Look How Far We've Come

It's not uncommon for the guys in my improv class to play gay characters. I've known improvisers who introduce the fact that they're pretending to be gay as the joke. And that's the worst. That's just the worst. That kid who starts a scene with a lisp, and I'm like, "Cut. New choice."

The boys in my class end up gay because it's important to have a strong relationship in improv, and there are actually only so many of those in life: family, co-workers, friends, lovers. And which is most interesting? And because it's a college improv class the gender ratios are 1:3 girls to boys. Two-boy scenes are a thing. Two-boy love is a thing.

Monday two guys did this hilarious scene full of subtext about jealousy and inadequacy and they totally nailed it. Everyone hooted when I called Scene. The guys hugged because they had done good. No one felt uncomfortable. No one made a crack. There's a gay student in class (maybe a couple)--he (they?) were smiling. Sometimes straight boys date the gay boys' in improv land. All parties jump in free as birdies.

This Is Out of Character for Me?

Spent a solid twenty minutes defending a comedic rape scene to my advisor today. I'm really trying to understand how to approach rape in art. I think it's important. Rape is a thing that happens. A complicated thing that happens. And complicated things are meant to be unraveled--not shut into shoe boxes.

Rape is also really in right now--as slang, jokes, perpetually in young adult lit. As a writer, I need to explore it. As humans we should all explore what we think rape means--how we can uplift our communities from it, how we can help victims heal and avoid. As a comedian, it's in my personal philosophy that anything can be funny. Not that everything is. But that anything can be. So. I'm paddling in strange oceans. I am in school. This is the time to take risks. I don't appreciate being told there is a topic I simply must avoid. Especially when the same professor assigns Anne Bogart's "Embarrassment" essay to me. LEAP?

During college I was a champion for all rights all the time, and I was a stickler about a lot of things...but it's complicated. It's complicated to give ideas power by rolling them into punchlines and also complicated to give ideas power by only accepting them in episodes of Degrassi.

Someone will be offended. Of that I can be sure. But someone always is.

By the Bike

Friday night I was at Lazz's frat house. Before dinner a few of his bros started playing bocce ball in the front yard. This simple description sounds a lot more dignified than it was. In short, the bocce balls would bounce around tree roots, roll between a billion cigarette butts, and land with a tinkle of broken beer bottles.

At one point, someone threw the white ball and one of the guys couldn't see it. He asked, "Is it by the bike?" (There was a bike propped up against a tree) and someone said, "Yeah"--a complete lie. The dude chucked his ball towards the bike, completely missing the mark. Everyone laughed. And then Lazz joked, "Well it was by the bike. Cosmically."

How could something be so funny based on objects being far apart when universally, the bike and the ball and the boccee players are all on top of each other.

On Saturday Lazz asked me the magic question:

"Wanna go to Pancake City?
As in the restaurant--
not the city."



And we ate pancakes bigger than our faces! And mine had peanut butter and chocolate chips in them! And life was sweet! We are what we eat, we said. I am this pancake. You are that coffee. Cosmically, everything is by the bike!

But I am the stuff of happy endings
Though mostly bluff, belief suspending