Frog (2021)
Two months into the pandemic—one and a half months longer than anyone thought we’d be in this mess—and I had slowly started unraveling.
BY CHRIS MIDDLETON
IMAGE BY PATSY WISNIEWSKI
Comedy is a weird industry to be in—especially in Canada—because everyone knows everyone. There are times I’ll be sitting in a Boston Pizza with my family, and a commercial will pop on the giant TV in the corner, featuring someone I know. “Look! There’s my friend!” My father, unimpressed, will ignore my excitement and return to the shrimp tacos he regrettably ordered. (It’s not Boston Tacos, Dad… give it up and order a goddamned pizza.) Comedy is a built-in social network and, for me, that social network crashed during the pandemic.
Instead of live comedy, many people are replacing those in-person experiences with online comedy shows, live streaming, and video sketches. I understand it, they’re all trying to stay creative during this increasingly tough time and figure out how to replace the high of an audience’s approval. I’m no different though, because as I write this, I’m refreshing Twitter to see if any more people liked my hot take on Mare of Easttown—a current reference at the time of writing. (It’s currently sitting at 2 likes.) It’s not the same as live performance, but dopamine is dopamine.
One of my friends’ videos passed me by a little while ago while I was flipping through my Instagram stories. It was an old improv teacher doing an “audition video,” pretending to read for the part of “Someone Who Can’t Fucking Take This Anymore.” In the video, she repeated the words “fuck you” with varying inflections. It was a raw, on-the-nose attempt at capturing the general malaise of the pandemic.
Fuck you.
I laughed at the video, gave it a like, and shared it. As I put my phone down, another level of feeling came over me. Here was a person who I used to see frequently, someone who I was in a class with weekly—sometimes more—for the better part of half a year, someone who I liked, and I hadn’t heard their voice in over a year. That’s when I started spiralling about how much I’ve been missing being locked inside.
***
The last live comedy show I saw was during Toronto Sketchfest. A group of my friends put together a sketch show centred around their dead parents—which is a lot less morbid than it sounds and was also very well executed.
After the show, we all headed to a brewery around the corner and discussed how weird things were feeling. It was two days after the Raptors had cancelled their season because of COVID, but somehow live comedy was more important. It was probably a way for all of us to hold on to normalcy for just a little longer. As we exchanged beers and laughs, deflecting away from the increasing uneasy feeling, a friend of mine turned to me and asked why I didn’t apply for Sketchfest this year. “I did,” I replied. “I didn’t get in.” His face contorted into an awkward smile, and he quickly ordered me another beer.
Fuck you.
***
It was fall of 2018, and one of my good friends had just started having success: getting cast in marquee shows, writing gigs, basically the crème-de-la-crème of unpaid “professional development opportunities”—which is about as much as you can get paid to do comedy in Canada. This was a good friend. We’d hung out, talked, volunteered as ushers together, and they worked hard; I was super happy they were getting noticed.
During one of our hangouts, I asked about a particular writing opportunity they had recently started. I had heard through the grapevine that you needed someone on the inside to help you get in, and since they had been writing for this project for a while, I figured I’d ask about it. They told me to follow up with them via text. During this hang out, I had also promised to send them this musical I’d just found that I thought they’d like. So, I open with a soft message only about the musical to a tepid response.
“Thanks for sharing! I’ll definitely check it out,” they reply.
“So how are things going with you?”
“Okay, I’ve been busy with this project I’m cast in! Sucks you didn’t make the cut. [Sad face emoji]”
“Haha, it’s okay, I’m actually trying to focus on writing more anyways,” I lie, trying to couch the hurt with some excuse.
“That’s good! You’ll get there.”
“Yeah, I actually wanted to ask you about that. I noticed you’re working for this website, and I was wondering how you got that? I’ve gotten some information from other people, but I would love to get some pro advice!”
No response.
“If not, no worries…”
No response.
Fuck you.
***
Two months into the pandemic—one and a half months longer than anyone thought we’d be in this mess—and I had slowly started unraveling. The haphazard online sketch group I’d joined had long fizzled away, any chance of returning to the few performance opportunities I had shriveled up, and my motivations for staying creative had been eclipsed by my need to find the perfect layout for my island in Animal Crossing. Things were bleak.
I had kept in touch with a few people throughout those passing months; it was a way to break up the monotony of existential dread and paying off my debt to Mr. Thomas Nook. It was also around the time this show I had worked for—that didn’t hire me back, and I’m FINE about it—was accepting open applications. I’m used to getting a handful of messages around this time, as they take applications yearly, but I had more messages flooding my inbox than I had received in the past two months… Okay, four messages.
One message was from a colleague from a show that was put on hold during the pandemic, asking me for advice on how they should structure their submission. It was a colleague I liked, and someone I felt connected to, so I gave them a little more time than I gave the other dozen (three) people who asked me for advice. We talked, caught up, shared a few laughs about the crazy times we’re living in. It was nice.
The next week, they sent me a note expressing some thanks for the help, and how they’d love to hang out in a park—since they live one neighbourhood over and it was allowed. I was thrilled at the chance of human contact, and we set a time for the following Friday.
That Thursday, this person cancelled.
“Sorry, I haven’t gotten any auditions in months, and suddenly, on the ONE day I have something, an audition appears in my inbox. Let’s reschedule?”
“Of course! Famously, have nothing else going on in my life, how about same time Monday?”
“Perrrrfect! See you then!”
This happened three more times. I still haven’t seen them.
Fuck you.
***
Going back to college—while being one of the most typical late-twenties millennial things I could’ve done—was an exhausting but rewarding way to break my Animal Crossing habit. The last two months of the program had me glued to my computer screen, and it left me burnt out and a few pounds heavier. The freshman fifteen has nothing on the post-grad stretch marks.
As I’ve been making plans to re-enter society and Googling “at-home workouts”, I got a message from that old colleague of mine—the one from 2018—congratulating me on finishing my classes.
“That’s so great, I didn’t know you went back to school?”
“Yeah, it was kind of an early pandemic choice that really paid off!”
“Haha, that’s so cool! How was the program? I’ve thought of taking that one before, just to beef up the qualifications a bit. I assume you walk away with a bit of a portfolio type thing?”
My eye-roll is audible.
I answer their questions, all the while still waiting on the answer to that question I asked years ago.
Fuck you.
***
Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve gained a weird uneasy feeling of paranoia that I’ve slowly been trying to shake off. Going from performing regularly to big audiences and having a rich social life to laying down on my couch reflecting on all the people who’ve wronged me and where it all went wrong hasn’t done wonders for my optimism. I’ve tried to work through these trust issues with my therapist, though I don’t fully believe she’s qualified… I’m joking, Brenda, I’ll see you Friday. My self-worth is slowly adjusting to not depend on the validation I seek from strangers. (By the way, my Mare of Easttown tweet has 4 likes, in case you were wondering.)
There are a lot of things I miss about the pre-COVID world, but the thing I miss most has been my friends. I’ve seen all my best friends throughout the pandemic, and even made a few new best friends, but there’s only so much time in a day to spend staring at fuzzy video boxes, and I need a change of pace. I miss the day-to-day of familiar faces, bumping into people at an event, small talk, feigning interest in someone’s reptile, and proceeding to not follow up with anyone. I enjoy the monotony of a pleasant conversation for pleasant conversation's sake. Organizing Zooms and one-on-one park hang outs has become exhausting, and I’d like the cover of a large group to keep the illusion that I’m popular.
There are many people I haven’t kept up with during the pandemic for different reasons. In fact, I’ve been actively trying to reduce my social circle, removing the people I feel slighted by. But it’s been easy to feel slighted, as I’ve been stewing in these pandemic-related isolated thoughts of past mistakes, and people have become feelingless avatars. I’m noticing that I’ve been cutting what was once a rich, vibrant fabric of a social life into a small—yet tasteful—pocket square. I have to remember that people have a lot more going on outside of my narcissistic self-absorbed victim complex, and I might get over myself and branch out.
So, I’ll let my co-worker keep cancelling on me, if it means one day I can share the stage and a cheap tequila shot with them. Fielding awkward questions will be a joy once I can see their expressions change in real time (and they can immediately buy me a drink after). I’m happy to answer anyone’s questions over a career coffee chat, even if they wouldn’t do the same.
Being inside for a year has turned me into a bitter person, and I can’t fucking take this anymore.
So, fuck you, Me.
Chris Middleton considers himself a writer/comedian based out of Toronto. He currently works at Humber Press, and his writing can be seen on Exclaim!, partonandpearl.com, adolescent.net, and many other places. His mom wishes he could be more like her favourite comedian, Justin Timberlake.
You can find him on Twitter @ActuallyChris, or at www.actuallychris.ca.
Image: Patsy Wisniewski, Frog, scratchboard, 2021.
Edited for publication by Cayley Pimentel, as part of the Creative Book Publishing Program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.