May I

On patriarchal permission, old poems, and improv class

On Monday night I went to improv class and for the first time in my life I felt liberated as a comic.

The summer of 2020 I was in a talking stage with a boy who lived on the other side of the country. It was perfect. He was a living journal of my thoughts and he lived so far away there was no sexual responsibility. (Later in my life I would learn there actually is no such thing as sexual responsibility, you don’t owe anyone pussy.) He was finishing his Eagle Scout project in the woods of Massachusetts and we would discuss our fears about going to college. He had done improv in high school and told me that I would love it. I was devastated and hurt. What a horrible way to flirt. I was a debater. Who looked great in a suit. Why would I ever ask an audience to give me a suggestion?

Yet that night, after we finished texting, I couldn’t sleep. So I looked up “Williams College improv” and there was a YouTube video from ten years prior. The team was finishing up a show and playing “Sex with Me.” I watched a couple examples and then started pausing the video to come up with my own. Then I felt the shame that comes with becoming your authentic self, closed my phone, and went to sleep.

When I finally went to Williams, I decided to pursue satire writing. I hated it, and decided that was it for my comedy dreams. This whole thing was stupid. But my silly satire articles made some small impression because when improv bounced back from the pandemic, the captain of the team reached out to me to let me know the grapevine thinks I’m funny and so does he. Even if I had no intention of being on the team, I should audition. Just because. I may not have, but that summer my boyfriend told me to watch Middleditch and Schwartz and it was cool. So I walked into the audition open-minded.

I didn’t think I would get in. But I got called back and I got it. And I remember trying to explain it to my parents and they saw that I was happy and that was enough. I almost broke no contact to tell my old talking stage that I did improv now. And then I did improv in England and the Edinburgh Fringe. And then I came back to college. And I was angry at institutional racism and accidentally pissed off all my white peers with how I was angry at racism. Oops. Then I moved to NY and took classes at UCB, and got on a house team, and was angry at institutional racism, and pissed off way fewer people. But I was so tired and sad.

So much of this dream is measured by something I don’t really want: fame. I want autonomy as an artist and that only happens at the top, so to the top we go. But it’s so degrading to ask for attention. My body feels like a prostitute to my ego’s wounds. I sell my own stories about sex and love in the vain hope it resonates with someone enough. I’ve never quite found why I put myself out there, what I get in return. Because it is an entirely selfish pursuit.

My friends told me to sign up for an improv class again and I said yes because I was sad and I didn’t know how to fix it other than hanging out with my friends. And the class is less about improv and more about being present. It reminds me a lot of the first half of Trust Exercise. Which is a book I gave to a guy I had a crush on once.

I felt nervous. And scared. And like I couldn’t do a good job. Like I wasn’t funny enough to be there. I felt imposter syndrome. In an improv class. Seventeen-year-old Shenba would be so embarrassed.

But this past Monday we were to improvise and not chase the laugh. And I’m not really sure what happened. I felt like a performer. I felt like myself, younger, a hyper-religious child in dance class, sweaty and tired. I forgot about what everyone saw, and I was there, in the world I was building with my friends. I was playing house again. I cried when I went home. I felt free.

As a kid when I danced I could see God if I wanted. I had a good imagination and honest faith. And so the way I danced was always tangibly an offering. I really felt I was giving it to a higher power. Comedy never felt like an offering. At its worst it feels like begging. Listen to me please please please. Listen to me talk.

My college essays were about the first time I did stand-up. I was obsessed with myself in a distinct way. I believed my life could be a vessel of displaying universal experience. I loved that every moment I was honest about the taboo I was liberated from my heritage and upbringing. Being an artist felt politically important and now it feels so gauche. So much is happening who cares that there was a rumor about me in middle school. But I won’t give up. And I’ve tried to give up.

I found a journal entry from when I was 16. I said if I had to choose between making a show like Bojack Horseman or falling in love, I would pick the show. Gun to my head I would give up my happiness to create something intelligent and layered and funny and stupid. Six years later I wonder if the answer is different. But whenever someone says love is sacrifice I wonder if I’ll ever love anything as much as the promise of creation.

I have always found myself trying to impress a crush. I used to hate English and then my first crush loved the Maze Runner so I read every YA novel in a year. And what I learned is I loved novels. I sometimes struggle to explore my interests without some kind of patriarchal permission to do so. My whole life something important happens when a man tells me it’s okay.

So in class, when a man told me to stop chasing a laugh and just perform, I let myself.

And I’m not necessarily religious like I was as a child. But on Monday night I saw God again. My skin was cold from the nervous sweat, my heart beating from the adrenaline, and I was inside this body, my body, and we were in on this performance together.

In college I wrote and publicized (posted on my Instagram) a poem called “Liberation Theology.” Named after the movement that views the gospel as advocating for the marginalized, it was a poem about being fetishized (copied below). It alludes to the story of Draupadi, who is gambled away and about to be publicly disrobed in court when she surrenders to Krishna and he saves her by changing her sari to be never-ending, un-disrobable. I always loved that myth because even God can’t change a man who wants to fuck you without your consent. He can only protect you. But even in this struggle of power, in a moment of losing complete autonomy, she surrenders. It also alludes to Kannagi, Shurpanakha, and Kausalya. But today I’m thinking about Draupadi.

To let go of the reigns to feel my hands again. God willing.

Liberation Theology (a poem from 2023)

mouth agape, eyelashes batting.

your hands in my hair, pulled back,

kissed my forehead after sex because “this is casual.”

my brown body would be fucking casual.

don’t be angry, it doesn’t age well.

i think of all the times i shot my voice higher

to be small, to be fuckable.

to be inauthentic enough that

whoever you corked

wasn’t really me.

“this is casual.”

i think of all the times i reminded myself

i deserved respect.

and i hate that i never believed it.

you’d bet me away to your friends for glory.

“can’t you do casual?”

i closed my eyes when you licked my ankles

my anklet on your tongue.

i prayed it would break like Kannagi’s.

that same tongue tasting the canal of my body,

the canal that could birth a baby strong enough to kill you,

a baby strong enough to be who i wish i was,

a baby, product of magic kheer.

“baby, you’re so good at casual.”

it doesn’t matter because i don’t like you.

i don’t want you anymore.

i could have loved you,

you know that.

i don’t want you to know me.

i want you to want me

so i’m not reminded by my loneliness

that my body is too brown.

as if that isn’t that what you liked so much.

exotic enough to cum on,

too much baggage to bring home.

“i liked you in your sari.”

i think about the undone

pleats on your unvacuumed rug.

“you don’t like this dress?”

i try to put aside the fact

that last time

you asked me to put my shirt back on,

as you pumped your kids into my mouth.

too ugly to look at,

you should have cut my nose off,

ugly ugly Surpanakha.

my body felt at peace, sticky in my long sleeve.

my mind collapsed

under the weight of insecurity that didn’t exist

until you asked me to put my shirt back on.

nose bleeding, blade rusty.

hand and mouth

good enough to be tools,

face and body

not beautiful enough to be the image,

nose on the forest floor.

cheap, brown, masturbatory toy.

“this white girl dress doesn’t work as well.”

oh.

you never did take the sari

all the way off the first time.

inside me, inside the sari, sari

falling off me, off the bed, onto your rug.

i felt pretty in my white girl dress.

i felt at home in my sari.

and now i am Draupati, begging God

to bless my sari, make it impenetrable.

please don’t come into my home.