Sorry I'm Late - I was crying at a comedy show

while not sitting by Lena Dunham

“What’s this really about?”

A woman came into the bookshop, rolling a suitcase behind her.

“Sally?” she asked me.

“No, I’m sorry,” I said.

“Neil?” she said.

I had to tell her no again – that Sally doesn’t work Mondays and that Neil was off sick and I was Jess. Just Jess with no real power in the bookshop.

The woman contained her disappointment well. Then she pulled a book out her pocket – a proof of a new book of hers coming out – historical fiction. She had shiny mauve-brown nails and was in her sixties, smartly dressed.

We chatted a bit about her book and how this was her second novel (out in July). I paused and then asked her if she’d been a writer for a long time and she shook her head no, with a glint in her eye.

“No, not at all. I told myself my entire life – when I turn 55, I’m going to quit my job and write full-time. And I did it!”

I love stories like this, that we can re-make ourselves at any moment. I don’t know why I relish these stories, as if my own life is so disgusting / repellent and I need to a fresh, dramatic new start, but it’s so comforting to think, if I just made a few right choices in the future, then I too will have two published novels and shiny mauve nails. (The author who came in was Annie Garthwaite and her book The King’s Mother is out in July with Viking!)

At the bookshop, Rebecca (25) recently told me, apropos of absolutely nothing, literally just looking at my face in a quiet moment: “You don’t look that old. More like…33.” Right after this, another man came into the bookshop. He was looking to buy Alastair Campbell’s book, But What Can I Do? He mentioned it was for his book club. I asked him more about his book club and he said, “Well, it’s really my running club but we read books, too.” He told me the name of his running club, and it’s actually the same running club my husband Sam trains with.

I texted Sam, “A man from your running club is in the bookshop.” Sam asked me to describe him. In a hurried text between customers, I wrote, “old AF?” And Sam instantly guessed correctly.

Look, I googled the running man and he’s in his mid-80s, so I think it’s okay to call him old. Though Rebecca would probably say to him, “You don’t look THAT old. You’re more like…79.”

I do feel bad about writing “Old AF” even though it’s unlikely he will ever find out that I did this. Last summer when my mom was in a hotel swimming pool in summer, some teenager accidentally hit her in the head with a beach ball, but this was nothing compared to the agony of what followed after. The kid yelled to his friend, “Hey! You just hit that old lady on the head with the ball!” and my glamorous mother, a very young 72 with elegant nails, designer sunglasses, a Fitbit that regularly gets 10,000 steps a day and most importantly, hair like Jane Fonda, was fuming. She still recalls the anecdote with fury. “That old lady? THAT OLD LADY?! Old lady my ass.”

“Do you still run?” I asked the running club man and he looked furious at the question, I guess at the insinuation that you don’t run at 85. He nodded his head vigorously and looked disgusted at me for asking. I’m still reeling from the shame.

And then, I swear, a few days later, I was sitting in a café eating a cheese and mushroom omelet and a young man and an older woman in her sixties sat down together. I was eavesdropping about how he was some big deal manager or agent or something and she talked about all the plays she had written and was currently writing.

I went to a baby shower last weekend, and we were supposed to write encouraging advice for the mother-to-be to read during the birth. A big thing I have been saying to myself and to other people, in an annoying all-knowing way is, “Trust in the timing of your life,” so I scrawled this onto a post-it on the message board.

Later, I realised how infuriating this will be while writhing in agony in the labour ward, begging the midwife for pain relief. Imagine the midwife cooing, “Just trust in the timing of your life, sweetie,” on her way out the door.

But I still like it - trust in the timing of your life - because so much of our life is not in our control, so I’d rather feel hopeful about that fact than spiral into despair. I’ve convinced myself that I must write X amount of words by Y date, so that I can get it published by Z and it never ever pans out the way I want or hope. But often, yes, it is better than I could have personally imagined. But it is never ever in the time frame I wanted.  

I worked an evening book launch at the bookshop last week. The author’s debut novel. She wore a long patent leather skirt with a slit up the back, sky-high glittery slingback heels, a black sweater and had light pink nails. She was gorgeous, but more than that, she was just very, very beloved. Everyone there was so excited for her.

My very favorite part about book launches is the speeches. I get to hide behind the register, in the shadows, watching these big moments unfold, for an author’s dreams to come true. The author was also a theatre actress, so she was very beautiful in a dramatic way and she wasn’t nervous at all – just blooming in her speech, out of her high heels. In her speech, she said that actually, her book was supposed to come out a year ago, but it was delayed, mostly because she was heavily pregnant at that time. The agony: to have your book publication date pass you by and having to wait another full year.  

“But it’s better this way,” she said. “Now I get to have both my babies.” She held up her hardback book “baby” and, in the very back of the crowd, her partner held up an adorable 9-month old baby as proof. The tiny feet in a red velvet onesie bounced on his shoulders and the baby grinned. “I love you, darling!” the man called out to her from the back of the bookshop. “I love you, darling!” the author called back.

Afterwards, when I was pouring wine and negronis, the books were flying fast. Soon, we only had one copy left. A woman in a grey sweater asked me to save it for her, in the back, and she would purchase it later. But two minutes later, someone else approached the bar.

“Are all the books gone?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I said.

“But I see one behind you. Why can’t I have that one?”

“Oh…that’s…reserved for one of the other guests. She’s going to pay later.”

“You can’t reserve. Why does she get to reserve it?”

I secretly agree with her. You can’t just “reserve” things wily-nily. You can’t just go around pointing to nice things yelling, “Mine! For later! Don’t touch!” But I’d already promised to save it for the woman in the grey sweater.  

At this point, I didn’t really know what to do. I kept frantically trying to wave and get the attention of the grey sweater lady, so she could hurry up and buy the book, but she was busy chatting to someone else. The bookshop can hold about 50 people in it, and it was at capacity.

The woman at the register leaned in.

“What if I pay more for the book? Then can I have it?”

“Uh….”

“You don’t understand. The author is my GIRL. We used to work together every day. I have to buy her book tonight.”

Finally, FINALLY the other woman in the grey sweater saw my frantic gesturing and made her way over. I explained the situation. The grey sweater woman decided that clearly the other woman wanted the book more than her and she relinquished the final copy.

As I rang up the book, I said to the winner, “So you and the author must be really close, huh?”

“Not really,” she said. “We just used to work together, that’s all. I haven’t seen her in ages.” Then she laughed.

Fucking hell.

Sometimes, it really is just about winning. Or at least not feeling like you missed out.

A recent bit of advice that I’ve heard recently that I cannot stop thinking about is this: if someone, especially someone you know well, says something rude or insulting or just makes you feel so taken aback or unnerved, don’t jump to attack or react. Pause, then look at them with big innocent cow eyes, maybe put a hand on their shoulder and say, “Are you okay?”

I love this because it immediately takes the power out of their hands and back into yours. Like, “I am not even going to acknowledge the low insult you just gave me because I am so enlightened, so holier than thou, and that comment was so batshit crazy, that now I am concerned for you.”

Part of me wanted to put my hand on that woman’s arm before I passed the book over and say, “What’s this really about?”

A few weeks ago, my husband and I had dinner in Soho, at a swanky vegetarian restaurant called Bubala. I was floored by the babaganoush. It will change you.

For dessert, I ordered an old-fashioned (whiskey, sugar, bitters, orange peel), which years ago I decided is the only alcoholic drink I will ever have again. Truthfully, my body hates alcohol. I hate the sour taste of any wine. I have never finished a beer. But for some reason, I can tolerate and almost like whisky, with ice. I have about one drink a year and this is the one I choose. Why I felt possessed to drink this that night, I do not know.

I drank it, but I also drank it fast. “THIS TASTES SO GOOD!” I said to my husband. “It takes the way whiskey should taste.” Then my skin flushed red because I have the Asian gene that means we can’t process alcohol properly and instead look feverish all evening.

We realised we were nearly late for our comedy show and stumbled a few streets over to it. We took off our eight layers of jackets and sweaters and sat down. We didn’t know a single thing about the gig and had booked it because it happened to be on the night we were having dinner nearby.

I was so buzzed off the novelty of alcohol that I thought I was sitting next to Lena Dunham, was truly convinced it was her. “You know, actors and directors and comedians go to these things scouting for talent,” I whispered to Sam, mentioning how one of his friends had seen Sharon Horgan on her own at this very venue. I kept leaning over trying to peer into her face, as she was faced away from me talking to her friend.

It was not Lena Dunham.

As the lights went down, we weren’t quite sure what we were watching. It transpired that it was two best friends, Harry and Diego*, a comedy double act, who had been writing comedy shows and performing at Edinburgh every year for over 15 years. Fifteen years. Some of the humour was forced and “punny” which I hate and at the beginning, I thought, “Oh no, this is terrible,” but halfway through the show they won me over.

My feelings of warmth towards them were less about the show and more about them: as best friends and comedy duo. I loved their enthusiasm. The fact that they were pursuing their dream. Then it revealed that they were in their mid-30s. I was so … so impressed that they were still doing this. Impressed and scared for them. Proud of them, as if I was their mother. How they had kept going, even after they had a TV sitcom and the sitcom was then cancelled? And yet they did - they kept going even after one of them, Diego, had married and become a dad. The show was about fatherhood (and their friendship), and it was a mix of recorded interviews, silly props and musical numbers. In the end, Sam and I both laughed a lot. We were charmed.

And at the very end, Harry and Diego played a recording of a video call between them while workshopping this very show. (They seem to record everything they do, in case they can use it as material later.) Diego was at home with his kid, Harry at home alone in his flat.

Everything is normal and then this candid interaction happens:

Harry: Do you have any other ideas?
Diego: Can we…?
Harry: What?
Diego: Can it be … our last show? (he grimaces, nervously)
Pause
Harry: Like, our last show … ever?
Diego: Yeah.
Harry: Our last show … ever.
Diego: Yeah.

Then an excruciating moment of silence. Of Harry’s face realising that Diego is ending their comedy dream. That this isn’t a “bit” he’s doing. That this magical safe space of what they were and who they were together – it was ending. Forever. That they would not make it, at least as a team. That they would not do this until they were old men. My heart physically hurt seeing the dawning realisation on Harry’s face and the guilt and fear on Diego’s face as he ended 15 years of partnership with one sentence: “Can it be … our last show?”

The tears streamed down my face and they kept going. The lights came up. People put their coats on. I kept crying. Not Lena Dunham left. Everyone else left. How could they? We’d just witnessed a brutal break-up.

I kept saying to Sam, “But they had a dream and it was okay if it wasn’t working out because they had EACH other, they always had each other and now Harry is going to be all alone.”

Meanwhile, the comedians were headed to the bar to sell their merchandise.

“We have to go! I have to talk to them!” I said, suddenly hurrying. When we got there, I reached Diego first, but truthfully, I had nothing to say to Diego, the man who had ended things. You can’t say anything to a Diego. Their minds are already made up.

I got to Harry. In his tuxedo. He felt younger and shorter than he had on-stage.

“Is it really over?” I asked Harry. He looked at me, bewildered. I still had shiny eyes and mascara streaks on my face.

“Yeah, I think so,” Harry said.

“You made me cry,” I said, starting to tear up again. “I can’t believe it’s over.”

And then I did something, so weird, so out of character, so insane. I touched him. I patted his shoulder and I said, “You’ll be fine.”

Harry looked at me, so confused, so perplexed, and he looked at me, really looked at me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Sam escorted me out. We took the night bus home.

When I got home, I kept wondering: “What’s this really about?”

***

In February, a man walks into the bookshop pushing a sleeping baby in a stroller. He scans the bookshop quickly. I point to a corner. He nods. He browses for 5 minutes and then buys a red card that says, “Baby Light My Fire.”

Another man walks in. I steer him towards the corner, and he picks out a card of a furry Yeti that says “You’re a Special One.” He’s about to pay when he lunges for a heart-shaped candle from the table by the window.

Another man walks in. He makes a beeline for the corner without any help from me and buys a card with a black and white photograph of two people holding hands.

The lunch hour on the day before Valentine’s Day is my favourite time of year at the bookshop. I was called in to cover lunch for someone who fell ill (a UTI! I rest my case). It was rainy and grey but I was warm inside and drinking my coffee and thoroughly enjoying the steady parade of men coming in from the rain, most spending about 45 seconds in the bookshop. (I assume most women bought their cards in advance?)

I love observing the pairing the man with the card choice. What caused one man to buy a card of a mermaid and a merman kissing? Why did one man grab the card that said, “Be Mine, Valentine” and then put it back and grab a generic card of cupid shooting his arrow. Was the statement of “Be Mine” too committal? Too possessive? Did they recently become polyamorous? What was it?

Another man with broad shoulders and a thick neck picks up a card of two hedgehogs kissing. Delightful.

Nothing is for certain except for this: I will see most of these men in here again the day before Mother’s Day.

Valentine’s means practically nothing to me now (though Sam did get me a red card that said “First you stole my heart, then you stole the duvet”). I worked a book launch this year on Valentine’s Day evening, pouring wine and beer. It was the least Valentine’s-y Day I’d ever had, as it wasn’t mentioned at all at the book launch and when I got home, my husband was already in bed.

Valentine’s Day used to be different. My sophomore year at Brown, a college friend and I were asked to write an anonymous column for the school paper about dating from our two different perspectives, and our first column was about Valentine’s Day. I just dug it up and reread it and could not be more thrilled that that column was anonymous and that it does not exist on the internet. I’m so grateful to be so old (38) that so many of my embarrassing mistakes are gone forever and not online.

In the column, I was reminded of the term we would use when our college roommates would lock us out of the room to have sex. “Sexiled.” So many references in the writing: “On Valentine’s Day, the three of us were sexiled, so we were in the hallway splitting a bottle of red wine.”

I was so frequently sexiled during my freshman and sophomore years at Brown that I lived mostly in the library and the staircase in our building.  My assigned roommate was a very beautiful European boarding school girl who always, always had a boyfriend.

It’s so odd to think that when many of us are 18, we go to college and we have to sleep in the same room, about one meter away from someone else’s head, someone who is a complete stranger to us. Due to the close proximity, my roommate’s boyfriend for most of sophomore year, Brian, and I had to tolerate each other. We were together so much that it was like we became our own old bickering couple, with no romance or warmth left between us.

He was so utterly irritated by me. I used to balance Nantucket Nectar bottles of juice in the space outside between the window screen and the window sill overnight because it kept drinks cold. I called it “my refrigerator” (we didn’t have a real one) and Brian absolutely hated this. Every time I said, “Hold on, let me check my refrigerator,” he would shout, “IT’S NOT A REFRIGERATOR!”

College was not at all what I expected or wanted. It snowed and was very cold. So many of the other kids had been to boarding schools and it felt intimidating. It was a) hard, academically and b) lonely and c) I just didn’t anticipate being sexiled that much merely because some housing admin matched me with the hot foreign girl.

I also really wanted to take a fiction course, but it was full, so I ended up signing up for an intro to playwriting course. I did not know one thing about playwriting, which made me feel insecure. But why would I have known anything? I was only 18! I don’t know why I thought I needed to know everything before I started college.

In my playwriting class at Brown, there was a guy named Kevin who is now a foreign correspondent for a major newspaper and a regular on NPR. However, I just remember him as Kevin – Kevin who had excellent hair and was very handsome and wrote a brilliant play called something like Nick Drake was Ernest Hemingway’s Father (or vice versa? I don’t know. I will not be asking Kevin. He is reporting on crime and politics and far too busy for this). I’m sure I understood none of it.

Years later, my college friend Fritz told he that he finally, really knew that I actually loved my husband – because I wasn’t following Kevin on Instagram. (He had checked!). It’s true! I’ve moved on, Kevin! I hadn’t even bothered to search for him on Instagram. Though I did just now and he seems very successful and also very single. (Which makes me relieved that he didn’t reciprocate my crush on him because he feels like the type who was always going to choose his career and his elite marathon training over a romantic partner that would tie him down.)

I remember always feeling like I was very awkward and strange whenever I ran into Kevin. I confided this to my friend Kim, who in turn, told Kevin that I thought this (why??? Why, Kim, why????). He told Kim something like, “That’s weird because actually she’s so normal. Probably the most normal person in the world,” which is the most insulting thing you can say about someone and wow, Kevin, who hurt you so badly that you had to burn me like that?

Maybe he partly thought this because for me, the hardest part in these creative writing classes was sharing and workshopping my work, so I always wrote very simple, plain, boring, safe pieces. I often have anxiety dreams about going back to college - and it’s always college - because I feel that I did it completely wrong and something deep inside of me wants to right it.

Every year, the Literary Arts department would put on a contest called, “Once Upon A Weekend.” The drama department would tape up a prompt for a one-act play on their door and you had only 48 hours to write and submit a play based off of this prompt. That weekend, my roommate was out with Brian, mercifully spending the night at his dorm instead of ours. It was snowing, a lot, and I was sitting at my desk in my dorm late at night, warm light from the lamp on my desk, when I suddenly felt this surge of energy to write.

The prompts for the play were: a secret, a knock, a kiss, a dramatic entrance.

I just started typing and stayed up until 3am. I loved that it wasn’t an assignment for class and that you couldn’t spend weeks and weeks on it – everyone could only write during the allotted 48 hours. I could write and nobody I knew would even read it – just the graduate students judging the contest. It was fun to just write for me. On Sunday evening, I printed my play off and anonymously submitted it in the tray before the deadline at 6pm.

A week later, I get an email.

Dear Ms. Pan,

Congratulations, your short play has been accepted into Once Upon a Weekend. Please meet at the Literary Arts Lounge tomorrow Thursday at 6pm to discuss production aspects and director/actors.

Thank you,

Jonathan Ceniceroz

I hadn’t realised what exactly this contest was. Apparently, they choose five winners and they perform all the plays in the blackbox theatre. And mine had been chosen!!!!

Except, well. Well. Hmm. Except now the play was going to be performed. And there was just one tiny issue. Two of the characters were based off of …. Brian and my roommate. The story was fiction, sure, and they weren’t the main characters, but the main character just happened to live with this couple who were a LOT like my roommate and Brian. They also called each other the same pet names, they also ate pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in bed watching the show 24, they also chain-smoked out the window.

At our next playwriting class, our professor informed us that we were the ones who would be acting in the plays. I couldn’t act in my own play, so I had to act in someone else’s. And who would I be acting with? Brian.

Brian. I had to a) perform in front of an audience and b) have my play performed in front of an audience and c) the work that was being performed was making fun of Brian and my roommate, who would, of course, definitely be attending.

And then I read the play I had to perform with Brian. It’s a two-hander, as they say, and in it, I have to sprint down a set of stairs in a pair of high heels and then I have to... I have to… I have to kiss Brian.

Except his name wasn’t Brian in the play. It was Harold. And a lot of the play is me screaming, “HAROLD!!!!!!” angrily, which obviously was going to come very naturally to me given the pent-up rage Brian and I felt towards each other.

During rehearsals, the director could feel the (extremely non-sexual) tension between Brian and me (mine: trepidation, abject fear; his: fury at showing affection for the woman who calls the windowsill the refrigerator) and so the director changed it to me just placing my hand lovingly on Brian’s cheek instead of kissing him.

One problem solved. Now I just had to tell my roommate that all of our friends were about to watch a play in which all of her private relationship’s quirks will be played out onstage.

My roommate took it so well. She knew Brian and I did not get along and she knew that I did not ever think this would be shown publicly and in the end, she laughed. We agreed that we would tell no one it was based off of her and Brian and just pretend it was all made up.

When my play was performed, I held my roommate’s hand and my friend Rachel’s hand and we sat in the dark in the theatre. It is so scary and embarrassing and exhilarating to watch your work being performed. My face went so hot and red and stayed that way for hours. I will never forget that moment for the rest of my life, laugh-crying out of joy and embarrassment.

Did I go on to write more award-winning plays? No. (Not yet?) I mean, this was great, but I wasn’t “discovered.” It was just a small moment that felt very big.

Maybe it was the thing that made me keep writing, a little bit. Maybe everyone needs these little bits that lead to another little bit that lead to another. An encouraging word from a teacher or a stranger – something to buoy your dreams, even slightly. My life hasn’t been full of massive wins, but I’ve had a lot of tiny ones and a few medium wins, which add up greatly to me.

Neil Tennant of the Petshop Boys coined the term “Imperial Phase” as the time in an artist’s career when they are at their peak and can do no wrong.

The author, Annie, who came into the bookshop and started writing at 55, now with two novels and a third on the way, is in hers right now. Taylor Swift is certainly in hers, as is Emma Stone. I’d throw Cillian Murphy in there, too. Claire Keegan. Richard Osman. Everything is just firing on all cylinders for them right now, but we forget that it wasn’t always this way, even for them.

Maybe that’s why I cried at the comedy show. Because Diego was done. Harry would go on, but would he make it? Would he go on to have an Imperial Phase? Will I? Is his version already over? Is mine?

Harry and I are similar ages. We are too old to be ingenues. Our names will never be next to the world “prodigy.” We are too young to be Annies and infamous late-bloomers. Will we keep going? Will we keep writing? Will we “make it”?

The other day, I was walking home and I looked up and saw a woman taking her bins out. I balked. I instantly recognised her as a famous writer who always looks very glamorous and made up - but today she was in sweatpants and wearing glasses and zero make-up, and I only recognised her because of that weird face memory thing I have.

I texted two friends immediately who between them know everything about everyone: “Did I just see XXXXX taking out the bins????? In sweatpants??? Glasses? No-makeup?” It was thrilling! Seeing the author in sweatpants was very exciting because she always appears to be in cocktail dresses. The friends confirmed that they had heard the author had just moved to my area.

And then last night, I was on a double-decker bus and hovering near the door as it made its way towards my flat. I felt a man coming down the stairs but didn’t look at him. Then, when he was getting off at the next stop, I looked up and saw him: David Nicholls. I only noticed him because he was overly polite in letting a woman get off before him. He didn’t take off a top hat and tip it towards her, but it somehow felt like he would have if he was wearing a top hat. I saw him and my brain went “DAVID NICHOLLS!!!” and my body went all tingly. David Nicholls, the author of the novel One Day, that has just been turned into the Netflix hit TV show.

Ah. So that’s how I’ll know when I’ve made it. When a woman texts her husband at 9pm with the enthusiasm of, “I JUST SAW DAVID NICHOLLS ON THE BUS. I’M SHAKING.” When two friends nearly get into a fistfight over who gets to buy the last copy of my book.

When someone calls their friend to say, “I just saw Jess Pan taking out the bins, and she looked fucking dreadful!”

Boom. May we all be so lucky.

*I changed the comedian’s names, mostly because I said that I didn’t like their puns and ‘Harry’ doesn’t need another kick in the teeth.

You can read more of my writing by checking out my book, “Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes.” (The UK version is “Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: An Introvert’s Year of Living Dangerously). It’s also been translated and published in the Netherlands, Korea, China, Russia, Germany, Taiwan, Poland and Hungary.

It’s about the year I spent: talking to strangers, performing stand-up comedy, travelling solo, trying out improv, going on friend dates and doing a bunch of extrovert-y things.  It’s about being an introvert and trying to extrovert for a full year. I interview brilliant people throughout the book who guide me through these nightmares.

Reviews for Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come

“I loved it! It’s such a wonderful title, and the book lives up to it’ Nigella Lawson 

‘In a world of self-care and nights in, this book will inspire and remind you to do some things that scare you every so often.’ Emma Gannon

‘Hilarious, unexpected and ultimately life-affirming.’ Will Storr

‘Funny, emotional and deeply inspiring, this is perfect for anyone wanting to break out of their comfort zone’  Heat

‘Beautifully written and so funny! I related to it A LOT’ – Emma Jane Unsworth

‘Relatable, moving and fantastically funny’ – Rhik Samadder

‘Tender, courageous and extremely funny, this book will make us all braver.’ Daisy Buchanan

‘A chronicle of Pan’s hilarious and painful year of being an extrovert.’ Stylist

‘Excellent, warm, hilarious.’ Nikesh Shukla

‘You WILL laugh and laugh while reading this.’ Sun

“Very funny, very smart” Liberty Hardy

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