I started thinking about comedy a lot more. The obsession of “what am I gonna do with my life, I wish I was doing comedy, it doesn’t feel right working in this office” consumed my thoughts. I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied: “I don’t care about gaming! I don’t even know how to play Magic: The Gathering! How can I be passionate about something I don’t understand! The boys who play these games need to take a shower and get laid!” I was slipping into a deep, dark depression, and that’s when I decided I was going to go to that comedy show. I found that comedy flyer and went to that fucking show all by myself. I liked to do things by myself because when I invited people out with me, I felt responsible for their happiness, and it was just easier to be alone. Besides, comedy was something I wanted to explore on my own. I wanted to study it.

I stopped at a bar for a few drinks before I walked into the theater. I always liked to have a few drinks before I did anything at night because it got to the point where I couldn’t do anything social without booze in my system. Their show was at a tiny, little theater, and I found a seat in the back corner. My eyes about popped out of my head when I watched them perform. I thought they were fantastic. It could have been the worst thing ever, but I was just amazed they had the guts to act silly onstage. It was my first alternative comedy show, and I just thought the fact that they were up there was incredible. I wanted so badly to be like them. They performed a few sketches and played different characters. Their humor wasn’t like the stuff you’d see in a sitcom. It’s like the stuff that made fun of sitcoms. Smart. They were these brave, creative warriors, and it made me wonder what it would take for me be a performer in New York City.

This show snapped me out of my nine-to-five depression and inspired me to explore the comedy scene. It also showed me a new way to party. A new cycle had begun.

Chapter Eight

My hangovers were getting worse. It was taking longer for me to bounce back from a night of drinking. I’d try to go on jogs and to eat healthy to counteract the amount of drinking I was doing, but I’d usually just walk around my neighborhood and have to go lie back down. This was scary to me because I used to be in great shape and could run for miles and miles. I told myself maybe I shouldn’t drink so much. My first attempt at trying to control it was trying to not drinkeverynight.

The one night I forced myself to not drink, happened to be a night when Nick had some friends over to our apartment. I didn’t have a drop of booze. I was proud of myself for being somewhat social while staying sober, but then Nick got drunk and really creeped me out. After his friends left he said, “I watch you, Amber. I watch you come in here late at night after you go out and party with your friends, and you don’t spend time with me.” I was like, “I AM YOUR ROOMMATE. I DON’T HAVE TO HANG OUT WITH YOU. I AM NOT YOUR GIRLFRIEND.” Then I stormed off to bed.

The next morning I woke up and there was a note on my door written in Spanish. I tried to read it for about five minutes, then finally admitted to myself that I didn’t know Spanish. I took it to work to see if anyone could translate it; the secretary said she could. She looked at it for a minute and said, “He said he’s sorry and he’s in love with you.” I was like, “Gross” and moved out a couple weeks later.

I moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with some guys from work. Mike, the nosy and nice guy and this one mellow dude, Al, had a big three-bedroom apartment, and one of their roommates had just moved out. It was perfect timing! Brooklyn was way cooler than Queens, and my room was much bigger than the one I had in Astoria. Around the same time I moved to Brooklyn, PokerForDorks.com went under. All of a sudden there was no money; I think we spent it all on private Korean karaoke rooms. I was okay with this because it was weird working with Stan after our little fling. I felt bad for him because his dream company failed. The investors from Florida were so mad at him, but that was his problem not mine! Adios, Ivy Leaguers! I’m a badass Brooklyn bitch now!

The cool thing was that when the company went under, they gave me a computer. They completely ran out of money and said, “We can’t give you your last paycheck, but we can give you a computer.” I was like, “I am the luckiest person alive.” I wanted a computer so bad and Mike and Al helped me hook it up to the Internet in my bedroom. I loved hearing the screeching sound of the dial-up modem. It meant I was about to be connected to the World Wide Web in my own bedroom! No more checking my e-mail at libraries or friends’ houses or waiting to get to the office The world was in the computer box in my bedroom and it was badass.

Another thing that made me happy was the comedy scene. I was going to so many shows. I had met a lot of comics and kept track of their shows. I was in this weird social limbo. I no longer hung out with coworkers after work because I didn’t have a job. I didn’t know anyone who liked comedy as much as I did, so I just went to these shows by myself. I didn’t care. I’d have a few drinks before I went anywhere, so I had plenty of confidence showing up solo. I’d just get tanked and talk to everyone.

Besides the increasingly weary hangovers, I didn’t suffer too many consequences when I drank. I didn’t have people telling me I was out of control or that I had a problem. This was probably because I was always surrounded by other drunks, so if I was obnoxious they were too wasted to notice. My behavior was not out of control. I wasn’t like Joe, or the belligerent people I’d kick out of Do Drop. I was just happy and confident and very chatty.

I loved drinking with comedians and immersed myself in the “NYC alternative comedy scene.” It was so cool it was uncool to use the word “alternative” but everyone did because it’s the best word to describe it. There were a lot of different types of performers doing stand-up, sketch, and music, and it was all happening in small, little black box theaters and bars all over the city. It fascinated me. These people were so creative and courageous and didn’t have full-time jobs, and they didn’t care. They put their art first, and just made all of the logistical things in life work out somehow. I wanted to be like them. I didn’t want to be a marketing associate or sit at a desk all day. I wanted to drink and write and turn my tragic thoughts into comedic gold, but couldn’t help but panic about being broke. This panic made me drink, and drinking costs money. HELLO.

I had to get another job. Liza had already landed a new fancy gig at an Internet marketing consulting firm, and she told me she would hire me as soon as she could, and sure enough, she did. Before I knew it, I had another nine-to-five job. There I was, once again, sitting in a chair looking at a computer, not knowing what the fuck was going on. I actually liked starting new jobs because I learned a lot in a short amount of time—whether it was a new industry or skill I had to soak up—it was stimulating. But now that I had comedy on the brain, it was hard for me to believe that a day job would bring me joy.

I was pretty good at PR, I loved stalking reporters and writing press releases and coming up with cool ways to get clients in the news. I started using humor to communicate with reporters. I’d write weird e-mails like, “Yo, Bob. I saw your article on E-commerce in the Wall Street Journal,and I loved your liberal use of the words itand the and a. . . thought you might be interested in X company.” It worked! People would always write me back. I learned how to be refreshing in an oversaturated industry.

Liza wasn’t my direct boss at this place; she worked more in business development and I was strictly PR. We’d see each other once in a while, but not much. I was cool with this because the women in my department were hilarious. I hung out with this girl Amy, she was from Jersey and everything was such a big deal to her—in a fun way. “Oh my fuckin’ gawd, did you hear what Bob said today? He’s outta his fuckin’ mind!” And she’d chomp gum real loud and tell us about the crazy sex she had with her boyfriend and how one time he donkey-punched her. I said, “You guys have a donkey?” She said, “No. He just punched me in the back of the head when he was fuckin’ me from behind.” I was like “Oh. Okay. Right on.”

Another friend I made was Roz. She was the secretary, in her early twenties, quiet at work but loved to rage at night. She grew up in Manhattan, was an only child, and her parents owned a fancy hair salon. They had a one-bedroom apartment in Midtown and a big house in upstate New York or maybe it was somewhere in New Jersey. We partied together a lot. She was like me; she drank to get FUCKED-UP. Amy would have to catch the train to Jersey, so she’d leave at a decent hour, but Roz and I would rage till the a.m. Even if we were just in her apartment, we’d get all fucked-up while binge watching Sex and the City.We both said we hated that show, but we couldn’t stop watching it.

Roz and I even took a two-week trip to Europe. it was my first time overseas, and I was very excited. Roz was well traveled. She’d been to Europe many times, so this trip wasn’t a big deal to her. My excitement annoyed her, which annoyed me, because how could I not be excited? Both my obnoxious excitement and her jaded grumpiness didn’t matter once we got drunk. Drinking made both of us so happy, and we needed it to get along on this trip. We went to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Amsterdam and our last stop was London. In Italy, I got so drunk I fell out of a cab, and it ran over my foot. Roz had to drag me into the train station because I was just lying in the street. She fed me a McDonald’s cheeseburger; it was so delicious. And the first thing I did when I was able to sit up and talk was buy some hash from some dudes with dirty hair.

In Germany, we got so wasted we brought two boys we met at a bar back to our hotel. The plan was to have sex with them. But I couldn’t go through with it, and I just lay there. The guy I was supposed to hook up with was like, “Come on.” I said, “Sorry.” Roz fooled around with her guy. I don’t know exactly what they did because my head was buried in a pillow. After they left, she said we were so stupid and I agreed. Then we had a pizza delivered. It was the most disgusting pizza I have ever tasted.

By the time we got to Amsterdam, we were both exhausted. We spent most of our time at a bed-and-breakfast run by a sweet, old, gay man who made us weird eggs and beans for breakfast every morning. We spent a couple of days sleeping and recovering, but I did somehow manage to go on a date with some random boy I met at a bar. He took me to the movies and that was it. I was too tired to get to know him. I just wanted to go back to the bed-and-breakfast so I could sleep. Roz slept for two days straight.

Then we took a mini cruise ship from Amsterdam to London where I got super wasted and played blackjack. Roz got mad at me because when it was time to get off the boat and go through customs, I could barely walk. I had never been this sloppy before, usually I was very functional and hyper and chatty, but on this European vacation I was such a sloppy mess. Roz was very annoyed. She decided to stay in London for a few more days while I went back to NYC.

It was back to the nine-to-five grind, but there was some exciting drama happening at work. Rumors were going around that our boss wasn’t actually a twenty-seven-year-old with an MBA; instead, he was a twenty-three-year-old compulsive liar with a coke problem. That’s hot! Of course I developed a crush on him.

When Roz got back from London, she forgave me for being such a sloppy, drunk asshole, and we started partying together again. One night, she and I went over to the cokehead liar boss’s place to have some drinks. I was very excited. I thought maybe I was going to make out with another CEO. We sat around his living room and drank oversize vodka drinks, and it wasn’t long before he busted out the coke and started doing lines. Roz was into it, and she knew exactly what she was doing. She snorted that white powder like they do in the movies—her head hovering over the table with a rolled-up dollar bill, starting off with a slow turn of the head following the line on the table until it disappeared, then whipping her head up real quick. I admitted I had never done coke before, but they were so nice and showed me how to snort it up my nostrils. I felt okay. I got a boost of energy and got real chatty for about an hour, but then I just wanted to go to bed. The cokehead liar boss said I could sleep in his bed. I was like, “Oh yeah, he wants my body.” But nothing happened. He slept on the other side of the bed, and he didn’t even touch me.

Of course it was awkward at work after this, but me doing coke with the boss wasn’t much of a concern for anyone because he did coke with a lot of people. And the company was facing much bigger problems. The business was slowly going under, and I realized that Internet companies either died quickly, or exploded with success. We were dead.

But one day, before the company went entirely to hell, I was standing outside the CNN building in Midtown waiting for a client. We had booked them an interview on some daytime-news show, and I was there for moral support. So, I’m standing there and I hear this voice behind me, this undeniable familiar voice. At the same time I was turning around to get a look at the person who belonged to this voice, I remembered who it was and thought, “That’s Tony Robbins’s voice.” Then a second later, there he was walking past me. TONY FUCKING ROBBINS! I couldn’t believe it! I ran up to him and was talking a mile a minute. He was about eight feet tall.

He asked me what I was doing that weekend. I thought maybe he wanted to bone me or something, but all he wanted was for me to go to his seminar in New Jersey. He gave me a card, told me to call the number on it, and said he’d give me two free tickets. I couldn’t believe it. I told all my coworkers and friends about it and asked if they wanted to go. None of them wanted to! They thought Tony was a joke, an infomercial hack, a cheesy self-help guru who preyed on sad people. I was like, “He changed my life. And my aunt Pam said after she listened to his tapes, she quit smoking.” I was a little embarrassed that they thought the guy I loved was a joke. But at the same time, I thought they were cynical, and if anyone could use some positive thinking tools it was them! I went by myself, of course.

I rode a short bus from Port Authority with a bunch of middle-aged Tony Robbins groupies to the Continental Arena where the conference was being held. When I told them I met Tony on the street and he gave me free tickets, their heads about fell off of their bodies. They couldn’t believe it. “I spent five hundred bucks for my ticket!” yelled a sixty-year-old woman who probably hated her life and needed a change. I thought about her worthless husband and how she probably put her career on hold for him, and now she was gonna make a comeback with Tony’s help. I also thought that I should’ve scalped my extra ticket for four hundred bucks and was mad at myself for not trying to sell it.