2011 – Preoccupied
Addresses: 27th & Buxton, SW 6th and Everett
This was the worst year of my life.
“You, sir, pissed off a very large man last night. He was outside ranting about how mad he was about it.” – Jessie McCoy, to me, on Facebook. May 7, 2011. I think I made fun of a fat guy for being a vegan, because much of my comedy was problematic.
Nationally, politically, things were getting tense. The 2010 midterm elections were a bloodbath for Democrats, which wasn’t surprising given the milquetoast policy offerings they’d made to a public hungry for accountability, an end to torture, the closing of Guantanamo Bay, and the end to warrantless wiretapping and drone warfare. I was officially slipping out of the Obama camp, increasingly frustrated as many of us were that the national ruling class had evaded almost all responsibility for the financial collapse that had thrown millions out of work and made the government their personal piggybank. The pain of the GWB years was still fresh in my mind, but alongside angry anarcho-socialist-lifestylists like myself were the libertarian Tea Party types, End the Fed Ron Paul anarchists, real ass communists and trade unionists, and the newly-arisen hacker group Anonymous. We were all pretty fuckin’ fed up with what was happening.
I – Funemployed Trillionaire
I suddenly had lots of free time, and an unemployment check. The first few months of the year, Taylor and I stayed home together a lot, ate good food, and played boxing and Wii Sports Resort on the Wii. My failure to win the comedy competition put me in a mood to explore other ways of approaching comedy. I was thinking of becoming something of a political-comedic celebrity. I wanted to be the counterpoint to Glenn Beck – a left leaning madman who would say and do absurd, spectacular things for attention and viewership. Glenn Beck had my attention often, as videos of his latest offense would circulate on this thing we had called the internet. It was uncommon at this point to focus on the absurd offenses of your political opposition.
I started a blog called “Dressed Funny,” where I would profile local comedians about the way they dress. I was always interested in fashion – having subscribed to GQ for about 5 years – and having a niche market, comedy, to approach through fashion seemed like a good idea, or at least one I hadn’t heard done before. The best thing I ever wrote was “Shawn Fleek’s Rules of Comedy Fashion,” a list of tips about how to dress yourself better, alongside other rules about how to hold a microphone, talk into a microphone, and to focus more on writing jokes and telling them than on looking a certain way. It was read by some 10,000 people, making its way through comedy scenes across the west coast, Midwest, and New England.
Rule #4) Dressed, Funny is about fashion, and fashion is about details. Watch comedians who are on television, and they generally have trademarks of professionalism in their appearance and mannerisms. Rules are made to be broken in fashion and in comedy, but someone, somewhere is going to enforce a strict set of rules on you, whether you agree with the rules or not. Your potential success in dealing with casting directors, bookers, agents and promoters could very well hinge on their judgement of your appearance. You have to be funny. If you don’t understand that, then start reading the rules from the top again. You don’t have to be handsome or well-dressed to be a great comic. But if you are funny, and you want a career in comedy, then it would make sense not to handicap yourself. It would make sense to do everything you can to look like you have your shit together. Comedy is a business. Performance is an interview. They laugh, you’re hired. So please, present your material, and be judged on your merits. But if your outfit is distracting, ill-fitting, misplaced (performing for AIPAC while wearing a Hitler costume), stained, tattered, if your hair is a mess, if you appear dirty, if your facial piercings are making noise when you are talking, if your earrings light up or blink or spray glitter, if you have your drink, a personal tape recorder, a filing cabinet and a mouse-pad with you on stage… (assuming those quirks aren’t core components to your humor or stage-presence) your interview is going to be tainted. Dressed, Funny is a website which intends to help comics see fashion for what it is: a tool to be utilized as much as the inflection in your voice in helping your audience appreciate your art.
Taylor and I also started a podcast. It was mostly my idea, and I did the bulk of the writing, but it was better than the failure that was Politicute, which collapsed because my computer – the laptop I bought when I moved to Portland – couldn’t handle video editing in the slightest. The podcast was heavily influenced by the talk radio I listened to all day every day, even though I was no longer at work in a kitchen. The show, Dr. Tyrant and Number 24 present The Fascist Radio Hour, was in a way a response to the talk about fascism happening during the Obama era. I wanted to definitively assert that fascism was and is a phenomenon of the far right. In order to do this, I created a fictional world in which a fascist dictator, Dr. Tyrant, is taking over the planet by propagating hatred among the masses. Dr. Tyrant was responsible for all forms of bigotry, which he used to enslave and control the people. As he would take over each area of the planet, he would enslave people and put them to work “digging.” The joke was essentially that the podcast was a radio program that was broadcast inside of the prison state. Meaning you, the listener, are a prisoner. Hence, the announcer at the beginning of each episode would announce, “Prison laborers are required to listen. LIVE from Fascist Mobile Command, it’s the Fascist Radio Hour, with Dr. Tyrant and Number 24.” I would add in dumb sound effects using my MIDI keyboard and samples I downloaded from public domain sound sites.
A core conceit of the show was that Dr. Tyrant had created an army of drone robots who would do his bidding, and in the classic style of the overtly sexist Dr. Tyrant, they were all women. However, #24 (whom Taylor played) became the only robot whom the Dr. gave feelings and emotions. The Dr. was a misogynist totally oblivious to the fact that once #24 had emotions and feelings, she was upset at the subjugation of her fellow drone-women, and she would break into monologues about feminist theory. She’d follow up some glibly sexist remark the Dr. would make by saying, “If I were in control, when I am in control, we’ll have a matriarchal society, with no more sexism, and no more men.” The Doctor would completely ignore anything she said of substance, and continue with his egomaniacal rants. This kind of satire isn’t even really possible anymore, may not even have been possible or appropriate then, and if such a show existed today I would likely hate it. Local comedians would come over and record guest spots – as a space alien that could control time (Tim Hammer as “The Time Hammer”), as a Space Cowboy (Dennis Williams, in a blasphemous southern accent saying “I really love your Peaches, wanna shake your tree, ma’am.”), as inept soldiers (Kyle Harbert and Justin Lentz) who failed to kill the slaves who acted up, or as our announcer (Andy Schanz – a remarkable impressionist whose standup comedy was always just shy of unwatchable, but who came alive in the role of announcer and commercial actor). The show lasted 6 consecutive weeks. It was extremely problematic – most of the humor was to be derived from commentary about doing horrible things as a fascistic warlord. War crimes, sex crimes, painful disfiguration. A clear example: one of the products sold on the show was “Dr. T’s Oppressive Scarring Acid.” The commercial went as follows, as read by Andy doing an impression of a wise-guy ad man from the 50’s:
Doctor Tyrant and Number 24 are problem solvers. They rise above challenges every day. And that’s how it is with Dr. T’s Oppressive Scarring Acid. Every day it melts the flesh of insubordinate men and literate women. Three out of four theocratic dictators agree that Dr. T’s burns faster, leaves more colorful scars, and teaches more powerful lessons in subservience and reverence for power. Friends you will not find a higher-caliber Scarring Acid at any price. Dr. T’s Scarring Acid – Put your slaves in their place with acid in the face. Dr. T’s!
With my free time I also started a regularly recurring monthly comedy show called the Mental State Department. “Where the brain goes when it dies… laughing,” the Mental State Department was “an extragovernmental agency with a dual mandate – to solve problems and to provide laughter.” Each month, myself and a few close friends (principally, Jay Dean and Joe Hieronymus, after Jon Washington quit, with eventual committed participation from Whitney Streed, Steven Wilber, Zach Cole, Jeff Oliver, Mandie Allietta, and others) would craft a 30-minute sketch show based around a theme. Themes over the year included Halloween, Robots, and Thanksgiving. Three comedian guests would be in attendance. Audience members would come to the show and write down their problems on pieces of paper and put them in a fishbowl. During the 30 or so minutes of sketch comedy, the three visiting standup comics would take the fishbowl of problems back stage and write jokes to “solve” the problems. Then the audience would vote on who was the best problem solver. The show was sometimes sparsely attended but had a small group of dedicated fans, and it was short-lived but fun. It directly influenced the creation of a regular showcase at Curious Comedy Theater called Instant Comedy, which became a monthly showcase for several years to come.
Curious Comedy had become something of a second home. I would occasionally work behind the bar, and was a rising star within the improv classes they offered. The theater was not without controversy, as the space had a reputation for playing favorites, coddling certain actors / players, and essentially serving as a clubhouse for the Artistic Director. I considered Stacey, that Artistic Director, a friend, and while I wouldn’t agree with the harsher criticisms levied against the theater under her direction, I did see a bit of an internal clique that was solidly defined, even as I was up and coming. This is true pretty much everywhere there is performance. These were just a different group of sexy weirdoes, not unlike the ones to whom I used to serve French fries and sing karaoke.
I took an improv class at Curious Comedy, and Taylor took another. I was in Level Three, she was in Level One. But we both took classes. At my urging, and her expressed desire, she performed on stage in front of an audience. It was a big moment for her, especially, as someone who has never been great at performing. When she got off stage the first time I gave her a big hug. I was proud she was overcoming some of the awkwardness that defined her performance style.
After some unsuccessful attempts at finding new work in some field besides kitchens, I was getting frustrated. A few times I sent out my resume with blatant lies just to see if I could get a call back. I pretended to have a college degree, out of shame at my failure to earn one, but even that wasn’t helping. So I took on more shifts at Curious Comedy to have more spending cash. It wasn’t a dive bar. It paid and didn’t demand me to clean up puke.
Around Summer, Taylor decided to start up a pickup softball game for comedians. It was her project, I just carried the equipment from our house to the field nearby. She was fond of the game from her youth, and the comedy scene was exploding with able-bodied potential ball players. I happened to have a glove I’d inherited form my uncle, who committed suicide when I was in 5th grade. With more than 200 people calling themselves comedians, it was high time we got the comics out of doors, in the daylight, to do something other than sit around in the dark in bars. Of course, we’d bring beer to the park, and smoke a ton of weed while we played, but it was a really nice time. Better than all the self-destructive, sedentary behavior we usually took part in.
II – Texas
Taylor and I visited her hometown. For all the visits prior to hang out with her family, I wasn’t prepared for how much I hated Texas. Not because of her mom, though her mom did in fact drive me absolutely nuts. It was just how Texan it all was. It was impossible to comprehend the depths of it all. The long drives between everything. The lack of recycling. My liberal, lifestyle anarchist sensibilities were enraged. How dare these people pretend to care about life (as they were pro-lifers) while their entire lifestyle is predicated on destroying the planet? The “bigness” of Texas felt like waste. Everything was bigger – but really that just meant they built huge roads between everything to take up ten times the amount of space necessary. Living in dense urban Portland made me so jaded on the sparse, almost intentionally-wasteful landscapes of Texas.
Taylor’s mom’s house gave me some severe allergic reactions. There was a thick coat of dust on everything, and it was a severe allergy season outside. There were cockroaches. I hated being there. Taylor’s mom had some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder, or at least seemed to be hoarding knickknacks. It was a scary premonition to me of who Taylor would grow to become, or at least at this point I was sure I didn’t like the possibility that this was going to be my future wife. Her sister Kenzie was younger, a bit naive, and Taylor and I would give her love and sex advice to keep her from getting her heart broken. She would still end up getting her heart broken but at least we tried.
A key piece of the visit was that through a long conversation over years together, I had convinced Taylor to finally reconnect with her father, from whom she had been estranged for some time. He was a Texas conservative man, a bit Hank Hill and a bit George W Bush. I didn’t hate him, because there’s something relieving about an honest conservative who is open and clear about that fact – even if I loathe everything they stand for, they’re also the polite kind of person who thinks it rude to bring up religion or politics. He was thrilled to see his daughters again – we ate barbecue together and everyone cried at the prospect of second chances. It was beautiful in its own way. Texas barbecue is the best in the country.
Taylor and I also spent a few days in Austin, staying with some friends of hers. I played Fable 2 on their Playstation well into the evening. As luck would have it, it was comedy competition season in Texas, and I performed in two different contests, badly losing both of them to Josh Johnson, a lovable local who deserved every win. Taylor’s dad met up with us to see me do a standup comedy set at the Velveeta Room. The host made the new guy – me – go nearly last – I was something like 30th on a list of 40 or so, though I’d signed up weeks in advance with support from a former Texan comedian, Belinda Carroll. Taylor’s dad bought me a bunch of whiskeys while I waited for the stage, and by the time it was my turn I was trashed and forgot all my jokes. Some highlights:
“I had a job interview this morning, and while I was walking there I shit my pants. A lot of people would have went home at that point, but I decided to go for it. I went to that job interview and I got the job, because I was undie turd.”
“I used to date this Israeli girl but we had to break up because she did not have very clear boundaries. And my mom told me never to settle.”
The host came back on when I was done, and said something to the effect that my jokes were all old and bad, and then we left. I think Taylor and I had more than a few fights while we were on the trip. It was becoming typical for us.
I found a shitty job that wasn’t cooking: I worked the counter at a cell phone repair shop in Beaverton called Tech House, owned by a Muslim man a month older than me who had no idea what he was doing and who had decided to start drinking for the first time in his life at the age of 27. The basic business was buying and reselling used cell phones, and providing jailbreaks, resets, hardware fixes. Sometimes we’d fix video game systems or computers, but the whole operation just seemed like a scam. The model of the business was essentially doing things for people that they could have done for themselves with YouTube and a little ambition. Every shift, I posted ads offering to buy used cell phones on craigslist, and advertising the services we offered. Nearly every instruction I was given on how to do my job was “look this up on the internet.” If someone came in with a cracked iPhone screen, I was to look for a specific YouTube video to fix the problem. Something about this business was so sketchy I still can’t quite label it. I was finally generating my own income again, about 6 months after being unemployed full time.
III – Sober for the Revolution
I had bought Taylor a subscription to Adbusters more than a year before, but I read the magazine more closely than she did with all the spare time I had. Because I was neck-deep in politics online and off, I saw it coming. In September, signs appeared on telephone poles near our apartment saying “you should have expected us” and other such Guy Fawkesian imagery and rhetoric, which at the time was exciting and I would soon find patently annoying. I remember pointing at one of the signs on a pole, and saying “we’re going to that.” It was our invitation to Occupy Portland.
Adbusters put out the call to #OccupyWallStreet.
T-minus four days to Occupy Portland, I’m standing under the Morrison Bridge with something like 50 people. We’re a small crowd, but we also know that we’re calling for something big, and we’re here to plan it as a totally decentralized, democratic effort. We form the first General Assembly I’ll participate in. We talk issues. We twinkle-finger when we agree and we down finger when we don’t. We are legion, and not in the inauthentic way that Anonymous says we are constantly.
When we break into affinity groups, I naturally self-assign to the media team. I’ve long been on social media, more than anyone I know, and I write more and more quickly than anyone I know – at the time, I was generating at least ten minutes of new standup material per week, a weekly podcast, a monthly variety show, and blogs about politics in the in between. I stay quiet at first, trying to be nonchalant. But clearly, at first, there’s no direction. I make a few recommendations. People are suggesting we meet again soon. I’ve never seen this kind of kinetic, political energy. These are all organizers – people who have also spent their time trying to get others involved. If they’d failed prior, it didn’t show, just like my own failures didn’t show. But they were present, and interested in ongoing talk.
Having felt a lot of peer pressure not to drink during this time, given my economic status, the way that the comedy scene looked when I was no longer the employee of a bar, the way that the comedy competitions had all been just a little bit harder because of being hungover or drunk, and then seeing what a real cohesive movement of motivated and smart people looked like, I told Tayor it wasn’t hard not to drink anymore,because I wanted “to be sober for the revolution.” Sobriety there helped me keep my wits about me while the Occupation continued.
I ended up an administrator, among ten, for the Occupy Portland Facebook group, where we would oversee the participation of some 10,000 individuals in the Portland-based movement for the 99%. The admin team met in a coffee shop to come to agreement that even when the most absurd Ron Paul-loving argument would surface, we’d allow it. We’d only censor overtly hateful, hurtful, targeting, or otherwise (on discretion, via consensus) bad posts. We had a pretty good track record keeping white supremacists out of the mix, though they’d creep in sometimes with Ron Paul rhetoric and then slip in “Rothschild Bilderberg Jew conspiracy” in a comment. We also drafted press statements, and led discourse. We helped people process the racism and sexism and homophobia out of their rhetoric for the sake of movement unity. It felt like a sincere public education being offered to anyone who needed to understand more about the reason the world was divided into haves and have-nots. My own analysis was barely evolved beyond my days of eating up every second of liberal democratic talk radio, but engaging with the various left-and-right-wing demagogues who found their way into the group helped move me left, and gave me food for thought. I started recognizing the need to correct some preconceived notions. To get better.
Nobody suspected the Occupy Portland march was going to end up as big as it did, some ten to twelve thousand people strong. After the manufactured nonsense of the Tea Party, this felt like a real, massive uprising, and the camp afterward was huge. According to filmmaker Michael Moore, who visited the camp as well as many others around the country, we had the largest continuous encampment in the United States. It was as quirky as Portland, and then some. All kinds of radical and moderate and conservative ideologues, unified under the banner “we are the 99%,” wandering around talking and arguing and collaborating with one another. General Assemblies – People’s Microphones – working groups – autonomous decision making – collective action – broader and more inclusive affinity groups. It felt like a revolution, as much as anything up to that point in my life had. I didn’t sleep in the camp, as Taylor and I had a house. But I did end up there often, doing anything I could, or more often spending my days on social media admin for a discourse around our demands, our grievances, or camp rules, our social rules, political line, political correctness, social justice, racial justice, gender justice, and so on. The camp’s was the only dirty kitchen in which I would happily work. We fed hundreds of homeless people thousands of meals and gave them a safe, secure place to sleep – some of them for the first time in years. The unions showed up and brought donuts and hauled away trash. We established governing principles, a smoking section for the camp to make things more kid-friendly. Drums were constant, which brought a distinctly tribal feel to the space despite it being overwhelmingly white hippies playing those drums. But they were there, a part of our pop-up new world inside the decaying husk of the old one. All of the rough edges were reminders that we had work to do. Any of us who didn’t blame homeless, mentally-ill or drug addicted people for their fate had to accept these people and deal with them as people, instead of pushing them away. It was a pop-up, autonomous community, with real social safety net for the people who polite, “I don’t discuss politics and religion” society had forgotten. Housing and food and work with purpose, guaranteed, in Lawnsdale Park and Chapman Square, between the Justice Center and City Hall and the Multnomah County Courthouse – the public square, full of the public, a thorn in the seat of state power in our city. We worked out autonomy from the police. Drug use was happening in the camp, which was hard to deny with the constant narrative of conservative talk radio calling for our blood and calling us every name imaginable, but the rules clearly stated not to do this, and the police seemed to respect our claim to the encampment. While I am not and was not a cop talker, the arrangements some Occupy organizers made with police did seem to keep police out of our hair so we could solve our own problems.
The Occupy Camp was a sight of tremendous hope in what felt like a hopeless time. Occupy as a movement gave me an optimism I’d needed, having spent some years growing increasingly frustrated with everything I cared about. Comedy wasn’t what it was when a tenth as many people were actual friends who performed together, and 90% were out to step on each other and move up. I had many people who respected me deeply for the political analysis I would weave into my comedy – and the writing I did outside of standup that brought that analysis to the forefront and would weave in humor. Work had fallen through and I was now in an entry level job in another soul sucking industry – amateur professional cell phone repair – that felt more exploitative and gross than just slinging food and drink. My family was too far away to be a real support or encouragement structure, though they were supportive from afar. Politics at the national level, where I focused so much of my energy and attention, were a calamitous hot shit show. Everything I’d come to have faith in was basically a huge mess. Including my marriage.
IV – Going
So I began to plan my exit. I saved money outside our joint bank account, by keeping checks instead of depositing them. We talked less. It suddenly made sense why she wanted me to put my money and hers in the same place. She kept tabs on me that way.
I recall sitting at my desk at my shitty tech repair job, chatting on facebook with Nicole, a cute girl from improv class who was half-flirting with me. She asked me about my relationship with Taylor, and I opened up about the problems. The fighting. The stress. The disappointment. I’d received a pay check that Monday, and hadn’t cashed it, and it was big, as my hours had increased. It was big enough to keep me afloat for some time.
It was Nick Walker’s birthday, November 5th. A local comic who was dating another, Jessie McCoy, he was part of our circle of friends. All the comedians were friends in some way, really. His party was at the East Burn, where many other comedians were hanging out, laughing, and having a good time.
I swallowed hard and I ordered a drink, because I knew I was going to need one. I was going to tell Taylor tonight I wanted out of our marriage. There was a comedy show going on. I watched and enjoyed it, but I was waiting for the inevitable. There’s something about these memories where the comedy isn’t memorable. Up to this point I’ve spent the better part of five years where all my spare time is spent listening to others’ jokes while waiting to tell my own. In the moment, I can hear, process, laugh, smile, wink, make notes, think about the structure. But I also don’t really need to retain this entertainment. In fact, retaining it makes it harder to write from my own voice. I can deeply respect a Nick Walker punchline. A few weeks earlier, a Halloween showcase at the Weekly Recurring Humor night featured a string of comedians performing as one another. I was Nick Walker. I did not do well. Sean Jordan was me. It was comedy for comedians at a show that only occasionally would get the audience the talent – and the pristine hosting and booking of Whitney Streed – deserved.
About an hour into the show, Taylor arrived. She showed up in a whirlwind and angrily knocked a drink out of my hand. She was livid, as I had broken my promise to stay sober. I don’t remember everything she said, but I do remember her mocking me for “staying sober for the revolution.” I told her I was done with that, and I was done with us. She wanted to talk outside and I stubbornly refused, hoping and clinging to this life I loved – the laughs, the friends, the dark rooms full of talented and beautiful weirdos. I knew this was all going to change. Eventually I left with her because it was embarrassing me to have her yelling at me in public. Outside, she crossed the street, and yelled at me to come with her. I refused. She left without me, and I went back inside and wrote out my plans. I was back home an hour later. We argued, her throwing her wedding ring and bulldozing past me, I tried to stop her by putting my hands on her, a deep regret in this haze of such a cataclysmic night, and then she left. I remember Shane and I meeting up on the patio at the East Burn, him asking me if I was sure, telling me she was upset with how I tried to stop her, that he was upset about it too. Flashback to Shane texting me “She’s my friend. Be good to her,” when he gave her my number. I remember went home later, and slept on the couch.
I woke up and my cell phone and my pay check were gone. Taylor had taken them. I opened my computer, and she’d clearly been using it while I was asleep. I emailed her. “Where’s my phone, and where is my check?” She told me the phone was a gift (I’d bought it when unemployed using our joint bank account) and that the check was to cover all my expenses that month (we only had one bank account so any money I had spent that month she insisted was hers). She admitted to having gotten into my computer, said glibly, “it was easy,” and told me she had seen the exchanges with the girl from improv class flirting with me. She accused me of infidelity. I evaded that question though there was more truth to it than I wanted there to be (the flirtation was two sided, and a harbinger of things to come, though it never got any more serious than that). I insisted she give me back what she’d taken from me. After some back and forth, she finally sent Shane over to our apartment with cash, and my phone, to return them to me. The phone was in prolonged lockdown, because she’d tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to unlock it and see what I’d been up to. Her jealousy, finally laid as bare as could be.
She told me over text that she wanted me out of our apartment within 48 hours, and I didn’t want to argue with her. I should have, this was unreasonable. The short time frame made it necessary for me to choose among, and lose, many of my possessions. I lost 85% of my books, nearly all my cookware, kitchenware, and utensils, many of my personal relics. Things gathered over years, lost in mere days.
I left behind the microwave Taylor would never use, a desk I bought with her, the bedframe I owned the first night we slept together, three huge bookcases, our Wii and all our games, the Ikea desk chair she’d gotten for me for my birthday, the tower of the computer that was destroyed in my move to Portland. All the Dead Man’s Furniture, though we’d never have had it without my being around to claim it. My walking stick, carved during my first week in Portland. A stuffed alligator Kate the Painter got me. A stuffed elephant Taylor had given me. Old papers and effects, things I probably will never remember are gone. Are gone.
I moved into the kitchen at Drew Anderson’s house. Drew and I had been getting closer over the previous few months, as I’d been visiting him to tell him I was thinking of leaving my wife, and looking for a place to crash when the axe inevitably fell. Drew is an artist, running a brand called Millions of Hundred Dollar Ideas (MoHDI). He is brilliant, understanding, and altogether the most-willing-to-put-up-with-me person in my world at the time. He helped me when I was down and out and I’ll never repay that service. Jay Dean from the Mental State Department had a pickup truck and hauled what few of my possessions fit into Drew’s kitchen – itself part of one large room where Drew kept a studio and loft at Everett Station Lofts. I slept on Drew’s daughter’s bed for when she visited – a child’s bed that was right next to the stove. I do some work for Drew and clean up after him here and there.
Among everything I lost was most of my friends, basically the entire comedy scene. It was the only group of friends both Taylor and I had (save a couple outliers – friends from back home or college we barely saw), and I was an abrasive loudmouth compared to her demure, tiny, cute self. I was known for being aggressive and pointed, for saying “I’m not doing comedy to make friends,” and she was always rightly seen as my better half. She was the CUTE in Politicute. I was the “Politi” – the politicizing figure, the man screaming in front of a picture of JFK. The hard pill to swallow. And upon my decision to exit the relationship, Taylor sought refuge not just in her close friends, but in the scene where I’d made myself my only Portland peer group. Every public perception anyone had of both of us was only amplified.
She sought the friendship and company of Jimmy, the comedian who had inappropriately texted her for years prior. She sought to companionship of comics and hangers on to the scene she’d claimed previously to hate. Anyone who would listen, she’d detail my misdeeds, my bad husbandry, my “infidelity,” that I watched pornography, and all the times we fought. Nothing was off limits to her scorn. And I made the unconscious decision not to defend myself.
I really don’t know why I didn’t. I just cut out. I can’t put a finger on it, but it felt like I was ending a phase of my life. Mostly I wanted the drama to go away, and to get back to the things that made me happy. Mental State Department was my baby and I loved it. Stand-up comedy was my guiding light. Improv was my new darling, where I could quick and dirty tell a joke that usually took weeks to write. Dating – in a way that didn’t make me feel horribly unappreciated and controlled and demeaned. Politics – in a way that I could feel good about instead of spinning my wheels – through involvement with Occupy and this new network of local radicals with whom I’d become acquainted.
It was around a month later that the Occupy camp was swept away by our militarized Portland police. They erected a fence. I went to the campsite with Drew, and cried, and yelled at the police who were keeping watch over the now-vacant park blocks.
Within that same month, Taylor had moved another comedian in to our old apartment. Tynan Delong, a slightly older, menthol-smoking Aries, who had long ago foregone drinking alcohol in favor of party drugs. The two of them took ecstasy and mushrooms together, and Tynan would indulge in his sugary candy addiction in our apartment. He was funnier than me. Over the course of a month or two he even took it upon himself to do a couple of comedy routines at my direct expense, making shots at political comedy and people like me, portraying a loathsome parody of my character called “The Flame.” It was funny, but it was mean. Taylor and Tynan would write funny in-jokes on each other’s’ Facebook, many of which were obvious digs at me. I recall one in which they made fun of me for wearing my keys on my belt, “like a janitor.” Taylor took bit, offstage parts in comedy routines that Tynan and Jimmy would do. Having been the person to get her to perform first, it was perhaps the most pointed of all the seemingly-pointed insults she’d send my way. She was getting more performance time without me than she ever did with me.
I watched comedians I respect shit on the Occupy movement at open mic shows and showcases within days of watching the revolution get swept away by the cops. Whatever the conservative talk radio types were saying about the camps was penetrating popular consciousness much more than what the progressive stations might have, had they still been
V – Clawing Back
Sleeping in Drew’s kitchen felt terrible. I tried dating, it felt terrible. I went out with the cute girl from improv class, Nicole, and it felt terrible. I slept with her, it felt terrible. I fell asleep behind her on a couch, and in my sleepy stupor I said, “oh my God, Taylor I love you so much.” Half-asleep, I was still married. Awake, I was divorcing. Nicole didn’t take it well. I cried like a baby, sobbed, wailed. It had hit me. We didn’t end up very compatible, and I had no business being in a relationship mere weeks after my nearly three years having rushed into my still-technically-marriage. But it didn’t stop me from trying. Drew tried to set me up with a friend of his girlfriend. It felt awful. We made out. It felt awful. Taylor was texting me at odd hours, accusing me of infidelity and telling me that adultery was a crime in Oregon, and since we were still married and I was seeing other people, she planned to take legal action. Manipulative, mean, petty. These aren’t words I would use to characterize most of my time with Taylor, but certainly words for the first month afterward. Threatening to sue me for sleeping with other people before the ink on the divorce was final.
Yet, two months after leaving Taylor, I tried to get her back.
We had an email exchange, one too long to post in full. Some highlights:
(I initiated this email exchange)
ME (12/6/11, 11:36AM) : “I still feel around for my wedding ring every hour or so. I still check your tumblr, because it’s the only thing I can see of yours. I still compose emails to you and then scrap them because they’re not going to change anything. I decided not to scrap this one, just to see how it goes over, if it might make sense to you. … Why did it come to this? Why couldn’t we stop fighting? Why were we so bad to each other? Why was me leaving the only thing that could make me feel like you cared about me at all? As it was, I felt like you had gotten complacent. I certainly had.”
TAYLOR (12:34PM): “You have made me cry at work more than any other person in the world.
… Every time I wash my hands my heart stops because I can’t find my ring. I stopped smoking so much pot because it gives me panic attacks. I absent-mindedly reach down to plug your speakers into my laptop and realize they’re gone, then look around and realize that most everything is gone, and I’m a pile on the floor.
…
You have helped me, immensely, to come out of my shell. And I thank you for that. However, recently, a friend at a party said “Taylor, I REALLY like you without Shawn, you’re actually gregarious!” It made me a little sad, but mostly happy. I’m finding my voice, and it’s not falling on deaf ears. Before, I was sitting quietly and sadly at comedy shows watching you talk to people, and that had a lot to do with the fact that I was depressed, unfulfilled, and lonely. … I’m sad and wishing things weren’t so awful between us, too. What do we do?”
ME (1:01PM): “I want to see you. I want to be your friend again, because I felt great being around you when we met, and you -were- gregarious, and we -were- different. Marriage made us lazy, sad people who didn’t improve and who got stuck in patterns. You, sitting at comedy, sad and lonely, is a classic example of that. That wasn’t the woman I married, I wouldn’t have married that woman, and if we weren’t married you probably would have felt abler to leave when you were bored, or to talk to whoever you wanted and be yourself. … I feel like self-improvement was so important to me when we met. I was a deep-breather. You remember that, right? You couldn’t match half my breaths because I breathed so slow. And through our marriage I got shallower, more constricted breathing. And it all really comes from that. I lost my practice, got stuck in a pattern, and have crashed my own life.”
TAYLOR (1:34PM): “I realized the pattern long ago, and I wanted to break it, together. I wanted us to stop drinking because we spent our entire dating lives drinking and our entire marriage drunk. … A psychiatrist at my work told me that divorce is like dealing with a death. It’s true. And it’s not fair for either of us to not be able to mourn properly.”
ME: (2:31PM): “There are things married people stop doing. Try to impress each other. Try to make ourselves worth seeing. Focus on getting and keeping each other, instead of lazily having and expecting each other because the decision has already been made and documented at the courthouse. Make efforts to be desirable because we’re not guaranteed anything. … I know you worked hard for us, harder than I did at points, particularly toward the end. I appreciate so much the health and well-being I owe you. And I also owe you a cry, together, sometime soon. The distance between us has been rough, and you mean a lot to me, and my immense guilt at the situation needs relieved, and you need to be validated in your concerns and suspicions, and we just need to clear the air.”
TAYLOR: (2:42PM): “I meant it when I said I’m losing my husband and my best friend. It’s really hard. Sometimes I have to stop myself from yelling out our private jokes in public, thinking that you’ll be right there to get it and laugh with me. … I’m leaving meeting up to you. I tried to take care of everything for too long. It’s up to you.”
We took a phone call. That phone call led to a meeting. We ended up alone, talking, in the corner of the parking lot at the Tonic Lounge, during the Weekly Recurring Humor Night, the next day – 12/7. She asked me repeatedly if I was serious about feeling like we could do it over and do it right, if I was willing to do what it would take. She ended up leaving that night, calling Tynan over, asking him for his key to our old apartment back. He stormed out, and she called me over. I spent the night in my old house. So many things were different – I wish I had the foresight to take photos before leaving. Anything that reminded Taylor of me was already gone – the reason she’d ended up a puddle on the floor. The big stuffed alligator I got from Kate the Painter. All the heart-shaped pillows. The carved walking stick. Gone.
It was the last time we had sex. The following morning, we reaffirmed everything from the night prior – that I would come back and be a better husband and keep my word to her to not drink again. I went to work at the Curious Comedy Theater wearing my wedding ring, and indicated to a few people that it might not be all over. They seemed happy for me. But it wasn’t that simple. I promised Taylor that things would be different. She took me at my word and seemed optimistic about us. But she remained in touch with Tynan. I found out later, by 12/8, the two of them had decided to stay together. On 12/9, she had the choice between coming to see me perform, or seeing Tynan, and she chose him. His show was much bigger, more significant, nationally-acclaimed. Mine was just a local gig not really worth mentioning.
I can’t say I blame her. The separation and social rift created in the aftermath of my leaving had left her with a much better life. The only thing she didn’t have from before me was me – and she’d kept plenty of things that were mine as her own. I, on the other hand had myself and a small amount of boxes and clothes to bring to the table. Having spent three years with me, she knew I wasn’t as dreamy as I’d seemed that first week together. She knew from our conversations exactly how conflicted and broken and complicated I was.
I went to an AA meeting. It felt like group therapy with a large and diverse room of people to whom I didn’t relate. These were people who had killed people while drunk. Gambled away their life savings. Lost all their teeth to bar fights. Not casual, not social, but dependent, uncontrollable drunks. To me, the booze was always hiding the real issues, and those were what I needed to address. I decided not to go back.
Compared to me, Tynan was simple, easy, convenient, and required little of her. He was also a few years drink-free, something she needed in a partner at that time. I was asking for her hand in marriage for a second time, and through a complex series of words and actions, she refused to grant it. She was no longer my wife. She was her own woman, and her heart belonged to another man.
VI – World War II Radio Christmas 1942
Our third anniversary would have been December 21st of that year – my grandfather’s birthday. Back on the evening of the 7th, when we met up and had sex, we talked about using the anniversary two weeks later for renewing our vows – really, making true vows instead of having a boozy wedding of no seriousness. But by the 9th, I was doubly divorced, not just divorced but officially rejected. It was over. I didn’t move back in, we didn’t celebrate a third anniversary, we did not renew our vows. Instead I watched my many former friends, our shared friends, rush to her side in support while I slept in a child’s bed in my friend’s kitchen and tried to figure out what to do with my life.
I figured that part out. Getting divorced certainly gives a person the chance to change the direction their life is heading.
All December long I watched the saddest Christmas show in the world, “World War II Radio Christmas” as performed by Oregon Children’s Theater while working behind the bar at Curious. Child actors performing a Christmas play, a musical, about WWII is probably the most emotionally manipulative thing one can imagine existing.
Scene 3: Two experienced nurses in a wartime field hospital, stage left and stage right, are working on wounded soldiers. A new, inexperienced nurse walks on stage. The new nurse is repulsed at the working conditions, asking “where can I set down my bags so they’re not a mess?” Left nurse laughs and replies. “We’ve done this in a cow pasture, ankle deep in manure. You’d better get in here and get to work.” Right nurse chides the newest one, “These men are dying and they need hope. You don’t come in here and start proclaiming how this isn’t a fit hospital. If it saves their life, this is the best hospital on earth. If it’s where they die, it’s not because the hospital was a mess.” It’s a moment of reckoning, and the new nurse is in over her heard. With that, the new nurse takes center stage. The experienced nurses step backward. The lights dim, and a spotlight hits her. She’s 15 or 16, done up like a USO girl from the War, curls in her brown hair, bright red lipstick, pointed cap. She starts singing, “I’m… dreaming of a White Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know…”
I cried at every one of six shows, my first time fully appreciating the beauty of the holiday and at the emptiness it made me feel. Everyone cried, it was a fantastically emotional performance and designed to hit hard. I somehow worked through it, making boozy cocoas for the parents and sugary cocoas for the siblings of the child actors. Now whenever I hear any of the songs from the show I am reminded of the possibly-worst month, of the work year, of my life. December 2011. I still can’t shop at Christmastime anymore. Any soulful or sincere version of White Christmas, particularly sung by a woman, makes my legs buckle. December as a whole makes me feel like dying.
At New Year’s I stayed sober. In photos from that night, I am thinner and sadder than I ever have proof of being. In a sign of the weird, desperate place I was living, I asked to kiss a friend at midnight, and she offered me her cheek. It was a kind brushoff, and I still feel thankful she didn’t just punch me in the face. But if she had, it would have been a fitting end to 2011.