We were out of work, Lewie and me. Lewie is a housepainter and it was his slow season. I’m a househusband, slinging diapers daily. Lewie, my wife’s brother, usually lives with his girlfriend on the south side, but he was staying with us until he finished painting our bedroom. He’d been at our place for a week–staying up late, getting up late, bored in the daytime and wired all night. A little like a baby. Every night when the baby woke me up I could hear faint babble from the TV in Lewie’s room, and every afternoon Lewie’d wake me up and tell me and baby about Jenny Jones.
I couldn’t believe he’d memorized the number from those ads on TV, but he had. The ads say to come down and be part of the show; a voice-over says, “Express your views!” then an audience member says “He’s a pig!” which is followed by a shot of a group of women grunting and then the phone number. Like Oprah and Jerry Springer, the show originates in Chicago. We have the country by the ear here.
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In its first year the talk show was light and “nice,” and she incorporated some stand-up into the show. After some months with that format, the ratings below sea level, she did a pair of shows where she confessed to having had silicone breast implants. The silicone had leaked out, it was causing her horrible problems. The critics called the shows a desperation move; her ratings, however, bounced higher than ever before.
Leaving the TV on after Costas one night, I watched Jenny Jones do a show with some married couples who included an extra woman in their relationships. Sitting between their wives and their wives’ lovers, the husbands of the bisexual women were some of the most happily married men I’d seen on TV. The audience growled and hissed at them; the husbands grinned. The wives yelled back. Jenny Jones acted as both ringleader and onlooker, smiling frequently, either bemusedly or with a kind of mock indignation. I fell asleep before it ended, but I stayed up to watch again the next night.
Dear Jenny,
I’m up with you till 2 AM
We were signing the releases they gave us when Lewie called to a guy in the line up ahead. “Hey John!” The guy yelled back “Lewie!” “That’s John,” Lewie explained, “he’s a baseball-card dealer.” John noticed Lewie’s bag, and said he’d brought a baseball for Jenny to sign.” He flipped it in the air. “Cool,” Lewie said.
