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Despite my love for watching stand up comedy on Netflix, I’d never been to a comedy club. About a month ago Valentina and I went to the Broadway Comedy Club to rectify that. I now know what to expect from a comedy club: a two drink minimum and a guy warming up the crowd while we got to work on our two drink minimum.

There were jokes about being too tall, jokes about pedophilia, and jokes about being the least attractive sister. It seemed to fit the bill for amateur, but still funny, stand up comedy. There weren’t always sharp observations being made with Fran Lebowitz-style wit, but there were always a few good laughs.

I got called on by a comedian. That’s what happens when you sit front and center. It all started because he commented that I didn’t shout anything out, but clapped along to something that he said, unusual audience behavior apparently. I was two drinks minimum into the night to not freak out when I was called on in front of everyone. He asked me what sport I played in high school, the topic at hand, and I said that I ran cross country. This led to a joke about whether or not running even counts as a sport.

Watching stand-up has always made me think: I could do that, but why would I want to? I’m sure that I could whip up a few good jokes and anecdotes, being bright and silly, but the act of actually getting up on stage and trying to get a few laughs from strangers seems excruciating, especially for a girl who probably won’t even do karaoke. It isn’t even a case of stage fright. It’s a case of not wanting to learn if you’re funny or insightful or not. Sometimes, it’s better to just be convinced that you are funny in your day-to-day life with your peers than it is to seek out any other validation and know for sure.

I do respect the people who do get up on stage and try to make people laugh. Comedians are our modern-day court jesters, delivering lines about how messed up our world is, thanks to the people who run it, but sugar-coat it so that it’s a nice pill to swallow. They tell the truth, but in a way that’s palatable. 

At least they do if they’re good at it.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Mikaela and I met up for a night at the theater. She’d gotten me tickets to see Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse, a show that was so popular, they kept it on Broadway for longer than its original run. Beforehand, we grabbed dinner at Jollibee (I do know how to cook, I swear) and then headed on over to the show at The Golden Theater.

The premise of The Thanksgiving Play goes as follows:

Four white people try to put together a play about thanksgiving and in their efforts to create an inoffensive play, they run the risk of telling a wildly offensive play. It is riotously funny, but still poignant (those are the best kinds), taking aim at the egregiously bad handling of the topic of thanksgiving and Native American history in American classrooms.

I think that this play perfectly captures where we are culturally, dramatizing the discourse and the jargon that we are all now so immune to hearing. So many sharp observations have been made, especially when it comes to the way that well-meaning white liberals can impede legitimate progress through their efforts to diversify. The message comes across that sometimes the best way to be an ally is to just be quiet.

The play is satire and the type of story that I anticipate will be around in the form of local productions across the country for years to come. Mikaela and I had a fantastic time, even though we sat on completely opposite ends of the theater. I am now dying to go back to Jollibee, the Filipino fast food restaurant we had dinner at, when I’m next in Times Square. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

“It’s a good thing I was born a girl. Otherwise I’d be a drag queen.”

–Dolly Parton

I have some very expensive habits– I think my record is pretty clear on that. I’m not referring to my love of avocado on my toast or the way that I need to buy a certain amount of beauty products in order to maintain my American Psycho skin routine. I’m referring to the way in which I recently parted with a bunch of my singles at a drag show in a bookstore a few weeks ago. 

It happened after dinner, but before drinks. Here’s what happened:

The Strand was putting on a drag show to celebrate Pride month and Mikaela and I were eager to get up close and personal with some drag queens as they performed for us, especially this past pride month in which drag shows were, and still are, under siege.

Mikaela and I had been hard at work at our respective jobs, so, at the risk of having all work and no play, we decided to go to a drag show at a bookstore, otherwise known as DeSantis’s worst nightmare. 

They were serving free drinks. Naturally, we partook. 

The drag queen that was MC-ing the show, Kendall Knight, did a bang-up job, making it more like a drag show, book shopping, and stand-up all rolled into one. She wanted to know if any of us were from the south, as she explained that we must do “hips and lips,” to stay quiet during the performances and Mikaela and I made it clear that we knew what she was talking about.

The drag queens were: Katie Silvernail, Lana Del Trey, and Bertha Venayshan. I do believe in life after love when a drag queen is singing Cher to me but then again I also do believe in love when Madonna asks me if I do. Both of those songs were played. Then came a drag show classic: Man! I feel like a Woman!, by Shania Twain.

Emboldened by my fruity drinks that may have been some kind of vodka-cran knock-off, I sang and danced along, with Mikaela by my side doing the same.

After a few performances, we started on some trivia. I was devastated when I was not called on to answer the question, “what color is the sweater?” because I knew that the sweater is “not just blue. It’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean.” I did however get the next answer right when I correctly stated that Britney Spears guest starred in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, followed by a meek “it’s Britney bitch,” under my breath. 

Another trivia question that I knew the answer to but couldn’t answer was “finish this sentence: these gays are trying to (blank) me,” but the girl who did answer it did a spot on impression. 

If you know, then you know.

Despite doubling my raffle tickets, I did not win the raffle prize which ended up being some of The Strand’s pride merch.

Once trivia was out of the way, the drag show started up again.

Bertha Venayshan went on next. She danced to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song and since I’d rewatched the Pirates of the Caribbean the day before, this performance felt like it was just for me. A drag queen twerking on beat to the Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t something that I knew I needed to see but I absolutely did.

Kendall Knight’s final performance opened with the audio from a scene from The Eyes of Tammy Faye, in which Tammy Faye herself announces that she didn’t hate homosexuals as a christian, because “God doesn’t make junk.”

Books, free drinks, and drag queens– why would anyone want to ban this?

On a more serious note: I think it is important to frequent our local bookstores in order to support them during this scourge of book bans and to see drag shows whenever we can. In other words, during this time of nonsense, seeing a drag show at an independent bookstore is the right thing to do. It was full of joy, and as all of the drag queens pointed out, it’s all about self-expression. People will always want to shut that down. 

Kendall did make it clear to us that while it doesn’t feel like it, we are winning.

Afterwards, Mikaela and I went down the street to Oscar Wilde, the wild bar that caters to lovers of the works of Oscar Wilde by mostly just serving alcohol. We drank some more, talking to a few Australian men we met, who we could be sure weren’t hitting on us since two of them were married to each other.

We called it a night in the middle of the night and I went to bed thinking about drag queens and Oscar Wilde. It was an amazing way to celebrate the first day of Pride Month. 

And though it is a few months late: happy pride, all year round.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

My brother’s girlfriend– and good personal friend of mine– Mikaela came up to the city for a few weeks. We kicked it off by going to The Strand to watch author Sidney Karger in conversation with his own good personal friend, Anderson Cooper, about his latest novel Best Men, a queer romcom about two men who meet as part of a wedding party. They fall in love, hijinks ensue, and they live happily ever after from what I can tell, in proper romcom fashion. I’ll tell you one thing: Anderson Cooper is much funnier when he’s not reporting the news to me.

Cooper and Karger had a really charming conversation, striking the balance between chatting as friends and discussing his debut novel. There was much talk of Nora Ephron, John Hughes, and other comedy influences, much to my enjoyment. They commented on the ways in which queer literature has come a long way, that there is now romp and enjoyment in queer stories, and that they don’t all end with one of the characters getting AIDs. This novel is an example of that.

Krager was kind enough to answer Mikaela’s brilliant question about the lightning speed with which he churned out this book, having written it within a year.

Cooper commented on how he always believed that writing a book was the greatest thing a person could ever achieve and I realized that he’d articulated what I’d always believed myself. Writing a book *is* one of the greatest things a person can achieve since it is absurdly difficult to do, as I had the misfortune to learn.

Krager is coming out with another romcom novel soon enough, but, in the meantime, we have his novel, Best Men, to enjoy. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Greek choruses, triple threats, renaissance men, and moonchildren.

My friend Alyssa and her boyfriend Charlie were chorus members in an opera that Charlie’s older brother, Christopher, single-handedly wrote and starred in, called Moonchildren. So I popped over to the Quaker church that it was being performed in and took my place in the first pew, claiming the best seat in the house. 

The opera itself dealt with what it means to be a free-spirit and a love of theater and art. I was sold. Charlie and Christopher weren’t the only members of their family in the show, as their sister Sienna also sang and played music. Her character was a drifter who represented the free-spirit side of the debate, urging those around her to live their lives to the fullest.

Before the show started I was asked if I wanted a hat. I sure did. 

I sat in the front row wearing my bowler hat as I waited for the show to begin and suddenly worried, but also hoped, that I might get picked out of the crowd as the wearer of the hat. 

I didn’t get picked out of the crowd, but my friends and the other cast members got up and close and personal as they shuffled around the stage, acting as the Greek chorus in the show.

It was clear that everyone involved in the project was immensely talented. One minute I’m watching a girl, playing the moon, belt it, and then in the next, I’m watching her bust out her cello and play along. When that’s not happening, Christopher is wailing on the piano, playing the music that he composed. 

Christopher, as well as writing it, starring in it, singing, and playing the piano throughout, painted the artwork that made up the set, placing him truly in renaissance man status. 

Between the art, the music, and costumes, the whole show had a frenetic energy to it. It made you leave the opera feeling like you could accomplish any artistic pursuit in the world. We all tossed our hats on stage at the end of the show, a fabulous touch that really sold the point of being wild and free.

Once the show was done, a group of us went to get pierogies at Veselka. Being Polish, I grew up making and eating pierogies with my grandmother, a former Miss Polonia pageant winner. I got an assortment of beef, cheese, and braised pork pierogies and can only recommend that everyone else in the world do the same.

It had been a nice, joyous way to spend the evening. The music was sweet, the talent was real, and the opera made you feel like perhaps you do want to be a hedonistic, free-spirited artist type because it hardly seems like anything else can be more important.

I have always felt like a moonchild in particular, being a cancer, ruled by the moon. I know the feeling. 

A moonchild forever.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Following my graduation and the departure of my family, I did a classic New York thing: I slept on my friend’s couch. My friend Valentina was gracious enough to let me sleep on her couch for about a week, during which time I continued my ongoing search to find the perfect summer sublet after my original arrangements fell through. Everyone assured me that searching for a sublet, having things work out, then not work, and then starting the search up again was “very New York of me.”

It was from this couch that I first toured the building for my internship in the financial district. From that point on, I’ve been having a dreamy time going to my fancy internship in the city. I have a nice long commute, which gives me ample time to read my book on the train and I have ample books to read, courtesy of my internship. This proves that even if I wasn’t doing the internship to afford luxury items like groceries, I would still be in it for the free goods. 

During this long commute, I wear sneakers on the train and then change into my black slingbacks once I’m in the office. I’m practically Working Girl. 

Do I sometimes listen to the soundtrack to the opening scene of The Devil Wears Prada as I get ready in the morning so that I can pretend that I am one of the glamorous women picking out their fabulous outfits in their splashy New York City apartments? That’s a stupid question. Of course I do.

Valentina and I had a fun time together during my brief stint on her couch. Together we went to the Paul Smith sample sale, where I showed enormous restraint in not buying anything. I went, yet again, to the MoMA, ingested some Georgia O’Keefe, and then ingested some Halal Guys. My time in the city was off to a great start.

After a few days of my crashing on the couch and probably flashing the people in the building across the street, Valentina and I went to see a play. Diary of a Madman, based on the short story by Gogol, was being put on nearby at a Russian theater and Valentina snagged some cheap tickets for the both of us. 

For those unfamiliar with the story, like I was, the story is told from the perspective of a man who is descending into madness, believing that the aristocratic daughter of the man he works for is in love with him, having been told as much from her poodle, and then believing that he is King of Spain. This production was the adaptation of the man putting on the show with the audience being mostly made up of people who knew him personally. It all felt very cozy and intimate, like we were watching someone’s passion project being put on before our very eyes.

Despite the small scale of the performance, the play was excellent, with strong performances by the actors and a million other decisions that worked beautifully for the show. The set was basically a bunk bed being spun around to fit the show’s every need with the lead actor climbing up and down it while delivering his monologues. There were even weird traces of pop music that played during transitions, adding to the madness.

I began watching the play when I was one prosecco in, which was the only real way to watch a play that opens with people dressed like cogs in a clock circling the stage as dramatic music thunders behind them. 

Much was said about noses to the point where I would now like to know what Gogol’s obsession with noses was since they crop up in his work a weird amount of times for noses to crop up in a person’s work (read the Gogol story, literally entitled, The Nose, if you don’t believe me). The motif of noses recurs so much that I felt I had to look up a picture of Gogol to see what his nose looked like, in order to understand him better. There were also noses plastered around the theater in order to really sell the point.

A few days later I was off to my new sublet and my first day of work. Thanks to her, I now had a working knowledge of the subway system and how sublets work, to say nothing of a place to rest my head and a play to go see. 

Cogs in a clock, talking poodles, the King of Spain, and sentient noses– it was all in a night’s work at a Russian theater in New York City and an appropriate last hurrah before I became a working woman yet again. 

Now I had new things to worry about and new adventures in store to add to the madness.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I am no longer an undergrad college student and that I am a college alumnus, but a few weeks ago that was all I could think about on the day that it was made official. My parents, grandmother, aunt, and cousin all came up for my graduation, with my bestie Valentina in attendance for the ceremony. After several days of spending time with them, I woke up early, put on my cap and gown over my graduation dress, walked down the street to my school’s auditorium to sit with my peers and waited for commencement to commence.

Our commencement speaker was Bill Lawrence, the creator of Scrubs, Ted Lasso, and Shrinking, and the great-great-great grandson of our loving founder Sarah Lawrence. This led to a pretty timely “nepo baby” joke at the beginning of his speech, followed by the most creative speech I’d ever heard.

He was an excellent commencement speaker because he didn’t really deliver a speech. He just started riffing off the notes he’d cobbled together, keeping the jokes coming the entire time, as he told us about the rules he gave to his writers in the writers room. I love how writing-centric the commencement speech was. 

If the speech ever got too boring, we were instructed to shout out “Harrison,” and he would start telling a Harrison Ford story, since he was the star of his show Shrinking. 

The first time someone shouted it he told the following story:

Bill Lawrence told Harrison Ford that he wanted Jason Seigel to star alongside him in Shrinking. Harrison wasn’t familiar so he asked him which movie of Siegel’s he should watch. Bill told him Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a few woos from the crowd). Harrison Ford watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which has some full frontal nudity from Siegel in it, to which Harrison Ford texted him, “Nice penis.”

Seigel then had that text message framed.

The second story was when they’re shooting a scene in which Ford has to shave his face in the morning. Ford told him that he had to do the scene shirtless, because he always shaves his face shirtless. When asked what he needed for the scene, he said, “I just need five minutes to do five pushups.”

Jokes aside, his speech was all about doing the job you have to do in order to do the job you want, not seeing other people as beneath you, and never forgetting your mentors. He supports the ongoing writer’s strike, made a joke about needing his “old man glasses” to read his speech, and kept on getting distracted by the people around him, including the president of the college. I had no other choice but to go home and binge watch Ted Lasso. 

I walked across the stage and got my diploma, or more accurately, an empty black binder that will one day hold my diploma once it has been mailed to my parents’ house, a few pictures of myself, and a hug from one of my professors.

Speaking of never forgetting your mentors, I was able to speak to my writing professors afterwards and introduce them to my family, during which time I hoped that they would tell my parents what they’d always hoped to hear during parent-teacher night when I was a kid: that I was a pleasure to have in class. The graduation gave way to a reception with light hors d’oeuvre, emphasis on light, and some champagne, and before my family and Valentina set out for the day for my final romp around Bronxville. I was out with this group when I received the good news: I’d just been hired as a marketing intern at Macmillan Publishers for the summer.

Clearly, it was an eventful day in my life. One I won’t soon forget. Little did I know that I was gearing up for a summer with so many more to come.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel