Yes Please (12 page)

It wasn’t until I turned thirty that I started to feel like my adult life was beginning. I had just been hired on
Saturday Night Live
and was about to attend my own surprise dance party; then September 11 came and the whole world went bananas. I had met Will and I knew I wanted to marry him and try to have children someday. I had paid off my student loans and I knew how to jump-start my own car battery. I had spent so much of my twenties in a state of delayed adolescence and so much of my teenage years wishing and praying that time would move faster. I remembered being five years old when my mother turned thirty. My dad threw a big party for her and the adults got drunk in the basement. I sat on the stairs in Holly Hobbie pajamas and listened to the clinking sound of ice in glasses. They all brought dirty presents from Spencer Gifts, a joke shop in our local mall that had boob mugs and fart machines and penis pasta. We would go in there as kids and sneak peeks at the dirty stuff, pretending to understand the bad sex jokes. Ten years later, for my mom’s fortieth, my dad made a homemade “Buns” calendar that included relatives and friends. They all posed in various funny underwear. Some were in Speedos playing the piano and others were in saggy pants showing their butt crack while fixing the kitchen sink. All this was the kind of groovy, semi-lewd suburban stuff that in some instances led to “key parties.” Thankfully, at least to my knowledge, there was no wife swapping in my childhood home. If there was, I don’t want to know about it. Family, please remember this when you all write your inevitable and scathing memoirs.

At thirty I felt like I had about six or seven years of feeling like a real adult before my brain and society started to make me worry about being old. There is the built-in baby stuff, plus the added fascination with the new. But here’s the thing. Getting older is awesome, and not because you don’t care as much about what people think. It’s awesome because you develop secret superpowers. Behold:

Getting older makes you somewhat invisible. This can be exciting. Now that you are better at observing a situation, you can use your sharpened skills to scan a room and navigate it before anyone even notices you are there. This can lead to your finding a comfortable couch at a party, or to the realization that you are at a terrible party and need to leave immediately. Knowing when to edit is a great aspect of being older, and since you are invisible, no one will even notice you are gone. Not getting immediate attention can mean you decide how and when you want people to look at you. Remember all those goofy comedies in the eighties where men became invisible and hung out in women’s locker rooms? Remember how the men got to watch pretty girls take showers and snap each other with towels? You can do this, but in a different way. You can witness young people embarrassing themselves and get a thrill that it’s not you. You can watch them throw around their “alwayses” and “nevers” and “I’m the kind of person who’s” and delight in the fact that you are past that point in your life. Feeling invisible means you can float. You can decide to travel without permission. You know secrets and hear opinions that weren’t meant for you to hear. Plus, it’s easier to steal things.

Getting older also helps you develop X-ray vision. The strange thing is that the moment people start looking at you less is when you start being able to see through people more. You get better at understanding what people mean and how it can be different from what they say. Finally the phrase “actions speak louder than words” starts to make sense. You can read people’s energies better, and this hopefully means you get stuck talking to less duds. You also may start to seek out duds, as some kind of weird emotional exercise to test your boundaries. You use the word “boundaries.” You can witness bad behavior and watch it like you would watch someone else’s child having a tantrum. Gone are the days (hopefully) when you take everything personally and internalize everyone’s behavior. You get better at knowing what you want and need. You can tell what kind of underwear people are wearing.

Lastly, because you are a superhero, you are really good at putting together a good team. You can look around the room and notice the other superheroes because they are the ones noticing you. The friends you meet over forty are really juicy. They are highly emulsified and full of flavor. Now that you’re starting to have a sense of who you are, you know better what kind of friend you want and need. My peers are crushing it right now and it’s totally amazing and energizing to watch. I have made friends with older women whom I have admired for years who let me learn from their experience. I drink from their life well. They tell me about hormones and vacation spots and neck cream. I am interested in people who swim in the deep end. I want to have conversations about real things with people who have experienced real things. I’m tired of talking about movies and gossiping about friends. Life is crunchy and complicated and all the more delicious.

Now that I am older, I am rounder and softer, which isn’t always a bad thing. I remember fewer names so I try to focus on someone’s eyes instead. Sex is better and I’m better at it. I don’t miss the frustration of youth, the anticipation of love and pain, the paralysis of choices still ahead. The pressure of “What are you going to do?” makes everybody feel like they haven’t done anything yet. Young people can remind us to take chances and be angry and stop our patterns. Old people can remind us to laugh more and get focused and make friends with our patterns. Young and old need to relax in the moment and live where they are. Be Here Now, like the great book says.

I have work to do. I remain suspicious of men and women who don’t want to work with their peers, comedy writers who only hire newbies, and people who only date someone younger or of lower status. Don’t you want the tree you love or work with to have a similar number of rings? Sometimes I get scared that I have missed out or checked out. Occasionally I don’t recognize myself in a store window. When this happens, I try to speak to myself from the future. This is possible since time travel is real and I have the proof (more on this later). Here’s what my ninety-year-old self tells me.

© Liezl Estipona

how i fell in love with improv:

chicago

© Jeff Clampitt

I
STOOD ONSTAGE PRESSED UP AGAINST A BACK WALL WHILE MY PEERS SCREAMED AT ME TO “SELL IT!”
It was a “midnight improv jam” at the ImprovOlympic theater in Chicago, the freezing city I now called home. I had been taking improv classes and this late-night show was an opportunity to finally get onstage. Getting onstage was a big deal. You could spend week after week in classes doing scenes and studying improv forms, but a half-hour performance brought out the best and worst in you. I learned a lot about myself onstage. Sometimes I turned into a desperate joke machine. Other times, I got shy and passive. Once in a while I would get weirdly physical or sexual. When people are nervous and put on the spot, they tend to show you who they really are. That being said, long-form improvisation had terms and rules—and I was learning how to work within them. An improv jam usually consisted of a more experienced improviser encouraging students to get up before they were ready. A paying audience was there to watch young students get better. If improvisation is like surfing, this would be akin to paddling out for the first time to catch a wave on your own.

For those of you who know nothing about improvisation, I suggest you read
The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual
. I will wait. . . .

Okay, great! So now you know that to be a good improviser you have to listen and say yes and support your partner and be specific and honest and find a game within the scene you can both play. Long-form improvisation (as you already know because you just read our great book) comes from a one-word suggestion that turns into a whole show filled with scenes and other various forms.

It was 1993 when I moved to Chicago. Bill Clinton had just been elected president, Rodney King had been beaten by the police, and “Whoomp! (There It Is)” was burning up the charts. Speaking of burning, federal agents would storm the Branch Davidian compound that same year and the place would go up in flames. A short time later, during a series of Second City Touring Company gigs across Texas, two women named Tina Fey and Amy Poehler would visit that compound on their way past Waco, Texas. More on that in a minute.

I moved to a new city already knowing my Boston College roommate Kara and our friend Martin Gobbee, and the three of us lived together in a cheap but beautiful Chicago apartment. Crown molding, wasted on the young. My dad drove Kara’s jeep across the country loaded with our stuff and I settled quickly into a life of waitressing and taking classes. It was an awesome time. I was extremely poor and had little to do. I painted my tiny bedroom Van Gogh Starry Night Purple, and I smoked a lot of pot. I would ride my bike to shows while listening to the Beastie Boys. I was twenty-two and I had found what I loved.

Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself. Chicago was swollen with talent at the time. The first Second City show I ever saw was Amy Sedaris’s last. The entire cast was saying good-bye to her and she was doing all of her best sketches. Amy Sedaris is the Cindy Sherman of comedy. When it comes to sketch, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone funnier. That night she was onstage with her cast, which included the two Steves: Colbert and Carell. I remember watching them all with a mixture of awe and excitement. Some of them were about to head off to New York to shoot their sketch show
Exit 57
. I remember thinking, “You are all so good and I wish I were better. Now get out of here because I want to be where you are.”

Over at the ImprovOlympic theater the talent was just as fierce. The “house team” there was a group called the Family. It was Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, Adam McKay, Neil Flynn, Ali Farahnakian, and Miles Stroth. They were improv giants, literally. Everyone was over six feet tall and imposing, physical, and hilarious. The Midwest grows its actors big. I would sneak into their packed shows using my student discount and sit in the light booth to watch what great improv looked like. The members of the Family were my rock stars. They were my Chicago Bulls. I would get food with other amateur improvisers and talk about the different moves I had seen the giants pull. I would marvel at how easy they made it look. I would go home and write in my journal: “Amy, take more risks!” “Get better at object work!” “Don’t be afraid to sing!”