11:40 pm - Sat 6.20.2009
It Ain't Easy Being Me

It's been quite a week...

Tuesday night I went with Brett K. to The Comedy Store, to see graduates of Gerry Katzman's stand-up comedy class do their stand-up comedy thing.

Some folks did better than others, but everyone got laughs, and no one "bombed". All-in-all, I was fairly impressed (This was a slightly more experienced group than folks who just "graduated" from the 10 week class).

I thought it was telling that the least well-received act was the 50 year old woman who did a five minute set on menopause, while the big hit of the evening was the little cutie pie who ended her set with an upbeat song on the ukulele about how "I like it kinda kinky".

Afterward, I wondered about my own potential as a stand-up; I thought about what I'd seen, the different points-of-view, the common themes between acts (Bad relationships, weird families, crappy jobs, etc), and tried to think of what I'd have to say on stage.

(In the time since, I've talked to Gerry Katzman, and have decided to take the class - Now it's just a matter of "working out the details", like how I'm going to pay for it.)

When I got home, I discovered, to my great chagrin, that my apartment was flooded (A pipe had broken in the apartment above me)...and Kipper, my cat, unhappy about the situation, "expressed himself" by peeing in my bed.

A lovely way to end the evening...

So that gave me a number of extra chores to deal with (and I'm not much for "chores" in general, let alone extra ones) - I had to take care of the water myself (When nothing had been done almost 24 hours later), I had to do an extra load of laundry (Before I got the shop vac the next day, I'd mopped up what water I could with a number of towels), and had to take my pissy bedding to the laundromat.

(The next day, since they were working on the broken pipe, I had to shower in an empty apartment on the 5th floor, which made me think, when I saw the nice, clean apartment, "Man, I really turn every place I live into a shithole...")

On Wednesday, I had a session with Javier, my first since he'd read my foster care case file.

His reading of the file was very similar to mine - which boils down, in simplest form, to "Mrs DeHaven good, Dept of Welfare bad" - but I would say he "amplified", and validated, my feelings with his professional perspective.

Having read any number of foster care case files, he told me he'd never come across any foster parent as loving as Mrs DeHaven, and that she really does emerge as "the hero of the piece", as I put it. He told me most foster kids end up with stories very much like mine, but without the saving grace of a "Mrs DeHaven" (And he agreed that Mrs D. was the likely difference between me being here, and not dead or in jail).

The perspective he had when reading the case file, that the social workers and psychologists didn't seem to have at the time, and that I've never had, was that "you acted exactly the way a normal child would act - in that situation" (He said it often seemed, in his reading of the file, that the social workers saw my not being happy and responsive to them, not acting like a "normal" little boy around them - when my circumstances were anything but normal - as a dysfunction. He was very unimpressed with the lot of them).

(This really merits its own journal entry. But for now, I want to move on.)

The good news? We won't be meeting again till a week from Wednesday, but after that, we're back on for once-a-week sessions; his supervisor had wanted him to dump me altogether (To make room for new clients), but I guess he agrees with Javier that this is pretty major stuff, and not the time to be "kicking me to the curb".

(So "Hooray!" for the case file.)

Well, there's much more to write about, but as I always do, I had all the time in the world to do this, and didn't, and now it's gotten late, and I have to go to bed (I'm going to visit Cary and Kay tomorrow).

Between stressing over money (I'm not making enough money to pay my rent, let alone pay for classes at IO and now this stand-up thing), my apartment flooding, the cat pissing on my bed, my past clamoring for attention, my cell phone dying, my teeth hurting, etc, it's honestly been a pretty miserable week, by and large.

(I did have an audition for McDonalds though - No "acting" required, but still, a moment where I could hope a national commercial might be riding to my financial rescue.)

In short, it's not easy being me right now.

But who else is going to do it?

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