Happy Cyber Monday, Pillowtown. I hope you did whatever you could last week to feel joy during a global pandemic climate crisis. What did I do? Thank you for asking. I spent time with family and friends, I experimented with matte eyeshadow, and my middle school crush told me he thought my Twitter was funny. I also ate Cuban breakfast at the place that used to be my ballet studio. Being “back home” is weird.
Around the one year mark of this newsletter, I told you guys I would stop making this about me, turning my gaze outward. Well guess what. They say to write what you know. And I only know what things look like from my point of view. And I have an astigmatism so buckle up.
I’m writing this, my 69th diary entry, from my childhood bedroom. I’m stuck here for another day because I got a flat tire. I want to set the scene for you, to give you a behind the scenes look at my artist’s quarters. I designed my bedroom at the age of 12. It looks like a clown had a mental breakdown while experimenting with color combinations. There’s a desk with soccer ball drawer knobs. A stuffed animal I won at the Montgomery County fair. A painting of Mickey Mouse I made in 3rd grade where all of his proportions are off so he looks like he got run over by a car. My birth announcement is hanging in here. When I was born I was 7 lbs 4oz and didn’t yet feel the gut-wrenching pain of loss and grief. But I did get to wear a cute little hat.
The walls of my room are green. A lime green that says “nobody has ever had sex in here. Too bright.” I have a tweety bird hamper hanging on the back of the door and a rainbow comforter. I’ve had many restless nights in this bed. Worrying about my grades, worrying about my sketch comedy shows, worrying about what I’m going to G-chat my crush in the morning. I was kind of an anxious kid. But now, I am totally fine.
My 5 (6) year high school reunion was this weekend. Everyone thinks I’m a comedian because I posted one picture of myself in Brooklyn holding a microphone. I think I am a comedian now because in the words of Aristotle, you are what you repeatedly do. And I do hold a microphone on stage weekly. My high school reunion was this weekend and everyone looks the same. Except now all the girls know how to straighten the back of their hair. You know when you see someone you haven’t seen in a while and you hug and say it’s so good to see you and then you make plans to get coffee and neither of you knows how serious the other person is about said coffee? Do that 200 times and you have a high school reunion. I got a burger after with my friends and we reminisced on when our elementary school teacher lit the teacher’s lounge on fire when she forgot her popcorn in the microwave. I don’t remember anything I learned in school, only what I saw.
Nobody in my grade is married yet. That, or all the married people were too busy being married to come to happy hour in downtown Bethesda. One person in my grade is engaged to her former soccer coach. I could never imagine doing that, because I was very bad at soccer.
During the reunion, Stephen Sondheim died. Twitter blew up with the news but at 6pm in Tommy Joe’s Bar and Grill, time stood still. The outside world was just that, outside. I found out later that he had died at 91. The founding father of the modern American musical. The guy who inspired so many kids just like me to be so annoyingly enthusiastic about our 9th grade musical performances. Sondheim was just featured in Tick Tick Boom, as Jonathan Larson cites him as his great influence. I thought about Jonathan Larson at my high school reunion. I’ve spent the last 5 years rushing to be someone. To check off all my goals as if I was running out of time. 5 years passed and everyone in my class looks the same. Still babies. Still with time left.
It’s a strangely impossible task to balance seizing every day with relaxing into the knowledge that life is long. Life is long and short. How are we supposed to do both? Jonathan Larson wrote a musical about running out of time when he was 30, and he died at 35. What do we make of that? Should we always be pushing?
I’ve had enough with the rhetorical questions. Do you think I’m funny? Do not answer that. My producers just called and told me to wrap this up so I will leave you with this- please watch Tick Tick Boom this week. And put some mustard on your turkey, it looks dry even from here. Have an amazing week, Go Blue, and don’t paint your room lime green.