I Told You So - PDF
نویسندگان: Kate Clinton
خلاصه: Told You So was completed at the end of July 2008. This book is acollection of columns from magazines, essays translated from early-century Bloggerean, and material written especially for this compila-tion. After I sent the document file of my book to my editor just bywarily pressing Send, I made a big flourish of checking off the last dayof my six-month writing schedule. I cleaned off my desk, filed twotrees’ worth of hard-copy rewrites, and turned my full attention towriting for my summer show in Provincetown.For more than twenty years I have performed in July and Augustin Provincetown. I write something new every day, especially if theweather is bad; I ride my bike down to the club and try the lines outat night. My audience knows that a lot of the material is being work-shopped for the show I will take on the road in the fall. They knowbecause generally I tell them.Some weeks a brilliant three pages of newly minted material be-comes an aside after only three shows. But other times a throwawayline gets a surprising response and over a few performances grows toa brand-new ten minutes. My audiences like being part of the process.They often talk to me after a show: “When you said that, I thoughtyou were going to go this way,” as if the show were on MapQuest, butthen they finish with the perfect punch line that had eluded me. SinceI have joke dyslexia, they kindly point out when I have reversed setupand punch line altogether. Or they tell me their stories. I take notes. Ipromise them royalties.My partner of twenty years has said to me after almost every showshe has seen, “Well, that was too long, but you need to do more po-litical stuff.” Over the years, and because of the world, I have becomemore political. Actually I am a full-blown junkie. My shows reflectthat. On the Provincetown entertainment menu of drag shows, pianobars, Broadway adaptations, theater, and comedy, I am the entréeknown as “that political one.”In the past, doing a lot of political material for people on theirprecious one- or two-week vacation in a resort town could be dicey.They have been at the beach all day reading trashy beach books orboogie boarding. They have not kept up. Some nights I felt that I wasanchoring a news show, not so much doing a comedy show. Instead oflaughter, I would hear, “I wish she had this on PowerPoint.”The summer of 2008 was like nothing I had ever witnessed. Itwas not just because critical mass had been reached in the possessionof personal handheld devices. Nor was it because the town mothersand fathers had finally gotten some decent radio transmitters andfewer people had to stand out in parking lots screaming into theircell phones, “I can’t hear you!” That summer Wi-Fi was the preferredguesthouse amenity. More than a private bath. No one wanted off thegrid. No one wanted to miss anything. Even on vacation.Would the Hillary supporters get over themselves and make thechange to Obama? Could Obama really beat McCain? The town sleptfitfully, waiting for a text message about Obama’s choice for vice presi-dent. Would he pick Hillary? In the line at the Grand Union, strang-ers would say, “Can’t wait to hear what you have to say about Palin.”Increasingly panicked mass e-mails from California warned of thepassage of Prop Hate, the anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative. Every-one bemoaned high gas prices. Bear Stearns Week trumped the funof Bear Week. International tourists crowded town during CarnivalWeek. Some shops accepted euros. In one ominous sign, the storecalled Don’t Panic was shuttered.When your situation room is a resort town in August, it is difficultto convey the seriousness of some developments to vacationers. It isalso perhaps cruel. In one late August show I joked about George W.,back stateside from the Chinese Olympics, which had been broughtto us by our own credit card debt. With not one little toenail left onhis moral footprint, and still president-erect from cruising the Olym-pic volleyball babes and hectoring China on its human rights abuses,our spectator in chief excoriated Russia for its preemptive strike onGeorgia. You could practically hear the world snorting, or maybe itwas me