by Holly Lorka
When I was eight, we colored with crayons. Dad brought us reams of heavy white paper from his job, and we sat at the kitchen table while designing our masterpieces. We drew landscapes or cars or hot air balloons, all filled with happy people and sunshine and butterflies. Even the car pictures had butterflies, because this is how we built things when we were children, out of purple and burnt sienna and gold and silver. Out of sunshine and forever smiles.
When I was forty-three, I learned how to cry in the shower. I learned to sit down and let the water beat hot upon my head and mix with the snot and other things coming out of me to travel down the drain to Nashville or wherever the Dukes of Hazzard lived. I learned to get loud and sloppy, secure in the knowledge that only the cat could hear me; his already low opinion of me mattered little. I learned that honoring sadness is a gift. The Universe has linked sadness to joy, and to cut off one is to deprive yourself of the other. That Universe is a fucker and also invented hangovers, if that’s any clue as to how maddeningly clever It is.
When I was forty-three, I sat down in my shower and cried until my fingers puckered and my skin was steamy red-hot. I then got out, dried off, stuck my tongue out at my cat, and went about the rest of my day. That afternoon my neighbor decided to wash her car with her kids and invited me over to hang out and drink pink wine with her. For the record, I don’t think pink wine is ever the right thing to do, unless you’re my dad, who drinks it over ice and doesn’t give a shit. But I walked down there anyway.
There they were, kind of washing the car. We’ll call it more of an approximation. Mostly they were spraying water at things not anywhere near the car, like some bugs and that one tree over there. Then my neighbor took the hose and sprayed the kids, who squealed and giggled and ran away and came back for more. Water ran into little two-year-old Zoe Plum’s green happy-faced galoshes, so that when she bounced around they made this beautiful wet squoik sound. And there it was: joy. Beautiful, unfettered joy that arrived unannounced and cupped us all in its capable hands and held us there for just the shiniest minute.
When I was forty-three, I learned that while the Universe is a fucker, It is a fair fucker.
daydream mercedes hand job
When I was a kid I wanted to be a lot of things. I wanted to be Fonzie, I wanted to be a cowboy, and for a long time I wanted to be Stefanie Powers’ boyfriend. Basically, if there was a cool or nicely dressed man with a pretty girl or a horse nearby, I wanted to be him. If there was a saloon fight or a moderate speed chase in a convertible, even better. Anything was preferable to wearing my stupid Holly Hobbie pajamas and going to bed with my sister when it was still light outside. I would lie awake in my bed and look out the window, devising elaborate stories in my head where I was always heroic and incredibly handsome.
There was, however, one thing that I wanted to be even more than all of these others, even more than I wanted to be a boy. I knew in every tooth, every hair follicle, every cell of my body that this thing was my destiny. It’s like I came into this world with it already done, I just had to figure out what it meant.
When my friends were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, they said astronaut, teacher, or fireman. When I was asked that question, I responded the same way every time.
“I want to be a superstar.”
Every single time, that’s what I said. I didn’t really know what it meant. My mother listened to Carole King and my father listened to Elvis. I pictured my superstardom as some victorious amalgam of them both. I could gyrate on stage in my gold suit and great hair while my fans wept, from the magic of my mere presence as much as from the poignancy of my lyrics. Cheering and crying were always a part of the picture.
I knew I had problems. I knew from a very young age that I was different, and not in a good way. How was I going to be Elvis if I was a girl? If I was a monster? If I was terribly shy? If I was good at reading and penmanship and English class and bad at singing and hair? I was in the wrong body and had all the wrong skills needed to manifest my destiny. This was so unfair.
So I let that feeling of knowing my destiny slip away. It was too big, too unclear, and too frustrating. Having people around me roll their eyes, pat my head, and shine me on when I told them that I was going to be HUGE got to be a real drag. Thanks, dream-crushers. My ideas changed. I got busy playing kickball and memorizing the presidents. I made myself grow up and out of my knowing this thing. My dream of superstardom drifted away like firecracker smoke. I could still smell it for a while, but then it became altogether intangible. It was too hard, and I had other, more pressing, issues to deal with.
I began to think I’d like to have a career in marine biology. All children, at least all that I knew, went through this phase, and I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s because we get such a pleasant reaction from our parents when we tell them. We decide when we’re twelve that we like dolphins, so we announce, “I’m going to be a marine biologist.” Our parents, envisioning a healthy, tanned child with a PhD and a lifetime pass to SeaWorld, widen their eyes in joy, send a thank-you prayer up to the heavens, and gasp, “That’s wonderful!” They then tell all their friends at the restaurant where your mom works that you’re going to be a scientist, and you think, No, I’m going to play with dolphins.
After that, I wanted to be an artist, then a graphic designer, then an archeologist. By that time I was already in college and had to make a decision because my parents were freaking out. So, of course, I went to nursing school, because I have no idea why.
It kind of worked out. It afforded me the opportunity to live anywhere I wanted to live and have four days off a week. Who gets that? I was lulled, for a while, by that, and by numerous dramas with women and houses and a cat that screamed any time I tried to sleep. I kept journals and took writing classes. Though the ideas of superstardom had withered, I did feel like I was put here to say something important. I just had no clue what it was.
I was funny. I had to be funny. I’d learned early on that it was easier to make people laugh than to let anyone think for a second that I was different. If someone laughed at what I said or did, they tended to like me. They wanted to be around me even though I looked completely awkward in my kitten heels and unruly clutch purse. No one cared while they were laughing, so I got really funny.
People began suggesting that I try stand-up comedy. I’d never considered it. I wasn’t even a fan of comedy except in books, but what did I know? I took a comedy class and wrote some jokes about how I humped my life-sized Barbie when I was a kid. The last night of the class we had to perform at a comedy club in front of an audience. Oh, shit. Why not just ask me to take my clothes off in public? Somehow I did it. I put on my flashiest outfit and stepped on stage, terrified and white-knuckling the microphone. Despite the jokes about Barbie, it went surprisingly well. The first great laugh I got that night miraculously opened up that box where I’d locked up my childhood knowing. I was on a stage in front of a crowd. People were cheering. My hair looked pretty good. It was happening!
I woke up the next day and felt amazing, until I remembered that I’d taken my pants off at a bar after the show. Then I felt amazing and peaceful again: ill-advised public nudity was nothing compared to taking one small step toward my childhood dream. The realization that I might actually get the chance to live up to my potential wiped away the years of subverted angst I had lived with while giving suppositories, renovating houses, and otherwise trying to ignore my destiny. It sounds silly, but I went to a bookstore that day and bought a coffee cup that said, “Good things happen when you go for it.” For years I drank out of that cup and remembered that first night. The memory of that first big laugh propelled me on through tedious open mics, bouts of nervous diarrhea, and late nights full of fried zucchini and cheap beer. Doing comedy is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds.
But it was a great outlet for me. It gave me a purpose for sitting down and writing. All the journals I’d kept over the years became suddenly useful. I combed through all of
them looking for ideas for jokes. There were plenty there.
I became a pretty good comedian and was lucky enough to land some nice gigs. I was just fucked up enough, just wry enough, just dependable enough. I said yes to everything, and because of that I got to be up on many stages and make a lot of people laugh. That felt amazing. I amassed an impressive wardrobe of shiny shirts and belt buckles, and I grew my hair to epic proportions. If I worked hard enough, maybe I could become a famous comedian. That seemed like what I’d been waiting for.
Around the time my comedy career started to really take off, I met a girl and got into a serious relationship. And while I dug her, I let it get more serious than it should have because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be doing at that point in my life. I was forty, for God’s sake, and ready to be settled down. Literally, before I met her, I thought, It’s time to tie up this last end. It’s time for me to be in a serious relationship.
Then very little about my life was based on anything real. I was doing comedy for the accolades and the idea of being famous. I was involved with this girl to tick off the last box. Look at me being funny and lovable! I am great! Everyone should be my friend! I was achieving what I thought I wanted to, and I never missed an opportunity to pat myself on the back for it. In my head I was earning a first-place trophy for most awesome life in the world.
I went on fooling myself for a while. My popularity grew, I was getting paid to tell jokes, and my girlfriend and I bought white dishes at Crate and Barrel. Everyone knows white dishes are the serious ones. The thing is, despite all of this, I couldn’t fool the Universe, which I’ve pointed out is a Fucker. It had a terrific way of smacking me down.
After two years of playing at this relationship and using this nice woman to help me fit my life into my ideal—while not being really happy with it or participating the way a person should, beyond buying the dishes and a salad spinner—I left the relationship and blamed it all on her. Or rather, I kicked her out of the house and began playing new music and blissfully humming in the halls while she packed her things. That’s what folks who think they’re on their way to becoming Elvis do. None of this could be my fault, right? I’m still great! New girls are buying me beers! I’m cracking them up!
Shortly after I broke up with that girlfriend, I began dating again. Because I still wasn’t looking at the reasons why things with my ex went down the way they had, everything was fantastic. I painted my bedroom lavender. I got new crisp white sheets. I bought a leather jacket. I was really moving forward, people. Even if my relationship had failed, I could easily move on to bigger and better things with women. I could still keep my trophy for comedy.
I made it into the Boston Comedy Festival, which was the most important thing I’d been invited to do up to that point. Boston was the big time, and I made sure to brag to everyone I knew about it. Since I was the Big Shit, I decided to take a new girlfriend with me to show her just how amazing I was; I was sure my Comedy Central special couldn’t be far behind.
The night of the festival, I expected to kill while dressed in my nicest vest and smart bow tie, à la the scholarly Northeast. Instead, I ate shit on stage.
It was worse than the time I got booed in Portland for telling a Mexican joke (do not tell any race jokes in Portland. They will murder you, cut you up into little pieces, and recycle you into bicycle parts). I ate it hard right there in front of new girl and the city of Boston. I’d built myself up to such epic proportions and thought I would easily slay, but then this thing happened instead. I gathered the sweaty, deflated pieces of myself together and moped angrily out into the rain back to the studio Airbnb we’d rented.
We still had six days left in Boston, which would have been great if she hadn’t ignore-dumped me immediately after I bombed. Ignore-dump is when someone has clearly made up her mind to not be with you, since you aren’t the superstar you’ve made yourself out to be, but she doesn’t tell you. You can feel it, and you keep asking her why she won’t touch or really even look at you, but she says everything is okay because she wants to stay in Boston and you already paid for the room and her airfare. It’s like ghosting, but face-to-face and more awkward. Even though we shared a queen-sized bed, I wasn’t allowed to get too close to her, and in the mornings I had to go out by myself in the rain to give her some alone time to get ready to ignore me some more. Best ignore-dump ever.
When we got home, she for real dumped me over a game of Bananagrams. This is when my mojo packed up all its shit and left me. Adiós, Holly’s mojo. I started feeling sorry for myself. I was angry and bitter at my turn of circumstances. All the girls ditched me. I found myself alone much of the time because suddenly no one wanted to be around me. I started bombing. And bombing. And bombing. I was stringing the bad sets together like rotting fence pickets, one after another. It got so bad that the owner of the comedy club where I was a regular called me to ask what was wrong, because it didn’t look to her like I had any confidence. Comedy club owners don’t generally call you—they just stop booking you and move along to the next dependable person—but that’s how worried about me she was. Whatever gift I had was seemingly gone. How did this happen? I’d been killing on stage for five years and now suddenly I sucked? What about my destiny?
My self-esteem tanked. I started drinking way too much. I chipped a tooth one night and decided it was a good idea to file it down with a nail file. I woke up one morning with broken glass in my hair and my back and absolutely no recollection of how it got there. I was lonely, defeated, and slowly realizing that what I thought would get me the one thing I wanted most in life wasn’t going to work.
Why not? Because, like my failed relationship, it was a sham. It wasn’t real. I had been on stage doing everything I could to get people to think I was great, to not actually see me, and it was finally falling apart. Fucking Universe.
On a cold afternoon in February, after this had gone on for months, feeling empty of everything but sadness, I sat down in my shower and turned the water on hot, cradling my forehead in my hands under the water, crying about what was happening to me. I thought about the fact that my friends didn’t want to be around me the way I was. Audiences didn’t want to laugh at me anymore. The act I was putting on, in life and on stage, wasn’t working anymore. I was trying, with the jokes and the outfits and the hair, to win over the world, to get everyone to like me, and it was all crashing down around me because it wasn’t real. It either had to end, or I was going to spend the rest of my life crying in this ugly shower with the peeling paint and shitty water pressure. When I couldn’t cry anymore, when I was all wiped out and peaceful, I made a decision: I was going to drop the act and just be real. I was going to stop my whole song and dance and just be myself. If people didn’t like it, at least it would be real.
I decided that I wasn’t going to do stand-up any more. I finally admitted it to myself that telling jokes wasn’t being honest or doing what I was put here to do. I was tired of selling out the sensitive parts of myself for cheap punch lines. I gave myself a different assignment: write the most difficult and personal story I could, and find a way to tell that to people. When I thought about the possibilities, I quickly knew that it could only be about one thing, something I’d been previously too embarrassed to talk much about. I would write about my gender problem and feeling like a monster for most of my life.
A friend of mine produces a show called BedPost Confessions, where people get up and tell their stories about sex, gender, and sexuality. Right when I got out of the shower, I sent her an e-mail asking, if I wrote this, would she let me tell it there? I was terrified at the prospect of revealing something so personal in front of strangers. I’d been ashamed of this stuff for most of my life. But if I was going to do this, I was going to do it all the way. She kindly agreed to put me on the show. Suddenly, I had a deadline.
I sat down to write, and the story poured out of me. I remembered things I’d stuffed away long ago. I sat and typed at my computer with a box of Kleenex
next to me for all the crying I was doing. I felt like someone was digging giant chunks of buried shame out of me and laying them all around for me to look at. How had I not thought about all of this for so long? It shaped the entirety of my life.
When it was done, I finally understood why I’d put so much effort into creating my false existence. This shit was scarier than I remembered. I’d begun hiding who I was at an early age, and it eventually carried over into every aspect of my adult life. I spent two months writing and crying and finally falling in love with the little monster that I had felt like as a child. I also began to like the adult I had grown into. That felt so nice, and so new to me. Still, I fretted about the approach of the show. What would happen? I’d be up on a stage, completely vulnerable, telling secrets that I’d buried a whole lifetime ago. There were no punch lines. There would be no more hiding.
The day of the show, April 12, 2012, I was so nervous I made myself sick. I’d spent years getting up in front of people on a stage and I’d gotten used to the stress of it, but now I was so mortified I couldn’t get out of the bathroom the whole day. This was going to be so much worse than taking my clothes off in public, but I knew I had to do it.
That night I got up on stage and read my story. I was so scared that I paid absolutely no attention to the audience’s reaction. When I was through, I quickly turned to walk off the stage but was stopped short by my friend, the producer. She told me, “Go back. They’re giving you a standing ovation.”