I Can Barely Take Care of Myself Read Online Free Page B

ever since I saw my first black-and-white photo of James Deansmoking in a Manhattan diner. Sadly, I can’t say that I’ve grown out of my urges to do things because I think that technically, if I were photographed doing them, it would make a really cool and iconic picture.
    Even though the “plan” was to be a serious actress, I had always secretly wanted to be a stand-up comedian. It’s safe to say I had about as much ambition and understanding of how to actuallybecome a stand-up comedian as my mom had of how to become a high-priced call girl. But that article in the Village Voice seemed like it was written specifically for me to see. The closest I had come to doing comedy since This Is Pathetic was becoming a member of a local Boston improv group. (Improvisation—that fine art where a group of people stand onstage with nothing prepared and one of themasks the audience for a suggestion like an occupation or a location and someone inevitably shouts out, “Rectal exam!”) I enjoyed messing around onstage and making people laugh, but I wasn’t great at playing with others. It’s not that I don’t enjoy sharing the spotlight—I just don’t like having to be responsible for other people.Improv is all about supporting your teammates. (By the way, I hatewhen anything other than a professional sports team refers to itself as a “team.” It has this air of forced camaraderie that has always made me uncomfortable, along with people who talk in baby voices to babies and to adults during sex.) Improv is similar to war in that you’re expected to do anything to save the life of your partner. And as with war, people don’t really understand what improv is“good for.”
    Improv requires one thing I lack that I think all mothers need—that basic instinct to put someone else first. I can barely forgive myself for the time when I negged Billy from my improv troupe onstage. He said, “I have a gift for you,” and my first instinct was to say, “No you don’t.” The scene died right then and there. See what happens when I try to nurture something? I know itseems dramatic to relate destroying an improv scene to possibly destroying a child’s life, but improv and child rearing are not so different. Both are jobs that people volunteer for and complain about endlessly, and they bore everyone around them as they talk about the process.
    I broke the news to Blake that I was moving. He was surprised, since only twenty-four hours earlier I’d wanted to settledown and play house. I explained to him that if I wanted to do something as drastic as become a stand-up comedian, I had to really make a bold move and change cities. I couldn’t become a new person in my old hometown. Blake agreed. He always agreed with me when I spoke excitedly and loudly about something—even if I was talking out of my ass.
    My parents had changed the locks on me after I decidedto leave them and attempt to move in with Blake. I never understood their reasoning for that move. Wouldn’t that only ensure that I’d spend even more nights having patchouli-scented sex with my boyfriend at his off-campus apartment? I had to arrange a time so they could let me into my own bedroom to get the rest of my things. Blake was in the driveway, hiding from my folks and manning the smallU-Haul truck that I’d rented to get me to Brooklyn, where I was going to live with my old college friends Amy and Ed. I didn’t even haveany furniture, just a couple of lamps and a wicker nightstand. The inside of our U-Haul looked like a Pier 1 had been renovated by a crackhead.
    As ballsy as it may have been to move to Brooklyn without knowing anything about it—except what I’d seen in the openingcredits of Welcome Back, Kotter as a kid—I was still a wimp in a lot of ways. I knew I had my parents’ love but I wanted their approval. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mom and dad that my reason for moving to New York City was that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. They