Hello Nice To Meet You (I'm A Mess)

this is the story of how i...um...came to be.

Some people head into college with great hesitancy, nervous to embark on the path to adulthood. I did not. In my first three years at school in New York, I was a waiter, a tutor, a nanny, a teacher, a theatre director, an executive assistant, and a student, of course--oh, I was an academic! I was always doing something, utterly obsessed with getting out and ‘into the world’. There were acting classes, acting auditions, modeling, singing, dog walking; there was a brief stint as the editor of an online pug enthusiast site...I did it all. I ate either too much or too little. I moved more times than I can count. I collected old leather jackets from thrift stores, I sold the jackets back to the thrift stores and started collecting boots instead, I took a salsa class, I took a class on making salsa...I loved the former, hated the latter; the former was taught at school by a beautiful Puerto Rican woman I was convinced I would marry, and the latter was an overcrowded cooking class taught by a rude, pug-faced man at the Columbus Circle Whole Foods. Why I did these things I don’t remember. I don’t think I ever verbalized a reason.  

I spent too much time on my phone, enough time to assemble massive photo albums. Hundreds and hundreds of images, most of which I’d screenshot off the internet. The “memories” iCloud shows me are rarely my own; they’re photos of apartments I wanted to buy someday, they’re photos of actors and actresses, singers and dancers, porn and food-porn; they’re infographics on how a bill is passed by the Senate, they’re photos of celebrities I was jealous of,  they’re befores and afters and stupid memes about death and bitcoin and Garfield. I inexplicably have over 40 photos of Michael Langdon of Little House on the Prairie I saved in May of 2019. Pa Ingalls, shirtless and glistening in the midwestern sun...that, for some reason, was worth downloading over forty times. 

All of these things, all of these jobs and clubs and people and places and passions, were fractal pieces of life I soaked up and retired, cataloguing neatly away, chasing the next high I could spur myself onward with. Every day, I would tear through the world like a tornado, absorbing any and all stimulation to keep me going, and every day, there would come the inevitable crash from the high. The fatigue would hit me like a ton of bricks, a sinking feeling of hopelessness would weigh on my chest like an anvil, and I’d barely make it home, dragging my feet up my apartment steps, kicking off my shoes, and collapsing onto my bed. Utterly exhausted, physically and mentally unable to continue on, I’d burrow beneath my covers and barely move until the following morning, when the process would begin again.

I was raised on Eddie Murphy’s Raw. My dad showed it to me long before he should have. He would queue clips up on his laptop, tilting the screen in my direction as we sat together at the kitchen table. The glare of the sun would distort the image, but that purple patent leather pantsuit is seared in my mind. I admired the humor, the masculinity, the sheer ability to pace back and forth like a tiger; to spit out words with such precision, confidence, and skill. This was funny, this was brilliantly funny; this was the real deal. Commanding people with humor was an indescribable high to a kid that was still wearing crocs and gauchos and playing The Sims well into highschool. I idolized him, I idolized him. I idolized a lot of comedians, these magical mystery people who seemed to push through their own obvious agony and make it something beautiful, or at least dazzling--I wanted that for myself, even during those college years. When I’d come home to rot in my bed, I’d watch YouTube clips of stand-up almost constantly. I’d hear the laughter blaring out of my tinny laptop speakers late into the night, offering my subconscious comfort even as I slept. 

I walked into Brooklyn’s Eastville Comedy Club on October 14th, 2019. I was wearing a faded green hoodie from a high-school theatre production and bootcut jeans with a hole in the knee. Rachel was sitting at the bar. “You seem nice, I can tell. Unlike the rest of these fucking shitrags”, she blinked at me, clutching a beer with both of her hands. Her fingers were adorned with costume jewelry rings. She grabbed another stool. “Oh god, just fucking sit with me. Let’s be friends”. Rachel dresses like a Victorian era sex doll, laughs until she can’t breathe, and swears like a sailor. I loved her right away. 

I wasn’t sure what a beginning in comedy would look like, but I figured it would be rife with intrigue, or at the very least, an audience. That night, looking out into the sea of faces, the lights shining hotly on my face, it became abundantly clear to me that no one...no one cared. This was a tired Sunday night open mic, and my audience was a group of bored and intoxicated comedians. I was here to hone my material, to work the kinks out of my set before taking it in front of a real audience. I was here to talk to myself--which was exactly what I lived to avoid. The night was fine, the set went fine. It’s mostly a blur. I remember telling a couple jokes, juuling in the bathroom, and checking my email on the toilet (stand-up is, above all else, an excellent laxative). I’ve had worse nights in comedy clubs. 

Over the next several months, something very peculiar started to happen to me. We were an interesting duo, Rachel and I; she a petite and bodacious woman with long flowing hair and a duster jacket, me a skeletal 6’1” vampire in a tracksuit. We’d roll in to open mics, we’d do our sets, we’d talk to the people who didn’t seem rich or mean, and a tiny piece of myself would chip away. I started to improve onstage. I had this whole thing, this whole I’m a tall goofy lesbian! thing. I slowly figured out which jokes made the drunk tourists laugh at the clubs in Midtown, and which made the bisexual art history majors laugh at the bar shows in Bushwick. I wasn’t Carlin, but I was figuring my shit out; making progress. The more people I met, the more friends I made, the more I felt paralyzed by something I couldn’t fully articulate. I worried that maybe I wasn’t being authentic enough in my material; that I’d caricatured myself and learned to regurgitate the same predictable shit, and that was why I felt like my skin was made of fire. I began “injecting reality” into my sets, as I called it. I went there (god, even typing the sentence makes me cringe now). I’d talk about my depression, being cheated on, my fear of failure, my eating disorder. I’d select whatever felt raw, whatever felt real, I’d write and write and write until I could make it funny, and off I’d go. And it was funny! Some of it, at least. It certainly seemed undeniably authentic. People would tell me that after I’d ˜perform˜. They’d say really nice things; they’d say they felt less alone hearing me joke about spilling orange juice on my laptop and having a breakdown in the library, or binging on store-brand Oreos at two in the morning, or being a gay kid and ripping out pages of my dad’s Sports Illustrated, blaming it on the dog. All of the sets I did were walking electrical fires cocooned in a layer of frenzied banter and frizzy hair. I was tossing out anything and everything into the crowd, an emotionally detached fisherman of misery, desperately hoping to hook some spark of real intimacy on my metaphorical line (‘metaphorical’ line is probably redundant, right? I guess it’s obviously not a real fishing line. Here I am, over-explaining metaphor. Maybe I’m making up for lost time; all those weeks and months and years where I ignored blatant answers sitting in front of my face). 

Little by little, my energy levels started to wane. I started sleeping longer and later, missing classes and appointments. I saw my friends less and less. I was no longer constantly running to an event or karaoke night or audition or reading. I made it to class when I could, I went to work, and I’d do a show. That would be the big event of my days, whatever comedy thing was happening that evening. Stand-up enabled me to find some spark of sentience within myself, and I’d cling to it as long as I could; a few hours of human-ness. The night would inevitably come to an end, and I’d go home, crawl into bed, and play YouTube videos. Before I knew it, I was living out my own personal Groundhog Day, caught in the mundanity of what felt like a depressive episode, but behaved a little differently. I wasn’t sure what was happening, and I couldn’t really orient myself and find out. I was a buoy in the harbor, bobbing around helplessly in the waves, waiting for something to happen.

But what?

I remained oblivious for months, right up until the day I performed the ‘mom/mom joke’. What’s the mom/mom joke, you ask? It’s a stand-up joke I wrote in December of 2019. Allow me to grant you the pleasure: 

People always ask lesbians what we’re going to call ourselves as parents. What the kids will call us. “Oh, is one of you gonna be mom, the other mommy? Mama? Mom one, mom two?”....that’s all wrong. The answer is obvious. My kids will just call my wife mom, and me...dad. 

It’s not a funny joke. It’s barely a joke at all. But oh, was I proud when I wrote it. I’d run my new material by friend after friend, and they’d all say the same thing: “Skip the mom/mom joke”. I’d profusely deny their request. In fact, I’d get downright offended, snidely retorting that I didn’t appreciate their passive homophobia. Of course, my friends are mostly gay, so it didn’t really work as an argument. But it didn’t matter. The mom/mom joke was staying in. I loved the mom/mom joke. I needed the mom/mom joke. I needed the mom/mom joke, and fuck you for not getting it. 

I needed it until this one freezing night in late December, when I performed it for the very first time. I breezed through the top half of my set, gearing up for the big delivery--the highlight is coming!, I thought to myself--and...it bombed. Nobody laughed. Why would they? It wasn’t that funny! I was performing at Club Cumming, a sexy, cool, gay bar on the East Side. These were cool queer people, and they’d heard a million mom/mom jokes before. Everyone has. I stood up there in my hoodie and my shitty jeans and just...stared. I’d bombed before, it’s a routine rite of passage for any comedian--but this time felt different. I took a painfully long time to recover. I stared out into the crowd, willing someone to chuckle, to boo, do something...and they did not. I think people thought I was actively setting up the premise to something that would actually be funny, and I had nothing else to give them. After a century or so, I cleared my throat and moved on. I don’t remember the rest of the set, or the rest of the evening, but I remember dashing out as fast as I could. I didn’t stay and watch the other comics, something I always try to do. I didn’t say goodbye, not even to Rachel. 

Sitting on the train home, I felt hollow. Utterly, hopelessly, hollow. I resorted to my usual chain of sporadic thinking, the thing had kept me going for all these years. I’d heal from this weirdly painful wound, I’d find something new. I let the floodgates open--I should get a hobby. I should get a cat. I should get a hamster. I should take piano again. I should take a stab at fencing, my old roommate’s boyfriend is a fencer, I could ask him. I should quit eating sugar. I should quit smoking. I should smoke more. I should quit comedy. I should quit school. I should move. I should leave New York. I should leave my life behind. I should leave earth! I should leave earth. The train screeched to a halt just as I was circulating the dull drain of a self-hating spiral, and I numbly climbed the steps, stumbling to my apartment. I didn’t cry, there was no big dramatic meltdown. I just kind of...sat there. I queued up a stand-up clip, I think it was Margaret Cho. I ordered some Thai food. I ate drunken noodles alone on my couch and felt very, very, sorry for myself. I went to bed and lay awake in the dark, staring at the warm orange glow of my space heater. 

That night, while lying wide-awake at four in the morning, I realized something. Or rather, I accepted something; I accepted that there was something I wasn’t accepting. All my years of frenzied searching and experimenting, of flitting and floating from one life to the next...no matter what I got myself into, no matter how dark I felt, how ugly, how broken--I always felt euphoria in the thrilling high of total metamorphosis. This time was different. I wasn’t bored or unfulfilled by what I had done that evening, not in the slightest. I hadn’t gotten tired of stand-up, I was feeling the bitter sting of rejection over a mind-numbingly stupid dad joke. I loved what I did. I had been so excited to perform that night I could hardly contain myself; my hands were shaking on the train ride down. Something within me had desperately wanted that laugh, and was deeply hurt I hadn’t gotten it. I didn’t care about any other joke; I could recover from that. Who cares if no one likes my comedy, my stupid depressed lesbian comedy?...Oh, but heaven forbid my mom/mom/dad joke fails to bring the house down. It didn’t make sense; I played it in my head over again and again, and it just. didn’t. make. sense. I was deeply confused. But I knew I couldn’t go on like this. I was, at that point in my life, self-aware enough to know I didn’t have many new beginnings left in me. I couldn’t will myself to find a new love, or lifestyle, or hobby, or place to live, or shiny thing to distract myself with. This one, whatever this thing was, this amorphous blob of highly irrational emotion that sat caged in the bowels of my stomach, that was here to stay. I didn’t know what it was, not fully. But I finally realized that there would be no conclusion for me to comfortably arrive at without embracing the fact that I was searching for one. 

I opened the Notes app on my phone. I tried to write a list of things that felt ‘wrong’, but nothing was coming to me, nothing but that stupid joke. It was at that moment I realized that maybe, just maybe, a very real part of me just...liked referring to myself as someone’s dad. Maybe I didn’t just resonate with the idea of having a wife, or being a parent. Maybe I was longing to let myself just fucking say ‘dad’; longing to masculinize myself, and speaking in ironic self-reference onstage to a sea of strangers felt like the only place I could do that in a way that still felt safe and far away. Saying it as a joke, saying it in a comedy set, that made it not real, right?...This was something I did a lot; take a feeling and filter it until it became...a joke.

I always had felt so embarrassed of myself. Mortified. No matter what I was wearing, or what I was doing, or where I was, I was hyper-conscious of every millimeter of my body, and I hated all of it. I am very tall and fairly strong. I am not bad looking, and I loved fashion (when I wasn’t too physically uncomfortable to wear anything other than sweatpants). Yet there was a palpable insecurity in how I held myself; an air of fundamental discontentedness with myself and my own appearance. That night, I looked back on my old ‘finsta’ accounts (for those not in the know, a ‘finsta’ is like an alt-instagram, a ‘close friends’ story, but in account form), and saw what I hadn’t before. They were wastelands of misery. I had one account where I posted things for my closest friends, funny little moments and thoughts and updates on my life. Then I had my journal account, a private, faceless profile, with 0 followers. 

A post from my ‘friends’ finsta account, dated June 1st, 2019. I couldn’t get enough of Snapchat’s gender-swap facial feature. I posted at least 10 of these, thinking it was absolutely hysterical. My friends thought it was funny at first, but then weird--I was recently informed that I apparently used to send regular ol’ snapchats, but using the gender-swap filter. I don’t recall doing this more than once, at most; it was, I’m told, a semi-regular occurrence. 

Two posts from my ‘private journal’ finsta account, dated September 15th, 2016, and August 29, 2018. I think the captions speak for themselves. I think it’s interesting how all of the dysphoric posts I put on the account my friends were following were...comical? They were funny and light-hearted. Haha, goofy ol’ me! I posted them between photos of my obviously feminine (at the time) appearance. Why would anyone necessarily suspect gender dysphoria, when I catalogued it away so deliberately? I was in utter denial of this practice to begin with. I only recently told my therapist.  

I dug into these posts and accounts that night, as I made my Notes app list. I hadn’t posted in over a year, and I’d forgotten about them; I’d forgotten how carefully I compartmentalized these things in my life and inner psyche. Telling the now-infamous mom/mom joke was somehow the catalyst for a deep-dive into my own documentations of dysphoria. I cried a lot. I deleted a lot of these posts, but some I screenshotted, knowing I’d want to do something with this information. I showed them to my best friend when I came out as trans a month later. I called her at one AM. I told her about the mom/mom joke, I told her about the Snapchat filters and mournful posts. I told her how embarrassed I felt all the time, how ugly and dirty and mortified I felt just sitting around. I told her I thought I was a boy, and I didn’t know what to do. I remember I could barely say it at a volume above ‘whisper’. She politely feigned surprise at the notion that I, her best friend of a decade, who routinely said things like “do you think I’d look hot with a mustache?”, was a man. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such relief as that, as my friends loving and accepting me. 

It’s been a year and a half, and I can barely remember who that person was. I hold in my heart the utmost respect and empathy for that person, because he endured the hell that was existing in a body that felt alien in a way he couldn’t yet understand. That person survived--I survived--and I am stronger for it. Coming out was the most important thing I will ever do for myself. Becoming the man I am today took learning to love the weird, the crazy, the sad, the fun (better rates on car insurance); it took embracing the terrifying beauty of possibility. It took allowing things to slow down, making room for the ugly thoughts, the ones that creep up at three in the morning; the ones that might even reveal themselves in a bad joke told at a gay bar. I know I can handle whatever life throws at me, because I’ve already conquered the biggest obstacle I could possibly face. When I think of my future, I think about comedy, the people I love, my dog. I think about writing stupid essays pontificating on the agony of dysphoria and living in New York. I think about good food and sex and skiing and making fresh coffee and mowing the lawn. But most of all, I think about being a dad.