Sketchbook: Strangers Are Easy

Back to work, whatever that means now.

Black Cat
Lower East Side, New York
Monday 17th Aug, 2026

An open mic on a Monday is church for people who don’t believe in anything, least of all each other.

Tonight’s congregation: three women grimacing amid two dozen white men in near-identical caps, each waiting his turn to tell the others about dating apps and between unhinged takes about various ethnicities (one in particular). Nobody watches the stage. They watch their Notes app the way you’d watch a departures board.

I sat at the back and drew them instead.

I’m trying to get back to work -that’s the project at the moment. Comedy shows every night. Boxing every morning. Drawing in whatever’s left over. If I keep the day full, the hours behave themselves.

Because here’s the possibly deranged thing about how I’m wired: comedy is how I metabolise the bad stuff. It always has been. You drag the grief up on stage, you make it do tricks, and every night it comes home a little smaller, a little more house-trained. That’s the deal. It worked for grief for a parent, grief for a marriage.

It isn’t working for Morris.

I keep writing the new stuff anyway. I try it on strangers in clubs and New York basements. Some of it lands, most of it dies quietly, and I go home and write more. Persisting isn’t a strategy so much as the only setting I have left on the dial.

Tonight I filled pages with men I’ll never see again. Strangers are easy. You get the nose, the cap, the slouch, and you’re done.

I still can’t bring myself to draw him.

‘til next time!
Your pal,

PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.