Killing Puppies

Going through a break up, the mind becomes simultaneously capable of the most logical and the most irrational thoughts. "I'd better get rid of that piece of driftwood she kept from our trip to San Diego. We're never going to make a mobile out of it now." Which makes sense, the mobile was her idea, and, really, what am I going to do with a giant hunk of sun-bleached wood, only it's the middle of the night, I'm in bed, the drift wood is in my car, not really bothering anyone, so its disposal, though perfectly within the realm of logic, is hardly a priori.

Except for once, during a breakup which effected me with a profundity even I have a difficult time explaining its impact, I've never worried that I was going to die alone, that my tears sprung from a bottomless well of despair, that I would never laugh again, smile at a stranger, catch someone's eye and, eventually, fall in love. It's the little things that get me. Like that driftwood. Man, that would have been a cool project: collecting shells and rocks on the beach--she loves the beach!--amassing trinkets and treasures until we are old and grey, adding them to our never-ending expansion of a mobile, all anchored to that one very special piece of wood she found on our trip to San Diego.

I have to see my ex when I go back to visit New York because she has my coat, which made sense in a world where my first stop from the airport after Papaya Dog would be her bed, which happens to be adjacent to her closet and my coat. It is significantly less convenient in a world where that closet is a half an hour train ride from my old apartment in Brooklyn where I will be crashing on my old couch while my roommates are on tour.

"Well, I better make plans to get that coat. It was such a find at that flea market," I think. "Silly to waste a great coat like that. And Los Angeles is so sunny, it seems practically criminal to go out and get a whole new coat." So I ask my ex if she'd like to grab coffee,and could she please bring the coat with her. I should just swing by when she is at work, grab the coat and leave her spare keys (whose real estate I've already assessed on my key chain and decided they need to go, immediately, post haste! I'd mail them now, but what about the coat) but if I go to her apartment, I'll have to see the dog. which may be too much for me to bear. I loved that dog. I'm not sure I'd make it through saying good-bye.

I can let go of the thought of our marriage, but am deeply saddened to think that we'll never have the wedding we planned, with aerialists, and my dear friend Bonnie serenading us for our first married people dance--seating scary uncle dick next to evil mother-in-law Nancy. Those tiny lost fractions of moments are what upset me.

At least every hour, I think about calling her and casually asking that she please not use the pillow that I made for her, as it was made with love, and, given the circumstances, is no longer appropriate.

I have a theory about all of this. I call it "killing puppies." The basic premise is this: if we see a movie where a puppy is killed, brutally or otherwise, we cry. It's horrible. Yet, we sit through movies like "Saving Private Ryan" or "Natural Born Killers," and we're ok. We're not happy about it. Maybe we're upset or intellectually provoked, but we're not sad like when the puppy died. My theory is that we can't process multiple human deaths at once--it's just too much, so it washes over us a bit more generally, whereas the puppy is just big enough of a tragedy that it gets through the little door in our hearts and makes us cry.

The same theory predicts that when I go through a break up with someone with whom I had thought I would spend the rest of my life, the things that upsets me most are driftwood, keys and a pillow. The thought that the relationship as a whole is over is too big a concept to permeate whatever gizmo it is inside of me that makes me sad. It's why, the last time heartbreak struck, I lost weight from crying so hard over the scent of her hair.

"So we beat on," I tell myself, "boats against the current, we are borne back into the past." Maybe I'll never make that mobile or marry a woman who makes killer turkey tacos, but I have to believe that somewhere, an even greater adventure lies ahead: one where the puppy lives, and all the people do, too.

Ah-ooo!

It Can't Rain All the Time

This old universe of ours certainly has a peculiar little cadence, doesn't it. And try as we might to make sense of it and predict some of its twists and turns, in the end, we are all pretty helpless.

My on-again-off-again was happily on. Despite 3,000 miles between us, we had regular plans to see each other and were generally happy and in love, my room covered in post-its she left with sweet nothings of encouragement ("you're pretty talented and you're going to make it," a playful take on what I had requested, which was "you're pretty, talented and you're going to make it," may we never underestimate the importance of punctuation.) She, adorned with a bracelet that bearing the engravement "future wife." Sure, highs and lows abound, but as far as either of us were concerned, this was a relationship of matrimonial caliber. We met family, friends, and referred to each other with the rather uncreative moniker "wife."

On Saturday I was feeling particularly lovesick, still adjusting to a new life in Los Angeles, missing my friends and, on that day in particular, my wife.

iPhone, please play back the transcript:

"Miss you too babe. No sad, life is great," she said. "See you in 10 days."

"19 days," I corrected.

Followed by "Oops. Right. Damn."

And then a series of four un-recriprocated texts sent by me over the course of the next 36 hours ranging from exciting news about a show I've been working on, to an advisory that my feelings were being seriously affected by this radio silence.

Nothing.

Then an apology, she'd been partying all weekend and was, thus, unable to text me. Then a brief phone call, where she whispered she was unable to speak, as she had friends over.

Then emails sent from each of us simultaneously (within a minute) explaining all the reasons we should just be friends.

So, to recap, "I love you, I miss you," 36 hours of silence, and a break up.

Certainly not the series of events I had hoped for. What followed was a teary phone call to my mother who immediately agreed that no one should be mean to me like that, that she was not the woman for me, that mama loves me always, always, and to never be afraid of crying.

Then a commercial audition for Dish TV, where I was chipper and professional--I told you, the universe is a bitch.

A walk to the liquor store for a mediocre bottle of wine, which I am drinking with ice in it, because I am a lady.

A couple of short, confusing, emails, a friend sending me a link to an apartment in his building that would be perfect for my girlfriend and I because he knows we've been looking for a two bedroom and how much she loves Santa Monica, a perfunctory look at match.com, just in case, and a cold CocaCola, which always somehow seems to cure what ails me.

My manager called me when I found out to make sure I was ok, if I needed popcorn and a movie, but I have a show tonight, and if there is one lesson with which the universe and I are in perfect accord, it is that the show must go on.

On Saturday, I missed my girlfriend terribly. On Sunday, my girlfriend was terrible, and today, the sky is a perfect pathetic fallacy of the tears falling down my face. I will never pretend that I understand the way the world works. I continue to wonder at what point my ex decided it was over, and at what point I, too, resigned that it was. Certainly, there must have been a place before those 36 hours of silence where one of us knew we were approaching a point of no return--that a refusal to send a "busy, love! Talk tomorrow!" was becoming a matter of la grande vie and le petit mort.

And now here I am, wine in hand, Pandora carefully curated to walk me through this crisis. It may be rainy and sad today, but let it not go unnoticed that I live in a world where nine days out of ten there is sun: metaphorically, that world is a lot of meditation, journaling and positive thinking. Literally, it is Los Angeles.

My roommate offered an unsolicited and entirely unhelpful opinion, and surely there will be more of those to come, but that's life. Timing is everything.

Are you there, facebook? It's me, DoctorPrincess LadyScoutington

Some of you out there may already know that a day and a half ago I moved to Los Angeles, which would be somewhat normal for a creature of my profession, until I tack on the little gem of a fact that I found out about the move a little over a week ago. It's a long story without much of a cliffhanger for an ending, but the sparknotes are this: I had an urge to come out for pilot season in January, so I went out and did a comedy showcase to try to meet some industry and get the ball rolling. The ball did roll, and my new west coast management team decided that they wanted me here ASAP to take some meetings and hope for the best. So I came running. A week's worth of shows, which became sort of my awkward farewell shows (which isn't totally true. I'll be back in January for a week. Farewell shows in the same way that Barbara Streissand has been doing her farewell tour long enough for it to be a revival) and about two days of frantically trying to fit my life into two checked bags, a carryon and a personal item later--I worked out an imaginary conversation with the woman at the Delta counter while I was packing. She would say:

"I'm sorry, your bags are overweight. I'm going to have to ask you to..."

And I would say, "Ma'am. Ma'am. Let me stop you right there. I just gave away all of my worldly posessions, shy of my hopes and dreams. How much do your hopes and dreams weigh? More than 50lbs?"

And then she would let me on the plane and I would get a slow-clap from my fellow passengers as I waltzed through security shoes ON!

I did not, in fact, have to enact said conversation. Though I did miss my flight despite an altruistic attempt to be on time, it turns out my hopes and dreams weigh 49 and 51lbs, respectively, so I was good. I have, however, had nightmares about having to give away even more of my stuff.

I arrived in LA and had a chat with my new roommate and his girlfriend, an aspiring comic in her own right, and they planted the seed in my lil brain to change my facebook profile into a page... like, what you have for a band or "community event," and all my friends would turn into likes, but all my photos would be deleted, but I could back them up, and tra la la, more professional, la la.

(Why are there fireworks outside my building right now? Who sets off fireworks in November? Ugh... what have I gotten myself into. On the upside, I have yet to hear a single ambulance or ice cream truck. Fellow Brooklynites, you can appreciate my glory. )

Before you make this change, they warn you that it is irreversable. That once you go page, you can never go profile. Are you ready? Oh, I was. I'm in LA, baby. This is big time. I'm going in for Comedy Central and sat in a waiting room for FOX where there was a wall of Emmy's. A double glass case wall.

So I did it. And immediately realized that being a page means you are no longer a person. You can't comment on other people's pages. You don't have pictures and places to list your favorite quotes and movies. No opportunity to show how quippy and ironic you can be with your response to "political views."

(Ooops.  There it is. My first LA police siren. You can take the hick out of hicksville... only opposite, because I'm in a city.)

All of a sudden, I missed being a person. I was part of the first non-Harvard wave of facebook users. I've had one since the very beginning, since myspace and friendster, since Ruby Prom and The Soccer Ball, Graduation, my first summer in New York. I've had that page since some of my trans friends still identified with their cisgenders (non liberal-arts college gradates, google it) and it's gone.

A couple of my friends have texted me and asked where I went. They can't find me. And you really can't. I can barely find myself, and what's more, I can't fix it. Facebook has no interest in helping me renig on my greedy decision to become an entertainer instead of a person. I don't even know how to create a profile and start from scratch. I'm screwed. I'm erased.


There is a little void I feel about every five minutes when I would normally be checking my facebook. I'm more than a little bit nervous to try to rebuild, and more frustrated than those police guys trying to find the firework guys with the un-helpfulness of facebook's help center.

Without facebook, who is going to read my blog? How are fellow performers, friends from elementary school, that bartender who hit on me even though she has a girlfriend... how are they ever going to find me.

Perhaps this officially marks my erruption into stardom--the petit mort that is more extacy than death.

I've had the thought to start a new profile using my real name, but that seems silly. I honestly don't know what I want... I miss the way things were, but it doesn't bother me to be off the radar for a while. Maybe I'll come back, maybe I'll come back but different.

It's just odd. Like moving to a new city with parking lots and medicinal marajuana. Sure, sometimes I miss the MTA and having a bodega on every corner, and maybe I don't have as many friends here and I have to re-build from scratch, but anything is possible, and anything can rebuild itself over time.

My Biological Clock

I have time management issues, by which I mean that I am writing to you from the airport because I missed my flight to Los Angeles, resulting in the mantra: "you know what's cheaper than changing your flight? Taking a cab to the airport." Not much of a mood lifter, as mantras go, I will admit, but every situation deserves a mantra.

When I was younger, my mom used to say to me, "Scouter, you have to choose your battles." I was a pugnacious youth, never one to let sleeping dogs lie when I thought said dogs should bark. (Bit of a watchdog metaphor if you will.) It comes from an overwhelming need for justice in the world: kickball teams should have perfect talent distribution in gym class, people who say mean things should be punished, trains should run on time, and if I know it takes me thirty minutes to get somewhere, it shouldn't ever take me more than thirty minutes to get there, traffic and train delays be damned ... It is a finely woven system of everyone getting their dues that makes absolute sense in my head and, I think, fuels the slow-burn mania and anxiety with which I struggle daily.

Part of being systematically late is the sense of injustice I feel in needing to plan ahead, to succumb to the limits of 24 hours in a day, to wasting time arriving at the airport an hour before my flight when I know perfectly well that if I'm not checking a bag, I can get from kiosk to boarding gate in well under thirty minutes, from the knowledge that if I can stay home for twenty more minutes, perhaps I can finish drafting that eblast that is supposed to go out tomorrow, or make a new feather arrangement to clip in my hair, or shave my legs...

I think somehow I should be able to do more with time than anyone else is able. That if it takes a regular person an hour to do something, I can do it in 45 if I just cut out the dilly-dally. To be fair, it works a lot of the time. I've saved hours over the course of a lifetime by showing up late at airports and rushing to make my flight, caterwhaling to the front of security lines, sweet talking my way past the check in counter. I once showed up twenty minutes before a flight from Kansas City to Russia and made it. I talked my way onto a plane in Paris that I was supposed to have boarded in Moscow. I paid cash from an ATM with someone else's debit card minutes before my flight was supposed to leave for soccer camp. (That one wasn't all my fault.) I've also missed flights to come home for Christmas, to surprise my mom on her 60th birthday, and now to do my first big stand up set in Los Angeles.

I woke up absolutely on time this morning. I left the house within five minutes of when I told myself I should leave the house. And then I grabbed breakfast, missed two trains in time to feel the rush of the stale subway air as they passed me by, and arrived at the airport thirty minutes later than I had intended, which was twenty minutes too late to check in for my flight, but three hours and $50 before the next one departed. It is unfair. I should have been able to make the flight. Had the trains not conspired against me, had I not run into a friend in the deli and waited for her to purchase her vitamin water, had I better positioned myself on the trains to be able to run for the transfer, had the man at the check in counter typed just a little bit faster and the woman at the gate been kind enough to let me on a plane that was still sitting on the runway with my empty seat still totally empty, had I not revised my system last minute and decided that no one needs to be at the airport a full hour before a flight (unless you have children, in which case life is already complicated, annoying an unpredictable) and given myself just fifteen more minutes to make my journey, had any of these things transpired, I would be somewhere up in the air right now instead of listening to the beep, beep, beep of a cart transporting fat and old people from one end of the terminal to another.

But I didn't. I don't. I see x-factors as injustice, a system which, by ignoring, I can somehow overcome. But I can't. All the missed auditions, nights of making my friends wait, and rushed commutes elbowing tourists in midtown can't change the fact that I am not a superhero. I cannot stop time or make the trains like I think they should--which would be efficiently, by the way. Don't even get me started on the injustice of the MTA.

So now, sitting at gate 27 waiting for a Delta associate to give me a seat assignment, passing the time with an iPad and the unwanted company of the bellowing voices of a group of polo shirt clad southern businessmen, the type of gentlemen who use "good" as an adverb, eat fries at 9:30 in the morning in the airport, and drink those weirdly large sodas that are small on bottom so they fit in armrests and huge on top so you can speed up the onset of your type two diabetes while you are laid over. They're not in any rush. They're also wearing pastels, which is questionable at best. They're just staring out the window and talkin bout things like regular people. Their last joke ended with the punchline, "se habla anything." Maybe there's a mantra somewhere in that.

Ugh...

This is a thing that happens when you're an actor of my generation... possibly just when you're an actor... possibly just when you're a person of my generation... who can say? I've just shared a magnum bottle of red ghetto wine with my roommate while working on costumes and pasties to sell at our show tomorrow, respectively, and I have some things I would like to say.

First of all, when does a to-do list become an I've done list? I'd love to see that day. At this point, I'm not sure I even have it in me to believe that that day exists anywhere in the the scope of the history of humanity.

Secondly, why isn't Disney on instant stream on Netflix? I'm sorry, that $7.99/mo is going towards groceries, and I don't own a TV, ok. What am I, a millionaire? Who owns a real TV these days. I have an ipad. Is that not enough?

Now, onto the point of all of this: I go up for auditions all the time. Mostly commercial at this point. The types of things that could pay me more for a three day shoot than I have ever made in my entire life combined. The type of brainless smile at the tupperwear Target add that a monkey could do... but which monkey? I get really close to some of these things. I'm pretty, smart... you know the drill. But when you were raised on a fat pot of "you can do anything" and end up in the middle of your Saturn Returns with a bif ol plate of rejection, life can seem pretty conflicting. It sucks, matter of fact.

Add into it a love life and a thousand missed opportunities that if only you could get your live together enough to capitalize on them, and you get moi, angry at my Netflix... foggily blogging in the middle of the night and hoping for a whole new world where the Disney movies upon which I were raised were available for the price of an unlmited instant stream membership on Netflix.

Also, I wish I had a machine that brushed my teeth for me while I was asleep. 28 years, and I still get annoyed every night on that long and lonely trek to the sink for some Colgate and a swish or two. Don't even get me started on flossing.  Ugh... flossing. What am I, a robot? Or a millionaire? Or a millionaire robot with a TV and a two DVD's at a time subscription to Netflix?

This Shit is Bananas

I recently went through a break up. And by recently, I mean the other windows open on my computer right now are her facebook page and "same day flower delivery NYC."

Her biggest complaint: that I never turn off.  That there is a lack of down-time, just-be-ourselves-time, fun-time in our relationship.  My biggest complaint: that I don't feel like I can "just be myself" around her. That I feel like I need to make up for the fact that I spend so much time onstage, cancel weekend trips last minute, and am, at times, emotionally wrecked from being passed over for the part I was born to play, seeing the end of my twenties fastly approaching and not really having a savings account, and having spent the past five years of my life almost exclusively with other performers--we have an odd code of conduct, for sure--and being in front of "normal people" tends to make me nervous.

We spent the better part of the morning walking up and down the West Side Highway with the dog, hashing out details of:

"You make me feel..."

"But I'm trying as hard as I..."

"That's the point. I don't want you to try..."

"But when I don't you get..."

"I can't help that! You make me so..."

"Well, it doesn't help when you..."

"But if you could just..."

"Ugh! I'm tired of fighting. "

"I'm just so tired of fighting."

And so on and so forth. In the end, I packed my bags and hugged her good-bye, shook the dog's paw and whispered in her ear, "I'll miss you the most, Scarecrow." I cried, she told me not to forget my hat, and just like that, something I thought would last forever was over. That old familiar homeless man who camps out near the subway entrance would never be my homeless subway man again. No more hitting tourists with my over-stuffed tote-bag filled with burlesque props and a ukulele in front of the IFC. All of it, just over.

Then...

"Wait a minute!" I thought, attempting to cry unobtrusively on the B train back to Brooklyn. "It's not just me! Everyone feels awkward just being themselves! I can make this relationship work!"

And then I started googling flower delivery.

Allow me to explain. I shall begin with an anecdote of the boys who live next door.

My former future wife lives in the hip West Village on what we had always considered a quiet block. All of the basement apartments in her building are privy to a private cut of what in Chicago would be an alley, but in New York we call a "back yard." It's a twelve feet deep lane of cement that separates her building from the one adjacent and is divided with charming wooden fences to create "yards" or "patios" or "a place for the dog to pee when it is raining and I don't want to get out of bed," depending on how you look at it. It is an ideal haven for bbq's, outside furniture, and conversation in a part of the city that is otherwise entirely infiltrated by sex shops and douche bag bars that stock Bud Light Lime and run specials on Michelob Ultra on Sunday afternoons. It is one of my favorite places in the world, that back yard, so you can imagine how frustrated I was when a group of ne'er do wells compromised its sanctity.

Next door to said haven resides a clan of twenty-something assholes who we assume work somewhere in finance and are obviously recent graduates of whatever soft-ivy-liberal-arts institution is handing out diplomas these days--(I can say that because I went to one such school. Sure, the education is great, but looking out onto one's graduating class, one cannot help but be filled with a sense that we are what is wrong with the world, with our $100,000 sheepskins, beer-stained cargo shorts, and vodka-filled Nalgenes under our robes.)

The collection of four men who live next door play their music loudly. Extremely loudly, which would be one thing were they having a party now and again, but is quite another issue entirely in light of the fact that there could be absolutely nobody on that patio, and they would still be blasting mid 90's rap, horrible techno, and "Now That's What I Call Music! 27." They do not speak unless they scream, and what they say is rarely worth saying at all. They're the kind of grunting idiots that reinforce the theory of evolution if for no other reason than they are clearly not-so-distant cousins of monkeys. Sometimes we pop our head over to remind them that it is a Tuesday at 11pm, or a Sunday at noon, or a Saturday at 4:54 in the morning, and could they please turn their music down. They hate us. And we hate them.

My source of revelation, however, is that heir music habits are so horrible, that there is no way they're genuine. Sure, I'll turn up some Tom Petty when the evening calls for it, but no amount of pent up anything requires the atonal choral renditions of "Freefallin" to which I am exposed on a regular basis. It's group think. They're all just trying to impress one another. Monkey one talks loudly, Monkey two talks even more loudly. Monkey three drinks crappy beer, Monkey four drinks crappy beer. Monkey one decides he needs to pee on the fence that separates our yard from theirs, Monkey three laughs and asks Monkey Two to please hold his crappy beer while he also pees on the fence. Lady-Monkey one who works at a consulting firm but wants to be an "event-planner" sees all four boy monkeys peeing on things, drinking crappy beers and talking loudly about nothing, and thinks this is what she should be doing, too. So she invites her other lady-monkey friends over and an awkward party ensues until Angry Lesbian Monkey next door pokes her head over the fence and asks to turn the music down, we're trying to sleep. Maybe one of the monkeys feels badly for Angry-Lesbian-Monkey, but the other monkeys have decided being loud is what monkeys are supposed to do, so they have to keep being loud! Monkey two realizes he's out of crappy beer, goes inside to get a new one, rise and repeat.

I know what you're thinking. "That's all great about the monkeys, Scout, but where do you and your awkward social habits fit in."

So, I'm not a monkey-see, monkey-do type of gal, but that doesn't mean that I have supreme self-confidence, it just means I don't have a monkey to follow. I do have a monkey whom I love and want desperately to love me, so I perform for her, and in the process, I'm awkward. I try not to be, but I am. And when the monkey I love says she doesn't like my monkey games, it hurts because all I ever wanted to come out of them was for her to love me. I've never been a follower. I was weird as a kid and now make a living out of being a little bit weird as a performer. It gets into your head that you're supposed to be a certain way, whether that be a douche bag junior analyst who listens to top 40 music or a well meaning cabaret singer who has been banging her cymbals for so long, she isn't sure how to stop.

The point of all of this is, whether you follow or you try to make your own way, "just being yourself," is the hardest thing in the world to pull off. Sometimes, like an unripe banana, the harder you try to peel it, the more it breaks off in weird places, and you squeeze weird banana pieces out of it, and end up trying to use your teeth to get it open, and then you try to play off that weird taste, but it's gross and makes your tongue sting, and in the end, sure you peeled the banana, but you made a mess doing it, and maybe the banana would have been a million times better if you just waited till it was ripe and cuddled it from time to time and told it that it was pretty.

Extended metaphor, but you get my gist.

I'm going to try to get my girlfriend back. I'm going to try to figure all of this out, and in the meantime, I'm going to keep slamming on my cymbals and trying to make people laugh. If all of this works out, it will be a miracle. And if it doesn't, at least I'm still better than the ass-wipes who live next door.

With Liberty and Equity for... Equity Members Only

So after the run in with RENT, I've decided to give have a Tanya Harding style wack at the world of musical theatre. I've been studying with the most amazing voice coach of all time (shout out to Shelly "The Singing Siren" Watson) and my voice is healthier than ever... which does call into question my impulse decision as a child to never ever take voice lessons because I didn't want my voice to sound "trained" and chesty like all the other sun'll-come-out-tomorrow kids from Miller Marly, Kansas City's local place to be for kids who gotta dance! and can't wait to book that regional tour of Hairspray. I took one lesson once when I was somewhere in the ballpark of ten years old, and I cried and refused to speak. Even then my need to be different was clear, and though I now have some real vocal damage and am ten years behind where I could be in terms of vocal strength, I must stand by my decision. Sure, I could have been a thousandaire by now having booked multiple tours and a small part on Broadway, but who needs that?

I do. Thus, the voice lessons.

From voice lessons have come plenty of gigs where I get to sing, mostly in the world of Cabaret, and still stripping when stripping is due, but mostly singing, and I love it.

And then there was RENT, which broke my heart. Shelly said an experience like that can only be described as being left at the altar. One minute everything's fine and they just like you for just who you are, and the next minute, they're gone, and you're all dressed up with nowhere to go. Continuing in the same direction, RENT has assumed the position of my ex. I thought we were going to spend forever together, she left me, I hated her and reveled in the mixed reviews she got without me, but part of me will always love her.

And until they fire whatever nonsense Miller Marley slut-bag they hired in my place, it's time for me to start looking at other shows.

So here I am, waiting in a long line of belters and ballers and girls in awkward audition dresses who can hit a hi-e, but only just barely, and it's mostly through their nasal cavity, which is neither pleasant nor satisfying. I sauntered in pretty late in the day for an open call for "Toxic Avenger" and took advantage of my girlfriend's West Village real estate to take a nap on lunch break. There is almost no chance they're going to get to me on the list, but I figure if I do this long enough, I'll get the hang of it and maybe even book a show. In the mean time I am blessed with an endless buffet of 16bar karaoke of all the greatest hits of Broadway, Mo-town, and songs that have been recently covered on American Idol or GLEE.

Stereotypes abound, from the kermudgeny monitor to the gay boy with a guitar and high school girls traveling in pairs signing up for everything. Tomorrow I get to do it all again for a Connecticut production of Cabaret. I feel good about that one, as my actual life is that of Sally Bowles minus Berlin and the abortion... though I was just asked to come back and host Berlin Burlesque at Galapagos in Brooklyn where I am pretend German and cover Mein Herr as my opener. Next stop, Connecticut! If thy could see me now....

In Sickness and In Health: Part I

I am blogging to you today from a hospital waiting room, waiting for my blonder half to emerge from a surgery of surgeries, one ovarian tumor lighter than she was when she went in. The surgeon is just shy of one hundred percent positive that it is a benign tumor and promised not to touch any vital organs unless they were "horribly diseased," which, though a brash turn of phrase from an otherwise plucky doctor, struck us as almost comforting after the Brooklyn accented anesthesiologist told us that it was possible for my lady to experience, death, nerve damage, stroke, bran damage, etc. from the general anesthetic, but, hey, a piano could fall on our head just walking down the street, so fuhgettaboutit. So despite anticipating my being on a slightly paranoid piano watch for the next few days, at least I'm not panicked while my future wife goes under the knife.

The short story is that in running tests for a completely unrelated operation on a major tear and boney impingement in the stuff that holds her hip together (college basketball plus sucking the marrow out of life one Chelsea Piers adult league and round of beer pong with the team at a time) they found this tumor, which meant a rapid transition from our not having a care in the world to having two pretty big cares in the world: one apparently the size of an orange, and possibly with teeth and hair growing in it (which is normal in the tumor world) and the other...well, the doctors didn't use any fruit metaphors to describe her hip issues, so I don't remember how big the tear is, but I know it's bad news.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that for a four month and change relationship, this was quite a mound of mashed potato worries to sling on our otherwise carefree veggie platter of girlfriend and girlfriend with very little notice. Now the gravy: I've never really had anything life threatening come my way, and I'm not great at dealing with anything serious in the first place. Forget life threatening, I've never broken a bone, had to say goodbye to someone I loved without ample notice, (my grandma was 97 when she bid us adieu, which, though sad, is kind of what you expect from a grandma of her years) or gone through any really major trauma ever. Well, family matters got rocky there in high school with an un-fun divorce coupled with a family member or two in rehab, more therapy than you can shake a $90/hr stick at, and the realization that I was a weird-o, which a was difficult to deal with before I figured out a way to make a living doing it, but that was years ago, and I’ve done a lot of work processing all of that. I was a worrier as a kid. I was high strung and thought the world at the cusp of a clumsy collapse at any given moment.

As a matter of fact, I've spent a huge chunk of my life trying to learn how to NOT take things so seriously, a skill which I have skillfully mastered, and am now skillfully happy and able to move and groove with the ups and downs of what has turned out to be an extremely ups-and-downs-filled career. So what happens when real trauma comes my way? What coping mechanism kicks in then? Is it back to panic and worry? Obsessing over details and making deals with the universe wherein if I am able to hold my breath for the entire time it takes for my car to pass through a tunnel my future wife won’t die in surgery? Am I going to go back to being neurotic, or will I stay cool, calm, collected, and unable to process anything real without a joke and a high five?

Again, no one's life is at risk here, but that steaming mound of double surgery is still swimming in butter on that plate of ours, and it's tricky business.

Mmm...butter. Goddamn, I would kill for some mashed potatoes right now. I'm in a hospital, they must have some somewhere... I wonder if there's a cafeteria downstairs...

Damnit. Ok, so I’ll admit, somewhere along the line of learning how to let things roll off my shoulders, I lost my ability to focus on anything in any way upsetting. In fact, focusing on any single thing for any length of time is an ace long lost from my deck, and though I've done my damnedest to replace it with a wild card or joker doctored with a sharpie and a hand drawn "A", it's never exactly the same thing. My girlfriend is right when she worries that I’ll not be the best care taker, and I’m an asshole when I assure her that just like the song says, “I’ll be there,” because I know I may not be cut out for this. 

I took our second ever fight for her to communicate to me that she needed some major support, much more than I thought I was giving, and our third ever fight for me to realize that I was going to have to stop drop and roll to find a way to make time for said support in my never-a-dull-moment-cabaret-and-burlesque-nervous-audition-after-nervous-audition schedule, at least while my girlfriend is recovering from surgery, and possibly for good. Either way, I’m sitting in a waiting room terriefied, not that the surgery will go poorly, but that our relationship will if I can’t pony up and simmer down.

More in a moment. Aunt Cathy just got here and I should stop clacking away on my iPad and look concerned. Sigh… for better or worse, here I come!

What Goes Up Must Feel Down

Sometimes I wonder if any of this is even possible--if the mountain I've placed before myself will always be a mountain, or if I'll ever feel like I've climbed something of any great import. I think of the long and sinewy road that snakes its way through my past and all the discarded projects that I've left scattered by the roadside along the way. I think of all the things I did and didn't mean to say, all the botched auditions, half finished jokes, music video concepts, festivals which came and went with unrealized potential meetings, reviewers, producers, agents in the audience. I think of all the unused ukulele lessons, which now live right next to my unused Groupons, and I wonder--is any of this, any of this, even possible?

The opportunity cost of being alive is overwhelming. I have a knee that pops every morning alongside the arches of my feet from performing nightly in drag queen heels. I read stories of performers, comedians in particular, who recount years they spent doing nothing but comedy, losing friends and lovers along the way. I think of friends that I have lost, and wonder why I haven't lost more, like a lackluster anorexic who wants desperately to be skinny but somehow can't shake the need to eat. I come so close to destroying myself in my art, measuring out my days in coffee spoons of joke writing in between auditions in the city, running lines on the train for any commute farther than four stops, saving money by buying iced tea at Dunkin Donuts, where any size is $.99. Seriously, any size. Like a giant fucking iced tea is $.99. And they have flavors. Unsweetened! Booking shows, seeing shows and strategic socialization at night, I can go weeks with ne'er ye an unplanned moment to relax, but it never feels like enough. I should be more focused, I should be more tallented, I shouldn't drink as much as I do, I should be more disciplined, I should have gone to conservatory, I should have submitted a book proposal to that writing agent who approached me after a show nearly six months ago instead of burrying it at the bottom of a to do list bloated with such tasks as "organize apartment,"  "fix costumes," and "buy a thank you presant for Shelly." (Seriously, girl. I've been looking for months, but I can't seem to find the perfect little something that casually shows you how much I care.)

I went to my intuitive energy reader this week. I try to go to her about once a year, but I carry a fear in me that seeing her so infrequently isn't enough--that I can't open my spirit guides enough, follow her directions enough, shop at Stick Stone and Bone enough, so I avoid it as much as I can. She told me to work more with mantras, which sounded like a great idea to me.

I got out the ol notebook on the train ride home today when my brain was satiated with lyrics and lines I am supposed to already have committed to memory, and I wrote:

My voice is enough. With love and ease, I will succeed. My voice is enough. With love and ease, I will succeed. My voice is enough. With love and ease, I will succeed. My voice is enough. With love and ease, I will succeed. My voice is enough. With love and ease, I will succeed.

A blog, even a short blog, after a period of not blogging, is enough. You, the reader, just you reading this... is enough.

P.S. Do you think that was enough times for the mantra? Maybe I should have written it more times.

Here's What You Missed

Dear Diary,

It's been a while since my last entry. I missed you. Did you miss me? I totes went MIA for a sec b/c some totally stupid casting directors stood me the f up at the altar. For two months, they strung me along, telling me how awesome I was, how much they loved my confidence, that all I had to do was just be myself, and then, at the last minute, they left me for another woman. I don't even know who she is or what she looks like, and I don't care. I don't care if she's prettier than me or can sing better or whatever. I hope they enjoy their off-Broadway run together and those casting directors can just think about what could have been.

So, there was a hiatus before the big let down when I slept, focused on my voice, and did a lot of positiv visualization. There were the two days after the audition when I went away to the country to cry on the beach, which, if you are going to cry, is a fantastic place to do it. Then came The Big News that I didn't get the part, followed by an immediate realization tht my life has gotten completely out of control and I am in desperate need of a new game plan, which pretty much brings us up to date.

A year ago I came fantastically close to an entirely different role, hosting a soft cable news show --think Lindsay Lohan jokes et al. Though I had no previous hosting expense, it made total sense that I would be perfect for this. And I was! All the way through contract negotiations, months and months of callbacks, until it went down to the final four, and I didn't book it. Bam. All kinds of gering up for ready for my life to go topsy turvey, upside-down, and in the anti-climax to end all anti-climaxes, everything stayed the same. Except that now, I was suddenly on a hosting track. I went up for all kinds of shows, worked on a hosting reel, did all kinds of mental and physical prep for this entirely new direction in which my career appeared to be heading.

And now that I came so very close to a life in musical theatre, I'm getting notes about the creative team's concern with the level of my dance training. For the record, I have no dance training. My level would be none. It all feels very "United States of Tara."

Which leads me to my next point, I've been a little off the ball these days for two reasons: one, I have no idea what the ball is anymore. And because of a skin cancer scare on the part of my manager, (she's fine) I haven't had a chance to meet with anyone to give me any inkling of clarity until tomorrow. Two, I'm depressed. Not spend all day crying in bed, crossing the street recklessly, fingers crossed that a taxi will smash into me and end it all depressed. More like the bartenders at my regular shows are worried about me because I haven't been drinking lately depressed. More like my girlfriend texts me, "I love you," and I text her back "xo" depressed.

The world keeps turning, and I am still on board for the ride. I just feel like sleeping a lot and watching "Dead Like Me" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" as opposed to whittling away hours at open mics.

Someday, my prince will come.

The "Cry" in "Crisis" -- (phonetic wordplay scores again)

The whole intention of this blog was to streamline. To focus. To work smart not hard. To say, "voila, stand-up. J'arrive!" And yet... and yet...

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury (lovers of Nabakov and Jeremy Irons get my drift) I am lost. I am hopelessly lost. I am a stand-up comic who continues to make her living as a burlesquer one, sweaty wad of bills at a time, and somehow found her way on track to be in a musical off-Broadway, on top of the regular acting work to which my body is accustimed and must, like a dancer at the bar, continue to do for fear of losing my training and, more importantly, my mind.

Every time I bump into a certain friend of mine who is a comic, I go through this cycle of crisis. My friend has made it as a comic. Pays the bills as a comic. Has a cool, not totally out of the realm of possibility for what I could do with my life, life. Every time I bump into him, I tailspin. I google people who are slightly more successful than I am and wonder what I am doing wrong. I hold onto years like a meiser holds on to gold: I may be twenty seven, but at least I'm not twenty eight. What, ho! She is twenty-nine. By the time I am twenty nine I'll be somebody, for sure!

And I am somebody. Nine out of ten days of the week, I love my life, my small piles of cash and dirt cheap apartment that comes fully equipped with a maddeningly long subway ride into the city  between two and a million times a day, depending on how much crap I can shove into one suitcase and how many numbers I have to do that night.

Today was a one in ten day. A not-so-sure-I-have-any-idea-what-I'm-doing-with-my-life day. I ran into the comic friend. We chatted. Life for both of us is going extremely well. He's gigging all the time, doing well, making TV appearances. I'm knocking on the door of the biggest role I've been offered to date. He's happy. I'm happy. He's slightly older than I am, so I don't do that weird jealousy thing with the twenty-nine! Ba-ha! (I'm not proud of that, by the way, but I still do it.)

And then WHAM! I get jealous. Not of his success, but of his ability to be one thing at one time, and for that to work so well for him. He doesn't wake up and spend thirty minutes making weird tarydactly noises to warm up his voice, then take Valarian root (herbal anti-anxiety reccomended to me by the head of ABC primetime casting due to nerves) go to a weird audition for something that he won't book, then to a rando photoshoot with some fella who is "super interested in burlesque and wants to shoot some downtown performers" then sit through two hours and a flat diet coke at an open mic, then to a Starbucks to blog, (thanks for the giftcard, Mom) only to end the night with one too many vodka on the rocks with olives "on the house" and false eyelashes half glued to his face at a burlesque show, only to wake up and do it all again. His life isn't perfect, but he at least gets to wear the same outfit for the entire day. I'm lucky if I make it in three or fewer.

Then again, I am rather fond of my trail of glitter.

Ugh! This is exactly what I'm talking about!

Today is a day where I wish I were more streamlined. Today is a day I wish I was a comic. Or an actor. Or a singer. Or on tour opening for Eddie Izzard across Europe and Austraila. Not... whatever it is that I am.

For 365 days I swore to be a comic. No option period. No way out. One year of mics every day. Now I'm not even sure if that's what it takes to be a comic, at all. There's a club. A club of people for whom this is their lives.They graduate to headlining at Caroline's. They book spots on Jimmy Fallon. They tour colleges and book the Chuckle Shack somewhere in the midwest and bitch about their day rate. I am not one of those people.

This week I had an acting intensive with my mentor who, because she is a filmmaker and single mom, only teaches about twice a year and does it out of a small town an hour upstate on the Metro North. She usually gives you about a week's notice, maybe two, which, for moi, means super early mornings on top of super late nights of shows for a week. This week it got so bad that I contracted a Urinary Tract Infection (my lady friend is out of town, so I can't even high five myself for getting sick from too much sexytime. Where were you on that one, ladyfriend?). A fucking horrible Urinary Tract Infection. A damage a muscle in my back because my kidneys are freaking out Urinary Tract Infection. A leaning across the counter at the pharmacy at Rite Aid telling the lady behind the desk that if, as she says, it will take about an hour to fill my $213 perscription, I will die, kind of Urinary Tract Infection. I cancelled a show for the second time ever since I've lived in NYC. It sucked.

It was my body's way of saying, "ENOUGH!" And I get it. It's too much.

I stayed in tonight. No mics. I shall focus on a writing project that I was supposed to finish two months ago. I will google people slightly more famous than I and wonder what I'm doing wrong.

Final callbacks for the off-Broadway show are this week. I have to sing better than I ever have before. I have to rid my body of infection. I have to sleep. Oh, god, I have to sleep. (Sleep is the biggest x-factor in one's vocal ability. You can cheat a lot of things, but when you are tired, your voice sounds tired and you damage it.)

Friday I slept for 13 hours straight when I laid down for a nap.

Oh, universe. Show me the path. Any path. Help me to shine and be shined upon. I am flinging so very much pasta being at the wall. Oh, please, help some of it stick.

On the upside, I get to perform in a Van Halen tribute burlesque show this Saturday at Joe's Pub. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.


Sigh. Wanting things is the hardest part.

It was the best of times, it was the...

Show thirty one brought me back to The Ritz, my Monday haunt, which I host and adore. I count it as stand up, even thought it is technically pretty far away from The Boys Club of stand up because though I am committed to thinking like, acting like, joking like a true stand up for 365 days, the truth of it is, I am always going to be a little bit squarely. Should I stumble into an HBO special now or ever, lord knows most of it will be bedazzled. Sure, it's no tight twenty minute set at The Chuckle Hut in Walla Walla, Washington, and I have semi-permanent damage in my knee from abusing my right to wear stripper heels, but this is also my life. One of my dearest friends in the universe (she has been my best friend for 20 years, which is a pretty cool thing to be able to say at 27, if you ask me) was over at my house knitting as I finished bedazzling a bra.

"I can't believe you figured out a way to make this your life," she said, as she finished a knit and transitioned to pearl.

"Honestly, I can't either. Yet here we are," I replied.

Yes, here we are. Dollar bills shoved down my pants and in my bra in a $600/mo apartment off a train that shuttles when it's feelin frisky, no idea what tomorrow will bring, no idea what tomorrow will bedazzle, meltdowns on Mondays, tantrums on Tuesdays, what the fuck am i doing with my life Wednesdays, and rent due on the first of every month, whether I like it or not. But I do have low income health insurance, which is nice. Someday I dream of making enou money on the books to be eligible for low income housing, but as it stands, I'm only 66% of the way there. Why they set the poverty line so high, I have no idea. What do they think this is, the 90's?

Diving down, down, far far away from midtown and "Don't Tell Mamas" came show thirty-two at Eastville, a nightly mic where some of the big boys will come to lob a joke or two. It is also in a windowless basement, so the odd 5:30 on a sunny Wednesday when you know the sun is out, but you're trapped in a room that appears to have a Deatheaters touch in it's ability to suck the soul out of young, hopeful comics--sometimes visibly, I swear--is enough to make even the most optimistic grape in the bunch feel more vinaiger than wine.

And yet, we soldier on. I shall admit, at this point I very badly want to quit. But I won't. At least I haven't yet. Honestly, I don't think I will. I'm too much of an asshole to be a quitter.

The Green Monster

Today I violated a major life rule: do not freak out and obsessively stalk someone younger than you when you get defensive about your career and someone in the business mentions her name. Facebook will not make any of this better, no matter how far yoygo back on her wall feed.

Very rarely do people get under my skin and send me cater wheeling down this path which can only end in pitty party.

Actor jealousy is a dangerous beast, one which I tend to successfully avoid, and one that slapped me freakin hard in the freakin face today. Trying to stay positive about a role for an extended period of time is exhausting, and sometimes having everything in your life go well only serves as a remind that things could be going very well.

Sigh. What would Kristen Chenowith do? Throw her down the goddamn stairs, that's what.

Show twenty eight was God Tastes Like Chicken. Always a fun show, and I adore the host...

Seriously? Why was my manager asking me about this girl? What does she even see in her? She's so smily and musical theatre and annoying.

Twenty nine was Naked Stand Up, which honestly hasn't been fun since it moved from The PIT to Queens, though it was the very show that added the brine to the pickle of a challenge in which I find myself now.

Thirty was back at teneleven bar, though I skipped out on the 10 o'clock mic at The PIT because of my callback situation.

Hear that, little miss born in 1985. I got a callback. I do things. I am going somewhere.

Ok. Letting it go. There is enough success in the universe for all of us. No need to be fatty.

Also, my girlfriend is way hotter than hers. And she has a back yard. In manhattan. Suck it.

Putting the Rage in Time Arranging... Because management doesn't have enough rage in it.

With an eight show deficit forty seven days into the challenge and the realization that the rest of my life is not about to sit, heel, stay while I go on about my challenge, I had hoped to double dip tonight and do a mic before my regular Monday show.

And then I spaced out and got on the wrong train. I left my house late due to the need to fix a costume for tonight and walk the dog which is not mine, but whose mother left him with me over four months ago and appears to have no intention of retrieving him, so the looking at my feet to ponder my life space out cost me the only precious 15 minutes of a prayer I had to make it to the mic on time, and even then it would be a mad dash, and I woul dmot likely have had to dash out early to make my 8:00 rendezvous with a group of producer who want to pitch a reality show about five up and coming NY comedians, one of them being yours truly. I ended up in Union Square when I had my sights set on the West Village, and rather than show up late, again, which I think is tacky and also I do it all the time and have ladled the last few drops out of my well of "sorry I'm late" excuses, so I jumped ship and, in a wave of almost tears (the dog thing is actually an extremely big issue right now. He is the most beautiful 80 pound commitment I never asked for, and, try as I might, I cannot be a single mom. His mom is on an express train to crazy town, however, so it is a source of much hemming and hawing) I decided to skip the mic and call my mom. And then I cried on the street in front of Barnes and Noble. Perhaps Borders would have been more appropriate, but there were none in sight.

And then I called my dear friend who lives out of town and almost cried again.

And then I felt better.

So no double dipping tonight, but I do have my late show, which I since.

Being kind to yourself can be a bit of a unicorn in this business. Well, not a unicorn, because I do think it exists, but you hear a lot more about it than you actually see people riding them off into the sunset--the unicorn of loving yourself and giving yourself a break when you need it most, being kind but motivated, and not holding it against yourself that you made a costume today rather than work on jokes or get into the city on time.

I am still working on forgiveness. Today was a gloomy day.

Anyone on the market for an 80 pound pit bull who hates cats and loves people? Tomorrow is another day. A day with auditions, photoshoots, and hopefully more than one stand up set for this little kitten. Get it? Kitten?

Holy Bunny, Batman.

Um... Excuse me, but where the fuck was I when it was announced that today is Easter? Was there an extremely loud train that galavanted through the city and I missed it, or did it sneak up quietly and other people are on the same boat as I am in saying, holy shit. Easter already? Who knew?

Train or the boat, people.

Point is, no open mics tonight because none of my regular dives were open due to som serious bunny love, (the holiday, not the person, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, what are you doing in this city besides being overcharged for rent) a fact which was only brought to my attention because of a planned revival of a certain musical baesd on a cult movie classic eponymous for a blood stained prom queen, and my being called in for the role of high school bully (the lines roll surprisingly naturally off the tongue... "my dad's a lawyer. He will sue your ass," among others...) who collects the blood and orchestrates the consequent soaking. 27 and I'm finally being taken seriously as a 17 year old.

I was under the incorrect impression that this was a world premier, so when they sent me original sheet music to prepare, I had a mini panic attack and lied to my manager.

"You do know how to read music, don't you, Scout?"

"Do I know how to read sheet music!" I responded, channeling my best Barbara Streisand channeling her best Fanny Brice.

The truth is, I read sheet music with the same dexterity that Helen Keller learned the word "water." Sure, she figured it out eventually, but it took a lot of hand holding to get there. So, in a panic, I went to arrange a practice session with an accompanist, which led to the realization that no one will work on Easter Sunday, followed by a consequent googling storm, followed by a big motherfucking sigh of relief when I found a very muddy recording of a 2010 reading on YouTube that was at least intelligible enough for me to learn my 32 bars. And then I drank mimosas in the park.

Thanks, for dying, Jesus. From one lapsed Jew to another. (To be fair, mom raised us Catholic. Dad's people were the chosen ones, and my mom chose to ignore their eight days of light and other evenings of whimsy, and parked our Midwestern fannies twice a year--Ester being one of those biannual body of Christ bonanzas--at an Anglican Church... aka Diet Catholic, or as they say in Europe, Catholic Light.)

One year I forgot about Christmas. Man, that flight was expensive.

Paying Rent

Ok, so right about now is where my callbacks for the off-Broadway show begin, so shows are going to get a bit sporadic. Audition round one was March 18th. Pepper in callbacks until we get to round four on  April 18th, and we just found out the final round will be just shy of a month after that. What that means is that sleep is the most important thing in the world for me. Sleep has a crazy imapct on the voice of a chanteusse, as the as the life of a comic tends to err towards the nocturnal, the 365 in 365 challenge plus said audition schedule came to a head in many a high school debate worthy session of cost/benefit analysis. The Q train shuttle didn't help either. 

I should also mention the emotional stakes at hand.  The night before I received my first callback for said role of a lifetime was a Monday, and Monday means one thing: TAKIN OFF THE RITZ! My weekly burlesque extravaganza. The show went less than well. We were involved with an epic battle with a fellow who is part of the cast of The Aubrey Show and deemed my venue the place where he absolutely needed to watch it, my show be damned, we can start after. Now, I struggle with confrontation (hush, Exes who care to argue with that.  I could only confront you because I LOVED you. Obvi. I can't yell at strangers, only people I care about enough that I am apt to push them away.) so it was a night of constant negotiation between diva gay boy on shitty reality TV show, a diva performer on my own line up who shall remain nameless, but was pissy about our delayed start time, my best friend (also a performer) whose well intended advice was in no short supply, and a bartender who was a-ok Bennedict Arnold-ing either way, depending on which party contributed most generously to her bar ring. 

The night ended in full meltdown on my part, counting out money in a heap of glitter and my own legs dreaming of something more. Perhaps a case of "the grass is always greener," or perhaps just a symptom of wanting something so far out of my control. It wasn't PMS, though. I checked. Still, no drought of emotion on my part. 

The next day I went back to the Port Authority show. The host was kind and let me go at the top of the line up, so I could dash away to Nurse Bettie for burlesque at 10pm. All in all a solid if not un-remarkable set, though it did shed even further light on my time management skills and wondered if part of my problem as a comic is lack of consistency. I can try to make a mic every week, but the ability to have a consistent schedule and build a community around one mic every week is not a luxury my lifestyle easily affords. 

Thursday was off to Noah Levine's mic and the remind that being 15-20 minutes earlier at the beginning of a mic for the sign up process can save a hour or more of listening to all the other comics and drawing mermaids in my notebook time. Again, time management. Damn you, 24 hour days. 

Twenty-two was a bit of a cheat. Doc Wasabassco (seriously, always puts a great show together) started a new monthly at Waystation, and I thought I could commandeer the audience into listening to jokes before they saw my boobs. They were definitely more interested in my boobs, so a big B+ for my B cups.

Twenty three was with Sassi at Broadway Comedy Club, which is also the home of my stand-up debut! It was the year I graduated college, a bringer show, and I thought it would launch me into superstadom overnight. I was an idiot. Also annoying. Most pretty women go through an annoying phase at some point in their life. Mine was my early 20's.

Twenty four came in the form of one of my favorite shows in the city, because despite being one of the most bizarre and unpredictable audiences ever, it is one of the few shows that can truly claim variety, and that show is Floating Kabarette at Galapagos Art Space... No, that's Public Asembaly/ Old Galapagos. New Galapagos moved to Dumbo. Yes, Dumbo. Uh-huh, you sure will get lost on beautiful cobblestone streets as you try to find it, but if you hit a deli called Peas and Pickles staffed by middle eastern men in patterened sweaters, you know you're going the right way. Also, try the Cajun Mix. I adore it, and if you go late enough at night, there may be some sort of super religious radio station playing and, if you are a lady, the man behind the counter will ring you up without making eye contact and will put your change on the counter rather than run the risk of touching your bare hand. I like to deal with it in the same way that I deal with Hassidic people... by trying to touch their hand, making eye contact, and saying thank you extremely loudly as if I were, oh, I don't know, a human being rather than a vessal for sin. Glitter is my gdd, motherfucker.

I should also say that Kabarette is the site of the only instance in which I have actually had someone  walk out on my set out of principle. It was a group of European men (think "Legally Blond" Gay or European, not "I own a yhat and have an accent so slick and a body so gracefully ripe with sinew that even a devout lesbian like Scout will flirt with me, until she realizes that you have tufts of pubic style, but slightly thinner hair where your breasts should be, and even if we do make it into bed together, I will spend most of the time pawing at your chest and having the disapointing realization over and over again that you are a gross man, and not a lovely lady) and my mention of my period was what did them in. I have a song dedicated to the matter. A sing along. It is usually such a crowd pleaser. Perhaps they went to Peas and Pickles and discussed poor fashion choices and a general distaste for women and bodily functions with the hands-off fellow who sells me Cajun Mix for my late night train ride home from the cobble stoned streets of Dumbo to the sea of abandoned Carribean food in the park that is where I reside: a place so deep in the bowels of Brooklyn that late nights and weekends, sometimes the trains don't even go there.

Or if they do, they shuttle.

We Will Return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming Shortly

Life does not rain, it pours, and in the grand tradition of the energy patterns of the universe, my 365 in 365 challenge happened to coincide with my being put on an audition track for one of those "I'll be damned if this wasn't the part I was born to play" roles, which for me, means the role of a certain below 14th St. lesbian performance art in a certain Alphabet City musical that rocked Broadway at exactly the same time that every hormone, dream, ambition, and quarter note I had to sing in my body rocked me. The audition process has been long and, well, oddly predictable: go sing, freak out, wait, get a call, freak out, find out the call was good news, freak out, prepare, go sing... four rounds of this we've had so far. The end is near, but my nerves are shot.

All of this has brought up the very question that may have been at the hart of this battle from the get go, which is, am I even a comic to begin with?

Stand Up is a bizarrely unique pinkie finger on the hand of the performance world. Comedians all at once have all and none of the power over their own career. So much of being a comedian seems to be just, well, being a comedian: hanging out with, spending your nights with, thinking like, talking like, being just the same as all the other, but better than all the other, comedians. Comedy Central Specials fall like errant bombs rewarding those most deserving and also those most, "what the fuck, you're kidding me" of the crew. We tumble though careers of which we portend to be the masters, but are really as much prey to whim and whimsy as all the other pretty schmucks who spend their days waiting for auditions and their nights being fabulously glamorous working coat check. None of us have any idea what is coming for us next, and wanting something is easily the first step towards a mental breakdown.

I took that first step in showing up for an open call. My amazing manager couldn't secure a private audition, so I was forced to accompany all the other NYU ne'er do wells for 4 hour wait in line for an open call that has, four rounds later, brought me so close to the prize that my heart is sore from trying to pretend things will be ok if I don't book it.

Top it off with the whipped cream of a new love, and it is no shock that today, I fell apart. I left round four with a lucky egg in my hand (a green stone that was given to me by Nasty Canasta at the start of the year. Egg for luck, she said. I took it quite literally) and helped a blind man named Joe cross the street and find his bus terminal at Port Authority. "Can I hold your hand?" he asked. His eyes were foggy with chaticacts. I told my intimate lady partner I would call her back and walked hand in hand with Joe to make our way up two escalators ("I'm not afraid of these things," he said. "They still freak me out sometimes," I replied") to gate 307 where he told me to thank my mom for raising  me right, and I secretly felt guilty for clutching my egg closer and praying for the karma to translate to the creative team at my audition just minutes prior.

What I am trying to say is that I have no fucking idea if I want to be a comedian. I know I want to be a performer. I know I want to write and make people laugh. I know that recently I have been smashed in the face with a kind of love that I had previously retired as even a possibility in the life of a performer.

As much as I don't want to care. As much as I hope that I am stronger than... above... will persevere no matter what... I want this part. I want a job where I get to clock in and clock out, even if it is only clocking out to sleep. I want something that is beyond my control of wanting, and it is killing me.

I cried today and took a nap. I had thought I would be able to go home after my audition and write, run errands, prepare for my weekly show this evening. Nope. Tears. I needed to cry and release to the universe the painful, uncomfortable, humbling truth that I want something so badly, I am totally venerable, without defense, open...

And then we pick ourselves up, are thankful for the lady who helps kiss away the tears (don't vomit in your mouth. I was bitter for a long time. It is my turn to be happy) and fucking blog. Will I make it to the early mic tonight? Nope. Has my stomach been stable enough to manage to consume solid foods yet today? Nope. Am I sure of anything in my career except for that I want things, performance things, I want this part, will not die if I do not get this part, but mostly believe why wouldn't they give me this part? want it so badly I require nine hours of sleep a night and sporadic mental breakdowns and spontanious egg-in-hand mid-street prayer sessions... yes.

My girlfriend asked me how it went. Do I need anything? I responded that I wanted a mojito (no idea where that came from.) She met me at the subway with a deli rose and told me it was ok to cry if I needed to. I needed to. Eventually, I fell asleep--at her house, not at the restaurant. I'm a woman of whimsy, not a crazy homeless person. "I should have done work today," I said. "You cried your eyes out today. You needed a nap," she said.

So, I'm behind on my open mics. I have been napping. It could be worse. I could be Mario Lopez. Everything always works out in the end. If it doesn't work out, it isn't the end.

Fuck You, Gluten

Just paid $9 for well vodka in a room filled with $3PBR's.

Next time, gluten intolerance be damned.

"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" or Bust

Twenty and twenty one came together like a group of hookers at a rugby team orgy. Up to the Upper West Side (seriously, that area between 14th street and midtown freaks me out. What goes on there except that spot by UCB that has tater tots and my Charles who lives in the tiniest studio in the world? Midtown, I know, due to an affinity for large, shiny lights and Broadway shows... though if I have to walk through an ocean of nose-pierced, Manic Panic late tweens/early twentysomething out of towners waiting for the lottery for "American Idiot," I may start carrying a brick in my shoulder bag, and I haven't been above Lincoln Center since I dated a woman In The Heights. Fair to say the musical was more fun than the commute) to the P&G for three rounds of 2 minutes each in a weird, speed dating for comics set up, which I eventually dug, once I figured out what was going on. 

Then I received a tip about a mic behind Port Authority and planned to meet up with my partner in spacy-ness, Chanelle Futrell. (we used to do a little Scout and Chanelle Show on youtube, which we plan to resurrect... eventually...) En route, I received a text from my new found lady which, in fine tribute to her skill as a wordsmith, read, "just leaving a convention in Midtown. Wanna make out in the bathroom at Starbucks?" to which, I said, "duh." So there we stood like patiently apprehensive late tweens/early twentysomethings waiting in line for the lottery for "American Idiot" and made out in the bathroom at Starbucks, careful not to touch any of our important parts to any exposed bathroom surfaces. It was awesome.

The mic wasn't bad either, until a drunk fella who was obnoxious in a way that is inexplicable without going on a full rant, which I just don't have in me right now, did a set that was every kind of racist no comedian wants to be. Political in-correctness may be all the rage, but racism is still exists, and just because you can laugh at your own internalized issues, doesn't mean for real racist and comedian are mutually exclusive. Sure, back when I really was a nose pierced, Manic Panic twentysomething and thought I was Sarah Silverman, I tried my hand at a couple of race jokes that didn't land, but I backed off. I knew when to quit. I looked like a bad comedian, not an asshole. This fella with a questionable hair situation and one too many vodka sodas was asshole all the way.

I lightened the mood with a rant about bedbugs, which are the only group of anything that I want gassed, beaten, hung, machettied, or however else racist people kill things. Those bugs are insidious, and I hate them.

Which leads me to my next point, being mean is only funny when it is lighthearted and not serious and you can do almost anything with a genuine smile. I may not be the best joke writer there is, but I am a generally happy person, and sometimes just going up on stage with energy and a smile is enough to save the day.

The "Oh My God I Want to Kill Myself" In Open Mics

Show seventeen was my weekly beast of burden, Takin Off the Ritz, which happens every Monday at The Ritz (gay bar, not douche bag hotel) around 10. Free show, so come by if you're not an asshole. The crowd shifts between mostly lezzies to mostly gay boys depending on the night, and I will say that hipsters, gay boys and lesbians are the trickiest audiences I have found thus far. My success in front of them all depends on how willing they are to make fun of themselves, which varies between very willing to make fun of their cold irony/bitchiness/love of hummus (respectively) to being coldly ironic, bitchy or loving hummus respectively.

Eighteen and nineteen double whammed on Tuesday with Big Mike and Friends at The Boxcar Lounge and Penny's Open Mic, both repeat offenders, and both epicly long, which brings me to my next point, sitting through all these open mics may well be the death of moi. There is a code of conduct at open mics, adherence to which is inversely proportionate to your level of street cred fame. The bigger you are, the easier it is to bend the rules.

Comics stay poor much longer than other artists, as even when you have sort of made it, you still probably need a writing job or a Cablevision commercial here and there to be able to comfortable afford that one bedroom in hell's kitchen I've heard so much about. And even the big guys still have to work out new material somewhere, so it isn't uncommon to see performers you think should be way out of your league jump on a line up of a mediocre show at a decent club, or following that logic, to see comics who are about to break into the "big time" of $40 primetime spots at the Chuckle Hut working it out in the backs of bars at lowly open mics. If fellas such as these fail to meet the one drink minimum or duck out before the end of the reserve list to hit the next spot, or, I don't know, go home, smoke pot and masturbate (which, from what I can gather, is the bulk of what successful comics do) it is less of a social transgression than if I, an up and commer who must rely on befriending people and being known as a good person for booking unpaid spots on other people's line ups, were to follow suit and ship out.

Translation: I have to sit and be cordial through all the performers at all the mics. On this particular night, the amount of time that required was a synonym of epic that I am too exhausted to think of at the moment, because my brain is fried from too many hours at open mics. It isn't anybody's fault. That's the open mic lay of the land. Go. Be nice. Listen. Have whatever beer is on special (unless you share my gluten intolerance, in which case you go for a vodka soda and curse the penny pinching bags of douche who get away with $3 PBR's night after night) and listen to every Tom, Dick and Harry tell jokes about his hairy dick and Tom Catting ways.

Point! Wordplay!

Time management is beginning to become more and more of an issue. Sure, I can get up there and tell some jokes, and maybe some of them are funny and maybe some of them need to go back up on the chalkboard of ideas for a bit until they find their feet, but the sheer hours of just sitting there, waiting for 135lb unshaven peach fuzz comedians to reach the "blowjob" climax of their jokes--by which I mean the word "blowjob" is actually their punchline. I would say this happens an average of two to three times per open mic--will surely do me in.

Nothing is more deadly for an ADD-lady than boredom. Suck my soul out with one reaction-less audience after another, but please, God, do not end my life in the back of a bar somewhere in alphabet city with a whimper.

Perhaps I am being dramatic. Perhaps I am hitting a wall. Perhaps I should hit my head against a wall just to mix things up.

Either way, thank you and GOODNIGHT!

A False Sense of Pessimism

Here's a joke that hasn't been funny since I was on A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila--I was the first person eliminated. It was awful. I didn't get along with the producers and am fully ashamed that I was ever on the show--But still! This used to be a funny joke:

"So I guess I'll just have to get famous the old fashioned way. Oral sex. It used to be just a dream that a lesbian could sleep her way to the top. Now it's a reality TV show."

I think I can salvage it. Maybe I'll give it a whirl tonight.

Show fourteen was one of those shows where if I didn't know I was going to go home and blog about it, it would have been uzi-to-the-crotch soul-killing. Hello, Laugh Lounge! The host didn't show, so the six of us passed the mic and took solace in the brutal honesty of the situation. There was no running the light. More of an, "ok, I have two bits I want to work on tonight. Here they are," type of thing. A solidarity in knowing we had paid $6 for a soda and were in a dark basement on a rainy day just trying to do our thang. And the cocktail menu had me in stitches! Essex in the City! Good one.

I skipped Friday for a burlesque show in Philly where I officially lost my crush on the 22 year old who obviously had never dated in the real world before, and performed at a lesbian bar that was full of women in vests and featured a carpeted floor. Who carpets a bar? (Insert lesbian carpet joke here.)

Show fifteen was teneleven bar, where the mic just recently moved from 8pm to 6:30. I was late, and the room was a little bit weird, though welcoming, and happy hour brought me a $3 vodka/soda and the bartender a $2 tip. Hey, big spender.

Because the audience was pretty thin, one of the comics took it upon himself to pick me out of the crowd (because crowd work makes so much sense at an open mic. HBO special, here you come) and ask me, "would you ever date a black man?" with an obvious race card in his deck that he was itching to play.

"Nope. Never." I replied. "I don't date men at all. I'm gay." Ha! Let them think I am racist and then switch it up at the end. Gay rights, touche!

I should have know better than to think that revealing my lesbian-ism is ever a deterant for men. I know, from experience that it is more of an invitation for sexual comments, personal questions, and an eventual offer to shave close and go down. (Men, take note. If you think you have a chance of bagging a minxy mo, at least come up with something more original than oral sex. We do other things, you know. Like scissor, cuddle, and talk about our feelings.) His rant against me ended with a question about my lover's breasts--please note, I did not have a lover at the time, nor did I ever imply that I did. This girlfriend to which he was referring was a product of his imagination, entirely.

"Does she have watch batteries or funbags?" He asked, employing possibly the most random point of reference for breast size that I have ever heard.

I didn't answer. Watch batteries? What is he, hitting on anamatronics at FAO Schwartz? Whose breasts look like watch batteries? The least he could have done was make a AA battery joke. Something.

I did have the pleasure of running into Sasheer Zamata (sasheer.com) who took me along to The PIT's mic at 10pm. Though my name did not make it out of the hat for one of the six open spots, all around good guy Rob Stern (http://passthecarrots.podbean.com) tacked me onto the end, anyhoo, so I ended the night with a smile and a slight wine buzz. Even though the Q train was shuttling. Freakin, always.

Oops, I did it again

For any of you who may be keeping track out there, you may have noticed that we are a little bit behind right now, both in shows and in blogs.

I can explain.

You see, there comes a time in every little lesbian's life where she falls madly in love with a woman who has strong arms and an amazing blond ponytail, and since the original lady in question has a natural tendency towards procrastination in the first place, and the woman with whom she is now in love works from home, and therefore has a flexible schedule, even though it's too soon to say that they are girlfriends, they are ok referencing each other as "intimate lady friends," and sometimes the first lady forgets to blog and has trouble focusing and, instead, spends the precious couple of freetime-hours she gets every week going on doggie dates, ordering vegetarian Chinese food, and discussing the possibilities of taking the Bolt Bus to Canada and eloping.

Does it help my career? Nope. But if we spend enough time together, it will help me regulate my period.

Still! The industry waits for no one, so after a brief week and change on the Island of Lesbos, I'm back and gearing up for a blog blitz.

Hold on, breeders. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Everything below 14th St

Knowing that I had fallen somewhat behind on my days to mics ratio, I had every intention of doubling up on Sunday. Having already expressed my feelings on the subject of time management, it shall come as no surprise that I did not, in fact, make the early mic I had hoped to attend, and instead went directly to Alter Ego, hosted by Killer Killy Dwyer the third Sunday of every month at Fontana's.

A regular on the line up, this is one of the few occasions where I do stand up and take my clothes off at different times in the same show. I is a difficult balance to strike, I must say, and the order is extremely important. Once an audience has seen you wearing nothing but sparkly things and a smile, it is difficult to convince them to want to hear you speak, though, when pressed, I can occasional combat this syndrome with the line, "the only thing more intimidating than a naked woman is a naked woman who talks." That's not just good comedy. It is the fuckin truth.

Lucky number thirteen was the relaunch of my weekly Monday show, Takin off the Ritz,which happened to coincide with the launch of "All About Aubrey," a reality show about someone named Aubrey. Reality shows are launched all the time without my being aware of it. I didn't think this beacon of a waste of time and brain cells would be any different. I was wrong.

In the grand history of bars double booking and mis communication in the service industry, my show was delayed an hour so that a fella on the show could watch himself have his 2.2 seconds of fame. All time low...definitely for me, and possibly also for humanity.

Try as I might to keep my "oh no you din't" in my head and off the stage, that shit was bananas, and though friends swore they couldn't tell, I had a sneaking feeling that I, temporarily, lost my funny.

I should also mention that right around then I was going through a casting process for a certain off-Broadway revival of a certain show that took place in a certain alphabet city in a certain early 90's, and I wanted the part so badly it felt like my eyeballs were bleeding. Why that has anything to do with wanting a part, is yet to be determined, but that's how I felt. Not just because I wanted the role, but because ever since I got really close to a steady gig last June (hosting a silly, pop culture news show on MTV. I lost in the final four, which was closed enough to make me believe there may, indeed, be a light at the end of the tunnel,) I have been desperate for the ability to make performing my job. Not my constant hustle, low balance alert, $70 cash in an envelope at the end of the night job, but my eight shows a week, pennies I nthe penny jar job.

Wanting things badly is the hardest part.

In a wave of drama, I swore off burlesque in the green room that night. It was, of course, a lie, but the more I glimpse what else is out there, the more I wish I were a part of it. That said, burlesque and cabaret are my life. I don't think I could ever live anywhere without them, and I would not be a fraction of the performer--wait. That doesn't make sense--I would be a very small fraction of the performer that I am today without everything that world below 14th St has given me.

In the words of a McDonalds drive through employee that my ex used to quote, "I is conflicted."

Someday I will be a thousandiare!

The short story is that I did not go to a mic on Saturday. The long story is this:

My dear friend, Allison-Rose DeTemple (also the designer of these gems: www.breedspecificgifts.com Christmas in April, anyone?) snagged tickets to see Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers at The Williamsburg Music Hall. Perfect! There is an open mic at Legion Bar at 5 and I thought I had the perfect little evening planned out... better than Home Depot, or any Will Farrell movie since "Old School."

Mid-afternoon I fielded a call from Ms. DeTemple asking if I wanted to go to Queens Chinatown for $25 massages, her treat. I should mention that part of the reason I am trying to get away from quite so very much cabaret is that it takes a huge toll on your body. All those high kicks in high heels with a high ball of whiskey can do a number on your alignment, so a massage sounded vunderbar, and a free massage sounded even vunderbar-er.

Still, I was forced to decline. I had a commitment to stand-up and nothing, no, nothing was to stand in my way! Not even a free massage. So, off I trod for 2.5 minutes of rambling in the back of Legion a bar followed by an or and a half of my idol on the banjo.

The MTA, however, had a different idea entirely. Now, if I were to make a list of areas in which I excel, I would certainly not include time management. I would definitely include consumption of and the ability to sleep with my friends and expect that everything will go back to normal, but definitely not time management. I live in a craft den of glue guns, chalk boards, paint brushes, half finished costumes and no shelves, so It is a wonder I make it anywhere at all, let alone on time.

I may have provided the bread for this story of running epically late sandwich, but The MTA certainly brought on the meat. Pickles and mayo are questionable.

There I am waiting for giant sausage link of a Q train to arrive and whisk me away to Williamsburg, when I discover there are no trains coming to my stop. None. N'er ye a train for the rest of the weekend. My only transportation option was to walk to the next stop and jump on a shuttle bus to Atlantic Pacific where I could get a train to somewhere, assuming that train is not under construction, as well. Sparing you the details, (there was rage and veggie fried rice, to be sure) this process took an overwhelming hour just to get to Atlantic Pacific, defeating any hope I had of getting to the mic on time, on time-ish, or even on time enough that I could eyelash bat my way into jumping on the end of the line up.

Chinatown massages, it was (hello, 7 train) but I was wracked with guilt for missing the mic. How could I have panned so poorly? Been so irresponsible? How could I lay still for a hour when there was stand-up somewhere in the city, and I was missing it!

All those hours on the train gave me plenty of time to consider what, exactly, I was willing to sacrifice for this challenge, and even more so, for my career. This entire challenge is based on the supposition that one year of hard work (after four years of equally hard, but somewhat less streamlined work, to be fair) will put me in a place where comedy, not burlesque, performance art or working the coat check at beer promotions, could be my bread winner. I couldn't help but consistently return to the question: what was this year of my life worth to me? I had already declined dinner invitations, fielded angry texts and phone calls from friends who were convinced that I was over our friendship, or at least didn't value it anymore, and stayed four hours or more deep into the single digit hours of the night at a mic in pursuit of seven minutes, and that's just since I took the challenge. I have broken fevers onstage, missed major holidays with my family, ended relationships with women I loved I pursuit of this dream of performing.

What's more, I don't think I am anywhere near special for having done so. One of my dear childhood friends routinely clocks 100 hour weeks at his job as an architect.

What is one year of my life even worth? One hour? Pardon the leap towards the existential, but when you've been on a train for over 90 minutes on a Saturday on your way to a mic with a drink minimum and the promise of 180 seconds in front of a lackluster-at-best crowd, who will silently think to themselves "that's funny" before emitting even a chuckle, the gears in your head start to turn.

The truth of it is, I don't mind it, any of it, really. Sure, I wish things were different sometimes. I wish I could go on a vacation without fearing being called in for an audition or booking a show that makes me cancel it last minute. (I might mention the all expense paid Alaskan Cruise I had to pay not to go on because of an audition at an improv studio that I didn't book. As my manager said to me at the time, "do you have a career in Alaska? No. So stay here and do your job.") I would like to someday order a round of shots for my friends and say, "this round's on me!" without doing math before cautiously putting down my debit card in fear of overdraft fees. I would like to have a wife and give her nice things and take her to nice restaurants, not because we know the bartender and he will totally hook us up, but because she wants to go there. And someday, I believe I will have those things. Right now, however, I don't. I have 180 seconds to get better at a bit that may, one day, go into a 10 minute bringer set that will get me noticed by the owner of nonsense and poppycock club, that will be seen by a schmucky guy with pull at Comedy Central, who will give me 22 minutes not to fuck up in a comedy special that will run sporadically for a few years and may or may not ever lead to a substantial chunk of money that allows me to live alone without jumping on craigslist to look for an extra gig or two to make sure that I can fly home for Christmas without "mentioning" to my dad how expensive airfare is these days. Ooh, boy.

Someday, I will be a thousandaire! But I have to say, for now, I don't mind being where I am. Sure, I wish I could order martinis at will, but I can order them from time to time, which is something I couldn't always say.

In the wise words of my father, "all you can do is point yourself in the right direction and keep moving forward. It is not up to you to decide how long your journey will last."

So, onto Steve Martin! Onto greatness! Onto a free massage in Chinatown and talking my friend into giving me a ride back to my house in the ghetto with two roommates, one bathroom here even the trains sometimes do not dare to go.

Ladies and gentlemen, the show you are about to see is 64% gay

Lucky show eleven is also a bit of a cheat, as it took place largely in front of a burlesque audience...and I didn't work out any new material... And I really only spoke fairly briefly... but I am counting it, because it fulfills the aforementioned qualifications, and with God as my witness, I shall not fail a this challenge!

Ugh, am I that needy, I just invoked God to witness a stand up challenge? We soldier on.

Show eleven took place in the form of a Doc Wassabasco show at City Winery. Yes, it was burlesque, but not only did I do a singing number in which I speak to the audience before I cue the DJ (albeit doing my most tried and true jokes for drunk people) each of the performers also emcees one other performer over the course of the night. Nothing major to report here, except that BB Heart mentioned backstage that this was a particularly gay cast, and the indubitable fact checker within needed to verify said supposition before I would sign off on it. Being a woman of science and precision, I requested that each of the members of the cast, excepting the one male member, as we decided it should be a ladies only calculation--BB is cheating already--calculate here percentage gay, 1% being very fond of the fellas, 100% being season tickets to Michigan Women's Festival. We were at a solid 64% gay until two late-coming performers, who shall remain nameless, rated themselves 0 and .02%, respectively, which we rounded to 0. Caught in the long-finger nailed, able to get legally married in all 50 states as well as Canada grasp of their hetero extravaganza, our average plummeted to 40 something, stripping us of our official gay majority, though I do think a couple of the somewhat optimistic 50/50 girls were took notes as to whom to invite to their next venture into "I had a girlfriend in college and occasionally like to make out with someone whose 5 o'clock shadow is in their southern hemisphere" experiment.

I remember a drag queen in Lawrence, KS once tossing the line, "bi now, gay later," at a boy in the crowd of a protest or performance... or maybe there was a performance in response to a protest... or a protest in responses to a performance... the details are hazy, though I do clearly remember Fred Phelps's crew being present. God bless Kansas. Experience has persuaded me, however, that "bi now, annoying later" may be a more accurate moniker for rainbow explorers of the female persuasion. I am the last bi girl with whom I went to bed, which incidentally coincided with the first, second and third orgasm I ever faked. Oops.