" ...the miscolored piss of a drug addicted art student arcing into the SVA toilet is not as inspiring..."
Space and Time, Dec 26, 2000
I have always worked out. Growing up, a workout was a swim in an outdoor pool at 5:30 in the morning. Anyone who thought a workout was 30 minutes just three times a week on the stairmaster was one of those amateurs who worked out to avoid getting fat. I had a higher calling, the Olympics, and would not be caught dead in my living room in tights with a celebrity tape, lifting three pound weights. Even when I was a road rat, just three years ago, I prepared for my comeback, everyday. I swam hard at lap pools all over the country. When I ran on the treadmill, it was to support my swimming and strengthen my legs. I swam and I told jokes and time was on my side.
No mas.
Now i wake up, take five steps to my home office on the couch purchased at a thrift store and code until everything's done. Then around the corner to the gym, when I elliptical train and then back home to shower, dress and perform. My swimming soul is buried beneath calorie counts and heart rate readings.
New material comes to me by accident, or if I am disciplined enough to write it down when I think of it. My day is spent covering my ass. I make important people happy, so I can pay my exorbitant rent. It's like feeding a bottomless aquarium of hungry guppies. After six or eight hours of tapping food into gaping mouths, I go to the gym so I don't get fat. Then I tell jokes. I take extra freelance work because wouldn't you in this economy, and so my weekend days are almost as awful as the other five. Of course, I am not an immigrant from Pakistan, trapped in a tiny bodega twelve hours a day, selling gum to spoiled Americans like me. And I am not a citizen of Sierra Leone, having my limbs chopped off by gangs who use amputation to spread fear and unrest. And I am a woman in America, not Afghanistan or Africa. My clitoris is intact and I can show my arms in public.
That's the good news.
A week in sleepy Pleasant Hill, with almost no shows and very little coding has helped me remember how much I once enjoyed huge blocks of free time. A few hours at Peet's with my Powerbook and the Sunday New York Times and I'm new woman, with big plans and wild dreams. I can see a show, my show, as more than just a series of the latest jokes, strung together and told merely because I am bored with the old stuff. I can see I need time to put it together, time to tie up the loose shoelaces all over my act. I need to stare at nothing in particular from a corner table and remain unseen, listening to private conversations. I need to sit with my ass uncovered.
We might move.
We were thinking of New Jersey- there's lots of cheap places just 30 minutes from the city. Each one is Pleasant Hillesque, a 2 bedroom apartment rents for almost half of what we pay for our studio. But then there's that moment when you have to tell people you live in New Jersey. Ahhh, they say. Yes, it is cheaper, they agree, and the commute isn't half bad, especially when you're coming in at night. Smart move, they say while they write you off as weak and suburban and unable to handle the truth.
Our other thought is Brighton Beach. A one bedroom apartment overlooking the ocean is a little over half our current rent. The Q train, an express line on the subway, can get you into Manhattan in 35 minutes and since Brighton Beach is the end, (or beginning), of the Q line, you're sure to get a seat. There is also a Jewish Community Center with a sweet lap pool around the corner, although it keeps Joe Leiberman hours- closed on Saturday.
I find this more appealing than New Jersey. While living in Manhattan is of course optimum, an apartment with space to live is completely unaffordable and we have nothing close to an ocean view. Our only window overlooks the bathroom of the School of Visual Arts and the miscolored piss of a drug addicted art student arcing into the SVA toilet is not as inspiring as the Atlantic Ocean. Also, Brighton Beach's reputation is not unlike Harlem's. Most people think it is full of vicious Russian gangsters and they aren't completely wrong. Oooo, people say when I mention a visit Brighton Beach, it's barely America over there. They are as impressed as if you'd taken the train up to 145th St. Brighton Beach means you are on tough S.O.B. living amongst all those Russians.
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