The Sweet Spot

I have to say, looking back on this moment this morning on my computer, the thing I was most impressed by was how red my hair looked on TV.

Now, I should point out, what was happening in this picture was that I was getting a move called “The Regal Stretch” performed on me by NWA champion pro-wrestler Colt Cabana, a move that involves being thrown on the ground, grabbed around the neck and stretched upwards while an NWA champion puts his knee into your back, thus causing intense pain.

But I am color-blind and people often tell me that my hair is no longer reddish as it was in my youth, a strange disjunction that I still see it that way, the way memory or nostalgia colors even the reality we perceive.

“Nope.” My couch-crasher Jeff told me, looking at the play-back clip. “It’s just a red light. Everyone’s hair looks that way on TV.”

Thanks.

If you want to know how I got into this situation, I am a strange and marginal character named “The Man Behind The Plant” (because I sit behind a plant) on a strange public-access/internet TV show called “The Chris Gethard Show”. The bit that night was that people could call in to see former NWA world champion Colt Cabana do wrestling moves on Chris or any of the other masochists on the show, but unfortunately for me, my improviser friend Shaun Farrugia is going through a bad breakup and too much free time and as a way “to kill the pain” decided to call in to ask Colt to do a move on me, by name and, well, improvisers don’t say no on stage.

After some intense back-pain and some grumpiness, I hobbled home, walking the 3 miles down 8th avenue to pick up my other couch-crasher Teddy from the improv mixer he was at, before walking and walking home.

In parts of my life, I find myself fearless, shameless and in others, paralyzed.

I speak of this abnormally, but it is normal, I’m sure.

I had my first Advanced Study Harold class with Neil Casey over at UCB and I came in to a class that some people freeze up in, a master class with a top performer and approached it fearlessly, a mile a minute, my heart pumping adrenaline off some sort of in-the-groove high causing me to talk a mile-a-minute after class getting food and in the break. People wanted to hang out with me, sent me messages on Facebook asking me advice, my only note I got was for breaking in my own scene because I was having too much fun. Something in me knew after I got in there, maybe after the initial fear, that there was nothing they could do to me now. I had taken so many level 4s at UCB, been rejected so many times. This class wasn’t an audition for anything, just an opportunity to learn. So I tried having fun and did great, I stunned myself in how great I did. I felt like a million bucks that day.

And then the next day I went to sign up for auditions for the UCB’s house teams and even just waiting in line looking around, confidence abandoned me. Here were all these people, nervous and experienced. I was just a number again and everyone seemed more together more belonging. Who was I? I wondered. What chance did I have in this wide sea?

I have had the honor for the past few weeks of being coached in a small team and a larger show by Christina Gausas, the best teacher and performer I’ve ever had the chance to study with (who is, incidentally, also beautiful), who somehow ended up taking me and my best buddy Sebastian under her wing in some miraculous confluence of events that I can’t even seem to recount now. In her workshops that I took, I did the best work of my life playing way outside my comfort zone, finding characters and confidence inside myself that I never knew I had. But in practice, something happened to me, these past few weeks, that was hard to overcome. I couldn’t say what it was? A fear? A pressure? A sense of not belonging or being unworthy? Or having to live up to something? Of being some sort of disappointment.

“It’s like you’re moving in slow-motion.” She told me. “There is a hesitancy. A half-move. And it’s something new.” She said.

“I don’t know, I feel afraid.” I told her.

“Don’t.” She replied, simply.

Christina is an amazing teacher, in that unlike some teachers giving a philosophy, like my other mentor Armando Diaz, she creates an atmosphere in which people can be true and honest, kind of like the way a catalyst works in chemistry: a catalyst doesn’t add some crazy energy to a reaction, it simply lowers the barrier that it would take for a reaction to happen otherwise.

That practice, I broke my boundaries and returned to that place of confidence and did, again, some of the best work of my life.

But I’m a big fan of believing that improv notes are often life notes.

Neil Casey told our class that improv “is not about not doing bad scenes, it’s about recognizing where you are and finding a way to navigate out of it”. That same not could apply for yoga, could apply for life. Noticing where you are, not judging yourself or giving up, finding a way to have fun even in an unexpected or unwelcome situation.

And Christina’s note to me (her notes that often seem like mind-reading) apply to my life as well.

Somehow, from all the confidence I’ve felt through the weight-loss and the way I’ve toned up my body, the way I’ve been continuing to perform well, the improvement I see in myself and the opportunities I get, there’s still that something inside me that isn’t confident, that feels small and unworthy. That thinks this current happiness a sham.

Sebastian (who often complains about not being represented positively enough on this blog) diagnoses it as my 8 years of high school introversion and also it should be noted, my markedly less-positive than remembered college experience, bubbling through, reminding me who it thinks I am.

Or maybe it’s just my singleness, that emptiness in me there.

A chauvinistic joke among my improv friends is that when a female student starts dating a good male improviser, they seem to improve rapidly as if succubus-like absorbing their power (I apologize for the offensiveness of this). But the truth is, just like my old sketch teacher Adam Conover used to say in his stand-up routine, there’s such a thing as “Girlfriend Confidence” or boyfriend confidence for that matter: the sensation of knowing someone loves you, that evolutionarily you are a winner for now, procreating, safe. I think the truth behind the joke for women in the improv community is that it is very, very difficult to be a woman in a small comedy community full of awkward men, especially when you might be interested in some of them, or even just unsure and that in finding a solid significant other, especially one whom you respect, you gain the confidence of not having to deal with being externally sexualized at the same time as being emotionally vulnerable in your practice. And it shows.

For guys though as well, it’s a difficult path, trying to find the right one, trying not to hang your hat on any failure or rejection. Trying to find grace in a small bar full of people after a show.

As I’ve said, dating in the community is kind of like shitting in a kiddy pool: everyone knows you’ve done it and they’ll probably remember even if some different people step into the pool.

So my therapist told me I should go back to online dating, which I’ve considered.

“How long has it been?” She asked.

“July or August. September?” I offered.

“You’re a much different person now then you were then.” She told me.

“It’s a place I went out of desperation and loneliness.” I told her.

“But it betters your odds.” She replied.

Looking back at my profile, at the questions I answered, how I’ve changed is evident, the intense criticism and self-doubt on display there is evident, so willing to beat myself up. I change answers, write new things as I realize the change in myself.

I worry as I look at my “quiver matches” about having to put myself out there again, talking to these people, taking a chance on something that could beat my confidence, that could make me feel terrible again.

But the note is that confidence breeds confidence. Life is unwritten and all we have is an initiation an attempt at connecting with someone.

No one knows where the scene will go.

So act confidently, knowing that no one has any more idea than you.

As Chris Gethard said:

“When you get up there, what you do could be the greatest thing that’s ever been done, or totally terrible. No one knows.”

Or as my sister said:

“You’re the dude. It’s up to you to initiate. So just be confident like the handsome cardigan-ed man you are.”

Life back into improv.

I did some good scenes yesterday.

Let’s see if I can do some good life.

***

It was a Sunday brunch, I was fighting a two-whiskey hangover (sorry for my pussi-tude) and I was look for something delicious for the day, a treat.

Faicco’s was the obvious choice, that magical oasis where a man can get a three-meal sandwich the size of a long forearm for 10 dollars, somehow located in the yuppified Greenwich Village/West Village boundary.

But Perilla just caught my eye, wandering down Jones St.

It was another morning where I had gotten up early and I had planned to read my backlog of New Yorkers and had yet again failed miserably to do so (I keep one in my mailbox for self-shaming purposes).

I saw the Spicy Duck Burger on the brunch menu, as it was my habit to check out the menus of restaurants I do not know as it is the habit of some people to stare up at blimps in the sky: admiring, with an eye to read their purpose.

As a non-carnivore, I am always interested in burger replacements, especially with alternative meats (most Veg-burgs I’ve had have been mealy or rubber-y) and this one came with fries, a forbidden and sometimes allowed treat for me.

So I waited out that extra time between 11:20 and 12, like I used to in my anti-breakfast days, until I sat at the bar, while a hipster emo-couple in their 30s came in with their hipster-emo baby.

My burger came shortly after the couple and was delicious.

Duck can be a little too fatty for me sometimes, difficult to eat in its dark, veiny-ness. But ground up and liberally spiced, the duck was perfect material for a burger replacement, with thick broadly-cut fries coming out fresh and a generous, sweet-seeded brioche, which I tore off much off, to preserve my weight-sensing sanity.

My only complaint (the price was high but reasonable for the atmosphere/quality) was that all of my burger toppings came on the side. For shame, restaurant. When I enter you I do not want a democracy. I want a tyranny of your choice as chef, deciding my experience.

If necessary, I can say the safe word of “allergies”, but other-wise, give me the stomach-pounding I paid for, no choice, just submission.

Rawr.

***

PERILLA

Spicy Duck Burger w/Pepper Jack Cheese and Spiced Fries- $16

Cornelia St bet. West 4th and Bleecker Sts.

1 to Christopher St. ACEBDFM to West 4th St.

My Encounter With A 65 Year-Old Man And Other Strange, Sad Stories

Like most things, in my life, it started with me looking at my phone.

It was a long day.

Even though I had decided before my trip to France that I would let things crescendo at the holidays before picking up at a more serene pace upon my return, I found myself swept into more and more action upon my return to New York City.

It was good, as my father would have noted to me. I like that, the sweep of activity, finding myself thrown between class and performance and work and friends, finding myself exhausted at the end of the night to wake up early with a purpose.

But I guess it all felt both welcome and sudden and sometimes I just found myself tired.

This was one of those times.

It was 7pm, heading uptown after a twice-a-week midday class. I had to drop off some DVDs in my most despised of neighborhoods: the Upper West Side, a bastion of snotty, self-righteous families and terrible, over-priced food. Needless to say, after a day of already working and a class where (as evident here) I put a lot of attention in to, I was exhausted and ready just to see shows.

Looking back on it, wondering why I was looking at my phone, I would point to the reason I used to give for looking at my phone in classes and inappropriate situations; that is, looking at my phone is a way to separate myself from the present, to detach, to not be there, or to avoid pain.

Such things can be deleterious, but they’re also human. It was late, I was tired, I was carrying my overly-heavy backpack going on a task I didn’t want to do at a time I didn’t want to do it.

So, when I went to cross Amsterdam Avenue looking up only from my phone to see the light had changed. I was surprised when instead of moving out of my way or brushing past, the man who walked near me in the crosswalk decided to push me so hard with his shoulder that what with my big backpack and my lack of attention, I fell on to the asphalt stunned.

A moment. And my brain vanished.

And I pushed myself up and turned around, catching up, to the man who pushed me over who kept on walking. The 65 year-old man in the cap.

“What the fuck is wrong with you man? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He turned around.

“No. Stop, what the fuck is wrong with you? You pushed me into the crosswalk!”

“I wasn’t the one who wasn’t looking where he was going!” He replied.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I replied, drooling at the mouth, spit flying. “THIS ISNT A FUCKING MORALITY LESSON YOU PUSHED ME INTO THE CROSSWALK, I COULD HAVE FUCKING DIED YOU PIECE–OF SHIT!”

All the time I was waving and gesticulating my bag of DVDs I had to deliver as I raised my arms in anger.

By the time I noticed it, the energy had shifted. People were gathered round. I was just holding myself back thinking how easy it would be to slam Mad Men Seasons 1 and 2 into this old asshole’s face as I saw the fear on it, as I felt my outrage, as I saw the fear of the people around me.

“GET THE FUCK. OUT OF MY FACE.” I said and turned around and walked into the crosswalk to wait for the light, which had decided in its unassuming way, to trap me there for a time.

“This man is obviously sick.” The 65 year-old man said, before probably walking off himself. I didn’t turn back.

As I walked down 79th Street, I delivered my DVDs on the next block.

“Who is this for?” The doorman asked and I replied. “What’s in here?”

“DVDs.” I told him, adding. “They might be a little wet, I just got knocked into the crosswalk over on Amsterdam.”

But he didn’t reply.

Walking down the street, down 79th, then Columbus, adrenaline raged through me and it was difficult to think, thoughts washed over my head, with meaning and intention, the looks on the onlookers’ faces, thinking I was assaulting this man, knowing that I nearly did, that no one helped me out of the crosswalk that, serious, fuck the Upper West Side.

I didn’t know what to do, I paced and walked and didn’t get on the train.

I phoned my parents and was brusque and upset as I can be when I don’t know what to do.

I stopped at Shake Shack and got a Black and White milkshake which was delicious and drank most of it in an act of self-reward and self-destruction, knowing both that I needed it and I would feel bad about it later.

It was delicious though and maybe all that hot fudge calmed me down.

All this past week, I’ve been talking to my friends about grace and how I admire it, the quality I most desire and what I struggle with. I find out I didn’t get into a class that I wanted and how do I find a way to see it as a gift? How do I forgive my family members when I fight with them? How do I live with life, in short?

I’ve been reading Chris Gethard’s book, which I bought on Tuesday, on a whim looking for time to kill between therapy and lunch and started reading it on the train and in Indian restaurants and in down time, quick drinking like soup.

And the book, which is full of anecdotes from Chris’s life (called “A Bad Idea I’m About To Do”) is all about that, the strange stories from Chris’s life of mental illness, dumps and rejections, near-brawls and intense embarrassment, but simultaneously, it’s also about the way that the worst moments in the moments, become stories to share and to learn from, moments of reflection, now or later.

For instance, as Chris described in his story “Nemesis”, syndicated on a past episode of This American Life, an asshole roommate of his who bullied him, stole gifts from his family and turned his other roommates against him in a whole year of college, revealed only much later that he was jealous of Chris because even though he was doing a ridiculous and mediocre college short-form group he had auditioned for 3 times unsuccessfully, he was pursuing comedy and the roommate never had the balls.

“I’ve become better about forgiving people.” Chris says. “Because I realize I don’t really have enemies in my life. I just have people who are somehow more miserable than me.”

All of the things in my life point to this. My trip to Paris, taking everything as a  gift. Realizing I have a wonderful life, full of friends and opportunities, the same one that leads me to be tired and upset some times.

Still I dwell on those moments, the class I didn’t get into, where I felt betrayed by friends or colleagues. Why is it so easy to dwell in self-pity or anger, I wondered, as I went upstairs to write this post.

The only thing I can come to is that self-pity or anger both involve not reckoning with the responsibility to be open and to be changed. They’re passive ways that degrade you more subtly than the “burden” of trying to deal with what is and move on, or better yet, learn and make it empowering.

As I go on today, as I tell that story, feel bad for myself or good, it’s at least something to remember that I can take from Paris, meandering, that the turn you’re forced to take can be a path of great discovery, in life, in improv, in anything. As long as you see it as a gift, or see that enemy, more miserable than you.

I bombed one show last night that “mattered”, had a great show that “didn’t” and felt great after both of them.

Why?

Because my life is silly and strange. Last week, I got heckled at an ASSSSCAT show, played ping-pong with my buddies and some comedy legends and somehow won a Mercedes-Benz bling medallion and then got to watch or do comedy all the rest of the week.

If something bad happens, maybe I’ll feel bad, but what a chance to see my life for what it is.

So fuck you, 65-year-old man.

But also, you know, fuck me. Or life’s good.

Or whatever.

***

SHAKE SHACK

Black-and-white Milkshake (the best)- $5.44

NE Corner of 77th St and Columbus Av.

1 to 79th St, BC to 81st-Natural History Museum

“I’ll use it as my profile picture.” I told Ro-Beardo Malone.

“Actually, I was hoping it would be the first picture on the next Feitelogram.” He replied with his half-cocked beard-smile, a tactic he frequently employed to try to inflame my inability to tell the difference between dry-sarcasm and his occasional earnestness. (e.g.: “Not enough films about the Kennedy assassination” accompanied by half-cocked beard-grin.)

It was 10:55, the hour of the always-breathless lead-up to The Chris Gethard Show, where my role as “The Man Behind The Plant” put me to some degree off-camera, getting ready to retweet people saying things like “Give me some jews 2fuk my boyfriend dumpt me” as well as home-brew images or cartoons having to do with the show. People frequently ask me, in bars or first dates, how I manage seeing my comedy friends with my friends from film school and the lucky thing is that the show is like a nexus of all of them.

Here, in one corner, is comedy-man Keith Haskel getting dressed up in a banana suit while his girlfriend helps him zip up. Over there is once-villain-man Andrew Parrish, warming up the audience and rushing around getting ready to punch Chris for an on-show bit, there getting in to an Evil Knieval costume is Ro-Beardo Malone, jimmying around trying to figure out whether his crotch muscles have healed enough that he can break loose and dance his fullest.

That night, a woman tried to book Rob to play a vuvuzela at her next bar mitzvah or event. That night, a woman called in with notes passed to the host with underlines to accentuate her increasing drunkenness. That night, a waltzing-seniors holiday special took over our studio so we were crammed in to a smaller one. I look forward to the show every week.

This week in improv class, I finished my last session of a 401, the class I was stressed out about enough last time around to write regularly about on this blog. Though I spent most of the class fairly confident, I lost that confidence in my last session and felt like crap going out for obligatory drinks with everyone after the show. That night, I started replaying a Mega Man RPG for the Nintendo DS.

In the haze after college that I am still in, I look for meaning all around me, for structure. When I didn’t feel good about my last 401 class, it made me feel down for two days.

I went in to my therapist asking why and she told me that in the absence of a significant other, my relationship with comedy and performance is the primary one in my life.

To that end, I went on two (unsuccessful) dates this weekend but things are looking, well, as they are.

In truth, I have to remind myself that there’s no control. To my friend’s perturbment, everything is like improv.

You can state your idea, your wants, your desires, but you have no control over where the scene or your life goes. Only where you choose to venture, preferably boldly, and the discoveries you make yourself open to with other people.

Tonight I go back to The Chris Gethard Show.

It’s a dating special.

I’ll be there again,

The man behind the plant.

***

My friend Jon Bander outed me yesterday.

The truth: I had been writing self-strokingly about the weight I had lost and telling people as much when they gave me a nice compliment or conspicuously in conversation (“Good show tonight.” “Yeah it was. I lost 50 lbs.”) but to outpour on social media was something else.

I had someone post on my wall that I was an “inspiration” my friends rag on me and people hold me up as some sort of symbol.

Meanwhile, on the other side, my parents were concerned I had lost too much weight (hovering somewhere around 175) and were wondering if there son was going to waste away. Their plans to have me see a doctor before I left were only foiled by a. A New York practitioners inherent lack of availability and b. them realizing I had been given a clean bill of health by that doctor about a month ago.

In the middle somewhere there was me, still self-conscious, still grabbing my belly at any passing moment, still wondering if I’d gain it back, if I’d added a pound. If now that I’d been “exposed” whether I’d just be another casualty, gaining back all the weight I had lost.

Friends told me it took them 5 years to get it back, others nodded knowingly as if it wouldn’t even do me any good to know.

The phase I’m in of “my new lifestyle” seems the scariest, the one without a plan where I try to find my own boundaries, set my own rules, figure out what works for me, what I’m allowed to do.

In Yoga (which I still think jokes and references to are stupid), my teacher talks about posture, as we stretch a belt across our backs to sit tall. When we arrive at our computers, we hunch over. When we sit on the mats we align our spine.

As I look in the mirror before the TCGS dating game tonight and put on a nicer shirt, now I wonder about my posture and how to fix that, how to get my body right.

Where is the happy medium between these things? My parents concern, my neuroses and the possible benefits of eliminating the things hampering me in my life.

What is the goal I’m trying to achieve (as Bander asked me as a necessary pre-requisite before instructing me on the diet I took to get to this weight)?

If it’s romance, as my friend Jason Chan has said, being skinny or even attractive (don’t think I’m there) doesn’t seem a large part of the equation.

If it’s happiness or self-contentment, isn’t that a state of mind rather than a physical pose? Haven’t I said before I was “happier” at my previous weight?

These are questions without too many answers as the holidays or my nearness to my Paris vacation grow closer.

Well, maybe I’ll figure it out in old gay Paris.

***

Or maybe my parents are concerned about me because they saw me split a cupcake into thirds.

My parents (seen above in soft-focus, head-cut-off form) were enlisted on a Sunday morning after a post-Faicco’s expedition to help me try out my latest point of exploration: Molly’s Cupcakes over in the West Village.

The place seems to have some reality-cred which I didn’t know too much about (not being an avid watcher of “Top Chef”-type shows) but I am fan of your down-home-style cupcake joint and the capacious milieu and swing-like chair seemed to draw me in.

Even though Mom pointed out their award-winning cupcake, a Peach Cobbler-blend with a real-peach slice on top, I was not interested. Such things struck me as being unnecessary, cupcake-wise, when for me the bread-and-butter of a cupcake should be simplicity.

I do like Pichet Ong’s cupcake inventions at Spot, to clarify, which often included Yuzu and berries and stuff, but even there, simplicity is maintained with the relatively small size and modest-icing of a cupcake being paramount. For me the monster-truck style-cakes of Crumbs are anathema and the Baked-by-Melissa tinies, while great, definitely suffer due to portion size on their value quotient.

So, I got the alpha-cake, vanilla base, chocolate-buttercream icing.

And I gotta say, it was pretty good.

The icing was refreshingly (unexpectedly) dark as opposed to milk chocolate and the base was also deceivingly lemony, a fact we interrogated the owner about to no avail.

What seemed simple ended up nuanced but markedly enjoyable, by no means a “perfect” cupcake (I think Blue Ribbon gets the closest to that), but certainly an excellent one.

My parents still looked perturbed though when I only ate my third of the cupcake.

“Too sweet for me.” My dad, the wuss, said eating about a third of his third before retiring. Mom and I tried to say something but well, you can bring a horse to water…

At least I ate half my huge Faicco’s sandwich in front of them.

At least they know I eat.

***

MOLLY’S CUPCAKES

Vanilla Cupcake w/Dark Chocolate Buttercream- $2.50

Bleecker St. bet. 6th Ave and Carmine St.

1 to Christopher St. ACEBDFM to West 4th St.

Giving

I admit as a New Yorker to never having seen the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, at least in my knowing lifetime.

It is possible that my parents took me before I was aware of things, like probably many struggling infants, fixated on a floating Snoopy in the sky.

But if so, these are memories only accessible through regression hypnosis, or at least a recounting to by my parents.

Yeah.

But I saw, for the first time, the floats coming up 10th avenue the night before Thanksgiving, a cordon mini-parade of sorts, rolling through midnight, police escorting, like some arcane gathering or the book of Where The Wild Things Are (not the shitty hipster-ass movie).

It was something that it was meaningful or wonderful to me (in the “full of wonder” sense of the word) seeing those floats pass by as I headed home from a particularly raucous sandwich-filled episode of The Chris Gethard Show. I felt like I was getting to see something hidden or cool. I felt that dormant, probably non-existent Snoopy-adoring child in me.

Or something like that.

Because as I “grow up”, what impresses me about myself is my non-chalance where before there was only chaos. When I get a 500-word explanation/pitch of why “we should be friends” on OKCupid, I just kind of sigh it off as silly. When I have a not-so great set on stage, I still feel good and goofy (though whiskey helped with that that night). Even my UCB 401 class, something that the last time I did it I was so stressed out on the pages of this blog feels nice and natural to me.

When I walked into my therapist office this morning, I thought about how much I had changed. Even though I’ve constantly thought of myself as relatively sane and well-adjusted, I started out two years ago as an angry, sharply-opinionated kid dealing with personal and professional traumas as well as the unsolved question as to whether anyone could love me.

Now, I’m a mellow still-weirdo, who’s done a decent amount of screwing (especially by former nerd standards) and consistently gets into less fights, less “battles”, less of the “proving himself” crusades I used to throw myself into as a crucible to prove my worth or reveal who I really was.

Two years ago, I went before a board at my school and told them if they didn’t heed my advice they’d have “blood on their hands”. Now, someone made a snide remark to my friend at a show and instead of instantly getting into a fight, I take a moment stare at the guy, ask my friend if he wants me to do something and wait for the asshole to dig his own grave (giving a “pedophilia” suggestion at ASSSSCAT and getting fucking reamed by families of victims at the intermission). For all my opinions and strangeness, I’m a much chiller person. Or maybe just more comfortable with who I am.

Which is not to say opinions or feeling strongly is a bad thing. They’re great under the right circumstance and I’ll still stupidly get into a cause to champion, or get hung up on the wrong girl or say my ex’s name as some freudian slip. These are the things that make us human. It is both full and childish, in a good way, to feel and react deeply. It’s what tells us we’re alive, that we’re capable of action, to do something, potentially stupid, and to see its results. We live by the fruits of our mistakes and the knowledge/nourishment we get from them.

So I guess that’s why I dug seeing those floats after the already silly and fun Chris Gethard Show. I guess that’s why I enjoyed some of The Muppets and all of Hugo. I suppose that’s why I still consistently eat Chicken Parmigiano and am shy about asking girls out on dates and feel this need to spill my guts to everyone here in (slightly) masturbatory fashion.

Because there always needs to be that kid inside us, capable of making mistakes, of taking foolish risks, of trying something.

Something capable of experiencing and creating the wonderful.

***

Looking at this picture shows how tenuous I feel about my sexuality when trying to explain to my friends that I do yoga.

Because they post things like this around and have saunas and an assortment of teas.

But it’s a nice other layer of structure and it kicks my ass.

And what can I say, I guess I like that.

I went out with my friend Frank and his assortment of online gaming friends (a “Korean korean” from Flushing, a waiting-for-deployment Army kid and his marketing-dept girlfriend) to Ichiumi, the fabled “sushi buffet” of my youth, a place where you can go to get an unlimited suply of sushi and Japanese/Korean food, both iffy in its health ramifications and delicious for the hard working-out 5-plate-eating Frank.

“Ha, Yoga’s for pussies, bro. Do some burpies.” He told me, before going on to discuss an online role-playing game they all played called “League of Legends”.

It is a bit, but what can I say?

I am not a flexible person and never have been. I always despised working out and most physical activity given the physical emphasis of my middle and high school, which I hated. I have always been tight and usually slumped over, my back and neck a tilting “C”.

But Yoga just seems so far away from the “machoness” and implicit judgement I felt at the gym. It’s just a bunch of people doing peaceful, but sweaty things. And while I don’t buy into the spirituality aspect, it does clear my mind. It feels like a nice release and more than that, it feels easy for me to continue doing it. I went three times last week and once so far this and intend to go tomorrow. I was disappointed to find out my studio didn’t have an iPhone app, so I could see the times more readily.

With the stress still at my work, I did Yoga yesterday and was much more happy with my free time than I usually am, since free time usually terrifies me.

I just got water at Ichiumi as Frank tossed back plate after plate, rushing against the 3 o’clock deadline when they’d toss us all out to prepare for dinner. We ended up badgering Frank into getting the new Zelda game, which I had been enjoying and while we explored the Saturday-time Manhattan Mall, still swarming from leftover Black Friday sales, Frank turned to me:

“So, uh, how much do you think a class at your place would be?”

“What place?” I asked facetiously.

“You know. Yoga. I just am tight and could use more flexibility.”

“Yeah, ok.” I said. “Pussy.” Under my breath.

And it took a little longer to find out.

Because they didn’t have an iPhone app.

***

Though I have mostly been cured of my hypo-glycemia by way of my diet, I was pushing it on Sunday when I waited till 2 to eat after waking up fairly early. In my defense, I was going to meet my sister to see Hugo at New York City’s greatest movie theatre, The Ziegfeld and I thought to go to the nearby hallowed-food cart, the great 53rd and 6th Halal Guys.

But I had been spoiled on them lately. Not that they weren’t still great (They were/are). Only that based on my routine I now get to have them at least once a week. They’re less of a treat and I’d actually already had a platter on Friday.

I had also been soured because I had tried to defuse the difficult-to-explain subterfuge of a cart that pretends to be the famous cart by isn’t by going over to that cart’s line and explain to the stupid tourists that they were in the wrong place, only to hear from some d-bag that he actually thought Tasty and Delicious was BETTER than Halal Guys!

“Dude, I’m a famous food blogger.” I whipped out. “I’m on TV for this shit.”

“Well, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said refusing to make eye contact.

Now, this is a point of pride for me because I felt as if I was doing a public service. Tasty and Delicious sells fucking HOT DOGS for gods sakes as no self-respecting halal cart should!

Fuck!

Anyway, the whole thing had left a sour taste in my mouth and as I did a nice Sunday three-mile walk to the Ziegfeld, I found a place that caught my eye in Bryant Park called Vegetarian’s Oasis amidst the gift-sellers and bag-handlers.

“Yeah, we mostly do music festivals.” The woven-shirt-ed lady told me. “Nearest one is the Electric. She said.

I got the Falafel Wrap, which of course came on whole-wheat, with tahini, “crushed pepper” sauce, fresh crispy cabbage, romaine and tomatoes. It was delicious and big, burrito sized and relatively inexpensive, especially for the neighborhood.

My sister, the semi-vegan, was somewhat jealous. I told her to try to get the falafel from the Halal cart, but she decided on a Jamba Juice instead.

“What, Juice is a meal.” She expressed when I showed my indignation.

She then proceeded to steal most of my small popcorn that I got at the movie theater.

But maybe I just should have brought her an extra wrap.

We’ll call it, a draw.

***

ICHIUMI

Lunch Buffet (Sushi and Japanese/Korean Hot Food, Dessert)- $22.00

32nd St bet 5th Ave and Madison

NQRBDFM to 34th St Herald Sq. 6 to 33rd St.

VEGETARIAN OASIS

Falafel Wrap w/Cabbage, Crushed Pepper Sauce, Tahini- $7

Inside the Market at Bryant Park near 42nd St and 6th Ave

BDFM7 to 42nd St-Bryant Park

You Are Where You Need To Be

I tried Yoga for the first time yesterday.

It was the sort of thing like Vegan-ism that I admit to disliking, the sort of thing that people use as a crutch to seem somehow spiritually superior to others. Back in sketch classes, when people would make jokes about “ashrams” or whatever I would always just think they were assholes, because really, what an elitist, shitty white-person thing to be making in-jokes about, Yoga.

But it was pretty good, though I’m really sore today.

I still don’t think I’ll be making any ashram jokes (just as I don’t think I’ll be talking about how much better my life is now that I don’t eat animal products) but it did make my back feel better and seemed to slightly improve my posture. It just seemed like a less body-destroying version of the Judo I used to do, which when I left it made me feel like my whole body was vibrating and that I craved meat.

But as I was leaving, the person who’d brought me there pointed out that this was a good way to meet women, since there was a low-percentage of males in Yoga classes and an even lower percentage of straight males. But I told her I thought it would be creepy to hit on a girl in a yoga class, a place where people are supposed to get away from stress and feel at peace and also somewhere in me it felt somewhat desperate.

This same person recommended that I highlight my TV appearances on my online dating profile, when they heard that my appearing on national television had somehow not lead to me being some sort of mighty-mack. But this too seemed desperate me, seemed targeted to attract the wrong sort of attention. I left the class feeling down and not knowing why, though maybe like I wanted to do more Yoga.

Thinking about it today and yesterday has brought me to a rather obvious realization and one that I’ve arrived at multiple times on these pages: for all my serenity and comfort for where I am in parts of my life, I still wonder what’s wrong with me.

In my personal and professional life I feel undervalued. Why couldn’t I explain why I hadn’t found anything meaningful romantically in the time since I’d been on television? Professionally there are problems too with feeling underused and undervalued that I can’t talk about here.

The other day after a good night at The Chris Gethard Show, I got in a fight with my sister that made me feel like I was 11 again and went out to a bar I know I shouldn’t have gone to, to talk to a girl I shouldn’t have talked to, about that something that just made me feel immediately like shit. I was undervaluing myself. I was feeling that way.

As always I can point to my friends and see similar problems, no great serenity or happiness there, necessarily. But maybe it feels frustrating to see their apparent grace in dealing with it.

Just like the Yoga people and the Vegans, my friends frequent seem to achieve some happy balance, or at least find a way not to show their loneliness. It’s healthy for them but it also makes me feel like who am I, but at least they don’t make jokes or gloat about it.

As I’ve written about before here, the best note I ever got in improv was from Ashley Ward, who told me at a bar after a class I took with her, after feeling bad about how I was as a performer that “You are where you need to be”.

It’s a good way to look at life and the situations you find yourself in, a way of seeing things that you make can’t make sense of as part of a larger situation, a moment in your life that is now, but will not happen again, part of a path you may or may not continue on.

One foot in front of the other, going out, doing things. I have friends who don’t go out, friends who wallow in their loneliness and depression and I don’t do that. I put myself out there and perform silly shows and write stupid blog posts (which probably don’t ultimately help win me any romance points).

I am where I need to be.

And I’ll try to figure out a Yoga class to go to.

Probably to the amusement of all.

***

Andrew Parrish is concerned about how he is portrayed on this blog and for good reason.

For about two-thirds of his portrayal, he has been a villain of epic proportions, so much so that Blake LaRue made a really fun Batman-villain origin-story for him, which I think was just Mad Libs pertaining to Scarecrow’s back-story (but still it was funny).

However, sadly, he continues to be a good friend to me.

When Robeardo Malone will have either a “large bowel movement” or a migraine or an attack of lethargy or Beamer will decide he’d rather hide from humanity that evening or Sebastian decides he has “too much homework, bro”, Andrew consistently comes out and does stuff with me and has fun.

This week, we headed to ASSSSCAT, saw a late-night set and then went on an epic quest around the city, wandering into a hotel to attempt to retrieve a pillow that was taken from him by his roommate for a French short-film shoot in a fancy hotel on the Gramercy Park, which we unsuccessfully crashed (something about the pillow being dirty) and then headed off for a night of ping-pong with comedy luminaries, into the wee-hours Sunday night.

Of course during ASSSSCAT at the UCB, a girl who attends the CGS recognized Andrew and started energetically talking to him, which he shrugged off, even when he later saw her on the street during our quest, he didn’t even stop to talk to her.

“What are you doing? Late night, pretty girl, chance encounter…” I demanded

“Eh.” He said.

Bastard.

It was a fun night though as I am epically terrible at Ping Pong and managed to hit the ball into the light fixtures several times before finally being relieved by the much better and funnier players.

Parrish is like me, single, but he’s goddam better at ping pong, non-chalance and now he’s even stolen quests from me.

I don’t know.

I’m watching you, Parrish.

Thin ice.

***

During that UCB show evening, Andrew and I ended up at a Japanese burger place named Kobeyaki over on 7th Avenue which I wanted to try.

They didn’t have any whole grain buns for their “Teriyaki Chicken Burger” (a good version of which certainly exists at Tebaya in lower Chelsea, nb) so I ended up trying their “Teriyaki Chicken Bowl” which came over salad even though I ordered it with brown rice.

It was good, a little overly sweet/sauce-drenched for my taste, but rife with good vegetables and a surprisingly varied-greens salad.

The next day at UCB I saw someone with the same thing as everyone crowded around to see someone’s opinion of the new place in the ‘hood.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.” The eating dude said. “It’s Bourbon Chicken.”

I literally gasped (or maybe said “Whoa”).

That is quite a put-down as Bourbon Chicken is the sort of crap one gets from Food Court Panda Expresses AND/OR Food Court Rajun Cajuns!

“No diss, man.” The guy said. “I love Bourbon Chicken. But this is definitely it.”

And I guess thinking back on my experience of it.

He’s kinda right.

***

KOBEYAKI

“Teriyaki Chicken Bowl”/Bourbon Chicken- $9.00

7th Avenue bet. 26th and 27th Sts.

1 to 28th St. CE to 23th St.

My Trip To Poly Prep

 

I was awake at 6am.

It wasn’t easy.

I had had an episode of The Chris Gethard Show the night before, one where I got dubbed my official show-name “The Man Behind The Plant”, which oddly brought me some pride. Everyone always goes out after the show and I have to admit feeling the slight temptation, even now that drinking isn’t too fun for me anymore, just to celebrate my renaming.

But I still had to be up at 6am.

And so I went home and left Keith Haskel in his Banana Suit and Ro-Beardo Malone in his Evil Kneivel costume to get drinks with the rest of the crew and headed home.

The alarm got me up, groggily, as I wandered over to the Prince St NR Station preparing to take my trip, forever, to the end of the R line, Bay Ridge-95th St.

It was a misnomer, really. That area was on the border of Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, a fact noted in Poly Prep’s school song which begins:

“Far down on the heights called Dyker…”

The song I memorized which would now never leave me, except by Alzheimer’s or death.

I had invited back to Poly Prep out of the blue, by my old 7th grade teacher, a bright spot in my loathed history of attending the school, Mr. Khan.

Mr. Khan had encouraged 7th grade Nicholas to write poetry, to find his voice, to begin to speak to his situation just when he started to have a situation to speak to. He didn’t coach any sports (unlike most of the teachers), he just loved his students and gave them all his energy. I would look forward to his class eagerly the 3-4 days a week I would have it.

The rest of my history at Poly Prep was not too happy as those who know me or read the blog know. In fact, I feel like it’s something now I bring up pretty early in conversations or in dates, how unhappy my high school experience was. When I gave monologues for “The Armando Diaz Experience” roughly half my stories were about how unhappy I was in high/middle school.

Poly Prep, for those who don’t know it, is a huge Ivy League private school in New York City, situated on the tip of Brooklyn on a palatial estate, looking like something out of “The Rules Of The Game” or “Gosford Park”. It has 2 duck ponds, 3 tennis courts, 2 soccer fields, 3 baseball fields, 1 full-size football field and a quarter-mile track. I’m sure I’m forgetting many things but so be it.

Suffice it to say, the focus is on sports and academics, with some minor interest in theater. Everyone else was marginalized to various degrees or left to fend for themselves. When I was there, class boundaries were the biggest “cliques”, with partying Manhattan Kids (“MKs”) making up one sect, Park Slope hippie sons-and-daughters making up another, the middle-class Italian Staten Islanders and then the kids brought in on sports scholarships, a large section of the population, but one that kept to itself.

Why not? If you have some kids talking about vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard and some kids seeing their single mother kill themselves working nights, you’re going to have some disjunction.

But still, I was invited there, a none-of-the-above, spending my time growing a pony-tail and sitting in abandoned corners of the library or the newspaper office trying to avoid people.

The first thing I noticed when I was back was that they now had Ronnybrook Chocolate Milk in their milk dispensers. It used to be “GAF E. SEELIG” whatever that meant. It still didn’t taste that good, but then again, I put it in some bad coffee.

After a couple of announcements, I was put on stage with three other alumni who had had various experience, including a girl who had struggled with coming out at the school (no easy task) an upper-middle-class West Indian woman who mostly enjoyed her time at the school and a kid from my year who had ended up an investment banker, but who had been expelled for a year or two from the school for stealing a laptop from someone’s locker. I look forward to hearing him talk.

I had warned Mr. Khan and my other old mentor there, Mr. Cox, that I would speak my mind on stage and “try not to curse”. They laughed and said it was fine. I mostly marveled on how normal the other people on the panel seemed as they went down and listed where they went to college and what they did now.

“Hi, I’m Nicholas Feitel.” I told them. “Uh, I’m not really sure what I want to do with my life, but that’s cool. For now, by day I’m an assistant to a producer and by night I do comedy and stuff. Uh, I’ve been on TV a bunch of times.”

Pause.

“Uh, check me out on Youtube?” I offered quizzically.

The crowd roared.

I felt good saying what was on my mind. I told students who didn’t like the school to get some perspective and find interests outside it. To know that “this is not it”, even if knowing that doesn’t help because “you are in it”. I told them that Poly conditioned me to hate myself, which is why I didn’t leave. I told them that they should know that “the people who were d-bags to me in school are now fat and have bad jobs.”

Not really values looking back that I want to associate with comeuppance, but it got a lot of applause.

It ended up fine with a mostly positive response, though when asked if I wanted to stick around I told them no and they called me a car which I took reluctantly after my hour-twenty on the R train getting there. It was still just a lot to be there and think and feel that all again.

The only thing that surprised me was the student who had been expelled, who stayed silent about it his whole time on the panel. When I talked about how Poly had conditioned me to hate myself, he said when he got the mic:

“Oh Nick, I’m so sorry to hear that. I wish I had known that when I was there so I could have pulled you on to the happy train I was on.”

My therapist noted that an earlier Nick would have outed him there on stage. Would have made him bring it up.It wouldn’t have been right. It would have been patently wrong.

But I just left it and left the school and went home.

I got an email earlier this week from Mr. Khan.

“My man Nick!” he typed exuberantly. “One of our superstar seniors has to do an interview with a working adult for her project. After hearing your speech she has abandoned her previous choice in favor of talking to you. Would you be willing?”

I’m meeting her at 5:15.

I hope the whole conversation won’t be about Bethenny Frankel.

***

I’ve been feeling less creepy lately.

It’s nice.

I’m still losing weight (yes, I know my personal weight loss is my readers’ favorite topic of discussion) and I’ve recently found a weird phenomenon which is that my stomach folds into itself when I’m reclining. It feels weird, but I’ll take it as a good sign I think.

As my therapist said, maybe there’s less there so there’s more room to fold.

As usual, I still have young ladies sending me subtle signals I’m better at reading that they’re not interested in me. Though now I get to hear these stories of people online dating in my improv classes where young ladies are like “Well, we messaged back in forth for two months and I kept telling him I didn’t want to meet and I wasn’t interested in him and fast forward we’ve been together for four months. He’s a personal trainer.”

When I head that story, I literally said “That’s creepy, I would have just stopped if you told me you weren’t interested in me.” But both the girl telling the story and the teacher of the class (who had done a one-woman show apparently about online dating) both looked at me and said something along the lines of “Well you’ve got a lot to learn.”

Sigh.

I’ve been working hard on feeling more confident and trying to put myself out there unembarrassed. I asked someone on online dating the other day to get a drink to me, something which I never had the confidence (as stupid as that is) to do before. Coffee, lunch, or, MAYBE, dinner, I would think. A drink I’m just telling them that I’m flirting, that I’m DTF, that I’m some confident jerk.

Or just confident.

But as stupid and simple that is, I noticed it and it felt cool.

But then there are still things that hit me, even if they hit me less now that I have some built-up self-confidence or built-up lack-of-creepiness.

Like a girl in my improv class last night thinking that I was going to hit her with a chair.

It’s sounds stupid and it’s a stupid story, one involving stupid improv.

I was in a scene where my game was to prove my courage against this girl who was playing a menacing groundskeeper. So I walked over to her and gently karate-chopped her and she laughed it off and pushed me to the ground and shot me with an improv gun, so I improv died.

But I needed to prove my courage, so I came back as an improv ghost and tried to karate chop her again.

“Hah, you’re a ghost!” She said. “You can’t do anything to me!”

“Oh yeah?” I replied and used my improv-poltergeist powers to pick up a chair and loom it menacingly towards her.

And the scene was edited.

Except after the class when I went to ask the teacher about some notes he’d given me, the young lady from the scene approached our teacher to ask him something and I walked away as I’d have other times to ask.

Except she said, “Actually I wanted to talk to both of you” and talked about how “uncomfortable” I had made her feel, that she “was like What the Fuck is he going to do, hit me with a chair” and again “how uncomfortable it made [her] feel.”

Again, I handled the situation well. I apologized profusely as did Brandon saying that she should never feel endangered and that I would never hit anyone with a chair and that I apologize if I made her feel uncomfortable.

But as I walked home I felt both how annoyed it made me feel now and how awful it would have made previous incarnations of me feel.

I know it was all about her and who knows what this girl’s issues are, but someone thinking I would hit them with a chair? What the fuck do I seem like to them? How terrible or creepy must I seem?

And even remembering how I would have internalized it made me very upset. I didn’t see any shows. I just walked home, the two miles, that heavy backpack on my back, full of half-a-dinner, back-issues of the New Yorkers and my newly-beloved mini-laptop.

Not to use a tired metaphor, but I carry around a lot of baggage when dealing with my romantic life and the way I’m perceived by people.

There’s still that Nick from Poly Prep who is conditioned to hate himself, to feel unworthy, or creepy, defensive or “other”. And as much as I fade away from him, I still carry him somewhere.

And he rests heavy there on my back.

But also, what the fuck?

Even he wouldn’t hit someone with a fucking chair.

***

I still get to have nice things.

After seeing Melancholia with my grams and feeling bummed out (more by the movie and less by naked Kirsten Dunst, which is pretty sweet, what, I’m a guy) I wanted to find something sweet to take my mind off it all.

Luckily, even though there was nothing to kiss, there was at least a good cookie in my pocket.

Although my Grandma and I ultimately ended up going to a secret ‘Wichcraft inside the Lincoln Center Annex on 63rd St, we did pass by Epicerie Boulud, the new “Pret”-type place by Daniel Boulud (DBGB, Daniel, etc…). While the “Amish Chicken” salad didn’t really seem my style, they had a smallish chocolate-chip cookie that looked pretty good.

Now, I have my qualms.

Firstly and importantly, it’s made with milk-chocolate, which isn’t usually my style. I think dark or semi-sweet works better for artisinal cookies with the sugary surrounding batter providing the contrasting sweetness to the intensity of the chocolate. It’s just like drawing, chiarroscurro.

But what this does provide is an intense sugar rush experience, the confectionary equivalent of being 5 again, with all sweetness and buttery flavors coalescing into adolescent glee.

It was small (which is good for me, not necessarily for others) but felt like a welcome thing to small ones or to those who wish to be so.

And that’s fine.

***

EPICERIE BOULUD

Chocolate Chip Cookie- $2.50

SE Corner of 64th St and Broadway.

1 to 66th St.