As I floated upward, he shouted “HEY!” I stopped and turned. I was the only one on the escalator. The entire train station heard the commotion and turned to watch.
“You,” he said, “are a fucking faggot.”
After that incident, whenever I was at the New Brunswick station and The Worst Guy Ever came by, I’d stare him down icily. He’d either remember me and scurry away or would engage and I’d tell him off again. But on a day like this, I didn’t have it in me. Instead, I kept my head down and thought about how by the end of the day I wouldn’t have a girlfriend.
I’d spent $12.50 on my round-trip train ticket. When I got to Penn Station, I bought my usual weekend-afternoon-in-the-city meal, an Auntie Anne’s pretzel with nacho cheese dipping sauce. I had about five bucks left when I headed to my class.
After class, my fellow students started making plans. Usually we’d either go out drinking or watch a comedy show together. Normally, I was one of the guys leading the charge.
“Not this time,” I told them. “I’ve gotta get back to Jersey so I can get dumped.”
Some people made jokes. Others got awkward. One girl in my class approached me.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I answered. “I deserve it.”
I trudged back to Penn Station. There was a shitty flower stand in the main hall. I had five measly bucks left but figured Veronica deserved some sense of class from me, considering the situation. I bought a wilting red rose and headed to the main terminal to wait for my train.
If you ever need proof of the discrimination held against the state of New Jersey, pay a comparative visit to the two main train terminals in Manhattan. On the one hand, Grand Central Station is beautiful. That’s where the trains to Westchester and Connecticut go. Everything’s made of marble. People go there just to read because it’s so peaceful. There’s a farmer’s market in the basement. The station even has an actual oyster bar.
I would never eat oysters at Penn Station. I wouldn’t eat at the Nathan’s Hot Dogs in Penn Station. I wouldn’t eat food I bought somewhere else and brought inside Penn Station; once inside, that food instantly becomes garbage. If you ever walk through Penn Station, I invite you to note how the floor is always slightly moist. I can only assume this is the accumulative residue of many people’s tears. God help anyone who has to use the men’s room at Penn Station; there are people inside who can only be described as “lurkers.”
It all adds up to the fact that on a normal day, Penn Station is a pretty soul-crushing place. On a day when I was waiting for a train to carry me back to the first true dumping of my young life, it was indescribable.
And yet, once I got on the Northeast Corridor train that night and sat down, an immense wave of relief washed over me. Because I knew how much of a fucking handful I was. As sad as breaking up would be, at least I knew I would no longer be subjecting someone I loved to dealing with it. Veronica would be better off. After all, I’d never had the guts to get help. I’d lied about it—said I was in the process of looking or acted like things were fine—until people stopped asking. Throughout it all, I’d used Veronica for support and forced her to put up with my bullshit when it served me. I was sad she was dumping me because I loved her, but I also recognized it was a good thing for her to move on, and as a result, during that train ride I became more calm and relaxed than I had been in months.
So much so that I fell asleep.
I woke up in Princeton Junction, one stop beyond the New Brunswick station.
I leapt off the train, moments away from being stuck onboard for a trip all the way to Trenton. For a moment, I stood on the Princeton platform alone. Snow was falling, I was holding a shitty rose, and I didn’t have a dime in my pocket. (This was about two years before every single person in America simultaneously bought cell phones and made nights like this nonexistent.)
I ran into the station in a panic. Aside from a bored woman sitting behind the ticket counter, the station was desolate.
“I fell asleep,” I said. “I’m supposed to be in New Brunswick.”
“A one-way ticket to New Brunswick is five twenty-five,” she told me.
“I have no money,” I said. She grimaced. “Honestly. Zero dollars, zero cents.”
She sighed.
“Look, the best I can say is get on the train on the other side of the platform and work it out with the conductor,” she told me. “I won’t bust you, but he might. Best I can do.”
“Thanks,” I said. When I looked back at her I had to fight back tears. Outside of the general stress of the day, it killed me that I had somehow managed to be an asshole to Veronica one last time. After all my disappearing acts and last-minute cancellations and generally evasive shitty behavior, I was going to be late for our fucking breakup.
I crossed over to the other side of the platform. At one end was a streetlight. I stood beneath it, hoping the light would give me a little bit of warmth to combat the cold, but it didn’t.
After a few minutes, the ticket taker emerged on my side of the platform. She carried a broom and dustpan. She slowly made her way from the platform’s entrance toward me, sweeping up along the way. As she got close, she bashfully smiled.
“You know,” she said, “I think you’re going to make some young lady very happy tonight.”
I was confused. She looked down toward the rose.
“Oh,” I said. “Not this time. Not tonight.”
She was confused.
“It’s not that kind of rose,” I mumbled. My voice broke at the end. Before she knew what was happening, I was full on crying. Her face displayed a mixture of confusion, guilt, and slight fear. Luckily for both of us, the train pulled up and I got on.
The conductor didn’t charge me. Half an hour later, Veronica broke up with me in her dorm room. Then, she drove us to a diner. We talked and she laughed a bunch; it reminded me of how things had been when we still felt like friends.
Two years later, I had a single night that changed my life.
It was a Friday, and I was scheduled to perform in a midnight show. My character was a Japanese schoolgirl, a living anime character, and my costume consisted of a skirt, a neon-yellow wig, huge googly-eyed glasses, and panty hose. When I saw myself in the green-room mirror, I started trembling.
You, I thought to myself, look like a fucking idiot. Is this what you’re working so hard for?
Out of nowhere, I burst out crying. People backstage asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t have the energy to answer. I actually did the show crying the whole time. Luckily the googly-eyed glasses masked my breakdown from the audience, but I freaked the shit out of my castmates.
As soon as the show was over I got the hell out of there. There was no traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel, so I made it to the Jersey side of the river in minutes. But being close to home didn’t calm me down. I was still bawling.
I pulled over on the bridge on Route 3 that spans the Hackensack River.
I should get out and jump, I thought to myself. Nah, it’s not even high enough to do the job.
Once I realized what I was thinking I cried even harder. Because I knew I really meant it. I wanted out.
Even though we hadn’t spoken in over a year, I dialed the only number I could think of.
It was 2:30 A.M. She didn’t owe me anything. But Veronica picked up after one ring.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
For the first time, I put all my cards on the table. I told her how my thoughts were running out of control. How sometimes I would make decisions that I actively knew were dangerous and had no idea why I did it. How I was giving up.
She talked to me for an hour while I made random turns through random suburban neighborhoods so I wouldn’t have to go home. Once I was calm, she gave it to me straight.
“The entire time we were dating, you said you were going to get help,” she began. “And you never did. But you need it.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
“I can’t be getting calls like this in the middle of the night, Chris,” she continued. “So here’s what’s going to happen. When you get home tonight, you’re going to wake your mother up and tell her what’s going on. I’m going to call her in the morning. So if you haven’t told her by then, I’m going to.”
She was giving me no choice. It was exactly what I’d needed for years.
That night, I calmly woke my mother up from a sound sleep and told her I was in trouble. When she saw the state I was in, she asked me if I was suicidal. I told her that I thought I was.
“Do you think we should commit you to a mental hospital?” she asked me.
“I honestly don’t know,” I said.
We sat up for a few hours debating the merits of whether or not she should institutionalize me. It was one of the most surreal, fucked-up conversations of my life. In the end, we opted not to. Instead she sat next to me while I slept, keeping an eye on me.
The next morning I scheduled an appointment with a shrink. I’d hit rock bottom, but the people who loved me—even one I’d blown it with years before—helped me hold it together.
For the first time in a long time, I thought things might turn out okay.
No Worries
With the exception of a five-month stint in Los Angeles, I’ve spent my entire life living in New Jersey and Queens, and it shows. I am a stereotypical northeasterner. I’m always in a rush. I’ve attracted stares from out-of-towners when I’ve shoved past someone blocking the subway door. I’ve considered kicking a man’s crutches out from under his feet because I thought he was going to make me late. It’s not like I think this behavior is okay. It’s just that I’ve spent more time sitting in Lincoln Tunnel traffic than most kids spend in front of the TV.
For a full six months after entering therapy, I felt shell-shocked and alone. I’d been put on medication, and was experiencing an array of side effects. Some were funny (Depakote made me fall asleep at the dinner table in the middle of a date); others were chilling (the muscle relaxant that accompanied my Risperdal warned of possible sexual side effects; I never dreamt that meant I would ejaculate what was for all intents and purposes water). It wasn’t easy, but after a lifetime of anger, and a college career that only saw me grow more and more out of control, for the first time I’d decided to get help and try to heal. I gave up drinking. I made it a point to actively search for the positive side of everything.
And perhaps as a result, after years of self-doubt and self-destructive behavior, I was finally dropping all of my internal defenses and starting to look at all the possibilities life offered.
So despite my loyalty and devotion to New Jersey, despite my long-standing job at Weird NJ, and despite the fact that it was the only home I’d ever known, when Matt Besser, the owner of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, called me in January of 2004 about a writing job for the Comedy Central show Crossballs (which he was executive producing), I knew I had no choice.
“I read your submission packet,” he began. “You’re not going to be a writer for my show, Chris.”
I was let down. “That’s okay, Matt. Thanks for giving me a shot.”
“I’m not done,” he interrupted. “I know you write for your magazine. And I know you’re funny. So if you want to come out here and be a writers’ assistant, I promise you that by the end of it, I will teach you how to write comedy.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I told him. “I’ll do it.”
“This job will not be glamorous,” he told me. “And it will not be easy.”
“That’s okay,” I told him. “I know how to work hard.”
“Then be at work Monday, in LA,” he told me. It was late on Thursday.
It was my first real job in entertainment and I was nervous, scared, and excited. But despite my anxiety, I was actually more than happy to make the move to the West Coast. I imagined that in addition to being a good career opportunity, it would provide me with not just a change of setting but a change in attitude, a fresh start. Los Angeles could be my own Shangri-la, a place where I could let my guard down. Relax. Give the veins in my forehead a break for a while. So with that one phone call I decided to drop my entire life in exchange for this chance at a new, less stressful beginning.
I spent my last weekend in New Jersey moving everything I owned from my apartment in Montclair to my parents’ basement a few towns away. When I took the mirror down off of my closet door, I realized for the first time that I no longer looked like a kid. I was about to turn twenty-four. The boyishness that had plagued me throughout high school and college was quickly fading away. I had finally put on some weight (although that was actually just another unfortunate side effect of the Depakote). I certainly wasn’t stylish, but it seemed as though taking care of myself had resulted in a happy by-product: for the first time in my life, I looked presentable.
At the bottom of a box I packed away the skunk my grandpa once tormented me with and the top hat I wore as White Magic. The framed covers of the Weird NJ issues I had worked on joined them. As I taped the last of the boxes shut, I sat on the edge of my bed and started to cry. Not because I was sad. And not really because I was happy. But because I realized that after twenty-two strange, hard years of willing insanity and one tough year of recovery, the roughest patch of my life was over.
The next morning my mom gave me a hug and helped me put my bags into a cab, and then I moved on.
I arrived way too early for my first day of work to find the doors to our bungalows locked. After five minutes of standing outside, I noticed a woman on a bike riding toward me. I assumed she was the first coworker I was meeting. I smiled and nodded to greet her. She skidded out on her bike. “If you nod at me again,” she said, “I will fucking kill you.” Then she rode away.
Welcome to Los Angeles. Welcome to your new life.
Most of the people I met in LA, even if they weren’t completely crazy, unfortunately weren’t much better than that girl on her bike. The majority of them were despicable in ways I consider worse than the most terrible aspects of New Yorkers. New Yorkers will be rude, but at least they do so out of the rationale that everyone around them is always slowing them down. Los Angeles, I learned, is a city full of people who have the personality of the coolest pretty boy from your eighth-grade class.2 But I also met people who were a huge exception to this rule. They were all Mexicans.
The second day at my job, as I was walking across the lot I saw two production guys standing around a boom box that was blasting Morrissey. As a sad, angry teen, I’d grown to love Morrissey and was shocked to see that these tough Mexican guys did as well.
“You guys dig Moz?” I asked.
“Yeah, man,” a shifty-looking guy said. “You wanna hit this?”
He reached a lit joint toward me.
“No,” I said, “we’re at work.”
“Little bitch,” he said. “That’s your name now. Little bitch. I’m Gomez. But you call me Padrino, ’cause I’m your godfather. That’s Muerto.” He pointed to his grinning friend.
“Doesn’t that mean ‘death’?” I asked. They both burst out laughing.
“Yeah,” Gomez replied. “You’ll see why.”
I later used that interaction as an excuse to talk to Wendy, the cute receptionist I already had a crush on.
“What’s Jose’s deal?” I asked her.
“No one really knows,” she answered. “All I know is that he has a side business where he drives shitty cars to Mexico and sells them every weekend. I have no idea how he gets back to work every Monday.”
I grinned at her, hoping she would grin back and we could start a love affair that would end in our happy marriage. She did not.
“Why do they call him ‘Muerto’?” I asked.
“It’s hard to explain,” she told me.
It didn’t take me long to find out how Jose earned his nickname. Just a few days later, while walking down a hallway, I was blindsided and tackled to the floor. Jose cackled as he pinn
ed me down. He reached down to my jeans, sticking his fingers deep into a small hole in the knee. “Who’s the king?” he asked me.
“What?” I answered.
With that he tore my entire left pant leg to shreds. He leapt to his feet, cackling again as he sprinted away. I spent the rest of the workday enduring jokes about my eviscerated pants, which looked like they belonged on some old-timey pirate.
Gomez and Jose’s favorite activities seemed to be: (1) smoking weed; (2) sleeping; (3) playing basketball; and (4) telling me long-winded stories about how they were forced into being drug mules during their teenaged years. Despite the fact that work isn’t on that list, they also managed to do their jobs, and well, too. But as far as my personal interactions with them went, anyway, they were usually involved in one of these four things.
Hear me out, though. I’m not saying that my Mexican friends were lazy. I don’t believe in that stereotype. These guys produced an enormous amount of effort. It’s just that they aimed all of their effort at being laid-back and having fun. There’s a difference between that and laziness. Lazy people spend their time sitting on Facebook or yelling at racist fifteen-year-olds who are also playing the newest version of “Call of Duty.” These Mexican guys didn’t waste time like that. What they demonstrated wasn’t laziness; it was aggressive relaxation. I even hoped that one day I could learn to live like them. They were the first people I’d met who lived with such a little amount of anxiety. Considering how I’d spent a quarter century being nothing but stressed out, it’s understandable how I quickly came to idolize my two new friends.
Gomez took the idea of being laid-back to a whole new level. He summed it up with two simple words—“No worries.” There was nothing you could say to phase Gomez. And if you came close, “No worries” was the magic phrase that drained all the tension back out of the room. During one particularly tough shooting day, all of our props were late to set. I panicked, tried to rectify the situation, and turned to Gomez for help.
A Bad Idea I'm About to Do Page 16
