The Finale: Bothering Ethan Hawke On His Stoop
If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighborhood
Picking up from where I left off last week.
God, I hope you all appreciate that I am willing to relive this humiliation. It’s really hard to type from the fetal position with my hands over my face, but I’m doing it for you.
There I am, standing in front of Ethan Hawke and his daughter. I don’t know her name. It’s not Maya. This girl is young. She could be 8. Or 10. Or 12. I am aware that what I am about to do interrupts her alone time with her dad. I am aware that what I am about to do interrupt his alone time with his daughter. I am aware that what I am about to do is treat him like the person that he definitely does not want to be right now, The Celebrity.
In my time as a touring comedian who was on TV and had fans, I have had people come up to me in public to say nice things to me. When a stranger who knows you but who you don’t know approaches, your nervous system gets thrown into a different mode. It’s like you become an observer of yourself having the interaction. Despite knowing how Ethan was about to feel once I opened my mouth, I decided that my needs mattered more.
I took a shallow breath (too nervous for deep ones) and said, “Either you’re Ethan Hawke or that’s a great Halloween mask.”
CRINGE SO HARD MY BONES COULD BREAK.
On the one hand, I think that’s a great line. On the other hand, it sounds so written, so prepared but I swear to God it just came to me in the moment! Ethan’s face remained neutral. He sipped a breath and almost said something, but he waited to see what I was going to say. I knew that his soul was leaving his body to enter into Observer Mode. His daughter looked at her knees, possibly going into the realm that she has to enter when people recognize her dad and create a wedge between the reality that she wants and the reality that’s forced on her.
OUCH. I FEEL LIKE I AM WASTING MINUTES OF THIS CHILD’S ONE PRECIOUS LIFE ON THIS HALLOWEEN ~~NIGHT~~ DAY.
My carefully rehearsed compliments about The Good Lord Bird would not come out of my mouth. I started to free-flow, saying things like, “I won’t bother you.” (While bothering him.) “I know you’re here with your family. I just want to say really quickly that I’m a huge fan. And I’m a totally normal person. I’m… I’m not crazy.” Words, letters, spilling everywhere.
What’s Your Name?
Ethan is kind enough to help me clean up the proverbial mess. He has now gone into Gracious Celebrity Mode. He smiles and says, “Aw, thanks.” And confidently, redirecting this ship extends his hand to shake mine and says, “Ethan. What’s your name?” And I am so stressed out that I say, “Um, it’s… oh, who cares what my name is!”
My thoughts are crashing into each other like excited bees. I’m trying to say that I appreciate that he’s being nice and then one part of my brain starts to get a little bit of EGO. I don’t just want to say that my name is “Jen.”
Because I am Jen Kirkman — someone who also gets recognized in Brooklyn, Ethan!
Remember Reality Bites, Ethan? Well, I’ve worked with Winona Ryder! We met and became fast friends. Hung out and smoked cigarettes all night one night and talked until 4 a.m.! Then we texted back and forth for weeks! I’ve performed many times with Janeane Garofalo! I also have her number! She says she doesn’t have a cell phone, but she does! She’s the one who told me what perimenopause was — years before it happened to me! Ben Stiller took me to an SNL after-party once! He thought I was funny! That’s three Reality Bites cast members! We also have a friend in common! The director! I bet you’ve seen one of my Drunk Histories but you don’t realize it. I was a successful comedian! Go check your Netflix!
I don’t say any of that. None of that matters. What my ego was suffering from in that moment was that I didn’t get big enough in my career as a stand-up for Ethan to know me. He would know if Amy Schumer walked by or my friend Chelsea Handler.
Am I jealous of them? Truly, no. But I am aware that this is a delicate place to put myself in. There are worlds where people with recognizable success get to call up the actors they admire and work with them. Like Ali Wong did with Keanu Reeves. That just wasn’t my destiny. None of this is said from a sad, regretful, please-cheer-me-up place. God, no. I’m just in a different phase of my career as a writer.
If I had tens of millions of dollars, I would not work at all. I’d read books all over Europe. That’s the only thing that I want to do. And go dancing. Disco dancing. With all of that money, I’d open my own disco. Just for me. And maybe a handful of other friends who are truly serious about it and won’t want to change the record. But we all have parts. And part of me, when I put myself in situations like this, gets activated. I didn’t have to do this, but I did. And there are consequences. There are costs.
A GEN-X HERO
I continued to babble and finally just said to him that I think he’s a Gen-X hero. I still haven’t told him my name. I know that he would have liked to know my name so that he can center himself and bring some neighborly humanity to this interaction. I told him that I like his views on life, art, and creativity and that I think he’s a good man to have in the public eye as a representative of our generation. I told him what I’d come to say, that my favorite work of his was The Good Lord Bird. And he said, “Yay, that was my favorite too!” And he high-fived me.
I excused myself and said I’d be heading along now and that I was so sorry to have bothered him. With his head shaking and his hands waving - he gave me a kind of “nah, it’s all good”, gesture. He looks relaxed now. His smile about The Good Lord Bird (have you watched it yet?? What’s wrong with you?? I told you ten days ago to watch it!!) stayed on his face as I almost turned to walk away. But I stopped. And I asked, “Wait, can I get a picture with you?”
ETHAN’S SMILE COLLAPSED. HE TOOK IN A QUICK BREATH. SHUT AND OPENED HIS EYES ONE TIME, A SLOW, DELIBERATE BLINK. ON HIS EXHALE HE NODDED IN THE AFFIRMATIVE, SILENTLY SWALLOWING THE WORD “YUP”.
I could have been a hero right then and there and changed my mind based on reading his body language. Instead, I ignored what I was picking up on and continued with my plan. I readied camera mode on my phone, as the theme song to Ghostbusters filled the street from the giant portable speaker. The lyrics practically narrating my behavior. “If there’s something strange in your neighborhood…..”
I babbled, “I’m so sorry. I never do this. I’m not crazy.” Ray Parker Jr.’s lyrics continued to taunt me. “If there’s something weird… and it don’t look good.” CLICK. I snapped the selfie. I told his daughter that I was sorry to bother her as well and then ran off into the ~~night~~ day like a bat out of the psych ward.
On my walk of shame, many blocks from The Scene Of The Selfie Crime, a woman hopped off of her front stoop with her bowl of treats and stopped me. “You need candy!” I said, “I do?” She said, “Yes. You don’t have any candy. And your skirt is so festive. That’s a costume! It counts! You deserve candy!” I took a mini Twizzler pack. She took another one and placed it in my hand on top of the pack I’d already taken, holding it there. She gave my hand a squeeze.
I kept on keeping on, back towards my apartment. I looked at the picture. I didn’t like it. I captured myself mid-sentence. “I’m not crazy”. I was no longer excited to text it to everyone that I knew. Looking at the photo made me so mad at myself.
I remembered something that Nietzsche wrote, “Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.”
I read that quote in the classic self-help book, "Healing The Shame That Binds You”. There is a healthy shame. Shame, like fear or anger, is an important emotion. Fear, in the right doses, keeps us safe. Anger lets us know where our boundaries have been broken, and shame helps us remember our values and moral compass. It’s only when our healthy shame turns into toxic shame that it becomes a poison — we’ve turned on ourselves, skipping over the healthy shame that we can learn from in order to be the best version of ourselves; now we’re wallowing in pity.
As a neurodivergent, if I feel okay to feel human emotions like shame or guilt or fear, I can make it worse by my reaction to feeling that way, piling on myself, and adding bricks to my backpack. I felt ashamed. That’s okay! It’s a guidepost showing me that I acted in a way that is not how I want to present myself. I interrupted someone’s evening. I went out of my way to do so. It was for reasons that weren’t really about connection, but more about novelty. I treated a young girl’s father like he was more important than her, and I don’t know what her potential trauma is around having a famous dad. This is all healthy shame. I do not want to do these things. But I did them. And now that I know what that feels like, I won’t do something like that again. I’ve since forgiven myself.
I took myself out for a glass of wine while I sat texting everybody that I know the selfie. When I told everyone that it was actually the most shameful and awkward moment of my life, they didn’t bite. Every friend texted me that he genuinely looked happy. I responded that of course he did. He is a good actor. He was acting. My friends insisted that at least he agreed to the selfie and went along with it and isn’t that what I wanted? Good question. I guess it is. I wanted the story. And the picture. And I got it. And now you’ve got it.
Approaching Him On The Stoop
And so I kept walking. What was I going to do? If I was going to walk by his doorstep again from the other direction, I would have to do it much later, so that if he did remember this woman and her boots, it would look completely normal. Like I’d been somewhere. With people. On this Halloween Day.
I was already feeling exhausted. This was a lot of walking after being sick for a month. I wanted to leave. I really hate the song Monster Mash, and after hearing it played twice, back-to-back, I started my walk home in the other direction toward Ethan’s brownstone. Parents and kids continued to come and go. I was now in front of his home. Again. Five minutes later.
A mom and her kid were picking from his candy bowl. (I have to be honest, I swear all I saw were small lollipops — the Hawke family candy offerings were seriously underwhelming.) The young girl, dressed like some character from some cartoon that I don’t know about, pointed at Ethan and said, “Hey, you’re that famous guy!”
And Ethan, amused, did not give in to the attention that he was getting for being special. He pulled his fox mask down from his head over his eyes and said, “I’m not famous! I’m a fox!” She laughed, and her mother told her to thank him for the candy and keep moving.
“See?” I said to myself. “Other people are recognizing him. So, it’s not weird if I say something to him.”
I know. It was a CHILD. I am a grown-up. His age.
But I let myself through the open gate, approached him on his stoop and said something to him.
I’ll tell you what happened in the next newsletter. 😉
My toxic shame from that Halloween ~~Night~~ Day is now just a ghost. And I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost.