Drew has been one of my best friends since freshman year of high school. We met while hiding beneath bulky hoodies in the back of a Pride Alliance meeting, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. He’s bookish, lanky in an imposing way, and graduated in the top ten percent of our class. I’m a loud class clown type, wearing a jester cap in my yearbook photo to prove it. On paper, we shouldn’t have made sense, except coming out in high school can be a bitch, and our growing text chain became a haven for commiseration and late-night plans to sneak out to the elementary school playground where we’d smoke a reasonable amount of pot and bemoan suburbia.
Before graduation, I sat my parents down and told them I was leaving behind the college scholarship for New York City comedy. I was met with resistance, until Drew stepped into the picture and made it semi-okay.
Drew the Optimist. Drew the Safety Net. Drew the Sensible and Constant. Drew the only reason my parents even remotely let me go.
Drew eventually decided to attend a CUNY school, so my parents knew he’d look out for me just as he always had throughout high school.
I miss those high school days where we could laugh at everything and nothing because we weren’t adults yet. Real life was still a couple years and a train ride away.
However, right now, it still seems a bit like I’m playing at being an adult, not quite crossing the threshold into responsibility. Like in that Britney Spears song from the feature filmCrossroadswe watched with my sister during a sleepover, except replace girl with boy and woman with man and, okay, maybe it’s not so much like that after all. But the sentiment of the lyrics rings true.
Drew stares at me across the way, eyebrows waggling a mile a minute, trying to elicit another laugh. That’s always been our thing,who can make the other laugh more, but…nothing. Not even a chuckle from me this time.
It’s not the pain, which is upsetting. I can usually find the humor in everything—that’s myjobas a stand-up—but the longer I sit here, the more I can’t help but wonder if I’ve become the butt of my own joke.
Did I set myself up for spectacular failure by chasing a pipe dream to New York City? What do I have to show for toiling away for four whole years? A fucked-up nose, a shattered five-year plan, another failed relationship I didn’t even want, and a silent love I’m pretty sure I do want, even though I can’t let myself pursue it.
CeeCee’s frequent emails about open Doop positions swim into my mind. I can’t believe I’m even entertaining the idea of applying, but I also can’t believe I’m here right now with a potentially broken nose and a languishing dream.
“You’re a saint for showing up. An A-plus emergency contact.” I offer Drew as close to a smile as I can muster in this moment. “I know you like to read on your breaks, so I’m sorry to pull you from that.”
“Please,” he says, holding up the book with an illustrated cover of a man in a hockey uniform and a woman with a foam finger looking longingly at each other across a crowded arena. “This is a four-star book at best and you’re a five-star friend. The face-sitting scene can wait.”
The door flies open with awhoosh, prompting some major PTSD. I will never look at doors the same way again.
In comes a young, fast-talking doctor with her hair pulled back and a short, bearded nurse in tow. The doctor takes one look at my bulbous nose and declares: “Oof. Yup, that’s broken.” She inspects me closer, scrunching up her features as she does. “Probably a fracture, to be exact. I can’t imagine you’ll need surgery, but it’s hard to tell with all the swelling. Let me feel around.”
“Hey, Doc, buy me dinner first,” I joke, because that’s all I can do right now to not start crying.
The doctor, not finding me funny in the least (join the club!), ignores me as the nurse readies a needle on a nearby rolling tray. When he sees the nervousness on my face, he says, “Believe me, you’re going to want this.”
The doctor asks me to lie back, strapping on a pair of white latex gloves. I gulp back a wad of panic spit as my heart starts racing. Coming closer, the nurse blocks the clinical overhead light, making the doctor look like a menacing shadow figure. I flinch, but within seconds, Drew is scooting his chair up on the opposite side of the table and rustling around for something unseen.
“Is it okay if I’m here?” At first, I think Drew is asking me, but then I notice he’s looking at the doctor.
The doctor nods. “You’re good there for now.”
Drew leans in, paper crinkling loudly beneath his elbows, and grabs my right hand in his. Small gentle strokes of his thumb crest over the back of my shaking hand. I keep my head still but shift my eyes toward his face, full up with another big smile, though I can tell there’s some worry in the deep wrinkles on his forehead. He devilishly widens his eyes at me and then begins reading in a whisper, breath ghosting over the hot shell of my ear.
“‘Jenna arches her back with pleasure as she sinks lower onto Preston’s tongue. All that chirping out on the rink during an intense hockey match has made his tongue dexterous, adventurous…’”
I’m too busy laughing—really laughing—to even notice the piercing needle or the tingling, numbing sensation that sweeps straight down to my toes.
Chapter Seven
My broken nose broke the camel’s back.
The urgent care bill mocks me from my bedside table, a staggering red amount circled at the bottom that causes my anxiety to skyrocket each time I so much as glance in that direction.
Over the next few days, I hole up in my room. Wanda keeps me off the schedule so nobody has to see my garish face, and I binge reality TV to try to make myself feel better.
Spoiler alert: It doesn’t work.
In my cave, shades and curtains drawn, with distance from the club, I decide it’s time to throw in the towel, as Wanda put it. With no word from the Broadway Laugh Box, with my friend request to Clive on Facebook sitting in limbo, with no certainty in my career and no steady-enough income, it’s high time for a change.
It’s never too late to make a change.
The Doop slogan in its looping, pleasant typography stares at me from the application screen CeeCee emailed me a few months ago. Do I dare?
