Wit: The Last Refuge of the Scoundrel

Yesterday after work I met my friend Carolyn at some new coffee shop in the village, Think. Carolyn told me that it had opened while I was in London, which explained how I missed it, because as it is on Mercer Street, I would have walked past it every day. It's a really chill place, a judgement I base on the fact that I ordered precisely one espresso and bullshat with Carolyn for about 3 hours. I have to try their cappuccino sometime, obviously before 11 AM (nobody with any sense drinks cappuccino after 11 AM, it's positively declasse). To give you an idea about what kind of place it is, I glanced around when I walked in and counted about 8 Powerbook laptops. Yeah, that kind of place.

Carolyn and I hadn't spoken since I left for London, so we obviously had a lot to catch up on. I did what I do, which is prevent real conversation from happening by constantly employing double entendres, absurdism, bitingsarcasm, and just general hilarious diversions. Carolyn (in between fits of convulsive laughter I would add) reminded me of something I told her once: I am uncomfortable when talking for more than 60 seconds without making a joke. I had to admit, she had me dead to rights. I tend to throw jokes into quite serious situations. They're not all homeruns, but it's something of a tic I have. I get called a smart-ass a lot, and have been told that my jokes "don't stop" and that is usually followed by "why, in the name of all that is holy and right on God's green earth, won't they stop?" Carolyn, and many other people I know, have told me that this is a defense mechanism I use to hide myself and to create some kind of distance from people because I have a crippling fear of abandonment. I have no idea where people get it from. If ONLY I had a fear of abandonment, it would add some flavor to my otherwise charmed life. I firmly believe that what keeps me from a career in comedy is that I've had nothing sad ever happen to me. That and I'm not very funny. I remember reading an interview with my comedy hero Stephen Colbert, who I've been a fan since I saw Strangers With Candy in like 1999, where he talks about his father and two older brothers die in a plane crash when he was 10. He said that a sense of humour is developed when someone loses their sense of innocence. I probably intentionally gave mine up rather than "lost" it. My parents are still married, my sister and I get along, I'm upper middle class and have never had any serious health problems. I go to a private university that costs more annually than a new luxury car or new kidney. With no real darkness, how can I create comedy? By making asinine observations about people around me.

I think my need to make jokes constantly stems more out of my desire to make people feel comfortable than to get people to like me. In fact, my humour is largely self-deprecating because it puts people at ease more than my more acerbic style of comedy where I cut people down like Paul Bunyon cuts down trees. Was Paul Bunyon a lumberjack? Or even real? I have always disliked confrontation and tried to make everyone feel easy all the time. Luckily, it hasn't been at the expense of people walking all over me yet. But as I wander through this post that is not so much a coherent thought as a safari through my subconscious, I feel it is important to clear up a point: I don't make jokes so that people like me. I do it because it makes them feel comfortable, it's fun and it keeps my mind occupied while you talk, because to be frank you're quite boring.

I'm not sad, but sometimes I'd be happer if I was.