I turned to Adi, my only accompaniment on this cold night of karaoke with in walking distance from my house. Adi insists on calling it “the ’roke,” and I never correct him. “I want to sing ‘Roar.’”
“The Katy Perry song ‘Roar’?”
“Yeah. I mean, I used to say I hated it, but it’s been helping me out lately. I know it’s a little trite, but the whole ‘I am a champion’ thing is, like, making my brain want to stop eating itself.”
“It’s not trite if it’s helping.”
“Yeah, but the sneaky thing about Katy Perry is that she has an oddly dynamic range and I don’t.”
“There is that. Do you have a backup?”
“‘Solsbury Hill,’ by Peter Gabriel. There’s that line in there that goes, ‘I’m never where I wanna be.’”
“That’s sadder than ‘Roar.’”
“But just as apt.”
It was early February and I was busy as hell trying to show another me. Things bounced back a little in February. On the first, I got me engraved: a 1957 Plymouth Fury, all red and white, appeared on my forearm thanks to Master Inkslinger John Meredith. I dubbed 2014 The Year of Christine, and set about making plans for my birthday, for which I would rent a theater and show the John Carpenter movie and offer cheese.
I began making more appearances onstage; my niche appeared to be storytelling about my weird sex life. Sometimes I was naked. Sometimes I was clothed. I also acted in my friend Allen McRae’s show; literally acted. It was the first time I got actual real pointers on how to act in a certain scene and not just be me but louder. One time after a storytelling gig, standup guy Justin P. Drew said that my set at the Middle East Restaurant was “my funniest ever,” which I appreciated, even though I was in the grips of a terrible, unending sinus infection.
Little by little, my new comedy show at Johnny D’s was taking off. I was attracting new and recurring talent. Audiences had begun to show up. My show was in the process of becoming a modest success, in part because I had finally figured out how to promote myself and in part because I’m a nice guy who wants people to succeed.
But damn, did my depression have a way of sticking around.
I’m not sure how much my diet – basically, no snacks and one chai a day – affected that. Probably a lot. I started a new cardio routine at the gym that involved burpees and sidebends and kettlebells and I wanted to die most mornings. I went out and bought things to make myself feel better, because more debt always helps. I got new jackets, new glasses, cut my hair a new way, and got the aforementioned Fury on my arm. None of it really dug me out.
One of the highlights of my month – my year? – was flying down to Athens to see my friend Joe and the Drive-By Truckers, playing their Homecoming shows in Athens, Georgia. There’s nothing quite like the thrill and the buzz of being pressed up against that stage, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley inches from your face, as they scream it all out and you scream it all back, sweat pouring off of you, whiskey churning inside, and you know all the words, all of them, and they debut new songs because their new album – the first since you got into them – is coming out soon and you are amped, amped, because you’re finally in on the ground floor and you finally know what it’s like to be there at release day, and this show is so good, so fucking good, and you never want it to end, ever, and that ringing in your ears is the price you pay for transcendence.
Also, I was able to give Joe the heads-up on something I set up before I lost my big money job: an all-expenses paid trip to Disneyland that spring. When I have money, I spend it on the people I love. Also me. But them too.
I wrote several major articles for FEARnet.com, including one that looked ahead to a really great spring for Stephen King fans. Unfortunately, Stephen King writers were SOL. Because Comcast bought FEARnet and one by one, all the freelancers went abracadabra, bye. For those of you counting at home, that’s two paying jobs I lost in the space of as many months.
I took a cheese class. I discovered I had a gluten intolerance. I bought boots so I could look more like Patterson Hood. I shattered my phone on the same day that I got an eye infection. I beat A Link Between Worlds.
And because rollercoasters of emotion are what this year decided to feature, I spent a quiet, lovely fifteenth anniversary with my man, Shawn. We had Indian food and watched the mostly terrible but also mostly amazing film Knightriders. Fifteen years is a pretty good run, and in what was turning out to be a difficult year, I was glad – as always – to have Shawn at my side, helping me navigate the choppy waters.
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