Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mindy Kaling
ISBN 978-0-307-88627-9
eISBN 978-0-307-88628-6
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
When Your Boyfriend Fits into Your Jeans and Other Atrocities
Always Wear Flats and Have Your Friends Sleep Over: A Step-by-
Step How-To Guide for Avoiding Getting Murdered
The Last Mango in Paris (this would work best if “Mango” were the
cheeky nickname for an Indian woman, and if I’d spent any time in
Paris)
I Don’t Know How She Does It, But I Suspect She Gets Help from
Illegal Immigrants
COLLEGE RUINED ME
47
and half-Asian, and while fitting the bill technically for a model,
has no interest in modeling. She’s just that cool. Me, on the other
hand, whenever I lose, like, five pounds, I basically start consider-
ing if I should “try out” modeling. When the three of us walked
down the street together, I looked like the Indian girl who kept
them “real.” I don’t care. After all these years with friends who
are five ten or taller, I have come to carry myself with the confi-
dence of a tall person. It’s all in the head. It works out.
So I left college feeling like a successful, awesome, tall per-
son. Then, in July of 2001, the three of us moved to New York.
And the stairs. Oh, the stairs. The staircase in our third-floor
walk-up was the steepest, hardest, metal-est staircase I have ever
encountered in my life. It was a staircase for killing someone and
making it seem like an accident. Our downstairs neighbor was
a toothless man, somewhere in his eighties or nineties. He lived
with what seemed like two younger male relatives, with “younger”
meaning in their sixties. In the dead of summer or winter they
would wear those ribbed white tank tops grossly named wife
beaters, which is how we knew they were rent- control tenants (if
anyone wears year-round wife beaters, it is the same as saying
they are enjoying the benefits of a rent- controlled apartment).
They also spoke a language with one another that seemed like
a hybridized version of an Eastern European language and
the incomprehensible mumble of Dick Tracy henchmen. They
would’ve been frightening, except they were incredibly timid
and scared of us for some reason. Like when that monster
in the Bugs Bunny cartoon gets scared of a mouse and runs
screaming all the way back to his castle.
In the summer, feral cats in heat clung onto the screens of
our living room, meowing mournfully until we threw a glass
of water at them. When it got cold, the roaches migrated in
and set up homes in every drain. Sometimes, when I got up in
the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I would feel a dis-
gusting crackly squelch under my foot, and I’d know I’d have
to rinse off a roach from my heel. That was our apartment.
We took the bad with the pretty good. Plus, we could afford
it, Prospect Park wasn’t too far, and people already assumed
we were lesbians, so we fit into the neighborhood right away. It
was all good.
Until we tried to pursue our dreams.
I AM TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING
176
LULULEMON: What?
32D: For the past ten years that Jeremy has been out of col-
lege doing entry-level job after entry-level job and grad
school, you’ve had a job that has turned into a career.
women and a lot of boys our age. That’s why I started getting
interested in men.
When I was twenty-five, I went on exactly four dates with a
much older guy whom I’ll call Peter Parker. I’m calling him Peter
Parker because the actual guy’s name was also alliterative, and
because, well, it’s my book and I’ll name a guy I dated after Spi-
der-Man’s alter ego if I want to.
Peter Parker was a comedy writer who was a smidgen more
accomplished than me but who talked about everything with
the tone of “you’ve got a lot to learn, kid.” He had been a writer
at a pretty popular sitcom. He gave me lots of unsolicited advice
about how to get a job “if The Office got canceled.” After a while,
it became clear that he thought The Office would get canceled,
and on our fourth and last date, it was clear that he thought The
Office should get canceled.
Why am I bringing up Peter Parker? Well, besides moonlight-
ing as Spider-Man, Peter was the first man I dated. An insuffer-
able, arrogant man, but a legit man.
Peter owned a house. It wasn’t ritzy or anything, just a little
Spanish ranch-style house in Hollywood. But he was the first
guy I’d dated who’d really moved into his place and made it a
home. The walls were painted; there was art in frames. He had
installed a flat-screen TV and speakers. There was just so much
screwed into the walls. Everywhere I looked I saw another in-
stance of an action that, if the house were a rental, would make
you lose your deposit. I marveled at the brazenness of it. Peter’s
house reminded me more of my house growing up than of a col-
lege dorm room. I’d never seen that before.*
Owning a house obviously wasn’t enough to make me want
to keep dating Peter. Like I said, he was kind of a condescending
* Look, I’m not an idiot, I realize plenty of boys own houses. That’s,
like, the whole point of the Playboy mansion.
Alyssa Shelasky
T hr ee R i v ers Pr ess
N e w Y or k
three rivers press and the tugboat design are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
ISBN 978-0-307-95214-1
eISBN 978-0-307-5215-8
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First Edition
Oui, Chef
44
45
46
47
event, along with a note: “Chef is very nice and very single.
Thanks for the assignment!! P.S. I know you’re not looking or
anything, but here’s his phone number. . . . Just in case.” Screw
journalistic integrity. Give the girl a raise.
While tucked under the covers in fuzzy socks and shea but-
ter cream, I reach for the light on the bedside table and start
to read the two-page interview on my BlackBerry. I am pre-
pared for a slight rush, a raise of the brow, and then hopefully,
a better night’s sleep. But as I read his responses—part juvenile
delinquent, part plain ole Joe—my eyes, freshly dotted in cu-
cumber serum, start to widen. He talks about his family’s villa
in Greece, and how he dreams of taking a girl there and mak-
ing her a peasant dish called reginatta, which he describes as
stale bread sprinkled with ocean water, covered with bright red
tomatoes and crumbled fresh feta. As for the girl, she should be
funny, down-to-earth, and extremely family-oriented. He says
he’s been a “kitchen-rat” his whole life and that it’s starting to
get quite lonely. He’s happy to have been on Top Chef, but he
might just become a marine biologist in Florida or a fisherman
in the South of France.
Wow. He’s just what I thought he’d be like: creative, care-
free, and vulnerable. As I read his answers, I am struck by how
unaffected he is. How can he be lonely? He’s such a rock star in
my eyes. And the perfect woman he described? She sounds a little
familiar. I mostly love that he’s a dreamer but doesn’t sound to-
tally dysfunctional. That’s exactly what I want, exactly what I
need. A flash goes off, and suddenly, I know without any hesi-
tation, that Chef is more than just a TV fantasy. He is my next
boyfriend.
Let me explain. There are three things I know about my bio-
logical self:
48
49
50
ask. He speaks broken English, is sweating his ass off, and tells
me he’s totally slammed. “No problemo,” I say, pounding the
shot and heading to the F train.
On the subway, I remind myself that our get-together is a
“business meeting,” so I put on my reporter’s hat and fool my-
self into forgetting about any romantic anticipation. I brush into
Fabiane’s with the look of an unflappable journalist, in a very
flappable short skirt, who’s done this hundreds of times. Chef is
there already, waiting for me by the dessert display, now walk-
ing toward me to say hello. He’s long, ruddy, and crazy cute.
Before I can reach out my hand, there’s a kiss on the cheek and
a tight hug hello. This doesn’t happen with Justin Timberlake.
We arrange a table for two outside, while I take out my
tape recorder, which I won’t be turning on, and my list of fake
questions, which I won’t be flipping through. I try to stay in
character, but the way he looks, the way he speaks, the way he
dresses, how our knees touch . . . I’m trembling. I’m not sure
what one orders on a bogus interview that’s turning into a first
date, with a French-trained chef and me, a kitchen-phobe, so I
fumble through the menu and somehow come up with chicken
curry salad. He gets a tomato and mozzarella tartine. We agree
on a round of Stella Artois. When the waitress walks away, we
waste no time getting to know each other.
“So, what’s your story?” I ask, with a beer bottle to my
mouth, half reporter, half temptress.
“I’ll tell you about me, if you promise to tell me about you?”
He smiles.
“Fair enough.” I smirk, locking my eyes onto his for a beat
too long.
He swiftly shares fascinating stories about his past, really per-
sonal things, and I assure him that everything’s off the record.
(If he only knew how off the record!) We are so instantaneously
51
comfortable around each other that when his Greek and Jewish
heritage comes up, I tell him that a Greek man once broke my
heart. Our food comes and I make the long story short. My eyes
well up when talking about John, as they always do, and he asks
if it still hurts. I say that I’m doing fine, that it’s all part of my
fiber now, and that I’ve never believed we get only one great
love anyway. I realize that I’m committing a faux pas by bring-
ing up old boyfriends, but this is not the kind of guy who plays
by the rules. He doesn’t even know they exist.
“Go on a date with me,” he interrupts.
“Why should I?!” I say teasingly, wanting to kiss him, se-
duce him, marry him.
“Just be my girl,” he says, with a naïveté I have never seen in
a man. “I won’t hurt you.”
I tell him I’ll consider it, and we share an excellent piece of
lemon cake, taking turns with one fork. It’s tangy and light,
with a generous rich glaze, the perfect way to end an early sum-
mer night. I’m hungry and I hog it because I barely touched
my chicken curry, which looked like bad news in school-bus
yellow. “Who orders chicken curry from a little French bistro?”
he jokes, as we walk away from the restaurant, nudging me
playfully on my side. Without a moment of self-consciousness,
I confess that I know nothing about food. He doesn’t so much as
flinch. He just wants to know when he can see me again. “Let
me think about it.” I wink, waving down a cab.
He kisses me good-bye, on the cheek again, but more af-
fectionately this time, brushing back my hair. We play it cool
for about two days or two hours. I can’t remember. But I do
remember not being able to sleep or stop smiling. I also refuse
to acknowledge that this is his last week in New York. He is
moving to Washington, D.C., to open a casual neighborhood
restaurant in Capitol Hill with a few partners. Caught up in the
52
53
Manhattan Bridge and the splitting skies. Our bodies are sticky;
our hair is wild. We don’t care where we’re going. It is the love
affair I never want to end, the perfect storm.
After that night, which rocked both my body and mind,
Chef starts buying me train tickets to visit him every weekend
in D.C. He’s renting a three-bedroom house with “the Boys,”
his tireless and tattooed sous-chefs. I like the Boys a lot; they’re
real teddy bears, but the house is situated in a dangerous neigh-
borhood, and ironically, their kitchen is infested with bugs and
beyond. In the morning, before he heads to the restaurant, Chef
always manages to make me strong coffee and cheese toast,
which is basically cheese melted on bread in the toaster oven,
but constructed with such confidence and so perfectly crispy.
I eat with my feet elevated, petrified of any critters that may
whiz by.
It breaks my heart that in building and launching the restau-
rant all summer, Chef and his roommates haven’t had any time
to clean up this run-down Capitol Hill clunker. It also breaks
my back—Chef essentially sleeps on a cot. So the first present
I ever buy him is a nice and comfortable “W Hotel” mattress,
which I purchase with my press discount. It’s the least I can
do—for both of us. He beams over the bed, saying it’s the nicest
thing anyone has ever done for him.
We like all things hotel-related. After making such a splash
on Top Chef, my guy is now invited to do a lot of cooking events
around the country. He includes me in everything, as if we’re
a package deal, and I am tickled pink to tag along. I sit in the
audience as he does his food demos, oblivious to his knife skills
but obsessed with his aura. When it’s time for the Q&A portion
of the event, I wait for some smitten soccer mom to ask if he’s
single, and for him to blush and brag about me. “Actually, that’s
my girl over there. . . . She’s the best writer in the world. . . .” I
54
swoon when he says this, especially because all he’s read are my
love letters to him.
When we go to a celebrity poker tournament at Foxwoods
Resort Casino in Connecticut, we skip most of the festivities
and stay in our suite, with the room-service menu and The
Hangover on demand. No one wins bigger than we do that night.
For a corporate event in Philadelphia, he is paid to make an
appetizer and meet some fans. Bored by the crowd, and enam-
ored with each other, we sneak off a little early. Arm in arm,
feeling very much like the untucked artist and his slinky muse,
we duck away, and I walk right into a glass door. Face first.
Bloody nose. He dies laughing. I die laughing even harder.
We have so much fun traveling in our pack of two, checking
into hotels, hiding out, watching movie marathons, and tying
and untying our terry-cloth robes. He always orders a couple
club sandwiches for us to share throughout the night. Chef is
a club sandwich aficionado. It personifies his style—simple
without being bland, layered without being complicated, and
ever so slightly retro. The sandwich has two things I’ve always
abhorred, mayonnaise and bacon, but I quickly get over that
and fall in love with everything about our toasted, toothpicked
ritual, the first of many.
He never has much time to enjoy New York with me now
that his restaurant is officially open, but when he comes in for
meetings, he tries to make a full day of it. I find us cool things to
do, like abstract one-act plays and raunchy underground com-
edy clubs. Since he’s been living behind a stove for most of his
life, he’s self-admittedly clueless when it comes to most things
nonkitchen. We see an outdoor production of Hair, just like I
did when I was little, and have such a wild time it’s as if we’re the
ones hallucinating. Despite his first-class cooking pedigree, fine
dining isn’t really our thing. After a movie or concert, if we end
55
56
57
58
to the villa by way of the market. The thing about Chef and
cooking is that when he’s not in his restaurant, he really can’t
be bothered. This doesn’t disappoint me one bit. Our meals are
low-key wherever we are, but I’m still careful not to cross the
line between adorably foodie-illiterate and downright stupid.
At the tented, outdoor markets, we shop for the glorious
food basics I grew up with—fruit, cheese, yogurt, bread, and
cakes—with a few delicious diversions. I can’t say no to baklava
and he’s a lamb gyro junkie. One après-beach afternoon, Chef
waits in the car while I run outside to buy a few bags of suc-
culent peaches and plums for the house. My selection looks out-
standing, but when I feed him a rock-hard peach, he scrunches
his face and tells me it’s totally not ripe! I’m not sure where I got
the idea, but I had always assumed all fruit should be hard and
crunchy like apples. He delights in calling me out on that one
(and I still prefer nectarines hard as tennis balls).
For dinner, we eat casually and compatibly, popping into the
local trattoria for Greek salads, a shared order of pasticcio, and
maybe a few bites of sweet, giant baked beans. While eating
gelato or ice-cream sandwiches, we walk home, watching for
shooting stars.
On our last night in Greece, we have to pack up our things
and close down the house for the season. I can’t seem to fit all
my sarongs and straw hats into my suitcase with all the evil-
eye charms and jars of honey I’ve bought for my family. Chef
nonchalantly suggests that I leave my beachwear here. “You’re
going to need everything next year, aren’t you?” he says, with
no clue how much his suggestion means to me.
Flying home, we review our upcoming schedules, with me
in New York and him in D.C., and suddenly the long-distance
just seems insane. It takes a two-minute conversation to decide
59
60
61
62
cherry blossom tree, and a big, open kitchen . . . it’s soooo us!”
he texts. That I trust his taste to sign a lease without me shows
just how much I like his style. And it’s such a relief.
In our own version of “the trick,” Liz and I have decided not
to drag out our farewells. She’s not the type to get theatrical
in the office, and I’m almost embarrassed by my affection for
her. So she’s purposely going home early today to make things
easier on both of us. When I hear a soft knock on my door in
the late afternoon, I know it’s time. “You take care, chérie,” she
says kindly and gently, and as our glossy eyes lock, she exits my
boxed-up empty office and shuts the door.
I stare at the blank wall, where I once hung a framed copy of
a John Updike quote, “The true New Yorker secretly believes
that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kid-
ding.” And I weep.
I don’t know why the experience of parting ways with my
boss hits me harder than separating from any of my girlfriends
or even my family, but I suspect a small part of me knows that
in saying good-bye to Liz, I am leaving behind so much more.
63
64
My life changed forever that night at Fabiane’s in Williamsburg, and the lemon
cake was the star of the meal, so it deserves a lot of attention. This version is
from the original Silver Palate Cookbook (Workman Publishing, 1982),
and it’s one of the best. I will never forget sharing dessert that night with Chef.
Place a rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Grease a 10-inch tube pan.
Make the cake: In a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of a stand
mixer fitted with the paddle attachment), cream the butter and
sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, blend-
ing well after each addition.
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda,
and salt. Stir the flour mixture into the egg mixture, alternately
65
66
Suzanne M O R R I S O N
Morr_9780307717443_4p_all_r5.indd iii 27/06/11 9:58 PM
Copyright © 2011 by Suzanne Morrison
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morrison, Suzanne.
Yoga bitch : one woman’s quest to conquer skepticism, cynicism, and
cigarettes on the path to enlightenment / Suzanne Morrison.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Morrison, Suzanne. 2. Spiritual biography. 3. Yoga. I. Title.
BL73.M667A3 2011
204'.36092—dc22
[B]
2010041940
ISBN 978-0-307-71744-3
eISBN 978-0-307-71745-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
. . . and before Kitty knew where she was, she found her-
self not merely under Anna’s influence, but in love with
her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married
women . . .
— leo tolstoy, Anna Karenina
and she wanted to chant for her and for all of our beloveds
when the stories of those who had gone beyond that day were
the news was on, and it was all bad. So many people looking
This was all well and good for a teenager who secretly
his chair. It was the reason we all watched the news with
“I can’t.”
how to live in the face of death, not then. But Indra could.
my first yoga teacher and I loved her. I loved her with the
told— all those sane people in the world who did not share
said, “It’s okay to fall away from the Church when you’re
off the street to my first real yoga class. I had done yoga
but now I walked into this studio as if I had spent all day
furniture and go work your shit out, for the love of God.
matching tank top. Tan, blonde, tall: I’ve never been one
more the way she sat, still and yet fluid, that attracted me,
and her eyes, which were warm and brown, with friendly
The lights stayed low and her voice stayed soft, so that
backs with our legs hovering a foot off the ground until
me. Please kill me. I wouldn’t pray. Who on earth was there
But by the end of class I was thanking the gods for this
partner, Lou. Lou was older than Indra by at least ten years,
but they were both the same height and weight— both
tall, both strong. That was one of the first things Indra told
she and Lou had been designed for one another. I didn’t
and his gaze too penetrating for me. Also, his classes were
home.
statement that was. Indra’s classes felt like home. Not long
at the studio feeling like I’d spent the day tied by the
In class I watched the way she eased her body into each
the pose, even, as if she were only faintly aware that her
caverns. Her toes splayed out one by one like the feathers
But the most amazing thing of all was that Indra made
I was putting on the long wool coat I had worn out to the
how that goes,” she said. She lowered her voice and leaned
that Gram’s health was failing, we all spent more and more
parents’ and find our brothers mixing Scotch and waters for
you can’t help but love right away. My sister called him
the Swearing Teddy Bear. Six foot four, with a square head,
famous for saying the wrong thing at the right time. When
up and down, a sly smile on his face, and said, “Well you’re
Grandpa.”
sit in his big red chair, watching court shows and old British
himself all at once to get into a car was a lot for a man
car, the sound coming from his chest was like sucking on
of the car and helped guide him into place as his breathing
show him how it was done, how he could find his way back
deeply over and over again, this is how it’s done, just do what
I’m doing, but soon my own breath grew shallow and sharp
hyperventilating. Or both.
training in Bali with Indra and her partner, Lou. But I’ll
brothers out. But this time I was vaguely aware that I was
I once was? Or was it for Indra, for Jonah, for the ether?
now, who said, “No one ever kept a diary for just himself.”
February 17, 2002
Seattle, 3:00 a.m.
Okay. So, I’m freaking out.
I leave for my yoga retreat in Bali one week from today.
I can’t wait to go, and I don’t want to go. It’s heartbreak-
ing to think that in one week I’ll be on the other side of
the globe, while Jonah starts packing his things to move to
New York. When I get back, he’ll be gone. I’ll have a few
weeks to shut down my life in Seattle before joining him
there. He’ll find an apartment for us in Brooklyn while I’m
still in Bali.
I don’t know what’s more shocking to me— that Jonah
and I are going to leave Seattle, or that my mother is actu-
ally happy that I’ll be living with my boyfriend. Living in sin.
She says she’d prefer it if we just got married already, since
everybody knows that’s the plan. But as she put it, “If you’re
not ready, you’re not ready. But I feel better knowing you’ll
be in New York with a man in the house.”
Bali. Two months away from home and family. I’m not
cutting the umbilical cord, not yet. I’m just sort of perforat-
ing it.
I used to have balls, dammit. I look back on the person
I was when I was fresh out of high school, and I don’t even
know her anymore. Back then, I did what I wanted. I didn’t
care what people thought of me, or if I was letting anybody
down. When all of my friends went off to college, I ran away
to Europe as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I hadn’t even been out of the country yet, but I knew what
I wanted to do, and so I saved up my money and I did it.
February 19
When I made these plans to be in Bali while Jonah moved
to New York, it seemed like a good idea. Maybe we needed
a break. We haven’t been getting along well in months. But
now that the date is approaching he’s sweet and attentive
and stays late at the pub till I get off my shift so we can go
home together. It’s like we’ve had a renaissance just know-
ing our time in Seattle is ending.
I’ve been packing very slowly, and today Jonah was
hanging out while I put my toiletry bag together. I’ve had
the same bottle of sunscreen for at least three years— I have
so little need for it beneath Seattle’s pewter skies— and I
started to pack it, but then I had a thought.
“Does sunscreen go bad?” I asked Jonah. He looked sort
of puzzled, and got up off my futon to look at the bottle I
held in my hands. “This bottle’s been around forever.”
He took it, popped the top, and squirted a tiny bit onto
his finger. Then, with a quick glance to make sure I was
paying attention, he licked it off his finger and smacked his
lips the way he would when testing butter to see if it’s gone
Later
So, I know I said I wasn’t going to censor myself in this jour-
nal, but in this one instance, I have to: my friend, the guy
who came into the pub last night. I’ve been thinking about
it, and I can’t write his real name. It just feels wrong. So, I’ll
allow myself this one act of cowardice, even if it is terribly
Sex and the City of me. He’s a sailor, so that’s what I’ll call
him. The Sailor.
He gave me a novel to bring with me to Bali. I’m look-
ing at it right now.
Anyway, he’s just a friend. I mean— sure, there was one
night, before I was with Jonah, when we kissed. A lot. With-
out our clothes on. But that was three years ago. So there’s
no reason for me to feel guilty about him, even if I did get a
little jolt when I opened up the book he gave me and found
a card in it. It doesn’t say much other than “Bon Voyage,”
but still. . . . Normally this would send me into paroxysms
of guilt and I would fantasize about an alternate universe
in which I live with him and we lie around in his turret
reading books all day and talking about them at night. And
other things. You know.
But I’m too depressed about leaving Jonah. Can’t even
enjoy a good fantasy.
February 20
So my yoga clothes for my yoga retreat in Indonesia were
made in Indonesia. Is this a good sign? Like, my pants will
get a homecoming? Or is this a terrible sign, that I will be
greeted as an imperialistic capitalist neocolonialist visiting
Bali to check up on my sweatshops?
Ugh. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to buy organic cot-
ton “Definitely made by grown-ups” yoga clothes. Shit. I’m
already behind the curve.
February 22
I e-mailed Indra to tell her that I don’t think I can go. I’m
not up for this, I’m not a brave person anymore and all I can
think about is that the world is about to end— everybody
says so, Nostradamus, the drunk at the pub last night who
kept saying, “You think 9/11 was bad? Wait till you see
6/13!”— and I don’t want to be away from my family and
friends when God’s other shoe drops.
Indra wrote back. She’s already in Bali, and she said that
if things go down she knows where she wants to be, and
it isn’t the U.S. She told me it’s beautiful and warm and
peaceful there, and that they’re waiting for me.
“Everything is simpler here,” she said.
Then she told me to do a visualization exercise in which
I imagine everything going well. “Imagine a best-case sce-
nario for your yoga practice, your meditation practice, and
your life in this unbelievable paradise.”
February 23
Up in the clouds.
I am not having a panic attack. I am not having a panic
attack.
Later
I just realized that I didn’t bring a single novel with me,
nothing fun to read whatsoever, and yet I probably tore
my rotator cuff waiting in the security line at SeaTac with
eighty pounds of sacred texts in my bag. At the forty-minute
mark I cursed the terrorists for ruining international travel,
and my shoulder along with it. Then I took it back. Didn’t
seem yogic. Also, bad luck: I’ve got twenty hours of flying
ahead of me and I don’t want to tempt fate.
That said, when I reached the hour-mark and still had
a half-dozen switchbacks to go before my turn for the X-ray
anal probe, I allowed myself a few unyogic epithets. They’re
winning! I wanted to cry as the TSA guy fondled my emer-
February 24
I wish this pen had Technicolor ink in it. From gray, gloomy
Seattle to this!
Bali.
I’m in Bali.
This has been the longest day of my life.
I got in this afternoon, bleary and buckled in the joints
from twenty hours of flying. After Jonah and I said good-
bye, I was so teary and freaked out, my sister gave me two
cigarettes in case I should need them. I put them in the
pocket of my gray wool pants, and when I got off the plane
in Denpasar I realized they were both broken and my pocket
was full of loose tobacco.
Which was unfortunate. I could have used one last dose
of home before hopping into a stranger’s Land Rover to drive
north to Penestanan, a village outside of the town of Ubud,
which, according to my travel guides, is Bali’s spiritual and
artistic center.
First impression of Bali? It’s hot. Like, steam-room hot.
The tiny Denpasar airport is the size of Seattle’s ferry termi-
nal, and as full of white people. These other white people
were smart enough to wear linen, though. The French-
woman next to me in customs eyed me in my black turtle-
neck and then leaned into her husband. “Quelle idiote,” she
said. “Elle est surement Americaine.”
you know. it’s funny how scared I was. That was only
a few hours ago, and already I’m looking back at that
person— that person who was me— and feel like I should
have just relaxed and waited to see what would happen,
instead of imagining all sorts of terrible things. I mean, what
good does that imagining do, anyway? You won’t know what
something’s like till you’re there.
Take my roommate, for instance. The only thing I knew
to expect when I got to my lodgings in Penestanan was that
Midnight
I think I’ve pinpointed the characteristic that makes Jessica
so strange and new to me: she’s earnest. Like, really earnest.
Most of my friends are funny, ironic, sarcastic types. Theater
people, writers, readers. You know, um, smokers. Smokers
are always ironic, aren’t they? (Although I’ve been hearing
rumors that we’re all going to lose our irony soon, now that
9/11’s happened. Apparently the age we’ve been in was an
ironic one, but now it’s over. Which is a weird thing, consid-
ering irony has survived most recorded wars, revolutions, and
plagues, but whatever, we’re a sensitive nation these days.)
No, Jessica’s earnest, and perpetually inspired. It’s like
she’s piped into some incredibly moving radio channel that
keeps telling her the Greatest News Ever. When she’s espe-
cially excited, her voice climbs to a silvery blue pitch and I
start to wonder if she’s going to break into song. When she
told me about the bodywork she does— something called
craniosacral massage— she said, “It’s just! So! Amazing!
That I get to do this incredible! Ah! Work.”
After I unpacked my things, I went downstairs just as
the sun was setting and found Jessica sitting at the table on
the veranda, writing in a spiral-bound journal. I sat down
across from her and we stared out over the darkening rice
paddies and listened.
There’s a gamelan orchestra that practices in a pavilion
in the middle of the rice paddies. All women, Jessica said.
The sounds they make are incredible, like a delicate silver
web hanging in the air one minute and the next, medieval
February 25
Morning
It’s 7 a.m. I’m up at 7 a.m. This is incredible. I wish I could
call everybody back home and tell them SEE? I CAN GET
UP EARLY.
Especially if I’m insanely jet-lagged, I guess.
We have class in two hours. I’m sitting on our tiled veranda,
watching Jessica. I’m eating papaya with lime and drinking
ginger tea, even though it’s about four thousand degrees out
here. I would love some coffee, but Indra told me before I left
Seattle to prepare for a “cleansing” two months. Which means
no coffee, no sugar, no alcohol, and no meat.
Oh, and no sex. I told Indra that wouldn’t be a big deal,
since I was leaving the boyfriend at home, and she gave me
this funny look and then said, “No sex of any kind. You can
just as easily drain your own battery as another’s.”
Exclamation point!
Jessica is sitting lotus-style on the edge of the veranda, her
head tilted back, eyes closed. She’s pressing a large Starbucks
travel mug against her chest, and every few minutes she low-
ers her head to the mug and sips from it, then she raises her
face back up to the sun, smiling slightly, as if in worship.
I don’t blame her. For worshiping this place, I mean. Ex-
cept that I don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t even want to
blink, I just want to take it all in. It’s spectacular. Palm trees,
papaya trees, a slice of the turquoise pool sparkling below
us. It’s like eating breakfast in a glinting emerald sanctuary.
There’s a small temple off to the left of the veranda, with
a sculpture of a tiny, sexless god peeking out at us, smiling
placidly. It almost looks like the god and Jessica are smiling
at each other. Like they’re both in on the secret.
I did ask Jessica if she thought it would be bad if I al-
lowed myself coffee in the morning. She said yes. Which
is an understatement. She basically responded as if I’d sug-
gested it might be okay if I freebased cocaine before class.
“No biggie,” I said, but it came out in a sort of ragged
whisper. The thought of going without coffee made my throat
hurt in the way it does just before I break into uncontrollable
sobs. But that was fifteen minutes ago. I’m better now. I think.
OH SHIT. Oh my God. Oh God, gross. I just reached
Evening
Oh no. Oh God. Oh Jesus. Oh, this is bad. I don’t even
know how to say it.
No, wait. I do know how to say it. They’re a cult. A cult!
But it’s not Kool-Aid they’re drinking.
Shit, Jessica’s coming. I’ve gotta go. I know what’s in
that Starbucks mug of hers. Run, run.
Okay. I’m ready to get this down, now. I’ve escaped the
house and am safely ensconced in a little restaurant called
Wayan’s Warung. Wayan is this great big woman with, like,
five babies on her hips at all times and a booming laugh. I
wish I could tell her why I’m here alone.
But I don’t think it would translate.
Today started off so well. I got to class this morning a
little bit nervous, but excited to see Indra. And right away I
PEOPLE ARE
unappealing*
*EVEN ME
9
non- equity
I studied acting for four years at the university level and received a
BFA. That stands for Bachelor of Fine Arts to most, but my
mother’s favorite joke was that it stood instead for Big Fucking
Actor. “Look who it is!” she’d say when I’d fly home to visit. “My
big fucking actor of a daughter!” My stock response was “Very
funny,” to which she’d reply, “Well, I thought we ought to laugh
instead of cry about it.”
“It” was the hour of reckoning: I had my BFA, my memorized
monologue. I’d re-soled my jazz shoes and purchased a beret. It
was time to scrap the “student” portion from my title and gradu-
ate to “Actor.”
Ever watch TV? See a movie? Attend a Broadway show? If so,
perhaps you’ve noticed acting as a career path for the physically
attractive. Some of the beauties can act to boot, but first and fore-
most they’re oddly and unfairly pretty. On the attractiveness scale
from one to ten, these girls are tens. Conversely, I was not. I’m not
gratuitously self-deprecating. I’m just being realistic. Sporting a
98
Barr_9780307382450_3p_all_r1.qxp:. 1/2/09 10:16 AM Page 99
FUPA and faint wisps of back hair, I hung just left of center: a
four. Stilettos, a hint of rouge, a nicely tailored dress— these
devices inch me toward a five, a six at best. But you wouldn’t stop
me on the street to say, “You ought to be in pictures!” And were
you privy to one or another of my college acting projects— let’s
say you’d been at Barnes & Noble’s magazine rack on the night I
hit the open mic— then you, like Peggy Pearson, would have told
me not to quit my day job. And you, like Peggy Pearson, would
have been ignored. I clung to my acting ambitions like a million
others so clearly destined to fail because the sparest shred of tal-
ent (I do do a great Tina Turner impersonation) mixed with a
pinch of encouragement and the desperate hope for fame can con-
vince you to pursue a ludicrous ambition. I have to be an Actor!
you decide. I can’t live a Life of Regret!
You’re primed to try. And primed to fail.
One Sunday morning not long after my college graduation, I
was on the phone with my mother. “Just called for a chat with my
big fucking actor,” she announced. “How’s it going, anyway?”
People love to ask you how it’s going when you’re in hot pursuit
of an acting career. Unstable artistic paths attract this line of
questioning and it’s ironic, I think, seeing as how the honest
answer is almost always “bad.” Variations include “very bad” or
“soul-suckingly bad.” Any actor who says otherwise is lost in a
maze of denial and the reason is this: Actors with careers on the
upswing don’t get asked the question in the first place, since, in
accordance with the nature of the beast, everyone already knows.
Everyone’s seen him/her in that movie starring Colin Farrell, the
Tylenol commercial, the walk-on role in a CSI show. So instead
of questions getting asked, praise is given: “You were wonderful
in that Tylenol commercial!”
A successful actor needn’t explain herself nor laundry list her
accomplishments; she’s too busy basking in her public praise. In
contrast, it’s the rest of us who must hone our desperate mantras.
Asked how the acting’s going, we throw down the card of over-
compensation.
99
Barr_9780307382450_3p_all_r1.qxp:. 1/2/09 10:16 AM Page 100
S A R A B A R RO N
“Not I, Captain!”
“Do you even know how true Christians love, you whore?”
S A R A B A R RO N
bruised her own pelvis and cracked her sister’s ribs. Not only was
I being funny, I thought, but I was also commenting on the nega-
tive side effects of anorexia in Hollywood! This sort of multilay-
ered artistry was rewarded with a callback, yes, but not an actual
part. For as gifted as I may have been at mimed celebrity incest,
I’m not good at impressions. I mean, sure, my Tina Turner can
stop traffic, but the folks at Lil’ Devils needed someone with a
solid Walken or DeNiro.
This tease and denial of the callback broke my father’s heart.
“Did you hear back about the sketch comedy group?” he’d ask
expectantly. He wanted so badly to have something to show off
about. At various weddings and Bat or Bar Mitzvahs, we’d both had
occasion to endure the gloating parents of other commercial actors.
“Did you see Kimmy in the Herbal Essences commercial?! She’s
the girl whose hair gets frizzy from the rain?! Wasn’t it AMAZ-
ING?” The way they carry on, you’d think their child won the
Nobel Prize or, at the very least, contributed to society in some
microscopic sliver of a way instead of mugging for the camera
about freesia-scented styling gel. My father craved a taste of this
same sort of undue pride.
“Dad, this is tough to tell you, but I think that Lil’ Devils sketch
group went with someone else.”
“What?”
“I think they needed someone better at impressions.”
“But did they hear you sing?! Did you do your Tina Turner?!”
He was more deluded than a porky pageant mother. He
could not understand how anyone, having borne witness to my
version of “Proud Mary,” would—could!— deny me the chance
of an awed, adoring crowd. I imagined my mother trying to
explain it.
“Joe, it’s time to accept that maybe acting isn’t Sara’s forte.”
“What?” He’d try to convince himself that she was the one
who’d gone mad. “Have you gone mad?!”
“No.” She’d stay calm. “I have not. Now let’s focus on the posi-
102
Barr_9780307382450_3p_all_r1.qxp:. 1/2/09 10:16 AM Page 103
tives: She doesn’t have cancer. She doesn’t do drugs. She’s learned
to fold shirts at Banana Republic.”
My mother had begun to make progress, combating the shared
hopes and dreams of my father and me, when the impossible
occurred and I scored a part. Two, actually. I’d be playing the dual
roles of Orange Girl and Sister Marthe in a quintuple–Off
Broadway production of Cyrano de Bergerac.
“Where’s ‘quintuple–Off Broadway’?” asked my mom. I could
hear the air quotes in her voice. “Downtown? Uptown? Brooklyn?
Queens?”
“New Jersey,” I answered.
“Do they have theaters in New Jersey?”
They do, in fact, though this particular production would be
mounted in the director’s apartment, in the living room he’d par-
titioned off with shower curtains.
“New Jersey has theaters,” I explained, “though I, personally,
will be performing in a much more avant-garde space than that.”
“Where?”
“A loft.”
Loft sounded artier than Jersey apartment.
“Are you getting paid?”
“What?”
“Are you getting paid?”
“I’m not sure I understand the question.”
As far as I was concerned, the opportunity to play the dual
parts of Orange Girl and Sister Marthe was payment enough.
Orange Girl (lest you’ve forgotten her noteworthy scene in act I)
sells her goods to fellow villagers. She asks, “Oranges? Milk?
Raspberry syrup? Lemonade?” And then just after Cyrano’s
entrance, after he’s said, “One more word of that same song, and
I destroy you all!” Orange Girl exclaims, “What an outrage!”
I’d say both those lines and then have two and a half hours to
kill “backstage” before reemerging in act V as Sister Marthe. I’d
say, “Sister Claire stole a plum out of the tarte this morning!”
103
Barr_9780307382450_3p_all_r1.qxp:. 1/2/09 10:16 AM Page 104
S A R A B A R RO N
just minutes before (spoiler alert!) Cyrano confesses his love for
Roxane and dies.
I’d use my rehearsal time to practice alternate line readings
(“WHAT an outrage. What an OUTRAGE!”), a diligence I hoped
would impress the director, but it seemed rather to annoy him.
One day I let one slip that was especially robust:
S A R A B A R RO N
lete’s foot. So what was next? Had this production been a fluke?
Was it worth it to keep trying? Well, it goes against my natural
instincts to keep trying. I’m more of a quitter: When the going
gets tough, I do get going. It’s just that my brand of going takes
me away from completing a goal instead of driving me ambi-
tiously toward it. The prospect of being an actor started to look
much more difficult than I had imagined, and in an effort to clear
my head and gain perspective, I decided to take a couple months
off from the audition circuit and review my other options. My
BFA paired with my Banana Republic employment had earned me
the following skill set: efficient shirt-folder, masterful Windexer
(at the start of every shift I’d Windex all the mirrors in the fitting
rooms). Maggie suggested that I tack on the adjective hilarious.
Specifically, after seeing my closing-night performance in the role
of Orange Girl/Sister Marthe, she’d said, “Wow. You were hilari-
ous.”
“Really?” I asked. Sister Marthe, to remind you, makes her
entrance for the big, dramatic death scene. “That’s not quite what
I was going for.”
“Well, you were.” She shrugged. “You and that paper-towel habit
had the audience in stitches.” Maggie meant it as a compliment, but
I was worried seeing as how my supposed hilarity was unintentional.
“I’m not sure that that’s a good thing.”
“Well, then try something where it would be. You did really
well at that improv troupe audition, remember? Or what about
stand-up?”
Stand-up. Interesting. Now that Maggie mentioned it, it didn’t
sound half bad. Another person might have seen the creative foray
for exactly what it is, a horrifying chance to humiliate oneself
before an audience and— bonus!— the only career path less stable
and more difficult than acting. But I’m a renegade where practi-
cality is concerned, so to me it sounded fun. I liked the idea of
taking a break from the acting routine, all the while staying in
pursuit of a goal that involved a stage, attention, and applause.
And laughter! Laughter I’d encouraged!
107
Barr_9780307382450_3p_all_r1.qxp:. 1/2/09 10:17 AM Page 108
S A R A B A R RO N
108
Barr_9780307382450_3p_all_r1.qxp:. 1/2/09 10:17 AM Page 109
10
bar rel of laugh
S A R A B A R RO N
dozen times from other comics. “Or did Gwyneth look like she
was sporting some serious FAT-BOY BOOBIES?!”
I’d shout the phrase “fat-boy boobies” like I’d offered up some
nugget of comedic gold, but the audience always seemed to dis-
agree. The notion of Gwyneth with breasts smaller than my
brother’s never succeeded in tickling anyone’s funny bone but my
own and consistently I’d leave the stage to an exhausted heckle
like, “Thank god,” or “Seriously?”
Afterward I’d sulk in the corner with an amaretto sour chased
by the preferred lie of all crap comics: “It’s their loss if they don’t
get me. I’m just too highbrow.”
My Britney Spears joke (and this was BTF, mind you: Before
the Fall) focused on a song of hers called “I’m a Slave 4 U,” a
three-minute masterpiece in which she talked about how much
she liked to dance and have sex. There was this one line of the
chorus where she sang, “I really want to spend tonight with you /
I really want to do what you want me to.” And from the way she
performed it— the belabored exhalation, the sigh and moan that
accompanied each note— you’d think she was mid-orgasm. All
this hemming and hawing just because she’d donned a pair of
couture underwear over her designer jeans? Just because she’d
thrust her crotch at a muscled hip-hop dancer? It struck me as
unrealistic, primarily because at this stage of her career, she still
laid claim to her virginity. Well I, as a comedian, wanted to com-
ment on this funny juxtaposition. So I’d quote the lyric to the
audience: “She sings, ‘I really want to spend tonight with you / I
really want to do what you want me to!’ Which we all know
means . . .” And then my punch line, “ANAL SEX!”
I’d get the occasional seal of approval from a guy in the audi-
ence: “Anal. Totally.” And one time a guy heckled after me that his
girlfriend had “an asshole tighter than a baby’s fist!”
You’d think a comment like that would force a joke into retire-
ment, but no. It stayed a fixture in my repertoire, a manifestation
of my comedic genius. I’m getting the audience to reflect on their
own lives, I’d think. I’m an artist.
110
Barr_9780307382450_3p_all_r1.qxp:. 1/2/09 10:17 AM Page 111
S A R A B A R RO N
S A R A B A R RO N
S A R A B A R RO N
117