Television appearance

And other scenes I replay on loop

It was the night before my TV appearance and I was lying awake in a guest room in Brooklyn. “You know how to sleep,” I told myself, but I didn’t believe it. No one knows how to sleep. It just happens. Or it doesn’t. I found a Benadryl in my backpack and crunched it between my teeth, rubbing the bitter powder into my gums the way I’d seen people do with cocaine in movies.

In the morning, I sat at the kitchen table while my friend did Zoom therapy in her bedroom. There were no doors in the apartment, so I could hear everything. She seemed to be doing better than I was.

She left for work and I waited for my phone to ring. It rang. “I’m transferring you,” a radio producer said. Then I was on air. The host read aloud from my pamphlet and I noted that my ideas sounded more compelling when voiced by an older man. After a brief, rapid-fire interview, the line went dead.

Another call came in, this time from a magazine reporter. I worried that this would be the rest of my life: back-to-back interviews, non-stop questions. Then I worried that this would not be my life, that this was the exception, that I would never feel this important again, that in the future people might say of me, if they said anything at all: The anti-tech girl? Yeah, she had a bit of a moment back in 2025.

After the call, I rode the subway to Bloomingdale’s in Midtown. Department stores are a bit like those patriotic Superbowl ads: no American is immune. It did not matter that I was a person who dressed exclusively in hand-me-downs and sidewalk finds; not even I could not resist the allure of full-price luxury.

Because I have large feet and poor balance, I wear men’s dress shoes. So I went to the basement and purchased Italian loafers with my credit card. I put the loafers on and clacked up the stairs to the makeup department. I contained multitudes.

The cost of my complimentary mini-makeover was a lengthy explanation of each product and its application. “Here at Bobbi Brown,” the saleswoman said, tilting my head back, “We wiggle the mascara wand for optimal coverage.” She then applied a layer of dark lipstick whose outline did not match that of my mouth. She seemed offended when I tried to blot it off with a tissue.

“Would you like to purchase any of the products you sampled today?” she asked.

“Oh,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

“We don’t offer makeovers without a purchase.”

“I really have to go,” I said, checking the time. “I’m going to be on TV.”

“Maybe you’d like the sample set. It’s a great deal: three products for $99.”

I almost laughed at the price. But she was not going to back down. “I’ll just take the eye cream,” I relented, pointing to the smallest jar, which turned out to cost $70. The sample set was indeed an excellent deal.

I expected my driver to be a veteran NBC driver who would say NBC things like, Is this your first time on air? You look great, by the way. Who’s your interviewer? Oh, he’s an easy one. You’ll be fine. Just make sure to look at the camera when you talk. But this driver didn’t even seem to know where we were headed. He relied on his phone to guide him the few blocks south.

Still, I entered Rockefeller Center feeling important. I’m just on my way to the office, I communicated non-verbally to all the tourists I passed. I work here. Surrounding the check-in desk were photos of notable SNL cast members — Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Bill Hader — in poses of great animation, their bodies folded up like umbrellas or flung across the stage like whips. My colleagues, I thought.

I had made it. Did it matter that I’d made it by talking about cell phones? I recalled the high school classmates who’d ridiculed me for being too enthusiastic. Well, you apathetic losers, guess the enthusiasm paid off: my name on a visitor badge, my body in an Art Deco elevator with no buttons, just the sheen of brass, the easy momentum of an upward climb. I was entering a world of glamorous opacity, and I made a mental vow to resist its influence, to remain transparent to the end, even if it killed me.

A producer escorted me across a grand hall subdivided by velvet ropes that had to be unhooked one by one. We walked by a glass-walled room with dozens of monitors showing wildfires, newsdesks, advertisements for cleaning supplies, animated infographics, reporters in jackets holding microphones. Seated before the monitors was a group of headset-wearing men, two of whom were turned toward each other in poses of idle chatter, as if the fate of American television lay not in their hands.

“You can get changed there,” the producer said, gesturing toward a gray door. I pushed it open to find what might have been the smallest multi-stall restroom permitted by Metropolitan zoning law. There was a woman washing her hands, and I wondered for a moment if she might be famous. Then I remembered that real stars get their own bathrooms.

There was no toilet lid. I laid my shoebox across the seat and placed my accessories on top of it: earrings, tights, nipple covers. I stripped off my regular clothes and dropped them onto the tile floor. I tried adhering the nipple covers to my breasts but they curled up at the edges, not understanding the stakes. I peeled them off and resigned myself to the old hair-in-front-of-shoulders trick, which, though effective, had the unfortunate side-effect of obscuring my outfit, not to mention my breasts.

I was carrying so many things — shoebox, Bloomingdale’s bag, backpack, coat — that I had trouble exiting the bathroom. No one offered to help. Importance was relative: the most important day of my career was a regular Wednesday at NBC studios. My visitor badge would expire at midnight. Who knew if I would ever be granted another?

In the green room, one of the producers referred to me as “the phone girl.” I imagined the epithet carved on my headstone. I chatted dutifully, worrying that I was wasting my best material pre-show, like a reverse sort of Treppenwitz.

Finally, I entered the main studio to find the host typing away on a wireless keyboard. There was no monitor on the desk; maybe it was across the room, or embedded in his retinas. “Hi August,” he said, before turning to a producer. “Can we confirm that all the drivers in that segment were Latino?”

I went and sat stiffly on my leather stool. “Do I look alright?” I asked one of the men.

“We can switch on your camera,” he replied. This wasn’t encouraging. A screen lit up and I saw my face.

“Wow,” I said.

My microphone had to be shifted further down my neckline to escape my hair. The audio engineer seemed nervous. “Sorry,” he said, his fingers on my collarbone. I almost wished we could be alone. The last man I’d touched was my physical therapist.

The host took a seat across from me. He asked me how I followed the news without a smartphone. It wasn’t clear whether this was being recorded.

“I find the news cycle problematic,” I said.

“You could read a newspaper,” he suggested.

“I try to focus on my own work.” Thankfully, this part would not air.

I noticed that the teleprompter now showed the introduction to my segment: IF YOU’RE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER FLIP PHONES THEN YOU’RE PROBABLY… A producer started counting down. At the number three, my face began to twitch. I tried to employ my trademark anti-anxiety technique — picturing my own death — but because I also had to focus on demonstrating my charm to 100,000 news-addicted Americans, the most I could do was mentally chant the word death while the host read aloud from the teleprompter with terrifying facility.

What did I say on air? I reiterated far too many times the pleasures of being in real life. There was one question I struggled to answer: what did I miss about having a smartphone? I didn’t miss a thing, and I said as much. “You’re definitely married to your cause,” the host observed, making me sound like a spinster.

The cameras switched off and I was led back to the elevators. I felt satisfied with my performance. Though I had failed to convey the full extent of my charms, I had at least done justice to the movement. Maybe I would be invited back someday. Maybe I would even get my own dressing room.

I stepped into the elevator slightly too late and the sliding door knocked me sideways. I tried again and made it inside. I glanced automatically at the control panel but there were no buttons for me to press. My downward passage was non-negotiable.

Outside, I found the same driver waiting. Less than an hour had passed since we’d parted. I asked to be dropped off at a bar in Brooklyn where I was planning to get a drink with another anti-tech activist. The bar was a dim, divey place, all piercings and jeans. I was still in my black chiffon dress, my face rouged and powdery with stage makeup. I set down the Bloomingdale’s bag and ordered a sparkling water. I noticed a familiar face across the room: my college ex-boyfriend, whom I had not seen in a decade. He waved. A projector switched on and everyone went quiet for the screening of a short film, which turned out to be a compilation of my ex’s skateboarding achievements.

The film was still playing when I felt a tap on my shoulder: the anti-tech guy. It was momentarily unclear how to proceed. This was the type of meeting that was accorded no name, but could not reasonably be referred to as anything other than a date. At a quieter bar with more seating and fewer skaters, I ordered another sparkling water, resigned to the possibility that I might wet the bed that night. He drank a beer, and I hoped he would get drunk enough to say something intense, but not so drunk that I wouldn’t believe it.

Have you ever hung out with someone who doesn’t own a smartphone? I will risk accusations of self-aggrandizement to tell you that these are the best conversations, uncorrupted and uninterrupted by external demands, requiring no supplementary materials, no images or texts, nothing beyond the human capacity for variations on vocabulary, gesture, and tone. For one glorious evening, I did not have to compete with tailored content – a battle I always lost, because unlike a smartphone, I was not designed to addict.

Fine, it helped that the man was attractive. But I encounter attractive people every day, on trains and sidewalks, at shops and cafes, and I find their eyes fixed on their screens, their ears plugged with sound, their real lives annexed to peripheral vision and background noise. How could I possibly strike up a conversation with a person like that, who wouldn’t even hear my footsteps as I approached?

“I was on NBC earlier,” I said. “They emailed me out of the blue.” I’d been at the Paris airport when the email came in. Hi August, hope you are doing well! Wanted to ask if you’d be available to join our anchor… If it was slightly sad to experience such moments without anyone to call, it was also a privilege: my life was all my own. I could perceive it without the distorting lens of a partner.

After my third sparkling water, I began to feel lightheaded from overhydration, which was almost like being drunk. The guy touched my arm a few times. I took a bathroom break to consider what this might mean.

Out on the sidewalk, my hands too full for a hug, I said goodnight. Our eyes met. There was an expectation, and I hated it, just as I hated the expectation to get a job, shower regularly, clean my desk, keep up with the news. I hated these expectations even when they felt natural and right. I hated being an ordinary person in an ordinary scene outside a bar at night. How many other couples had kissed in this very spot? I wanted it, yes, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I walked away.

My studio desk

“Wait,” he said, coming after me. This might have been a dramatic gesture had the distance been greater than five feet.

“It’s a complicated situation,” I said, indicating with one phrase every possible barrier to love, from my own celibacy and geographical instability to his recent breakup, our age difference, and the climate crisis.

“I mean,” he said, looking over my shoulder at something I couldn’t see, “I’m open.”

I didn’t want to be in control. I wanted to be in an elevator without buttons, one that would deliver me wherever I was meant to go. I wanted a metal door to slide away and reveal my future, and this time I would follow the script, I would read aloud from it with terrifying facility, and there would be a man sitting behind a glass wall, witnessing my life without ever threatening to become it.