The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (9 page)

And ten years after the day my mother died, I found myself remembering her written words.
Don’t be pathetic.
I removed my hand from my purse and didn’t check to see if Caleb had called again. And when I arrived home, I found my two best friends, Risa in a skimpy jumpsuit and Sharita in a gray business suit, waiting for me outside my apartment building.

I parked at the curb right in front of them. “I love you guys,” I said as I got out of the car and I pulled them into my arms. “You two are the best friends ever.”

“I know, how fucking amazing are we with this friendship shit?” Risa asked.

“So amazing,” I answered.

We had all finished hugging when my “Tightrope” ringtone went off.

I pulled out my cell and checked the caller ID. It was a 917 number. New York. It must be Caleb. He had mentioned still needing to get his number changed, even though he had moved from Brooklyn to L.A. over six months ago.

He was finally calling me.

“Who is it?” Sharita asked.

I pushed the “Ignore” option and tossed the phone back into my bag, letting Caleb go to voicemail. “Some boy,” I answered. “Want to order a pizza and watch a movie? Benny and Abigail won’t be home until late.”

“I got the black
Karate Kid
on DVD,” Sharita said, pulling a red Netflix envelope out of her large black leather purse.

“Are you serious? How old are we, talking about watching the
Karate Kid
?” Risa asked. “And why are you carrying around Netflix in your purse?”

“It was a good movie. I keep on telling you …”

“I kind of wanted to see that,” I said, since Tammy wasn’t there to play her usual role of Sharita-Risa fight diffuser.

“Okay, fine, if Thursday wants to watch a kid’s movie, too, then I guess I can deal,” Risa said, stringing a skinny arm around my shoulders. She gave me a little squeeze as we all walked into my apartment building.

Yes, marriage is work, but that’s marriage. The first six months of a relationship shouldn’t be hard going, and they most certainly shouldn’t be a lot of work. If the first six months of your relationship isn’t mostly a Hallmark card, get out. If he’s not enthusiastic about you or doesn’t treat you right, or if you find you’re not all that enthusiastic about him or you’re not treating him right, dump him. Because if you two can’t get the easy part right, how the heck do you think you guys are going to handle the hard stuff?

—
The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
by Davie Farrell

THURSDAY

I
had been best friends with Sharita for over a decade. Sharita skipped her midterms to be by my side when my mother died. Sharita even loaned me money to move to Los Angeles after grad school. But at that moment, I was truly considering dumping Sharita as a friend.

“What do you mean you can’t come to my show?” I would have yelled this question, but I had taken the call at work. “You’re seriously bailing on me at the last minute?”

“Marcus just called and he’s got an extra ticket to the Earth, Wind & Fire concert at the Staples Center. Girl, you know how much I love me some Earth, Wind & Fire.”

“Yes, you and my grandma,” I said. “You promised. Bring him along if you want.”

“I know I promised, and I would bring him, except he’s black, and your whole show is about how trifling black men are,” she said, like her ditching me was all my fault.

Reason #1 I didn’t date black men. Black comedians and rappers could throw shade at black woman all day, and black men not only laughed, but also gave them enough money to buy mansions, cars, and even more women for them to make fun of in their routines and songs. But let a black woman do a routine about how crazy black men are—suddenly everybody gets offended.

“I mean, some of your points are funny, but black men already have so many people attacking them. It just feels like you’re ganging up on them,” Sharita said after my first show.

Funny that she never seemed to feel like black men were attacking black women when she bought rap albums back in college or liked black
comedians on Facebook who did routines about how crazy black women were.

“Can I ask why you’re dating a guy that takes himself so seriously that you can’t bring him to the show you promised me you would attend?”

“Did you invite Caleb to the show?” Sharita asked, her voice the sharpest pencil in the making-a-valid-point bucket.

“No, but only because nobody gets invited to see me perform if we haven’t been dating for at least three months.”

“Nobody’s ever made it to three months.”

“Sharita,” I said, hand to brow. “Do you understand that you’re really letting me down here? You promised me you’d come out this time.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Sharita answered.

My fifteen-minute break had come and gone and I could tell that I wasn’t going to be able to make Sharita budge. Have you ever met one of those borderline-autistic genius types that could tell you how much 1,623,426 times 30,748,642 was without blinking an eye but couldn’t, like, tie his shoe? That’s kind of how Sharita was. She was brilliant with money but just plain stupid when it came to men. And she could become weirdly blind to the feelings of her friends when an eligible black man came sniffing around.

“I expect you to come to my next show with three guests,” I told her.

“One,” Sharita countered. This wasn’t our first negotiation. “It’s hard to get anyone out to anything with a two-drink minimum. Those drinks are so overpriced.”

“You’re accountants. You can afford it,” I shot back.

“We’re accountants, so we know when we’re being gypped.”

“Two. Final offer.”

“Fine,” Sharita said.

“Fine,” I echoed back. Then I mumbled, “Love you,” even though I didn’t really feel like saying it. But my mother’s death had taught me that the last thing you said to loved ones should always be “I love you.” Because those might be the last words you ever got to say to them.

“Love you, too, girl,” Sharita answered before hanging up.

RISA

T
hursday called me to complain about Sharita on her lunch hour. I wasn’t surprised to hear she flaked on Thursday’s show. Sharita is the queen of doing the things she wants to do and finding a reason not to do the things she doesn’t want to do.

On one hand I felt bad for Thursday, since I wouldn’t be there either because of my Space Camp show. On the other hand, during my many years as a lesbian with straight friends, I’d noticed that straight girls tended to fall out with each other when one or both of them got into a new relationship. Things they didn’t mind about each other before suddenly became major problems, which usually didn’t get resolved until one or both of them broke up with whomever they were dating and decided that the other wasn’t so bad after all. Half the time, Thursday and Sharita couldn’t remember what they got so mad about a few weeks later. I’d have to remind them, just because I like instigating shit.

But the lunchtime bitch session took my mind off that night’s show for an hour. It also gave me the chance to smoke five Parliaments on my balcony, which killed a little bit of the hunger and anxiety chewing up my stomach.

I was still trying to figure out the set list. Should I play all new stuff or should I make some room for a couple of the Sweet Janes hits like the Space Camp manager wanted? It might remind the Gravestone Records guy that I used to be a rock star.

Used to be.

On one hand, the reminder might seem desperate. On the other hand, it might be needed.

After I got off the phone with Thursday, I decided to spend the next two hours choosing an outfit while eating a Luna bar really slowly. Risa Rule: I only ate food-food between the hours of one a.m. and five a.m., but I
always nibbled down a couple of energy bars on show days, because if I didn’t I might get too weak to perform and then faint on stage. I found that one out the hard way a few years ago, and was still paying off the E.R. bill since I didn’t have insurance.

After settling on a rainbow-striped bikini top and neon-green skinny jeans worn under my illegal R2D2 hoodie (which I snagged off Etsy before Lucas’s lawyers came in and shut the designer down), I was still no closer to a set-list decision.

So I called Tammy. Voicemail. Why wasn’t she ever there when I needed her? The two of us were supposed to be friends. I even introduced her to Thursday and Sharita after she made that common pretty-girl complaint that she didn’t have any female friends, and now she was all cozy inside my group. But she rarely picked up the phone these days. I considered texting her to explain that “friends” don’t always send “friends” to fucking voicemail.

But I really did need help with this set-list issue, so I called Thursday back. She told me to play the Sweet Janes songs. I said that it kind of went against my principles.

She said, “We’re too old to still have principles. I would kill for the chance to sell out.”

Then she made me hold on while she wrote that one down to use in a future routine.

THURSDAY

T
he comedy business was an interesting one, because toward the beginning of a career, small comedy club owners didn’t really care how good a comedian was. Small comedy clubs weren’t really looking for the next Adam Sandler or Wanda Sykes. They wanted to get butts in the seats. So it didn’t matter how badly a comic performed. If they had at least ten people in the two-drink minimum audience, then they’d always be invited back.

Thanks to my grad school connections, I had gotten over fifty people to come out the first time I played the Laugh Out Loud in North Hollywood. But tonight I had exactly zero guests on my roster. After arriving at the club, I avoided Louis, the Laugh Out Loud’s squat and buttoned-up owner, and slunk back to the green room, which was actually painted dark blue and outfitted with a mishmash of furniture repurposed from trash-collection curbs all over the city.

“Hey, Thursday,” most of the other guys called out when I came in.

There weren’t a lot of female comics who lasted more than a few months in the harsh world of L.A. stand-up and there were even fewer black females. So when I walked into any comedy club’s dingy not-actually-green room, the other inhabitants usually knew me, even if I couldn’t return the greeting properly since they were all mostly Jewish or Italian and either really skinny or really overweight. And though I had learned many of their names at one point, I had ceased being able to tell them apart and had resorted to labeling them by their acts. Like Former Drug Addict Comic, who was running his routine under his breath in the corner, and Still Lives With His Mother Comic, who sat on one of the few couches without springs sticking out, with his head between his knees—probably trying not to hyperventilate. More than any other profession, I thought, stand-up came
with the most stage fright. Yes, even more stage fright than acting. After all, actors didn’t have to worry about their audiences heckling them.

“Hey, guys,” I said, keeping my greeting vague. “Looks like a good house.” The better-than-average turnout made me feel less guilty about not having anyone in the audience myself.

“Nobody big, though,” Extreme Physical Comedy Comic said.