Here is a basic rule I believe in and protect: If you were raped, you get to make rape jokes. If you’re scared of being raped, likewise. In fact, there’s just about no joke I find too offensive because I deal in satire. But many people don’t know what that is and many of my jokes fall on deaf and dumb ears (just ask Sarah Silverman or most of the writers for Comedy Central - or read the reviews for my Disney essays.) I’m a comedy writer, and like most funny people, a lot of terrible stuff made me this way. I deserve to laugh about it. But more importantly, I NEED to laugh about.
I'll now leave you with my favorite knock-knock joke:
(Cue Destiny Child's "Survivor")
I bring this up after two Facebook friends (a married couple) started policing me. A recent joke I’d made had the hubby acting indignant on behalf of an entire race. My joke was:
“Why do all the big black guys in my neighborhood have such scary dogs? When did being big and black stop being enough?”
Is it racist? Obviously. But it’s also funny. And the reason racist jokes are so funny to anyone with half a brain is because they are ABSURD. An intelligent person wouldn’t summarize an entire race with any description, even physical (there are albinos and midgets EVERYWHERE.) Besides, if you’re my friend within the secret circle of Facebook, then you KNOW my sense of humor. It is often offensive – I try to tone it down but it doesn’t help that I married an instigator. Love me or leave me. But don't call me a racist in a passive-aggressive manner.
So the hubby wrote “DISLIKE” and when I asked why he elaborated that any big black Facebook friends would think I was afraid of them. I protested that it’s in the eye of the beholder and that I personally envy the power wielded by a large black man.
Recently I wrote another update that managed to piss off his wife:
“My morning commute was so bad that I wished to get terrorist-attacked just to put me out of my misery.”
Do you REALLY think there’s a commute that bad? No. But it was Friday when the whole city was on reddish-orange alert, or whatever alarming color you wanna call it. The wife wrote the following and the irony is precious:
“When did you become so retarded?”
AAAAAAAAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!!! As offensive as I am, even I know not to post that word anywhere!!! Talk about veering from political correctness, “retard” is the worst one of ALL! There are even COMMERCIALS about it in between episodes of Glee! (Not that I can watch Glee.) It’s the new N word, for crying out loud! I can’t deny that I wasn’t delighted at the hypocrisy, but still. It pissed me off to be policed yet again. So I deleted these two from my Facebook. I didn’t want to delete them – I wanted to simply hide my wall from their judging eyes. And I’d already hidden their updates from my own eyes because they are the type who like to “check in” everywhere they go. I get it – your small town friends are impressed by your big city life. But it bores the rest of us. If you can’t deliver on entertainment AND you have the audacity to judge your peers passive-aggressively in a public forum, you gotta go.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw their own politically incorrect stones. And it’ll be awkward when our paths cross again, but so what? It’s awkward when someone farts on my morning commute, but I survive that. Logan says this great thing to me every time I fret about any social dealings:
If it’s not going to bring you happiness or money, why bother?
So it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and my thirteenth year in this town. Lately I’m back on my kick of wanting to move – go anywhere else and just FORCE myself to stay put. But my love affair with this city is like an abusive relationship: No one knows what it’s like when we’re alone together.
I currently have a very lovely gig that has fattened my checking account quite nicely. And I’m selling books – BOOKS! (Technically, they’re just essays right now, but WOW! It’s A LOT of money I didn't expect to see!) We don’t know how long we can count on my income but we’re thinking about moving to a nice area – a REALLY nice area – and throwing a lot of money away on rent AND a broker’s fee. Because what if this is our last year here? What if Logan gets a great offer in L.A. to produce or host a game show? (The latter isn't so unlikely.) We want to enjoy what time we have left in this lovable yet devilish town. And even though many of the people I love are here, I do NOT plan to have babies in this craphole. UH-UH. Don’t get me wrong, it could happen, but I’m fighting with all my might to save these eggs til I’m in a REAL home and not one that’s constantly targeted by Al Quida and homeless people who spit.
Everyone likes to compare notes on their personal 9/11 experience and which friends/family they had nearby. I have NEVER heard anyone who’s lost someone rhapsodize about it because those people don’t need to compare notes. They don’t want to and they certainly don't want to waste money on all of that for-profit commemorative crap. And even though I’m in the lucky batch, I don’t really like to talk about that day. But good luck going to work and NOT hearing it. Good luck turning New York 1 on in the morning and NOT seeing something totally disturbing – something to suck you right back into that time. The best story I heard all week was Bernadette telling me about her parents driving her back from Long Island on Friday night. There were confusing lights on a bridge that they mistook for police cars. Then Bernadette realized, “They’re decorating for 9/11!”
She was totally sincere but she and her parents started laughing. Decorations for 9/11. YEP. That’s where we are with this thing. Her dad laughed and then added, “Maybe I’d feel different if I hadn’t gotten out.”
This was the part of the story that confused me. I didn’t know Bernadette's dad was in the second tower because she isn’t the kind of person to tell her 9/11 story. Her dad was on the 60th floor. When the first tower fell, he ran down the stairs and got out. And even he can laugh about the absurdity of an entire weekend devoted to this thing. When we “celebrate” and “remember” on TV we’re letting the terrorists win. It’s like calling your ex and listing all the things you miss about him. When we shut down our trains and tell our citizens, "If you see something, say something," (DUH!) we're perpetuating the terror. The fear lives on.
And those images do disturb me. I’ve never become desensitized to this stuff. But I want to be. And that’s probably why I make jokes. Because I was scared during Friday morning’s commute. I was scared taking the train today, especially when the whole system went to hell in a hand basket and I ended up on four different trains before I gave up and walked the rest of the way home. I have just as many nightmares about fires and jumping as the rest of the world. I just have a better attitude about it.
In 2001 I was going through a super fun slutty phase that coincided with a lovely bout of anorexia, so I was lookin’ and feelin’ GOOD. Around 3am I was begged to sleep over by a rather successful lawyer who happened to also be quite attractive (and short – I’ve dated so many hobbits that my friends nicknamed my vagina “The Shire” and insisted, “They just want to go home!”) I didn’t want to sleep over because I didn’t care about him – at all. He was just for fun. At the time, I was slightly dead inside, unable to love anybody and just trying to figure stuff out. What a GREAT time for the most traumatic thing my generation’s ever seen to strike!
I left his bed, peed in his courtyard (because I could), took off my heels and walked all the way from Broadway and 7th Street to 8th Ave and 18th Street in my bare feet. (Apparently, this was also my “gross” phase.) I was feeling really good. I’d dumped Allan, my lovable, talented and rather “well off” fiancé but I could still go home to him. And that was convenient because unlike the lawyer who’d tried buying me stuff to get me to stay, I actually cared about Allan. I walked across town singing showtunes at the top of my lungs to the delight of applauding homeless people. I didn’t have any money to give them, but most of them get happy if you smile and look them in the eye. I remember thinking how this was the first time I felt safe here. I’d made this town my bitch and I was happy to call it home. As I crossed 7th Avenue, I held my shoes up to the towers and sang at the top of my lungs to them.
Four hours later the first one came down.
What nobody ever talks about were the days we were trapped. You couldn’t get off the island unless you had a car and there were no cars left to rent. My grandfather offered to get me in Jersey if I could hitch a ride over. And I wanted to. There were constant bomb threats. We were always running away from a building. None of them came true but it proved to me that there are some twisted freaks in this town just waiting for the chance to get evil on the rest of us.
I did the only thing I could – I begged my mom to come get me and drive me back to Florida (I wouldn’t even get on a plane.) A few months later I went to some performance art conducted by the now deceased Spalding Gray (he jumped off the Staten Island Ferry after seeing the movie Big Fish, a true testament to how awful that film was.) One of the writers told her story about 9/11. I wasn’t expecting that. I felt safe in Florida, living in a treehouse along the river with my pug and writing projects, waiting tables at a seafood restaurant as I worked my way through the surfers of that cruddy little town. When this storyteller talked about the island shaking, I started to shake. I trembled. My date tried to touch me and I wanted to shout in his face, “DON’T! I don’t even like you!”
A few weeks later I spiraled into what I believe was an honest bout of alcoholism. I drove drunk. I had black outs. I ended up in the grocery store near my house several times wasted and eating pastries from their containers as the store’s cashiers peered from around the corner not knowing what to do with me. I wasted away in that little apartment feeling poisoned by my circumstances and pitying myself. Then my incredibly wise cousin, Katie asked a good question.
“Why don’t you go back to New York?”
Within ten days I’d sold all of my belongings and bought a plane ticket. I started over. My numbness didn’t go away for years though. I stopped being a vegan. I ate animals and their secretions after being a vegetarian (off and on) since I was twelve years old. I dated five guys at a time, using them mostly for food and money, replacing them like they were rolls of toilet paper. It wasn’t until my love affair with Konk that I came back to life, and even then it took time (and a powerful therapist provided to me through the 9/11 program.) After turning thirty I began to realize just how absurd all of life is. Nobody’s special. No one is more deserving. We’re all just skittish haphazard mammals trying to get a break. And we all deserve one.
I danced in my underwear that evening after our phones started working again. I had about twenty-seven messages but the one that got me was Katie’s. Through sobs she said, “You have to be okay! I know you’re okay! Please be okay!”
She’d visited me just a year earlier and even came down to the Trade Center where I worked. I was a temp – a floater. I worked for $16 an hour and hated every moment of it. Nobody knew if I was at work that day because the phones wouldn’t work. Nobody knew if that was me they’d seen jumping from the top of a building to escape fire because a quick death was preferable. And sometimes knowing that could’ve been me – could’ve been anyone I love – was just too unbearable.
But those times have passed. Now I can revisit this crap every year thanks to websites and stations replaying the highlights of that awful occasion. But I can relive them without shaking, drinking myself into oblivion, or even the warning tone people use to retell their personal 9/11 story. I can laugh about it. And I need to laugh about it. And if you don’t like it, I’ll 9/11 you from my Facebook page.
I'll now leave you with my favorite knock-knock joke:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
9/11
9/11, who?
(GASP!) YOU SAID YOU’D NEVER FORGET!
(Cue Destiny Child's "Survivor")
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