My new hour of stand up FOOL PROOF will be filmed as a comedy special May 17-20 at the off broadway theater Soho Playhouse. Please come!
SOHO Playhouse May 17-20
The past 4 months I have been talking each week for an hour with a friend and texting regularly. It is a semi formal, semi structured relationship to be able to meet some goals and encourage some habits that have eluded me for sometime.
He texted me: Hey man, how is the show coming along? How’s the substack?
I texted back: THE SHOW IS GOING AMAZING! AND THIS WEEK I AM PUBLISHING AN ARTICLE ON SUBSTACK CALLED ‘LEAVING IT ALL ON THE TABLE!’
We were roommates a decade ago and we had seen one another at some of our lowest moments. A toxic girlfriend I was on and off with had just broken up with me for the 4th time, I came back to the apartment and I told him. I didn’t know what was wrong with me and why I still wanted to be with her and through tears with his hand on my shoulder I made him make a promise to me.
‘Listen bro, if I get back together with her again you have full permission to punch me in the face. You have to. YOU HAVE TO PROMISE ME YOU WILL PUNCH ME IN THE FACE.’
We shook hands and made a deal.
I got back together with her a month later and then we even got engaged 9 months after that. I sent out invitations to our wedding and he RSVP’ed. He never brought up the punch, his end of the bargain that I forced him to agree to. The wedding never took place, we broke up a few weeks before the date and that was that.
A few months after the wedding that wasn’t, my friend was a week late on rent and I had to ask him where the money was. I came home later that day and saw a third of the rent in cash on my bed, in 20’s 5’s and 1’s. We usually paid rent by paper check at the time so, when he got home I had to ask…
‘Hey…I’m not even asking where the rest of the money is at? But like…what’s the deal? Are you ok?’
Through tears he explained to me that the rest of the rent was on the way, he needed a few days because he fucked up. He spent it on drugs that weekend. Trying to look cool. Trying be the life of the party.
I told him it’s ok, get it to me when you can but this can’t happen again. For me or for you.
The rest of the money was on my bed the next day.
The past decade we have maintained a pretty classic, polite, cordial friendship, occasional drinks together, attended shows together, texted memes and articles back and forth, performed on some stand up shows together. But those desperate moments were always present in some way because they were not meant to be shared.
When my wedding invitations went out my friend knew more about the underlying irony surrounding the entire event. The next time he was texting his dealer to supply coke at the party, he knew the short term social capital this purchased him could come at the cost of his responsibility to his roommate or his friends trust. It was like seeing your teacher outside of school at the grocery store in pajamas or seeing your priest walking out of a gay bar or see your boss crying on the subway or an influencer taking her 5th picture in front of the Brooklyn Bridge or see your Dad holding hands with another woman and in every one of those instances you make brief, momentary eye contact and you know you are meant to never speak of this, but now you carry a little piece of the truth in your pocket, whether you want to or not.
It is for that precise reason I observed my friends transformation with such interest, I knew where he has been. He is married now, a father, physically fit, he has the occasional drink but doesn’t do drugs anymore but all of these things as wonderful as they may be, are all external. What I observed about him was a profound sense of peace and contentment with himself and with his life. and a noticeable authentic joy in his demeanor.
When we started our phone calls all of the goals I laid out were external. Pages written, followers accrued, subscribers gained, weight lost, muscles strengthened, drinks imbibed. He carefully has guided most of the conversations back to something deeper and more internal, it’s always been revealing because it reminds me of that punch.
PUNCH ME IN THE FACE IF I DO THIS THING I KNOW I DON’T WANT TO DO AGAIN.
*spends $4000 dollars on a ring, gets down on one knee and to ask for a lifetime commitment to the person you were supposed to get punched in the face if you got back together with*
Clearly there is something stronger than willpower and grit that is driving our decisions. I am sure early on the Saturday before the party started my friend was as committed to paying all the rent on time as I was to moving onto some healthier fishes in the sea.
The benefits of those moments in our lives though are that now our conversations are filled with actual unadulterated honesty, especially about those tiny insecurities, that seem so insignificant it feels weird to voice them. I would tell you what they are but YOU DON’T GET MY TINY INSECURITIES THOSE ARE SAVED FOR REFORMED COKE HEADS ONLY!
It was not until I sat down to write the essay that I thought up and then sent him enthusiastically, that I realized what I meant to say was 'Leaving it all on the field’. It was going to be about my upcoming show and really going for it and not being afraid to take risks creatively just because it’s a special venue and there will be cameras filming it. LEAVE IT ALL ON THE TABLE BABY! Once I realized I misspoke I looked up the exact meaning of this phrase, which from a google means ‘to refrain from taking the utmost advantage of something’. What I meant to say was LEAVE IT ALL ON THE FIELD BABY! And that means ‘expend every effort to defeat one’s opponents’. I sit here now and realize I really didn’t mean either of those sayings, I think I meant ‘put it all out there’ which you can only do when there is trust on the other end and sometimes that trust is delivered in the biggest mistakes from decades ago.