yes please(17)

I’d like to tell you that I responded to the note. Or that I turned around and faced that letter head-on. I’d even like to tell you that I checked my body and heart and realized I was fine with the sketch and felt no need to apologize. Nope. Instead, I got angry. Anger and embarrassment are often neighbors. Sometimes we get defensive about what we feel guilty about. I was angry about the fact that I was being accused of something I didn’t do. I didn’t make fun of a real girl on purpose! I would never do that! That’s not me! That’s not me at all! I reread the note over and over again. I shared it with other people in the hopes they would agree that Marianne and Chris were overreacting and I was right to believe I was a good person. I told everyone about it and asked everyone to say it wasn’t my fault. I threw the note in the trash like it was evidence of a crime. I stomped around for a bit and then pretended it went away. I was a shitty version of myself. The shadow side. I made a lot of noise because I felt bad about hurting someone’s feelings and I didn’t want to get quiet and really figure out how I felt. I was afraid to lie down and put my hand on my heart and hear the tiny voice whispering inside me saying that I had screwed up.

Your brain is not your friend when you need to apologize. Your brain and your ego and your intellect all remind you of the “facts.” I kept telling myself that the only thing I was guilty of was not paying attention. Sure, I was being self-absorbed and insensitive, but who isn’t? Sure, I should have been more on top of what I was saying, but wasn’t that somebody else’s job? Didn’t everyone know how busy I was? Didn’t Marianne and Chris take into consideration what a NICE PERSON I was? My brain shouted these things loud and clear. My heart quietly told a different story.

Shame is difficult. It’s a weapon and a signal. It can paralyze or motivate. My friend Louis CK likes to say that “guilt is an intersection.” Getting out of it means making a choice and moving forward. I felt guilty and I felt shame, but I didn’t really move. For years. I parked my car in the intersection and let it sit there until the battery ran out. Then Spike Jonze helped me.

I bet you didn’t expect so many A-list names in my apology story!

A word about apologizing: It’s hard to do it without digging yourself in deeper. It’s also scary and that’s why we avoid the pain. We want so badly to plead our case and tell our story. The bad news is that everybody has a story. Everyone has a version of how things went down and how they participated. It’s hard to untangle facts and feelings. For me, as a person in comedy, I am constantly weighing what I feel comfortable saying. There are big differences between what you say on live television and what you say at dinner, but you realize you have to be responsible for all of it. Each performer has to figure out what feels right. I am a strong believer in free speech and have spent most of my adult life in writers’ rooms. I have a high tolerance for touchy subject matter. There isn’t a taboo topic I can think of that I haven’t joked about or laughed at. But I have an inner barometer that has helped me get better at pinpointing what works for me and what feels too mean or too lazy. I like picking fair targets. I don’t like calling babies on websites ugly or comedy that relies on humiliation. I love ensembles and hate when someone bails or sells their partner out. I love watching a good roast but don’t think I would be particularly good at roasting someone. Maybe it all comes down to what you feel you are good at. I have a dirty mouth but know that I don’t always score when I work really blue. I have a sense of what kind of jokes I can get away with and still feel like my side of the street is clean. I like to lean my shoulder against limits and not depend on stuff that is shocking.

That being said, I still made a joke about someone being disabled. I didn’t know it was a real person, but why does that matter? All of this left me stuck in that guilt intersection. I knew I was wrong but couldn’t move. I lived in fear of running into Chris and Marianne, which was strange, because there really wasn’t anyone else in the world I was afraid to be in a room with. This made famous-person stuff stressful, because Chris was famous and an actor and there was a high chance I would run into him at an award show.

I don’t want to back-door brag as I make my way to the end of this apology tale, so let me just front-door brag and talk about the cool people I get to be friends with. I am friends with Kathleen Hanna and Adam Horovitz, aka Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys. I can’t believe I am friends with them. I love Kathleen’s music and I am in awe of her social activism and general awesomeness. I asked her to interview me for Interview magazine when I was just a sketch performer whom nobody knew. She said yes because she supports young women. This is the artist who pulled women to the front at her rock shows. She shows up and does the work and is the real deal. Now she is my friend. Her husband, Adam, is also my friend. I used to listen to the Beastie Boys on my Walkman and dream about meeting them. Now I have Adam’s e-mail. I’m blowing my cool cover but I am so psyched we are friends. I am also friends with Spike Jonze. Guess who else I am friends with? Kim Gordon! Norman Lear! Martin Short! It’s awesome! I can’t lie, it’s so awesome!

See how I am trying to distract you from the shitty thing I did?

Anyway I was at dinner with some of these people and Spike mentioned working with Chris. I told him my story, and how five years had passed and I was still sitting on this feeling that I had blown it. Spike gently reminded me that it’s never too late to reach out and apologize.