Comedic Timing

Chapter II

II

Monday morning, Jordan video calls me and asks about the party. I’m waiting in line to order a bagel and coffee, along with a few other people, all of us preoccupied with our phones. Jordan, insistent that Christian is hot, turns our conversation into a friendly argument.

“He’s like a golden retriever,” I say. “Adorable but kind of stinky and clumsy. There’s nothing hot about that.”

“ I’d fuck him,” Jordan says confidently. I laugh.

“He’s hot,” he insists. “Don’t pretend he’s not hot.”

“He’s not attractive to me,” I say, my eyes darting around defensively, surveilling for eavesdroppers.

“Because he has a penis?”

“Genitalia has nothing to do with it,” I whisper, shielding my voice with my hair as best I can.

“Oh, fair enough,” Jordan says. “I still remember you drunk making out with that sexy Republican guy in college.” Now Jordan is grinding coffee beans in the background. I have a burst of longing for my life in Chicago, for the morning debriefs that didn’t have to take place through a screen. When he would make me a mug of pour-over, too, and get coffee sludge all over his kitchen counter.

“Thanks, Jordan. That’s definitely one of my fondest memories. Also, I don’t know if ‘sexy’ and ‘Republican’ go together.”

“They can go together, and you’re so welcome. Did you meet anyone else? Anyone interesting?”

“Sure. I talked to a bunch of people,” I say, thinking of David, how quickly our conversation had turned from flirtatious and lighthearted to sour and combative—at least on my end. “I’m still wondering if I should... branch out,” I say before I put my bagel order in.

“I told you. You don’t want to hang out with comedians. Especially the New York ones.”

“I have to meet people somehow. Plus, they’re not all comedians. I think.”

Jordan snaps his fingers. “ Oh , remember Tanya? We went to college with her? I think she lives in New York now. You should reach out.”

“Tanya the influencer who takes mirror selfies while on the toilet for makeup sponsorships?”

“I thought that photo was very chic.”

As I shove my breakfast into my tote, I deliberate bringing up David. Not mentioning him makes him matter more, I decide. And I know Jordan will be honest with me and tell me if I overreacted.

I step out onto the street, juggling my coffee, my bag, my phone. “So, there was this guy at the party. He seemed nice at first. We were talking, kind of bantering. Flirting, I think. But then he put his foot in his mouth and felt so bad he found me on Instagram the next morning and messaged me to apologize.”

“No way. What did he say at the party?”

I relay the story to Jordan, who replies, “You’re upset because he was flirting with you?”

“Be serious, Jordan. What he said was really offensive.”

“It’s not that bad. He probably wasn’t thinking. You take things too personally!” I know he’s right, at least partially; David unknowingly struck a spot that was raw for me, even after all these years of growing confidently into my queerness.

“So, what did he say in his message?” Jordan asks. “And what’s his name?”

“David. He apologized, said he was offensive, then invited me to Christian’s solo show this weekend.”

A car honks. A truck blasts its horn in response. Jordan is silent. “You there?” I ask.

“Naina,” he says, his voice dripping with giddiness. “I think I found his Instagram.”

“Whose?”

“David Azarbad? That’s him?”

“Jordan.”

“You didn’t say he was sexy . And he’s a Virgo!”

I roll my eyes.

“This is exciting for you!” Jordan exclaims. “Listen, you should accept his apology and become really good friends with him. Then you can introduce me when I visit.”

“You want me to befriend a hot guy just so you can meet him?”

“Oh, so you think he’s hot,” Jordan pokes. I laugh, grateful that Jordan can’t see me shrugging.

“I have to go. I have my first day of work.”

“Best of luck! Happy new job!”

“You make it sound like a threat.”

“I’m sick,” my new roommate Jhanaki says, pulling a mask over her face as I walk into our apartment after my first day at work. “I left the office early.” She has a nasty cold. She tested for COVID twice. Negative. I admire her commitment.

“Can I get you something? Some soup?” I offer, not really wanting to go back out again but knowing it’s the appropriate gesture.

She shakes her head. “Thank you. My mom dropped some stuff off. Along with too many kinds of medicine.” Jhanaki falls into a coughing spell, making eye contact with me helplessly between phlegmy bursts.

She is a Queens native and is talkative, in an anxious way. Even when we met over a video call, her shoulders seemed energetically glued to her ears. Her nervousness doesn’t matter, though. She is intimidatingly stunning—wide, light-brown eyes, pronounced cheekbones, shampoo-commercial hair that flows down across her shoulders—and this is more unnerving than her chattiness. She works in finance and rarely seems to be home, given early mornings and late nights. When she is around, she sits in front of the fifty-inch screen in our living room and watches reality TV—wealthy women arguing over plans canceled last minute, British people making out in hot tubs.

Her sick routine and her well routine look pretty much the same: her on the couch. “Well, that’s nice of your mom,” I finally say, feeling tender. “I miss my mom’s cooking. She is no longer with us,” I add, trying not to sound too sad. With us. I never know the most gentle way to put it. Jhanaki’s features go flat, like she doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Naina,” she replies, a softness in her voice due to the coughing or empathy. “I didn’t know that.”

I am quick to deflect, asking her what she is watching, suddenly feeling vulnerable. I shut my feelings out, irritated at the inconvenience of my emotions.

We spend a few minutes talking—“this show is just teenagers doing drugs and having sex,” she explains—before she gathers her blanket and Kleenex to put herself to bed.

“Have some of my food,” she insists. “I can’t finish it myself. One can only eat so much daal.”

I’m embarrassed I said anything about my mother. I shut myself in my room and throw myself on my bed, too, but more as punishment.

Since my move, I have been attempting to fill my newfound free time with writing. I scribble in my journal, thumb words on my phone’s Notes app, stare at the blinking cursor in a blank Word document. I want to anchor myself in what I can rely on amidst all the newness: words on a page. Or on a screen. But journaling has quickly become complaining via long-form. I had an idea for an essay, but as soon as I tried to string it together, the phrases came out stilted and rudimentary. At least I can type on my phone with zero pressure, I tell myself. Except most of my missives there are simply sentences I’ve fished out of my stream of consciousness with no further consideration (“ People who have three or fewer photos on their Instagram profile have my whole heart ”). I wonder if I can blame the breakup, if it drowned out the voice in my head.

I check my phone and reread David’s message.

davidazarbad: Hi Naina, it was nice to meet you last night. I didn’t get to say goodbye before you left! I want to apologize for what I said. In person, if possible. It was weird and offensive. I swear I’m normal (ish). Let me know if you want to come to Christian’s show this Friday. Maybe I’ll see you soon.

I know I might have been too hard on him. I could’ve been more polite and gracious in that moment, more patient and willing to have him learn from his blunder. At the very least, I could have waited to leave until he returned from the bathroom.

I am used to this cycle of reacting and then regretting. I have a tendency to be emotionally impulsive in arguments over seemingly small stuff. I am always subsequently guilty for not being more measured in my responses. Alternatively, I repress my anger over big things only for my emotions to become pressure-cooked. When I started seeing a therapist in college, I worked on unpacking this, but—like many people—I struggle to make my self-awareness useful. To regulate my feelings in real time. To force myself to find the right release valve.

My mother used to coax my wrath out of me by kissing my forehead or hugging my delicate, adamant body until I softened into her touch. “There we go,” she’d coo, squeezing me tighter. “It’s okay to be upset, but eventually you have to let go.”

In this case, I’m not angry about other things and projecting them onto David. I’ve stewed enough to determine that. I have a right to be offended by his judgment—and I don’t really want an apology.

But I have to admit to myself that I want to see him again anyway. He may have hurt my feelings, but he cared how I felt. I’ve also never thought about a T-shirt—a man in a T-shirt—as much as I have since meeting him.

I force myself toward the last remaining boxes in the corner of my room, the ones I told myself I’d deal with before I started work. I strip back the packing tape and pull out jeans, sweaters, scarves, dumping them onto the floor. Sofia’s gray sweatshirt got caught in the mix. It is the piece of clothing I asked to borrow most—oversized, pilling from being washed often, comfortable.

I think of Sofia throwing my clothes at me during our last fight, her anger blurring rationality. I’d never seen her so furious. I’d never seen her heartbroken. “This is yours !” I screamed, picking the sweatshirt up from the pile in front of my feet. I shook it in her face. “You’re insane . Who throws clothes at people in real life?” I shudder at this memory, at this other side of myself, which I secretly hoped would evaporate with maturity.

At the end of that last fight, we ran out of energy and collapsed onto separate pieces of furniture until night fell. We continued to sit in the dark, silent and spent, before Sofia retreated into the bedroom without me. The next morning, we had sex—rushed, disconnected, habitual—and didn’t talk about what happened the previous day.

And here it is, the sweatshirt—our favorite piece of clothing, but ultimately hers . I folded it and packed it in this box, taking it with me to New York out of anger. I should have left it behind. I don’t want to look at it anymore.

I place it by my door as a reminder to drop it off at the post office tomorrow morning.