Life As I Blow It by Sarah Colonna

called
Bus Riley’s Back in Town
. It’s a play about a guy named Bus Riley who is back in town. My co-star was a guy named Nick. Nick liked to drink whiskey.
    Nick lived with his girlfriend but he was miserable with her. Really everything made him miserable, but he covered it up with moments of what seemed like joy. I assumed that I could make him happy. I can’t say for sure that he was manic-depressive, but I
can
say for sure that he reminded me a lot of my Uncle John, who was manic-depressive. John was someone who when I was younger I thought was one of the happiest people that I’d ever met. I later found out that my parents just didn’t let me around him when he was having an “episode.” When they did finally decide that I was old enough to be told that he was sick, I insisted on seeing him. My dad made arrangements and we paid Uncle John a visit in Sacramento. I was about thirteen and we met him at a diner. It felt like he didn’t want us to see where he lived, which turned out to be the case because he didn’t have a home. My grandma was secretly harboring him even though she’d been told over and over that she was enabling him; everyone else kept him at a distance since he refused to stay on his medication and get the help he so desperately needed. She didn’t care. A woman that will take the bus cross-country to see her grandkids has a lot of dedication in her. And she was his mother.
    John was really nervous when we all sat down in the big red booth; my dad had told him that my sister and I now knew about his condition. He tried to overcompensate with humor. When I asked him how he was doing, he said, “Just trying to stay away from the chain saws,” and laughed.
    I was, and still am, terrified of chain saws. I won’t even set foot in a haunted house because I’m convinced that the person holding the chain saw is an actual serial killer using Halloween as their excuse to go nuts. All year they wait for the night they get to dress up and act like it’s all fun and games, then when the moment is right people who just thought they were out for a good scare will get their heads sliced off. The movie
Halloween
really fucked me up. Uncle John’s joke made my head spin.
    The most attractive thing about Nick was that he was a complete mess
and
an adult. He started classes then dropped them. He wanted to be an actor but felt like he was too smart for it and should probably teach English. All of his noncommittal bullshit made me really horny.
    After Andy, I didn’t think I would ever fall in love again, but it was happening. Nick made me feel incredibly safe and incredibly insecure at the same time. There isn’t anything more tempting than that combination. It’s like someone offering you a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich right after you start a diet.
    Nick flirted with me, but I couldn’t decide if it was real flirting or if he was just researching his role of Bus Riley. He seemed to be taking his acting seriously during those few weeks, and I liked it. I was starting to find guys in my classes hotter than the guys from the fraternity houses. Frat guys were fun for a night, but brooding actor guys had me really interested, and Nick was an amazing brooder. It wasn’t untilmy late twenties that I figured out the guys I had been labeling as brooding were probably just alcoholics.
    One night after a long, emotional rehearsal where my character agonized over the return of Bus Riley, Nick and I decided to go for a drink. We were physically exhausted from what our characters were going through. We decided that a pitcher of beer at Fuzzy’s was the perfect way to unwind. As a bonus, Max was working that night. He was too dumb to figure out that since I never returned any of his calls he should start charging me for drinks.
    One free pitcher led to another, and the next thing I knew Nick and I were in my shitty Mustang on our way to the