When we left off last week: During a pay-to-meet session with a respected
casting director my mind kept drifting to the married lifetime I’d left behind (seriously,
I’d been married longer than most open mic comics have been on the planet!) and
my now altered life. I didn’t “change horses in mid-stream.” I got off the horse, walked into the stream,
got pulled into an undertow and there was no lifeguard on duty… I should have had a snack before this meeting with Twinkie Byrd, even her name makes me hungry.
Divorce was a heart breaking, game changing monkey
wrench in my family, income and eating habits.
Tribeca offered everything just
outside my door, or within walking distance: dim sum in Chinatown, brunch in
the Village, lunch around the corner at Nobu, dinner in Little Italy, birthdays
and anniversaries celebrated right across the street at Tribeca Grill. My gastronomic choices off Brooklyn’s Malcolm
X Blvd. were pretty much limited to a proliferation of plexiglass protected
Chinese fast-food take- out joints. No
Zagat rated restaurants, designer name boutiques, or comfy new movie theaters
nearby now. Within walking distance, I
had street after street sporting a two per block minimum of store front
churches and African hair braiding shops.
Don’t get it twisted. The heart of Bed-Stuy boasts wide tree lined
streets with the occasional mansion dotting row upon row of brownstone and
limestone landmark homes. And THAT is
why in spite of her riotous history; Bed-Stuy was slowly but unmistakably
becoming the go to gentrification destination of white folks fleeing $2,000 -
$3,000 a month Manhattan shoebox size studios shared with 2 roommates. Black long time brownstone owners were
cashing in selling their homes in a bubble inflated market. Or they doubled (sometimes tripled) the local
rent on the gentrifying influx happy to finally have space, ornate woodwork, no
roommates and a monthly outlay reduced by hundreds
of dollars. Through providence and timing only slightly ahead of the trend, I
found in a century old brownstone, on a short street wedged between Crown
Heights and Bushwick, an apartment I could afford. BTW, time would tell, I really couldn’t
afford it.
Dollar signs danced in my head as I calculated
how silence had dominated my 5 minute @ $8 per minute session with this casting
director, who was going to instantaneously
change my career a.k.a. my life.
Finally Twinkie (her real name) put down her pen and fixed me with a
penetrating stare. Where do you see yourself? She asked.That’s when one of the voices in my head did
a double take.
Just one of seven voices residing in my head, the Martha Raye / Pearl Bailey / Carol Burnett hydra
a.k.a.-
Martha Bailey Burnett
Martha Bailey Burnett, is especially fond
of physical comedy: double takes, pratfalls, spit takes and the like. The pause following Martha Bailey Burnett’s
double take, gave me the opportunity to shut her down before she responded (out
loud) with an ostensibly comedic but obviously sarcastic rant about “having
paid her dues”… “breaking back into
show business”… and “a job that rendered more than a negative balance after
rent, food and utilities!”
by Helene "Oh For The Love Of God I Am Forever Forgetting It Is Wednesday" Gresser
1. I actually got up before my guy, and made HIM coffee in the French press coffeepot, which takes FOREVER, because the water takes, like, 127 minutes to boil, and then there is the waiting for the coffee grounds to steep, and the insanely hard "pressing" of the press-thingy, and then the preparing of the creamer and sugar in the cups. After doing this, I adore my dude even MORE, because he does this for me EVERY time I spend the night. I wake to sleep, and take my waking SLOW.
2. I went to a networking luncheon, to network for one of my three "day jobs" (aka NOT PERFORMING,) which was cool, but ironically it took place at the Friar's Club, a private club that consists mainly of entertainment professionals. And most pro comics are members. I love this club, and long to be a member, but cannot afford the thousands of dollars for the initiation and yearly fees. I burn with envy for my friends who are members. And I was there "networking" for a job that I do just to pay some bills. Just kill me now.
3. I dropped off keys for the new tenant of an apartment I rented for my real estate jorb. I told the new tenant to buy wood glue and fix a TINY and completely unnoticeable barely-jiggly-unless-you-futzed-with-it-for-seventeen-minutes-straight threshold himself, as otherwise the apartment is PRISTINE and PERFECT, and please don't delay moving in because the owner probably will not take the time to buy the 3.99 wood glue herself and have it fixed. I should have just gone to the Duane Reade and bought the damn glue and done it myself. Maybe I will tomorrow. I am that kind of real estate agent.
4. I tried to write my blentry when I got home, but my very nice roomies were watching "Spartacus" or something and all I could hear was screaming and violent fighting coming from the show, so I turned on the radio and got so distracted by the combination of the screaming and the Clear Channel-dictated-thus-completely-predictable song list that I was rendered idea-less and prayed for my guy to call and rescue me from the cacophony. He did.
5. I am sitting at my guy's computer typing this now, eating delicious pita-pizza he made for me, and got up to sing "Why Do You Build Me Up, Buttercup" to him. Now "I'm A Believer" is playing, which is the perfect antidote to "Buttercup." I am going to sign off now, and try to be less cynical.
6. I only smoked three-quarters of a pack today. That's pretty good, right???
My recent blogs have shared self-examination on matters of
sexuality.While some readers are
entertained and others horrified, the quieter ones who e-mail me privately are
the ones most grateful that I even am willing to bring such matters into the
light.They are female and usually
feeling lonely in the load they carry.It is what helps me stay on track when I’m having my own doubts about
continuing to write in such an open way.
Pulling
things out of the darkness is what I do.It was necessary for my own emotional survival in life, and it is what
truly helps.It does mean I allow myself
to be open to the world.With that,
comes good and bad.
In teaching, it is such a high to hear the light bulbs going
on in heads.People, many of whom
haven’t had that experience, feel so good when they can see what they couldn’t
before.Just knowing lights can be lit
is life-changing.
Even in my comedy, I often am simply shining a light on what
we do as humans, particularly in heterosexual behavior, how we treat each other
and ourselves.I’m not looking to get my
jokes at anyone’s expense.I think what we
really do and feel deserves looking at and is often funny in a ridiculous
way.Some people, both men and women, seem
to feel uncomfortable and might prefer we don’t examine our lives.Some are very disapproving of my unladylike
ways.Ah, too fuckin‘ bad.Once a woman came over to me after a show and
told me her husband was going nuts asking her if what “that female comic” said
was true and going more nuts as she kept telling him “yes.”I love these stories.But the most touching for me took place when
I was quite new at doing stand-up.I’d
been doing it less than a year, and I was fortunate to be included in a show at
Therapy (a mainly gay male bar in NYC) booked by comic Adam Sank.I was still doing my original 5-minute
set.It took on a lot of heavy duty
subjects in a very comical way.But the
underlying anger of my material was clear, and the path to funny was clear.The audience, mostly gay men and some women
friends of theirs, and I were on the same page from before I got on stage.I was very lucky.I think they liked my look and friendly
demeanor (I’m not a comic that makes you regret sitting up front).Plus when Adam introduced me, they heard that
my comedy was on a feminist radio program (Fran Luck’s “Joy of Resistance”),
and that seemed to be a plus.We were
all coming from a place of oppression.So when I got up there, nervous and shaking, I actually felt liked already.That helped my set go very well.I was proud.They don’t all go so well.Here’s
the touching part.When I went to the
unisex bathroom, which was clean, beautiful, and perfectly lit for looking in
the mirror, a young woman (looked Philippine maybe) looked at me and said that
she was sorry to bother me but that I was great.Then she lost her ability to speak and began
to cry.I was washing my hands and said,
“First of all, you’re not bothering me.And,” referring to her tears,
“I understand.”I dried my hands on my
pants to hurry and hug her.I really did
understand that I touched hurting spots for her.She was grateful I put it into words, but she
wasn’t at a place inside where she could laugh yet.We just hugged.“I really do understand,” I said, without
ever knowing her details or her name.
My then-husband told me, “No matter what you do, it’s always
social work in some way.”
It was the brave women who didn’t shut up and who risked being
thought of as crazy or too extreme who helped me so much in my life to have
hope that life -- even on a woman-hating planet -- was worth living and could
have much beauty in it.It was women
like that who gave me words when I so badly needed to know words existed for
what I was feeling.When there are words
for it, it would make me feel convinced I wasn’t alone because the words would
not exist for me alone.
So here I was being that woman for this pained person.It felt so much bigger than comedy to
me.Comedy was just the avenue that
reached this soul.
I am not striving to limit what I say and how I say it.I had once been the scared first-grader whose
teacher told my grandmother that I was too shy and afraid to raise my
hand.She pointed out that when she
called on me anyway, I knew the answer.Of course the teacher didn’t know I was under daily threat of being
given away to a foster home if I spoke about anything that went on in our
house, blah, blah, blah, so yeah, I was too quiet and too afraid.She got that part right.I’d like to continue growing up and out from
there.It’s not easy but so worth it.
In my adult years, there continue to be special people who
welcome my voice (as opposed to trying to shut me up, and I can’t express how
tremendous that is to me who has felt so suffocated) and continue to help light
my path in ways.One of those people is
Alexandra Jacoby, a woman very worth Googling.And it was at her Vagina Salon, that I was introduced to this
wonderfulness below.
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like to help give ourselves
back to us … so much has been stolen
and buried.Vagina owners and vagina
visitors, the next 3 minutes could potentially change the quality of the rest
of your life.
Apparently Friday was International Women's Day, so in honor of said day, here's how we celebrated!
While you may be thinking that I had drastic surgery, I assure you, the above photo is the ad for soy sauce (duh!) that was hanging in Crystal Nails where we had our pedicures!!!
Yep. We Three Women (hear us ROAR!) had ourselves some fabulous footwork done. Three fancy ladies of leisure out for a day of purty.
My neighbor to my right... I have to admire A) A woman comfortable enough with her femininity not to shave or B) A man comfortable enough with masculinity to have a pedicure. You decide.
Either way I do have a bit of a problem with foot shavings from anyone. It's like the Ped-Egg commercial...only in person.
Comparatively speaking, my pedi-person didn't have it so bad. Admittedly, I took care of business prior to my appointment because I am so insecure that I imagine that the conversation in about how nasty my feet are when my Pedi-people speak to one another in their native tongue. This is why I'd much rather have a fish pedicure, though I do feel bad for any fish that has to live off of foot shavings.
If you ever want to know what it feels like to be a marinaded chicken cutlet, let me tell you, it's divine!
Don't judge! Both rulings, Plaintiff. When I asked my Pedi-person if she was a Judge Judy fan, she smiled, nodded, and asked, "Too hot?"
"Judge Judy? Oh. Water temperature. No. Just right."
Nothing like abrasive mint green slime to make a gal feel beautiful!
and that awkward moment when I thought my toes were poking into the cushiony foot rest...
Vegans stop putting pictures of your
food on facebook! That bowl of mashed greens looks like spinach
that's already been recycled, if you get my drift.
And your vegan imitations of regular
food – stop it. You're not fooling anyone! That is not a cookie,
that is a butternut squash mashed into a patty with carob chips on
it.
Cut it out. If you want to be a vegan
why can't you just eat vegetables? Why must you insist on calling
your various disgusting arrangement of mashed plants veggie burgers,
or tofurkey or vegan nut bar with stevia? No one wants to eat that
shit and we certainly don't want to see it!
Grow up. Eat a cow. Nothing is going
to happen to you. You know how many animals you're saving by eating
those leaves and vines? None. You know what you're accomplishing?
Being the weight of a teenager well into your midlife crisis. No one
wants to see a forty year old in skinny jeans. Cut the shit already.
Also, vegetarians. What's up with
those lying jerkwads? “I'm a vegetarian. Oh, I eat fish.” OK I
know you're weak from lack of a quality protein/fat combination, but
fish is not a vegetable, unless you're in the Tea Party where fish is
a vegetable, and you're pregnant two weeks before you meet the penis
packer that did it (will do it) to you. Also they don't believe in
evolution. Is that whom you wish to align yourself with, ya jerks?
Morons that don't “believe” in science? Because I can tell you
this, beyond a shadow of a doubt – fish is not a plant. You never
heard of a potted fish, or fish bouquet, right? Because fish is
meat. Sorry to have to point out the obvious to you. You're clearly
well into your self-righteous diatribe about corn syrup and
carbohydrates, why let a few little facts get in the way?
And truthfully no one cares what you
eat. You know what I don't like, is the pomposity and condescension.
I don't care if you're a vegan. Which is a vegetarian. No one
cares. It is your rude behavior that no one can stand.
Its not just that you want to live a
lifestyle. You want everyone to know it, and you want everyone to
rearrange everything because of you. I won't do it. You have made a
decision to live your life a certain way, so live it. Why are you
busting everyone's balls? It is because it isn't about food. It is
about moral superiority. You feel that not eating animals gives you
the edge over your fellow humans. In what? In a douchebag contest?
You win. You're choosing your diet so you can look down on other
people. That is truly admirable!
I'm not saying all vegetarians are like
that, but I know more than a few that are. And the ones that are are
like those homophobic politicians. The louder they rail against it,
the more likely you are to find them eating a hotdog in a closet.
I stood outside my apartment building tonight and looked at the cigarette I was sucking down like a caricature of Denis Leary and whispered, “I love you so much, I hate you.”
In the past eight months I have become an obsessive smoker. I am now up to a little over a pack a day. The FIRST thing I want in the morning, before I drink the water I always keep bedside, before I pee, before I turn on the coffeemaker, I smoke a damn cigarette. Sometimes I smoke THREE before I get up to make the coffee, stopping only to pop my much-needed Adderall and slug some H2O before I light another.
Today I ran out of cigarettes midday, after having purchased a pack last night during my bartending shift. I was fine for a while, busy with work on the computer and making calls. But when my roomie came home, I begged a Cigarillo off her (she works for the company and gives out samples at stores, so she always has a stash.) Then I begged for another, and then a third. I had six dollar bills in my purse, and cigarettes cost about thirteen bucks here in NYC. By 9:56 p.m. I was scavenging my purses and coats and jeans for quarters, finding exactly seven dollars in change in addition to my six dollar bills, and limped off to the corner bodega (I have some weird red swelling on my third left toe, and I did not stub nor break it.) I muttered out loud to the gods “Please, please, don’t be out of fucking cigarettes. I would suck cock for a cigarette right now.” I said this OUT LOUD. I was scanning the sidewalk for “street ciggies” – a habit I picked up last summer in my insomnia-ridden walks around my block. Street ciggies. That means I will pick up a carelessly tossed, half-smoked cigarette, break off the end that goes in the mouth, and fucking SMOKE A CIGARETTE I FOUND ON THE SIDEWALK. Sometimes, I find a whole, untouched cigarette that has fallen out of some drunken kid’s pack. O glorious find, the whole ciggie.
The grungy bodega was out of cigarettes, after experiencing a brief and heartbreaking misunderstanding with the barely-English-speaking Dominican boy behind the counter in which I literally put my hands in prayer and said “Please say you have cigarettes!” and he said “What kind?” and I jubilantly asked for ANYTHING non-menthol. He then said “No cigarettes. No cigarettes.” I wanted to throttle him. He pointed to the next block’s bodega and I hobbled quickly there to find my glorious fix, quietly apologizing to the owner for paying in piles of quarters. I have been smoking Parliament 100’s lately, because they are LONG and last a seeming nanosecond longer than my usual choice of either Camels or Marlboro Lights. I opened the pack like Charlie in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” opening a deliciously decadent Wonka bar – filled with joy and anticipation as well as massive guilt, knowing I should use that precious change for food or laundry or something practical. But sweet Baby Jesus, I wanted that first puff more than I wanted a sandwich or clean undies.
I have smoked three cigarettes while typing this. There are tiny ashes sprinkled on my laptop keyboard. It is thirty degrees and a coming Nor’easter wind is blowing through my perpetually open bedroom window. I am wearing jeans, a hoodie sweatshirt, and fuzzy socks under my duvet cover. The fresh air does not do much to help the fact that everything in my room reeks of cigarette funk. The odor reminds me of my Grandma Gresser’s house, my Uncle Tom’s Volkswagen, my brother’s former apartment – all furniture, sheets, clothes, towels, vinyl seats saturated with nicotine, a smell I hated. I still hate it. It’s in my hair soon after I shower, and I love having sweet-smelling hair. It is on my breath as I whisper in my friend’s ear as I slink in late to a comedy gig. My favorite waiter at the restaurant where I tend bar waves his hand in front of his nose after I take a smoke break, telling me to suck a lemon to take away the stank-breath.
What the hell has happened to me?
I have smoked casually off-and-on since I started bartending back in 2000, when smoking was still allowed in bars, and I decided to “learn” to actually smoke, to inhale, to counteract the smoke surrounding me, making me more tolerant of the smell. I would get dizzy if I smoked more than one or two, or even sometimes a half a cigarette was enough to nauseate me. I liked a “sneaky smoke” with a girlfriend after a drink or two or a big dinner, or on my travels to Italy, where smoking Italian cigarettes was fantastic with an espresso at an outdoor café. But I rarely bought a pack, just bummed them from friends. If I did buy a pack, back in the day when they were actually fairly cheap, I’d end up leaving at least half the pack on top of a garbage can for some lucky sucker looking for their own street ciggies.
When I was dating a fellow actor on a children’s theater tour, we shared a motel room and I’d beg him to smoke outside, as the smoke would keep me from sleeping. The time I actually bought a pack and smoked several ciggies - to quell my anxiety about attending yet another friend’s wedding reception solo - I had to pull over my rented car to vomit from the nausea that overtook me after three cigarettes smoked on an empty stomach.
I started smoking more often after September 11th, when I was overcome with incapacitating anxiety and insomnia, hearing F-16s droning regularly over the Hudson in the days and weeks after the horror, and I could not go for more than a couple of hours sleep without turning on the news to see if something else terrible might be heading our way. I smoked on the stoop. My favorite news anchor Peter Jennings started smoking again after quitting the habit for nearly twenty years because of the attacks, and then he died a few years later from lung cancer. My Grandma Gresser, a life-long smoker, died of cancer throughout her body. I have seen the gross anti-smoking ads, I know what it does to your body.
My fifty-year old brother and his girlfriend have quit smoking recently. My brother has been smoking since he was about sixteen. I am in awe that he is actually stopping. My father used to smoke Camels unfiltered for years, and then quit cold turkey along with my stepmother. I remember clearly when I was about five years old, my father tossed a Camel from the car window and it flew into the back and landed in the crease of the back seat cushions, where it went unnoticed until my foot, which is habitually tucked under my backside when I sit, suddenly felt very hot. He had to stop the car and hurriedly prevent the whole damn seat from bursting into flames. My dad was the only person on which I actually enjoyed tobacco scent. It mixed with the Clove gum he chewed and his Aramis cologne. As a child I would bury my nose in the brown corduroy sport jacket he regularly kept on a coat stand in his university office, and breathe in his dad-smell, comforting and safe.
I am dating a smoker who has been smoking far longer than my measly few months, and even he looks at me and says,” You just had one. You’re lighting another?” and he refuses to let me smoke more than one while we snuggle together watching a movie on his bed before we turn in for the night. Sometimes I quietly sneak out of bed when he dozes off and grab one to smoke in the next room, like some sort of naughty child, guilty and pleased with myself at the same time, Ha ha, I got away with it.
Jesus Christ, I’m now more than halfway through the pack I just bought.
Yes, it’s been a shitty, uber-stressful, tumultuous year for me, and I use that as an excuse for my new addiction. I tried to stop for a couple days with the aid of electronic cigarettes. My psychiatrist offered me Wellbutrin, which, when I did take it as an antidepressant a few years back, completely eliminated my desire to smoke even casual post-drinking ciggies. But it also gave me migraines and made my hair all thin and flat and I hated the drug. I don’t think the patch would work for me, I love the physical act of smoking: the lighting, the first scent of burning paper, the inhale, the exhale and relief that comes over me.
I am disgusted with myself for the money I spend on packs, the dependence, and the loss of control over my urge to self-destruct. I used to get furious when walking behind a smoker on a beautiful spring day, when I wanted to breathe in the sweet lilacs in bloom, not some crappy-ass tobacco stench. Now I get the dirty looks. Once a dog-owner stopped me from petting his dog, for fear my cigarette smoke would stink up his puppy-fur. I am a pariah. Addict. Idiot.
I am going to quit. Really, I am. But I just watched this Bill Hicks bit and lit another goddamn ciggie. I have just enough left to get me through the morning.
-hmg
p.s. I just HAD to include this video I found. It made me laugh out loud and WANT A DAMN CIGGIE. Watch it:
Where we left off last week: I was having trouble staying focused in what I hoped to be a dynamite
meeting with a hot shot casting director, since at this point in my life only dynamite could
break the log jam in my career…
I watched Twinkie make marks from the top to the
bottom of the paper in front of her. From
my side of the desk I guessed she was either constructing a six-set Venn
diagram or designing a need- to- know flow chart of secret drone missions, on
my resume. What the hell is she doing? I
was already uncomfortable with the whole pay to play with a casting director
phenomenon that became a cottage industry in its self during my hiatus from comedy
and performing. Wasn’t that the purpose of showcase after showcase, the
opportunity to be seen by an influential gatekeeper like herself?
Yes I am an unforgivingly old school by-product
of the previous century, but faced with the prospect of being a non-income
generating, middle-aged non-performing, performing artist, I sucked it up and
stuck my toe in the now. Paying to meet
Twinkie was the iceberg tip of my adjustments.
It was a huge adjustment returning to the place of
my birth - Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy - after homesteading, raising a son, reveling in
Tribeca and then leaving divorced. My lovingly supportive yet oddly passive aggressive
marriage, to my high school sweet heart- fiancé- husband- parenting partner,
began to chafe in its third decade. In
the fading afternoon sun of our art filled, book lined, homey apartment, Phil
and I exchanged words that could not be snatched back. I was deeply in love
with my husband. Somewhere along the
years I stopped liking him. Our Dartmouth educated son was grown and leaving the nest. Soon I’d be the next to go. I’d grown apart from the man I fell in love
with when I was 14 years old. It felt like
time to leave the most significant man in my life.
At the time I was acting in a production directed
by the renowned Woodie King Jr., on NY’s Theater Row. I had in the offing an epic blues cantata, written
by a longtime friend, sure to make my mark as a theater director of note. I did not have a second thought about the
comedy career I’d left in the dust. But how
do you adjust to leaving a lifetime of love? I
clutched my rising possibilities as an actress and director on the dramatic
stage. In less than a month I was out on my own. My timing was impeccable. I left Tribeca for
Bed-Stuy, I signed the divorce papers and then right on cue, came the recession, years and years of recession.
Dollar signs danced in my head as I calculated
how silence had dominated my 5 minute @ $8 per minute session with this casting
director, who was going to instantaneously 
