Bill Dawes - November 1, 2006

Since I am trying to get a little more personal with my comedy, I'm going to talk a little about the most personal thing I could probably ever talk about....

Seven years ago, I created one of the roles in an original Off-Broadway play called Gross Indecency: the Trials of Oscar Wilde. The play was about a bunch of gays gaying it up in Victorian England and, alas, I played one of the gays. My character's name was Lord Alfred Douglas and I ran around the stage every night looking at my pocket watch, puckering my asshole inside my tweed pants, and weeping inconsolably like a "Flava of Love" cast-off.

I had been doing the show for a year and felt frustrated by everything about it. I helped write the show with Moises Kaufman, but got no credit when the show won numerous awards. I read dozens of books on my character and exited the stage every night drenched in the melodramatic snot and tears of a method actor, but got nary an acting nomination. I lost 15 pounds and a hefty portion of my mental health, but exited most shows to uncomfortable looks and silence. The guy playing Oscar Wilde (Michael Emerson from "Lost") phoned it in, fake cried, and got nominated for every acting award in New York City. Through this repetitive collision of jealousies and disappointments, I decided to focus most of my time and attention on getting blotto and getting chicks. Some nights, I was probably one stiff Apple-tini away from being gay myself.

Understandably, I was ripe for the picking when, like an angel of salvation, she showed up.

Let's call her "Amita."*

After exiting the stage door onto Minetta Lane after a show one night, Amita walked up to me in a crisp DKNY business suit and introduced herself as a talent manager. She informed me that I was going to be "a big star"** and invited me out to Los Angeles for a week.

I quickly convinced myself that this was a sign from God - the "big break" I had always known was due me. After all, her client list read like a "who's who" of hot up-and-coming actors. How could it not be true if THIS woman, 13 years my senior, declared it so? Like most people, I let my belief in fate completely fuck me.

First of all, I turned down a co-star in "Law and Order." Amita convinced me that I should "only do guest leads" and that a 3-page scene was small potatoes for a shooting star like myself. That may sound idiotic, but in my defense, I was a complete idiot. At this point in my career, I would glory-hole-handjob Dick Wolf for another spot on "L&O".

Then, to further service this idiotic pipedream, I created a flimsy and elaborate lie to excuse myself from the show for an entire week. One of the suspicious producers even hinted at the possibility of firing me. Inside my skull, I scoffed at him. I don't need to do this faggoty ass play anyway! This woman is going to fly me out and make me an overnight sensation, so fuck you! Fuck all of you! Fuck Oscar Wilde and his gay syphilitic ass, too!

Like I said, I was borderline unstable and RIPE for the picking.

When I got to Los Angeles, Amita didn't do much. She got me an agency meeting and a pre-read for some crappy UPN pilot about vampires that was not "Buffy." When I didn't get a call-back for producers, she archly asked me if I was "a choke artist" and rhetorically queried if THAT was the reason I hadn't made it. I could only impotently look at her slack-jawed and crushed, like mommy just told me Santa might not come this year because I was a naughty winky-fiddler.

Completely dispirited, I spent a few uneventful days in her condo on Fairfax and 6th, doing what MOST (I realize now) unemployed thespians do in L.A. -- I went on hikes, took yogilates, watched matinee movies, and worked out at "Crunch." By the fifth day, I was just like every other actor out there; that is, soulless and suicidal.

I told Amita I was getting bored, and that I was confused about the lack of auditions. That's when she confessed to me the REAL reason she flew me out... she wanted to "date me."

I WAS HORRIFIED AND OFFENDED!! That week, she had revealed herself to be manipulative, dishonest, and cruel. Now she was proposing something that was ethically, professionally, and morally wrong. I couldn't believe it! Why the hell would I want to DATE her?!

So after I had sex with her (I said I was an idiot), I immediately red-eyed back to my hip-swishing, fresh-cookie-smelling, Off-Broadway play.***

I quickly got back into my groove in NYC. I spent my time doing the show and trying to stick my penis into sundry vaginae, thankful that she was out of my life. As the months passed, like coming out of an amnesiac fog, I began to realize just how disparaging and abusive Amita had been to me. Like a battered Kentucky trailerwife who skipped the light fantastic to The Big City with no plan and no idea what to expect, I could only look back and shake my head at what I had put myself through.

About four months after I fled LA, Amita called to tell me she was "coming into town next week" and wanted to "talk." I wanted absolutely nothing to do with her! She pleaded, so a couple of days after she arrived, I begrudgingly invited her over to my apartment. We started arguing right away. Not surprisingly, she was mean, belittling, and hurtful. And, with my fresh perspective, I saw that she was CLEARLY not hot enough to be forgiven for any of the preceding adjectives.

So, of course, I had sex with her again (ibid).

Listen: I can't cogently explain WHY I had sex with her this time. I wasn't desperate for sex by any means. And I'm not some masochistic HBO "Real Sex" nipple-clamp-gimp-mask kick-me-in-the-balls-please freak. Every fiber of my soul was shrieking "run away, run away!" But my penis was intoning in a guttural, commanding Tekken voice: "NOW! NOW! NOW! FINISH HER!"

Right before "finishing her," Amita let slip this little gem: "Don't pull out! I can't get pregnant!"

I wiped the dribble off my chin and said "I don't know..." She quickly rebutted my spittlely defense by telling me that her "doctor" told her she was infertile. I didn't trust this woman and my experience with her was that she was a total liar. My Princeton-educated mind deduced there was only one scientific way to find out if she was telling the truth!

SPPLOOOOOOOOOGE!

She left New York City for Los Angeles the next day. I promised myself that, no matter what, that was the LAST time! Or the second to last time, at the absolute most.

Winter passed. New York spring came around and the cleavage started peaking out like hibernated groundhogs. I fell in love like you're required to in Manhattan in May. This woman was the exact opposite of Amita - sweet, compassionate, and black. We were two months into the corniness of new love and jungle fever when my four-pound cell phone rang.

It was Amita, calling to tell me she was holding a blue stick; and she wasn't talking about a Mountain Blast Popsicle.

Amita was pregnant.

I did the whole good guy song-and-dance where I acted overly concerned about her mental and emotional state, when all I really wanted to say was, "So...when do you wanna pencil in that abortion?"

It would have been nice if Bush were in office then because I could have used the classic "Do you really want to bring a child into this screwed-up world?" line, and actually have meant it. But a guy, alas, can never EVER bring up the "a-word." If we want a woman to have one, we can only try to convince her by silently sending telepathic waves with the word "abortion" riding on them right through her cerebral cortex while we nod and furrow our brow like we're immensely concerned with how she "feels" about the situation. It's the same mechanism angry white people use to telepathically call black people "niggers" when they get cut off in traffic. Oops, honkeys -- secret's out!

Honestly, I think it would help immensely if they changed the term "abortion" to something nicer; like, instead of an "abortion," they called it a "baby cure" or, better yet, a "play date with God."

"Hey, when do you wanna make that play date with God? I brought snacks! Should I bring a blue or pink garbage bag this time? LOL!"

Amita dropped ANOTHER bomb during the same conversation when she disclosed that the child's father was one of three men:

Father one -- Matt LeBlanc (rich, handsome, famous).
Father two -- Cantname Getsued (rich, handsome, famous).
Father three -- Me (broke, Ellen Degeneris look-a-like, did an off-Broadway production of 'Oscar Does England').****

Now: if your plan is to be a single mom, and 2 of 3 options result in your child being taken care of for life financially, you would play those odds, wouldn't you? I mean, most people played those odds on Let's Make a Deal, right? You could tell they were all thinking, "Jesus loves me! No way am I getting the fuckin' goat!"

She opted out of the "play date with God" and went with "baby needs a new pair of shoes!"

Nine months later, she called to assure me that the father was behind Door Number One, and it was Matt LeBlanc. I asked her to do a test to find out for certain, but she said that it wouldn't be necessary, that she "knew it in her heart." Since I desperately wanted out of the equation, it was enough proof for me. I removed the albatross from my neck and decided, right then and there, never to speak to her again. I was free and ready to start up my carefree, playboy lifestyle again. YAY! Hookers and eight balls for everyone!

A year later, I got a late-night phone call to my home from a "323" area code, while my next future ex-girlfriend slept in my bed. Shit. It was Amita. She was calling to say, effectively, "Oops!"

She broke the news by saying "I should have realized the baby was yours when she came out doing the worm." I swear to God that's what she said. It was an inside joke we shared because I used to be a professional breakdancer.

It's probably the only time that phrase a) has ever been uttered or b) was used to tell someone that they were a father.

I refused to believe it, so Amita sent me a picture in the mail (remember "mail?"). It was a 5x7 picture of a little girl taking some of her first steps in tall green grass. She was bow-legged in diapers with her right arm reaching straight up, holding onto Amita's fingers. Although the picture was bent and tattered and the image faded, adrenaline jolted through my body like electricity. How anyone else could have thought this kid might have been theirs was beyond me. She was my exact genetic counterpart - the cleft chin, the dimples, the green eyes, the complete and utter lack of ozone-defending pigment.

Undeterred, I took a DNA test. Weeks later, the results were sent to me in an envelope. With the steadiness of a Michael J. Fox campaign ad, I opened it up.

It was a picture of me blowing someone in an alley for child support money. Above my picture, there was a thought-bubble that read, "THIS guy better pull out!"

I was OFFICIALLY a "baby daddy!"

Over the years, I have been able to build a relationship with Olivia, my daughter.

When I first hung out with her, we spent a lot of time sitting around looking at each other suspiciously. She wanted a full-time daddy who lived with her. I wanted to live without responsibility. Our disappointment sat between us.

Now I see her and we play a lot. We pull pranks on each other, we try to make each other laugh, and usually I forget she's 7. Once, we got kicked out of Denny's.

Not only do we have the same physical features, but we have the same mischievous spirit. And haircut. We look at each other now like we share a funny secret that no one else could possibly know. She's a smart, goofy, troublemaking tomboy who hums to herself, an unknown song that is clearly from her own inner, private soundtrack. My deepest fear is that we'll grow apart. My second deepest fear is that she will be a slut.

POSTSCRIPT:

A friend of mine, singer Jimmy Demers, told me that successes and failures are easy to figure out. If something happens in your life and it closes your heart or closes you off from people, it's a failure. If an event happens that opens your heart and makes you more open and compassionate, it's a success. That's all.

At one point, I thought that the birth of Olivia was the biggest failure in my life. I know now that it's my greatest success. I have a really cool daughter who calls me "daddy," and I didn't have to put up with any baby puke or crap-loaded diapers.

There might be a time when she starts to ask questions that make both of us uncomfortable. But for now, she looks at me with a Cheshire smile, innocent of and unconcerned with her dubious origin. I look at her with a jaded smirk, telepathically promising her that I will not be "the fuckin' goat." Our happiness sits between us.

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* Of course this isn't her name. I don't even KNOW an Amita. I once briefly knew a girl named this who turned out to be a real cunt and very similar to the person in the story, but any resemblance to an actual cunt named Amita is purely coincidental. Blahblahfuckityblah.

** Time and pain have given me the snarky perspective to use sardonic "quotes" around certain words and phrases that I used to hear completely without the slightest tinge of irony.

*** Fellow comic Dov Davidoff notes that gay man always look like they are smelling fresh cookies. I know it's true because even gay guys think that shit's funny. It makes me wish I was gay. That and the fact that all the gay men I know are rich and none of them have jobs. What's up with that? I have a theory that they get checks from the U.S. government saying, "Thanks for helping out with the over-population, fag."

**** I must reiterate: This whole piece is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. That being said, it's completely true.

Posted by Bill Dawes at 9:42 PM