Life As I Blow It

by Sarah Colonna

  Marvin was a huge flirt. He had a way of making a girl feel special, which—if you are slow on the uptake—is what girls want. Unfortunately he didn’t discriminate, so I spent most of our relationship encountering women who were “shocked” to meet Marvin’s girlfriend since they were “sure he was single!” In some ways his flirtatious nature probably kept us together past the point that we should have been; I was so busy fighting for my new boyfriend’s attention that I didn’t have time to think about the fact that I was still hung up on my ex.

  I tried a few times to get Marvin to go by his real name, which was Greg. Greg was a nice normal name and Marvin was his shitty middle name. For some reason he preferred it. I’m not sure what the deal is with me dating guys who like to go by ridiculous names. He insisted that the name Marvin was more original than Greg. I explained to him that sometimes things that seem original only seem original because everyone else is smart enough not to use them.

  The day that he asked me to move in with him was the day that I knew it was about to end. At the time I was living with a girl named Nicky and he was living with a guy named David. Nicky was lots of fun to live with, but she was messy. Sometimes she’d get up from the couch and would leave behind crumbs when she hadn’t even been eating. She put food wrappers in the bathroom trash, which really grosses me out. One should always know the difference between kitchen and bathroom garbage. I’m also certain that her unreasonable love for cigarettes is how my cat developed asthma. The asthma was something that I discovered after weeks of listening to him wheeze. I assumed it was a hairball so I continued to give him remedies that pet stores and the Internet told me to. When things didn’t get any better I took him to the vet, who diagnosed his condition and informed me that my cat would need a cortisone shot every few months to keep it under control. I cursed Neil and his audacity to die and leave me with an asthmatic cat.

  So it was after about a year of dating that Marvin started looking for an apartment for us. I told him that I wanted to get my own place.

  “But we’ve been talking about this for months. We knew both of our leases were going to be up. You said you’d want to move in together,” he said.

  “No, I said I probably wanted to move in together,” I shot back.

  “That’s no excuse. I didn’t look for a new roommate. Now my roommate is moving in with his girlfriend and I won’t have a roommate anymore. This is a bad time to change your mind.”

  “Well needing a roommate is no reason to live together!” I yelled.

  “I wouldn’t need a roommate now if you hadn’t been telling me for months that you were going to be my roommate!”

  His mind was like a steel trap. And I was sick of hearing the word roommate.

  “Fine,” I replied. “Fine. I screwed up. I thought I’d be ready to move in with you but I’m not. I’ve never lived by myself and I think it’s really important that I do that before I live with a man. I need to know that kind of independence.” I’d read that in a self-help book that I had browsed through in a store but had never purchased.

  We didn’t break up, but Marvin was pissed off that he had taken the leap of asking me to move in with him and had been shot down. I couldn’t really understand what the big deal was. I was still his girlfriend, after all—he was getting his cake and eating it, too. It wasn’t until I hit my early thirties and had to break up with a guy who I was very much in love with because he had no interest in living with me, that I finally felt Marvin’s pain.

  I found my own place. The day I moved in, he refused to help. I had to pay movers with the two hundred dollars I had left to my name. While I unpacked the tons of boxes all by my fucking self even though I had a fucking boyfriend, I decided I was going to break up with him. Now I was living by myself and I was newly single. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be excited or sad.

  Luckily for me, Jackie had just left her husband, although I’m not sure she was legally married anyway because they had gotten married in Mexico after knowing each other for three weeks. Now she needed a place to stay. She thought she was imposing, since I had just gotten my own place for the first time in my life. She was not. I wanted the company and if she slept on the couch I would most likely not need a night-light; I have never recovered from watching the movie Cujo. That dog was mean.

  Jackie and I had met when we worked together at Mirabelle. I was now bartending at a place called Formosa, and she was working at a really nice restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Almost every day she’d come home with an expensive bottle of wine. It didn’t matter if it was 1 P.M. or 9 P.M.; we’d drink it. If we both had a whole day and night off, we were drunk before 5 P.M. and asleep by 10 P.M. I was taking huge steps backward, and I was having a blast.

  I decided I’d get my shit together when she found her own place; it didn’t seem worth it to try while she was staying with me. I also told myself she really needed me since her marriage had crumbled. It would have been selfish to focus on my own life.

  When the day came that she actually did find her own apartment, I was bummed. There was no way I’d be able to live alone and keep acting the way I’d been acting. I’d feel too guilty and/or end up choking on my own vomit.

  Since I was alone again, I figured I should be productive. I hadn’t been doing much stand-up since the Drew Carey incident. I’d gone to a couple of coffee shops or small bars to do sets, but I was too scared to go anywhere with a real paying crowd that might despise me. I decided to try to change that one day after I got a card in the mail from my mom.

  She and I had had a conversation during which I broke down and cried. I didn’t often do that with her. In fact, the only other time I can really think of was when I later had to break up with the guy who didn’t want to live with me. I tended to keep my chin up so she didn’t worry. But for some reason during this particular conversation, when she asked how I was doing I couldn’t just say “fine.” I was disappointed that I was on the verge of turning thirty and was still bartending. I started to really consider that I’d made a huge mistake moving to L.A. and that I had missed my opportunity to stay in Arkansas and have several children with a guy I hated.

  The card that she sent a few days after that conversation was simple and sweet. It said that she was proud of me and supported me. It said not to ever doubt what I wanted to do with my life. It arrived when I needed it the most.

  I decided to get myself booked on a show at the Improv. I figured if I was really going to get back into stand-up I had to start there. I needed to conquer my fear of that place. I told myself that if it didn’t go well, it didn’t matter. All that did matter was that I got up there.

  When I walked into the Improv, I immediately ordered a drink. I’m not one of those people who refuse to perform with alcohol in them. In fact, I prefer it. Jackie had come with me, so I bought her a drink and within a few minutes we were on our second round. I had huge butterflies in my stomach. I still always have a little bit of nerves when I perform, but that’s something I believe in. I think if you get too comfortable you might stop trying.

  When I got onstage and took the microphone I just assumed everyone could see my hands shaking.

  “If you guys are drinking, please don’t drive …,” I began. I figured if I was going to start over, I should really start over. Plus I hadn’t spent much time performing, so thus far that was my best opening joke.

  “Too bad they can’t put one of those on my phone, so that when I get home at two in the morning and it detects alcohol on my breath, it just shuts off—before I call every man that I know.”

  The audience laughed. They laughed a lot. Side note: I know it isn’t that funny now, but this was before texting took over and when drunk dialing was hugely popular. I spotted Jackie and she gave me a huge smile.

  I was relieved that it went well because if it hadn’t I probably would have been set back another eleven months. I had totally lied to myself earlier. “It’s brave that you even got up there” is just what people say when they t
hink you suck.

  I finally got some momentum back and started getting booked in commercials again. Most important, I was able to quit the side job I’d been doing as a secret shopper for hotels. It didn’t pay much and I kept it longer than I needed to, but I have incredible guilt about turning down any way to make money when I need it. I’m actually surprised I never guilted myself into stripping.

  The hotel job sucked. Basically I had to call amazing places like the Four Seasons in Maui and make a fake reservation, all the while filling out a check sheet indicating whether the reservation agent was meeting the criteria they were supposed to meet. I had to record the conversations, which meant I had to have my apartment as quiet as possible, which meant that I couldn’t even turn on a fan in the middle of July. I didn’t have air-conditioning—living alone was pretty expensive so I could only afford an apartment with very few perks, like a working shower. Aside from an all-new General Hospital, having a fan on was the highlight of my day and that stupid job wouldn’t allow me to do even that. It was also really depressing to have reservation agents describe to me the amenities and grounds of lavish hotels that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to afford to stay in, as I sat Indian-style on the floor of my apartment in the sun.

  I got another agent for television stuff, an older man named Sal who was well liked around town but not all that powerful. I didn’t really care; I just wanted someone to believe in me and I considered the fact that he wasn’t a snotty asshole a bonus. I started getting work on a hidden-camera show on the Sci-Fi channel. Geeky guys who watched that channel and came into the bar would recognize me from the show. They seemed really disappointed to figure out that I was also a bartender. People seem to think if you’re on TV you should be making enough money that you don’t have to keep a day job. That’s not the case. I didn’t really care—with more work coming, I finally felt like there was light at the end of the tunnel.

  Just when I was starting to feel good about myself I met Nico. He had a really deep voice and a lean body. I later caught on that his lean body may or may not have been from a cocaine addiction. He was an actor who was having a tough time finding work, but had been successful a few years earlier. He became successful again after we quit seeing each other. I have great timing.

  Nico was the type of guy who made me trip over nothing and drop things. His existence at the bar cost my boss a lot in replacement glassware. The first time I went home with him I had sex with him—even though I had promised myself that I wouldn’t. I wanted to feel sexy our first time and I didn’t in my dirty black jeans and hair that smelled like Chinese food. Formosa serves Chinese food—I didn’t just randomly carry that scent.

  Nico lived right down the street, so he always walked to the bar. That night he suggested I come over and go with him to take his dogs for a walk. I thought it was just a cute way to get me to his place, but we really did take his dogs for a walk. As if I didn’t find him sexy enough already, now I got to watch him care for these two adorable dogs that he obviously loved so much. As we walked he told me a story about how one of them had gotten really sick and he ended up paying over fifty thousand dollars in vet bills to get him well again. I was impressed that he’d spend that kind of money to save an animal, but I was more impressed that at one point he had an extra fifty grand lying around. We stopped to let his dogs pee under a streetlight and he turned and planted a big kiss on me. I was taken aback a little at first. He was so good-looking. It didn’t make sense that he’d pick me, the bartender at his local spot who sometimes scared the shit out of innocent people on a hidden-camera show.

  Nico had a lot of tattoos, one of them being an ex-girlfriend’s name. I don’t know how I was able to see my way to his bedroom with all the red flags waving. But on top of the dark hair and the scruffy face, he held a couple of my other weaknesses: upper-arm tattoos and a love for cigarettes. I don’t really like kissing smokers—I just like watching hot guys smoke. Unfortunately it’s rude to have sex with a smoker without kissing him, so sometimes I have to make the sacrifice. After we had sex that night, I slept over and we had a blast. I always laughed when I was with him, which was just another reason I was so attracted to him. He was almost forty and I was in my late twenties. Although he drank like a fish, I had the illusion that he was a grown-up and I thought we could have an amazing life together. He could teach me about “the business” and I could teach him about popular new drinks.

  For a while we hooked up on and off. For the most part, I kept other aspects of my life quiet around him. I felt like he’d worked in the industry enough and anything I was doing would seem silly to him.

  The day after a crappy showcase for another comedy festival, I had to cater some awful outdoor corporate party down by the airport. Another side job—I told you I don’t know how to turn down work. This was a particularly shitty party with a barbecue theme on a particularly shitty day. I was walking back to my car with lemonade all over my white shirt and tri-tip on my pants, trying to figure out if catering was really worth the sixty-four extra dollars I had made that day. I decided it was not, and that it would be my last shift. It was almost as liberating as quitting the phone call job.

  I felt my phone vibrating in my apron, and looked down to see that “N” was calling me. I hadn’t put Nico’s full name in my phone because I thought just using an initial created distance between us. I was really working on not getting my heart broken, and I was nailing it. Since I was pretty sure he’d never called me before 10 P.M., I got so excited that I tripped over a speed bump in the parking lot.

  “Hello?” I panted oh so casually as I wiped the blood off my forehead.

  “Hey, it’s Nico.”

  “Hey, it’s Sarah,” I said.

  “What’s that noise—are you at the airport?”

  “A plane almost landed on me. I’m by the airport.”

  “Oh. You going somewhere?”

  I was supposed to bartend that night. If I didn’t tell him the truth I’d probably have to actually go out of town. “No, I’m just in that area. I’m catering an amazing party.”

  “You have another job that I didn’t know about?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it sounds awful.”

  “It is. But I’m quitting after today. I need to focus on my bartending career.”

  He laughed. I felt relieved.

  “I was just wondering how the show went. You said it was for a festival, seemed like a big deal.”

  I was surprised he retained that much of our conversation. “It was great!” I lied. The truth was that it was “fine,” not “great,” but I didn’t want him to think I sucked at stand-up.

  I hoped that daytime phone call might be the start of something serious, but it wasn’t. We continued to see each other off and on for a couple of months, but I think we only went on one real date, and even that was at a bar.

  One day a new girl was sitting in a booth at Formosa with him. They seemed really close, too close. He didn’t pay much attention to me and I started to feel like I was going to cry, or at least pass out. Before he left he walked over and said goodbye to me, to which I responded “yep” without even looking at him. Ha! I showed him.

  After leaving with that girl, he had the balls to call me later that night. I’d had about fourteen drinks, so I answered, ready to tell him where to go.

  “Before you say anything, just listen. I had to walk her home because she was a mess. I did used to go out with her, but she’s crazy. Nothing happened.”

  “Perfect, that explains why you sat with her all night and acted like I was in quarantine,” I slurred. I have zero ability to hide my feelings when I’ve been drinking. Actually I can’t even do that sober.

  “I haven’t seen her in a long time. I was just being polite. I felt like if I introduced you to her she’d say something stupid. She really is crazy.”

  “Who were you being polite to? You weren’t being polite to me. You’re exactly what Cassie said you are.”

&
nbsp; Cassie, the eighty-year-old waitress who worked at Formosa with me, had warned me that Nico was a “ladies’ man.” He and I had laughed about it in the past, but that night I stopped thinking it was funny. Even though it seemed like he was telling the truth, the feeling that I got in my stomach when I saw her walk up to him scared the shit out of me.

  “I guess I am,” he resigned.

  Nico wasn’t one to confront an issue, and neither was I. We basically just let it all fizzle after that. Unfortunately that didn’t stop him from coming into the bar. It was annoying for two reasons: 1) He would talk to girls that he was obviously trying to pick up right in front of my face; 2) I used to think he came in all of the time to see me, but now it was clear he just liked to drink.

  Regardless of who that other slut was, he eventually started coming in with girls that he was definitely dating. Each time I felt like my heart was being ripped out, but I never let him know. One time after a particularly long night of watching him hold court with a stupid-looking blonde, I snapped and texted him a list of five other bars in the area that served Red Bull in a can and carried Stoli, just the way he liked. That text led to a bit of conversation and that led to a few more dogwalks between us. Our reconciliation didn’t last long and eventually I was ducked in the passenger seat of Jackie’s Honda Civic while we did a drive-by to see if anyone else was parked in his driveway.

  “Is that that bitch’s car who was in with him last night?” Jackie asked as she turned off her engine.

  “Maybe. But maybe it’s his car.”

  “I can get closer. What kind of car does he drive?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well that’s helpful.”

  If you don’t even know what kind of car the guy you are checking up on drives, the whole drive-by is pointless.