Party of One (18 page)

That evening, I went online and checked my e-mail, which in 1998 was a thing you did a maximum of one time per day, and there was a message from my high school friend Ned, who had started a job at a magazine in 1515 Broadway that morning. “Dave—I work above MTV and they're doing some kind of audition to be a VJ. It is full of children and weirdos. I feel like I have to tell you this: If you're thinking about doing it, don't. The potential for embarrassment is high.” He wasn't wrong.

I was living in a railroad apartment with Aimee and Louise—the one who had started all of this by making the wild suggestion that a person should love what they do for a living—at the time, and they were traveling for work, so I had the place all to myself. I bought a bottle of red wine, grabbed a full pepperoni pie from Original Ray's Pizza, and rented
Wings of Desire,
as I recall, so that if anyone asked if I'd seen
City of Angels,
I could say: “No, but I have seen the original German version.” (If you run into the twenty-seven-year-old version of me, you have my permission to punch him.) I took the phone off the end table and put it in my lap. If anyone were to call, I decided I would give it two rings. No, three. Three seemed cooler.

By 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, nobody had called.

I'd had two whole days—and an entire German art film I wasn't paying attention to—to get accustomed to the idea that nobody would be calling, so it wasn't a shock, but rather a dull ache. A hunger pang. But somehow, I still felt inspired. I pulled out my purple MacBook, opened Word, and began a journal entry about it.

Because here was the thing: I wanted the job—of course I wanted the job, who doesn't want that job?—but having been there, even for just fifteen minutes or two hours or whatever it was, had lit a fire under me. I had somehow reached the age of twenty-seven—four years of which I'd spent in New York City—without meeting very many people who loved what they did. I'd somehow heard the phrase “show business” a million times without hearing the word “business.” It had escaped my understanding that if you have a passion, even if that passion is pop culture or music videos or doll clothing or whatever thing you love that the world tells you is frivolous, there is a business built around it. People make money doing it or planning it or writing about it. There is a place for you and for me. Being in that studio had jolted me to life. I felt like Gonzo after having visited the stratosphere via balloon. I was going to go back there someday.

“So I didn't get a call,” I wrote. “But I've decided that it's okay because starting right now, I a…”

The journal entry ends right there. At literally 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday night, I got a phone call. I picked it up after one quarter of a ring.

It was Amanda. “Dave? You're not going to believe this, but you made the top ten.”

Holy fucking shit.

I was to report to 1515 Broadway the next morning at 11:00 a.m. and expect to spend the day in the studio. There would be interviews, more things to fill out, and then a live show full of challenges after which they'd choose the top five. I walked ten laps around my block trying to get tired enough to go to sleep. No dice.

First thing in the morning, I called my boss and came clean. I had not been sick; I had been interviewing—I said “interviewing,” like it was a normal thing and not a giant circus I'd willingly joined—for a job at MTV. “I'll be there all day tomorrow, but if you need me to come in at night and get anything done, let me know,” I told her. “Oh, no,” she said, “We
really, really do not
need for you to come in.”

Gigi, the maternal MTV receptionist, greeted me at the door to the studios and took me to the green room, where the top ten were gathering. They included a red-haired skater kid who called himself “Ducci,” due to his resemblance to a young Danny Bonaduce; a beautiful blond pixie named Kiele who had answered on her questionnaire that she was voted most likely to become an MTV VJ, and brought in her high school yearbook to prove it; Danielle, an African American girl next door; a handsome guy named David who worked at Kim's Video downtown and loved to talk music, and who I recognized as my direct competition.

And then I heard the voice.

“Heeeeeyyy everybahhhhdy…”

It was the tall, emaciated model from the line on Monday morning, and she was a dude. She was a dude with a variety of scarves tied at various places on various limbs, with outstretched toothpick arms, with a voice like the child of Carol Channing and an automatic pencil sharpener.

“What's up? I'm JESSE.”

Well,
I thought.
We have a winner.

I decided that my goal would be to roam the studio as much as they'd let me. To talk to as many people as I could. To see who does what and where I'd be useful. To treat it like a job interview that just happens to air live on MTV.

At 3:00 p.m., the live show started. Carson, Ananda Lewis, and a British guy named Toby Amies were the hosts. The ten of us lined up across the studio. At the beginning of the show, we went down the line, introduced ourselves, and told Carson our favorite songs. Mine was “Philosophy” by Ben Folds Five. I think it was true, but more important, it felt on-brand.

The entertainment for that day was a new pop group that had had some hits in Germany, and whose single “I Want You Back” was just starting to get some radio play: NSYNC. They were in oversized jeans and sweater vests with nothing underneath, as fashion dictated. Chris Kirkpatrick looked like a rasta pineapple. Justin Timberlake's hair was a blond Jheri Curl confection. I looked out onto Times Square, where two small pockets of fans stared up: a pair of German girls holding aloft a piece of posterboard on which they'd written “ICH LIEBE NSYNC,” and a few older women with a sign that spelled the band's name out with the last letter in each member's first name: JustiN, ChriS, JoeY, LanstoN, J.C. (
Lanston?
I thought.
Lanston is not a name.
And indeed, it turns out one of the band moms determined that this last-letter-of-the-first-name-spelling-out-NSYNC thing would only work if Lance pretended his name was short for
Lanston.
So for the sake of a cool logo gimmick, sweet Lance changed his name to a name that doesn't exist. We gays are eager to please. Apologies to any actual Lanstons reading this book.)

The challenge, as I recall, was for each of us to interview Chris Kattan, and I'm not sure if he was trying to be difficult or if he was just on drugs; as I recall, it was rocky at the start but seemed to right itself by the end. John Norris was asked for his opinions after we all finished, and I think he mentioned me, but again, this is a happy, candy-colored blur.

Looking back, what is astonishing to me is that I didn't have a full-scale panic attack on live television, the way I almost definitely would now. I think the truth is that the situation was just too bizarre for me to react the way I should have.

Carson read off the names of the top five: Jesse. Ducci. Kiele. Danielle. And then…Dave.

Oh, dear God. I called the office and my boss said: “We saw.” There was joy in her voice. In the moment, I thought she might be happy for me, but she was probably giddy at the prospect of finally hiring someone who knew what he was doing, and not having to pay me a severance besides. We all had a big night that night.

Thursday and Friday, we were the guests on
MTV Live
again. I remember something about a shopping spree at the Virgin Megastore across the street. I remember them pulling a postcard out of one of those sweepstakes wind-up barrel things, and calling the name of a viewer in Texas who would be the wild-card candidate, and thus flown in to start competing with us on Friday. I remember giving some kind of campaign speech on a podium in Times Square, which I had written over beers with a couple of friends from my improv group the night before. I remember world-premiering “Push It,” the first video from the second Garbage album. Mostly, I remember spending the day with production people, all my age or a year or two younger. Cool. Smart. Obsessed with pop culture and gainfully employed. It was possible to be all of those things at the same time. I was learning a valuable lesson the hard and weird and televised way.

Throughout, people treated Jesse like the alien being he was. He was eleven feet tall, he weighed eighty pounds, and he spoke in another language, for he was from the mythical land of St. Mark's Place. He was, in short, exactly what a stoned teenager who had the afternoon to kick it in front of MTV and vote for the next VJ could ever want. I wanted to win, but I wasn't going to, so the safe plan was to lose well.

At last, the time came for the big Saturday event, the four-hour live show. I talked about De La Soul with Dr. Dre and Ed Lover, calling their beats “stupid fresh” (to which they replied, sternly: “Don't ever say that again”). I practiced awards-show podium banter with Pauly Shore. I did a thing where I interviewed Kathy Griffin and she pretended to flirt with me, having told Carson that I was her type. Having woeful self-esteem, I assumed she was joking, but having seen the guys she's dated since, I actually might have had a pretty decent shot at Kathy Griffin.

Here's what I recall clearly: there was a game show segment where the six of us answered music trivia questions. I did well in this one; I had shown up because I was a music obsessive, after all. But here's the thing: I was carrying around so much shame for being a music obsessive—for being
different
—that I actually
didn't
answer certain questions, questions I absolutely would have gotten right. I saw the huge disparity in the scores on the monitor, and I thought:
this makes me look like a weirdo.
I threw a few questions—what other names are Paul Hewson and David Evans known by?
Bono and The Edge. OF COURSE THEY ARE BONO AND THE EDGE,
yet I said nothing—because I was uncomfortable knowing so much about popular music
in a contest of knowing things about popular music whose prize was a highly coveted job deploying your knowledge of popular music.
That's some high-level internalized homophobia in action right there.

One by one, the finalists were weeded out: Nelly the Wild Card. Ducci. Danielle. Kiele. Until at last it was me and Jesse. Just the two of us, Carson alongside with an earpiece.

Now, I knew I wasn't going to win. But I still wanted to win. And these moments, as we now know from shows like
American Idol,
are unbelievably stressful. They're glacially paced, and heavy with import. For the first time in this process, I started getting nervous. My heart rate accelerated. I remember drumming my fingers on my chin, as though it were a thing I did when I was nervous. I had never drummed my fingers on my chin. Nobody had, because it is not a thing people do. I had an out-of-body experience. I don't remember anything that happened in those few minutes.

But I have been told I did not win.

Jesse was whisked away to the Downtown Studio to get his oversized novelty check for $25,000 and meet a gang of reporters for a press conference. I was disappointed, but I went to my dressing room, wiped my makeup off, looked in the mirror, and said:
Keep it together. Go to the wrap party. Schmooze, get business cards, treat it like a networking event. Hold on for one more day.
So I did. I collected a stack of cards from a variety of production people in roles large and small. I got a lot of
tough break, man
and a smattering of
we should do something with you.
I said: “Yes! Let's do that!”

I then went and met the rest of my friends to get properly drunk at The Gaf, where MTV was on the television, and
Wanna Be a VJ
was being re-aired for the second time in a row. I arrived just in time to watch myself drum my face and lose. And then they played the whole thing again, and then again, all weekend long.

I had a sense that my foot was in the door, and that my job was to start pushing. My friend Mike, a guy I had watched untold episodes of
Remote Control
with in the late '80s, told me: “The mothership just came down to pick you up, Dave. Get your ass
in there.
”

Starting that Monday, I went through the stack of business cards and started trying to schedule meetings. What I seemed to understand was that even if people say they want to work with you, they'll forget in seventy-two hours if you let them, and my job was to not let them. I figured I'd just keep trying until they either set a meeting with me or asked me to stop calling. I decided to behave like a benign stalker. I'd had experience.

The reason stalking is so popular is that sometimes it works. A couple of higher-up executives brought me in. Chris Connelly sat me down for a strategy session. I got a freelance gig writing on a weekend countdown special called “The Top 20 Summertime Videos” or some such thing. My boss was a brilliant writer whose immediate supervisor seemed to be a little sweet on her. “Let's have fun with this one,” she said as we began work. “I'm head writer on this, so he won't read it. He'll just tell me it's great and then we'll come up with better ideas on the shoot day. Watch.” She pulled the keyboard toward her and wrote: “The Backstreet Boys' ‘Quit Playing Games with My Heart' video reminds me how much I need a good, solid ass-fucking.” We finished the rest of the script, submitted it to her boss, who told us it was great, and we came up with better ideas on the shoot day, because that's the way things worked there.

After I was around the offices for a couple of weeks, people started to call me in to test for some of the new shows they'd be launching in the summer. One such show I tested for was called “Eye Spy Video,” in which we'd play videos and then ask viewers questions about what they'd just seen. (An SAT reading comprehension section, but with Everclear videos.) It got picked up, and I got picked up with it. They offered me a probationary six-month contract. At the time, I was still popping by at my advertising job, phasing out of it and getting things ready for a successor who would almost certainly be better at the gig than I was. On a Sunday night, I got my files in order, put my personal effects in a box, turned out the fluorescent lights in my office, and said goodbye to advertising.