Seth Meyers I love you but I'm taking my Sundays back

my annual Sunday dread post and the everpresent loom of 30 Rock

It’s Sunday again and I am still in bed watching the sun set through the slats in my window. I’m in a horizontal Z-shape with my head against the headboard (likely place for her to be), my legs pulled in (birthing position), and my laptop tucked right in place to slow cook all vital reproductive organs.

And in the past five hours I have watched so many late night clips that not only do I live within the body of the host but I am also the guest. When I finally rise from bed I am standing in my bathroom explaining my fame in a modest and intellectualized manner that not only wins over Seth Meyers but makes him laugh: a hard-working well-read Northwestern laugh with a pedestrian slap on the desk. And there are so many games, always games, and I am winning most of the time, but when I lose I lose with such suaveness that the game loses respect all together.

Because I am just another sad woman from another tiny town where no one would ever laugh. And I too have a story about a chance encounter with Colbert on the L platform. I am a frequenter of all improvisational cities including but not limited to the city of Second. And because of this we all make a great team. And because of this we win the games.

My jokes and musings are not found esoteric because each live audience has been jam-packed with people who drink from the same algorithmic stream. We all laugh together, double over, punch the shoulders of our neighbors erotically. Because just for a minute let me touch you and let us laugh.

The clock strikes 11:30 PM and I’m jogging from studio to studio to sit on a grand couch and squabble with some guests, whoever they may be: nude HBO up and comer, the dregs of The Lampoon graduating class, the former child star we all believe in now. I throw in so many jabs, including some well-pointed ones that infer our familiarity and also our growing rapport. I do something fun like wear a t-shirt with my own face on it. I am doing double duty on SNL. I am thanking the band.

At the end of my shift, I take the elevator down to Rockefeller Center so I can sit on the ice-skating rink to cool off and ground myself because frankly it is important I stay humble before this whole thing gets too far ahead of me. Like the athlete’s ice bath, I must come into contact with something otherworldly and painful to remind myself that my heart beats for no one.

As I circle my bare ass on the ice, just another lonely girl in midtown, my flock of devoted (by way of endearment and not force) agents and publicists come to assure me it was all worth it, all of it, and I am still riding the fine line of brute comic honesty and artistry. One game of Pictionary with the cast of The Penguin doesn’t strip my respects and accomplishments. And I can do it all again, it’s a promise. I can be a friend of the show. And it’s not just because you looked hot, they explain. But next time you don’t have to pull up your dress that many times, you know? Just let it be, let it dip. It does you a favor, the plunging neckline. It does us all favors.

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My life, so it may be, has dulled down to a handful of Sundays where I consider the pursuit of an icy cold death over the boil of a pot of noodles. This dangerous consideration, however, is then immediately challenged with the fear imparted by the orange film that develops on the water, or the expiration date of the butter folded in. The maybe-lead-chips of paint on my apartment wall, growing armpit rash, steady groan of my refrigerator: these precursors of death will all swallow me whole before the pasta is even al dente.

As the macaroni tumbles, I look to Seth to finish my segment:

Who would want this anyway, Meyers? I catch all of these stars in my Sunday net and watch them until my eyes feel a distant burn, corneal cling wrap bubbling like a bad blister. Who would even dream of this notoriety? This participation and complicity in my own weekly delirium? Surely not you and this rotating cast of late night foxes.

I’ll take that as a compliment, Seth says, laughing again. Always laughing with me.

Back in bed, post obligatory Sunday bowl of buttered noodles, I return to more plain hauntings. The quiet intimacy of rewatching the same video of yourself from high school chorus that is posted on a friend’s mother’s Youtube channel. This time, it’s just you and the people you used to know too well back in the space where you could’ve done something different but you didn’t, you did everything that was expected of you. So nothing much changed. Everything was under control, and you can just watch it again and again and again.