My Year with Eleanor

by Noelle Hancock

  Something that also happens during the fight-or-flight moment is your body reroutes the blood in your stomach to your muscles, where it is most needed. The feeling of blood being pulled from your stomach creates the fluttering we call butterflies. Digestion temporarily shuts down, which can cause diarrhea. Let’s just say, I very much needed to visit the ladies’ room.

  When the emcee announced a Good Morning America reporter as the third contestant, Matt shot me a confused look from across the room.

  “What’s wrong?” he mouthed.

  I shook my head as if to say I don’t want to talk about it and looked away. Mark Anthony returned a few minutes later.

  “Want to go next?”

  I put up my palm. “Still not ready.” Ten minutes later he asked again.

  Without looking up from my paper, I answered, “Nope.”

  “Noelle, look at me,” he said sternly, but when I looked up, his face was kind. “I can push you down to seventh, but that’s it. You just have to get up there and go for it.”

  Next up was an indie magazine writer who strode onstage in a pink rock star wig. She was wearing an elf costume and a strapless sequin dress simultaneously. She leaped around the stage and growled at the audience, unleashing an onslaught of groaners like:

  “Knock knock?”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Angry cow.”

  “Angry cow, who?”

  “MOOOOOOVE!”

  And that was one of the good ones. The audience sat in stony silence, punctuated by the occasional heavy sigh. I breathed deeply to slow down my heart rate. I remembered something Dr. Bob once told me about a poem called “The Guest House” by a thirteenth-century Persian poet named Rumi. In the poem, Rumi suggests we think of our emotions as guests who show up at our house unexpectedly. No matter who shows up—joy, sorrow, depression—all should be welcomed inside and entertained because there’s a lot we can learn from them.

  “Think of your fear as a guest who shows up unannounced. Invite the fear into your guest house and listen to it. No matter how much he whines, eventually you’ll find you can just tune him out and keep going about the business of your day. Accept him, be kind to him. If you make friends with fear, you won’t mind when he shows up at your door. You may even look forward to his visits.”

  And so I invited fear into my house. I listened patiently while he bitched and moaned. “What if you forget what to say? You’ll look like a total idiot. All of your friends will be embarrassed for you. They’ll pity you. What if the older people hate your dirty jokes? What if you talk too fast or hold the mic wrong so no one can hear you? Remember, you’ve never held a mic before!”

  “Anything is possible,” I replied calmly. “But I think it will turn out okay. It usually does. And if it’s really bad, at least it’ll make for a good story one day.”

  Soon I noticed that fear was repeating himself. At first I’d thought there was a lot to fear. But he was just rehashing the same few worries over and over. I stopped feeling overwhelmed and I relaxed. I even tuned him out, as Dr. Bob predicted. Fear is boring. After fifteen minutes, he quieted down so much that I didn’t even hear him slip out the door. I knew fear would be back again. He’d continue to drop by unannounced, probably for the rest of my life. But after spending so much time with him this year, I understood him better.

  Suddenly, it was upon me. The emcee announced: “She’s a freelance writer who’s been published in magazines like Rolling Stone, Maxim, and Us Weekly. Please give a warm welcome to Noelle Hancock . . .”

  Mark Anthony clapped me on the back. “Get up there and make that stage your bitch!”

  I folded up the papers and shoved them in my back pocket. As I awkwardly wove my way to the front of the room, turning sideways to squeeze between the tables, Matt caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up. Chris and Jessica waved eagerly, big grins on their faces.

  Bill shouted, “You got this, Hancock!”

  When I stepped onto the stage, my friends vanished into the darkness along with most of the audience, obscured by the glare of the spotlight. Only people sitting a few feet away in the first two rows were visible; mostly contestants’ parents in their sixties. There were many tired faces, one hand pressed to a cheek, propped up by an elbow on the table. A few frat guys sat tilted back in their black wooden chairs, arms folded across their chests.

  I drew the mic under my chin and tried to look confident. “Is everyone enjoying the weather?”

  The silence in the room was absolute. The audience was tired of participating. The pink wig girl had worn them out with all her questions. Finally someone—possibly Matt—hooted in confirmation.

  “Me too,” I continued breezily. “I love the fall because I hate bees—and fall is like their off-season. Because in the spring and summer, you never know when someone’s going to turn to you and say: ‘Don’t move! There’s a bee on you. Seriously, don’t move!’ ” I made a confused face. “Don’t move? It’s, like, whose side are you on? You want me to hold still so the bee can find a good vein?” The crowd laughed. Emboldened, I plowed on.

  “You ever wonder who discovered honey? I do. Because I wanna meet the guy that looked over at a beehive and thought to himself, ‘You know what would be a really great idea? You know those dangerous insects over there? I’m gonna break into their house and steal all their shit!’ That’s like breaking into the headquarters of the Latin Kings.” I’d been worried not everybody would’ve heard of the street gang, but this received a good amount of laughter from the audience. “Bees are really just tiny gang members, right? Always rolling with their crew, always packing a weapon. Bees don’t even have butts—they have daggers where their asses should be. The weapon is built in! So don’t tell me ‘don’t move.’ Because that’s not a bee sting, that’s a fucking drive-by!”

  I could hear Chris’s punchy laugh amid the cheers and applause. I paused and silently counted to three, which Mark Anthony had said was another way to signal the crowd that I was about to change topics.

  I drew a deep breath, wondering if I was about to offend everyone in the room. “So I don’t like giving blow jobs—”

  The laughter hit like a gale-force wind, stopping me before I could even get to the punch line. It was so startling I almost took a step backward. The tone of the laughter was a mixture of surprise from the men and a kind of admiring identification from the women. When the room quieted down, I started again.

  “So I don’t like giving blow jobs for the same reason that I don’t like people projectile vomiting into my mouth.”

  The response was even louder this time. The room seemed to undulate. People were actually doubling over, I realized with amazement. I put my hand on my hip and gave the audience a cocky half smile. They whooped in approval. I glanced down at the first row and my smile faltered. The parents were scowling up at me. One of them grimaced in disgust. Clearly, I’d lost them after the honeybees. Shake it off, I admonished.

  “Blow jobs are the reason girls start having sex in the first place, right? It’s more of a gateway sexual activity for us.” I leaned over the microphone as if it were a penis and held my hair back with one hand. “What happens is somewhere around the third one we stop and we think to ourselves, ‘Well, this is some bullshit!’ ” Waving my microphone/penis, I continued “And I know someplace else I can stick this so that I can actually breathe—and watch TV at the same time.”

  People were howling. Howling! I paced the stage, playing to the crowd.

  “My high school friends and I lost our virginity around the same time—because we were followers as well as sluts.” Loud chuckling. “And of course we talked about it afterwards because girls have to talk about everything. All my friends said, ‘Oh my God, it hurt so much! Didn’t you think it was painful?’ And I remember thinking, “ ‘Painful? Really? Um, that wasn’t my big takeaway from the situation.’ ” Then, like an a
fterthought, I added, “Then again, my uncle has a pretty tiny penis. Maybe that had something to do with it.”

  The incest joke drew a few horrified gasps from the front row, but they were quickly drowned out by laughter from the rest of the room. For some to love you, others have to dislike you—that’s the nature of performing.

  Everyone except the front row loved the Jenna Jameson joke, as I knew they would. While the audience was cracking up, I reached in my pocket and pulled out my safety net—the typed-up routine. My closing bit was long and there was a high probability of flubbing a sentence or two. I stared at the square for a few moments, debating. My routine had been flawless so far. If I read this last part from my notes, I was guaranteed the rest of it would be perfect. My fingers began unfolding the pages.

  No.

  Suddenly I stopped and stuffed the square back in my pocket.

  “I’m going to leave you all with my craziest subway story. And this is absolutely true because there’s no way I could make up something this twisted. One night I’m in a subway station waiting for the train. When it arrives, the car that stops in front of me is empty. And that should’ve been my first clue something was wrong because that never happens in New York. I step into the car and it smells like feces.” The New Yorkers in the room snickered knowingly. “And that’s because there actually is feces smeared on all the seats in this section.” The laughter grew louder.

  I continued: “Then I realize that the car isn’t actually empty. It’s that all of the passengers are huddled at the opposite end, clinging to each other for dear life. So I join them—because nothing brings people together like the fear of human excrement. At the next stop this couple gets on the train dressed in black tie, drunk out of their minds—it’s like six P.M., by the way—and they go to sit down.” A few groans of recognition went up around the room from the people who saw where this was headed. “We realize what’s about to happen, so all the passengers start screaming, ‘NOOOOO! STOP!’ But the couple is hammered, so they don’t understand what’s happening and . . . they sit in the poo.” There was a collective moan from the room, but it was mixed with laughter.

  “So we’re yelling at the couple, ‘Get up! Don’t sit there!’ and they’re slurring, ‘Whaaaaaa? Whassss happening?’ Finally they drunkenly stagger across the aisle to change seats, but since the whole section has been defiled, they sit in the crap a second time.” This garnered shrieks of horror from the ladies while the guys clapped their hands a couple of times in that way that’s reserved for reveling in another person’s embarrassment.

  “Now we’re fucking losing our minds, saying, ‘NOOOOO! Don’t sit there either! Move!’ So the couple slides over, smearing themselves across, like, five more seats of feces. Seriously, I haven’t seen people rolling in shit like that since I watched German porn.” The frat boys in the front were practically convulsing at this line.

  “At the next subway stop, the couple gets off and heads off to their party in their formal wear, totally unaware that their backs look like a Jackson Pollock—if Jackson had had a feces period—and as soon as the doors close, every passenger bursts out laughing. Like, howling, pounding-each-other-on-the-back kind of laughter. It was beautiful. Something brought a group of strangers together in New York that night.” I paused for effect. “And it was the shit.”

  A brief silence descended and then the crowd erupted.

  “Thank you so much!” I yelled over the applause and cheers, returning the microphone to the stand. “You’ve been a wonderful audience!”

  Unbelievable. The rush that came over me was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was a joy so pure and profound and untainted that it was almost a high. I was in love with this moment. I wanted to pack up my belongings and move into this moment. I wanted to live here for the rest of my life. I was magnificently and disgustingly happy. And more than that, I was marvelous to myself.

  As I made my way back to the comedian alcove, there were many high fives and backslaps from the other comics. “Well, this competition is over,” one of them said with a grin. Another one leaned in and said in my ear, “You’ve got this thing locked down. Congratulations!” By the time I reached my seat, my phone was already buzzing with text messages from my friends.

  Chris: “OMG, we are ALL blown away!”

  Jessica: “I forgive you for cutting the baby terrorism. Because seriously you were AMAZING! You looked so comfortable up there. Your delivery was incredible!”

  Bill: “UR kinda my hero. P.S.: I’ve never felt more uncomfortable than when that offspring of Pink and Rumpelstiltskin came onstage. WTF? Just a bad moment for everyone.”

  But my favorite message was from Matt. He wrote: “That was the most amazing thing I have ever seen you do. Or anyone do. You could be a real stand-up comic. It was that good. If you don’t win, I’m setting this place on fire.”

  I didn’t stop beaming throughout the next three performances, but I wasn’t even listening. My God, I was really going to win this thing. I couldn’t believe it! This would be my proudest accomplishment since getting into Yale. In my head I rehearsed a quick acceptance speech. How amazing to get to thank Matt and Chris and Jessica and Bill publicly for their support! Maybe I’d even thank Eleanor. I’d briefly describe the project and how I’d put this fear off until the end because it was the scariest and then bring it home with some closing statement along the lines of “dreams really do come true!”

  When the last comic took his leave, the emcee appeared onstage. “And now for the winners of the 2009 New York’s Funniest Reporter contest!” he said. My stomach was churning with excitement and nervous anticipation.

  “Third place goes to . . .” He announced the name of the Good Morning America correspondent, who smiled beatifically and waved at the crowd.

  “Runner-up goes to . . .”

  It’s extremely rare but there have been a few times in my life where I’ve received a precognition about something that’s going to happen. It’s not a suspicion but a certainty. And suddenly I knew that I hadn’t won the contest. So sure was I that they were about to announce my name as the runner-up that I said it in my head along with them:

  “Noelle Hancock!”

  Even though I’d known it was coming, a tingling disappointment flooded through my body, as though my insides were blushing. My friends clapped hesitantly, unsure of whether they should be cheering for the runner-up position when they’d been so certain I would win. I smiled hugely, but my throat was throbbing from holding in my emotions. There was a stinging behind my eyes. Do not cry, I scolded myself.

  The deadpan CNN producer was announced as the winner. She didn’t look at all surprised by the win as she took the stage, and she didn’t seem to really care. She accepted the award with a casual “Hey, thanks, guys.” Then before departing she said, “Let’s give a round of applause to the other reporters. You guys were awesome!” Then the show was over. Matt and my friends were across the room, but I walked toward them slowly, trying to gather myself before I reached them. I was mercifully intercepted by the emcee, who led me and the other two winners to the stage for ten minutes of pictures. Later, I’d look back at these photos and marvel at how two different features on the same face could express such conflicting emotions at once. My mouth was set in a wide grin, while eyes were dispirited and shiny from the unspilled tears still lurking behind them. When we were finished, I stepped off the stage and Jessica caught me in a frenzied hug.

  “You were totally robbed!” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t stay. I have an early flight tomorrow and I still haven’t packed.” In a surprising move, she was going backpacking for two weeks in Argentina.

  “Thanks for coming! Now get out of here, you fucking hippie!” I tried to sound jaunty, but my voice came out in that desperately bright tone people adopt when they’re trying not to betray their disappointment.

  Then Matt was at my side, making no atte
mpt to disguise his mood. His expression was pure indignation. “That was bullshit!” he declared. “I can’t believe you didn’t win.” Then he brightened. “I can’t get over how good you were up there!” He put his arms around me, linking them behind my lower back. “You were so confident, honey. It was like watching you come into your own. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  When he said this, I realized how completely absurd I was being. My goal when I’d come here tonight had been to not forget my bits. Yet suddenly I’d raised my standards until nothing less than perfection would do. In doing that, I’d created my own disappointment out of something that should have been joyous. It was a habit I’d spent the last year trying to break. And right then, I made the decision to release my disappointment. I refused to be an enabler of my own unhappiness. There are enough real misfortunes in life to get upset about. With that, I exhaled and let the disappointment flow across my tongue and out of my body. I was surprised at how easily it faded away. What remained was not the giddy elation I’d experienced earlier but something more mature—a deep, gorgeous contentment that had settled in my very bones. I understood why this was different from my other fears. Skydiving, flying a fighter plane, shark diving—these were things I hadn’t wanted to do. Making a crowd of people laugh for five minutes straight was something I’d wanted to do but hadn’t believed I could do.

  That night I lay in my bed, grinning into the darkness, playing those five minutes in my head on an endless loop. I’d stayed up till five in the morning, not because of insomnia, but because I didn’t want the night to end.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A great deal of fear is a result of just “not knowing.” We do not know what is involved in a new situation. We do not know whether we can deal with it. The sooner we learn what it entails, the sooner we can dissolve our fear.

  —ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  My whole life I’d worried about death. When I was a child, I went to bed every night expecting to be murdered. I’d watched enough episodes of Unsolved Mysteries to know that the world was full of people wanting to kill me, and what better time to kill someone than when she’s asleep and you have the element of surprise? I developed a lengthy pre-bedtime ritual. I checked the locks on the windows, searched the closet to make sure no killers were hiding there. Then I looked in the laundry hamper because the closet’s way too obvious. Most likely, anyone small enough to fit in a hamper couldn’t be much of a threat, but when you have the element of surprise working in your favor, anything is possible.