Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

33 - Funk as Druck

November, 2002

But that day never came.

Tom and I were both in The Room when our assistant, Eugene, poked his head in. "Cliff is here to see you."

"Cliff?" Tom asked, surprised.

"He's the president of the network."

"We know who he is, Eugene," I said dryly, "We just didn't know he was coming."

"I didn't know, either. He just wants to talk to you for a few minutes."

The writers reacted like we had been called into the principal's office.

Ooooooooh! You're in trouuuuble!

"Fuck all y'all," Tom said with a laugh.

Cliff was already in our office when we arrived. Libby was, too. Eugene had forgotten to mention that. They stood to greet us. Cliff shook our hands, Libby gave us affectionate hugs. I noticed that her eyes were tinged with red.

"You OK?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, with a weirdly forced smile. "I just... yeah."

We sat in our little sitting area. Cliff and Libby returned to the couch, Tom and I faced them in swoop armchairs with worn gray fabric.

"What's up?" I asked.

Cliff leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs. "This is the worst part of my job," he began, "but unfortunately I have to shut down production on King of The Jungle." He lowered his head and raised his eyebrows. The creases that appeared on his forehead were very sympathetic. But there was something about it that seemed rehearsed. "You've done great work here, boys." I felt my eye twitch at the word boys. We were the guys.

"Really great work," Libby seconded and now I could see she was crying, wiping the tears with her knuckle, careful not to smear her mascara.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then an explosion of laughter from the Writers Room down the hall. I half-smiled at the incongruity.

"But the show is going to air, right?" Tom half-asked/half-pleaded.

The look that passed between Cliff and Libby gave us our answer. "We're still working out the schedule," Libby said, "but maybe in the summer?" That was no consolation. Summer was when they burned off their failed projects.

"Did we do something wrong?" Tom asked earnestly. Cliff shook his head.

"Turns out Danny's just not that..." He pursed his lips regretfully.

"Good? Funny? Talented?" Libby suggested. The edge in her voice hinted at a previous argument to which we had not been privy. An argument Cliff now conceded.

"In hindsight," he sighed, "we probably should have just let you do the show you pitched us." This admission was the only vindication we would get. "I'm sorry, kids. You're canceled." Not only was our show dead, we had been demoted all the way down to kids.

Breaking the news to the writers was painful. But the good thing about comedy writers was that they used humor as a coping mechanism and they quickly came up with a hilarious bit called Fuck You, Aaron and Tom, We Don't Work For You Anymore! in which they all told us all the things they supposedly hated about us. All of their grievances had a nugget of truth — my unnecessary bluntness, Tom's obsession with pointless minutiae — but exaggerated to the point of comic absurdity.

Breaking the news to the crew was absolutely excruciating. A hundred good, hardworking people — many with families — who, through no fault of their own, were about to be unemployed a week before Thanksgiving.