I Can Barely Take Care of Myself Read Online Free PDF

have the life you envisioned for yourself. To fill up that pit in the gut that just says, “Gimme, gimme what I want. I promise I’ll be good if you just gimme whatI want!” That’s how I felt about stand-up comedy. And if anyone had told me that I couldn’t have it, I would’ve been yelling too. Although I related to Amy’s feelings of longing, falling asleep to them was not soothing. I opened my window so that the sounds of the Mack trucks would drown out the sounds of the train wreck in their bedroom.
    The next morning, I got on the Manhattan-bound F trainafter being laughed at by Amy for asking whether it was safe to carry a purse into New York City. I got off at Second Avenue and found my way to my mecca—the Luna Lounge. It was empty and I went up and confidently said to the bartender, “I want to perform at the alternative comedy show I read about in the Village Voice .”
    He shrugged. “I don’t book it. You have to send a tape.”
    I was confused.“A tape of what?”
    “A tape of you doing stand-up.”
    Now I was indignant. “But I have never done stand-up. I don’t have a tape yet. I’m trying to start so I want to start here.”
    We went back and forth for a while—as I tried to convince him that I just knew I was funny and he tried to convince me that he had no power to get me on that stage. Imagine going to a job interview, refusing to bring arésumé or any references, and wanting to get hired on the promise that you’ll do a really, really good job if they’d just hire you. I sat down at the bar, defeated. But then I realized, Hey, I’m an adult. In New York City. I can have a drink in the daytime if I want and smoke a cigarette. I ordered a beer and bummed a Merit Ultra Light off the bartender. I posed for the imaginary camera that wastaking my James Dean–esque photo. I’d gotten what I wanted out of New York City and after only four days, I knew it was time to go home.
    BACK IN BOSTON, things felt weird with Blake. I couldn’t believe that four whole days spent in a long-distance relationship hadn’t made him change his mind about not wanting to live with me. He said I could stay with him until I found an apartment. I did findan apartment. His apartment. And like a lost puppy, I stayed for almost a year. I got my old job back at the Boston Ballet and my old position back on the “team” at Improv Boston. I was disheartened at the thought of starting a stand-up career because it seemed like you couldn’t start until you had already started and put it on tape. So I postponed that dream and focused on being Blake’s clingygirlfriend.
    As the months passed, the only thing tangled up in Blake’s sheets was Blake. I was on the other side of the futon, shivering, struggling to get under the covers with him. Blake had made a new friend in his acting class, a female friend. She was starring in the college production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Blake lit up when he talked about her, and he talked about her a lot. He alsotalked to her a lot, on the phone, in his room, while I sat on his bed, watching. I got drunk one night at a party and confronted him in front of God and a kitchenful of his peers and screamed, “Are you fucking her?” He wasn’t fucking her—until his girlfriend got drunk and crazy and screamed, “Are you fucking her?” And then that night, I’m pretty sure he fucked her, because he didn’t come home.The next day we broke up.
    I know it’s wrong, and if I end up going to hell and meeting Adolf Hitler, I promise that I will kill him with my bare hands, but to this day when someone brings up The Diary of Anne Frank, I can’t help but think to myself, That little whore.
    My relationship with my parents had improved over that year. Somehow living with Blake wasn’t as abhorrent to my folks as spendingthe night with Blake and then coming home the next morning in the same clothes in which I’d left their house—to see my boyfriend, who was planning to take those