As an over-thinking narcissist (I’m sorry: post-modern neurotic? self-actualized individual?) it seems like I’m always trying to explain myself to myself. I’m always picking apart the what and trying to get to the why of who the hell I am. Sniffing around for explanations for this person I’ve ended up as, it’s like a solipsistic treasure-hunt and the chest isn’t full of gold, it’s full of oddly familiar ticks and spaces between breaths, little pieces of myself that I recognize in others. It’s when you see someone you haven’t seen in a long time and notice something about the way they hold their head or shift their weight, and you get this spark of “Oh, holy fuck — THAT’S where I got that.”

So it was when I attended Lauren Weedman’s reading from her new book, A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body: (Tales from a Life of Cringe). See, almost a decade ago, I worked with Lauren at this place called Entros, and I was but a wee impressionable girl in my very early 20s and auntie Lauren did something strange to me and I only just remembered it when I saw her and it all came flashing back. (Note: Lauren Weedman would like me to remind you she’s not gay.)

Entros was one of those zeitgeisty enigmas that really only could have existed in the late ’90s in Seattle. (Proof: they bet the farm on opening an Entros in San Francisco and the whole thing fell apart in 2000.) A restaurant and bar that was also this whole gaming/entertainment center, Entros was NOT an arcade — there were no video games or foosball or skeeball or other things involving balls. (Wait: I think there was one game involving balls, but it was the exception.) The games at Entros were high-concept mind and body games, some of which were team building, others of which were just entertaining. I think the theory was that the games were all designed to “bring people together.” I’m telling you: high concept.

A couple examples: teams constructed enormous hamburgers out of oversized pieces of wood on a conveyor belt. Couples guided each other through mazes, one of them wearing a blinding helmet with a video camera on top, the other watching the video and guiding them via walkie-talkie earphones. One game was actually just a live game show in front of a fancy powerpoint presentation type thing.

The clientele included lots of tech/dotcom employees doing team building luncheons during the day, and then couples on dates in the evening. The food was kind of expensive, and you can probably see why, when the bubble burst, Entros burst with it.

But for a while there, it was a pretty cool thing. I was hired as a Game Guide in late 1997, and it was my job to show people how to play and interact with the games, host game shows for 50 people, and generally act like a smart-alecky, snark-filled Disneyland employee. In fact, that may have been in the job description. “Be super friendly, but give lots of ironic disclaimers and snarky winks while you’re helping people build their giant hamburgers out of wood. Think Disney, but drunker and a little meaner.”

The other game guides were extroverted weirdos and creatives who were mostly a few years older than me. There was the performance artist who glued cutouts from playboy onto her naked body, wrapped herself in cellophane, and rode the Monorail. There was the drunken poet/playwrite who slurred through cribbage games. There was the married couple who ran a small theater company and game guided on the side for a little extra cash. There were a lot of fabulous freaks, and one of them was Lauren Weedman.

Lauren was a half-step higher up the freak ladder than me, and was a Game Captain, meaning on some nights she’d manage the Game Guides while also shouting at people about wooden hamburgers. She was good at her job, and it was always fun to work with her. I never quite fit in at Entros (too young, too raver, not enough of an alcoholic), but Lauren was always quite nice to me.

After six months or so as a Game Guide, I was promoted to Guide Captain. It was nerve-wracking and terrifying and exciting. I was already perhaps a little baldly ambitious and got myself all worked up about how I was going to be the BEST FUNNIEST, MOST AWESOMEST GAME CAPTAIN EVAR. I was going to knock those dotcom team-builders out of their sneakers, wowing them with my hands-on game guiding abilities while simultaneously stunning Entros management with my impeccable employee-wrangling. All this, and I think I was making an amazing $11 an hour!

Lauren was my trainer on the first night as a Guide Captain, and she walked me through all of the steps. Here’s how you wipe down the sweaty insides of the camera helmets. Here’s how you run the flow of Game Guides through scheduling the game show. Here’s how you give the smack down to overly drunk customers still keeping them laughing. I took notes about all the shit I was supposed to do, but also studied Lauren’s mannerisms and affects and timing and made mental notes of it all. I was going to kick ass!

Naturally, my first evening didn’t run smoothly. It wasn’t a catastrophe, but there were some impatient customers, some confused Game Guides, and poor little 22 year old Ariel was a little overwhelmed by it all. Picture the oversized pants! The teal rayon button-up work shirt! The bleached out raver bob haircut. The eyes brimming over with tears.

At one point, as I ran across the enormous warehouse space that Entros called home, Lauren grabbed my arm to check in.

Is everything going ok? she asked me.

I nodded, breathless and gulping.

Do you have the next game show scheduled?

I nodded.

Do you feel like you’re about to cry?

I nodded again, ashamed for being such a pussy.

I almost cried on my first night, too, she confided in me, and somehow that was all I needed to know.

It reassured me that Lauren had the funny and yet even she felt like crying on her first night, because sometimes despite all the applause it feels like no one likes you and you might as well just slice yourself from wrist to elbow because my god!, the failure, the failure, the failure. Are they looking? Why aren’t they looking? Oh no: they’re looking. And if you just keep talking, if you can just fill the silence with words and the funny and big smiles and gestures and arched eyebrows, then you won’t start crying and you can get through it just fine. Just keep talking and you won’t cry.

Anyway, I can’t remember who left Entros first, but Lauren moved to NYC and I started editing a magazine and life went on. She hit the semi-big time in NYC, landing a spot on The Daily Show, which she writes about in her new book excerpted over here. She did lots of one-woman shows which were heralded by everyone, and which I somehow never managed to see when she came back through Seattle. Nine years went by. No biggie.

But now that I’m back in my home gayborhood, when Lauren came through town with her new book, I opted to walk down and catch the reading. Let me tell you people: Lauren is the funny. Like David Sedaris but even more neurotic, like a noodle bowl full of buttery tangled self-awareness, self-deprecation, and self-loathing. Lauren mines the creases of her life for the nasty comedic shmegma that collects between the rolls of adoption, divorce, failures, successes, ambitions, insecurities, cities, people, family. It’s like watching a snake eat its own tail, slurring as its mouth fills with more and more of itself but winking at the same time in a way that says, “If I stop eating myself, I might die of starvation. Keep watching, folks!”

Lauren’s reading was fabulous, and as I stood there in the darkness watch her do her thing, I kept getting the oddest little flashes of recognition. Just tiny bits.

I mean, for godsake: we worked together for a year almost a decade ago. I’m not going to get all maudlin here, because it’s not like Lauren was my long-lost big sister, taking me under her feathered wing and teaching me the ways of Wise Funny, patting my back and coaching me through my seratonin hangovers. We weren’t that close or anything.

But I guess I was studying her more than I really realized, because something weird rubbed off the Weedman. The frantic pace, the torrents of tangential storytelling that all somehow loops back around to, well, me and did I mention that anyone other than me bores me and oh my god, did I really say that outloud and jesus, I better fucking shut up but I can’t! I can’t shut up! Even with my own tail fully down my throat it just keeps coming! Funny thing is, when it just keeps coming out of Lauren’s mouth, it’s always fucking funny. Or sad. Or both. I can’t tell any more. I’ll let the LA Weekly tell you about it and just say that if even one speck of funny dust rubbed off Lauren Weedman in the late ’90s, I consider myself a lucky little Game Guide.

But enough about me. This is about you, and YOU should read her motherfucking book. If you like Sedaris, if you like Savage, if you like Schmader, if you like Daum, if you like Eggers, if you like frantic freakouts and self-sabatage, get yourself the book. Hell, I’m going to take it farther than I should because, well, that’s what Lauren would do: if you like Stallings, get yourself the book.