It all started with laughter and a longing to be somewhere else.
I don’t miss my hometown. I moved out of Longmont, Colorado in 1994, and never wanted to move back. For me, crossing that town line is like stepping into a dark parallel universe of bad memories. It’s a time machine that only goes back to traumatic events; to people who only knew me as the juvenile delinquent offspring of a narcissistic, alcoholic mother. People who said I’d end up as nothing, popping out kids, smoking crack and ending up dead in a ditch. It’s the town where a loser who nearly killed me is still frequently seen walking around on the street.
I still have some very awesome friends living in Longmont, and while I almost envy their loving view of the place, I simply do not share it.
My home life was not as bad or as good as it could have been, but it was difficult. It had a few bright spots, though. Sunday nights were the best. The long weekend at home with my mother and her awful boyfriend at an end, I lay in my bed, in the dark, clock radio at my head, volume low enough so only I could hear, tuned into the Dr. Demento Show. I listened to the weirdness and laughed my ass off, alone in the dark.
Funny helped me cope. I got through those painful years because I had unending rage, an indefatigable sense of humor, and the knowledge that one day, I would get the fuck out of there and go far away.
By the time I was 30, I was in another Colorado town. I was doing all right, but wanted more. To do more. To see more. To be more. So I wrote. I talked to people. I read. I got wasted and made fun of everything. I met people who were like me, who loved laughing as much as I did, and we spent a lot of time trying to make one another laugh as much as possible.
The laughing, sarcastic, goofy and broken people. Those are my people. When I met my husband, we instantly found that we were able to have long, interesting conversations about almost anything, though we disagreed on a lot. Music, movies, books. We often disagree. I prefer that he wear headphones when he’s listening to music because what is that shit? Okinawan thrash metal punk rock techno flute players? No. No thank you.
But, we’ve always been able to agree on funny.
All that conversation, disagreeing and funny led to me running off to France, where I’ve been making fun of things for the past ten years. Ten years. A goddamn decade. And now I feel the longing to be somewhere else. I’ve stuffed about all the Camembert I can stand into my face, so it’s time to do more. To see more. To be more.
And, uh… my husband got a transfer to his employer’s England location, so it all works out.
With moving comes planning. Stress. Cleaning, sweating and packing. In this case, it comes with preparing to sell our house and for me, going through the fun process of obtaining a visa. Again. (It’s okay, I’ve got some experience under my belt, now. And no one’s worse than France when it comes to red tape, so I’m almost looking forward to dealing with an organized process.) The more we thought about all the work involved, the more overwhelming it became.
So, how do we deal with that? A trip to New York City, obviously.
We did New York stuff. We ate pizza. We went to Carnegie Deli, discovered it was closed indefinitely, so we went and looked at people in Times Square. I talked with strangers on the street, which is something I never do. Speaking to people in French at home is something I can do, but it’s very difficult. It takes a lot of concentration to find my words and to comprehend the words of the other person. This means less joking, less banter and slang. But in NYC, I was riffing with strangers. And loving it.
I was friendlier than I’ve ever been.
I ate a REAL breakfast with eggs, pancakes and bacon. We went to the 2nd Street Deli and stuffed ourselves with Jewish deli meat and pierogis. We went to the 9/11 memorial because that was a thing I had to do.
And then, it was time to laugh.
At Comedy Cellar Village Underground, we laughed ourselves silly. Dan Naturman. Gina Yashere. Lynne Koplitz. Dov Davidoff. Mark Normand and Jim Florentine (who you know if you’ve seen the recent season finale of Louie.) all killed it.
And I began to remember how much I miss going to comedy shows in Denver. I’d forgotten that I even missed it at all. But now, I was remembering again.
We ate donuts and bagels. We went to to Brooklyn. (If you visit Brooklyn, please give Ray’s Food & Walking Tours a go. Food! Walking! Street art! All with a local resident of Brooklyn, who genuinely loves his neighborhood and everything in it.) More Jewish deli. More pizza. Some local artisinal coffee and chocolate. We went to Dumbo and had a beer. We strolled around and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. We went to Chinatown and ate dinner.
We did the Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl. And then it was time to laugh again.
At the original Comedy Cellar this time, we lucked out. We were seated right in front of the stage. We got fucked with by one of the comedians. When Jim Norton showed up and did a 10-minute set, I almost lost my shit because I’m a fan and he wasn’t on the scheduled lineup. Greer Barnes came in and finished the show and he fucking killed it.
Off and on throughout our brief jaunt in NYC, our conversations kept returning to the move.
“Fuck. I missed real breakfast food. At least in London, breakfast food is all over the place.”
“There’s plenty of comedy clubs in London. We’ll be able to do this a lot more after we move.”
“I hope we’ll still be able to find decent French food stuff in London. I bet they have plenty of French AND American stuff in London, right?”
And what I realized was that now, the longing to be somewhere else had grown stronger than it had been in years and was demanding to be reckoned with.
I realized, too, how much I miss my native tongue. This having been my first visit to an English-speaking country in six years, I felt like I had a goddamn superpower, riffing with strangers in the street. Not only that, but having my personal bubble of space once again removed an incredible amount of tension from me. Tension that has been winding me up painfully tight every time I leave the house to wander among the humans.
Our last day in NYC, we stopped by John Lennon’s digs at The Dakota because it was another thing I had to do. We strolled through Central Park and went walking around in The Met. I thought of how many times I’ve made an escape. How many boxes I’ve packed. How many leases and deeds I’ve signed. How many hours I’ve spent laughing in the dark, wanting more. To see more. To do more.
I ran from my hometown. I ran all the way to Paris. I’m on my way to London. And a brief stop in New York reminded me that even though I’m still seeking my place in the world, it’s okay. As long as I’m laughing, I’m enjoying the search.
