I’m Just a Person

162 Pages·2017·3.71 MB·English

by  Tig Notaro

Foreword

Acknowledgments
I always considered myself a private person—both onstage and off—who made
way more observations about the world around me than the one inside me.
But after my life fell apart in March of 2012, I felt compelled to express
myself on a much deeper level. With each new project I took on, I found a sense
of openness, a desire to share another level of my life, and I felt a more complete
person emerging.
I consider my comedy album Live, which was recorded at Largo, to be the
skeleton of who I am and what happened directly after the rug was yanked out
from under me. It was the first time that I felt a need to tell the truths of my life
because there was nothing left to protect. The documentary about me that soon
followed, I consider my organs, and this book, I consider to be the meat of it all.
I am forever grateful for all the people who allowed me the opportunity to tell
my story in all its different forms and forums.
My hope is that this book might give you some courage, and possibly some
insight or understanding about me, but more ideally, about yourself. I’d be
honored if someone could use my life as an example in some way, but please
remember, I’m just a person. I was fumbling and failing, growing and changing
through it all and will continue to do so. I tell myself daily that we all have
tailbones; that though our bodies have evolved to the point of no longer needing
them, our tails once gave us balance as we walked; that I’m just simply a person
with a tailbone making my way in the world.
I want to thank my first hero, my mother, Susie, for giving me every single
one of my talents as an athlete, artist, and comedian as well as an inner core of
steel; my father, Pat, for giving me my gumption; my stepfather, Ric, for giving
me the guidance that allowed me to focus that talent and gumption; my brother,
Renaud, for doing anything in the world for me . . . and I mean ANYTHING (I’d
do the same for you); and my manager, Hunter Seidman, who has helped me
juggle these difficult times and whose keen judgments have always made
everything easier and better for me.
I am deeply grateful to my agents, Andrew Skikne, Kate Edmonds, and Marc
Gerald; my attorney, Julian Zajfen; and everyone at HarperCollins and Ecco,
especially Hilary Redmon, Daniel Halpern, and Gabriella Doob for their
editorial insights. To the brilliant Stef Willen, who ripped this book apart a
million times over to help make it what it is today. To my friends and family, all
the way from Mississippi to Louisiana to Texas to Ohio to New Jersey to New
York to Colorado to California and beyond—I couldn’t be surrounded by more
interesting, giving, open, or understanding people, so thank you.
Finally, endless gratitude to Stephanie Notaro, my tremendous wife and the
adoring mother of our little kitty, Fluff, . . . every single morning that we wake
up, I still can’t believe the easy love we have found in each other. I am in
absolute and utter awe of your tasteful ways and inspired by the high roads you
take. There isn’t a wiser, kinder, more hilarious, more compassionate, or more
beautiful person out there. Thank you for loving me.
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. Over My Mother’s Dead Body
2. Are You My Mother?
3. The Downfall
4. Saying Good-Bye
5. Letting Go
Photographic Insert
6. Diagnosis
7. Largo
8. Looking Down
9. God Never Gives You More Than You Can Handle
10. R2, Where Are You?
11. Pat
12. Stage IV
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Over My Mother’s Dead Body
I don’t like small talk.
“You from around here?”
“Chilly out tonight, huh?”
So I rarely talk to strangers, especially cabbies. I’ll usually put my
headphones on to avoid such moments.
Tonight, though, I really needed to connect with someone, anyone. And up
drove anyone.
“Hi,” I said softly as I got into the cab. All I could see of the driver was the
profile of a man in his late forties. “Could you take me to the northwest area of
Houston, please?”
“What’s the address?” he sneered, disgusted that I’d been so casual, so sure
that he had the kind of time to just start driving me in a general direction.
“I can’t remember exactly, but if you drive me to the Spring area, I’ll figure
out where I’m going.”
I was a shell of a human. I had just been released from one hospital for a
bacterial infection and was trying to leave another hospital. This time, though, I
was leaving my dead mother behind. It felt completely wrong, but what could I
do? Ask the cabdriver if I could bring her with me?
Hey, Cabby—I do understand that I’m the one with the bad attitude, but
not only do I need a second to shut my door before you peel out of here,
but could you give me a minute to go grab my dead mother’s body?
It was 3 A.M., and I had been at my mother’s bedside for twelve hours. I was
exhausted, but now that I was leaving I felt like there’d been some kind of
permanent exchange. I took my sadness and left a body.
Maybe I was expecting the nurses, administrators, and doctors to gather
around my mother and reminisce:
Oh, remember when she first got wheeled in here?
Oh yeah . . . I forgot about that. I was remembering that time when the
priest came in to read her her last rites.
What about when we took her off life support?
Right! Yeah—she was so great. I really liked her.
My mother had died two hours before. There was no “last breath,” only her
death rattle—the eerie gurgling and drowning noise in her throat ending with a
dark gray liquid pouring out of her mouth and dripping down her chin and neck.
I sometimes wonder what my mother would think about me revealing such
intimate details about her death. But my mother didn’t like to edit me. When she
did, all I had to say was “But it’s the truth,” and she’d shrug her shoulders like
“Who could argue with that?”
When I called the house to tell my brother, Renaud, and stepfather, Ric, that
my mother had died, Renaud said he was coming to get me. The hospital was
forty-five minutes away.
An hour passed. I called my brother’s phone and found out that he hadn’t left
the house yet. He was calling friends and family to tell them about my mother.
How could this not wait? He surely didn’t have an easy night, but I know he
hadn’t spent the last twelve hours at our mother’s side counting the seconds
between her breaths. I could hear in his voice how sorry he was and how much
he realized he had screwed up, but I was furious, so I just took a taxi. Maybe this
was a clear example of when I could have been better at picking my battles since
I could not even remember my mother’s address.
The cabdriver turned and stared at me for a couple beats, then cocked his
head to the side and said, “You don’t know the address? You don’t know the
address?! I need the exact address!”
This was not the anyone I would be opening up to. I wasn’t going to the
house I grew up in. Ric and my mother had moved about five years ago. My
relationship with them was complicated, and I had only visited maybe five times.
“Please, I don’t know it off the top of my head and my mother just died. And
. . .” I started crying.
“Oh!” The cabdriver fully turned his body toward me. “‘My mother just
died?! My mother just died!!’ Poor you!” He was yelling, his eyes bulging and
squinting. “My mom left me when I was fifteen years old! She didn’t give a shit