I'm Not High (9 page)

I’d continued to see Kelly, partly because I was mad at Kristen for orchestrating the bet. And that made Kristen mad. Apparently she was annoyed she hadn’t won the bet. The whole situation confused me. “Does she
like me
like me?” I wondered. We’d spent New Year’s Eve together, gone to Busch Gardens, hung out nightly, and I never had a clue. It hadn’t come up in all the nights we’d spent talking, and now we
weren’t
.

We froze each other out for weeks. I stopped doing stuff with Kelly. It was just too weird, and I didn’t want to be in the middle anymore. Their senior prom was coming up, and though we’d all decided long ago to go as a group of friends, that was probably not happening now, and I didn’t care to find out. Still, as the days went by, I knew I was being foolish. Kristen had been my lifeline since I’d moved to Florida. It dawned on me that I should be the bigger person and not let a little drama ruin what we’d built. Something nagged me to go to her house and talk.

One night, Kristen’s front door was open, and as I pulled up to my parents’ house, I could see her sitting in the living room, watching TV. I got the guts together to approach her. We met in her breezeway and sat down and talked for hours.

I told her that if she was really into me, she should have let me know from the get-go. She shouldn’t have felt like she had to hide anything. We reached an understanding and put the bet behind us. It was a great talk. She also told me she’d bumped into an old friend from Boston who was in town and wanted to take her to the prom. She wanted to know if I’d take Kelly and we could still all go as a group. I figured, why not? This night felt like a resolution to me, and that was important.

As we worked things out, I felt the need to kiss Kristen so bad. I had an overwhelming feeling. Not a romantic one. Not a sexual one. It was more like this overwhelming godly soul kiss. It was unexplainable. It felt right just to kiss her on the forehead and that’s what I did.

Everything was peaceful. It was one of those rare, perfectly satisfying moments, utterly calm and serene. I felt clarity, which obviously, at that time, was in pretty short supply for me.

Kristen died in a car accident the next day. She was a passenger in a car driven by one of her friends, and about a mile from where we lived, it collided with a truck.

I remember driving up to my house that day and seeing a ton of people fanned out across her lawn. Too many people at such a strange time to signify anything other than the fact that something really heavy and really bad had just gone down. My sister was outside. She grabbed me and ushered me into my parents’ house and told me what happened, because she didn’t want any freaked-out kids to just bumrush me and tell me. The only friends I’d made there were through Kristen. She was the glue for all of us.

I was in a fog for a couple days until the wake. It was the first time a death had ever hit me that close. Her dad lived in Boston and he showed up at her house beforehand. He made a point of walking over to talk to me.

“I just want to thank you for being a great friend to Kristen,” he said.

“You
know
me? ” I asked, dumbfounded.

“She talked about you all the time,” he said.

To me, Kristen’s wake was so morbid. It was my first real funeral. Pictures of her were everywhere. Chairs were set up around her casket. Everyone was looking at her. Nobody spoke. You walked in, kneeled before the coffin, then sat down. I needed to get out of there. I went out to the parking lot with some of the friends she’d introduced me to. A couple of girls, and a guy named Ed. I liked them all.

“Kristen wouldn’t want this,” I said, exasperated. “This is depressing.”

So I just started riffing on each person who was there. I was imitating Kristen’s voice. It was coming from her. I was acting as if she was in heaven, looking down at us, and what she would be saying. It was pure comedy. People gathered around and soon they were laughing.

“Is this right? ” Ed asked. “Should we be laughing right now? ”

I didn’t know. Periodically, I would stop and people would encourage me to keep going. It was like a strange, out-of-body experience. Like I was watching myself do this while channeling Kristen’s sense of humor and voice. When I was done, there was a circle of about thirty people surrounding me, and I said, “That’s what Kristen would want right now. Not for us to sit around mourning. Let’s celebrate her.”

At her burial, I hung around until everyone left, and then I talked to her grave. “I’m sorry for not being with you that day,” I said. “That was stupid.” She had a class photography project that she wanted me to help with, and I blew it off. I was purposely late. She had waited around her house for me to show, then got fed up and left with a friend, and I never saw her again.

“Listen,” I said to her grave. “I’ve got to get back into doing stand-up comedy again. I saw firsthand the healing power of comedy and it was huge.”

(Now, you might be saying, “Breuer, this is getting deep and heavy,” and to that I’d reply, “I’m only just getting started.”)

Back at Kristen’s house, family and friends had gathered, and again, the scene was too much for me. I stepped outside, right in front of her house. The sky was clear and blue, but directly above Kristen’s house was a perfect circular rainbow around the sun. I know there’s a term for this phenomenon,
sun dogs
, but it was like a movie scene. Why did it happen at this exact time?

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, so I asked her friends and family to come outside and take a look. Some guests, along with Kristen’s mother, began weeping. Later, Kristen’s mom came to me and handed me a stack of all of her handwritten poems. Only then did I realize the depths of what she felt for me. We had shared something amazing that had been built on friendship and communication, not just stereotypical, fickle teen dating. We’d made a bond that wasn’t based on anything superficial, just mutual honesty and openness. I don’t think I even knew that was what having a girlfriend was all about yet. I’d totally felt a similar bond at times with my family, and some of the people on my block back in Valley Stream, but here was a girl who, very quickly, I completely connected with, who never judged me. In the end, that helped me focus on what I wanted and who I was trying to become.

And here’s another strange thing: I got asked to go to a surprise birthday party in Sarasota, Florida, last year. I was at home in New Jersey, making dinner with Dee when I found out about it. I turned to her and said, “I don’t know why, but I feel like there’s another reason that’s bringing me to Florida.”

“What reason? ” she asked, pulling apart some broccoli spears. “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I know the party will be a lot of fun, but something else is calling me there.”

“Whatever,” Dee said, smirking. She’d been down this path before with me. More than once.

A day later it hit me. It had been in my subconscious for a while. I came back to Dee said, “I need to talk to Kristen’s brother. I need to reconnect with Sean and talk with him about his sister. But I have no idea how I am going to find him. And I don’t know why this Florida thing is on my mind. Last I heard he was living back in Boston.”

I didn’t give it much more thought. I flew down to Florida. Went to the party. Had a great time. Then this Sean thing began to weigh on my mind. The next day I drove back to the Tampa airport early. I was sitting in the parking lot lamenting on how I wished I had seen Sean while I was here or at least find out for sure where he was living. My time here was almost over and I didn’t do it. Then I asked God. I said, “If there’s a way you can bring Sean into my life right now, just do it, God. Every time I think of something like this, it happens. So I know you can do it, God.”

I turned in my rental car and went in to board my flight. At the Tampa airport, the security station and X-ray machine are right in front of the tram that takes you to other terminals. I showed my ID to the security person and started walking through security toward the tram, and I heard my name.

“Jim? ”

I turned around and saw a heavyset guy whom I didn’t recognize. “How are you doing?” I said, thinking it was a fan. “Nice to meet you.”

And the guy looked at me and said, “Jim. It’s me, Sean.”

“Sean? ” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “Kristen’s brother.”

I thought I was going to pass out.

“Oh, my God,” I said, smiling. “What are you doing here? ”

“Flying in from Boston to visit my parents,” he said, nodding out toward the runways. “I just landed.”

I had to laugh as I explained to him what was going on. “Dude, if you knew the events in my head going on up until this moment you’d lose your mind! I’ve been thinking a lot about you. I really felt, for some reason, I’d run into you down here.”

A Lesson from Steve Harvey ... and a Few Others, Too

After Kristen passed, I put my mind and energy on comedy full force. I was watching TV at my parents’ one night and Eddie Murphy was on
The Arsenio Hall Show
. As he sat with Arsenio, he was talking about what it took to make it. At a certain point, the words coming out of Eddie’s mouth seemed to be meant for me. “Commit 100 percent to your dream, Breuer. What the hell are you doing taking hotel management classes? ” That was more than enough for me. I got into the game, and made enough of a splash on the local scene that I was spending a lot of nights as the house emcee at Ron Bennington’s Comedy Scene in Clearwater.

Sunday night was open mic night at the Comedy Scene, and Steve Harvey was doing the last of six shows following that. Florida, by the way, would prove to be a great training ground: In my time down there, I’d open for comics like Carrot Top, Larry the Cable Guy, Paula Poundstone, and Richard Jeni. Anyway, Steve had been the headliner since Tuesday. I was emceeing, after having opened for him a couple of nights beforehand.

I stuck around to catch his final set, and after Steve was done performing, he walked by, flashed me a smile, then paused and said stoically, “Hey, I wanna talk to you.” Any time a veteran comedian cared to take a minute or two to dispense some wisdom, I was all ears. But looking at him, I could see a deep intention. Like he
had
to share something with me. I was thinking, “Oh jeez, why me? Is this another one of those heavy things? Or is he about to tell me that I totally suck at comedy, and he doesn’t want to see me continue sucking in such a horrific way? ”

We sat down across from one another in a booth up in the back of the club. He was wearing a beige suit, and as he hunched forward, he loosened his black patterned tie and dabbed at some residual sweat on his forehead with a napkin. He looked around at the nearly empty room and remained very serious. “Forget all those motherf-ers up there tonight, you’ve got something, kid,” he whispered. “Being around here this week, observing you, watching your act, I can see it. I know you have it in your heart.” He beat on his chest lightly with his fist. “You’re in it for the long haul. I can feel your passion when you’re onstage.”

I was speechless. It turned out I didn’t need to say much, anyway. Steve had it covered.

“Okay, okay,” he said, conceding that I was not perfect. “One thing you need to work on is your pacing, you hit the stage like a roller coaster at its peak.” He brought his hand up in the air, then slammed it down onto the table very fast. “Then
whoosh,
you go screaming down that track.”

I nodded. I knew what he meant. I was young and full of energy, and I confidently performed with a golden cross dangling from my left ear while wearing a silk shirt, Capezio (the ultimate
Miami Vice
-meets-Bon Jovi brand) dress pants, and, you got it, Capezio shoes. I was a man on fire when I was onstage, and I wanted to slay the audience.

“You wanna bring them up here,” he continued. “Get them really peaking, then you can fly down that track together. And then you slowly bring them back up again. You can’t be at the peak the whole damn set! You’ll burn people out.

“Keep working on your material, Jim,” he said. “You’ve got a gift, and that means you’ve got as good a shot as anyone. A better shot than most. But you’ve got to want it.”

“I do,” I said.

Steve held up his closed fist. “This is where you are right now.” He opened it, wiggled his fingers, pointed them in all directions, and said, “And this is where you wanna get to,” before closing them again back into a fist.

One by one, he opened each finger back up. “Family,” he said, sticking out his thumb. “This represents your family. Never forget your blood.”

Then he opened his index finger and said, “Dedication. Dedicate yourself to your craft. Respect it. Every club you go to, you may see someone with a little more talent, someone in a better spot, whatever. Look close enough—you’ll see their passion and how hard they’ve worked to get to where they need to be. Do the same.”