" ...write a show for yourself, says my agent. Isn't my act a show, I ask..."
The Program, Oct 26, 1999
This my be my last missive from Phoebe's, the best coffeehouse in Williamsburg. Laura told our landlords we're outta here by Dec 1 and we all agreed that, for the last thirty five days, the landlords didn't have to promise to fix things they wouldn't fix if we'd be allowed to use our deposit for the last month's rent.
Gennady, who has been learning HTML coding, took a job at my company filling in for a girl who's off to Columbia for a month's sabbatical. I'm teaching him, managing him, and I couldn't be more nervous and picky. But he's doing fine and after she comes back, he'll be able to work part time at least, enough to pay his half of our new rent in Manhattan. My evil master plan is that he can take a few of my hours so I can take some time to myself and write a joke or a story or a script or anything.
I have an unhealthy addiction to stand up comedy. I didn't get an Aspen audition this year because, says to my agent, I did Montreal a few years ago. It's one or the other, unless you're a star or you bring something else to the plate. Write a show for yourself, says my agent. Isn't my act a long running show that's constantly being updated, says I? No, says she. It is to me, it's the only thing I like to do, says I. It's not enough, says she.
Pisser.
I went to a Weight Watchers meeting this Tuesday, and I'm also mailing in a subscription card to Mode magazine, the Vogue for the 12-14-16 set. I am a size 14 normally, a 12 occasionally. I never ever see women my size on television. Women are either obese or thin or dangerously thin. No one is normal. If I lose twenty five pounds, I'll be thin. If I gain seventy five pounds, I'll be obese. I've given myself a dozen out clauses- if I am too unhappy restricting my food, then it's back to normal. My contract with myself is that I finally accept my body size and adjust the dream. But since I've changed everything else about my life these last two years, why not try this too? Why leave any stone unturned, or, as my landlords would say from their cell phones where they live in Florida, door unhinged, shower head unscrewed or refrigerator door unclosed without tape? (My apartment is a comedy condo without strippers).
If I have to turn into a weight obsessed maniac to get thin, I'll call it off. I"m not going to start smoking and I'm not going to sit at one end of a table sipping a diet coke while a group of people I'm having lunch with dives into a pizza. I guess I don't want to be a star that badly.
I do want it badly enough to be weighed by a stranger, however, and pull out my POINT converter when I'm eating and listen to a slender Weight Watchers lecturer coerce at least fifty grownups into eating less than they want to all next week. It's absurd but I want it.
We'll see.
