“So is that all you wanted to tell me?” he asks.

“No,” I say.  “There’s something else.”

“I thought so,” he says.  “You sounded like you really wanted to talk to me.”

“Yeah.”

We sit in silence for ten seconds.

He shrugs.  “Uh, so…?”

“Hold on, I’m not ready to say it yet.  This is hard.”

“Hard?  Damn, this is gonna be good!”

“Not bad hard, it’s just hard to say.  Whew, I didn’t think it was gonna be this hard.  And now I’m building it up too much.”

“Exactly,” he says, straight-faced.  “Just say it.”

“I mean, it’s just really bad timing,” I say.

“Why?”

“Well, because you hate me right now.” Over the weekend, I had made a really shitty comment to him, and even after two days of trying to explain myself, I can tell he’s not completely over it.  Shit, I pretty much had to beg him to meet me here.

He shakes his head.  “I don’t hate you.”  His tone is very matter-of-fact.  “Just say it.”

“No, it’s not a big deal.  It’s just…hold on.  Give me a minute.”  I take a deep breath.

Our server comes over and grabs the pizza tray.  “Can I get you guys anything else?”

“Just the check,” he says, and she walks away.

“Well, I love you,” I blurt out.

He stares at me, so I keep talking.  “That’s all.  I just love you.  And I told you a while ago that if I fell in love with you, I would tell you to your face.  So I’m telling you.  To your face.  Right now.”

He doesn’t even blink.  “Thank you,” he says, and he takes another bite of pizza.  That’s it.  It’s such an anti-climactic moment, I’m not sure how to deal with it.

If this moment were a scene in a movie, this would be my voiceover: Oh, no problem!  You’re welcome for loving you. Really, no trouble at all.  Anything I can do to be of service to you.

We sit in silence for a little while – I’m not sure how long.  I guess as long as it takes to listen to the words “Thank you” echo back and forth across my mind 7,012 times.  The server drops off our check, and it occurs to me that I really timed that “I love you” poorly.  Now I have to sit here and try to make idle conversation while we wait for her to run the tab.

“So my friend John is moving to San Diego,” my mouth says.  “He got an internship at UTSD.”

“Oh nice!”  He gives me a high five across the table.  “I used to date a girl that was going there.  That’s a really good program.”

“Yeah, well, that John, he’s a smart fella!”  Did I really just use the word ‘fella’ in a sentence? I laugh out loud.

“What?”

“Nothing.”  I’m not at all satisfied with how this went down.  If this were a movie, it’d be so much more of a big deal.

But in reality, the moment I tell a man to his face that I love him is glossed-over, forgotten even.  I have to bring it up again just to make absolute certain it happened.  “So you probably already knew that I loved you,” I say.

He shakes his head, carefree and easy.  “Naw,” he says.  “I didn’t know that.”  Jesus, we might as well be talking about how there’s a new Laundromat opening near my house.

“Oh.  Okay.  Well.” I shrug.  “Now you do.”

***

I’m sitting in Planned Parenthood talking to a nurse.  I’m already annoyed.  My birth control runs out two days before my health insurance kicks in, and I “make too much money” to receive any Planned Parenthood benefits, so long story short, I have to pay $100 for something that I can get for free in three days.

The nurse asks me the same basic questions as in any women’s health clinic: all oddly personal sex stuff to gauge your level of responsibility.  I understand the need for what they do – young women who come in there might not know about sex, and it’d be good for them to have an adult to talk to about it.

Still, every time I have to go through one of these Q & A sessions, I try to think of a shortcut to the end so they’ll just give me what I came for without getting all up in my business.  I want to tell her, “Look, Lady, I’m ‘bout to be 30, and I’ve never been pregnant or had an STD.  Can you just give me the goddamn pills?”

But no, she presses on.  “Are you currently having sex?”

“Yes.”

“With one or multiple partners?”

“Just one.”

“I see,” she says.  “And is your partner having sex with other partners?”

“No.  Uh, yes?  Shit, I don’t know.  Probably.  Who am I kidding?  Yes, definitely.  Probably.  Let’s go with probably.”  I laugh.  “Look, I don’t know.”

If this were a scene in a movie, the nurse would’ve said something to make me feel more comfortable, something like, “Girl, I been there!”  Then she would’ve given me a high five.

But it’s reality, so she just stares at me, says, “I see,” and then looks back down at her endless list of goddamn questions.  “Have you had unprotected sex within the last month?”

It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to say, “Bitch, now you just being nosey!”

***

I’m in my car driving one of my comic friends, Solomon Georgio, back to his house.

“Look, I’ll probably just die alone,” I say.  “And I’m fine with it.  I’m not gonna find anybody, I’ll be single forever, and I’ll die alone.  It’s totally cool.”

“Why do you gotta say stuff like that?” he asks.

“Oh, I don’t mean it,” I say.  “I just think that my life is a movie, so I’m trying to say the turning point line that the main character says in the movie.  You know, the line that triggers the chain of events that end up making her life become suddenly awesome? The part where she’s pretty much given up, and she talks about it right before she ends up getting everything she wants.”

Let me break in here to explain something.  When I say that I believe my life is a movie, I don’t mean that I think the world revolves around me.  I mean that I think everything that happens in real life is relevant and symbolic, a chain of events that, when linked together, tell a greater story, one that doesn’t have an end yet.

This belief has been constant throughout my life.  As a result of it, I sometimes spew out sentences that sound like epic lines of dialogue, and I apply symbolism to every single thing that happens around me, so believing my life is a movie has only resulted in me looking like a weirdo a couple times.

Like that one time, back when I was working in the Dean’s office at OU.  We had mistakenly sent a flower delivery man away, and the Dean, worried, told us that those flowers were for his wife.  I stood up from my chair, threw my notebook and pen on the ground, yelled the words, “My whole life has been leading up to this moment!” and sprinted out of the room to chase down the flowers.  I brought them back a few minutes later to reluctant and sparse applause.  True story.

“Oh,” Solomon says.  “So you’re saying we’re acting in the romantic comedy of your life right now.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, in that case, I know my role.  I’m the pro-active gay friend that expresses way too much interest in your love life.”

I laugh.

“I’ll call you later.  Be all like, ‘Girl, I know of a hip party tonight.’”  He does a series of gay man head shakes and snaps before continuing.  “Honey, we need to get you laid.  I’ll be right over.   I’m bringing some mimosas and a case full of outfits for you to try on.  Why?  ‘Cause I’m a stereotypical gay man.’”

Now I’m cracking up.

“You know,” I say, “My life would be a million times sadder if I wasn’t constantly surrounded by funny people.”

***

It’s an afternoon in early June, and I’m deleting his number from my phone.

This isn’t the first time I’ve deleted someone, but I gotta admit, it feels a little wrong this time. A few months before, I’d actually promised him that no matter what, we’d stay friends, but I’m fed up with existing in a gray area.  “It’s not a big deal,” I tell myself.  “And I tried not to delete him.  He won’t care if we’re not friends.”

The logical part of me knows that’s not true, but the part of me that acts impulsively on every emotion I have the second I have it overrides that logic, and so I erase him from existence.

I don’t just delete his contact info – I delete every call to or from him in my call history.  I delete our pages and pages and pages of text conversations, the story of us.  I delete any photos I have with him in them, any remnants of him in my phone.  It’s the most efficient deletion I’ve ever performed.

There, I think.  Now we’re not friends.  Gone.

Two hours later, I’m sitting at the bar at the Hollywood Improv watching the Thunder play and drowning in whiskey when my phone vibrates, a text message.  I look at the number.  It’s him.  I can tell by the area code.

I try not to check the message.  I try to hold out for as long as I can.  In reality, maybe 30 seconds pass before I open the text, but when I get to the screen, it’s blank.  The only thing on the screen is the time, 5:58 p.m., and the number of the man that I had just a couple hours before deleted from existence.  Huh.  That’s weird.

So I text him back.  “Hey,” I write.  “Did you by any chance send me a blank text just now?”

“Nope,” he writes.

No?  But then how did this happen?

If this were a movie, this would be the moment when the main character gets a second chance to correct a stupid mistake.

I text him again: “If I call you right now, will you answer?”

“Of course, doofus,” he writes.

He picks up on the second ring.  “Hey Baby Girl!”

“That’s funny,” I say.  “So you really didn’t just text me?”

“No, why?”

“Well…uh, because I deleted your number from my phone.  I deleted all our text history and everything.  Then, two minutes ago, I got a blank text from you.  Weird, right?”

“Whoa,” he says.  “That is pretty weird.  Wait, you deleted me?”

“Yeah, but the point is, I’m putting you back in.”  I figure I spend so much time looking for symbolism in the world around me, I’d be a complete fool to ignore the one sign that actually means something obvious.  That phantom text, well, it’s the Universe telling me, “No, Leah.  Not this person.  Not this number.  Not this time.”

“I think my phone is telling me not to delete you,” I say.

“Good,” he says.  “And hey, don’t do that again, okay?”

***

I work as an admin assistant at an elementary school in Culver City. Today, the 8^th graders are graduating, and my boss lets me attend the graduation.  Because I’ve only worked here for six weeks, I have very little attachment to these students, and quite frankly, I don’t give a fuck if anyone on the planet graduates from the 8^th grade, but I’ll watch a 4^th grade flute recital if it means I can get out of sitting at my desk for two hours.

The ceremony is pretty cheesy, a bit over-the-top emotional. The parents in the audience are boo-hooing at everything that happens.  The teachers sitting around me are melting into puddles of goo because someone told some kid to reach for the stars.  Meanwhile, I’m sitting unaffected, wondering how long it’s gonna be before we can tear into that cake.

Because the graduating class is so small, there’s a portion of the ceremony where each student picks their favorite teacher, and that teacher says something specific to the student, whether it be advice, sharing a memory, or encouragement for the future.

One of the students chooses Sharon, an Art and Literature teacher, to speak on his behalf.  She ambles to the front of the stage, stands face to face with her 8^th grader, and says this:

“You know, Ian, I’m honored that you would choose me to speak for you today.  Because really, I should be up here thanking you.  In all my 30 years of teaching, you gave me the best compliment that I’ve ever received.  I don’t even know if you remember this, but when you were younger, you came to see me one day, and you told me, ‘No matter how bad my day is, I’m always happy when I’m with you.’”

“So today, Ian, I’d like to return that compliment.  And I’d like to tell you that no matter how bad my day is, I’m always happy when I’m with you.”

That one gets me.  I’m now just one of the many puddles of goo sitting in the audience, tears streaming down my face.

Sometimes I get so caught up in always trying to find the best words, I forget that the most eloquent way to say something is almost always the most simple.

If my life were a movie, then I would’ve had to miss this. Because moments like this only happen in real life.

***

I’m sitting in the House of Pies on a Saturday night, late June.  I’m dressed up for the second time since I moved to L.A., wearing a skirt, heels, and his jacket because it’s cold in here.  We’re eating breakfast and having a conversation about nothing in particular, mostly just about how a few weeks ago I told him that I love him.

“I feel stupid,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because I’m all dressed up.  I did this for you, you know.”

“What?  Come on!  You did?”

“Yep.  I did,” I say.  “I wanted you to think I looked pretty.”  And then I throw my head forward, smashing my face into the table.  “Oh God, I’m too embarrassed to look at you right now.”

“Come on,” he says, laughing.

“Nope, not looking.”

“Leah, look at me.”

I sit up, my hair covering my eyes.

“Hey,” he says.  “This, right now.  It feels like a scene in a movie.”

I sigh, exasperated.  “No, it’s not,” I say through my curtain of hair.  “It’s reality.  My life is not a movie.  It just seems like one because I’m really dramatic about everything.”

I blow a chunk of hair out of my eyes, and the first thing I see is him laughing at me.

I smile.  I can’t help it.

If this were a movie, he’d be long gone by now.  Because in the movies, when you tell a man you love him, he either says he loves you back and makes out with you all disgustingly in a public place, or he runs away scared in the opposite direction, no exceptions.  Here in real life, he doesn’t do either of those things.

I don’t pretend to know how this story ends.  Truth is, making everything a movie has been my way of dealing with the fact that I don’t know a lot of things.

But I do know this: no matter how bad my day is, I’m always happy when I’m with him.

It’s my fault I’m here.  I agreed to the Punch Wrap Challenge the week prior, when I was drunk at the House of Pies, eating eggs and calling my comic friend Jeff Sewing a giant baby pussy.  He and Andy Sell had already taken the Punch Wrap Challenge, and the results were as follows: Andy finished it and spent the rest of the night in misery – something about being “all stopped up.” Jeff couldn’t finish it and lost his manhood the very moment he admitted defeat.

“Really?” Jeff says.  “I’d like to see you eat one.”

“I can do it,” I say.  “I can do it without even trying.”

Andy laughs.  “I don’t know.  You’re a tiny girl.”

“Pffft.  Whatever.  I can do it and then run a few miles.”

“Fine,” Jeff says.  “Next week.  You’re doing the Punch Wrap Challenge.”

“Fine,” I say.  “Next week, I’ll eat circles around you motherfuckers.”

I’m paraphrasing.  What I really said was much, much longer – a rant about how I can out-eat any man that went on for the entirety of our late-night breakfast – but the basic gist of it was this: I’ll eat the fuck out of a Punch Wrap, and I’ll make Jeff and Andy look like goddamn sissies.

Yeah, I’m a trash-talker from way back.

I take the first bite, all tortilla and crust, just an inch of straight bread.  I smile. “This is gonna be easy.”

***

It’s November 2011.  I’ve been in L.A. for four months.

I’m in the Hollywood Hotel sitting next to Fernando Sosa, watching him write his set in a tiny flip pad notebook.

“That your set?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.”  He hands it to me.

I lick it, one giant wet tongue right down the center of the page, and I hand it back.

“Gross!” he says.

“Yep,” I say.  “That just happened.”  I’ve been licking set lists of Oklahoma comedians for years now – it’s kind of a thing I do.  Fernando is the first L.A. comic to experience it.

He shakes his head, laughing.  “I can’t believe you just did that.”

***

I’m on the phone with my mom on a Saturday afternoon in April.  “How’s my dog?” I ask.

“Oh, he’s doing great,” she says.  “Really great, actually.”

“That’s nice,” I say.

Davey Dog lived in L.A. with me for the first nine months, but I drove him back to my mom the weekend after Easter.  It was selfish of me to bring him to L.A., but I liked hearing him run to the door when I got home.  I liked sleeping with him taking up half the bed.

“Really,” my mom goes on.  “I’m actually surprised at how happy he is all the time.  He’s got a big yard to run around in.  He’s got Zowie to play with.  I mean, I’m sure he’d be glad to see you if you came here, but I thought he’d miss you more.”

“Jesus, Mom,” I say.  Eleven years, and he’s just like, “Peace out”?  Then again, my mom gives out dog biscuits all day long.  She’s basically a dog biscuit prostitute, my mom.

I half expect her to go into more detail about how much my dog doesn’t miss me:  “He doesn’t seem to remember you at all.  In fact, I have the phone on speaker right now, and he is actually visibly cringing at the sound of your voice.  He learned to draw and then drew a picture of your face with an angry-looking line through it.  He taught himself how to bark the words, ‘Who’s Leah?’  He feels freer.  He’s writing a novel about getting away from the sad people in life and finding his own happiness in retirement.”

In real life, she says this: “Leah, he’s your dog.  Of course he misses you.  He’s never going to forget you.”

I sigh.  “I know.”

Leaving Davey in Oklahoma, well, I’ve now officially left everything behind.  That dog has been by my side for the last 11 years.

When my ex, a human being who I also left in Oklahoma, heard that I left Davey, he texted me: “That’s gotta be really hard, sorry.”

I texted back, “Yeah, well, standup comedy.”

***

It’s Friday, and there’s a party at my house.  Nine other comics and I are gathered in my tiny bedroom with the doors closed.  A couple of us came in here to smoke a joint, but the rest just wandered in a few at a time.  That’s the thing about comics – in any given social situation, they gravitate toward each other.  At the end of the night, you can usually find them sectioned off somewhere, talking about standup because that’s their life, and that’s all they want to talk about.

Tonight’s no different.  I’m laying on my bed wedged between Jonathan Rowell, Doug Dixon and Solomon Georgio, not contributing much to the conversation, but listening to Andy and Rick Wood try to story one-up each other.

My bedroom is right next to the bathroom, so every now and then our conversation is interrupted by the sound of someone using the, uh, shitter.  Because we’re a room full of comics, none of us can let these instances go without commenting on them.

“That’s a little loud,” we say.  “I don’t think that’s healthy.”  Or, “Ooh, that sounds painful.”  Or, “We’re trying to have a conversation in here!”

“This is awesome,” Andy says.  “We need to keep doing this every Friday night, for sure.  Comics Unite Fridays!”

“Yeah,” we agree.  And then we gather in a circle and put our hands in a pile in the middle: “One, two, three, Comics Unite!”

It’s truly the queerest thing ever.  It might not have even happened.  I mean, I’m pretty high, and I’m listening to strangers fart two feet away from where I sleep.  It’s possible that the writer in my mind did that thing where it romanticizes the moment.

But whether the after school special hands-in moment happened or not, every Friday night, comics unite indeed.

***

I’m standing outside the Bliss café on a Tuesday.  Stan, a young comic with messy hair and a propensity for forcing high fives and hugs on people, walks up to me, his high five hand outstretched.

I jump up to slap his hand.  “What’s up, Stan?”

It’s precisely at that moment that a man wearing tiny running shorts and a tank top walks down the sidewalk with a shopping cart full of things that are only valuable to him.  I notice right away that he has The Crazy Eyes.

Stan is in the guy’s path, but doesn’t notice. “Stan,” I say.  “You’re in that guy’s way.”

“Oh, sorry,” Stan says.  He steps back.

“You think you can do more pushups than me, Big Man?” Crazy asks.

“What?” Stan says.

“Right now, you and me.  Let’s see who can do the most pushups in one minute.”

Stan looks at me, and I shrug.  “Do it.”

So with a lit cigarette in his mouth, Stan gets down on the sidewalk in position next to the crazy man.

“Okay, go!” Crazy says, and he starts doing the fastest, most impressive set of pushups I’ve ever seen.  He does that thing where he claps between pushups.  He uses one hand for a little while.  And he never, ever stops talking shit.  Not for one second.  As I watch him, I wonder what path his life took to end up on that particular strand of crazy.

Meanwhile, poor Stan is laboring.  I cheer him on, but it’s obvious that’s he’s gonna lose this one.  To a crazy homeless man pushing a shopping cart down Vine while wearing tiny running shorts.

That’s the thing about L.A.  Moments like this happen here, and they happen so often that people who’ve lived here for a long time don’t seem to notice them.

This is how I’m getting used to L.A., through what happens around comedy.  L.A. is comedy to me, but the place itself always manages to seep into the background.  Like a helicopter flying overhead in the middle of your conversation, or smoking pot on the street corner in broad daylight, or getting three parking tickets because you can’t decipher the 18 different restriction signs.  Or like the gang of stray dogs that I literally used to fend off every other night while walking Davey, who I swear taunted them by prancing around like a privileged house dog asshole.

***

It’s a Thursday night in November, I’ve just finished my second mic of the night at the Bliss, and a vampire is walking me to my car.  He’s not really a vampire, but that’s only because vampires don’t exist.  Otherwise, he’s totally a vampire.  Clues to back up my theory: he’s from Transylvania, he has a widow’s peak, sharp incisors, and a thick Romanian accent.

We’re talking about comedy or something.  I’m not making great conversation, mainly because I’m high, and, as many people will attest to, I’m no fun to talk to in that state.  Honestly, I’m just trying not to make any more vampire references.  I feel like he gets that a lot, and I’ve reached my quota for the night at 1,057.

As we approach my car, I catch a glimpse of a white envelope tucked underneath my wiper blade.  “Goddamn it!” I yell.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Motherfucking fuck!” I point to my car.  “I got another goddamn parking ticket!”

“Oh, that sucks,” he says.

“Fuck!  Fuck!  I just got one last week.  Fuck!”

I snatch the ticket from the windshield. But when I open the envelope, there’s no ticket.  Just a lined piece of paper from a tiny notepad.  It says this:

“Don’t ever lick my notepad again.  -Fernando”

I crack up laughing, and the vampire just watches me, confused.

***

It’s Easter Sunday, and today is a good day.  Not just for the whole Jesus resurrecting thing, but for many other reasons.  For one thing, Andy hosts the Sunday night open mic at the Silverlake Lounge, and today he gets to drink again after giving up alcohol for Lent.  He’s not in the bar more than ten minutes before taking a shot, drinking a beer, and spilling one of those things on the front of his t-shirt.

For another thing, it’s beautiful outside, like I imagined Southern California was before I moved here.  (Since then, about once a week, I angrily ask anyone who will listen, “Why the fuck is it cold right now?”)  Fernando and I had spent the afternoon on the patio of Umami Burger (or, as he likes to call it “Uma Thurman Burger”) talking about comedy because that’s what we do.

Now we’re in the dark pit of the Silverlake Lounge drinking beers and waiting to go on, watching Andy get gradually drunker between introducing comics.  As the mic progresses, each introduction gets more elaborate and heartfelt.

“This next guy,” he says.  “Oh, man, I hope you’re all ready for this next guy.  He is hilarious, and I love him, and you’re all gonna love him.  Love.  Lovey love love.  I’m a beacon of love.  Give it up for the very funny Pat Regan!”

Pat’s one of my favorites.  He’s a young kid (I think about 22), he’s a weirdo with a guitar, and he’s great because you really never know what he’s going to do onstage.  On top of all of that, he’s hilarious.  He’s one of those people that you feel lucky because you get to see him now, and there’s something special about him.  I don’t know, he gets “The Glow” around him.

Pat plugs in an electric guitar, sits on a stool center stage and adjusts the mic.  “You’ve all heard this before,” he says.  “But I wanted to try it electric tonight.  I’ve never done it that way, so bare with me.”

He strums a familiar chord and starts singing a song that we all do indeed know. “San Francisco take me back,” he sings.  “I promise not to leave you no more.  San Francisco take me back…”

He sings the first verse, and when he hits the chorus again, something awesome happens: all the comics in the audience start singing with him.

“San Francisco take me back,” we sing.  “I promise not to leave you no more…”

Of all the L.A. moments I’ve had in the past nine months, this is my very favorite.  Because right now I feel an amazing amount of affection for everyone in the room with me, all these people that I see working out their jokes every night after their day jobs, these people who came here from another place and left girlfriends and fiancés and dogs and families and financial stability behind.  Even though we’re all lonely open mic comics in an isolated city full of delusional people, today we’re here together in this bar singing “San Francisco take me Back” with Pat, and there’s just something extraordinary about that.

***

“I can’t believe you guys thought that was hard!” I say to Andy and Jeff while we walk down the sidewalk on Comics Unite Friday.  We’re going to a karaoke bar.  “That was so fucking easy to eat!  I didn’t even feel weird after I ate it.  Woke up the next day, and I was perfectly fine.”

I’ve been talking mad shit all week.  Why?  Because I finished the Punch Wrap Challenge in less than 10 minutes.  That’s right, Folks.  I ate a Pizza Hut pizza wrapped in two Crunch Wraps from Taco Bell, and Jeff is officially a pussy.  (Did you get that, Jeff?  I’m calling you a pussy on a public forum.  Your move.)

“Hey, you should write about the Punch Wrap Challenge in your blog,” Jeff says.

“Yeah,” Andy says.  “When are you gonna write about us?”

Actually, that’s a good question.

Mom: Got my tax refund so if you need more help let me know

Me: No, I actually think I’m gonna be ok.  Save some to come visit me please!

Mom: Do not worry white man, I will have money now

Me: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

***

As soon as I walk into Café Gratitude, I know I’m too sarcastic for this place. I’m only here because it’s across the street from the Melrose Gallery, where I work, and my boss sent me to pick up lunch.  I peruse the vegan menu, knowing that it doesn’t matter what I order.  It’s not going to be what I really want – a hot pile of meat. [Insert generic dick joke here.]

On the Café Gratitude menu, all the food items are listed as self-affirming sentences.  Some of the choices are a breakfast dish called “I am great”, a porridge called “I am bright-eyed,” and a dessert called “I am mystical.”  I can’t decide what’s more annoying – the affirmations themselves, or the fact that they’re not grammatically consistent.  Some end in adjectives (“I am extraordinary”), some end in nouns (“I am joy”), and some end in verbs (“I am honoring”).

What kind of asshole needs this type of validation when ordering lunch?

I look around to make sure I’m in a real place, and I didn’t wander into some sort of sketch comedy set background.  I’m having one of those crisis moments when I feel like reality is a parody of itself, and everyone around me is an actor.

“Can I help you?” the cashier asks.

“Sure,” I say.  “I’ll have the ‘I am dazzling.’”  I giggle.  “And the ‘I am magical,’ please.”  Then I crack up laughing, and the girl just stares at me, obviously unaware of how hilarious her life is.

***

Facebook message sent from Amanda Webb:

Between approximately 4am and 5:30am CST lots of love and positivity went your way…I just figure you’ve got stuff too, and you don’t even know when people are saying good things about you, or thinking them, or when something you wrote or said one time makes me feel better about myself, or the world. I wanted you to know, in case you needed to know.

***

Back in August, just a month after moving to Los Angeles, I lived in the same apartment building as my friend Doug.  He did stand-up for a bit after he arrived in L.A. in 2005, but he had stopped for some years before starting up again when I moved into town.  One Saturday morning, he dropped by to check in on me.

“How was the hotel last night?” he asked, meaning the open mic at the Hollywood Hotel.

“It was dead,” I said.  “I always feel like it’s dead in the late show.  I guess I did okay.  There were a couple people yelling shit at me.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “But good comics know how to adjust to the atmosphere.”

“True.  Sometimes the crowd’s just dead, though.  I mean, I’ve seen some really good comics have bad sets.”

“I guess,” he said.  “But we’d be able to handle if we had more experience.”

Experience? Who’s this fool talking to?

He pointed at me, then at himself.  “We’re not good yet.”

I take a slow breath.  “I don’t like that you said that.”

“Well, it’s true,” he laughed.  “We’re not good.  I’m just being humble.”

After he left, I sat and mulled over the conversation, letting it fester and run through me like a cancer.  About an hour later, I stomped upstairs and pounded on his door.

“Oh, hey,” he said when he opened the door.

“I got something to say to you.”  I stepped into his apartment.  “I’m a good fuckin’ comic.  And you’re not allowed to tell me that I’m not.  I’m not saying I’m the best, and I’m not saying I can’t get better, but I’m good at what I do.”

“Geez, calm down,” he said.  “I was talking about myself, too.”

“You can think whatever you want about your act,” I said.  “But don’t bring me into your negative bullshit.  I really don’t need that right now.”

“Okay, God.  I was just kidding.  Sorry.”

“Yeah, well, try to remember, I left my whole life to move here and do this.”

***

Comment left on my blog post by Erin Baird:

I believe in you, and I will never forget where you’re from, where I’m from. It never leaves you. It resonates. You may find yourself waitressing at a shitty Mexican food restaurant, wondering if you have the strength to muddle through another day in hopes that someone will take you and your talents seriously (this is currently my life to a T by the way), but I believe that someday it will all be worth it, because we are strong, talented women who DON’T TAKE SHIT FROM NOBODY.

And I’m done with my feminist Oklahoma rant. It’s just that all day I’ve been thinking “I just feel like no one understands.” And then I read this, and it made my day. Cheers, Leah, I want nothing but the best for you.

***

I’m running errands on a Saturday morning when my phone rings.  It’s one of my best friends, Angie.  She and a bunch of our crew are in Memphis this weekend to celebrate her 30^th birthday, but I couldn’t make it due to lack of funds, or, in layman terms, I’m a broke-ass motherfucker.  “Hey Lady!” I say when I answer.  “Happy birthday!”

“Thanks!” Angie yells.  She’s on the phone with me for all of two seconds before another friend of ours, Amber, snatches the phone away from her.

“Why didn’t you tell me you got a job?” Amber asks.  “I gotta read about you getting a job on Facebook?”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Yeah,” she says.  “You’re supposed to be one of my best friends.”

I roll my eyes the way you do when you’re arguing with a nagging aunt that didn’t get your thank you card in the mail.  “I didn’t tell anybody,” I say.  “I mean, I called my mom, and I texted Rockey.  That’s it.”

“Exactly! I don’t even get a text?  You can’t add my name to the send line?  How hard is it to add a few more people?”

“Honestly, I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me or really mad at me right now.”

“Uh, I’m being serious,” she says.

“Well, then I’m sorry,” I say.  “I didn’t think it would bother you.  And I really, really wish I could be there with you guys right now.”

“Me too,” Amber says.  “Have you noticed I’ve been checking you in with us on Facebook?”

I laugh.  Right now, according to Facebook, I’m at on Beale Street in Memphis.  “I wish.  So how’s the weekend?”

While she talks, I park my car by the curb and grab a few shopping bags from the back seat.  My eye catches an orange object nestled by my back tire.

It’s a bouncy ball.

I reach down to grab it and less than a second after I scoop it up, a stream of gutter water runs down the curb.  A moment later, and it would’ve been gone.

This is no accident.

***

Text from Oklahoma Comic BradChad Porter:

At Bison Witches with Lizardman and Amanda Webb.  We all agree you’re an idiot.  I love you.  I miss you right now.

***

“I found a bouncy ball today,” I say after I jump into the passenger’s seat of Fernando Sosa’s car.  We’re carpooling to an open mic in Pasadena.

He shrugs.  “Is that a thing?”

“Yeah, it’s a really big deal.  I never told you about the bouncy balls?”

“Well, I know you write your initials on them and leave them places.  Wait, did you find one with your initials on it?”

“No,” I say.  “But that would be so cool.”

He nods.  “That would be amazing.”

“Well, it was cool to find this one, too.  I find them all the time, but this is the first one I’ve found in L.A.  It means I’m supposed to be here.”

He gives me a skeptical look.

“What?” I ask.  “Okay, it’s weird, I know.  But it’s not an accident.  I was talking on the phone, and I grabbed it right before a bunch of water washed it away.”

“Who were you talking to on the phone when you found it?”

“My friends.  They’re all in Memphis, and they called to say they miss me.”

“Okay, you’re right.  That’s pretty cool,” Fernando says.  “Man, you have really good friends.”

“I know,” I say.  “I’m really lucky.”

***

Facebook comment from my best friend, Rockey, after I told him to stop “liking” all my status updates:

You don’t own me or my FB account! Also, stop writing things that I like. Btw, I like your shit b/c I feel bad for you. It’s usually pics of you doing stand up to an empty room. I sometimes think that you built a stage in your own garage, and you have your roommates take pics of you to make you seem like you’re cool.

***

It’s Thursday, two days after Valentine’s Day, and I’m driving nine hours to Winnemucca, Nevada to do 30 minutes in Winners Casino.  I get a speeding ticket near Hawthorne, putting my net profit from the gig at negative 50 bucks.  I got this booking because a friend of mine is headlining the show, so he hooked me up with a sort of “audition” for the booker.  It’s not a practical move, but I know this going in. 

To be honest, I’ll drive for three days if it means there are people ready to laugh on the other end.

The crowd’s relatively small, but they want to laugh, so they laugh easy.  I’m doing a solid job.  A little tough at first, but I don’t think that’s entirely my fault.  The host brings me up after giving announcements, which he does by asking the crowd, “You guys have anything you think I should announce?”  He apparently forgot the first and only rule of announcements: know what the announcements are.

Twenty minutes into my 30-minute set, I decide to play around with some new material.  I tell a joke I’ve been working on in L.A.  I can’t get it to hit in front of the crowds of L.A. comics, probably because it’s a simple set-up, a silly punchline, but here in Winnemucca, Nevada, my instincts kick in and say, “Tell it.”

And those instincts were right, because the joke kills.  It’s moments like these that I think of when someone tries to make me feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.

After my set, I head over to the casino café to cash in my free meal voucher.  While I sip on some tea and wait for my burger, Brian, the cashier, chats with me.

“I saw a little bit of the show,” Brian says.  “I was in the back.  I only got to see you for a minute, but from what I saw, you’re funny.”

“Hey, thanks, man,” I say.  “That really means a lot.”

“Yeah, I had to come back here to work, though.  You didn’t make fun of me after I left, did you?”

“What?  No.  Why would I make fun of you?”

He shrugs.  “That’s what the comedians normally do.  I mean, look at me.  I’m a walking joke.”

I look in his eyes.  “No, you’re not,” I say.  “Don’t say that about yourself.”

***

Facebook message from Colin Newman, my editor, after I sent in one of my posts:

Fucking awesome and heartbreaking…I’ve had one of those “hopelessly declaring your love to someone” kind of moments…well, I’ve probably had a couple, but I’ve only had one where I really really meant it. Her response: “You don’t mean that, you’re just a romantic. Ease up on the vodka.” I did mean it. I wasn’t drunk. Fuuuuuuccckkkk…still breaks my heart just thinking about it.

Thanks for that – and for the record, I have no doubt that in 10 years you’ll be driving around in your imported luxury conversion van with a vanity plate that says “DUES_PD”.

***

When I first started doing stand-up, all my friends came to watch me at an open mic, and they laughed at unfunny things because they just couldn’t let me die up there.  I’m hard enough on myself and smart enough to know that I didn’t earn their laughter.

The last time my friends all came to see me was over Christmas, when I went home to visit.  They sat front and center in the middle of a room full of people, and I made them laugh for real.  I’ve been doing this long enough to know the difference.

Stand-up isn’t an easy thing to learn.  There’s no road map of lesson plans, no syllabus, no one guiding you, save a few old headliners who give you snippets of advice if they like you.  The only way to get better at it is to do it, and you have to learn as you go.  And you have to learn to be your own teacher.

It’s a system of checks and balances, a delicate back and forth between one person and an audience, and the way you interpret that interaction dictates your next one.  It means that I fail sometimes, and I succeed sometimes, but either way, I am the only one responsible.  There’s no one else to blame.  There’s no one else to credit.

I’m not an old comic, by any means, and I’m still not quite a professional, but I’m not a rookie, either.   I’m learning my own hard-earned lessons, one at a time, and I’ve racked up more than five years of them.  Whether or not you think I’m funny, my experience means something.

And I’ve done the road enough to know that this is how comedy works: if you’ve been doing it for less time than I have, I demand exactly five years worth of your respect.

It’s rough starting stand-up in L.A.  I get that.  If I had moved to L.A. alone years ago with no experience, my entire self worth might have hinged on whether or not a bunch of other comics at any given open mic deemed my jokes funny enough to laugh at.

But I didn’t, so it doesn’t.

I’ve had an unbreakable support system behind me from the very beginning, but I no longer need other people to remind me that I’m funny when I have a bad set.  I gauge my own laughs.  I fix my own fuck-ups.  I trust my own instincts.

I validate myself.

***

Facebook message from Mindie Dieu:

Hey Leah-
Saw your post on passing up a job you needed bc it interferes with comedy.

Something will come up. It will. You can do this. I really admire you for pursuing this dream. And I’m proud of you for sticking to it.

Take care,
Mindie

***

As I wait for Café Gratitude to prepare whatever the fuck I just ordered, I realize I forgot to order my boss’s iced coffee.  I step back in line behind two men who are looking over the menu.  One of them turns to me.  “If you know what you want, go ahead,” he says.  “We’re still deciding.”

It’s Jason Schwartzman.  I’m pretty sure he knows the exact moment that I realize it’s him because it’s the moment I stop acting like a normal person and just stare into his eyes.

Now, I like Jason Schwartzman, and if I weren’t the type of person who goes completely retarded upon meeting famous people, I probably would’ve been able to tell him that.  But because I’m me, I just stare at him for way too long, walk past him, and then creepily whisper, “Thank you, Jason Schwartzman.”

It’s weird, though – during the moment we spent staring at each other, I swear it seemed like he was searching for something, waiting for some kind of recognition.

Huh, I think.  Maybe even Jason Schwartzman needs to feel validated every now and then.

It’s at that moment that Jason Schwartzman leans in behind me, places the menu back on the counter, and walks out without ordering a goddamn thing.

I smile.  Maybe not.

My old friend, Generic Vegan Hipster Cashier, stares at me from behind the cash register.

“Can I get an iced coffee with cream and sugar?” I ask.

She nods.  “Absolutely.  We have a goat’s milk or an almond milk – which would you like?”

“Uh, I guess almond?  Whatever.”

“Okay, and for sweetener, we have an agave guava, a honey infused—”

“You know what?  Just give me whatever most equals sugar,” I say.

She traipses off to make the coffee, and I look back over the menu while I wait.  I notice that, of all the self-affirming menu items, there isn’t a food item called, “I am funny.”  I guess even the people at Café Gratitude know that the only judge of funny is the laugh.

When my order is ready, I can’t get out of there fast enough.  For one thing, the internet’s not working on my phone, and I need to tweet about seeing Jason Schwartzman.  On top of that, though, this place just feels icky.  I don’t need a café menu to tell me why my life is interesting and magical, and I definitely don’t need a pretentious vegan café to remind me what I’m grateful for.

***

Thank you, Friends, for the good thoughts, prayers, chants, karma, sacrifices to Satan, meditations, Facebook messages, blog comments, random texts, and the stories.  Thank you for the money, Mom.  Thank you for checking me in, Amber.  Thank you for all the rides, Sosa.  Thank you for the bouncy ball, Universe.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for believing that I know what I’m doing.

Thank you for everything.

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m waiting to get on at the Hollywood Improv.  Angelo Bowers, a much-loved and respected L.A. comic, died this morning in a car accident caused by a drunk driver.  The host of the Improv mic, Peter Banachowski, started the show by telling stories about Angelo and then inviting all the rest of us to do the same.

I didn’t know Angelo.  I only met him once, for a second, but I can see and feel his impact on the room full of comics around me.  It’s kinda breaking my heart.  Not only did Angelo impress them with his act – anyone you ask will attest to how goddamn funny he was – but I’m finding out that he was also one of those people who said things that stick with you, the positive things you need to hear, the things that make an impact.

Tonight, Angelo is the voice playing in the back of their minds.

The entire room’s full of a tangible shocked sadness, a silence you know to respect, but there’s still a part of me that wants to go up and get laughs, even though I know it’s not gonna happen.

The comic onstage feels that, too, I guess.  He bumped us all down the list because he’s a “real comic,” not an open mic-er like the rest of us.  You can tell because of his air of confidence, his nonchalance at the mic, and because he keeps reminding us over and over again that he gets to perform on TV, so he’s obviously better than us.

“If Angelo was here,” he says, “he’d be making fun of you guys for wasting your time onstage by talking about him.  He’s dead.  Comics are supposed to tell jokes.  Why the fuck you guys up here telling stories about Angelo?”

“Peter told us to!” somebody in the crowd yells out.

“Peter, you told them to do this shit?”

Peter, standing in the back of the room, shrugs.  “Yeah.”

“That was fuckin’ stupid,” Mr. I’m-On-TV says.  “You should know better than that shit.”

After Mr. TV tells some jokes and relinquishes the mic, Peter steps back onstage to introduce the next comic.  “Just to be clear,” he says, “I still encourage all of you to tell stories about Angelo.”

The audience erupts in applause and cheers.

“Next week we can come here and tell jokes, but today, we can remember Angelo.  What better day than the day of his death?”

It’s the right thing to say, but I’m not surprised.  This isn’t the first time Peter has impressed me with his integrity.

I wait for the comics in front of me to take their turns, resigned to the fact that this isn’t gonna be a good set.  Right before I get onstage, though, the man that lives in the back of my mind speaks, saying the words that I always think when I’m worried about what’s coming up, words that comfort me.  A simple magic mantra:

“Just be funny,” he says.

***

I’m in eighth grade, walking around small town Blackwell, Oklahoma with two of my best friends.  We had spent the morning picking up trash, extra credit for some science class, and as part of the incentive, we got these awesome “Blackwell Trash Day” t-shirts to remember such a landmark event in our lives.

That’s not why I remember it.  This is why I remember it:

After the three of us receive our shirts, we put them on, and we walk around town wearing matching t-shirts.  Fair enough.  But on top of that, we decide to tie matching bandannas on our heads because that’s the type of thing really awesome people do, and we all know it.

On 6^th Street, a red car drives past, stops a block ahead of us, and then reverses back to where we’re standing.  The passenger window inches down, revealing the charming smile of Mr. Popular.  He’s an athlete.  He’s good-looking.  He’s gesturing for us to come closer.

Once we’re gathered around the window, I see that his older brother, Dr. Popular, is driving.  I’ve never talked to either of them, but I know who they are – the Popular last name gets a lot of attention in Blackwell.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Mr. Popular says, “you guys look like fucking idiots.”  He turns to his brother.  “What do you think?”

His brother nods.  “Yep, fucking idiots.”

They give each other a high five (well, maybe they don’t, but in my memory, they do), and then they crack up laughing and speed off down the road.

A few years later, I’m a high school junior.  When we come back from Christmas break, everyone’s talking about the terrible car accident the two brothers got into.  The younger brother made it out okay, but the older brother is in a wheelchair.  He won’t ever walk again, and he has some severe medical problems.  I see him at basketball games sometimes, completely broken.

He dies months later.  They announce it over the intercom at school, and I hear a shocked gasp ripple through the cafeteria.

I feel for the family, but I’m also disconnected from the grief.  The only time I had ever talked to the guy, he had gone out of his way to call me a fucking idiot.  This is all I know of him.  I can see everyone’s sadness, so I’m sure that he was a better guy than that, but I only knew him as a douchebag.

***

After the Improv mic, I’m feeling very much like an outsider to L.A. comedy.  I’m standing in front of the Bliss Café on Vine, talking to Lawrence Epstein.  He hosts an open mic there on Thursday nights, but he’s there now to hang out before he goes in for his night shift.  “Where else you going tonight?” he asks.

“Well, I just came from the Improv.”

“How was that?”

I shrug.  “Sad.  Everyone was telling stories about Angelo.”

“Yeah,” he says.  “It’s a rough night.”

“I know this is stupid,” I say, “but I had a bad set, and it’s bothering me.”

He laughs.  “What did you expect?  You went up and told jokes on the night a comic died.  That’s a hard situation for anyone.”

“I know,” I say, looking down at my hands.  “I’m insensitive for even thinking about that.  I mean, I’m alive.  A good guy died, and I’m alive.”

He shrugs.  “You’re a comic.”

I nod.  “Yeah.  I’m just stressed out.”

“Haven’t found a job?”

“No.”

“Well, you know, when I moved here, I had to go through a lot through bad situations.  I was homeless for a while.”

“Damn.  Sounds like you were much worse off than me.” I sigh.  “God, I’m being stupid.  Sorry I’m talking to you about all this shit.”

“No, it’s okay,” he says.  “You look like you need someone to talk to.”

I sigh.  “It’s just that…” I fight back tears like the big titty baby I am.  “It’s just that I can take all the other stuff, the jobs, the personal stuff.  But when comedy goes bad, everything else feels pointless.”

***

It’s early December, and I’m back home for the first time since moving to L.A. Well, close enough to home—I’m in Tulsa, actually, opening at the Loony Bin for the week.

Friday night, and I’m outside getting some air before the late show.  I walk in five minutes before start time, and the club’s manager rushes over to me.

“Thank God I found you!” she says, stopping me just inside the door.  She has a look of severe urgency on her face.  “Don’t tell your dead baby joke this set.”

I don’t know what to say.  I just stand there and blink.

“There’s a lady here tonight who lost her grandbaby.”

“Like today?  Her grandbaby died today?”

“Yeah.  The baby just died, and they don’t know why.  So absolutely no dead baby joke.”

I try to process this information.  “Oh my God, that’s terrible.”

“Yeah, so definitely no dead baby joke.”

“Okay, okay.  I get it.  I won’t tell the joke.  But for the record, it’s not a dead baby joke.  It’s not like the joke is, ‘Hahaha, a baby died.’”

“Well, I know,” she says.  “But still…”

“I mean, I don’t think it’s funny when babies die.”  I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve taken the censorship personally.  “Jesus,” I say.  “I’m a human being.”

“Leah, I get it,” she says.  “It’s more for your protection.  If you tell that joke, and she gets upset, then you and the other comics might have to deal with her for the rest of the show.”

“I’m not gonna tell the joke,” I say.  “I just feel like you think I’m a mean person based on what I say onstage, and that’s not fair.”  I walk away and march right into the showroom, where I brood for a minute about how I have to drop a solid bit from my set.  But then, seconds before I go on, the voice in the back of my mind pipes in.

“Just be funny,” he says.

And “whoosh,” the bitterness passes, and I’m clearheaded.  I step onstage, where I tell a dead-baby-less set to spare the feelings of the drunk lady in the front row.

I do a fine job, but all I can think when I get offstage is, These people don’t like the real me.

And then, If I don’t belong home, then where do I belong?

***

I’m in my real home, Oklahoma City, at the Loony Bin Christmas party.  I’m whiskey-drunk and mingling in the lobby, haunted with poster-sized headshots of all the headliners that come through the club. I know a lot of these guys.  They glare at me from their place on the wall, 20 years younger than they are now because mid-America comedy clubs are time capsules.

Nothing’s changed since I moved to L.A. Not that I expected anything to change.

My friend, comic James Draper, walks up to me, my tiny blue backpack on his shoulder.  “Look at me, I’m Leah,” he says in his dry, sarcastic tone.  “I carry around a bag full of bouncy balls.”

I laugh.  He’s right.  My bag is full of a few things I need and roughly 50 bouncy balls.

“Hey, you guys!” He turns to the other comics in the circle.  “Look at me and my tiny backpack!  I’m Leah, and I walk around everywhere with a heavy bag full of stuff I don’t need.”

“So what?” I say.  “They’re magic.”

James positions the bag on his hip.  “I don’t think you understand. You’re literally carrying around excess baggage.  This is like a metaphor for your life.”

“Huh,” I say.  “I never thought of it like that.”

***

Next Wednesday night, and I’m driving to yet another Loony Bin, this one in Wichita, Kansas.  I’m in a dark place.  It’s one of those days I spend thinking about all the people that I’ve hurt and all the people who’ve hurt me.  I can’t really explain what brought me to this head space—I only know that sometimes I get nostalgic for things that I can’t quite identify.

Back in September, this very same feeling had prompted me to write, “LK loves CP” on a bouncy ball and drop it out into the world, my bizarre way of saying goodbye to a dead-before-it-started one-sided romance.

Yeah, okay, that’s weird.  I’ll give you that.  But this is even weirder; that night, CP, who I hadn’t talked to in six months, texted me because he was in L.A.

Ever since then, I’ve operated under the assumption that I’m magic, and I can summon people by releasing bouncy balls into the world.  Today, it suddenly occurs to me, a 29-year-old fully functioning adult, that maybe there’s no such thing as magic, that what I’ve been calling “magic” really might just be a way to explain something that hurts me.

Only one way to test that theory.  Outside the Wichita Loony Bin, I write “LK loves CP” on another bouncy ball.  If I’m magic, then he’ll appear.  I toss the ball over my shoulder and make my way into the club.

***

Once inside, I head to the back of the room, where I plop down on a stool like I didn’t just do the weirdest thing ever.  Mark Payne, the club owner, is sitting on the stool next to me, his boots propped up on the chair in front of him.

“Hey, Mark,” I say.

“Where you been, girl?”

“Uh, I moved to L.A.  Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.  Well then what in God’s name you doing here?”

“Came home for Christmas, and I wanted to get a few weeks in.”

“How are things going out there for you?” Mark asks. “You getting any work?”

“Work? Ha!”  I shake my head.  “It’s just open mics and stuff like that.  But I haven’t blown anybody yet.”

“What did you just say?”

“The last time I was here, you told me not to blow anybody for stage time.”

“Oh, come on, I did not,” he says.  “I told you to watch out for producers who try to get you on the casting couch.”

“Uh, no, you didn’t.  You said, ‘Don’t go out there and blow people for stage time.’  Those were your exact words.  Remember?”

He grins.

***

Thursday night after I do a good, solid set, and Mark’s perched on his usual stool in the back of the room.  “I got some notes for you.”  He hands me a piece of paper, his handwriting scrawled in unreadable pencil marks.

“Never follow…uh…Poke?  Jome star at…punchline…orgy…twitch? What the fuck does this say, Mark?”

He snatches the paper out of my hand, exasperated.  He points at the words as he reads.  “Never follow a question with a long story.”

“Okay, yeah.”

“You brought up an orgy at the end, but then you didn’t tie it into your earlier orgy joke.”

“What are you talking about?  I called back to it.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Uh, yeah, I did.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

“Well, I ended on it.”

“Well, it doesn’t work.  Stop doing it.”

“Fine.”

He sighs.  “Your problem is, you’re almost too educated for this room.”

“What does that even mean?  Look, man, I can’t change who I am.”

“No, I didn’t say that.  These people are just different than you.”

I roll my eyes. “Goddamnit, Mark.  I grew up an hour away from here.  I’m fucking from here.”

***

I haven’t heard from CP after trying to summon him with the bouncy ball, go figure.  This is a good thing.  If I had heard from him, then maybe I’d be lost forever to a world of unreality.  Or worse, I’d be once again stuck wondering when I’d hear from him next.  Trying to get him to pay attention to me is no easy task – I know this because I’ve spent way too much of the last year doing it.

I decide it’s time to let him go, along with a few other people and things from back home.  I figure if I’m gonna start a new year of working my way out of Oklahoma comedy and into the L.A. scene, where most people don’t mind so much if I tell a joke that’s indirectly about dead babies, I need to get rid of some of the excess baggage I carry around.  (*Note: I still intend to carry around my bag of magic bouncy balls, so my literal excess baggage remains intact.)

You may be wondering why I’ve wasted so much of my time on someone that doesn’t know I exist.  Believe me, I’ve often wondered that myself.  Because maybe my best friend is right – maybe CP is just a mean jerk.  Maybe he’s a bad guy.  But during the short time I’ve known him, so many of the things he’s said have stuck with me for one reason or another, and they help me adjust to lots of different situations here in L.A., or anywhere.  For that, I can’t not love him.

Even after he’s gone from my life, I still hear him.  The insightful things he said stay with me, just like the funny and kind things that Angelo said stick with all the L.A. comics around him.  It makes me think that comedians should treat life like we treat our few minutes onstage: we know we have a limited time to make an impression on people, so we go on as though that impression is the only thing they’ll remember about us.  And it just might be.

Because the things we say, they outlive us.

***

It’s September 2010, I’m four years into standup, and I’m in the back of an unfamiliar comedy club in a new city, cracking my knuckles and swaying back and forth, trying to get a hold of my nervous energy.  I’m about to do a guest spot in front of a packed room, and if I do well, I can book a week in the club.  As the host starts my intro, a sweeping panic runs through me.

I turn to CP.  “Oh my God,” I say.  “Is it okay if I’m a little dirty?  Shit, am I supposed to be clean?”

He laughs, shaking his head at my amateurish behavior, and in that casual way he has, that way that I love, he brushes away my worries with a shrug.

“Just be funny,” he says.

As I turn the corner to my apartment building, I hear a very tortured, drunk screeching.  I see the source, a woman down the street wearing a tiny dress and heels.  She’s sprawled out on the hood of a random car, screaming obscenities into her cell phone.

It sounds like this: “Fucking motherfuckin’ cock motherfuckin’ you motherfuckin’ fucker asscock fucker.”

As she ambles closer to my apartment, I go inside the front door and watch her from the window because it’s funny, but also because I want to make sure she makes it home okay.  Once I’m inside, she starts sprinting toward my building door, and I just stand there, frozen in terror, convinced that she’s one of those fast zombies like on 28 days later. Before I can react, she bounds up the front steps and slams her face right up against the window inches in front of me.  We lock eyes, the pane of glass between us.

I see gigantic tears black tears falling from her heavily made-up lashes.  She screams, “Are you gonna let me in, Bitch?”

I suddenly realize that it’s my neighbor, the girl with the Chihuahua who lives right across the hall.  No, we don’t have the type of relationship where we can call each other “bitch,” but I perceive that she’s in the midst of a blackout and let it slide.

I open the door, and she brushes past me, stumbling up the stairwell.  As Davey Dog and I follow her upstairs, I notice that she has her dress pulled up to her waist, no underwear on, and her glorious Brazilian-waxed pussy out in the open, enjoying the cool night breeze.

“Uh…” I say, but I’m not really sure where to go beyond that.  If she were a guy, I could just say, “Your pussy’s showing,” but you can’t talk to women like that.

I stand outside my apartment while I watch her fumble with her key.  “Do you need help?”

She shakes her head, repeatedly missing the doorknob.

“So, uh, listen, uh, you might want to pull your dress down.”

She pounds on the door for a few seconds, then slides down the front of it until she’s ass-up on the carpet.  I’m about to try a different approach, but I hear footsteps coming to her door.

I step inside my apartment and listen.  I hear her boyfriend’s voice mumbling, her screeching, and a door slam.

Jesus, I think.  I don’t get women.

***

I’m driving from an open mic back to The Comedy Store with Amy Cheapho and feeling very self-conscious about the trash on my passenger’s side floor.  There are about 12 water bottles there, and every time someone rides with me, I have to hear the crunch of plastic under their feet.

“Sorry about the mess,” I say.

“I don’t care,” Amy says.

“That guy in there really annoyed me,” I say.  “Why can’t I tell a joke about a blowjob without getting that kind of reaction?  Guys say that shit all the time.  It just drives me crazy.”

“No, I get it,” she says.  “You know what else drives me crazy?  The way the men are all over women comics.  I never thought I was really hot, but now that I do stand-up, I feel like men hit on me all the time.”

“Me too!” I say.  “It’s so weird!”

Amy’s a comic from Orange County, and I see her almost every night on the open mic circuit.  It’s taken us the better part of three months to actually start talking to each other.  It’s not because we don’t like each other.  We just have very little in common.  I mean, I just listened to her have a conversation with another comic about Kim Kardashian’s divorce and France in the fall, which makes me think she’d get along famously with my gay best friend, but I kind of feel like a common street rat when I’m around her.  She’s always so well put-together, and she gives off an aura of money.

And truly, I’m the one being super weird about everything because talking to women scares the shit out of me.

I know that makes no sense, but here’s my working theory about why I feel anxious around the fairer gender: I’m around men all the time.  And not regular men, either, male comedians, who are hands-down the most awkward, neurotic, socially retarded group of people on the planet.  Because I’m around them, I’ve adopted their neuroses, their self-consciousness, and right along with that, their inability to talk to women.

I’ve never had trouble getting along with women, but I do rarely know what to say to them, and I constantly feel bad about it.  I hate that I feel disconnected from the people I should identify with.  It’s alienating to walk into a room full of people and naturally gravitate toward the people with penises because you just don’t know what to say to the people with the pussies.

***

“All right, are you guys ready for your next comedian?” the host asks.  He looks down at the list in his hand.  “Well, your next comedian is our first female comedian of the night – Leah Kayajanian!”

I step onstage at the Comedy Store, shake the host’s hand, and grab the mic.  Like every other time I get on at the Store open mic, I feel a tiny bit off.  Maybe that means I should tell my best jokes and stick to the script I planned, but like an asshole, I ignore that impulse and dive into something awkward instead.

“I love being introduced here,” I say.  “Give it up for your next female comedian, everybody!  It’s a female!  Did I mention it’s a woman?  If you listen close, you can hear the whistling of her vagina as she walks up to the stage.  You can hear her labia slapping against her thigh!”

***

When I was in middle school, living in small town Blackwell, Oklahoma, I played in the boy’s baseball league.  I was the only girl.  I wanted to play in the major leagues when I grew up, so it made sense to me to start playing as soon as possible.  It was a simple split-second decision that I said out loud to my mom, and before I knew it, she signed me up for the league and sent me heading right down a path of unintentional feminism.

I didn’t do it to make a statement of any kind about gender equality. I didn’t think about the debates that went on in the pre-league meetings, I didn’t think about getting picked last to be on Kay Electric (the team that would most definitely be the underdog team in the kid’s movie about working together), and I didn’t think about the boys calling me a dyke before I even knew what the word meant.  I just want to play baseball.

One of Kay Electric’s very first games was against a team from the closest town.  My first at-bat, I stared down a couple of balls from pitcher Josh Day, and then took a swing at a fastball at least three seconds after it hit the catcher’s mitt.  The next pitch came right at me, and without thinking, I casually let go of the bat, reached up, and knocked the ball down with my bare hand.  During my trot to first base, I noticed that the other team was cracking up laughing.

Even my first-base coach laughed.  “Good job,” he said through chuckles.

I realized then that everyone was laughing at Josh because I knocked down the ball he threw at me.  Not only did it loosen up the tension that I accidentally created by being a girl, but it earned me a lot of respect that I never felt like I deserved.  I mean, sure, I knocked down a ball with my bare hand.  But that was just a natural reaction, a human instinct to survive.  What was I supposed to do?  Let the ball whack me in the titty?

It’s a strange feeling when people look at you like you’re an anomaly when you’re just doing something that comes naturally to you.

***

I’m at a Jack in the Box with a comic friend of mine, and he’s talking to me about his long-distance relationship because it’s on his mind a lot.  “I just don’t see what men get out of marriage,” he says.  “You know?  What would I get out of it?”

I sigh.  “I don’t know.  Someone to hang out with when you’re old.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it,” he says.  “But it just seems so unnatural.”  While we eat our food, he continues.  “I’m just not in a place where I want to have any children, you know?  I’m focused on what I want to do with my life.  All of my friends are having kids.”

I dip a curly fry in ketchup.  “I might want to have kids some day,” I say.

“Really?” he asks.  “You?”

“Well, yeah.  I mean, not now.  Not anytime in the near future, obviously.  But I don’t want to rule it out completely.”

He shrugs.

On one hand, I feel for him.  He’s really struggling to keep his relationship together because he loves his girlfriend, so everyday is painful for him.  I’ve been there, right on the fence deciding between getting married and moving on to a completely different life.

On the other hand, I’m kind of annoyed at his assumption that because I’m here, I must’ve already decided against having a family forever instead of just right now.

***

I walk into the Hollywood Hotel bar on a Friday night, and there’s a woman comic onstage.  This is not noteworthy.  What is noteworthy, however, is that she’s holding a two-year-old toddler on her hip while delivering a few jokes to the sparse crowd.

Something inside of me feels weird about this.

Okay, I think.  I’m not gonna judge.  Sure, she has a two-year-old in a bar past 10 p.m.  Sure, she’s telling jokes about how she wishes she never had kids while holding her child in her arms.  But I don’t know her life.

She gets offstage and spends the next hour in the hallway outside the bar, following her toddler as he runs back and forth from one end of the hall to another.  I’m standing by the wall, watching the little boy run, and I look up at his mother’s face: tired, annoyed, hopeless.

“Hey,” I say.  “You were funny.”

“Really?”  She walks right up to me and gives me a huge hug.  “Thank you so much.”

She picks her son up and holds him on her hip while she talks to me about how he had too much sugar earlier in the day, so now she’s just hoping he’ll work off that excess energy.  While she speaks, her son punches her in the head and pulls her hair.  Before she leaves for good, she shakes my hand, looks right into my eyes, and says, “Don’t have kids.”

***

I was engaged back in 2010.  For about two good weeks.  After that amount of time, I began to panic, I mulled over it for a month, and then I broke it off like an adult.

During the short engagement, I worked a week at a comedy club out of town with a headliner who honed right in on my ring.  “Are you getting married?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah,” I said.  “You ever been married?”

He shook his head.  “I would never marry someone unless I wanted to be with her all the time.  I’m talking like if I was going somewhere, I’d beg her to go with me, like ‘Please come with me.  Come with me.’”

Like most road comics, he was talking out of his ass.  But it stuck.  For the next few weeks, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it played over and over in the back of my mind.

Before that, I had thought of my marriage as a good practical decision.  The man I was marrying would help support me while I tried to work on the road.  He’d watch my dog when I left for weeks at a time.  He’d take care of the house while I went off to new cities, having adventures without him.

I was going to marry him because I knew I’d be just fine leaving him behind.

***

My mom and dad got divorced when I was four.  I don’t know the exact details about the demise of my parents’ relationship, but I do know that my mom fell in love with another man, my stepdad, who she married for twenty years and also recently divorced.  They live together now, divorced, retired, and happy.

For the few weeks when I was engaged, I thought about my mom a lot.  I thought about how healthy she is in comparison to my dad, who has pretty severe Parkinson’s disease, about how she always asks me about him because I know that even after all this time, she feels guilty about leaving him.  But looking at the two of them now, I can’t imagine them together.

My mom likes to move around and watch sports and play games and talk (Oh God, does she talk).  My dad likes to watch TV in his underwear.  He always had a steady job, he always supported his family, but when he came home, he’d take off his pants and plop down on the couch.  So who can blame my mom for falling in love with an alcoholic with big dreams and a charismatic sense of adventure?

I broke off my engagement because I didn’t want to marry a man who was safe, who would always come home from work, help me make dinner, and then sit on the couch and watch TV.  I want to marry a man that I don’t know actually exists, one who might have issues and crazy ideas and a collection of terrible vices, one who might get on my nerves so much that I divorce him, but one that I still always want around me, all the time, forever.

There’s a point to all of this.

When I broke off my engagement and moved to L.A., people assumed that I did it because I had to choose between my comedy career and a family.  I let them believe it because it was easier, I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and it made me seem way more awesome than I actually am.  In reality, I chose not to get married because I knew it wasn’t right.  If it had been right, I would’ve made it work.  I would’ve stayed in Oklahoma and gone on the road and figured out how to be a comedian and somebody’s wife at the same time.

I’m not a martyr for single women.  I get very lonely very easily.  I like being around people, and I do want to get married some day. Some women comics don’t ever want that life.  Some do.  Just like the men, it depends on the person, and I don’t speak for the women comedy community.

I spend a lot of time wishing I knew how to converse better with women comics, but even though I don’t know what to say, I feel just as close to them as I do to the men I hang out with.  Because like all of them, I am a comic, and nothing will ever change that.  It’s an inextricable part of me.  It’s what I do best.  But it has absolutely zero to do with being a woman.

I don’t know right now whether or not I would choose my career over being married to the right man, but I do know that I should never have to.  None of us should ever have to.  The issue is not whether I chose being a comic over being a wife and mother – the issue is the misconception that I had to choose.

It’s the difference between right now and forever.

***

It’s late Friday, and I’m at the midnight open mic at the Hollywood Hotel.  There are a few people there, littered around the room, looking through notes, paying very little attention to the stage and the people on it.

The host is drunk, as usual.  He brings a comic offstage and nods at me.  I’m next.

“Our next comic coming to the stage,” he says, “is a female comedian, and she’s definitely very cute and very sexy.  Please give it up for Leah!”

I walk onstage and grab the mic.  “Wow, sexy.  Thanks.”  I shake my head and look out at the crowd, the host.  “That’s nice, I guess.  But you should know, I’d rather be funny up here.”

I turn around.  “Dude, you came back!”

It’s Fernando Sosa, a comic from Chicago who moved here around the same time I did.  He had gone home for a couple weeks to see his girl and run in the Chicago marathon, but just before he left, he said something that made me feel like he might not come back.   I think it was, “I might not come back.”

“How was Chicago?”

He smiles and shakes his head.  “Amazing.”  He pulls his phone out and shows me a picture of a street scene, decorated like a postcard with a dusting of autumn-colored leaves.  It makes me miss the fall.

One of the door guys brings out the signup list for the mic.  Everyone mobs around it, elbows and light shoves, but Fernando and I just watch because we know it’s the most pointless mob ever.  There are only 40 lines on the sign-up sheet, and there are over 60 people there, but you don’t have to actually put your name on a line to get one of the coveted 15 spots – as long as you write it on the piece of paper, it counts.  The people fighting to get a good spot are just doing it because they don’t know any better, or because they like to smell 40 different kinds of body odor all at once.

“You missed last week,” I say.  “I got on the list, and I ate the biggest dick, and then the host shamed me.”

“Oh, that sucks!”

“I wish you were there.  I mean, not like it would’ve helped at all, but at least I would’ve known someone.”

“I hate that they gotta be so negative.”  He sighs.  “So what else happened while I was gone?  Tell me something good that happened to you.”

“Uhhhhhh…well…”  I search my mind, reflecting on the events of the past few weeks.

“Oh God,” he says.  “That bad?”

***

Wednesday morning, and I’m driving to the temp job.  I’m thinking about him.  Again.

I park my car and watch the last few minutes before 7:30 tick by.  I have no idea why I bother getting here on time.  I answer to no one all day long.

I take a bouncy ball out of my backpack, and I write “LK loves CP” on it with a Sharpie.  I do this because I’m crazy, but also because I haven’t talked to CP in six months, I desperately want to stop thinking about him, and this is the best idea I’ve come up with.

Six fucking months.

I step out of my car and toss the ball over my shoulder, so subtle and casual.  You wouldn’t have caught it if you watched me do it.  There.  Gone.  He’s now bouncing off into the world and hopefully out of my mind.

He texts me at 8 o’clock that night, just after I get offstage at the Hollywood Hotel.  He’s here.  In L.A.  Six months of not talking, and he’s in my town the day I decide to write his stupid initials on a bouncy ball.

So I guess this means I’m magic, and I can summon people with bouncy balls. Yeah, there’s that.

***

I meet up with CP, and we have fun hanging out.  We always have fun hanging out.  It’s when we say goodbye that things go bad, mostly because I always hate it when he leaves, and he always seems completely fine with it.  It ends the same way every time, he and I sitting in a parked car, me grasping at straws to get him to stay for just a few more minutes.

“It’s just…I just…I don’t know.” I sigh.

“What?”

“Nothing.  Never mind.”

“Why do you always do that?” he asks.

“Because I’m not good at talking,” I say.  “I’m good at writing, but not talking.”

“Well, don’t write a blog about this.”

“I won’t.”

I can feel him staring at the side of my face.  “You still like me?”

“Yes.”  I don’t even hesitate.  “Of course I do.”

He shakes his head.  “That surprises me.”

“Really?  I thought it was obvious.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Wow.  I must be a pretty good actor.”

A few seconds of silence pass.  “Well, okay.”  He puts his hand on the door handle.  “I’d better get going before I try and get you to have sex with me in my hotel room.”

I see my opportunity.  “Actually, I’d be down for that.  We should do that.”

He draws in a breath and shakes his head.  “Naw, I don’t think it’s a good idea.  It’s definitely tempting, but I think I’m gonna try and do the right thing tonight.”

“Huh.  You’re turning me down.”  I stare out my window onto Sunset Boulevard, which is pretty dead for this time of night.  “Of course you are.”

“Hey,” he says.  “Look at me.”

I glance in his direction for a second before turning back to stare out the window.

“You homo.”  Call it a character flaw, but he likes to say I’m gay whenever I show that I have feelings like a human being.  That’s kind of his thing, the way he sidesteps dealing with my erratic emotions.  “Stop being such a homo.”

I scoff.  “I’m not the one turning down pussy.”

***

Next morning, and I’m in the parking lot outside my temp job again.  I’m 20 minutes early.  On an impulse, I call him.

“Listen,” I say when he answers.  “I want to tell you something.”

“All right.”

“It’s just…I just…I don’t know…”

“Here we go again.”

“No, wait a minute,” I say.  “You turned me down for sex, and I think that would hurt anyone’s feelings.”

“I wanted to have sex with you.  I just know that it’s gonna cause problems in our friendship.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s fair that you act like I don’t want to be your friend.”

“Hey!  You stopped talking to me.”

“Yeah, but I did that for a reason.  It’s hard for me to be your friend.”

“So what?  You’re saying that your feelings get in the way?”

“I’m in love with you,” I blurt out.  “I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

Wow.  I’ve never said that out loud to someone who I didn’t know for sure would say it back.  I mean, I’ve written it.  I’ve strongly implied it.  I’ve even declared it on bouncy balls, but I’ve never just said it to anyone.

“Are you happy now?” I ask.  “You made me say that.”

“Oh, I forced you to say that.  I put a gun to your head.”  He laughs.  “Listen, I don’t want to say that you’re not in love with me, but I think you don’t know a lot about me.  I’m not as cool as you think I am.  I, uh, voraciously pass gas—”

“Look, you can say whatever you want about it, but it’s not gonna make it any less true.”

“Well maybe it’s just one of those things where you want what you can’t have.”

“I’m sure you have a lot of theories—”

“Ha, yeah, I have some theories.”

“And that’s fine with me. I just want you to know that I hate it when we don’t talk.  I didn’t ever want to stop talking to you.  But you just pop in and out of my life, and I never know when I’m gonna get to see you again.  I really like hanging out with you.”

“Me too,” he says.  “I had fun last night.”

“Yeah,” I say.  “So did I.  But then you leave, and I get really sad.”

***

I almost don’t make it to the Comedy Store on Sunday.  I’m fresh off a plane ride from Dallas and a weekend spent drinking too much with my college friends.  My alarm goes off at 5 p.m., and I consider skipping the mic.  It’s not like it matters, anyway.  I probably won’t even get on.

But then the voice inside me that’s afraid of missing one night forces me into action, and I drag my tired ass to the club, perch myself on the wall, and play with my phone while I wait for them to post the list of the chosen ones.

At 6:45, they post it.  My name is there.  Number 10.

The crowd’s strange that night.  For one thing, there is a crowd.  Normally, the open mic audience at the Store consists of 40 comics spread out around the back wall of the club and two or three people at the tables front and center, who find their way inside like stray cats and seem unaffected by the fact that they’re the only real audience members there.

Tonight, the place is booming.  There’s a gay birthday party celebration going on, a bunch of loud flamey men in the front row with their required number of thick girls, dressed-up fag hags.

The guy before me kills.  He has an electric guitar and inspires the crowd to sing along to his song, “Don’t get old.”

It’s my turn.  Tony, one of many skinny and smarmy guys that host the open mic, introduces me.

When I grab the mic and look out at the audience, I see a strange hostility.  This doesn’t happen to me a lot, but every now and then, I look out into the crowd, and I sense their genuine dislike.  Larry David, one of my favorite people on the planet, used to look out at crowds like this, say, “No,” and then turn around and walk right off the stage.

It’s not the crowd’s fault they don’t like me.  Maybe they hate me because I look sarcastic.  Maybe they hate me because I’m dressed like an eight-year-old whose mother didn’t check her before she went off to school.  Whatever reason they have for not liking me before I speak, I amplify immediately by telling a joke about my gay best friend that I should’ve known just wasn’t gonna fly.  I start right in the middle of a story, and I try to wedge it into a 3-minute spot with no context around it.  The joke gets a few polite chuckles.  I suck them up, plow on through, and bomb with as much dignity as I can muster.

When Tony jumps back onstage and takes the mic, he says my name like I just drank my own urine in front of him.  “Leah,” he spits out.

As I’m walking to the back of the room, yelling at myself in my mind and self-editing my bit to make it more accessible, Tony says.  “She’s doing the type of stand-up I like to call, ‘You-had-to-be-there comedy.’”

And the crowd roars.  One of the biggest laughs of the night.  At my expense.  Fuck all.

I hang in the back for as long as I can stomach it, but I only last a few minutes before I have to leave, shamed, unfunny, and alone.

I imagine myself a stranger walking down a dirt road in a country town, people watching me from their front porch rocking chairs, commenting to each other, “Now that poor girl looks like she don’t have a friend in the world.”

***

“You have to stay here,” Jonathan says.  He’s sitting across from me at the table in a Fatburger.  We’re between mics at the Hollywood Hotel.

Jonathan Rowell is one of my new favorite people.  Even though he grew up in L.A., he’s always right on the verge of homelessness, which never stops being funny to me.  I met him a couple months ago when I was drunk and high, and I declared that he was going to be my best friend.

I suppose in any other world, we’d be unlikely friends, mostly because he’s ten years younger than me.  But he’s also the guy that I sit with in coffee shops or burger joints for hours, just talking about standup.  I had that in Oklahoma, people always willing to talk comedy with me, but here, it’s often marred by some unwelcome sexual tension or negativity or bitterness or selfishness.  Perhaps because Jonathan’s young, he doesn’t have any of those problems.  He’s just a weirdo.

“I want to stay,” I say.  “Believe me.  I just need a job.  And a place to live.  And some money.”

“Oh my God!”  He looks up at me, his eyes huge.

“Shit, are you okay?  What is it?”

“I just dripped grease on my lap, and it looks like I came in my pants.  Now I’m gonna walk around and people are gonna think I came in my pants.”  He has a very severe look on his face, much more dismal than when we were discussing my problems.  “Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed.”

I look underneath the table, and sure enough, it looks exactly like a cum spot.

“Ew,” I say.  “Yep, you’re right.”

“Oh God, and I have to go onstage.”

I laugh.  “Dude, it’ll be cool.  Just own it.  Be like, ‘Fuck yeah, I jizzed in my pants, you got a problem with it?’”

“Oh my God!  Now I’m thinking people are gonna look at it and think it’s pee like I peed a little and then stopped, and that’s even worse.  Do you know what I mean?” he says.  “Like if I peed just a little bit it’d be way creepier because men aren’t supposed to be able to stop peeing.”  He cocks his head to the side.  “Can you do that?  Can you stop while you’re peeing?”

I stare at him for a few seconds, take in his young face, which looks like he’s on the verge of panic, and I crack up laughing.  I laugh harder than I have since I’ve moved here.

***

I’m sitting outside the Bliss Café on a Thursday night being all stoned and talking to Lawrence Epstein, the host of The Jester Room.  I pull a large bouncy ball and a pen out of my bag, and while I listen to Lawrence tell me about his day, I write part of my favorite quote around the side of the ball, the final line of Italo Calvino’s book, Invisible Cities:

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live everyday, that we form by being together.  There are two ways to escape suffering it.  The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it.  The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

I’ve loved this quote for years, but I just now understand what it really means.

I do a quick set at the Bliss, but I’ve got two more mics to hit up, so I shake Lawrence’s hand, then I amble off into the night, bouncing my ball while I walk, looking for the right place to send it out in the world.

***

I give up on trying to come up with a positive thing to tell Fernando.  “I don’t know, man.  I’m pretty sure something good happened, I just can’t think of anything right now.  But, you know, I’m fine.”

It’s true.  I am fine, but nothing’s changed.  I still don’t have a permanent job.  I don’t have any money.  I don’t have a permanent address.  I don’t have anyone who isn’t crazy or creepy or annoying that will put his penis in me on a regular basis.  Nothing’s changed.  I just feel better about the state of my life.  Somewhere in the last few weeks, I realized that at the end of the day, despite the shittiness, even when I wanted to stay in bed and stare at the wall and wonder why my life has gone bad, I got up and did open mics and worked on my act.  No matter what.

If I know anything about comedy from watching five years of mics, I know this: anybody can make people laugh.  It’s how you react when you’re not funny that matters. 

“Man,” Fernando says.  “I want to hear something positive.  I feel like I’m surrounded by negative things.”

“Ooh, I know what we can do,” I say.  I unzip my backpack and pull out two bouncy balls.  I toss one over my shoulder and into traffic on Sunset Boulevard.  “There.  That’ll put good karma out there.”

He stares at me.  “Why?”

“Just humor me.”  I write his initials, FS, on the side of the second bouncy ball, and I hand it to him.

“Uh, so what do I do with this?”

“Whatever you want.  You can keep it, or you can drop it somewhere out in the world.”

He smiles.  He looks like Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez from the movie The Sandlot.  “Well, I’ll take whatever I can get right now.”

When the mob clears, I sign up on the mic list and then talk comedy with Fernando to pass the time while we wait.  They post the lineup at 6:45.

I’m number 14.

I walk out of some terrible hip Hollywood bar and immediately make eye contact with a young guy wearing a Red Cross shirt and holding a clipboard.  “How are you today?” he asks.

“Oh, you know.  All right.”

“Well, let me ask you this.  Do you know how many disasters happen everyday?”

“Disasters?  Like natural disasters?”

“Anything.  Any disaster.  You can count large-scale natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or smaller disasters.

“Smaller disasters?” I ask.

“Like car accidents, house fires.  Did you know that more than 200 disasters happen every day?”

“So wait, any car accident constitutes a disaster?  Like fender benders?”

“Yep.”

“Huh.  So what if I cut my foot on a piece of glass?  Is that a disaster?”

“No, not a disaster.  Unless it happens in a house fire.”

“Oh, so if I cut my foot while watching my house burn, then it’s a disaster.”

“Well, sure.  The fire is.”

“But how do you know what constitutes a disaster?”

“Well, uh, there are official reports made by…uh…officials that actually name whether or not something is a disaster.”

“Hmm.  So what is it that you’re asking for?”

He perks up.  “Well, we’re asking for a small donation to the Red Cross.”

I laugh.  “Money?  Nope.  I’m poor.  I’m walking around looking for jobs right now, actually.”

“Well, if you need a job, we’re always looking for people.”

“To do what you do?   I couldn’t.”

“It’s really not that bad,” he says.  “You get to talk to people.”

“Honestly, I’m way too much of a pussy to just approach people on the street and ask them for money.”

We stare at each other.

“I’m sorry I said pussy to you,” I say.

He sighs.  Seriously.  He visibly sighs.  “Okay,” he says.  “Well, bye.”

And I leave, a little reluctantly, off to face more depressing restaurant managers.

***

I’m at a group interview for a California Pizza Kitchen.  There are nine other interviewees, and all but two are younger than me.

“Okay,” says Marcy, the over-enthusiastic regional manager.   She’s worked at CPK for ten years.  “First of all I want you all to introduce yourselves and tell me what your favorite restaurant is and why.”  She points to a girl at the opposite end of the table.  “Start us out.”

“Hi, I’m Josephine, and my favorite restaurant is California Pizza Kitchen because I’m a carb person, and I really love the bread and pastas on the menu.  I’m always suggesting it to my friends.”

Marcy nods.  “Great.  What about you?”

“My name is Angela, and my favorite restaurant is California Pizza Kitchen because I love pizza, and you just guys just do it better than everyone else.”

Before it comes to me, four other people introduce themselves and reveal that their favorite restaurant is, shock-face, California Pizza Kitchen.  What are the odds?

“All right,” Marcy says to me.  “It’s your turn, but you can’t say California Pizza Kitchen.”

“Oh, I won’t,” I say.

Marcy looks taken aback.

“Because I just moved here from Oklahoma, and there are no California Pizza Kitchens there.”  I’m not sure that’s true.  “My name is Leah, and my favorite restaurant is a thai food restaurant a block from my house in Oklahoma.”

I don’t know why, but I’m lying.  I could say a million other things, things that are truer, but I choose this moment to work on my improv skills for some reason.

Marcy nods.  “And why is that your favorite restaurant?”

“A combination of things, really,” I say.  “They had great service” (lie), “and their food was so fresh” (lie), “but it made me sick every time I ate it.  I just liked it so much, I’d eat there anyway” (100% true).

The group laughs.

I answer every other question first.  Here are a few of the bullshit gems I throw at Marcy: “I love waiting tables because I really enjoy interacting with people.  I think they’re infinitely interesting.”  Or, “I love the concept of CPK because it gives the employees so many opportunities.”  Or, “My main goal is to stay with this company and create a career out of working for your restaurant.”

Marcy loves me.  The other interviewees love me, too, because I’m warm and personable.  They don’t know I’m swindling them, charming them by inserting humor to mask the insincerity of horrendous situations like this, a group interview.  I put everyone at ease a little bit.  I’m good at that.  I’ve always been good at that.

Nailed it, I think as I drive home.  So what if I have to play some games and act like a chain restaurant is the end-all of my career goals?  I try to ignore the tattoo on the inside of my left arm, the Latin word “veritas” glaring at me.  It means “truth.”

I get a call the next day.  CPK wants me to come in for a second interview.

***

It’s Monday night.  I’m at The Comedy Store waiting to go on the open mic.  I’ve got an amazing luck streak going.  This is the third week in a row I’ve made it on the list.

Tonight’s host is both enthusiastic and cynical, an unnatural combination of things.  “All right,” he says.  “This next guy coming to the stage was supposed to go first, but he couldn’t come up here because he had rolled his little cart-thing through some dog shit.  Believe me, I’m not making this up.”  He rolls his eyes.  “Now, I want you all to do me a favor.  Can you do that?”

He’s talking to the four people in the front row.  They’re currently the only people in the room who aren’t comics waiting to go on.

“I want you to decide whether this guy is a comedian, or a crazy homeless person.  So keep that in mind.  Crazy homeless guy, or funny?  I’m gonna ask you after.”

A man who does indeed look crazy, rolls his cart, a homemade podium made to look like the outside of a TV, up on the stage.

Mr. TV has half a mustache.  One side of his head has a full blonde head of hair, and the other side is completely bald.  He’s wearing half a bowtie and one suspender.  His act is a series of puns and one-liners based on some props he brings with him.  They’re not terribly clever or original, but he gets a few stray chuckles, the people in the front row giggling in that pity laugh type of way.

At the end of his set, Mr. TV takes a long time trying to get his cart off stage.  The club bouncer and the host have to help him move it.  It’s quite a production.  To make up for the awkwardness, the host grabs the mic.  “Okay,” he says.  “Applaud if you think Mr. TV should never, ever do standup again.”

The comics clap, but the audience members don’t move.

“Oh come on!” the host says.  “That was terrible.  Can’t we all agree that was terrible and he should quit?”

Mr. TV is finally offstage, now trying to navigate his portable podium through the tables and chairs scattered throughout the show room.

“No,” the man in front says.  “He doesn’t have to quit.”

“Oh, are you gonna go support him, sir?” the host asks.  “Are you gonna buy tickets to see that man perform anywhere?  Are you gonna tell your friends that he’s really funny, and they should waste their time and money watching him onstage?”

“Well, no,” the man says.  “I guess not.”

“Jesus,” I say.  I feel bad for Mr. TV.  Besides the non-comic audience members, I seem to be the only person who does.  The rest of the comics laugh loudly at his misfortune.

“Look,” the host goes on.  “We gave him a chance.  We let him have his three minutes, and he came up here and wasted everybody’s time.  You know how many serious comics wanted to go up tonight?”

The man shrugs, helpless.  “I was trying to be supportive.”

“You know what?” the host asks.  “You’re not helping anything by being supportive.  What do we say here at The Comedy Store?”

From the back of the room, the Store manager steps out of the box office and yells, “It’s a sin to encourage mediocre talent.”  He crosses his arms over his chest.  “That’s what Mitzi always says, and that’s what we stand by here at the Store.”

Mitzi Shore is the oft-mentioned, much-loved owner of the famous club.  I take a moment to picture her standing in the manager’s place, saying that very same thing to poor Mr. TV as he pushes his sad little cart out the front door and down Sunset Boulevard.

My heart literally aches for Mr. TV.  Who are we to shit on what just may be the one thing he has to look forward to?

At the same time, though, I can’t stop thinking about Mitzi’s quote.  “It’s a sin to encourage mediocre talent.”  I suddenly grasp the fact that I’m in the Comedy Store in Los Angeles waiting to get up on a stage where Steve Martin and Richard Pryor and every legend of stand-up once stood.  I am right here.  And I realize that stand-up comedy is ruthless, unbearably lonely, and hard.

But it’s honest.

***

It’s my second interview for California Pizza Kitchen, and I’m getting along swimmingly with the manager who’s interviewing me.  Brandon’s one of those, “I want work to be fun,” guys, so the interview becomes conversational from the get-go.

“What do you like to do when you’re not at work?” Brandon asks.

“Well,” I say.  “I’m a comedian, so I go to a lot of open mics and shows around here.”  Shit, I think.  Why the hell did I tell him that? I figure now he’s going to know that my interest in restaurant management is a line of bullshit.

He doesn’t get it, though.  “Wow, comedy,” he says.  “You know, I like to tell jokes during some shifts.  If I see, for instance, that one of my servers is having a tough time, I’ll tell him a stupid joke, you know.  Just to lighten the mood up.”

“Exactly,” I say, taking his ignorance and running with it.  “I see myself as the kind of person who just wants to make people laugh.”  For a living.  As my career.  Really, it’s the only thing I think about.  Shut up, Inner Monologue!  You’re ruining this.

“That’s great,” Brandon says.  “You seem like you’re a team player.”

“Oh, absolutely,” I say.  “I find that you can get so much more done when you share the same goals with everyone around you.  So if your goal is to give people a great experience at a restaurant, you have to start by helping your peers.”

Okay, I feel the need to explain something here.  I’m actually a really good server.  I really do help the people I work with.  I really do like to make the other servers laugh, but I don’t do it Brandon’s way.  I do it like every other person who waits tables: I make fun of managers like Brandon who take things way too seriously.  In a restaurant, the servers are on one side, the managers on another.  If you’ve ever waited tables, you know that’s an undeniable truth, which is why movies like Waiting are so popular.

I’ve worked in restaurants for years, and I’ve run into my fair share of Brandons.  I’m willing to bet that when Brandon pulls a server aside to tell him a joke, the server laughs politely, but walks off thinking, What a tool. So while what I’m saying isn’t a bald-faced lie, it feels misleading and wrong because I know I’m just saying what he wants to hear.

Most people would probably say, “That’s just life, Leah.  You have to play the games to get by.”

But I’ve kind of always refused to do that.  Not getting somewhere because I don’t want to play the games necessary to get there has been a recurring theme throughout my life.  My stupid need to be true to myself, well, it’s my Achilles heel.

“I think that’s all for this afternoon,” Brandon says.  “You’ll hear from us on Monday, and we’ll let you know whether or not we’re gonna have you back for a third interview.”  (Yes, you read that right.  You have to go through three interviews to get hired at a California Pizza Kitchen.)

He shakes my hand.  “Thank you, Leah.  It’s been a pleasure.  Hey, do you wanna hear a stupid joke?”

“Sure,” I say.

“When Snoop Dogg gives the weather report, what does he call it when the forecast shows rain?”

“I don’t know.”

Brandon grins.  “The drizzle.”

I stare at him for a second.  I know he said it was a dumb joke, but I also know he thinks it’s hilarious.  I know what I have to do.

“Hahahahahahaha,” I fake laugh.  “That is hilarious.”

Brandon shrugs, “It’s just a silly joke.”

“It’s great, Man,” I say.  If there’s a comedian hell, I’m going to it.

***

I’m 22 years old, and I’m riding the T through Boston to my very first job interview at an insurance company.  I got the interview because my dad worked for the company for about 20 years.  He’s retired now, but they still think of him fondly enough to give his daughter a chance.

I get off at my stop and walk to the huge glass building.  I feel like a kid playing adult.  My interview clothes are uncomfortable and stiff.  My heels make clicky noises as I make my way down the sidewalk, passing people on cell phones, carrying coffee and briefcases, wearing boring black pants suits.

This is just the real world, I tell myself.  I ride the elevator up to the fourth floor and step into a reception area.  The receptionist tells me to have a seat, that the woman interviewing me will be ready for me shortly.

I sit down and notice a pamphlet on the table next to me.  I pick it up and read the front of it.  It’s all about the company, statistics and numbers lauding the merits of commercial insurance.  Suddenly, I feel very depressed.  I think of my dad coming in to work here everyday, sitting behind a desk so that some asshole can write, “Our customer service reps care about you,” on their hiring pamphlet.  “Our main concern is making your life better.”

A few minutes later, a woman comes out, shakes my hand, and brings me back into her office.  She sits behind a desk, and I sit across from her.

“So Leah,” she says.  “Tell me why you want to work here.”

I think for a minute.  “Can I be honest with you?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t want to work here,” I say.  “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”  I brace myself for a lecture about wasting time.

But the woman just smiles at me.  “Wow,” she says.  “I’ve never heard anyone say that.”

I shrug.

She leans forward.  “So what do you want to do?”

“I want to write,” I say.  “I think I’m supposed to be a writer.”

Then the woman tells me about when she was younger, how she wanted to go to school in Vermont.  How she wanted to be a painter, but she ended up getting a job in insurance because she was afraid of not being able to support herself financially.  “I admire you,” she says.  “And I sincerely hope that you end up being what you want to be.”

I stand up, we shake hands, and I can’t get out of that building fast enough.  As I head back to the T station, I’m cracking up laughing.  I feel light.  I feel like I’m 22 again, and I have infinite possibilities ahead of me.

But then reality catches up with me, and I realize that I didn’t get a job today.  On purpose.  Now I have to tell my dad that I sat down in a job interview he got me and told the lady interviewing me that I didn’t want that job.

And I have to go home, back to Oklahoma.  I’ve failed at Boston.

***

My third interview at CPK goes smoothly because I have become a soulless bag of skin spewing out bullshit lines about how to sell things, how to read people, how to make money for the restaurant.

I get the job right then.  They take a picture of me, they tell me to be prepared to train in a couple weeks, and they write my name down in an appointment book for Monday at noon, when I need to bring in my social security card and fill out some new hire paperwork.

I’m so relieved.  I have a job.  I can stay here in L.A. now.  I made it.

***

On Labor Day, I get up around 9 and go eat brunch with a couple friends.  We stand in line outside the restaurant chatting for a good hour before we get in, but the food’s great, which makes it worth it.

I go home and write some jokes, then decide to take a nap.  I get up in time to go to the Comedy Store.  I tell some comic friends that I got a day job, that I’m so relieved.

I go to another open mic down the street.  When I get home around 10 p.m., I decide to go for a run.  It’s not until I’m running down Sunset when I realize that I was supposed to go in and fill out my hiring paperwork today.

I completely fucking forgot.

***

I call CPK the next day, and they put Brandon on the phone.  “I never do things like that,” I say.  “I was confused, I guess because of Labor Day.  I’m in the area right now.  Can I bring my social in?”

“Mmm,” Brandon says.  “Actually, we’ve already decided that we’re going to move forward without you.”

I sigh.  “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?  I mean, seriously, you can call my old manager, and he’ll tell you that I’ve never missed a shift.  I literally have never done this.”

“I’m sorry,” Brandon says.  “But we’ve already made a team decision, and we’re going to stick with it.”

I hang up the phone and stare off into space, letting my imminent doom sink in.

I am such a fuck up.

It’s hard not to write Brandon off as an asshole.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that he’s right not to hire me.  The reason I didn’t make it to fill out paperwork is because my mind is elsewhere, consumed and obsessed with standup comedy.

And because I’m the same me that told the lady in Boston that I didn’t want to work at her insurance company, I know that I’m not going to be happy working somewhere where I can’t be who I am, where my independence, extensive education, and creativity are moot points.

Brandon’s probably very good at being a restaurant manager, but I’m better than him at reading people.  If Brandon knew how to read people, he would’ve known that I’m a comedian and writer first, that those things are my whole life, that everything else is just a means to an end.  If Brandon knew how to read people, he’d know that I thought his joke was terrible and lame.  If Brandon knew what I knew, he could detect the difference between a fake laugh and a real one.

I think of Mitzi’s maxim.  “It’s a sin to encourage mediocre talent.”  I’d like to add something to it, a little maxim of my own: never fake-laugh at a lame joke, even if a job depends on it.

I don’t envy Brandon.  I suppose it’s not easy trying to appease a staff of servers.  I suppose you have to make decisions based on whether or not somebody shows up when they say they will.  I admit, I know nothing about managing a restaurant, so I have no business thinking of Brandon as an asshole.

But Brandon has no business telling shitty jokes to people desperate for a job, making them fake-laugh because it’s impolite not to.  For that, you are an asshole, Brandon.  So you just diligently manage your California Pizza Kitchen and leave the funny to people who know what they’re doing.

“Can someone bring me home and let me sit in your air conditioner?  It’s so hot out here.”

I turn to him, and we make eye contact.  Conversation officially engaged.  “It’s not that hot, man,” I say.

“It’s definitely too hot out here.”

“I think you’re being dramatic.”

“Oh, really?  Is that right, Baby?  Listen, why don’t I come over to your house and just sit awhile?”

“Mmm, no, not gonna happen.”

“Why not?”

“Um, well, because I think you’re crazy, and I’m thinking I shouldn’t have started this conversation.”

He laughs.  “I ain’t crazy, Baby.  I know everything that’s going on.  Believe me.”

I don’t know where to go from here, but the walk sign tells me I can cross the street, and I scurry off into the distance, the guy behind me still yelling.  “I ain’t crazy, Baby!”

***

“Your problem,” Doug says, “is you feel the need to engage people in conversation.  You don’t have to talk to everybody.”

“You’re right,” I say.  That’s actually good advice.  I’ve been here for three weeks, and I’ve gotten myself in about seven arguments.   Four of them have been with a fellow open mic-er named Lee.

“Just ignore him,” Doug says.  “Talk to him the minimal amount.”

Doug is the best friend I have in L.A.  He’s an uber-healthy, more responsible, more grounded version of me.  I’ve known him since college, he lives in my building, and he does stand-up, so we hit up a lot of open mics together.  The one we’re going to tonight at the Bliss Café is a five-minute walk from our apartment building.

Sure enough, we get there, and Lee sits outside by the door.  He stares me down, his usual greeting.

I ignore my impulse to stop and talk to him.  I succeed in going in the café, buying a cup of coffee and a banana, and making it back outside before I’m in the middle of our first argument.

“I wasn’t even talking to you,” Lee says.

“Oh, really?  You weren’t talking to me when you said, ‘Leah, why are you looking at me like that’?”

“First of all, I didn’t say your name.  I was looking over your shoulder at him.  Ahmad, come here!  Wasn’t I talking to you a second ago?”

“What?” Ahmad says.

“I don’t believe you,” I say.

“You know what your problem is,” Lee says.  “You have to be the center of attention.”

“Oh, I have to be the center of attention,” I say.  “Um, I’m pretty sure that all of us have to be the center of attention.   We’re fucking comics.”

I start unpeeling my banana.

“Ooh, can I watch you eat that?” Lee asks.

“Sure,” I say.  “Sure.  How’s this?”  I pull off a chunk of the banana and smear it on my lips.  “You like that?”

I look over my shoulder at Doug.  He’s standing off to the side and messing with his phone, saying the minimal amount.

***

I’m at the Sunset Grill.  We’re in a small room upstairs that holds a microphone and three rows of chairs.  The host of this mic, Jamar Neighbors, sees me walk in and nods at the list on a stool next to me.

I sign my name on the list for my first open mic in L.A., and then I survey the room.  There are about ten other comics scattered about, all guys, some on the patio outside of the room, some in chairs.  I walk to a chair front and center to the comics performing, and I sit and watch the show.

Jamar gets onstage.  “Here’s a new joke I’m working on,” he says.  “Before rape was illegal, it was cool.”

He goes into the rest of his joke, which is funny in a shock-funny way, and then introduces the next comic.  As the list goes on, he tells the same rape joke between comics four more times, and I squirm a little in my seat.

When it’s my turn to go onstage, he says, “This next comic coming to the stage is very, very funny.  Give it up for Leah  Ka…Kay…Kayah…Shit, I can’t pronounce this.”

I take the mic.  “It’s Kayajanian,” I say.  “And I have a question.  Are you gonna rape me?”

He smiles.

“No, seriously, because this is the first open mic I’ve done here, and you keep telling that one rape joke.”

A guy in the back laughs.

I segue into my rape joke, get a few laughs, and step offstage, proud of myself for doing this.  I forgot how lonely it is to start doing stand-up.  Tonight reminds me of the first time I got onstage five years ago at the Loony Bin in Oklahoma City when I didn’t know anybody, and all I had was a few minutes of time to make people like me.

I feel brave again.

After my set, another comic smiles at me.  Desperate to make friends, I point at him.  “I like your shirt.”

I really do like it.  It’s a purple shirt with stack of cassette tapes drawn on it in white.

“Thanks,” he says.  “I like your shirt, too.  It’s very sexy.”

“Uh, what?  I’m wearing a t-shirt.”

“It’s nice.”

“Well, thanks. I’m actually about to go, so—”

“So have you ever been raped?” he asks.

“What?  Why are you asking me that?”

“Because you were talking about rape.”

“Yeah,” I say.  “But I was talking about rape because it’s part of my joke.  That’s kind of a weird question to ask.”

“Is it?  Why?”

“I don’t know.  I guess because you went from ‘I like your shirt’ to ‘rape,’ and that just seemed like a jump to me.’”

“Oh.  Sorry.”

We end up talking it out, and the guy gives me his business card.  It’s the first of my growing L.A.-open-mic-comic-business-card collection.

I walk down Sunset toward my car, and I stop at a crosswalk to wait for the light to change.  Business Card runs to catch up with me.  “Hey,” he says.  “Can I get your phone number?”

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Well, to be honest, you’re kind of creeping me out right now.”

“Oh,” he says.  “Okay.  Bye.”  He walks away.

***

I’m at the Hollywood Hotel on a Friday night.  There’s a booked show tonight, and I got myself on the bill.  My friend Adair Fincher, photographer, law student, and candy enthusiast, is visiting for the weekend, and we’re sitting at the bar.

A man walks over to the bar and orders an L.I.T.  Adair, having the same problem that I do, which forces her to interact with strangers, makes eye contact and smiles at the guy.

He slides over to us.  “Are you ladies here to watch the show tonight?”

“Yes.”  Adair points at me.  “She’s in it.”

He nods.  “Oh, you’re in it?  Well, are you gonna be funny?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna be funny.”

“I’ll tell you right now, you’re gonna have to work really hard to make me laugh because I usually don’t think women comics are funny.”

I roll my eyes.  “Well, I think you’re wrong.”

He shrugs.  “I’m just saying.”

As the night rolls on, Mr. L.I.T. man gets wasted and starts heckling the comedians.  He keeps interrupting jokes to scream out that the comics onstage aren’t funny, that he could do a better job.  He does this at a constant rate until one of the comics gets sick of it and exposes him for the douchebag that he is.

Shortly after this public shaming, Mr. L.I.T. staggers back to the bar and points at me.  “You better be funny.”

“Hey,” I say.  “Was that you heckling the comics?”

“Yes it was!”  He’s obviously proud.

“Well, then you’re a douchebag, and that’s a dickhead thing to do.”

I see Adair’s eyes get wide, her lips twitching into a smile.

“I was telling those guys how it’s done.”

“You know, it doesn’t make you awesome to yell at people onstage.  It makes you a dick.  And you’re only doing it because you’re too much of a pussy to get onstage yourself.”

He doesn’t respond, just stands in front of me, a wounded look on his face.  Finally, he points at me.  “You better be funny.”

“Oh, I fuckin’ will be,” I say.

He walks off, and Adair starts laughing.  “Well,” she says, “that was interesting to watch.”

***

I’m in the hallway waiting to go on.  I’m standing next to Ryan Pfeiffer, tonight’s host of the show.  I like Ryan, he’s funny, but he’s pretty much always some kind of fucked up.  He turns to me.  “So can you tell me how to say your last name again?”

“Kay-uh-jane-ee-un,” I say.  “Just like it’s spelled.”

He looks at his list.  “I’m sorry, I’m just so stoned right now.”

“No, it’s cool, man.  It’s a daunting last name.”

“Yeah.”  He seems to fade out of a reality for a minute or so, his eyes half-closed, a huge smile on his face.  We watch the comic onstage.  He’s not having a great set, but he’s getting a few scattered laughs by miming jerking off.

Ryan turns to me again.  “Wait, how do you say your name?”

I laugh.  “Kayajanian.”

“Kay…uh…janian?”

“Yes.  Look, it’s not a big deal if you mess it up.  Just try.”

“No, I think I got it.  Kayajanian.  Kayajanian.  Kayajanian.”

I smile.  “Good.  Yeah.  That’s it.”

He fades out again before turning back to me and blurting out, “So, uh, and you’re name is…Laura?”

“Jesus, Ryan.”  I grab his shoulders.  “My first name is Leah.  I’ve met you like five times.  At least get my first name right.  Leah.  Leeee-uhhh.”

“Leah,” he says.  “I knew that.  I’m sorry, I’m just really stoned right now.”

Drunk L.I.T. man makes a sudden appearance in the hallway.  He’s not looking so hot.  He’s bent over completely, swaying forward in slow motion, but never actually hitting the ground.  After about 30 seconds, he stands up straight, walks around the spot where Ryan and I are standing, and reaches in to casually cup my right tit.

“Motherfucker!” I spin around, but the drunk has somehow fleet-footed his way out of sight.  “That guy just grabbed my tit!”

“Oh my God!” Ryan says.  “I saw!  I thought he was your boyfriend.”

I scoff.  “What?”

“I thought maybe he was your boyfriend.”

I put my hand on my hip.  “So you think I’d be dating the drunk man who was heckling the comics?  You think I’d date a guy with his shirt buttoned all the way up to the very top button?  How can you even breathe like that?”

“I’m sorry, do you want me to say something to him?” Ryan asks.

“You think I’d date the bald dude-bro that’s dressed like a cholo?”

“I’m so sorry.  I’m just really stoned right now.”

The jerkoff mime does his closing bit, and Ryan gets up onstage to a bored crowd.  He tries to pump some energy into the room, but they’ve been there a long time, and they’re just about through with watching comedy.  And I’m next.

I watch Ryan from the side door.  “Please welcome to the stage,” he says, “a very funny comedian, Leah Kay-uh…uh…uh…  I’m sorry, I fucked it up.”

He looks at me and bows his head, defeated.  I step onstage, shake his hand, and grab the microphone.  “My name is Leah Kayajanian,” I say.  And then I get the crowd back, and then I fuckin’ make them laugh because that’s what I came here to do.

***

I’m at the Comedy Store waiting to see if I’ve made the list.  I’m standing by myself and staring at all the other comics because there’s nothing else to do.

Mr. Business Card pops up next to me.  He’s wearing the same t-shirt as he was the last time I saw him.  “Hey.”

“Oh, hey, man,” I say.  “How’s it going?”

“Good,” he says.  “So you still think I’m creepy?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I mean, the whole rape thing.  I was feeling a little weird about being the only girl.  But we’re cool.”

He points behind me to Jamar Neighbors, the host from the Sunset Grill open mic.  “You don’t think he’s creepy, do you?”

“No,” I say.  I nod at Jamar, and he nods back.  “I think he’s probably cool.”

“Yeah, he’s a really nice guy,” Business Card says.

And then, I swear to God, Jamar, who has no idea what we’re talking about, walks by, leans in next to me and says, “I’m gonna rape ‘ya!”

He walks away without another word, and I crack up laughing.

***

At the Hollywood Hotel.  Again.  Starting to wonder why I keep coming back here.   Another comic described the atmosphere of the place as “the inside of a limo in the 1970s,” and I think that’s the most apt description.

Lee is onstage yelling things at people.  I’ve seen him go up around four times, and I don’t think he’s ever told a joke.  During his set, I get an idea for a bit, and I start typing it out in my phone’s “note” application.

“You messing with your phone?” Lee asks from the stage.

I look up.  “Oh, yeah, sorry man.  I was just trying to remember something.”

“Leah, why are you always so mean to me?”

“I’m not.  Just go on with your set.”

“It’s too bad that you’re a comic, because I would definitely have sex with you.”

I shake my head, annoyed.  “Who says I would fuck you?”

Gene Steichen, the host of the show and the actor who plays the fig leaf in the Fruit of the Loom commercials, senses that Lee’s set is de-railing and hops up onstage, making an effort to grab at the microphone.  “Okay,” he says.  “All right.”

“Well,” Lee says, “Then I might end up doing something that could get me eight years in prison.”

“Are you implying that you’re gonna rape me?” I ask.

“What?  I didn’t say that.”

“Fuckin’ try it.  I’m not afraid of you.”

Gene pulls the microphone.  “Ohhh-kay, this has been nice.”

Before stepping offstage, Lee leans into the microphone to do his big closer: “Remember me when I’m famous!  I’ve been Lee.  Peeaaaaaace [held out for a dramatically long time]…and carrots!”

***

I’m sitting by myself at the Improv open mic drinking a Jack and Coke and watching Marcella Arguello.  She’s cracking me up.  Actually, she’s cracking everyone up.  She pretty much turned the gloomy feeling of this mic around.  She’s naturally funny, a good performer, and to top it off, she’s six-foot-two and gorgeous.  This is the first time I’ve seen her perform, but I’ve seen her around.  Earlier today, she friend requested me on Facebook.

After her set, I walk up to her.  “Hey Marcella.  You’re really funny.”

“Thanks,” she says.

“I’m Leah,” I say.  “We’re friends on Facebook now.”

“Oh yeah!”  She reaches out and shakes my hand.  “I saw you at the Comedy Store.  Us women gotta stick together.”

I look around the room at all the open mic-ers, mostly men.  It occurs to me that I’m so used to being around large groups of men in L.A., I don’t remember what it’s like to talk to someone and not self-consciously feel the need to pull my sweater tighter around my chest.

I turn to Marcella.  “I agree with you one hundred percent.”

I stand next to her, waiting until it’s my turn to go onstage, and I miss my Oklahoma comedian friends, the ones who know how to pronounce my last name and who wouldn’t want to fuck me if I were the last woman on the planet.

It’s 2 a.m., and I’m walking to my car with James Nghiem.  It’s a pleasant night to walk, but the walk’s not pleasant.  I’ve spent the majority of it ranting about Chicago comedian John Roy, who had worked in Oklahoma City at the Loony Bin the week prior.  On Sunday night, all the Oklahoma City comics roasted me at the club, a traditional comedian goodbye, and John Roy came in later on in the night to headline the regular show.

We reach my car, and I open the door, flustered.

“Fuck that guy,” James says.  “I don’t want you to move to L.A. with a chip on your shoulder because of John Roy.”

“No, see, that’s the thing,” I say, tossing my tiny backpack full of bouncy balls into my car.  “I don’t have a problem with John Roy.  I already told him what I think about him.  I already took care of it.  My problem is with you.”  I point at my best friend, and I can see by the look on his face that I’m hurting his feelings.

“What did you want me to say?” he asks.

“I don’t know, man,” I say.  “How about, ‘I know Leah, and she wouldn’t do that.’  You should’ve stuck up for me.”

I get in my car and drive away, James standing there on the curb.  We normally don’t fight because we’re both stubborn, and neither one of us make enough sense to argue with each other—the last argument we got into happened because he dissed me by pulling away from a fist pound, so I refused to fist pound him for the rest of the night.  He ended up walking home in the rain.

Tonight, I’m arguing with James Nghiem.  Actually, I’ve been arguing with everybody.

***

It’s a Tuesday night, and the open mic just ended.  I walk outside to the patio to find some of my friends.  Standing just outside the door, there’s a young-looking kid, probably about 22, with an acne problem and drunk-hazy look in his eyes.

“Hey,” the kid says.  “You were really, really funny up there.”

“Thanks, man.”  I smile and attempt to walk past.

“No, really, you were funny, and it was surprising.”

I turn back to him.  “Oh really?  Why was it so surprising?”

He shrugs.  “Because you’re a woman, and women aren’t funny.”

I inhale one slow deep breath, put my hand on my hip: all systems go for my argument with Mr. Zit in 3…2…1…“You’re a fucking idiot if you really think that.”

“Name a woman, alive or dead, that is funnier than Richard Pryor,” he says.  “You can’t do it.”

“What the fuck kind of logic is that?  Name a black man, alive or dead, that is funnier than Richard Pryor.  Name a Jewish man in a half-dead zombie state that is funnier than Richard Pryor.”

He smiles.  “Yeah, but you can’t do it.”

“Your logic is faulty, idiot.  And you know what?  You’re not going to win this argument because I’m smarter than you.  And funnier than you.  And better than you at everything.”

I suppose I could’ve handled that better.  I suppose I could’ve taken the high road, said something like, “Well, good sir, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree,” but that would’ve implied that there’s a possibility that his point could be right.  There’s not.  He’s wrong.  And I’m not coddling these assholes any longer.

***

I’m in a strip mall plaza in Wichita, Kansas at the Loony Bin for The World Series of Comedy.  I’ve just found out that I didn’t make the next round, but I’m fine with it. Before I leave the club, I walk over to the back of the room to Mark Payne, the guy who runs the room.  Since I met him in January, I’ve liked him, so I figure I’ll say goodbye.

“Hey, Mark,” I say.  “I’m leaving.”

“Well, call me when you want to work, Girl.”

“I would,” I say, “but I’m moving in a month.”  I bask in that brief moment of joy, a moment every comic relishes, the moment you get to turn down a booker.  It’s like saying, “No, thanks.  I don’t need your help.”  There are few things sweeter in life.

“Oh?” Mark says.  “Where you going?”

“L.A.”

He shakes his head.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I knew you were going to say that.  Why is it a bad idea?”

“Because you’re too green.  You’re not ready.”

“Well, I’m having trouble finding my audience here.”

“Look,” he says, “Wichita is an industrial town…”

I roll my eyes.  I’ve heard this speech before.

“You gotta look at it this way,” he says.  “People around here know who you are.”

“That’s the problem.”

“You’re nobody in L.A.  You’re nothing.  There are a million Leah Kayajanian’s out there trying to do the same thing.”

“Actually,” I say, “I am literally the only Leah Kayajanian.  Here or there.  I got a weird name.”

He stares at me over the top of his glasses.  “I just don’t want to see you go out there and start blowing people for work.”

“Uhhhh, what?  Blowing people for work?  Seriously?”

He shrugs.  “Well, I’ve seen it before.”

“You’ve seen a woman go to L.A. and start trading blow jobs for stage time?  You’ve seen that happen?”

“Just be careful who you run into out there.”

“Yeah, Mark, I got it,” I say.  “I hope you know, though, I would never, ever do that.”

I hug Mark goodbye, and he pats me on my lower back, half an inch above the top of my ass.  His hands are just high enough that it’ll be weird if I say something, but low enough to make me pull away.  I consider saying something about it anyway, but I decide, no, it’s not worth the time and effort I’d have to put in to this particular argument.

Guess I’ll just write a story about it and post it on the Internet.

***

The day after the World Series of Comedy Contest, I stop by the graveyard where my brother is buried.  I stand and stare at the headstone for a few minutes.

It’s weird to see my last name etched in stone like that.  Because there aren’t a whole lot of Kayajanians walking around in this world, I suppose.  Maybe to a John Smith or an Ashley Jones, seeing your name on a gravestone is a pretty regular occurrence, but when I see “Kayajanian” on a headstone, it means that someone I know has died.  Someone I know, or me.

I drop a bouncy ball on the grass next to my brother.

***

“What do you want today, R.J.?” the waitress says, hands on her hip, an amused look on her face.  “Did you come here just to bother me?”

“Oh, you know it,” my uncle says.  “And I’d tell you what I want, but I don’t think you can give it to me.”

“You couldn’t handle this.”

He laughs, “Oh, boy, I’m telling you, at my age, that’s probably true.”

I get the feeling this conversation happens a lot.  Me, my mom, and R.J. are all sitting in a diner on the corner of Doolin and 13^th in Blackwell, Oklahoma.  My hometown.

I haven’t been here in so long, I’ve never seen this diner.  It used to be a Chinese restaurant owned by my friend’s parents.  It was the type of place that you can’t wash off your clothes, and when you leave, your hair smells like Chinese fried food for a week.

R.J., born and raised in small town Oklahoma, has the quirky character and quick wit that Jeff Foxworthy might’ve ripped off had they ever encountered each other.  He has a thick Oklahoma redneck accent, and he’s fond of saying big words and then saying, “I don’t think I’m using that word right,” even though I can tell by the twinkle in his eye that he knows exactly what the word means.

He’s always made me laugh because he’s likable and funny, and on top of that, he has many weird hobbies and strange talents.  He plays the drums, he writes humorous poems, he paints, and, my very favorite of all his hobbies, he makes authentic arrowhead weapons out of rock and deer antlers.  No kidding.  A tour of his workshop actually prompted my weirdo mom to say, “Geez, R.J., you got antlers out the kazoo!”

I’ve never met anyone quite like him.  He is the only R.J. Ruiz in Blackwell, Oklahoma, but he is also the only R.J. Ruiz in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles.  I love him for that.  I love him for many reasons, but especially for that.

“Are you coming back around here before you go?” R.J. asks while he spreads jam on a slice of toast.

“I don’t know,” I say.  “I’m leaving in a month.  Not sure I’ll make it back this way.”

“That reminds me,” he says.  “I haven’t given you an earful yet about moving to Los Angeles.”

I turn to my mom.  “Here we go.”

“This is what I have to say to you.”  He puts down his toast and looks at me over the top of his glasses while he speaks, each word coming out slow.  “Do you think…you could have chosen a place…just a little bit farther away from us?  I mean, gol-ly!  Did you consider Alaska?”

I laugh.  “Yeah, it’s far. I thought you were gonna tell me how much L.A. sucks.”

“It does suck,” he says.  “But I can see how, doing what you want to do, you need to move somewhere horrible like that.  You ain’t gonna be able to do what you want here, that’s for sure.  It makes sense, and I wish you the very best.”

I hide my smile behind my coffee cup.  That’s it, I think.  That’s the difference.  That’s what people who believe in me say. “Thank you for saying that.”

“Well, I don’t care what anybody says.  I think you’re all right, Kid.”

***

I worked with John Roy in Chicago back in February at Zanies Comedy Club.  It was my first and only week to feature at a club, and I was all nerves.  I had gotten booked because my friend, Kevin Bozeman, was headlining the club in September when I was visiting, and he got me onstage to do a guest spot, 7 minutes.  I killed it.

Later, Bozeman and I are talking to the club’s manager, and Bozeman says, “So are you gonna have Leah open for you?”

Martin shakes his head.  “No, feature,” he says.  “She can feature.”

Bozeman and I exchange a look like we got away with something, and I manage to make it out the door before squealing with excitement.

A couple of emails to the guy who books the club, and it’s official: I’m the feature on the week of Valentine’s Day.  And when I finally get to Chicago, when Zanies finally gives me the chance to move up a step in the comedy hierarchy, what do I do?

I suck.  I suck a giant cock.  All week long.  It’s painful.  It’s embarrassing.  And it makes John Roy, the headliner, hate my guts.

***

It’s the morning after my roast, and I wake up hungover.  I should feel supported and loved and refreshed, but I feel weird about the night before because John Roy is in Oklahoma City.  He was last night’s headliner during the regular Sunday night show at the Loony Bin, and I had heard through the grapevine he had some extra-horrible things to say about me.  Why, I wonder, is John Roy still talking shit about how unfunny I am?  It’s been three months, for Christ’s sake.  Let it go, man.

As these things often do, this tiny thought stays with me and just starts to get bigger.  Just a tiny grain at first, then snowball sized, then snowman-head size, then giant-killer-snowball-tumbling-down-a-hill-to-kill-some-unsuspecting-skiers size.  When I call Dan Skaggs at 3 in the afternoon, I’m in a pretty bad state.

“All right,” I say.  “I have to know.  What did John Roy say about me?”

“Okay.”  Dan sighs.  “He said that you got booked at Zanies because you fucked Kevin Bozeman.”

“What?! He said what?”

“Yeah,” Dan says.

“Oh my God, what a fuckin’ douche!  Why the fuck does he think that?  Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, it was your roast, and I didn’t want to make your night suck.”

“You should’ve told me.  Did you tell him that wasn’t true?”

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because I figured I could get him talking about it on my podcast.”

After a pointless conversation in which I say “fuck” 1,000 times, I hang up the phone and sit there in a rage.  I have no idea what to do.  This is my worst nightmare come true.

I fucked somebody to get booked? That doesn’t even make sense.  First of all, if I were going to do that, I might at least hold out for a T.V. spot, not give it up for a middle spot at a mediocre club.  I guess in John Roy’s mind, not only am I a whore, but I’m a cheap whore.

Also, I don’t know a whole lot about Kevin Bozeman’s mating habits, but from what I know about the guy, I don’t thing he’d put that much effort into getting pussy.  He seems like much more of a “let the pussy come to me” type of guy.  And, contrary to popular belief, my pussy is not made of gold.  And if it were, it would be a very uncomfortable place to put a dick.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m trying to make a joke about it because that’s what I do when things get bad.

I know that if I’m a woman comedian, I have to be thick-skinned.  I have to be tough.  But as a human, I’m sensitive, and this hurts.

What hurts most about it isn’t the implication that I’m a whore.  It’s the accusation that I got something that I didn’t earn.  I resent that.  I’ve worked hard my entire life at everything I do because I never wanted anyone to look at the things I’ve accomplished and say I didn’t deserve them.  I’ve supported myself independent of other people, and I’ve never, ever compromised myself to get anywhere.  My mama taught me never to do that.  Yes, John Roy, I have a mother, and yes, she knows what you said about me.

***

I send John Roy a message on Facebook.  I’ll spare you the specifics, but let’s just say I told him exactly what I thought about him. If you’re curious about my tone, I’ll tell you that I ended the message with this: “Fuck you, you sexist piece of shit.  I’m writing about this in my blog.”

About five minutes later, John Roy replies.  This is what he says:

“I’m sorry.  You’re right.  Full apology.”

Just like that, he concedes the point.  Meanwhile, my name is floating around out there in the minds of God-knows-who he told, little whisperings about my talentless hack-whore comedy career.  Think I’m paranoid?  Maybe.  But I recently ran into comic AJ Finney at the Loony Bin, and he had heard John Roy’s theory about me and Bozeman.

I didn’t even know AJ Finney.

Because I want to be fair, I will tell you that John Roy, apparently addled with guilt, has sent me a list of contacts in L.A. and all of their information.  I’m not going to use them because I don’t feel the need to help assuage his guilty conscience.  Also, I know for a fact that John Roy doesn’t think I’m funny, and I will not be accepting any help from anyone who doesn’t believe in me.

Fuck you and your contacts, John Roy.  I’m never gonna owe you shit.

***

My last few months in Oklahoma have flown by like flashes from a chaotic artsy film.  Just random scenes and characters that come in and out on the edge of my consciousness, people that I love and people that I don’t love either hating on me or bending over backwards to help me get out of town.

One random scene that comes to mind brings me to an afternoon spent inside Abby Hale’s garage, where Adair Fincher is taking our picture.

Here’s one of the pics:

I love this picture because it will always remind me of Oklahoma.  It’s silly, yes, but there’s more to it than that.  For instance, the “I’m with cunt” sign is a creation of none other than Oklahoma comic, the hilarious BradChad Porter, who walked beside me in Bricktown holding it up one pleasant Sunday afternoon.  He just makes me laugh.  Always.

The woman holding the sign is Abby Hale.  She has a successful career as a result of her hard work: she worked her way up the chain of command to be the boss.  She likes Burlesque shows, and she teaches pole-dancing classes.  She has a beautiful house just outside of Norman, a good heart, and a body that is impossible not to look at.  Seriously, I washed my socks on her stomach once.

The woman taking the picture is Adair Fincher.  I met her ten years ago when we were both freshmen, and I taught her how to make letters out of pretzels.  Since we met, she has spent way, way more time than any person should trying to figure out how to get a still shot of me with bouncy balls suspended in mid-air.  She’s interesting, incredibly smart, and her brain moves faster than the rest of her.  Walking around with her is like walking around with a tornado.  Adair moved to Hawaii last year to got to law school.

I have a point, and it’s this: I could give a shit about Oklahoma as a state.  Sorry.

What makes Oklahoma so hard for me to leave is its people.  That’s what this place means to me, all the people I’ve met here.  And so help me, if I ever hear anyone talk some shit on BradChad Porter, or Abby Hale, or Adair Fincher, I won’t think twice before I shank them with the arrowhead-slash-antler weapon my uncle R.J. gave me, an Oklahoma-style stabbing.

***

For the past year, I’ve written a very self-involved and narcissistic blog that has recently gotten more and more trapped in my mind.  I’ve spent hours obsessing over some, admittedly, bizarre experiences.  I’ve held a mirror up to myself and faced myself down, and then I put everything out there in public.  Through that, I’ve learned a lot about the kind of person I am, the good and bad things that make me.

This is what I want to say to you, Oklahoma.  Hold a mirror up to yourself, analyze what you see, and try to pick out all the good and bad things that make you.  Stop walking around with a chip on your shoulder.  Remember that you’re not inferior.  And know that just because some people leave to go to other places doesn’t mean they’re gone.  They still exist here.

Adair is just as much Oklahoma as Abby is.  I am just as much Oklahoma as BradChad Porter is.  Some people move away and bring the character of this state with them, and some people stay here and work their asses off to make things better.

For all the people who have told me in the past few months, “Leah, don’t forget where you came from,” I’d like to say that I won’t.  I promise you that.  But I’d also like to say this to you: don’t forget where I came from, either.

That means that when someone comes to you and says vicious things about me, stand up for me and tell them they’re wrong.  Don’t do it because you think I need protection, or because I can’t take care of myself.  Do it because you know I can and because that makes you proud of me.  Do it because you know Oklahoma is great because of its people, and, whether you like it or not, I am its people.  Do it because you know that if we’re too meek to stand up for our own people, we are inferior.  Period.

***

My uncle R.J. points to me across the breakfast table.  “Listen up, and listen good.”

“Uh, okay.”

He pauses for dramatic effect, I suppose, then launches into a poem he wrote:

I’ve labored long and labored hard

For honor and for riches.

But I won’t take this shit no more

From all you sons of bitches.

So take this note,

The one I wrote,

And perform this layman task.

Fold it neat,

Make it sweet,

And stick it up your ass.

I think, Leah, your bad luck is simply a series of inconvenient coincidences.  The Universe doesn’t really hate you.  That’s ridiculous.

At this exact moment, as the thought floats from my mind, I see a large circular piece of metal in the middle of the sidewalk in front of me, and before I can correct my path, I step into it mid-stride, somehow get both my ankles caught in it, and take a pretty rough tumble onto the concrete.

“Mother-fucker!” I scream.  Out loud.  At no one.  “Fuckin’ god fuckin’ damn it!”

I survey the damage, open scrape wounds on my knees and my left shoulder, bright red blood trickling down the front of both legs.  I stand up like a cripple, take two slow steps, and then I say, “Fuck this,” and I just start running again, only now from an outsider’s perspective, I seem much less like a peaceful woman enjoying her daily run and much more like a crazy homeless person.

Because as I’m running, I’m yelling in between bursts of breath, screaming out sentence fragments and weirdo phrases that only make sense to me.  Things like, “Fucking Universe!”  Or, “Knock me down a million times, and I’ll get up every time, motherfucker!”  Or, “Bring it, bitch!  But you’re gonna have to kill me!”  Rest assured, Readers, I’m not exaggerating to make this funny.  No, I’m literally yelling these things while running and bleeding down the street.

I’m so pissed off, in fact, my adrenaline kicks in, and I’m almost at a sprint now.  Leave it to me to shave ten minutes off my five-mile because I’m having a facedown with The Universe.  It’s exactly like that scene in Forrest Gump when Forrest and Lieutenant Dan hit a bad storm at sea, and Lieutenant Dan screams curse words at the heavens.

I make it home in record time, but when I step through my front door, when the adrenaline stops and the sting kicks in, I know this: I, Leah Kayajanian, am officially at war with The Universe.

***

Let’s get this out in the open: I believe I live inside a story.  That means that I see the people I run into everyday as characters, and I see the world as an elaborate movie set.  It’s weird, I know, but it’s my way of dealing with life.  Other people have God or science or logic (none of which I’ve ever warmed up to), but I have stories as a way to cope with life: my way of applying reason to what just might be chaos.

Because everything in a story happens for a reason.  In a well-told story, there are no insignificant or unnecessary details.  I believe things in this world are more connected than separate, so when good or bad things happen, I imagine a fucked-up “checks and balances” version of karma where all happenings are the result of very meticulous measurements of what you put out into the world vs. what you take from it.

Until now, I’ve made sense of The Universe this way, and though I’ve often thought it unpredictable, I never before thought it unfair.

***

A couple days before my psychotic run, I’m at Bill’s, my favorite Norman dive bar, with James Nghiem, and we’re both signed up to sing in the 80s karaoke contest.

I’m in a good mood.  Earlier tonight, I got to do stand-up, something I don’t get to do a lot lately since I’ve been working nights, and I got to hang out in Oklahoma City with my comic friends after that, something I feel like I never get to do.  We smoked pot in the back of a P.T. Cruiser, I peed by a dumpster, and we went to eat at Hooters, where we ordered boneless chicken wings from a pregnant server.

Now we’re back in Norman, and I’ve convinced Nghiem karaoke is a great idea.  He’s sitting at a tall table drinking a 2-dollar Lionshead beer, just where I left him before going in to the bathroom.  As I get back to our table, I hear the intro to Purple Rain start playing.

“Shit,” I say.  “I signed up for a Prince song.  This is the second one I’ve heard tonight.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does,” I say.  “I want to be original.”

I get up and walk over to the woman in charge.  “Hey, Angie.  Do you think I should change my song?”

“What’d you sign up for?”

“Little Red Corvette.”

“No, don’t change it!  I love that song.”

“But everybody’s doing Prince.”

She shakes her head.  “That doesn’t matter!  Yours is my favorite, anyway.”

I walk back to our table feeling much better about my song choice and slide back into my chair across from Ngheim.  “So in the bathroom stall,” I say, “there’s paint chipped off the back of the door.  And the way it’s chipped, it looks exactly like a werewolf wearing sunglasses and staring up at the sky.”

James laughs.

“I’m serious.  I see it every time I go in there.  Next time, I’m bringing my phone in to take a picture.”  I take a sip of my beer and then slam it back on the table.  “Oh my God, where’s my phone?”  I open up every zipper on my purse and rummage through, but it’s not in there.

“Did you leave it in your car?” James asks.

I shake my head.  “No!  I used it right before I went in the bathroom.  I just fucking had it!”

Initiate panic mode in 3…2…1…

James takes his phone out of his pocket and calls mine.  He frowns.  “It’s shut off.”

“What the fuck?! Someone stole it?  No fucking way this is happening to me again.”

Purple Rain comes to a close, and I charge up to the microphone.  “Angie,” I say.  “I need to use the mic.  I can’t find my phone.”

She hands me the microphone.

“Listen up,” I say.  “I’m looking for my phone.  I had it in my hand five minutes ago, and it’s brand new, and I just got it to replace the last one that someone stole.  So if you’ve seen my phone, please, please, please just turn it in.  I don’t give a shit if you stole it, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, I really just want it back.  Please don’t do this to me.”

“What kind of phone is it?” someone yells.

“An iPhone.”

A lady sitting at the table front and center says, “Someone’s gonna pawn that shit.  You can’t leave that lying around.”

“Oh, nice,” I say, still into the microphone.  “I can’t leave my phone on a table because then some fucking asshole piece of shit thinks it’s theirs?”

“I’m not trying to argue with you,” the lady says.

“Well, you’re not fucking helping.”

Angie pulls the mic from my grip.  “Seriously, people,” she says.  “It has a tracking device on it anyway, so we’ll find it.  You might as well turn it in.”

She’s lying.  It doesn’t.  I’m defeated already, but I spend the next half hour running around the bar and retracing my steps during the three-minute time span when I was without my phone.  I walk back and forth to the bathroom, eyeballing all the other patrons while I frantically search the floor.  The worst part about the whole thing isn’t the fact that I just went through this same exact thing three weeks prior.  It’s not that this is my second iPhone that I bought on credit.  It’s not even that I’ve only had the phone for a week and half.

No, the worst part about all of this is that whoever took my phone never left the bar.  The thief is one of the 40 or so people in here, watching me walk back and forth like a crazy person, letting me tap on legs so I can look underneath bar stools and tables.  Somebody sitting in this bar, the bar that I’ve been coming to for the past ten years, stole something of mine, sees my distress, and refuses to give it back.

Ain’t that some shit.  I may deserve most of the bad coming at me, but I don’t deserve this.

After my search proves fruitless, I storm back over to the microphone and snatch it out of Angie’s hand.  “All right, motherfuckers!” That’s what I lead with.  The bar patrons quiet down to politely witness my meltdown.  “One of you assholes in here has my fucking phone, or you know who does.  This is just shitty!  You people are all just shitty!”

“What color is it?” someone yells.

“It’s black.  Like every fucking iPhone on the planet.  But what the fuck does it matter?  Someone in here fucking stole my phone, and they’re not gonna give it back no matter what I say about it because the world is shitty, and you can’t fucking trust anybody.  I don’t trust any of you people.  I just…I just…”

Angie nods at me in sympathy and slowly pulls the mic from my hand.  Her eyes speak loud and clear: “Leah,” they say.  “You are officially making a fool out of yourself.”

I walk back over to Nghiem, defeated.  I grab my beer and swig the rest of it.  “Let’s go,” I say.  As we walk out, I flip off the bar with both hands and scream, “Fuck you fucking assholes!  Fuck this bar and everyone in it!”  I stumble a little bit and fall into a paper rack by the front door.

Two guys and a girl are leaving with us, and the girl stops in front of me.  “I feel really bad,” she says.  She opens her purse.  “You can look through my stuff if you want.”

I sigh.  “I don’t want to look through your stuff.  I know you didn’t take it.”

That’s not entirely true.  She could’ve taken it, and she could’ve offered to have me search her to seem less suspicious, I know.  But if that kind of person exists in this world, I would rather not know about it.

Nghiem and I get in my car.  Before I start it, I wrap my arms around my steering wheel and lay my head down, face pressed up against the horn.  “I fucking lost my second iPhone in a month,” I say.  “I couldn’t even afford the first one, but I just had to have it.”

“This isn’t your fault,” James says.  “It’s just shitty.”

“No, it’s my fault,” I say.  “I suck at keeping things.”  I pull my head up.  “Did you know that my mom got on my AT&T plan so I could get this phone after I lost the first one?”

He nods.

I start driving, but since I usually plug my phone in to play through my radio, there’s no music, just dead air.  After a few minutes of silence, I say, “I feel like The Universe hates me right now.”

James shakes his head.  “The Universe doesn’t hate you.  We can fix this.”

“Pfffttt, right,” I say.

“I know how you feel,” James says.  “I felt the same way all last year, like everything was against me.”

Shit.  Nothing like getting blasted with a ball of perspective during a “woe-is-me” moment.

In 2010, James’ year started with the sudden death of his father, which kicked off an unbelievable streak of bad luck.  A hailstorm totaled his brand new car.  (During this storm, a giant piece of hail actually left a huge, hideous bruise on his shoulder, which was ironic because he once told me he wanted his MMA fighter name to be James “Deadly Cloud” Nghiem.)

Within weeks of James driving his replacement car, his dad’s old vehicle, someone broke into it outside Othello’s, the bar where we do stand-up every Tuesday night.  What did the thief steal?  A CD case with a bunch of mix CDs and some inspirational notes that James kept, things his dad used to say.

What kind of person steals things so personal?

A few months later, James let me borrow his expensive video camera, and I forgot to lock my car, and you can probably see where this is going.  The camera, I replaced, but I couldn’t replace it’s content: film of James onstage when he got to open for Todd Barry.  James certainly didn’t deserve that kind of luck.

These are my inner thoughts, but I’m still pouting on the outside.

“Things got better,” James says.  “This year is a really good year for me.  It’s just been kind of shitty for you.”

“Oh, man, I’m only halfway through the year.  I got six more months of this bad luck?”

“No,” he says, not a question in his voice.  “You’re gonna turn this around.”

I really want to believe him.  I really want to believe I’m half as strong as he is.  Because it seems that when things don’t go your way, but you go on, you’re a human that can overcome obstacles.  But when you have the kind of year James had in 2010 and go on, you’re a hero.

I decide before I fall asleep that night that I’m not a hero, but I’m not the kind of person who’s going to let an iPhone break me.

***

“So why do you think the Universe doesn’t want you to have an iPhone?” BradChad Porter asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

He shakes his head.  “Like do you think that maybe one day, we’ll find out that iPhones cause cancer, and then you’ll realize that when people kept stealing yours, really they were saving your life?”

“Maybe.”  I cross my arms and stare out he window of his Saturn.  We’re driving north on I-35 to do nothing, it seems.  He had come to pick me up so I could “run errands” with him, but now that I’m in the car, I think he just feels bad for me.

“I’m blaming this on you, by the way,” I say.

“Me?  Why?”

“Well, you were supposed to hang out with us last night, and if you had, we would’ve stayed in the city, and I wouldn’t have gone to Bill’s, and I’d still have my phone right now.”

“Huh,” he says.  “But maybe I would’ve met you in Norman, and we would’ve gone to Bill’s anyway.  And I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I wasn’t there when you lost your phone because you got to have James there, and he probably reacted appropriately to the situation. I would’ve thought it was hilarious.”

I shrug.  “It was probably pretty humorous.”

“I don’t think you understand,” he says.  “The second you turned to me and said, ‘Oh shit, I can’t find my phone,’ I would’ve laughed right in your face.”

“Good to know,” I say.

“Two iPhones?  Someone stole two phones from you in one month.”

“Don’t forget, someone also stole my GPS system.  And 60 bucks.  And if you go back a few more months, someone stole my iPod and James’ camera out of my car.”

He shakes his head.  “Man, what is your issue with The Universe?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking that maybe my cat and Kevin Bozeman cursed me.”

“What?”

“I found a bouncy ball a few months ago,” I say, “and you know, those are good luck to me, and then I lost it because my stupid cat stole it and hid it somewhere.”

“Wait, your cat stole your bouncy ball?”

“Yeah, I don’t know.  I think she started playing with it during the night, ‘cause she only comes out at night, ‘cause she’s a freak.  But I looked everywhere for that fucking thing, and I couldn’t find it.  So if it was good luck when I found it, it has to be bad luck to lose it, right?  I think she stole my luck.”

Brad laughs.  “Your cat?”

“And around that same time,” I say, “Kevin Bozeman told me that no matter how bad things get, they can always, always get worse.”

“The comedian?  Why did he say that?”

I shrug.  “I don’t know.  I think he thought he was helping me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.  Just that my cat and Kevin Bozeman put a curse on me, and now The Universe hates me.”

“Nope.”  He shakes his head.  “No, I don’t accept that.”

“Well, that’s my theory.”

“Well, it’s wrong.  Your cat and Kevin Bozeman did not place a curse on you.”

I stare out the car window.  “I know it’s just a phone,” I say.  “And in the grand scheme of my life, it’s not important.  I just…I just really liked it.  That’s all.  And I believe in karma, but I don’t get this one.  I would never steal someone’s phone.”

It’s true.  I wouldn’t steal someone’s phone because, for one thing, I know what a pain in the ass it is to deal with Apple, whose motto should be, “We make cool stuff, but we’re dicks about it.”  Or to deal with AT&T, whose motto should be, “We rape you in the ass with rusty metal rods, and we would do it to children if we could, but they’re not old enough to sign our ass-raping contract.”

And most of all, I wouldn’t steal someone’s phone because I know why I bought mine.

I actually bought my first iPhone in Pennsylvania on my way back home from Massachusetts.  At the time, I was driving a U-Haul van with my mom’s stuff crammed in the back, my mom reading some god-awful paperback in the passenger’s seat, and a tiny Chihuahua running back and forth throughout the cab for the entirety of the 28-hour drive.

I stopped at an AT&T store not too far across the Pennsylvania state border because I was fresh off the end of a tortured pseudo-relationship-thing, and I couldn’t bear the static on the radio, the weight of the way my life was looking ahead of me—living with my mom, working all the time, worrying about money, no job, no gigs ahead, no love, no definite future.  I needed a tiny distraction from my life.  I needed to listen to music that I liked, so I bought an iPhone in Pennsylvania to stream music while I drove us to Oklahoma.

And that stupid phone, iPhone #1, well, it got me all the way home.

***

Storms are brewing all around Oklahoma, the threat of tornadoes menacing the state.  Norman and Oklahoma City make it through relatively unharmed, but the threat of a huge twister is enough to shut down Othello’s, so there’ll be no open mic comedy tonight.

I don’t know what to do with myself.  I’ve gone to Othello’s every Tuesday for four years.

I call Brad.  “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.  I was actually going to see if you wanted to meet up.  I have something for you.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Is it a bouncy ball?”

“Do you really think I’d drive all the way to Norman to give you a bouncy ball?”

“I don’t know.”

In the end, I decide to drive to his house to watch movies and, inevitably, talk about comedy until well into the night.

When I walk in, I flop down on his couch and chat with his mom (Yes, he also lives with his mom.  OKC comedians are a sad bunch.), and after a bit, he comes in and hands me a small white envelope.  On the front, it says, “Project iPhone.  From everybody.”

“Oh my God,” I say.  “No way.”  I open it up, and inside, there’s 200 dollars, enough to replace my last phone.  “Who is this from?  Who is everybody?”

“Me, Spencer, Dan, James, and Zach.”  Those are all OKC comics, hilarious people, my friends.

“Oh my God, you guys, I don’t even know what to say.  This is too much.”

“It’s a gift,” Brad says.  “We wanted to do this for you.  We love you, you know.”

“It’s just that I feel like such a brat,” I say.  “I don’t need an iPhone.”

“Well, look,” Brad says.  “You’re moving away from us.  And we can’t give you 10,000 dollars to help you move and to make sure you’ll be okay.  But this, well, this we can do.”

It’s nice to know I have people behind me, even when I’m battling a power so great as The Universe.  I figure this envelope of money is my friends telling me, “Leah, that’s just life.  Don’t let it beat you.”

***

James Nghiem is at my house syncing iPhone #3 with his computer, which I have to do because my computer’s software is too outdated, and this is one of the minor things that make the repeated theft of my phone a terrible nuisance.

This is the third time we’ve done this, and it’s starting to feel very silly.  For the third time, we restore the settings of my very first phone, the one that made the trek from Massachusetts with me, and I get back all the contacts that I had before, even the one name that I’ve since deleted.  I stare at the name of the person I can’t call anymore, a friend that I’ve lost, and consider deleting it for a third time.

No, I’m not going to delete his name.  That’s what I did on the last two phones.  Because this is my very last chance with an iPhone, I decide that I should break the cycle and do something different, no matter how tiny it seems.  I have no plans to call Mr. Man, but I figure it’s all about perspective and attitude, so I can simply change what that name means to me.  Instead of looking at it and thinking about all the things I’ve lost, maybe I’ll look at it and remember all the things I still have, all the lessons I’ve learned from the people I’ve met in all the places I’ve been.

The verdict is still out on whether or not I’m at war with The Universe.  The day I bought Phone #3, someone stole a handful of burned CDs and a couple of new ones out of my car, which I swore I had locked, so the karmic and cosmic mysteries of my made-up bullshit world still remain.

Because life is a story, an ongoing story without an end.  And depending on who you are, that story can be guided by bouncy balls, God, chaos, reason, destiny, or just pure chance.  But even I’m not too cynical to know that when I fall on the ground and scrape up my knees, if I can get back up and keep running forward, The Universe smiles on me.