comedy Archives ⋆ Page 14 of 50 ⋆ Virginia Jones

Nemesis, Goddess of Revenge: A Story

I am not the hero of this story.

Let’s start off by saying that.

Also, I love and value my female friendships.

Women hurt each other more deeply than men. Many of my women friends list their worst betrayal as being dealt to them by another woman friend.

We will hurt each other over men, because women don’t value their friendships of many years over some dude who’ll be gone in a fortnight.

I’m going to anonymize this woman by calling her Jen, although that is also her name. We were both born in the 70’s, when everyone was named Jen.

She was never my friend.

The Past

In high school, in suburban Dallas, Texas, she was in love with the first boy I ever had sex with, a chubby goth with a mild speech impediment. “Cotton” and “Latin” sounded like “Coddon” and “Laddin”, and it was adorable.

He tried to have a Dave Vanian (of the Damned) white streak in his black hair, but since he did it at home, it was usually a duck-yellow streak or a slightly green one. Now he lives in San Marcos, Texas and has a wife and kids and we are facebook friends.

Jen hated me for being with him. Women do that. It had nothing to do with me. After I broke it off with the Dallas suburban speech-impediment Dave Vanian, she slept with him that night, which annoyed me but was out of my purview.

He did not become her boyfriend after this. Nothing between them changed, except that they had slept together. If he had wanted to be her boyfriend, it would have happened when they met, probably. It had nothing to do with me.

She went to college in Austin and I went to college in Dallas. I heard a story about her getting kicked off campus for beating the shit out of her roommate. After graduating, I moved to Portland, Oregon.

Tom Waits did a show in Eugene, two hours south of Portland. For the next ten years, everyone I was ever friends with or dated had been to that show. Also Jen. Of all the people I didn’t want to see, she was it.

The Theory

There is a theory of human communication called disruption. If someone is mean or dismissive or cruel to you, and you are kind and patient back, it is difficult for them to continue to treat you badly. We want to mirror behavior to each other- so if you’re shitty to me, I’ll be shitty back, and it can just escalate. If you’re shitty to me and I am kind back, it’s hard to keep going in that direction.

She did not respond to my attempts at disruption.

“Hi! Jen! Man, I didn’t think I was gonna see anyone from high school today! How you doin’?”

Jen: “When the fuck did you move here? I guess this town really has gone to shit.”

Then What Happened

A little after I moved to Portland, Oregon, I started dating a deathrocker who looked more than a little like Nick Cave, so much so that my admiration of the actual Nick Cave has been tarnished by the experience.

He worked in a record store, because what else was he gonna do, and he mentioned his co-worker Jen.

I shared with him our history.

He paused for a minute, and said, I should just tell you now, I have a past with Jen. I don’t want you to find out later and be angry. When I was married, we had an affair. It’s long over and we’re just friends. I’m also not going to cheat anymore- my marriage ended badly and I learned my lesson.

(This was not true, but it is another story entirely.)

We started seeing each other seriously, and one day, she looked over his shoulder at work as he was sending me a note on Myspace, because I am very old, older than any of you can possibly imagine, and she blanched and started screaming.

GINNY RYAN? YOU’RE DATING GINNY FUCKING RYAN?

This is not my name now, but it was my name then.

An Odd Synchronicity

For some reason, despite being opposed in all things, we had the exact same taste in men: Men who tried to look like the lead singers of seminal goth and punk bands.

She let him know that I was a bad person, a dishonest person, that I was untrustworthy, and unworthy of love.

He said ok, but that he would give it a shot anyway.

In the following weeks, she called him repeatedly, at different levels of drunk, trying to seduce him. Sometimes I was with him, listening to her messages as she left them. This is before cell phones! You could write someone an email or you could call them, but you couldn’t booty text! Imagine that, children!

She had him fired from the record store, so fiancee was unemployed for a year, because managing a record store is really the only job he was fit for in life.

The Present

A couple of weeks later, I was drunk in a parking garage in downtown Portland and I saw her car.

Portland is a small town now, and back then it was a tiny town. She had left her car in a garage across had gone drinking in the bar across from the record store.

I had had a drink myself. Several drinks. I was drinking something called the dirty monkey at the bar on the ground floor of the Crystal Ballroom, and after a few dirty monkeys I leaned into the bartender and asked, now make me a FILTHY monkey.

Important Fact

The statute of limitations in Oregon for property damage is six years.

This story is from ten years ago.

She drove a very distinctive car. I checked with my fiancee to see if it was her car. He said he thought it was, because he had had sex in it before. I checked the cement garage for cameras. There were none. I put down my handbag and turned my ring around, like I was getting ready for a high school fight.

First I scratched down the side of her car first with a key, which is a rookie move, but which was a warm-up and a declaration of intent. Orange paint curled up satisfyingly around the edge of my key.

Next, I kicked off her driver’s side rear view mirror with a boot.

There is no sales tax in Oregon, so lots of state funding is provided by traffic stops. I knew she’d never limp home without getting pulled over. I pounded her car in the weird, echo-less, sound-dampened garage.

I managed to break a taillight but not a window, and my dude said, that’s enough, let’s go. You’re done. You’ve beaten up her car. I was flooded with endorphins and delighted and proud and ashamed, but I couldn’t tell anyone, not until now. Not until you.

The Future

Her job at the record store was over within the year, after she punched a customer in the face. The regional manager let her know that you can be snide to customers, you can ignore them, but you can’t actually assault them. She sold her record collection to my husband and moved back to Texas, where she was lots easier to avoid.

The Importance of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #122

I first saw Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #122 in 1990 in Columbia, MO when I was an art student, and it’s my favorite piece of hers.

I wrote an art studenty little paper about it then and was delighted to see her used in promotion for the exhibit Imitation of Life at the Broad Museum.

Cindy made it for Interview magazine in 1983, when they lent her a rack of clothes and said “do something cool with this”, I believe this is a Romeo Gigli suit. Anyway, I love her fury and glamour and red-rimmed eye and balled up fists, and she’s who I think of most when I do my comedy: a woman right on the edge of absolutely losing her shit.

Working With Your Rapist: The Problem With Due Process

Aaron Glaser in the New York Post Comedy Rapist

What we’re told in the Aaron Glaser case is: if a woman doesn’t report a rape, she’s not allowed to talk about it.

If the law doesn’t hand down punishment, her experience isn’t valid. She can’t talk about it, because it was never proved in a court of law.

That’s some witch trial sh*t. All “due process” means is he can’t be jailed before trial. It doesn’t mean the allegation can’t be discussed or used as a reason not to book him, or not to employ him.

Other dudes say “He’s a good dude”, which means, “He’s never mentioned being a serial rapist.”

The dude might say “I’m not a rapist”, because he thinks maybe I raped somebody, that’s not what I AM. I baked a cake once, I’m not a BAKER.

If a woman says, “I don’t wish to do comedy with my rapist”, her option is to stay home.

If she says “I don’t wish to file charges and go public about being raped”, her option is to shut up.

What do we do, as women comics?

We talk about rapists amongst ourselves, in secret groups.

We maintain secret lists of people we’ve heard are sexual predators because that makes us feel safe.

That also means, if a woman is attacked who didn’t remember a name from the list, it’s back to being her fault.

This week a friend asked me about a comic who I know to be someone who sexually assaults unconscious women. The word is that he raped a comic in my old town when she was drunk.

Is the comic going to report it? No. She feels ashamed, she wants to comfort herself and put it away.

So, when we can’t do anything to protect each other or ourselves, all we can do is repeat, I’m sorry. I believe you.

My own policy on rape and sexual assault is: I believe the victim, because 1. false reports are rare and 2. society is predisposed not to believe the victim.

My policy has lost me friends, because I didn’t “back up” an accused assaulter and other men in our circle think I’m not a good pal, because he’s a good dude.

And that’s a thing I’ll have to live with.

Movie Love Lessons!

You get to a point in life where you think, hey, I just keep dating awful people, I wonder why? Then you start thinking about your favorite movies from childhood!

Beauty and the Beast:

A beautiful village girl enters a monster’s castle to plead with him to release her father. She submits to her own incarceration. He throws temper tantrums and tries to force his way into her room, and then breaks up his own furniture.

She falls victim to Stockholm Syndrome and falls in love with her captor. Once she proves her love is true, he is revealed to be a prince!

This teaches us that if you have patience and love a bad person for long enough, he will become a good person.

What are some lessons we can take from this?

Don’t trust people who wear too much velvet.
Don’t date guys who have kidnapped any member of your family. Not even a cousin.
Rich doesn’t always mean nice. Some might argue that it never does.

Grease:

Two attractive people meet over Summer break, fall in love, and then when they get back to school they’re worried that if they date, their friends won’t think they’re cool anymore because she is a “soc” and he is a “greaser”. They spend the WHOLE SCHOOL YEAR pining for each other. At the end they put on different outfits in order to meet the expectations of the other person, and then they die, as they get into a convertible and their car drives into the clouds.

Lessons:

Date who you want. It doesn’t matter if your friends don’t like their jacket.
You don’t have to change to be loved.
Don’t have unprotected sex with Kenickie, or anyone really.

Some Kind Of Wonderful:

In this film, Eric Stoltz plans a dream date for a woman he has barely spoken to and only loves for her appearance.

At the end of the date, she turns down his gift of extremely expensive earrings. He feels that she is being a real a-hole.

When a guy has a best friend who’s a girl and they hang out all the time, that girl is already probably in love with him, although she dresses like a demolition derby driver.
If someone plans an elaborate first date to try to win your love, and isn’t happy just to meet and talk over coffee, it’s probably a desperate attempt to paper over their own insecurities!

Pretty Woman:

It’s a cute retelling of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, in which a street prostitute becomes a trophy wife, which is the same thing but in longer pants.

She gets an emotionally distant workaholic with no family ties, and becomes a kept woman- that’ll be fun in marriage counseling!

“Hey, I think our power dynamic is screwed up.” “Why is that, I wonder?”

When a man buys a woman, it’s like buying a car- he’ll trade her in eventually.

Just remember that romantic movies are a fun fantasy, but many of the relationships depicted in them are a real nightmare!

Best Goth Friends!

Written for Jonathan Bradley Welch’s A Very Special Episode show! Theme: BFF’s!

I met my best friend the first week of college. She was looking for someone in Bruce Hall, which was the art dorm, because it had art studios on the top floor. Also, it was the cheapest. It didn’t have air conditioning, and it was supposed to be haunted.

I heard a kid died elevator surfing, where you get into an elevator shaft and ride on an elevator until someone takes it to the top floor and you fucking die.

Instead of getting a haunted elevator, we got the elevator closed the rest of the year and everybody had to take the stairs.

Don’t pity him. Pity us.

How It Started

Melissa walked past my door, and I went out and said, hi, it’s nice to meet another goth. She said, what’s a goth? And I said, it’s us. It’s what we are.

What do you think you are? I asked.

A spooky kid, she said.

Sidebar: this story is before Edward Scissorhands and Hot Topic. This was before the Craft, before the 2000’s when everyone was wearing vinyl pants and talking about how they partied like a rockstar. Mel was from a small town in Texas called Palestine, which had the same population as my high school. Word of goth had not gotten there yet, and she may have believed she was the only person who read tarot and listened to sad music for hours.

She was not.

Mel had long black hair and little round silver glasses and dark lipstick and many layers of black lace on, and in general looked like someone who maybe someday would get a Sylvia Plath tattoo.

I had short red hair and a nose ring and looked like someone who might have prepared a monologue from Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar for an audition for a film called Teen Witch. That is something that I did do, and they managed to make the film without me.

I asked her, what do you think you are? What do your high school friends call you? And she shrugged and said, spooky kid.

Main Hobbies

We started hanging out right away. Our main hobbies were: taking acid and seeing the Rocky Horror Picture Show, getting dressed up and taking dramatic portraits of each other in the stairwells at school. Also we drank terrible dorm coffee with ice cream bars melted into them, and Bailey’s irish cream, and then we wondered why we were getting fat.

We were inseparable, and dated briefly until we remembered we were primarily straight. Roadtripping to New Orleans for spring break, we hung out in front of Anne Rice’s house. We went to goth clubs, sat in the back of rooms and complained together, and in general we had fun.

Some Troubles

Our friendship wasn’t perfect. When Tank Girl came out, based on a comic book series I liked a lot, I shaved my head into a Chelsea haircut and wore tutus and combat boots, and felt like I was working an edgy look.

She took a photograph of the back of my head that demonstrated that my head was a bad one for shaving. My skull is long and H.R. Geiger-like in the back, and there is a shelf. I asked her why she hadn’t told me my head was bad and she said she figured it was too late.

Once, she wouldn’t stop puking, and I took her to the emergency room and waited with her for ten hours.

One time, she was my confidant and best friend and and she understood me, and that was all the time.

Another time, we drove to Oklahoma city in the middle of the night because we wanted a box of Boo-Berry cereal, which was not available in Texas, and we ate it as the sun came up and it wasn’t very good.

We were a really good match. I was a little too tall and she was a little bit short. I was an emotionally needy extrovert who met everyone and remembered no-one and she was sometimes shy, but she could remember everyone we’d met.

And Later

After college, I moved to Portland, OR to date a boy I’d met in Dallas. She followed soon after and we took back up together. We were doing exciting things like going to a goth club owned by the Russian mob, dancing to Britpop, and complaining that things weren’t the same as they had been in Dallas, Texas. What they were was much better.

I became aware that she had found another girl to hang out with named Caroline. Caroline was also a little too tall and wore high heels all the time and I thought she was loud, even though I am also loud.

We still liked each other. We still saw each other. But Caroline was usually there too. It was stupid to complain that I was jealous. Why should I be jealous? I was jealous.

The End, My Friend

Our friendship wasn’t really over until she and my husband had a disagreement about plans that they’d made. I expected her to pick us up for a DJ gig and she didn’t, but she showed up hours later, drunk and with Caroline, talking in circles about how fun and fucked up their evening had been. I told her I was tired of her letting me down, and she was furious.

It was her word against his, and I felt like I had to side with my husband. It was a small thing. Looking back, it didn’t matter, but everyone was very angry.

Later Still

Two years later, my marriage ended, because my husband was sleeping with another friend of mine, which I didn’t like very much. That friend in turn was surprised that I didn’t like her anymore.

I went to Melissa’s wedding, to a tall blonde Swede, within a month of my divorce, because I loved her and it was important. It was a beautiful wedding in an art library, with favors made from antique books and a cake in the shape of a gilded beehive.

I sat with our friends and cried a little harder, because I wasn’t just happy for her. I was also sorry for myself. At this point, she had fallen out with Caroline over something.

We are still facebook friends. We leave each other likes and comments. I am happy to be to see her happy. She is happily married and doing well. But I still miss my very best friend.

Love on a Trail of Breadcrumbs

I had a great first date with a curly-haired breadcrumber who kept in sporadic touch with me, which made me sad because I wanted to see him again.

Technology has changed the way we interact with each other. A few years ago, if you’d been dating someone and you didn’t want to anymore, you had to say “hey, thanks for dating me, but I don’t want to anymore.” It was rude to do this over the phone! You had to meet someone in person to reject them!

Now we ghost, fade, or breadcrumb our way out of hard situations.

Ghosting Has Been Well Documented

You’ve gone on a number of dates with someone, and then you Keyser Soze them like in Usual Suspects- you’re just in the wind. No text, no call. Everyone hates it, but everyone does it. Having been ghosted implicitly gives you permission to ghost, like being bitten by a werewolf makes you one yourself.

The first time I was ghosted, it took me by surprise. I assumed that the person I had been dating for nine months was in rehab or prison (either one would have been a pretty good idea.) Then, after two weeks of silence, I saw him tagged in a photo in his favorite bar.

I was amazed. I didn’t call it ghosting, I called it “being dumped by a sociopath”.

Ghosting happens because it’s the easiest option. There’s no confrontation, and also, ghosting never really closes the door. In the ghoster’s mind, they’ve never really broken it off with you, so there’s still a possibility of dating you in case what they’re pursuing peters out, and also the thing after that, or if they someday reach the end of Tinder and it’s just a picture of a cat with a colander on its head.

Breadcrumbing is the same- they might not want to date you now, but they maybe want to later? Or not?

Fading is a slow ghost.

Responses just get shorter and less committal until they’re gone, but by the time it’s done, you’ve gotten used to not hearing from them, like when you taper down from smoking or eating carbs.

Monday after a date: You say “That was fun!” Three hours later they say, “Ya!” You say “Have a great night!”, they say nothing!

Tuesday: Still nothing

Wednesday: You ask about plans, three hours later they say “rly busy, talk later”

Thursday: Nothing

Friday: You ask, “Hey! Good week? Weekend plans?”

Saturday: No word back at all! Spooky, they’re a ghost!

In many ways, breadcrumbing is even more infuriating than ghosting or fading, and this is how it goes:

They don’t make plans with you for months, but sometimes you’ll get a text out of nowhere that says, “TGIF!” or “Happy 4^th!” or “Hope ur gr8!” The two weeks between Christmas and New Year’s are filled with enough breadcrumbs to fill a bakery, as people have free time and think “I guess there’s worse things than going out with that girl again.”

They never have a long conversation, but just drop a three syllable text from time to time. Dropping tiny bits of attention your way keeps you from forgetting about them.

If you respond, they might say something back and they might not. You might get a picture with a caption that feels generic/out of context, and this is because they’re sending it to a bunch of people. (IF YOU THINK THIS IS ABOUT YOU THEN IT IS.)

If you’re Facebook or Insta friends with them, they might wordlessly “like” a particularly nice selfie, just pressing a button to change the color of a heart somewhere in the universe, to remind you that they still exist.

What Happened Was

I had a really great first date with a curly-haired breadcrumber who kept in sporadic touch with me, which made me sad because I wanted to see him again.

I ran into him six months later and he asked me out again, and when I told him no, he was surprised.

Me: “I have a two-three week test period on dates. Your window of opportunity to ask me out again has long since expired.” (This is fancier than how I really said it, I think the f-word was in my original response.)

Him: “I wish I’d known that was a requirement.” (That’s what he really said)

Me: “I think it’s pretty normal. If I see you every six months, that’s less often than my parole officer or my hairdresser. That’s not dating. I don’t know what it is.”

If the ghoster is keeping you in cold storage, the breadcrumber is just keeping you on the bench. They might get back to you. They might not. They’re “keeping in touch.” It’s infuriating. And it’s a tiny, gradual waste of your life.

What are they after?

They’re either a player and like to have lots of people in rotation or else, and this is the sadder option: they really think this is what dating is. They think if they keep meeting people they’ll find the right one, and until they’re sure you’re not the right one, they’d better keep you on the line.

What’s hard to explain to a breadcrumber is that romantic attachment doesn’t happen like in the movies, where you both reach for the last box of brown cinnamon Pop-Tarts at Von’s and your eyes lock and you fall hard.

Romantic attachment and feeling is something two compatible people who like each other build, with communication and intention, not with breadcrumbs but out of whole slices of goddamned bread.

What do you do if you’re being breadcrumbed?

The only way to stop it is to be clear about what you want from the other person.

“Hey, I’m interested in you. Do you want to make plans with me?” If they respond, great, go out with that person.

If they don’t respond with plans, cross them off your list of prospects. Now, you can spend all the time you spent waiting to hear back from them talking to people who want to date you, and put that emotional energy into people who’ll give it back!

– See more at: http://www.lovetv.co/looking-for-love-on-a-trail-of-breadcrumbs/2/#sthash.8KKcLPqp.dpuf

James and Julian: A Writing Exercise

5 minute writing exercise based on a tweet from Julian McCullough to James Urbaniak:

hey James your creep radar is terrible I’ve been staring at you for 10 minutes at gate 51A

(view is of James Urbaniak wandering through his kitchen in a bathrobe, as seen through a slit in a wall panel)

Hey James

Can you see me

I can see you

Can you feel my eyes on you

Are you ignoring me

How dare you ignore me

(muffled noise)

No Radiohead songs are about romance, do you ever notice, James? They’re about failed romance.

Maybe that’s why Thom can’t keep anything together. What would a happy Thom Yorke sound like? I’ll bet he’s never happy. Just manic.

Sometimes failed romance is the best kind, though- it protects you from disappointment. Never had a start to begin with, just a doomed thing. I’m keeping my last unexpressed crush safe in a Mason jar. It can’t breathe but it’s safe and it’ll never get old.

James. Psst. James. You got earbuds in man? Earbuds in your own house, nobody’s got a record player so nobody bothers having a stereo. We never listen to each other. You’re staring right at me but you can’t see me. You’re listening to a podcast where famous people talk about when they weren’t famous yet, making everyone listening feel like being famous is inevitable. Famous people used to not be famous, I’m not famous but one day I will be. That’s the progression. That’s the way it goes.
James. You’ve gotta get better than this, man. You’ve gotta get better than this.