for the first time in a long time, I did a dorm crawl. It was also the first time that it seemed like everyone wanted a full insertion, including Addison and April. The only ones of the girls that just wanted to be held and petted were Nancy and Susan. They whispered that they were both still virgins, but had no qualms at all about having me finger them to a very satisfying climax.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
