Retrospective Comedy: I Still Have a Story to Tell

In 2011, I wrote 45 minutes worth of material over a 3 month period; the resulting compilation was called Brutal Honesty. 10 minutes of monologue was dedicated to talking about Sally, a girl I liked for 2 years in high school. The material for the show wasn't very funny, and the Sally material was no exception. It wasn't brutal honesty on my part; it was honestly brutal on the audience's part (I seriously don't know how they sat through it). Because of this, I'm currently working on a bunch of material for another extended show called Special Provocations which I intend to record at home, rather than before a live audience. It was originally meant to be an amended version of the previous show, but after watching the footage, I decided it isn't worth re-using— my delivery was so weak throughout the performance that even the successful lines were rendered unusable. Part of this new material has me talking about my Year 12 Formal and after-party, critiquing my mindset and my actions at the event, including how my writing about my previous admiration Sally for Brutal Honesty, when combined with the loneliness I felt at that time, helped rekindle my interest in her.

I've mentioned Sally and my Formal/after-party a million times, so I can understand how it might seem obsessive, and I've seen how that obsession can manifest in a negative way. In writing the Sally material for Brutal Honesty, as I just mentioned, I started to become attracted to her again—I was looking at her more and more, having repeated romantic/sexual fantasies involving her, even wanting to ask her to be my date for the Formal. And in writing the Formal/after-party material for Special Provocations, I've thought about what's Sally's doing now, what she remembers of that evening—as well as wanting to know if she knows what I said about her on this blog, and what her opinion of me is, if she has one at all.

One of my reasons for writing this new material about the Formal/after-party is so she might see it and laugh at it. Whether her lack of enjoyment that night was my fault or not, it'd make me really happy to know she got a laugh out of my talking about it. It's not as if any of this stuff matters anymore, especially to her, but I still have this urge in me to make things right, to clear the air, and to know everything's OK with her regarding this subject—not to just think it's OK, but to know it's OK.

I wrote this in a private journal entry:

I wonder if I’ll ever see [Sally] again, if we’ll ever speak again. I picture us meeting at our school reunion, her reaction different each time. Sometimes, she smiles upon seeing me, gives me a quick hug, and we just talk about what we've done since school ended. Sometimes, she looks at me awkwardly, says "Hey.", and quickly moves on. Sometimes, she gives me a cold look, says nothing, and keeps her sights firmly locked on her next destination. I don't know what to expect, but any potential encounter of ours is so far away that it's silly to think about.

It's evident that I've wanted closure on this for ages, and it just doesn't go away. It's such a trivial thing, but at the same time, that doesn't make it any less important to me. When people found the Formal/after-party/Schoolies blog entries on here, I remember one person telling me that there were rumours floating around about me, rumours he didn't elaborate on for fear that I'd regret hearing about them. Not that I know anything specific about such gossip (if the guy who let me know about that is reading this, feel free to let me know—I might even contact you about it later down the line), but it's still left me with this desire to prove myself to people: to prove that I did care about Sally's feelings that evening, to prove that I'm not some dipshit with no social skills, to prove that I learned from my mistakes. I don't really have much reason to care what most of my cohort thinks of me, nor would they have much reason to care about any of this nonsense, but that wish to convince people of the truth still remains.

Half the problem is that I think about the past too much; this was also summed up in the journal entry:

Everyone thinks about their past, but without something in the present to keep my focus on the future, the past (and it's desired manipulation) is inescapable.

I don't have much of a life at the moment, and with nothing much to focus on in the now, I focus on back then, simply cos it's more interesting. I know I need to work on that, definitely. But I still hope I finish this new material, and that Sally sees it. It's not like I want someone to go "Hey, Sally! You know that guy who wanted to fuck you a couple of years back? That weirdo? He wants you to see this." That's exactly what I don't want: for her to think I went through the process of writing and recording another 45-60 minutes worth of comedy just to get her attention. I want this stuff to stand up on its own—and the vast majority of the material has fuck all to do with Sally anyway—but I still want her to at least watch the parts mentioning her, hoping she enjoys it. I just want to make her smile.

Am I weird for wanting that? Is it too obsessive? I don't know anymore.