HYPNIC JERKS

We finally made it into February, and if I thought the world was on fire before, holy shit are we in it now. I knew things would be bad under the new administration, but knowing something academically is not the same as witnessing it in real-time. I’m still not sure how to appropriately balance my attention so that I’m not paralyzed by a constant bombardment of absurdity, cruelty, and dread. One thing that makes this all the more disorienting is how happy I am. I still feel an intense joy every time I sit down to work, every moment I get to spend with friends, family, and loved ones, no matter what fucked-up shit is going down on the national or world stage.

Saturday night, I did standup for the first time in a while. I co-produce a comedy showcase at Squeaky Pete’s in downtown Baton Rouge—though if I’m being honest, “co-produce” is overselling it. It’s Terence Delaine’s show, and I just kind of work the board, and I do time when he’s into that. I do want to learn how to actively produce, but that process is complicated by the fact that I’m working assiduously on this novel and trying to figure out where Kechi and I will be living in the near(ish) future.

The set went well-enough. I’m rusty, of course. It’s been a long time since I had the time and access to tell jokes on a consistent basis. Nowadays, I go up whenever I can for a few reasons. One is that I still love being around comedy. I’m married to a comic, I have a lot of comedian friends, and I’ve never forgotten the visceral joy of what it feels like to rock a room. Another reason is that DEAD END BOYs is largely set in the New Orleans comedy scene, and the privilege of telling jokes in South Louisiana, especially, is important to me. I had some decent jokes Saturday night—some of them new—but I wasn’t generally happy with the set. For one thing, it wasn’t cohesive. I hadn’t taken the time to actually arrange its beats what with everything going on in life and the world. Another issue was one that mostly mattered to me because of the particular setting. I found it hard to connect with the audience because in that bar, it's hard to hear laughter from the stage. I know I got laughs, I could see people, but for me laughs are cookies, and part of the magic of standup is instead of waiting for a response via email, I tell my joke, and I either get my cookie right away, or I don’t get it, and I know I have to do better next time.

I don’t think it’s a controversial perspective that Black people, queer Black people, disabled people don’t have the luxury of despair. I didn’t fall apart the first time Ole Whatsisname took office, and I’m not going to do that now. I’ve worked too hard and gained too much ground to let it all come apart because people who have either amputated their humanity or never had any to begin with are trying to set me back to nothing. I think I do a good job of maintaining and building positivity without deluding myself or tipping into toxic territory. Positivity doesn’t mean a damn thing if I’m not willing to acknowledge the negative, and baby, I am terrified! For myself, for the people I care about, for other vulnerable people whom I don’t even know.

There’s that old saw we see over and over again, especially online: “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.” I understand that sentiment, and I respond to it on a deep level because in many ways it expresses the central preoccupation of my creative work. I think that’s true for a lot of us. I have some issues with it, though—for one thing, I do know how—at least, dimly, and growing in my chosen field(s) means finding new ways to relate to others by examining myself, by using the unconscious parts of me to communicate directly with the sleeping selves of others. I genuinely believe that you should care about other people because they’re not as other as you might believe, and that in doing so, you are caring also for yourself.

 This coming Saturday, I’ll be appearing at MidCity Microcon at the Main Library here in Baton Rouge. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’ll say in my keynote address, how I can connect with my audience in a way that will matter to them and to me. I’m still not sure, but the shape of my address is beginning to emerge. Over the years—not just in my 20-year career as an author, but in my personal life, I’ve done many things I never thought possible. In some ways, losing as much weight as I have is the least of these. Thinking and writing about all these things on my mind and on my heart has helped me bring the recent events into sharper focus. I helped Kechi write and perform her one-woman show, which is very specific about her perspective, her experience wearing her identity in the world. I got word this weekend that “Fat Kids” made it onto the Locus Recommended Reading List. It’s not my first time on the list, but I do believe it’s my first time on it with a piece of short fiction. That novelette is my own very specific story concerned with my body, my identity, and how it connects with the world around me and the events of my own life. It’s a Black story because I’m Black. It’s a story of fatness, its fallout, and its influence on my life and perspective because I’m fat, but what I’m most trying to say with that work, with all my works is that these quirks of identity of perspective that shape our experiences and worldviews are the very things that bind us together, that make it possible for us to locate our common ancestor, that pre-human being dreaming in its tree whose hypnic jerks save it from tumbling to its death. So, when the powers that be try to convince me that I’m nothing, my people are nothing, I know better, and I won’t fucking pretend otherwise.