Recycling Bad Jokes

The afterlife starts to seem like a much more appealing idea once you know someone who’s died. My cousin-in-law’s Mom passed away a few weeks ago, several years after his brother (her son) had passed away tragically at a young age. And even though I don’t know their whole family particularly well–just my cousin-in-law and of course his wife, my cousin–there was something especially cathartic about the funeral services. This idea was in the air that she got to be reunited with the son she had lost and you couldn’t help but have yr spirits lifted just at the hope that fills such a notion.

Recently I’ve begun to face the idea of my own death on a more frequent basis and it has become more of a presence in my life than a mere scenario for my brain to picture. I guess what I’m saying is that it has become less about picturing what my funeral would be like and more of who would be waiting for me on the other side if I was to reach such a place. I think about Nick and how he would be so excited to take me to all of the most fun parties.

It’s funny that Nick’s the one in this ‘imaginary’ role, that as of right now he’s really the only friend I have over there. It’s funny because he’s sort of so perfect for it—to be the guy to handle being at a party where he didn’t know anybody. All of my close friends in college met Nick just as this person who sort of showed up in our lives unexpectedly and just existed around us like he had always been there. He moved into our place senior year as a local friend of one of the guys who lived there and that guy who brought him in was barely around. So Nick was just this guy living with us that we didn’t know who we really had no context for. And he just dove right in. One night he was “joining the century club” (attempting to drink 100 cups of beer in one night) with our friend Josh. Another he gained the nickname ‘Jug Wine Nick’ by showing up (uninvited?) at a theater party and just absolutely wreaking havoc on it, making twice as many enemies as he did friends. But those friends who got in the face of the bitchy stage managers and said, “Hey, that’s not some guy who just puked up purple bile all over yr driveway. That’s actually the coolest guy here,”– well, they never left him.

So now I’m gonna totally negate my original point and realize just how unhealthy it is for me to fantasize about an afterlife where Nick is just waiting for me to join the party. But death is the failure of life, right? And if you truly believe that yr Life is a failure, then it seems like the natural consequence would be death, no? Because at some point, it seems that you just give a lot of lip service to the idea of being a failure at life (cough) unless you are truly a failure at life. Yet still, even at that point, I find my brain gravitating toward finding a glass half-full even in that dire of an equation. We still look for that glass half-full, right? We cry our fierce cries and then find some promise in how uplifting a good cry manages to bring relief when it’s all through. So even in picturing yourself as a failure at life, as someone who ends up giving up or just plain couldn’t do it, can you help it but think, “Well maybe I would be a success at death.”

What’s wrong with me? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be an asshole who’s being so flip about his own life when I know that there are multiple people who will read this who don’t think that my life is worthless, who could probably point to ways in which I’ve affected their lives that would be hard for even someone as morbid as me right now to shrug them off. And if I go ahead and publish this, is it just one big cry for help? When does yr life stop feeling like one giant fucking cry for help?

I did stand-up tonight and here was a ‘joke’ I thought of: “My ex-girlfriend and I just got in a fight over instant messenger where we both told each other to fuck off. The fight was over a website we both go to and how well each of us knew the ins and outs of this silly web page. And as I hear myself try to explain to you what the fight was about, I wonder: how much pain has to exist between two people that a detail as minute as that has them (virtually) screaming at each other?”

How did I forget to tell that one? I’m sure it would have brought the house down. Instead I talked about how showing up at this open mic won out over going to an AA meeting. And why did I not go to an AA meeting? Because I don’t feel like my drinking is troubled enough to be worthy of calling myself an alcoholic. I just wanna stop putting myself in situations where I risk getting girls pregnant that I don’t wanna get pregnant. Because if that happens, then I’ve just become my Dad. And I don’t know of an easier way to truly, truly make myself feel like a failure.

 

Tags: wannabe rock bottom star