"FUCK HAROLD!"

JOURNAL 1 (Nov 11 to Nov 17)

MONDAY

My paternal grandma was real pissed about the substack I wrote about my dad’s former career as a bookie.

My dad showed it to her; he thought it was funny. But I guess she was under the impression I wrote it cause the FBI gave me a check to sell him out. She thought I was snitching.

To be fair, she’s 96.

And her forays into reading have been brisk and very recent. Last year she asked me for a “book of quotes” and I got her a book of like the 100 best quotes. 

One time, I was driving her somewhere and she asked me, “what are those things?” with no ostensible referent, and after a complicated, gesturefilled back & forth I realized she was talking about quotation marks. I told her they’re used to designate speech and she said, “hmm” and turned to gaze very pensively out the window. 

My relationship with my grandma is complicated cause she hates my mom.

It’s unclear exactly why she hates my mom. Of course, I’m looking at the whole thing with a strong bias as my mom’s son, but it seems pretty clear-cut: My grandma couldn’t accept my dad marrying a woman she couldn’t steamroll, who wouldn’t kowtow, and I’m certain it didn’t help that my mom is an immigrant from Brasil. 

So she wasn’t present in my life even though she lived in Ohio, about 10 miles away, my whole life. Meanwhile my mom’s mom lived in Rio and was a constant presence.

But that don’t matter. I do find her very amusing. 

Anyway, she blasted me with texts

I didn’t respond.

So she called my dad saying,

“FUCK HAROLD!”

TUESDAY

Tuesday and Thursday I get up at 5AM to work.

I got this client at the gym who’s like a lifehack psycho. He gets up at 345AM and mediates for an hour and, you know, optimizes everything and whatever. 

He used to creep me out cause of the intensity of his stare and the fact that he works out in the same rotation of old tattered stinky t-shirts even though he’s rich. But two years of the twice-a-week early mornings and we’re very cool. 

It was an easy workday; it always is. Especially since there was epic gym drama playing out on social media that serves as great water-cooler fodder. 

After work I finished The Da Vinci Code (for the record, I don’t think anyone should voluntarily purchase a book that’s already sold 80 million copies: I stole mine from Barnes & Nobles: I recommend that course of action). I posted a picture of it next to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake and said, TOP 3. 

People were hitting me up like either “I heard The Da Vinci Code is FUCKING SICK.” or “are u fkn serious?!” 

Nah, I wasn’t serious. But if you were on a desert island, those three books would be pretty good companions. 

In the afternoon I had a call with my book agent. (I’ll call him Clive Clamhands to protect his identity.) My old editor don’t want my new book. Apparently it’s not sexy enough. So I’m gonna rewrite it and make it super sexy and we’re sending it out in Jan/Feb.

That evening, I went up to Columbia for a book event.

There was a brasilian writer in town, Bruna Kalil Othero. She wrote this sick book, O Presidente Pornô that she’s trying to get published in English. She also happens to be my girlfriend Gaby’s distant cousin. 

I hate being in college or classroom environments. Ever since I went to school; it makes me extremely anxious. 

I saw three separate ostensible-students alone and crying in the dark gloomy street. Made me thing maybe the Columbia curriculum is a bit more rigorous since I got my MFA there. 

That night I had Steve’s show at Broadway Comedy Club.

Steve is a 75 year old comedian that I give boxing lessons to. I met him at an open mic. I did some joke about my twin sister and he crawled up behind me, creepy as sin, and whispered in my ear, “I had a twin sister, she stole my inheritance.”

He is an oversharer supreme. 

I started out giving him lessons in the park for 40 bucks a pop. Now three years later, he comes into the gym and he’s one of my freeloaders cause he’s trying to actually fight. Though he could handle a fight for sure, it’s gonna be tough as hell to get him an opponent. But I’m determined to, even if we gotta dig up some skeleton. 

My only confrontation at Church Street ever was over him.

So there’s all sorts of these goofballs at the gym who don’t know jackshit about boxing and yet insist on doling out advice. And there was this bald dude with very expensive gloves (another red flag on the advice front); every time I’d be done with Steve I’d see this dude chirping in his ear.

It don’t bother me at all. I just say, Steve don’t listen to a fucking word this guy tells you.

One day, Steve comes to train looking like a sad puppy (not unusual: he oscillates from utter despondency to epiphany daily). He tells me the Bald Dude said to him, “you’re a fucking creep! Get away from me!”

I went to confront the guy. I asked him why he said that. He immediately got all hot with me, started yelling at me. Saying, “you don’t know what HE said to ME!” And then he refused to tell me what Steve said. 

I asked Steve what he said.

Apparently they were in the locker room and the Bald Dude got out of the shower and Steve said, “you all clean?”

Now, sure, Steve got some leers that’ll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, but the Bald Dude’s reaction struck me as homophobic (Steve’s gay). 

I called him out on it. And he kept that same intense energy with me, so I started mocking his workout: the endless handwrapping, as if he was gonna hurt his widdle knuckles on the bag; etc. And then I challenged him to spar and of course he didn’t want any smoke.

I was being a bully, but I was pissed. Next day, the Bald Dude came in and packed his shit and left the gym, filing an official complaint about me. 

Anyway, Steve has a bi-monthly show at Broadway Comedy Club that he gives me a spot on and I do whatever I want.

The audience was pretty light, and so I was fucking around big time.

WEDNESDAY 

I can’t remember what happened most of Wednesday.

But in the evening, that brasilian writer, Bruna came over to Gaby’s apartment. Gaby’s parents were there and they cooked dinner.

I was the only one there without ties to Belo Horizonte; they got to have their little mineirada while I smiled cariocally. It was extremely pleasant.

THURSDAY

I canceled my 6AM cause I had gotten drunk on wine the previous night.

My clients say it’s always the same story with me, I come in haggard and weary saying I drank too much the previous night.

You know what I have to say to that? FUCK YOU! 

Work was fun though. During a session with my other freeloaders, Adam and Chris (I am too charitable to these losers), we made a video making fun of how some of the coaches at the gym hold mitts. 

That night I had a 9PM and 11PM show at Broadway. So it was gonna be a long ass day. 

I’ve been trying to rebuild my act; I go thru these ebbs and flows where I start thinking that jokes with a set-up and punchline are a crime to artistic expression. And I just wanna improvise everything and be crazy. But then I realize nobody wants to book the unpredictably insane person with no act and I go back to writing and trying to find joy in the artificiality. 

At the 9PM show I had a 5 min check spot. The room was packed but half of them weren’t even paying attention. Eventually I bailed on the jokes and went behind the curtain and talked to myself and got their attention back. But it was mediocre and I was pissed. 

When I walked outside, I saw my grandma called me and left me a voicemail. I was already in a bad mood, so I didn’t want her to bring me down further so I didn’t listen.

Also my old boxing coach from Brasil hit me up saying he needed to talk to me. I didn’t respond to him either cause I imagined he needed money.

When you live in the United States and you have family and friends in South America, often, in their minds, you owe them money for the life-discrepancy. And they might be right.

I went back to the 11PM determined to connect with the audience and make something good happen. I did 7 minutes, all crowd work, and murdered. But I left feeling like that was cheap and worthless too. Cause crowd work can be too easy sometimes. 

I went home feeling totally despondent. 

At least I was sober though so I could read before I went to bed. I’m on the third volume of Javier Marías Your Face Tomorrow and it’s incredible. The last line I read before sleep was about an artist named Kiko and the narrator said: “nothing good can come from someone with that name.”

We called my uncle Kiko (my mom’s brother). And it’s true, nothing good ever came out of him. I gotta do a stack about him one day. 

FRIDAY

I had a dream with my dead uncle Kiko. So on top of how wretched I was feeling about stand-up and the empty worthlessness of jokes, now I had the annihilation caused by death on my mind. 

GREAT!

After work I went to Gaby’s to have breakfast. She works from home three times a week and some mornings I come by with real perverted energy wanting her to drop them drawers, while she is, of course, at work. Which she does not like. So I try to come thru chaste and nice.

And we have a very wonderful chaste and nice breakfast.

She wanted to hear my grandma’s voicemail. So I played it. She was calling me to say how embarrassed and sorry she was, she didn’t realize that what I wrote about my dad “I didn’t put in every book”? 

I have no clue what she thought was going on. But she was sorry. And she said she’s been sick lately cause the devil got her by the ass.

But I called her and told her she was forgiven and that I loved her.

She said, “really?”

I said, “yes Nana.” (All her grandkids call her Nana, a bastardization of the Italian Nonna.)

And she cried. 

That lady is funny, I gotta give it to her. 

After that, I did some open mics. Which did not help the comedy despondency. And I met Ethan at Local 42 for beer; I love beer. 

Ethan used to be my roommate but he fucking ditched me to live with his fucking girlfriend way out in bumfuck Innwood. Not that I’m fucking mad about it for one fucking second, he can do whatever the fuck he wants, it’s his fucking life! 

The cheap beer at Local 42 is $4. So we had many. 

Him and his Sophie (who he fucking left me for, not that it’s a big fucking deal!) were gonna come over to watch the Tyson fight, but they didn’t. 

So I watched the fight alone, drinking more beers, smoking weed, and stuffing my face (chips, oreos, bad bad bad), ruminating darkly about comedy, until I had an epiphany about my material (which always comes after these nadirs) which cheered me up. 

I am a pie-in-the-sky kinda optimist, so I thought Tyson was gonna knock Jake Paul out. But he didn’t. At least the co-main event was an incredible fight. 

SATURDAY & SUNDAY

Worked.

Then went to the afternoon mic at The Stand which is usually pretty good, if you get a good spot. Eric got a great spot while the room was still full and he murdered arrogantly, gleefully, which always pisses me off. 

I went dead last when the room had dwindled significantly. But at least the epiphany paid dividends. 

I met up with Gaby and we went down to the East Broadway Mall, this rinkydink dump like abandoned mall in Chinatown with this dumpling spot in the basement Fu Zhou Wei Zhong that is delicious and super cheap. 

We had a wonderful time and she stayed over.

The next day my paid Sunday clients canceled so I canceled on my freeloaders and just chilled with Gaby.

We went to see the pigeon sculpture on The High Line. Which, sculpture on the High Line seems like something I’d disdain automatically, but I thought this sculpture was fucking sick. It’s a giant pigeon! Posted all noble like he’s Simon Bolivar. 

Then we went to 192 Books and read in the park. She out-read me cause she was really fucking with this The Devil’s Grip by Lina Wolff. 

Then I went up to see Sean, who’d been cooped up (not a pigeon pun), working. 

On the way to his spot I saw the Louis Vuitton store which looks like a giant pile of suitcases and I think the whole thing is gaudy and horrible and should be blown up; it’s like the opposite of the pigeon. 

Me and Sean podded. 

Then I went back to meet up with Gaby and we saw A Real Pain at the movies which we both loved. 

And the week was over.