Page 81 of My Own Kind of Person

My hand opens the lock on the stall door. “Joe—”

Two guys laugh their way into the bathroom. Joe puts his head down and rushes out. I follow him at what I hope is a non-creepy pace, but when I get to the main room, I don’t see him. The host is talking about how tonight the audience will decide who opens for Joe Johnson on Saturday at the Vanderbilt.

Something hot swirls inside me. I want to tell Joe I know how he feels. I want to tell him I feel it too.

I sit at a table in the back stacked with silverware and menus, and I open my set and write the rest of what happened with Christy. The part I haven’t been able to let myself think about.

The first comic comes out and I reread what I wrote. I rewrite the lines that present a caricature of Christy. The second comic comes out and I read it again. I rewrite lines that present a caricature of myself.

The host says, “Sean? O’Brien?”

“Sorry.” I stand. “Coming.”

He thrusts a hand toward me. “He’s alive! Ladies and gentlemen, Sean O’Brien.”

I rush to the stage, then realize every other comic entered from behind the curtain. The entrance must be through the greenroom. But here I am, so I jump up onstage and take the microphone. I expect to see Joe looking up at me from the front row, but he’s nowhere. I can’t see Andi and Elijah either. The lights are brighter than at McGuinn’s. I can’t see Mom, but I know she isn’t here anyway.

“Hello,” I say, and in response someone coughs. “Cough to you as well.”

From the side of the room, a deep voice shouts, “This guy looks rock hard!”

A few people turn to look. I don’t need to, because I know the voice. It’s Jay. Maybe he heard about the show from Kaye, but however he heard, he’s here.

“Muscle man!”

It’s remarkable to me that he finds these things meaningful enough to shout.

He makes high-pitched moaning sounds. Some guys in the crowd laugh like this is ridiculous but they’re still entertained. More people from the crowd turn to look.

I look too, and I see Jay’s face smiling in the dark.

It shocks me awake.

I grip the mic. It’s not disdain for him I feel. It’s not frustration with him or wanting to defeat him. Jay is a false enemy. I’m not against him; I’m against the history and the culture that made him this way. And made me this way.

I close my eyes and take a breath.

“The night of my seventeenth birthday I message my girlfriend and tell her I’m ready to have sex.”

I open my eyes.

I talk about how I wished I had ten condoms and how I wished I could pre-condom. I talk about her butt when she leans against the kitchen counter. I talk about when she leads me to the bedroom but it’s me who’s walking in front but it doesn’t feel like I’m leading.

Everyone laughs at all of it, even the parts I didn’t think were funny. Not always at the same time, and not always with the same tone. Whatever it is, they’re with me.

I talk about how I put on the condom she brought and positioned myself over her but I wished I’d done more push-ups and felt like an extraterrestrial. I say, “She hasn’t pulled me in yet. My brain yells at me to be a man and do it, and I close my eyes and move my hips forward.”

My brain attempts to go blank.

But I keep talking.

“And I immediately freeze,” I say. “I hover above her. All the fear, all the panic, all the making fun of myself builds up inside me. If I say words, they’ll come out as cry-words. I wish I were asleep, or better yet, away. I wish my consciousness inhabited a different entity. I wish I were a tree across the road, or an old woman in a boat somewhere. I wish I were a duck living by a lake. Ducks don’t ever seem to know what’s going on.”

Some people laugh uncomfortably while others simply look uncomfortable.

I adjust my hair. I give my eyebrow a scratch.

“And she says, ‘Sean?’ And the sounds in my head get louder and louder. And I say, ‘I don’t know why—’ ”