now that you've been reading my blog for a few months, maybe we can take this to the next level (sexy!)

Tonight I did a set at Mintyfresh's "Coming Out" show. Among other comics who saw the ads, this caused some confusion, as it is a well-known fact that I enjoy myself a high-caliber gentleman caller here and there.

It all happened when I told Shawn Hollenbach, one of the Mintyfresh producers, that I was seeing a lady, something I hadn't done since college. In between that time and tonight, the night of the show, the lady and I have ceased seeing one another (she has subsequently referred to me in writing as "a woman I've done wrong").

In my seven minutes of glory, for an audience comprised mostly of gay men, I talked about my brief stint as a collegiate lesbian ("when your social life, by necessity, revolves around consciousness-raising meetings -- imagine if straight people had to go to Habitat for Humanity to get laid") and my recent revisitation. One thing that has occurred to me recently: you know how, in high school, it's typical for the student government to have a male president, but lots of women in all the offices beneath that, with virtually all of the actual work being done by women? Plus all that stuff about girls being more diligent, more organized, and having better handwriting, and now graduating from college at higher rates and getting better grades? Yes. That. I suppose I'm one of those girls, and I've been working hard for a really long time now (since I was fourteen and realized that I direly needed to get out of Virginia), and it just so happens that the great majority of the people I know who have also been working really hard and impressing me are also women. It has been a long time since I've met a man of dating age I found impressive; more commonly, I end up propping up the egos of nice men who are just sort of traipsing along in life. ("But you made a short film in 1998!" I will say. "You are a filmmaker!") Yet my women friends are accomplishing things that provoke actual excitement and professional jealousy (of the healthy, motivating sort -- Molly and I have been getting high off of this for years now). And my lost lady impressed the hell out of me.

I'm looking, it seems, for an Honor Roll student.

I ended my set talking about how dating someone different -- in this case, in gender -- involves recalibrating yourself in certain ways, reworking the Pavlovian pathways in your brain that tell you to feel a certain way in response to a certain stimulus. It's not that this is irreversible, but there is some effort, some re-recalibration, in reversing it, and that can only lead you to wonder at the futility of recalibrating in the first place, of calibrating to anyone; it's like switching to Daylight Savings Time for someone, and having to switch back. Or converting to metric, and then you're alone again and back to standard measurements, counting out ounces and inches -- until you find yourself driving in kilometers. And you remember what you did, and what you nearly, but not quite, managed to reverse, and that whole metric debacle smacks you in the forehead.*

I don't normally open a vein on this blog; it's just not my style. But tonight I found myself walking through Park Slope on a damp, dark night, listening to Jeff Buckley on the iPod I bought with my own damn money, realizing that thirteen-year-old-Jen would have been fucking thrilled at the very possibility of living the life of twenty-six-year-old Jen. I feel about as invincible as anyone who's not an asshole can really ever feel (I think an extended feeling of absolute invincibility is probably pathological).

I'm often disappointed in how long people in this city can remain children. City life encourages an extended adolescence that I find unbecoming; it's like being on a date with a guy who only talks about video games, except sometimes it seems like a whole city of noncommittal, whiny people saying things like "I still haven't found the thing I was meant to do." Have a kid, volunteer to do something important at which you might fail, join the freaking military, get married, go to law school. Anything. I think you grow up by taking on responsibility; if you postpone responsibility until you feel grown up, you might find yourself yet another man-child in expensive jeans perfectly spiked hair poised atop a brain full of self-indulgent mush.

I was born about thirty-five years old. I always felt childhood was undignified, and often found the "playing" of other children embarrassing even to watch. I'm not saying I was smarter or better; just that I was no fun at all. Well, I was sarcastic, which for some people is akin to fun. In any case, people would often tell me that childhood was the best time of one's life, and that I would miss it when I grew up and had to do more homework, or had to make a living, et cetera, et cetera. And that's never been true; I have relished every step forward. Childhood was hell. Adulthood means you can wear the stuff you weren't allowed to wear in junior high, buy that Red Hot Chili Peppers album you were forbidden to purchase in 1990, blog about your love life, become a comedian, sell your eggs, eat alone in restaurants, buy weird groceries that don't work together as meals, walk alone on the streets of Park Slope in the middle of the night, and a million other things that have made me very happy in small but repeatable ways. I am waiting, I suppose, to grow into the age I have always been.

I said I don't open a vein on this blog, but I suppose it's good to donate blood twice a year or so.

Goodnight, dear readers.

* That would be "the forehead of your heart." I felt like I was actually doing pretty well with an analogy for once, so I figured I'd mess that up for you here. A friend of mine pointed out that in that old song that goes "Our LOVE is like a SHIP on the OCEAN we've been SAILING with a CARGO full of LOVE AND DEVOTION," the speaker is actually saying "our love is like a ship full of love." Take that.