Chapter 5
“NO PRESSURE”
Lisette and I had dinner together at my apartment on Tuesday night, exactly one week after she’d moved out of my place.
I had managed a little food shopping over the weekend and managed to pull together a chicken tikka masala from one of those tasty but inauthentic jarred sauces that would make an actual chef weep into his apron.
“Isn’t Paul the best?” she said as she set the table; she still knew more about where to find the various forks and glasses than I did.
“He’s really nice.”
“You should marry Paul,” she said, “and get your Canadian green card, and stay here forever.”
“So the two of you never dated?”
“Oh, no. He’s like a brother to me. Except my actual brothers would knock out Paul in a fistfight. Two of them are wrestlers, and Paul’s not really a fighter. Not that I’ve seen Paul fight, but I can’t see him breaking a beer bottle against a brick wall, you know?”
“Have you seen someone do that often?”
“At least twice.” Something in her tone made me leave the comment without pursuing it.
“Paul’s lovely,” I said. “But it seems like he’s still getting over his divorce so maybe no green card weddings yet.”
“Trish was awful to him,” Lisette said. “The worst part about her was that she seemed so nice. But you could tell she wasn’t.
She was one of those people who has a soft, gentle voice,” Lisette adopted a breathy, kindergarten teacher tone as she spoke, “and everyone likes her but she’s not actually going to do anything that will be difficult for her.
Because she doesn’t like things that are hard.
” Lisette rolled her eyes, dropping the voice.
“She wouldn’t go out of her way for anyone, you know what I mean?
And Paul’s so nice that he’s easy to take advantage of.
When he falls for someone, he goes full on, head-over-heels, you know?
” My breath caught painfully at the words as I imagined what Paul would look like if he were head-over-heels in love with someone.
“So he let her push him around. And then she announced she was leaving him one day. Without warning. He was completely shattered.”
“Has he dated since then?”
Lisette leaned forward. “I knew it. You like him!”
“No, I just wondered.” Was I blushing? I hoped not. I shrugged one shoulder lightly, doing my best casual, Sex and the City romantic sangfroid.
Lisette considered the question. “He hasn’t dated that I know of.
One time he took a woman to dinner, and afterwards he told me he wasn’t ready.
But you may be right. He may be obsessed with Trish.
I think for a while he was hoping she’d come crawling back.
But that’s why I want him to date you. Have a fling with the lady from Brooklyn who’s only here for a couple of months. ”
“The Lady from Brooklyn sounds like the name of a scandalous 1940s movie.”
“That would be a good comedy sketch. The Lady from Brooklyn. A musical.”
“With songs like Pizza Rat and Rent Control and Fear of Intimacy,” I offered.
“See,” Lisette said with a knowing grin, “that was improv. You’re one of us already.”
I grinned, wishing it was true, wishing I could be a carefree improv comedy person. What would that be like? Dashing up on stage in overalls and shouting, ‘Who here has had an embarrassing sexual experience they want to share?’
“So what’s the status with your housing?” I asked her, carefully steering the subject away from romance.
“Oh, good news! I successfully did the church rounds with my sad story and one of the families is letting me rent out their basement, so I will be out of Paul’s by the weekend!”
“That’s wonderful!”
“It’s such a good deal,” she said. “They’re only charging me two hundred dollars’ rent, and all I have to do is watch their kids once in a while so they can go to dinner and a movie.
It’s in their basement, and the ceiling isn’t finished, but there is a toilet in the corner and a shower.
It’s gonna be perfect. I can save up for my own place. ”
It sounded appalling, even by my own low standards from the cheap-rent trenches of the outer boroughs, but I could tell she was relieved not to be relying on Paul or me anymore.
I had a sense of fellow feeling with her desire to be independent.
I remembered once at my liberal arts college—I had gone to Bard on scholarship and spent four years in rolling green fields among wealthy animation and social justice majors—a much wealthier classmate found out about my neglectful upbringing.
I considered her a friend and had been telling an amusing anecdote about my mother forgetting our existence for a weekend and Laura and I surviving on three different brands of sugary cereal.
Suddenly, her eyes welled with tears, and she clutched my hand with blue-painted nails and said that she was so sorry that happened to me, and if I ever needed anything, I could come to her.
I extracted myself from the room and her friendship as fast as I could.
Nothing makes you feel worse about your life than genuine pity.
“Well, it may not be perfect, but I’m glad you found somewhere,” I said briskly.
“So are you excited about improv practice on Thursday?” Lisette asked.
“I have no idea what I’m walking into, to be honest.”
“Okay, perfect.” Lisette folded her knees up in her dining chair and set both elbows on the table. “Let me give you the basics.”
While we finished dinner, Lisette gave me a quick talk about improv. It was the first time I’d seen her get deadly serious, even including when she told me about escaping her abusive boyfriend.
“Improv,” Lisette said, “is not just comedy. It’s not—you know—a means to an end. It’s the end. It’s a way of thinking. You have to observe and connect and return back to things and see them in a new way. Those are all the things that are required to live a good life, yeah?”
She told me that the key to improv was to listen to your impulses, to trust your inner gut, and not to push things.
“Don’t try to be clever. Definitely don’t try to be the funniest person up there.”
“There is no risk of me trying to be the funniest person there,” I said. “I’ve seen you guys.”
“And don’t push an idea.”
“That’s going to be harder. I try to push things all the time. I tried to push someone to marry me for years.” I was only half-kidding, and I saw that Lisette could tell.
“When you’re doing improv,” Lisette said, “you listen to the scene. It’s okay if it goes nowhere.
Let it go nowhere, and trust something will come.
And listen to your partner. Listen to what they’re giving you, because they’re channeling their own life and creativity.
And using that to build something new is one of the best feelings in the world. ”
Lisette walked me through some of the sketches we might do in practice.
“Here’s the key,” she said. “Between now and then, you’re going to want to come up with funny ideas. Don’t.”
“Okay.”
“Just listen and respond honestly, and trust that the funny stuff will come. Because it will. Because you’re funny.”
“No pressure,” I said, drily.
“Exactly!” Lisette cried. “No pressure. Just be in the moment. It’ll come to you.”
“Can I tell you a deep, dark secret?” I said to Lisette. “In college, I wanted to write for Saturday Night Live, and I put together a packet and applied when I was twenty-three.”
“That’s great!”
“No, it’s not, because they rejected me.
But you know the worst part? I didn’t realize that I could apply again.
I didn’t know that sometimes writers applied for several years before they got the job.
I thought that meant that I officially had been found to be not funny, like a stamp on my forehead, so I gave up and chose another career.
I didn’t find out until years later that I was wrong.
So this is bringing up a lot of repressed trauma. ”
“Repressed trauma is perfect for improv.”
I laughed.
I arrived at Paul’s house right at 7:30 that Thursday for my very first improv practice.
Lisette had explained to me that they practiced every Thursday for a few weeks in a row and then had a show about once every six weeks.
It was July 13th, and their next big performance would be late in August. She said I was welcome to come to any of the practices, as long as I was on time.
“Paul takes it pretty seriously. But don’t be scared, though. Everyone will be nice. Except Mark, he’ll be mean, but that’s his way of being nice.”
I stood outside and took in Paul’s cute little house—much less ramshackle than the one I was staying in, neatly painted yellow with lights shining from the windows.
Paul’s Mini Cooper was parked out front.
The sight of the house made me happy and nervous, which I knew was another warning sign that I was feeling too much already.
I reminded myself that it was probably Paul’s wife who had picked out this quaint little two-story building with the stained glass over the front door—the wife that Paul was hoping would return to him.
Paul opened the door and smiled when he saw me.
“You came!” He seemed so genuinely surprised that I felt foolish, like I was a freshman in college who’d accidentally crashed an upperclassman’s party after mistaking a mention for an invite.
I followed him into the house, peeling away my jacket.
“Lisette’s made cookies,” he said, taking my coat, “as you can probably tell from the faint smell of burning.”
“Hey!” came Lisette’s angry voice from deep within the house. “Fifty percent of them are fine!”