I Enjoy Being a Girl Fuckup.

Toyota Comedy Festival 2001
Originally uploaded by branleighbarber.

PLEASE NOTE: While this may sound somewhat melancholy, it's actually a kind of embracing of myself and my eccentric and often slightly self- destructive behavior.

My parents often wonder when I went off the deep end, as far as graduate school is/was concerned. I had moved out to New York solely to pursue the goal of an MFA, but my interest was waning in an evident manner. I was spending more and more time doing comedy stuff, and less and less time pursuing the theater administrative work I was meant to in order to do well in the career field I had chosen. I can pinpoint it to the exact night.

This was taken after my very last day of finals in year two of grad school. It was also the evening of a good friend at the time's birthday. I had gone to the gym prior, and meant to drop in for a quick drink and then go home. And, of course, as we all know, whenever one plans to be responsible with alcohol, one must then double the regular amount of drinking one does and divide that by my first (and last) Red Bull & Vodka. Then factor in all of us trouping over to the old UCB Theater to the improv nerd party night of yore- Thursday Harold Night- and things get blurry. I am fairly certain that's the night I knocked over a bunch of my & my friends' empty Ballantine 40s during someone's show. What an asshole.

I remember staggering to McManus and forcing someone to slow dance with me to one of the 50 overplayed songs on the old jukebox. I am thinking it was "Bridge Over Troubled Water". I don't remember putting the flower in my hair. I do remember not planning to get that drunk, because I wore what has to be the MOST UNAPPEALING, UNFLATTERING, POST-GYM NIGHTMARE OUTFIT OF ALL TIME (this is where my phrase "gay PE teacher" stems from) and my hair is a shambles. I have on fucking Adidas shower shoes.

At about 2 AM-ish I remember Curtis (before he was my friend) coming up to us, addressing us as "ladies", and asking us to go to a party for the Toyota Comedy Festival.

A friend was upset over the fact that a guy she liked left without asking for her number. On the way out of McManus, I saw some butcher paper sticking out of a trashcan on 7th & 19th and decided to make her a sign reading, "Don't be sad, he's gay". [See cringe-inducing photo]

There was a blurry taxi ride. I recall being on the roof of the Gershwin, one of the four of us girls getting randomly kissed in the elevator, and spitting mouthfuls of keg beer on another as she was getting hit on by some very nice guy (who I suspect hates me for it to this day; I give him that). I think I was lying on a lawn chair at one point- never on the ground, because it was covered in Astroturf. I know I accidentally knocked a bottle off the top of the building and felt really, really guilty. And my friend Rebecca climbed the water tower.

We ended up at a diner at 7 am on Friday morning, where whenever one of my girlfriends would mention a guy I would interrupt her and demand, "Yeah, but does he have a big dick?" The lone guy who was with us looked fascinated and horrfied by my quest for schlong knowledge. I think he considered it a challenge of some sort. I remember smelling Ivory soap and Listerine on someone and realizing I smelled like the warm version of the now-fermented keg beer I had expelled from my mouth onto my horribly ugly shirt. I remember pointing & laughing at people who were going to work in their suits and high heels. I think that's when something in my just sort of snapped and I knew I could never do that for the rest of my life. I just couldn't, even if I tried. I knew I'd fail. It was terrifying. It was grand.

There's more goings on from that night- it went on into the afternoon- but that's enough. I think it serves to make it clear how, in one single night, I freaked out and couldn't handle the fact that I went to school to get a Masters in something it turned out I loathed. I hadn't gotten that drunk in years, maybe ever. It made me remember that I like having fun and being rambunctious and loud, and mostly not trying to pretend that I know what the fuck is going on and that I'm in control and I don't feel like acting mature. Because people, let me assure you- let the photo assure you- I am not.