Violet & Takeout

A Breakup, Ordinary — Part I

My fantasy for children’s television is that it’s not really children’s television, it’s everybody’s television.

— Steve Burns

White styrofoam boxes from the Chinese restaurant idle under hot lamps. They’re our craft services, from this place down the road, the one specializing in “Eastern” flavors. Not a Chinese or a Thai or a Japanese or a Korean place. It’s the greasy phoenix that grew out of the burnt down husk of a Burger King. “Brass Wok.” Its palette spans some two-thousand miles: Sushi, kimchi, pot stickers, stir fries, pho. How are they getting away with it?

I’m no longer paying attention to the camera in front of me, or the ragged puppet talking to me. I’m staring down those boxes. One of them is a hamburger. There’s always one burger from them and it’s always mine. I will stab anyone who takes it, cameras running or not.

“All with a pinch of baking soda. That, Violet, is how you freebase cocaine,” the puppet says to me in his high, squeaky voice.

“Alright, we’re done,” Terry, our director says. He’s standing at one end in the garage of the old mechanic’s shop we refitted so we can tape our stupid show. He knows to call it a day when the puppet and I start discussing STDs, police brutality, Kierkegaard. Topics strictly off-limits for a basement-budget, non-profit, local-broadcast children’s television show. The only real success we have is with the painfully ironic adult male demographic that watches the show online.

Sakke, our Finnish puppeteer, pulls himself out of the pit. There oil changes once occurred, but is now a home for spiders and discarded puppets and props.

“Are there any burgers?” I ask Terry. He’s answering his cell. He covers the mouth piece. “No, no burgers.”

I shrug and scrounge through the boxes, poking at their insides. I force myself to settle for pad thai.

Sitting next to Brass Wok’s assortment of lunch specialties is a brutalist spread: A proletariat brand of crackers, the kind that comes in a white box with bold black letters reading, “Biscuit, Thin (Salted),” as if they can’t legally call them crackers. There’s also a platter of meats and cheeses from the deli, arranged like soldiers standing in formation.

I spoon large portions of disappointing noodles into my maw. Should have eaten breakfast. Or got Mexican food. Yeah, it’s gauche to order when we have some kind of craft services, but I don’t think anyone’s going to blame me.

I ought to open up a “European” restaurant, one that makes penne pasta, paella, poutine, pierogi and döners. A place offering the same condescending variety like the Brass Wok, as if we could sweep it all up under a singular adjective and everyone be just totally cool with it.

Dusting himself off, Sakke walks up to me and grabs a box and a sleeve’s worth of cheeses. He’s a giant of a man, ten feet tall and built like a lumberjack’s nightmare, like you’d shatter an axe trying to take him down. He also made “Mopsy the Flopsy Monsty” and all the other puppets by hand and does most of their voices too. Monsty’s the diminutive form of monster in our show, in case you couldn’t guess on your own. He and I start talking, but when we do it’s not like when I’m talking to Mopsy.

“You and Daniel should come to my show tomorrow,” he says in his “European” accent. “We have a new album out.”

“Oh, cool,” I say. “I’ll talk to him,” I smile, delivering the non-committal answer I usually give. It’s not that I don’t want to go see his grungy ska band (and despite what Sakke says, he’s in a ska band), but my boyfriend and I are celebrating our three-year anniversary tonight and if all goes well, tomorrow night too. But even if that isn’t happening, I’d still dig deep for an excuse not to go. I could say, ‘Hell no,’ and he’d probably respond just the same.

He shrugs. Yeah, that kind of response.

“Cool,” he says and devours a palm-full of waxy cheddar. He follows it up with greasy rice and starts talking to the cameraman. I regret not having asked Sakke about his new album at the least.

Terry comes up to me, done with his phone call. “Hey Violet, what are you doing tonight?”

“Taking my daughter to her father’s and celebrating a weekend without her. I think I might sleep in tomorrow,” I tell him around a mouthful of noodles.

Every Friday he tries to rope me into working through the weekend. So what’s it going to be, Terry? Commentary? Conventions? Livestream a Q&A? Wanting to cash in my success by pressuring me to orchestrate a sex-tape scandal?

“Well, I’d like it if we can start on the DVD commentaries. Like tonight or tomorrow. I know we don’t need them for a month, but I’d like to not get behind schedule on this. I know you. You aren’t good with schedules.”

Damn. Here I’m hoping he’d finally ask about the sex-tape. “I’ll do the commentary if you bring the vodka,” I say.

“No, no, no. No drinking. This is a kid’s show. Why do I have to keep you telling you that?”

“Terry, we can drop it, okay? You told me we’re getting dropped by WAGP? We can drop the façade and get away with it. Kids aren’t watching our show. At all.”

“No shit. You think I somehow didn’t know we’re always sold out of men’s extra-large t-shirts? And what’s this about WAGP? Last I talked to them, we’re still on the 5 AM slot on Sundays. What are we getting replaced with?”

“I don’t know. Church service reruns or CSPAN’s Greatest Hits?” Is it Terry who told me? Or is it his brother, Jacob? Who told me to not tell Terry. Shit.

“Shit,” he says and looks down at his feet. “Does Jacob know? Never mind. I’ll talk to him myself. Either way, we can’t just drop the shtick and start acting out.”

“Why not?” My voice echoes my daughter, like when she’s confused why dessert doesn’t also follow breakfast.

“Because if we give into the grown-up demos, we’re ‘selling-out.’ Their words, not mine. Then they stop buying the merchandise and the DVDs and then we’re out of business. And we can’t afford that, because I did something stupid. Really stupid.”

I keep chewing, but my eyes ask him, “What now?”

Terry has done some terrifying and stupid things pursuing his dream making children’s television.

“We’re getting a live audience for next season.”

I tried to swallow my food down, almost choking on it in the attempt to get out the words, “Are you fucking insane?” Sakke and the camera man and the grip and the makeup girl, Candace, and everyone else in the room looks at me. “How the fuck could you do that? We had a good thing going, Terry.”

“I know, I know. But I wanted to beat last year’s donation numbers, so I kind of suggested we could auction off story-time seats and it’s kind of blown up.”

I throw the almost-full container of noodles away. I’m feeling the pad thai. “I was hoping we can kill that segment and now — weren’t we going to replace it with animated skits? Shit. Those books suck. And now I have to keep reading them to live children? Or worse, grown-ass men who’re watching the show because they want to write fanfiction about me and the puppet getting it on. Goddamnit, Terry.”

“Violet, this show is for kids.”

“That’s selling out. Me doing an entire season black-out drunk isn’t selling out — it’s us being honest. This, though. When you threw together this charitable bullshit, did it ever cross your mind our key demo aren’t children, they’re grown man-children.”

“It’s for kids,” he repeats, this time firmly. Because repeating it makes it truer.

“Kids television is for kids, and yet here we are.”

“What do you want me to do about it? Give them a refund? There won’t be a next season if we do that. We’ll do the episodes and soldier on, okay? Then when next season’s done, we’ll retire story-time. Fair?”

“Shit, you took their money. Goddamnit, Terry. Why am I finding out about this now?”

“Do you even look at the show’s Twitter?” I look through him, answering his question. “Come on, Violet, don’t be like this. I need you to be reasonable. It’s for a good cause.”

“I’m going to Jacob about this,” I say, pointing my index finger up. “I’m going to pick up my daughter from school now and hand her off to her father. I’ll start my commentary over the weekend and just bring them in with me on Monday.”

“I’d have preferred you and Sakke do an in-character. But sure, though can you make it Tuesday? Monday’s no good for me,” he says. “And please, no drinking.”

“Spoil sport,” I say, throwing my bag over my shoulder and walking into the sunlit parking lot and waving to the crew on my way out.

Breakup, Ordinary returned in Violet & Timeliness on Story of the Week@Medium.com.