I wrote this some time ago. A couple months ago, actually. And if I’m to be completely honest, a lot has happened since then so I really shouldn’t be posting it but these are a lot of words and they’re decently organized. So I’m posting them here. Call it, “Dateline: Late January.”
++++++++
There’s been a lot tragedy and time in my life lately. The tragedy is that I realized someday all those I love are going to die. The time is that time is what’s going to kill them. But the good part is that all the people I hate will die. So nobody wins, which seems fair.
I’ve been busy. Busy as a B-student.
First there were the holidays, also known as Holidays, also known as White Christmas. I don’t mean that in a racist way. I mean that white people benefit more from Christmas than other people because all the toy and ribbon and wrapping companies and holiday-related DUI’s are owned by white people. We, us honky’s, we invented owning shit. The day owning shit stopped being a past-time and became an economic model is the day the expansion of society stopped being fun. We learned that owning other people’s shit was possible, and a little thrilling, and because we were pretty good at sailing and at killing we went around the world owning shit that belonged to other people. We made it ours. Cause we had guns and walls. We wanted it all. When we ran out of shit to own we started owning people. And that was cool for awhile but not really, because it eventually led to trouble. So there’s that.
My holidays were very tiring. Because of generational divorce and bad scheduling I spent three days driving many miles around the Chicago suburbs attending various Christmas functions celebrating the birth of a savior I don’t believe in. That’s a lot of miles to log in order to not close my eyes during grace.
From a carbon footprint perspective there was nothing green about my Christmas. I’m okay with that because the gas I burned in my aging SUV (Slightly Urban Vehicle) is offset by the fact that for the first time since I learned to read I did not receive a Far Side page-a-day calendar from my Grandma. That’s worth a branch or two, right? Or several large sticks.
She did give me a piece of money in a card. Cash. Sweet glorious cash. What a waste these cards are. How bout just giving me the money, plus the $3.49 cents the card cost, and the value of the old lady saliva it took to seal it? Let’s not let sentimentality get in the way of efficiency. But yet, but yet, because at heart I’m a good person I still read the cards just in case anyone is watching when I open them. This is the same reason I don’t open cards in front of mirrors.
Then New Years came around. Such a fest this Holiday can be. Except I was in the ramp up stage of a nasty sickness, a head-fucking, mind-numbing, ooze-making sickness. An ass-troubling, humanity-hating, groan music sickness. That’s what it became. Before it became its full purpose, I managed to arrive at a New Year’s party where I coughed into my arms until both my elbows got filled with diseased goo. My gf was gracious enough to help me evacuate the place before I could completely contaminate the Jimmy John’s platter or the 3 to 5 year olds that were roaming about. Sweet, nutty, goofy, smart little kids. I hated the notion that a particle of my face might infect their delicate bodies so I refused to hug or high five them or rassle or inspire fear in them by pretending my thumb was no longer attached to my hand, which is my signature move around humans that age. I got home and was in bed before those kids. Yay, New Years!
It got worse. Wasn’t fun at all. Not fun ‘hangover hope-I-didn’t-leave-my-wallet-at-Taco-bell-again’ sick. Not ‘South-America-was-beautiful-but-bring-your-own-water’ sick. Not ‘piss-in-two-different-directions-and-are-scared-about-your-dick-for-awhile-but-then-you-realize-it’s-because-you-just-fucked’ sick. More like a bunch of bacteria saw my lungs and trachea and said, “Hey, this place looks like it hasn’t been lived in for years. Good clean tissues, nice surfaces, healthy alveoli. Don’t seem to be any leaks. Good bloodflow. Let’s see if the water still works. Let’s start a fire and have sex in the hot tub. Dirty sex. REAL dirty sex. DIRTY bacteria sex. Let’s not only have that. Let’s reproduce like bacteria. Oh wait. We ARE bacteria! HAHAHAHA! Ha– Oh shit, my twenty minutes are up… I have so much left on my bucket li– {garbled noises}– Man, woah! Dude! Now there’s double of us. Let’s fucking party! Snap your glow sticks! Holy shit, this place is warm and cozy. Look at these alveoli! Quick, plug in the lava lamp; we’ve got nineteen minutes…”
See, what happened there was drifter bacteria assholes gave me an upper respiratory infection. Shitheads.
Saw a doctor. He put me on antibiotics and asthma medication. Right after he gave me the asthma mediation he called me a “weakling poopyhead” and then poked me really hard in the chest. I declined his offer to meet him out by the dumpsters after school so he could do, as he said, “what your daddy never did.”
But he did give a prescription for some drugs. Bacteria-fucking up drugs.
This whole sheets-on-the-bed trend is nice but I’m not real big on changing them. Sure, I’ll change them sometimes when I’m healthy, but being a sick, miserable lump means the sheets stay put. It’s a law of physics thing. My sheets were velvet or something, or no, flannel and featured pictures of ice-skating penguins having the time of their lives.
So I laid in bed day after day, oozing and leaking my illness into those absorbent sheets, soaking into it, marinating. And my nightstand turned into some kind of test case at the CDC, covered with the detritus of sickness: a forest of water bottles over a floor of ny/Dayquil wrappers and water and dust and spent cough-drop wrappers and bowls encrusted with dried oatmeal and cottage cheese, and amongst that a place for my cell phone plugged into it’s trusty charger because even a shot cowboy needs his horse.
I got better.
Time propelled. Insisted. It didn’t stop spinning. It never will.
After missing a week of work I had a lot of catching up to do. Missing work is one of the few joys most people have in life, and it’s yet another reason I look forward to death. Being dead seems like the ultimate missing work. “Sick” days are the secret arrow in the quiver of most peoples’ workaday lives, but when you have to skip work because you’re actually sick, actually unproductivized, then that’s just fucking miserable. A sick day actually sick? What a gyp!
After all that I finally got back to work. Work is how I make money. Money is how I keep the debt collectors off my ass. My ass is how I poop and it’s the last thing I want my enemies to see. Seeing is how I… ok enough.
What? Oh yeah.
January was happening.
I was lucky to be booked for some showcases. Rotten Comedy at the Oakwood Bar and Grill had me up. Waited my turn. Told jokes. Made people laugh. Disappointed myself. Appointed others. Great room. It’s really alchemizing into a real fucking comedy show, without the fucking. They’ve had some incredible performers. Also, it starts at the perfect Thursday time, 10pm. So fun.
The following Monday I did Speak Easy Comedy at Stanley’s Kitchen and Tap on Lincoln Avenue. Fucking insane. This is one of those rooms that shouldn’t exist in the way microwaves shouldn’t exist, or in the way microwave popcorn shouldn’t exist. It’s too fucking good. Neosporin, ya know? Somebody is cheating. Since they started they’ve been packing the place with smart and attentive crowds, 60 plus. And like Rotten, they’ve had great headliners… standups turned movie actors, standups turned TV writers, standups turned funny; they’ve had them in. I did a ten minute set. It went well. My riffing didn’t get in the way of my jokes and my jokes didn’t get in the way of my riffing. Riffing is how you prove you have a brain and jokes are how you prove you have a memory.
That’s been one of my problems. I often start with a smart/great/gross riff and it works more often than not. It’s like betting strong on your first hand in poker. You take a risk, you come out of the gate hard, you hit some note that the audience loves, and you catch a strong wind off that approving energy. It’s sweet and earned and delicious. Or… Or your riff sucks ass and you find yourself wondering which way the wind is blowing. And your sail is twisted and your rudder is wobbly. If you’re lucky you untie it but you’re not really sure how. Or you unwobble it. But none of that happened. I riffed really well, and then I brought out my jokes, and it all blended. Only trained comics could detect the seam. This, I’m thinking is the main difference between comics and surgeons— surgeons shouldn’t riff. They should follow the textbook. They should follow rote. They should do what other surgeons do or learn from their mistakes. And when they’re done, people feel better.
Which is what comedy is, I guess. To feel better. To make people feel better. Sometimes it’s just a moment, sometimes it lingers, and sometimes laughter lives beyond its first moment of existence, in a thought or a memory. We strive for the reminder laugh.
Existence is hilarious.
{ 2 comments }
