Limited Engagement

On my way home before writing this, I stopped by a local store, which was conveniently beside a place of very ill repute, to purchase cigarettes. The girl who was supposed to be assisting me with my purchase of cancer inducing goods was nowhere to be found. An old American dude tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the girl. He said, “There she is, the one in the white jacket. She’s an airhead. She’s 17 and she tries to fuck everybody.”

All I could say was, “Oh.”

So we sat there, the American dude and I, im drinking a beer and me puffing on a cigarette, and I figured; “Yep. This is the world I live in now.”

A lot can happen in a week. Two weeks even. I, myself, am somehow taken aback by all of this.

Leaving Cavite (Somewhat) in Style. After another not-quite grueling day at work, I had to stop by the Big Man’s place to talk about the details of my impending move, which was to happen the next day. I was supposed to have just a short chat, go hoome, play a few hours of Smackdown vs. Raw and, if it was possible, sleep.

Of course, my life doesn’t really work that way, I’ve come to learn in my 29 years walking this wretched Earth.

The ever morose Tapa King was there, and at that point I knew it was going to be a long night. Upon minimal urging, the King himself laid down gifts of alcohol, which we all drank with a half hearted sense of glee. After all, the Tapa King was always besieges with some issue or another, the Big Man had his fair share of troubles, and me? Well, at that point my heart still hasn’t stopped ticking in that annoying manner and there wasn’t anyone around who cared enough to ask how I was doing.

Once the energy drink-booze supercombo was emptied, it was the Big Man’s turn to succumb to even less urging and out we went for more supposedly good times.

I swear I had fun. I really do. If I could remember anything, I’ll bet it was fun. Apparently, backouts don’t remedy broken hearts.

On the corner of Hope and Love, the new Fortress. I have finally moved in to my new home, which is closer to work, and somehow looks like a miniaturized version of the Fortress. With the help of the Big Man and the Girl Who Saved my Life (at this point in time, I had no idea where the girlfriend was, as she had just gotten home from her hometown and for some reason we weren’t speaking), incidentally the two people who had been to the Fortress the most times. On the way over, the Big Man was filling me in on how  amazingly plastered I was, and how loud and obnoxious I was that night. Yeah, that sounds so 2009.

I surveyed my new home and I thought to myself, yeah, this is a nice place to slowly go crazy.

The neighborhood is as mean as the streets I sorta grew up in. The people are somewhat loud, but I am in need of some well needed isolation. I’d like to think I’ll do better here than I did in my time in the house where the darkest of my days occured.

The BIg Man and I had a drink as the Girl watched on, and when both of them left, I was alone. It felt like wearing old jeans (which I do all the time). Familiar and comfy, with that nagging feeling that something might go wrong with one ill-conceived motion.

A Call from the Past. As I was setting up the new digs, I got a phone call from a former girlfriend, who may have heard about my supposed woman problems, asking me if I would give “us” another shot. She, to paraphrase Jeff Winger, sees my value now, apparently. I respectfully declined, not our of spite, but out of principle. A variety of principles.

The girlfriend, when things eventually got smoothed out, was teasing me about being flattered by the offer. Of course, I wasn’t. I’m not going to name names, but this ex of mine treated me in a manner that even my most indifferent of friends had to butt in and talk me out of being with her. There’s nothing flattering about a person you once love only realizing how special are or how special you could be years after you had broken up.

If you are with someone, right now, don’t wait years to tell that person what he or she needs to hear. Don’t wait until life has drastically placed you two in way too diffrent paths before attempting to make that person feel the way you think he or she deserves to feel. If you are with that person, right now, then there is no better time to do all of that but right now.

Bad Nights and Good Nights. I don’t want to brag, but when I started doing stand up, I never had a bad night. Week in and week out I would perform and always leave the crowd, big or small, laughing and applauding. I’m not saying I’m great  at it, but I never stunk. Until that night. Oh, fuck that night. I started out and I had the crowd in the palm of my hand. It was my first paid gig after all. My debut of sorts. I thought it was going to go my way, but then it happened. I bombed. I panicked and went for some of my proven material. Bombed. I choked and lost the crowd. Joke after joke was met with silence and by the time the set was over, I had to be swept off the stage for I had melted in shame.

The comedian who I thought of as my mentor told me, “good job.” One of the other veteran comedians started ribbing me. “We always say that to people who open the show. Everyone who goes on first is Jesus Christ.” For some reason, that brought a smile to my face. I stilled felt sucky on that bad set, but my fellow comedians saw me in a familiar light that they were comfortable to rag on me. And that made me feel good. Like I was finally one of them.

I requested that I perform again the following week. I didn’t stick around to get my cut of the payment for that night.

The following week, with nothing to lose, I stepped up and hit them with jokes, most of them I had just written. Again, I knew I could not do any worse anyways. And the crowd was laughing. They were responding to me. Not in a big way, but they responded to me enough for me to do my part. After all, I was just a filler between two more experienced comedians, one was my mentor, the other, the fat dude who killed the previous week. My job was just to keep the energy up during the transition, which I’d like to think I managed to do.

I stuck around and received my first payment. True, what they paid me didn’t could only barely cover bus fare. True, the amount I was paid was just one third of the amount I spent on beer that night. But the point is, I was paid to be funny. If ever I never hit  the mic again, I could still say that at some point in my failure ridden life that I was a professional comedian. 

Delusions of Stardom. Apparently, my performance was good enough that the comic  group’s talent manager invited me to join them for an audition for some sitcom the following day. Now, I never envisioned myself in that kind of spot, but upon urging by the girlfriend, I decided to go and immerse myself among the hopefuls who had traveled long and wide just so get a shot at stardom. It was almost sad, seeing that many people there. The women trying to accentuate what they can accentuate. Comedians of different kinds, performing like puppets on a string. We were all monkeys dancing around in front of a bunch of TV execs who most likely hate their own programming but have no problem producing it becausse it’s was the huddled masses consumed.

So I did my dance, and again, hanging out with the comedians and feeling just like one of them was more than enough to make it all seem worthwhile. 

Drunk on a flatbed, singing songs of yore. On one of the weekends that I’ve managed to come home to Cavite, I spent the night drinking with the Big Man, the Make Up Artist and the Gadgeteer (Who was being a tad paranoid about me giving him this particular nickname. But what can I say? It was the best one I can come up with for a guy who created lighhting rigging from a clothes hanger and had one fixed his CPU with a fucking paintbrush. A fucking paintbrush! I can’t even use a paintbrush for its intended purpose, let alone use it to make complex machinery run smoothly.)

Two bottles of expensive Scotch Whiskey, a newly sober Big Man, and the open sky as I lay flat on the back of his pick up, slowly watching spots form in my vision. All thoughts faded away from me then. I do yearn for the old days sometimes, when it was but us and Li and in the Big Green South.  The only other time I felt absolute love for myself is when I do standup, and I don’t even get to do it every week now.

Even the alcohol kick isn’t enough. Yes, I do want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life.

Doo doo doo.

The Sheltered Sons of the South. My new domicile and this whole stand up thing has produced something I totaally did not expect; a whole new sphere to live in. In the numerous lives I lead, I didn’t think there was room for another one, but when I got to thinking about t, this might be the best way to go about things. Sharing a few beers with them in this bar that I growing more and more at home with, spending an entire weekend getting drunk and playing a bunch of games, meeting fellow geeks, talking about things I could never talk about with the majority of my other spheres, it was refreshing. Plus, they are close to home, so aside from the Boys, these Sheltered Sons are the most convenient of my spheres.

It started when fellow comic invited me to te bar for a couple of drinks to dicuss the prospect of possibly opening up shop down south. It has been a plan that was suggested to us by one of the veteran comics, and with our open mic nights now turned into a free show, this new friend of mine and I decided to pool our strengths together into finding a new venue for our comedy. Then his other friends showed up and turned into this social thing, and they really treated me well.

Growing up the way that I had, I’ve always been a bit reluctant with people that are considered to be well off. While I pride myself in having friends from all walks of life, I never really tried rubbing elbows with a bunch of kids that, probably a few years back, I would have described as snot nosed rich kids. But my comic friend, the resident One Man Wolf Pack, has a work ethic one can only admire, and his friends are far less the snooty bitches I had been exposed to before.

The Gadgeteer said it best when I dragged himto one of the Sheltered Sons gatherings; “I have been slapped in the face with opulence.”

I wouldn’t go as far as consider myself truly part of their group, as these guys have pretty much grown up together. But I am pleasantly surprised that I am in new company, and even more surprised that I don’t mind, considering my current predispositions toward most of my personal relationships.

Early Warning Signs. There was something that happened to me amidst all of this, and while I do not wish to go into great detail, I just want to say that I’m a little shaken up. There are concerns about my health that I’d like to addreess in my own fashion, but I have to say, I’m gooing about life half-scared these days of time running out. I’ve been noticing things that I never really focused on in my life, things about me and the people around me that may  have been trigerred by that one phone call. I’m 29  years old. In less than a year’s time I’d be 30. I have, in many ways, thought of this as my final year. Final year as what, is yet to be determined.

I’ve been reassessing my relationships, my place in the world, and there’s something eating at me that I still as of yet can’t bring myself to write about here. point is, there is no day but today, and every second counts. You may think you have all the time in the world, that you can just sit and wait to get yours before you give, but I have learned as young as 21 that time, life, it’s all fleeting. And in the face of all this, despite the noise, despite the lights, despite the promises, I still walk unsure.

I’m trying to confront the fact that no matter how hard I try, I wuld be able to accomplish I set out to do. There just isn’t time. Bitter pill as that is, I also try to be accepting of the fact that how I feel, the thought that I actually do feel, before is never going to be the same again. I can blame many people, annd I could blame circumstance but at the end of the day, it boils down to myself, the choices I made, and the ekind of life that I’ve lived that put me in this sot I am today. The girlfriend asked me why couldn’t I just join them if I can’t beat them. Well, I’ve lived one way, I guess I’ll die that way, until someone or something shows me any differently.

That’s the problem with borrowed time. You never know when you’re going to be asked to return it.

“I never thought I’d die alone
I laughed the loudest who’d have known
I traced the cord back to the wall
No wonder it was never plugged in at all
I took my time, I hurried up
The choice was mine, I didn’t think enough
I’m too depressed, to go on
You’ll be sorry when I’m gone” – Blink 182, “Adam’s Song”

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~ by sunriseshotgun on February 16, 2011.