Posts have been sparse this year – my writing focus has shifted and I’m not ready to post the work yet. But I am excited to share with you a piece published today in the Huffington Post. Here’s the link:
Let The Next Generation Marry For Love
Second Comedy Class, Or, Maybe This Was Not Such A Great Idea
Comedy Coach Tim Ferrell gave the guidelines for how the run-through and feedback session would work after each comic took a turn on stage. I thought he got the guidelines from a kindergarten poster. Everyone Gets to Play. Try New Things. Give Your Complete Attention. Don’t Be Mean. Keep Your Hands Off Other People’s Material. The last one was a biggie.
“If you are considering hacking some material from your favorite comic – don’t. I know their material. Even if you move one noun or one verb around, I will know. So don’t even try. You have plenty of your own ideas and stories.”
After each comic shared their material, Tim would respond first so we learned to give constructive feedback. “A laugh is the ultimate feedback for a comic, but what’s really helpful to the comic is understanding why he – or she – got the laugh. Or, why they didn’t. Your job is to be specific.”
The more Tim talked, the more my tummy clenched. The always simmering hot-flash threatened a full flame. The fourth chemo treatment had me on the bathroom floor, so attending class this evening might not have been all that wise. I wrote comedy notes right up until Ramona sat me in the chemo chair, but my funny bone deserted me when the toxins began seeping into my veins. Tim was receptive when I suggested my stage debut happen next week. Now I was secretly glad that I was too sick to stand at the mic tonight.
Christine played chauffeur and got me to the club, settling my shaky body into a rickety seat before heading off to chat up our classmates. She was in her element, asking people about their new material and barely containing her excitement to get up on that stage.
I glanced over at Kim. Flannel clad arms wrapped tight around her chest telegraphed her nerves. Not Christine, though, she practically vibrated off her seat.
The Southern Lawyer Turned New England Mom was first up, since she’d done this before. She was already refining a great bit about trying to get her kid to eat carrots. I didn’t have kids, but even I was charmed by the drawn-out Southern drawl imitating a very intent three-year-old. “I-ahh wee-ill naught eat tha-uht.” She looked so at ease, it was scary.
Tim kept the positive energy going and called on Christine. “O’Leary, you’re up!” He’d begun using last names with some of the comics and it set up a familiar, insider feel for the group. It made me feel like I was already a cool-ass comic.
If Christine was glowing before she got on stage, she was now afire. And she hadn’t said a word. The Southern Lawyer Turned New England Mom let out a low whistle. She saw her competition, even though this wasn’t a competition. But who were we kidding? We all knew we were comparing ourselves to one another. Was she funnier than me? Was he worse? There was no way to avoid this – and for the first time it occurred to me that putting myself in a stressful, competitive environment may have been a mistake. Didn’t stress whack out the immune system?
Christine talked through fifteen minutes of material, most of it about being a girlie-girl who likes girls and getting a mani-pedi in a Vietnamese salon. She wondered what the nail technicians say about the customers when they speak to each other in Vietnamese. It was rough, but we could see where she was headed. Tim suggested she shorten the set-ups to one or two lines, but he was clearly psyched with her direction.
“Can you hear the gems?” he asked, “This is how it works. You share your rough stuff for the next couple weeks and then we start polishing.”
I made it through Christine’s practice before swaying to the bathroom and throwing up. When I returned, Tim was telling everyone to lean into their fears. Apparently, after watching both the Southern Lawyer Turned New England Mom and Christine, the other comics were not as eager to get on stage, afraid of looking stupid. Tim was having none of it.
“This is about taking risks, looking stupid, and making mistakes.” He laughed. “People, comedy is about pain and suffering.”
I leaned over and whispered to Christine. “I thought that’s what the fucking cancer was.”
© 2012 Cathy Kidman
Posted in Second Comedy Class, Or, Maybe This Was Not Such A Great Idea | Tagged cancer and comedy, cancer and humor, Comedy Coach Tim Ferrell, first time comic, ovarian cancer |
A different kind of post today! Here’s a link to a story I told at SLANT, which is Portland, Maine’s Moth-like storytelling series. For those of you who have been reading the blog from the beginning, this story will be familiar. It’s the story of how I stumbled into stand-up comedy during a steroid-induced mania. My story starts at 50:12 in the podcast. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know!
February 10, 2012 SLANT storytelling evening go to 50:12
Posted in When Steroids and Fears Collide | Tagged cancer and comedy, cancer and humor, life choices, ovarian cancer, stand-up comedy |
The Monday Before Surgery
Mid-weekend, in one frightening shared epiphany, Ramona and I remembered our lack of legal status.
“We don’t have a single piece of legal paper to document our” – I counted on my fingers – “twelve year relationship.”
“Our mortgage?” Ramona suggested as a joke.
But we both knew, in a medical crisis, a house document did not count as proof of domestic partnership. If something went wrong in surgery, Ramona and I were unprotected. Critical decisions would default to my feuding parents. They loved Ramona, they supported our relationship, but we could not take the chance that sanity would prevail. We could not count on their ability to agree on anything, never mind trust in their willingness to step aside and let Ramona make decisions.
Monday morning found me in the office of a lawyer friend filling out medical power of attorney papers and answering questions I expected (“In the event you are unable to make decisions for yourself, who would you like to designate as your guardian?”) and questions I didn’t (“Do you want to be resuscitated in the event that you stop breathing?”).
The second Monday appointment found me in a dentist chair. Two temporary crowns needed to be replaced with permanent ones. The procedure had been scheduled a month before, and I considered blowing it off, but learned in pre-surgery information that permanent crowns were recommended during intubation. Intubation. A word I had never used in conjunction with myself.
The dentist asked from behind her mask, “How was your Christmas?” Tilted back in the chair, I didn’t know how to answer. Good? But the next day sucked? I went for direct. Her eyes crinkled. Over the next months, I would witness many people absorb this information, feel the weight of each one.
By the time we arrived at the third Monday appointment, Ramona and I were worn out. Cursory research had yielded the information that the surgeon was well respected and liked by colleagues and former patients. Since his hands would be in my belly the next day, I wanted to more than like him.
A little after 4 p.m., Dr. Donald “Call me Chip” Wiper came into the waiting area and ushered us into his office. Over the next hour and a half, he was respectful and patient with Ramona’s many questions.
Gone was the shocked, silent Ramona from Friday. Today’s Ramona was scared, steely, and determined to know everything. I let her take the lead. My tongue still tingled from Novocain. She had started with the inevitable, “Are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?”
Dr. Chip, who must have been asked this same question everyday of his practice, responded as if explaining the process of validating biopsy results was the most important thing in our world. Which it was. When Ramona asked about the progression of clear cell ovarian cancer, he moved to sit between us on the couch and drew a diagram, which he then gave Ramona to take home. (I later discouraged her from placing it on the refrigerator.) He was encouraging, even while emphasizing the aggressiveness of this type of ovarian cancer. We would know more after the biopsy of the internal organs and lymph nodes, he told us, but early indications were promising. As we listened to him explain the surgery and outline the recommended course of chemotherapy, our confidence in him grew.
During the drive home, we confessed: we had already fallen in love with our doctor. Dr. Chip was our age (late-thirties, early-forties), sandy-blonde handsome, and smart. A hottie. We honored “the bisexual within” despite the seriousness of our situation. We recognized the emerging crush was emotional, but he had spoken with both of us, building a relationship with both of us. When I explained the medical power of attorney papers, and recounted my morning in the lawyer’s office, he had acknowledged the extra stress we were under.
“Thank you for bringing the papers in. Unfortunately, they are important. You should probably take an extra copy to the hospital.” He paused. “I’m sorry you had to do that today, or any day, actually.”
That night, after the long, long day of appointments with the lawyer and the dentist and the surgeon, when Ramona and I were in bed and all the calls had been made and there was nothing left to do, I fell apart. I didn’t want to lose this life we had built.
I felt Ramona smile against my neck. “Thank God,” she said, “I’ve been the one killing you off. Now it’s your turn.”
She had been trying to kill me off since Friday, the day we got the diagnosis. “I can’t imagine a life without you,” she whispered each night into the dark as we held each other. Which meant, of course, she was imagining a life without me and it was freaking her out. “You are everything to me. What if you die?”
I hadn’t known what to say to this woman who was my partner and my love and the stoic in our relationship. It had always been my job to worry about our future. Now her stable world was crumbling and I didn’t have an answer to “What if you die?” I could only wrap my body around her and tell her I loved her and tell her we’d know what we know when we know it. I was surprised by my own calm faith.
© 2011 Cathy Kidman
Posted in The Monday Before Surgery | Tagged cancer and humor, domestic partnership, gay relationships, marriage equality, same-sex marriage | 3 Comments »
First Comedy Class
Silence stretches between the members of this new group of wannabe-comics, an unfamiliar state of being for most. The scraping chairs, thrumming fingers, and tapping feet all make it clear that sitting still isn’t usual, either. Someone lets out a loud raspberry sigh and it echoes like a bad joke off the walls. Monday nights for the next six weeks the plan is to meet here and learn to deliver the funny. But right now, it’s just silent agony. I have ample time to question the wisdom of signing up for stand-up comedy classes while in the middle of chemotherapy treatments. I had hoped to be laughing already.
Comedy coach Tim Ferrell ends the pain. He surveys the eleven of us, sprawled across a half-dozen of the Comedy Connection’s wobbly tables, and states with flat assurance, “That was five minutes. Five long minutes examining your navels, each other, the fly buzzing around the tables. Five minutes you wished to hell you could get out of. Five minutes to question why you paid good money to be here. That’s the point. You just felt it. Five minutes is a fucking eternity when a comic’s material isn’t good.”
We nod with herd-like agreement. Five minutes had seemed so short when he first talked about developing our five-minute comedy “sets”. Now it’s a lifetime.
Tim moves to the next lesson and gets interrupted mid-sentence. “So the first rule of comedy is -”
“Don’t talk about comedy?” quips the guy who lives in his parent’s basement.
“That’s another kind of club, kid.” Tim shoots back, fast and dry. “Nothing is a secret here. That’s why comedy works. No, my friends, the first rule of comedy is: Don’t try to be funny.”
Keep their attention but don’t try to be funny. I breathe through Tim’s explanation as my tummy rolls over. “Nothing turns an audience off faster than a hungry comic desperate for laughs. It’s your material that will be funny, the way you tell your story.”
He jerks his head toward the lighted stage, a low platform, one step up from the sticky-beery floor. He knows all we see is the mike in the lights. He knows we carry rookie dreams of quick fame. “If you thought you could get up there and just wing it because all your friends pee their pants every time you open your mouth, you are wrong. You will fail.”
Tim pauses, the bill of his Yankees baseball cap lifts to almost reveal his eyes. He wants us to know this next part is important. “This is a writing class, and whether or not you write in a notebook, on a computer, on a napkin, or the back of your hand, I don’t care. Whether or not you write in full sentences, bullets, or haiku, I don’t care. But you will write.”
Half the group groans. I take out my Moleskine notebook and get ready. The fireman from Biddeford grabs a napkin from the nearest table and asks me for a pen. While the words fail and writing fight for top billing in my head, I distribute extra pens from my bag to classmates. The confidence I felt before the class puddles around my feet. I can write foundation grants, a killer business memo, thank you cards when I remember to, but can I write five minutes of comedy? And then stand on stage in front of a mike? This says fail already.
A hot-flash makes its way up my throat and a waterfall of sweat rolls off my head. I yank a bandana from my bag and wipe my scalp, hoping no one else noticed. They didn’t. They are each as self-absorbed as I am right now, their eyes on Tim but their ears listening to their own internal versions of self-doubt. Tim hears us, though. Or he’s just done this routine a million times. “By the end of seven weeks, you will each deliver a solid set. I promise. I’m here to make sure you don’t fail. Nobody fails in my class.”
Nobody fails in my class, I write with relief. With three of my six chemo treatments still to go, my lackluster consulting practice on hold, and my family in crisis, I need some success.
© 2011 Cathy Kidman
Posted in First Comedy Class | 2 Comments »
How Me
As my lips closed around the plastic circle and water tipped from the Poland Spring bottle into my mouth and down my throat, the thought intruded: What else am I drinking with this water?
Plastic might be my enemy.
I never asked myself “why me.” I obsessed about “how.” There’s no history of ovarian cancer in my family. No breast cancer. No prostate cancer. No lung cancer, even though the branches on our family tree are gnarly with long term, late stage nicotine addiction.
Did plastic water bottles cause my cancer?
Was it the time I sprayed the outside foundation of the house with insecticide, seeking to annihilate every single rampaging black ant, and the spray nozzle spilled poison, saturating my gloveless hands?
Was the white powdery flea collar I slid around the neck of my childhood cat safe for either of us?
Was it polyester fibers, or even those new “natural” ones known as rayon and tencel?
Hairspray? Hair gel? Nail polish or makeup?
Supermarket vegetables? Chicken? Beef? Pork? Eggs? Milk?
I eat organic now.
And when the needle entered my vein, infusing my blood stream with the pharmaceutical toxins meant to save my life, I fought the thought, What will this cause?
A year after completing treatment, I signed up for an “Environmental Racism” course to understand the impacts of mining, logging, and other industrial activities on people of color. As a diversity junkie, I thought I signed up for the “racism” part.
One hour into class, the truth hit me: this was about cancer. Did a polluted environment make me sick? Was I raised in a house built on a waste dump? Was my home on a brownfield? Was there, is there, asbestos?
And then, what if it wasn’t something tangibly toxic? What if it was psychological? Had depression caused my cancer?
Was ovarian cancer a penalty for not living my real life?
Stagnant work, spotty success, fractured family, stuck in Maine – all daily disappointments. Daily disappointments add up.
I avoided this line of inquiry.
A friend, trying to be helpful, told me that every human carries some form of cancer cells. “It’s just that the cells are dormant in healthy bodies.” I questioned this but never checked it out. What if it was true?
The doctor upped my anti-depressant. And I worried about pharmaceutical toxins again.
© 2011 Cathy Kidman
Posted in How Me | Tagged cancer and humor, denial, diversity junkie, life choices, ovarian cancer | 2 Comments »
Prologue
Clutching the mike is what new comics do. It gives the illusion of control. Not a bad thing to want, standing on a stage and performing stand-up comedy for the first time. After the opening joke explained away my bald head – “Never piss off your hair stylist” – the audience was in. I relaxed my grip. A little.
The club was packed, most of the people there for me. The Mistress of Ceremonies acknowledged this, opening her arms wide in greeting to encompass everyone. “And now, the person you have all been waiting for! A closeted social worker who can show you how to use a condom, but prefers not to: Cathy Kidman!”
Hearing my name, I took a long breath and exhaled a quick prayer to the universe. Help me. I thought about the family, friends, and healthcare professionals who had filled this comedy club to support me. We had traveled an imperfect path to get here tonight. I willed myself to hear their loud applause and whistling. Willed myself to walk confidently, as if I did this everyday, from the back of the dark bar through the tight arrangement of tables and chairs, up onto the stage and into the light.
I saw black, the audience hidden. Well, at least they could see me. Seven months ago, that was a question mark. To buy time while my eyes adapted to the glare, I adjusted the microphone and lowered it to my 5’2” height. Faces in the front began to emerge. My partner Ramona, my mom and cousins were in the back. From there, they’d be able to give me a full report on the audience response. I wanted to learn from my hits and misses.
I spotted an aunt and uncle seated with their good friends at the table to my left and felt a moment of warmth. Then alarm. What if they didn’t think I was funny? What if no one did? The crowd to the right of the stage were strangers in their twenties. Beer bottles covered their tables and the smell drifted up. They had laughed loudly at the previous comic’s penis jokes. Too late to second guess my material now.
I leaned into the microphone and said, unplanned, “I am feeling the love.” Laughter greeted me. “We love you too, Cathy!” someone yelled from the back. I grinned in response and allowed their energy to seep into my bones, anchor my feet. The audience was still in darkness, but I acted as if I could see each person. In my head I heard, Take your time. This is your audience now.
“I don’t know how I feel about same-sex marriage,” I announced. The audience went silent, unsure. “When I was a young lesbian,” I began, and then stopped because their laughter interrupted my flow. I continued, “When I was a young lesbian, my lesbian elders taught me that marriage was a form of patriarchal enslavement. Now those same lesbian elders are reading Lesbian Bride Magazine and hiring wedding planners. It used to be a lesbian had a truck and a dog. Today it’s a minivan and an adopted daughter from China.”
By the time I was done, I had poked fun at gays in the military, racial profiling, and the belief in Maine that a meal at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet constitutes a multicultural experience. My five minute set ran for twelve and it felt like two while the audience laughed throughout. Everyone, including me, was a little dazed when I finished. Then the crowd was on its feet, clapping and whooping.
This was glorious. This was better than anything I could have imagined. This was worth every failed practice session, every failed joke, every tear. This was almost worth ovarian cancer.
© 2011 Cathy Kidman
Posted in Prologue | Tagged cancer and comedy, cancer and humor, first time comic, life choices, ovarian cancer, same-sex marriage | 3 Comments »
