I Can Barely Take Care of Myself (3 page)

Blake
was the opposite of what I was faced with in my real life. He was a free spirit who stole cans of tuna fish from the grocery store while I was saddled with student loans, credit card debt, and the reality of moving back in with my parents. Blake spent his days wearing essential oils like Egyptian musk, reading books about the Stanislavsky acting method, and playing the drums, while I was gearing
up to take a nine-to-five job in the sales department of the Boston Ballet.

Once I moved back in with my parents, I just assumed that it was tacitly understood that as a grown woman, I’d sleep over at Blake’s
apartment sometimes. It’s not like he could come over and sleep with me. I had a single bed with wheels. One thrust and my bed would be on the other side of my room and my mom would probably
yell, “You’re scratching the floor up when you scrape the wheels against it like that, Jennifah!”

I’d assumed that four years of college had matured both my parents and me. I’d assumed that since I was twenty-one, there was no way they could think that I was still a virgin. (I mean, not that I think they sat around thinking about it. That would be creepy. Although I imagine if I were married
and raising a teenage kid, their sex life would in fact be all I’d be able to think about. If I had a boy, I’d stop walking in his room unannounced once he turned eleven for fear that I’d catch him masturbating. If I had a teenage daughter, I imagine I’d sit there trying to watch TV at night but instead be wondering,
Is she out having sex right now?
Do husbands and wives have quiet nights at home
when their teenagers aren’t around and casually throw down, “How was your day, honey? Hey, do you think Susie has lost her virginity?”)

My parents were very strict with me growing up. I wasn’t allowed to have a telephone or a boy in my bedroom. If a boy happened to call me, I had to talk on the kitchen phone. My only hope for privacy was dragging the cord around the corner from the kitchen to
crouch and whisper underneath our upright piano in the dining room. Sometimes I had to sneak into my parents’ room to use their phone. That was even worse because the line would get staticky once my mom picked up the downstairs extension to eavesdrop. I don’t know what she thought she was going to hear. When I was in high school, I had no idea what talking dirty was. The only earful my mom got was
overhearing me nervously ask Adam the cute skateboarder, “Um, so, what’s your favorite Cure song?”

During my senior year of college, I had lived in an off-campus apartment with two boys, Tim and
David. It was like a reverse
Three’s Company,
except unlike Jack Tripper, I didn’t have to pretend to be gay in front of the landlord and I had no interest in seeing Tim or David naked. They were like
brothers to me. (I never had a brother, but I’m assuming it feels like having a male friend whom you don’t want to bone.) When I told my very Catholic mother that I’d found somewhere to live . . . and it was with
two guys,
she said no right away. Actually she said more than no. What she said was, “Jennifah, the boys will rape you.”

I don’t think my mom quite understood the difference between
a rapist and a male roommate. It’s hard enough to share an apartment with a friend, because things can get pretty awkward if you owe him rent money. I can’t imagine how delicate a situation it would be in the kitchen the morning after your roommate has forced himself on you.

Tim and David drove out to my parents’ house in the suburbs to meet them, so that my mom could put faces to her daughter’s
future rapists’ names. Their goofy demeanor and general innocent vibe won her over. She agreed to cosign the lease and let me move in with the guys who were such sweethahts—and I’m happy to say they never sexually violated me.

EVEN THOUGH I didn’t think I had to ask permission to sleep at Blake’s house now that I was a college graduate, it wasn’t really a one-on-one, eye-contact-filled conversation
that I wanted to have with my mom. I knew it would be awkward enough for her to see me leaving the house with an overnight bag. On my first night back, I finished unpacking and setting up my childhood bedroom to my liking and then turned right around to head into Boston to spend the night with Blake. I left a note on the kitchen table for my mom and dad—
Staying at Blake’s tonight
—and hopped in
my dad’s spare Oldsmobile.

Blake and I were tangled up in his paisley sheets while Nag Champa incense burned in swirls around our heads, and my parents didn’t know where Blake lived and had no way of contacting me. I think cell phones existed in 1996 but nobody I knew had one yet—if
they did, it was in the form of a car phone with a long cord connected to the cigarette lighter. My folks never
crossed my mind once. Why would I go home for the night? I’m an adult in the city and there’s no need to drive home at two in the morning—and I have an irrational fear of getting in my car in the middle of the night and forgetting to check the backseat, only to be stuck on the road with a monster behind me, ready to strangle away. The next day, I walked in the front door and saw my mom sitting at
the kitchen table. It was unusual for her to still be in her bathrobe at noon. That was her physical signal for “I’m so upset that I can’t even get dressed.” My mom sat there and flipped the pages of her newspaper very quickly, staring at me instead of the articles. I got the same feeling I used to get in my stomach when I was a little kid and I was in trouble. (Not that as a kid I ever got in trouble
for sneaking out to sleep with my stoner boyfriend, but you know what I mean.) My mom said, “You didn’t come home last night.” I said, “I left a note.” She said, “I know you did. Your father and I found it to be very bold.” I said, “I have a boyfriend!”

And she said, “If you live under this roof, you live under my rules, and we do not allow sleeping over at a boyfriend’s. If you want to be a
trash bag, then you get your own house and behave like a trash bag there.”

I’d never heard of being called a “trash bag” before, as opposed to just “trash.” My mom was really throwing down. If we were the Real Housewives of Massachusetts, she would have ripped a crucifix off her neck and stabbed a hole in my Red Sox T-shirt. When I think about it, it’s actually kind of a compliment, because my
mom was implying that I’m strong, durable, and can be relied upon for clean up after a house party. I decided to respond like an adult, and since I didn’t know how to be an adult, I got hysterical and stamped my feet. I slammed my fists on the creaky kitchen table and took a stand against living for free with my parents and driving their car. I screamed a few things about being in love and how they
couldn’t keep us apart. I grabbed the suitcase that I’d just unpacked the day
before and started repacking. Had they not assumed I’d shared my bed with boys in college? Maybe they hadn’t. When your daughter is in a sketch comedy troupe, maybe all you assume is that she isn’t getting any.

At the last minute, I realized the Oldsmobile wasn’t really
my
car and I’d have to walk with my stuffed suitcase
to the commuter rail train that came once every three hours.
Fuck it,
I thought, and like a grown-up, I dragged my suitcase sans wheels down the street and a few flights of platform stairs, where I pouted and waited for a train heading to the city limits.

Blake lived in a part of Boston called Brookline Village, with three other guys. I figured what’s one more person? When I arrived with my suitcase,
his roommates were happy to see me and I went into Blake’s room and immediately unpacked my things and hung them in his closet. While he was at class, I got all domestic, cleaned up his incense ashes, rinsed out his bong, and put his dirty clothes in the hamper. Later that night as we lay entwined on his futon, Blake asked, “So, have you thought about where you want to get an apartment?”

“Oh,”
I said, trying to conceal my disappointment, but it was hard to play it cool with a quivering lip and a bridal magazine in my hand.

Blake said, “I’m sorry, baby, but I can’t have a live-in girlfriend my senior year in college.” I ignored the fact that him calling me “baby” made me cringe. Sometimes Blake really thought he was a member of Earth, Wind & Fire. I told him that he needed to grow up.
He came back at me with, “I’m not supposed to be grown up yet. You’re twenty-one years old and a college graduate. You’re the one who needs to grow up.”

The next day, after Blake let me know that our committed relationship couldn’t handle the extra commitment of permanently sharing his bed and his stolen cans of tuna, I went by myself to a party. My friend Zoey had just come back from New York
City and was carrying around a copy of their free weekly newspaper the
Village Voice.
There was an article about a new alternative comedy show on the Lower East Side called
Eating It
at a bar called the Luna Lounge. Although it wasn’t a normal “comedy club,” it was highly respected and a place where all of the coolest comedians went to try out new material. Getting up in front of people and just
sort of talking had been something I’d wanted to explore ever since I was fifteen and I saw that episode of
Beverly Hills 90210
where Brenda Walsh started hanging out at a spoken-word open mic night at a coffee shop. She called herself a “hippie witch,” moved out of her parents’ house for a short stint, and sat on a stool, telling stories about high school.

I never went apartment hunting in Boston.
After that party, I decided that becoming a stand-up comedian and getting my start in Manhattan was my destiny. If Blake thought that I should grow up and my parents thought that I wasn’t adult enough to sleep at my boyfriend’s house, I’d show everyone. I’d move to the toughest city in the world. I’d wanted to live in New York City ever since I saw my first black-and-white photo of James Dean
smoking in a Manhattan diner. Sadly, I can’t say that I’ve grown out of my urges to do things because I think that technically, if I were photographed doing them, it would make a really cool and iconic picture.

Even though the “plan” was to be a serious actress, I had always secretly wanted to be a stand-up comedian. It’s safe to say I had about as much ambition and understanding of how to actually
become a stand-up comedian as my mom had of how to become a high-priced call girl. But that article in the
Village Voice
seemed like it was written specifically for me to see. The closest I had come to doing comedy since This Is Pathetic was becoming a member of a local Boston improv group. (Improvisation—that fine art where a group of people stand onstage with nothing prepared and one of them
asks the audience for a suggestion like an occupation or a location and someone inevitably shouts out, “Rectal exam!”) I enjoyed messing around onstage and making people laugh, but I wasn’t great at playing with others. It’s not that I don’t enjoy sharing the spotlight—I just don’t like having to be responsible for other people.
Improv is all about supporting your teammates. (By the way, I hate
when anything other than a professional sports team refers to itself as a “team.” It has this air of forced camaraderie that has always made me uncomfortable, along with people who talk in baby voices to babies and to adults during sex.) Improv is similar to war in that you’re expected to do anything to save the life of your partner. And as with war, people don’t really understand what improv is
“good for.”

Improv requires one thing I lack that I think all mothers need—that basic instinct to put someone else first. I can barely forgive myself for the time when I negged Billy from my improv troupe onstage. He said, “I have a gift for you,” and my first instinct was to say, “No you don’t.” The scene died right then and there. See what happens when I try to nurture something? I know it
seems dramatic to relate destroying an improv scene to possibly destroying a child’s life, but improv and child rearing are not so different. Both are jobs that people volunteer for and complain about endlessly, and they bore everyone around them as they talk about the process.

I broke the news to Blake that I was moving. He was surprised, since only twenty-four hours earlier I’d wanted to settle
down and play house. I explained to him that if I wanted to do something as drastic as become a stand-up comedian, I had to really make a bold move and change cities. I couldn’t become a new person in my old hometown. Blake agreed. He always agreed with me when I spoke excitedly and loudly about something—even if I was talking out of my ass.

My parents had changed the locks on me after I decided
to leave them and attempt to move in with Blake. I never understood their reasoning for that move. Wouldn’t that only ensure that I’d spend even more nights having patchouli-scented sex with my boyfriend at his off-campus apartment? I had to arrange a time so they could let me into my own bedroom to get the rest of my things. Blake was in the driveway, hiding from my folks and manning the small
U-Haul truck that I’d rented to get me to Brooklyn, where I was going to live with my old college friends Amy and Ed. I didn’t even have
any furniture, just a couple of lamps and a wicker nightstand. The inside of our U-Haul looked like a Pier 1 had been renovated by a crackhead.

As ballsy as it may have been to move to Brooklyn without knowing anything about it—except what I’d seen in the opening
credits of
Welcome Back, Kotter
as a kid—I was still a wimp in a lot of ways. I knew I had my parents’ love but I wanted their approval. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mom and dad that my reason for moving to New York City was that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. They never said point-blank, “Don’t become a stand-up comedian,” but I think that’s an implied desire that parents have for
their child from the moment he or she is born. That and “Don’t become a stripper or a junkie, or a musician.”

Being a comic is even harder than being in a band. A stand-up comedian wanders cities alone, saying dirty things into germ-ridden microphones to drunk people, whereas a musician sings things into a germ-ridden microphone to drunk people who at least want to give them free drugs and sleep
with them after. So for the time being, I just told them that I was moving to New York City to get another job in some kind of box office and to start going on auditions as an actress—really put that BFA in theater arts to work.