The Host
A make-or-break show
To my friends in the movies chat For the countless hours of digital companionship
“No, no, no!” The host’s hand shot to the knot of his tie in a greedy attempt at loosening it. “It doesn’t work. It’s clunky. It sucks!” He wondered if anyone was even listening as he let out a deep sigh — the accumulated exhaustion of a seemingly endless rehearsal evaporating into warm air, stress turned carbon dioxide. He gestured at the silhouette holding the cue cards. “Just put them down. We need to redo it. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with this.”
He had performed thousands of monologues throughout his career but none had ever felt as labored and insipid as this one. His hand traveled back to his jugular notch, loosening the tie further. “I’m hungry. Let’s take a break and come back to it.” He left his mark and trudged over to the craft services table, observing the ground in front of him as his feet swung in and out of his field of vision. When he got there, the table was empty but he didn’t feel like kicking up a fuss anymore. “I’ll be in my dressing room,” he said, his voice trailing off.
He slammed the door behind him. The noise caused his ears to ring and he was afraid that the ringing wouldn’t subside so he let his mind wander in hopes of forgetting about the incessant squeeeeee that was bouncing off the inside of his skull. He looked around his dressing room and its gray walls, dark green couch, and white dressing table gave his body a familiar jolt, one where recognition becomes so intense the mind seems to slip out of reality momentarily, oversaturated. He fell on the couch — there was a knock at the door but he pretended not to hear it.
The host’s thoughts landed where they usually land: sex, violent movies, ratings, his first girlfriend’s face, the smell of fresh bedsheets in hotel rooms overlooking neon megalopoli — “The Industry” which had changed a lot since he got his start. The first show he ever did was a lifetime ago. Him, nervously twitching, laughing, compulsively fiddling with his shirtsleeves as his jokes were met with an indifference that, in the moment, struck him as cruel. “I’m trying my best, aren’t I?”
Things picked up over time but the days of being a hot new television commodity had long since passed — he thought back on the pleasures that came with that time of his life, which was, perhaps, the life of every successful, healthy heterosexual male of his generation. Afterparties, intimate conversations, laughter amplified by one too many Cape Cods, Irish exits, shared cabs. A certain woman’s crooked, nervous smile that was seared into his brain, the one she flashed him the next morning, one of her eyelids hanging slightly lower than the other, her hands quick to cover her chest with the white linen sheets when she felt his eyes on her breasts.
The episode occupied his mind for a moment and he considered pleasuring himself to the memory of the woman’s drunken enthusiasm — there was a heat rising from his loins that felt like it could burn holes in his pockets. He remembered tonight’s show: “make or break” were the words pulsing in and out of existence behind his eyes, a hateful graffiti vandalizing his every thought. He knew they would be expecting him on the stage again soon.
As he was making his way back, he wondered how a place like this could ever feel so empty. There was a staleness in the air, the kind of unpleasant, thick odor he associated with the mornings that had begun following sweaty, restless nights. He pictured someone puncturing a bloated corpse’s abdomen in the janitor’s closet, releasing a foul gas, black discharge seeping out of the hole. Death ensnared his imagination as he traversed the endless corridor on his way to the stage which seemed to move further away with every step he took. Shadows followed him on his path, grabbing at his heels in an attempt at pulling him into the darkness. Things would be okay, he thought, just as long as he kept moving.
Slowing down to catch his breath, the host saw one of the anthracite-colored doors that lined the walls glide open. He looked on in stunned silence as the door revealed a young woman staring back at him from the dark of the room, her pale face illuminated by the lurid fluorescent lights that blasted down from the corridor ceiling, flickering in tandem with every perverse, self-destructive thought that congealed in his soul.
The host took a step towards her, his body trembling with anticipation as he pictured himself untying the halo braid her brown hair was currently fashioned into and smelling it. Standing in front of the woman, he buried his nose in her ear. He put his arms around her torso and pushed his body against hers when something, some hideous carcass of a passion he had last felt a very long time ago, possessed him to blurt out, “Oh my god!” — with it came relief. Their lips met and as he felt her mouth open, accompanied by a sharp, astringent smell, he ran his tongue against hers, holding her face between his hands.
She pulled her head back and breathed heavily — the smell streaming out of her mouth grew more acidic and he felt her teeth loosen as he kissed her once more, her dark eyes trained on his. He released her from his embrace and took a step back. The young woman seemed to have aged a few years in the minutes since she first materialized in the doorway. Some of her youth had faded, replaced by a weariness that he found unattractive. A tooth rattled furiously in his mouth — he spit it on the floor, contemplated its dark, glistening surface as it writhed slowly in his saliva, and kept walking, forgetting about the aging woman he was leaving behind.
The chemical smell that hung in the air slowly gave way to the mustiness of the theater’s old curtains. It’s a smell he knew very well, having walked past them nearly every day for three decades. He was getting close. No longer thinking about the monologue he would be forced to contort into something mildly amusing for a world that was rapidly losing interest in him — indignities over indignities: nasty gossip, teen slang, current events — the host remembered the thrill of being met by an adoring audience, the crack of the drummer’s snare drum, the shimmering white splash of his cymbals… the announcer’s voice, lilting his name, carrying it over peaks, through valleys.
Waiting for the show to start, the host was no longer worried — the vicious words inside his head had been replaced by new ones, sparks of gentleness lighting up the depths of his consciousness with shades of orange. He muttered to himself: “I’ll just do what I always do.” There is comfort in routine, he thought. There is value in doing the same thing over and over, he thought. The ritual is beautiful.
There was no production assistant to count down the minutes and seconds to showtime — the announcer was silent, the band hadn’t taken their places. He called out to his producer, to no avail. “Fuck it.” The host stepped out from behind the red curtains, taking in their smell once more before making his way to his mark. A crowd erupted in cheers as he emerged and he tried his best to keep himself composed, to maintain the necessary air of expert aloofness. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, smiling proudly — his voice echoed through the theater until the silence consumed it.
Romantic, scary, and imaginative. Great writing, mi pickney. ❤️