Sweet Talk

1. Aarti

AARTI

Errr! Errr! Errr!

My eyes fly open as the emergency distress signal that is my four-thirty a.m. wakeup call blares.

The lithe, tan body of supermodel Brigitte Blanchette jolts awake next to me.

She falls off the bed with a thunk before struggling to untangle her Barbie limbs on the floor.

It’s physical comedy at its best–up there with my Shakira Does Mundane Tasks impression–except the panic swirling in my gut supersedes any possible humor I might find in the current situation.

You’ve done it now, Nair .

In the year-ish that Brigitte and I have been hooking up, the cardinal rules of our arrangement have been set in stone: no sleepovers, no PDA, just dinners in shadowy booths where wandering hands could caress a thigh beneath the table without an audience.

This situationship isn’t my first rodeo, nor will it be my last, and these are simply the guidelines that protect my heart and career from abject peril.

“Why would you get up at this ungodly hour?” Brigitte groans, voice muffled by the pillow she pulled off the bed with her.

“You said you were gonna drive home after a ‘power nap’ last night,” I remind her brusquely, stalking to the kitchen for my morning matcha.

“ You tired me out!” she protests.

I want to gloat at the orgasm-laden compliment beneath her complaint, but I’m too frustrated with myself to relish being the Casanova equivalent of a sleeping pill.

Brigitte has far less at stake in our clandestine relationship.

Supermodels are allowed to be queer, or at the very least engage in public displays of sexual fluidity.

Her personal brand thrives on a little edge.

Mine depends on being relatable and safe–especially right now, with just one month until it’s my turn to host the crown jewel of late night television.

Hosting Up Late is every comedian’s pinnacle of success–the Beychella of career highs, if you will–and there was a collective hush of anticipation across the entertainment world after Guy Morrison was forced out.

The network blamed budget cuts, but everyone knows the truth: he was too politically outspoken, and they needed someone who’d be hungry enough for the opportunity to play ball while offering plausible deniability to the accusations of an anti-woke agenda.

Ding ding ding. That’s me.

Indian and a woman. The first of either demographic to host Up Late and a clear attempt to appease the backlash to Morrison’s firing.

The CBT president implied as much the day she offered me the gig.

To the network, I’m two big checkmarks on a diversity spreadsheet.

But to the brown girls who will be watching from their living rooms, I’m something else entirely.

Dare I get cocky and proclaim myself an inspiration?

Maybe I would have last week, but after being gifted another mile-high stack of rewrites with the note to “tone it down,” I’m just holding out hope that I’ll make it to TV, period.

Do I love being muzzled when fascism’s on the rise?

Hell no. Is the network exploiting the pressure I feel from my own communities to puppeteer me into the apolitical, brand-safe late-night host they prefer?

Duh. But how could I walk away from this opportunity, strings be damned, knowing what it would’ve meant to young Aarti to see someone like her behind that iconic oak desk, knowing her own biggest dream wasn’t totally impossible?

I know it’s na?ve to hold onto hope that despite the superficial reasons the network hired me, I might still find a way to create change from the inside. But hope mixed with stubborn faith has carried me this far, so I may as well carry that torch a little further.

Brigitte yawns her way into the kitchen, taking an uninvited sip of my searing hot matcha. She wrinkles her nose in annoyance.

“You need to leave through the service elevator,” I tell her.

“Ew. Don’t they use that for literal garbage?”

I shoot her a mocking smile and steal back my matcha. “Something like that.”

“You’re cranky in the morning,” she sighs, tapping away on her phone.

“And you’re not supposed to be here in the morning.”

“You came too many times last night to still be stressed.” Brigitte pouts her famously plush lips. “And to take it out on me of all people.”

“You’ve got one job: look hot. I’ve got ten: look hot but not that hot, be funny but inoffensive, appear smart but not threateningly so, and somehow turn all of that into a show that won’t get canceled before the wheatpaste on my posters has dried.”

“This is true, I am unfairly hot-privileged.” She slips on her flats by the door. “But it can’t be that hard to make your show good. You’re, like, the most naturally funny person on the planet.”

“Is that why you frequent my bed?”

“Pretty much,” she shrugs. “You’re like if a lesbian ate Pete Davidson.”

“I’ll have to remember that one for when I never, ever come out.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “If only you were hot enough to be a supermodel, then you wouldn’t have to worry so much about the whole being gay thing.” She gives me a wink, then annoyingly pecks each of my cheeks before sashaying off. “Bye, bitch.”

My sassy overnight guest represents the one demographic in my veritable grab-bag of diversity that I can–and do–conceal.

If the network knew the lesbian part, I would’ve had a less than zero percent chance of landing this job.

So for now, aside from a teensy corner of the internet who call themselves Gaartis (Gay Aartis, of course) and who are widely written off as fan-fic-obsessed wishful thinkers, that part of me is locked away tighter than Brigitte’s legs around my shoulders last night.

I gulp down the rest of my scalding drink and head out the door to 68411 Hollywood Boulevard, where, in a few short weeks, my wildest dreams could finally come true… or collapse in spectacular ruin.