A week of resentment

Waiting on a friend’s good news

A Diary.

DAY 1

Art has entered a competition for plus 35 year old comedians called ‘Old Comedian of the Year’. 

This is somewhat of a surprise because as alternative comedians, Art and I don’t do comedy in order to get ahead. We do comedy for comedy’s sake. 

Still, I can see why he’s done it. It’s one of those fanciful acts of Carpe Diem. Art is 65 years after all, and running out of shots.

‘I think that’s really great’, I say. 

‘Why is it really great?’ Art asks suspiciously.

‘Well, you’re trying , aren’t you. You’re giving it a real shot…before it’s too late.’ 

‘Oh fuck off.’

‘No, I mean it. I think it’s really good.’ 

Art sighs. 

‘It’s all a waste of time. They don’t want someone in their 60s. They want someone they can promote and put money behind.’, he says. 

This is the truth but I have learned throughout the years that it is my duty as a friend to deny the truth if the truth is unkind. 

‘Oh, don’t be silly. We don’t know that, do we? I mean who can tell what they want or don’t want in a competition?’

Art, astute as usual, has started cackling hysterically, reeling his body over the bench on Clerkenwell Green. 

I have made a tactical error. I have forgotten that I am not an actress, and the truth has slipped out betwixt my teeth. 

‘Yeah…this is why I don't have many friends, I suppose!’ I exclaim. 

‘Don’t I know it Rosana…Don’t I know it.’ 

On the train home, I muse on the fact that Art might make it to the final of a big comedy competition. Something about it doesn’t sit quite right with me. 

DAY 2 

I stay late in the pub, drinking with two other comedians, Stuart and Rambo. 

They are pleasant enough individuals although I wouldn’t venture as far as to call them friends. 

Stuart is one of those supposedly handsome comedians with slicked back hair who wears rings on his fingers as if he’s a rock star, and like a rock star, loves the sound of his own voice and will not interrupt a monologue no matter how long he’s been on it. 

Rambo, on the other hand, is one of those  rare chameleon friends who has the capacity to act either with the delight of a dignified knight or with the deviousness of a snake in the grass. 

His acts of kindness involve getting me gigs and asking me how I’m getting on with the eye situation but he is also a man fully capable of plunging me into the depths of despair with his underhanded sarcasm. 

Despite these obvious character flaws, I have spent many a hours confiding in Stuart and Rambo and thus feel a reluctant kinship with them both. This is all friendship is if you ask me. Reluctant kinship. 

I tell them about Art and the competition. 

Rambo is, on today’s occasion, in his devious mood which is easy to tell because he circles the wine glass with his index finger and his lower jaw protrudes forward like an open shelf. 

I want to shut the shelf closed but it’s too late. 

He is about to pounce. 

‘It’s interesting, isn’t it…that you don’t apply to competitions anymore. Have you thought about why that is?’ he says. 

Here we go. The slippery little leech. 

‘No….Why, have you?’ I ask. 

His lips are pink from the wine and glow in the effervescent light of the candle like blood. 

‘It might just appear that maybe you’ve stopped…believing in it.’ 

‘Stopped believing in it?’ I ask even though I know damn well what he’s talking about. 

‘Your dream, your little…dream.’ 

He smiles a wicked smile like a villain that’s just detonated a bomb, and his eyes glow with joy, a joy expunged at my expense. 

I try not to take it personally. 

Shake, shake, shake it off like water off a duck. 

Rambo is just one of those comedians who presumably deals with his own comedy-related pain by expanding it, turning it into a monster and then inflicting that monster on another open mic comedian at 11pm at night. 

It’s not the most graceful of jobs but it gets him through the day. 

On the walk home, and in the safe solitude of the Georgian bricks of Clerkenwell, I search for an answer. 

Why have I stopped entering competitions? 

Do I really believe that anything will come out of my comedy pursuits? 

The answer hits me like a blow. 

No. I don’t. I really, really don’t. 

He has done it. 

Rambo’s monster is atop me, and he’s got me by the neck. 

DAY 3

I find out that another good friend of mine, Tom, is in the competition with Art, and the heat is taking place tonight. 

I feel strangely vexed about this news, and I have no idea why. 

It is only later in the day that the truth settles upon me like the dregs of London’s tap water set on an afternoon cup of tea. 

I am a woman torn between good and bad instincts. 

On one hand, I want Art and Tom to go through the first round of the competition because I am their friend, and as I despise any friends who have ever resented me for a minor success, I endeavour to live my life in earnest pursuit of not being such a friend. 

On the other hand, I am terrified. 

I am terrified of what will happen to me if Art and Tom get ahead in the competition. 

Of course, I know very well what will happen to me. 

The familiar pang in my stomach. The pang of getting to the platform and watching the train depart the station but not just any train. Your train. You were supposed to be on that train. 

I can already see the pointless fog of my weak crackling cry moving through the frosty air. 

What about me? 

What about me? 

DAY 4

I receive a text message from Tom to say that neither Art nor Tom have made it through the competition. 

It should be said that both Art and Tom have been going for 8-15 years and so the fact that neither of them made it through the first qualifying round of a competition that sees novice comedians sailing through, is quite frankly, the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. 

I lean back in my swivel chair and muse on this for a time being. 

As sad as I was for their disappointment, it was an undeniable comfort to me that these two pals did not make it through. How could it not be so? 

It was a comfort to know that sure, perhaps I wasn’t getting anywhere in comedy or in life itself but here was the great news, neither were any of my friends. 

Oh, what a wonderful comfort that was. 

I recall a line from a book on the topic of success, claiming that you should always pick friends who are more successful than you. 

Hah. How wrong the writer had been. 

I get up from my swivel chair, walk to the kitchen and bite into a grape. 

DAY 5

All is not right with the world. 

I wake up to the news that Art has made it through to the next round of the competition on a wildcard. 

‘What?! How could this happen? You never told me about a wildcard!’ I shout down my phone. 

‘Yea…They never told us about it. At least I don’t remember them telling us about it.’, Art, who has a brain injury that impacts his memory, explains. 

‘So they just bring in the concept of a wildcard without telling anyone about it? That doesn’t seem right to me!’ 

‘Ta Rosana - it’s nice to know how happy you are for me.’

‘I am happy for you. I’m just appalled at…how they’re treating acts these days!’ 

DAY 6 

I meet Art at our usual bench in Clerkenwell . 

I have purchased a £1 pack of shortbread in the local Waitrose which I hand to him nonchalantly.

‘Too kind’, Art says and opens the pack in his blaze manner, starting to munch on the first biscuit as if it is rightfully his. 

I am glad I bought him the biscuits. It is the duty of even a bad friend to pretend every so often that they are a good friend. 

‘I know you prefer Digestives but they were too expensive’, I explain.

£2.50 was too steep a price to pay off my guilt, and I hadn’t committed murder after all. 

‘Nice to know our friendship has a price’, he says sarcastically with his mouth full of shortbread. 

I reach into my bag and hand him a homemade card that says, ‘Congratulations, I  am genuinely happy for you.’ 

He reads it and cackles. 

‘What’s funny?’ I ask. 

‘It would’ve been more believable that you were happy for me if you hadn’t underlined the word genuinely 3 times.’, he says. 

I strain my neck to look at the card as if I’ve forgotten it. 

‘Oh yeah, true.’ 

Art starts cackling again, and his eyes shine with a healthy glow. I can see he is pleased with the card. 

For a moment, I am pleased too. 

It is that familiar joy that comes with the acknowledgment of friendship. 

It really is nice to have a friend, even if it is a friend that might make it through to the finals of a major, national comedy competition. 

‘It’s all a waste of time. They’re not going to put through a 65 year old, are they…’

‘Yeah, probably not’, I answer. 

‘Are you going to come watch me if I make it to the finals?’ he asks with his mouth full of shortbread.

Then I imagine Art at the final, standing next to a bunch of people almost half his age. The picture would be published in Chortle presumably, and God knows where else. I obviously couldn’t miss the actual show, watching my good old pal doing his ridiculous puns in front of a hundred people at a theatre. An actual theatre.

No, I suppose I could not miss that.

It would be the laugh of a lifetime. The laugh of a goddamn lifetime.