an absurd tone

Looking back over the year's posts, I noticed that there was a definite change in my tone around the end of May and beginning of June.

It was around May 22, 2006 when I posted a blog about writing here less. It was a de facto farewell, or rather an announcement that I wasn't going to blog as frequently as in the past.

It also happened to be around the time that I quit the radio gig and started the higher-paying job at the prefab factory. I was anticipating that I wouldn't have any time to post at length, as is my wont.

Now that I've been gone from the prefab gig for almost three months, and now that the year is almost over, it feels appropriate to reflect upon what has come before.

New job and less time to blog notwithstanding, there was a definite change in my tone during the past summer.

And I remember what caused that change. I didn't write about it at the time because... well, I don't have any real reason or excuse as to why I didn't.

I guess now is as good a time as any to examine this.


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In the middle of last Spring I saw an ad for a theatrical production of Ubu Roi, an obscure early-twentieth-century absurdist French play written by none other than Alfred Jarry, whom I have obsessed over for some time now.

Imagine my excitement: Jarry's work is strange and satirical, and reading the words on the printed page just doesn't do any justice to what he was trying to stage. Jarry is not the type of figure whose plays get staged regularly, and since I was working on a screenplay based on the eccentric 'pataphysicist's life, I thought it would be splendid to see a production (taking place in nearby Pasadena, no less) of perhaps his best-known work, Ubu Roi ("Ubu The King").

The main character, Pere Ubu, is an over-the-top antihero possessing every negative quality and trait available to the human condition: cowardice, greed, ignorance, sloth, boorishness, full of disgrace and wholly unsophisticated. This was Jarry's intention-- the character was based upon one of his science teachers during his insolent upbringing, a man that young Jarry and his classmates reveled in lampooning.

The best way to describe Ubu (to those who don't feel they can regard someone so repugnant and vile as even remotely comical) would be to compare him to Homer Simpson. If Homer Simpson was actually a real live person, 90% of the things that come out of his mouth (as well as 95% of his actions) would appall the average citizen. But we giggle at his antics because he is a cartoon character, a grotesque so broadly drawn that one must laugh in self-defense lest the gravity of his words and deeds remind us that reality is not that far removed from the caricature.

I knew of only one other person who would appreciate a theatrical staging of Ubu Roi, and that was my friend from high school, Laurie. When I forwarded a link of the ad, she replied that she would love to check it out. She would let both her husband Daniel and Eve know about it so that we could make a couple's night out of it.

It all sounded good to me. Personally, I would've gone by myself if no one had wanted to go.

In hindsight, maybe that would have been the better course to take.


*/*


As the date for the play neared, Eve and I were pretty much done romantically. She'd made it clear to me that she only wanted to be friends. I suspected that she was already seeing someone else, but I figured we could at least try to be friends. After all, I was friends with nearly all of my exes and it never posed any problems. Eve and I had matured enough over the years to be civil and respectful of each other in a post-break-up scenario, right?

Not quite.

I found that I didn't really like Eve as a person if we weren't in love. Absurd, yes, but you're dealing with a person who lives for the absurd.

Things that I could tolerate in her simply became intolerable without the net of an intimate relationship underneath us. Lacking a shared passion, I began to see how vastly different we are in general. Her idiosyncrasies started to grate on my nerves.

Look, I'm not the neatest, tidiest person in the world, but must she always keep her apartment in such disarray, with clothes strewn about and cigarette butts piling to Babelian proportions in her many ashtrays? To me, it was less about good housekeeping than a symptom of a deeper problem.

Still, it would not be such an issue if it weren't for her facile acknowledgement of this supreme messiness-- you couldn't walk into her place without hearing her apologize for the state it was in, even if you had no intention of mentioning it.

But to push matters into the realm of insufferability, she would refuse any offer to help her clean the mess. So here you have it: a girl with an unkempt apartment bitching about something she has absolutely no intention of doing anything about...

I could deal with it when we were lovers, but not when we became friends.

That was just one of the things that was growing on me, and it certainly wasn't the biggest thing either. But it would indeed prove to be the case later on.


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When my friend Nina got wind of the Jarry production, she volunteered to buy tickets for the four of us plus two more for herself and her boyfriend, who later got me the short-lived job at the prefab factory.

She purchased tickets for the last day of the show. This made me even more excited, because I wanted to know what my friends thought of Jarry. I was already sold on the man and his writings, but to finally be able to talk at length with people I respected about something that I was so gaga over filled me with such an elation that I forgot about everything else, including my strained relationship with Eve.

Now that I replay the whole episode in my head, I realize that I should've done more to ensure that things would go off without a hitch. However, I was too happy about seeing a rarely-performed Jarry play in my own backyard to think of Murphy's Law, which is ironic seeing as Murphy's Law is the purest distillation of Jarry's pseudo-science of 'pataphysics that anyone could ever come across.

"If anything can happen, it will"... or so the maxim goes.


*/*


The day of the play, I started to get anxious.

The plan was for Laurie and Daniel to meet us at Eve's apartment, where we could travel together in one car.

Nina and her boyfriend were already on their way, and had called to let us know that they would leave the tickets at the box offfice window in case we were running late.

And running late we were. I was pacing around Eve's disheveled apartment, looking at my watch every two minutes. "Where are they?"

"They'll be here," Eve said, annoyed at my impatience.

"If Laurie and Daniel cause us to miss out on this for any reason..." I didn't finish my sentence. I had no threats to wield.

"Well, why don't we just go on ahead and meet them there?"

"Do you know where the playhouse is?"

"No. Do you?"

"No."

"Well, you should've thought of that beforehand."

That last comment from Eve ticked me off. Obviously I should've done more legwork in that regard... but considering her penchant for bitching and moaning about every litle thing, it was a pretty nervy thing for her to say to me, and at the worst possible time.

I glared at her for an instant and remembered that she and I no longer had any reasons to be phony around each other.

So I lit into her.

I chewed her out for being so petty, so dismissive of my anger, especially since every time she gets angry for the smallest reason I have to sit there and listen to her and take it and hear it again and again, and now that we weren't a couple I didn't have to put up with her sanctimonious bullshit, and why is it that I'm always the one who has to answer for everyone else's mistakes, why is it my fault when someone else is too fucking stupid or unaware to simply be on time for something as simple as a ride to the playhouse...

Eve didn't like that very much. But when I reminded her of the time, she got on the phone and called Laurie to inquire as to what was taking them so long.

"Hey Laurie, what's going on? We're waiting for you two... What was that? His what? He can't find what? Well, tell him he's going to have to can it, because we only have fifteen minutes to get there, and you guys haven't even left yet..."

Upon hearing that, I threw my hands up in the air. "Great... fucking great!"

I know I wasn't acting very mature about it, but at the time I couldn't believe it was happening. I simply could not believe that it was all going down the way it was going down.

Eve hung up the phone, a look of wariness on her face. "She said that Daniel's having some sort of a hissy fit... you know those Brits..."

I went outside to have a smoke. When my lighter wouldn't work properly, I lashed out and punched a tree with my fist.

Eve didn't like seeing this side of me, but when she tried to communicate that to me I retorted that she was going to have to get used to that side of me: Now that I had no reason to pretend I gave a damn about anything concerning her, she was going to see how I really am.


*/*


Fifteen minutes past the hour, Laurie and Daniel showed up. I don't know if their reaction to Eve telling them that they were wrong about the time the play started was genuine or feigned, but apparently they felt bad for being late and wanted to get there as soon as possible.

By that time, I'd stopped talking. I was filled with hatred and anger. Nothing I could say or do mattered. I was at their mercy from that point on.

There were the usual awkward gestures, mostly on the part of the women, to try and lighten the mood. But I had nothing to say, and Daniel, realizing that it would be very easy for me to jump all over him and blame him for our lateness as a group, kept quiet.

I finally said something when we arrived: "Let me out here, I'll check to see if it's too late to go inside while you guys find parking."

I approached the box office and talked to the woman behind the glass.

"A friend of mine left four tickets for the show. Has it started already?"

"Yes it has."

"How long ago?"

"Promptly at seven."

It was now 7:30 pm.

"How long is the show?"

"An hour and a half."

Not too shabby, I thought. An hour is better than nothing.

"I must warn you, sir," the box office woman said, "that the theater is probably full. We cannot guarantee that you will have a seat."

"Shit, I don't care if we have to sit on the floor. Do you have the tickets?"

She gave me the tickets just as the others walked up. I informed them of the situation and we all agreed that missing half an hour would not be a terrible thing.

The entire scenario was starting to brighten. We entered the theater and an usher greeted us.

"I'm going to have to check and see if there is anywhere we can seat you," she whispered.

We could hear the actors reciting their lines. There was strange Parisian music simmering in the background. The audience broke into laughter.

The usher came back to us and said, "I am so sorry, but there is nowhere that we can seat you that wouldn't violate the Fire Code."

My heart sank. All hope was dashed. Rather than try and see if I could sweet talk her into letting us stand somewhere, I mustered the fakest smile that I could and turned around.

"Let's go," I said to the others. I believe it was the last thing I said for the rest of the evening.


*/*


In the simplest of terms, I was greatly disappointed.

Regardless of blame or fault or circumstance, the fact remains that a part of me broke into pieces that night for some reason.

Why should something as trivial as missing a play hurt me so deeply?

Did it represent something in my mind? Did it symbolize the powerlessness and meaninglessness of existence in the face of our inevitable fates? Was this type of badly-planned, poorly-executed misadventure the reason why I embrace the absurd in the first place?

All verbiage aside, I was disappointed because I was really looking forward to it and it didn't happen.

No one is to blame for this. Actually, if anyone is to blame, it's me. If I really wanted to see it that badly, I would've just bought myself a ticket and gone by myelf, as I've done on countless occasions in the past. That way, the only unpleasantness I would have to endure would be the predictable chorus of people telling me that I should've called them because they would've gone if I'd asked them...

...and of course, the whole point of going by myself is so that I wouldn't have to ask anyone to do anything.

I don't know... It really crushed me, and I haven't even wanted to talk about it since because I know what an asshole I was during the whole thing. But at the same time I cannot find it in my heart to laugh it off just yet. It isn't funny to me-- it hasn't had time to gestate and transmutate into a hilarious but bittersweet anecdote.

There's more bitterness than sweeteness here.

When things like this happen, the first question I ask is, "Why me, Lord? Why do these things happen to me? Did you do this to fuck with my head? Or is this what I deserve, for being such a fuckhead all the time?"

Then I start thinking about the dumb looks on everyone's faces as they sheepishly attempt to change the subject; the flat jokes and fragile atmosphere that gets sucked out of the room like a vacuum due to my loud and blistering silence; the speechlessness and inability to articulate anything beyond a choke and a forced gulp in the back of my throat as I struggle to restrain myself from out-and-out strangling someone to death...

That event changed the tone of my blog, and after that I saw the comments dry up, and the posts became less humorous and more mean-spirited. Even if people couldn't put their fingers on it, something inside of me had turned for the worse. It was bleeding through my pores and into the keys of the keyboard, making its way into the computer and up on the monitor screen, imprinting itself on the font of this blog, embedding itself in the html code that makes up what you are looking at right now...

I can't say that I feel bad about my behavior, even as I know how unbecoming it was for me to pout and sulk as I did. But I won't apologize for it, because after all I am human, and we all make mistakes, and my mistake was raising my expectations above what constitutes reality these days.

That's the problem with dreamers like myself: When we hit the ground, we hit it hard.


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As a footnote, Nina and her boyfriend said the play was excellent. They had no idea what to expect from it and came away very pleased, if a bit baffled at first. She told me all of this when I met with her to repay her the money she shelled out for the tickets we didn't get to use.

Daniel took issue with the playhouse overselling the show, and had a thorough chat with their ticket department. He was able to wrangle four free tickets for any play in the upcoming season. There probably won't be another staging of a Jarry play for some time, however-- maybe it will never happen again.

Then again, the play did very well both commercially and critically, and Jarry wrote at least three other Ubu plays... so who knows? Maybe one of these days I'll get to see one after all.

My friendship with Eve suffered greatly after the debacle. She stopped returning my phone calls and made no attempts to reciprocate any gestures on my part. I don't blame her-- when I told this story to a female friend recently, she looked at me and said, "Jesus, remind me never to get you mad!"

As for me, I gave up on completing the Jarry screenplay out of sheer disgust. I started the new job and instantly began to hate it. Then, I started using cocaine with an alarming frequency, even as I made peace with my father after 16 years of holding a grudge against him.

What sucks about me is that whenever I let go of one grudge, I take up another. I guess I am just one of those miserable persons who always needs to have a scapegoat to blame for all of his problems in life.

But this time, the person I am mad at is not my father or Eve or Laurie or Daniel or the playouse ushers or anyone else.

This time, I am mad at myself.

That's why I've spent the last half of 2006 punishing myself.

That's why the tone in my blog changed.

And that's why I'm glad this year is over.

I'm not going to say thing like, "2007 is going to be a great year!" No way, Jose-- that's what got me into this shit in the first place. Just take a look at my blogs from last year, and you'll see me gushing like a sexed-up schoolgirl about how 2006 was going to be great.

Instead, I'll try a little bit of reverse psychology: 2007 is going to suck big fat fucking elephant dicks.

Knowing my luck, Murphy's Law will kick in and 2007 really will suck elephant dicks.

But at this point, who cares? It's all absurd, right? It's all just one big joke being played on all of humanity, right?

Right.

HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE