My comedy class instructor Dave walked up to me and whispered, “Are all your people here? I’m thinking you’re next.” Someone was onstage talking about cooking shows or something, and I shook my head.
I wasn’t ready to go up. A few hours ago, I was. Even 15 minutes ago. But now I was starting to feel like maybe I’m not funny. For whatever reason, this wasn’t a concern in front of strangers at an open mic two weeks earlier.
This time, people who know me were there. And people who ostensibly know me, blog readers who ventured out from behind the computer monitor to support me in real life. I felt so appreciated and excited and forgetful.
“How well do I really know these bits I’ve said to myself everyday in the shower for about three weeks?” I started to wonder. “Is a bright light and a stinky microphone enough to induce amnesia? I’m thinking yes.”
A woman with a three-minute set went on ahead of me, and I stepped outside to collect myself, which means casually pace. I could earn a place on the U.S. Casual Pacing team for the London 2012 Summer Olympics. Just you watch.
Then I went back inside and tried to block out what the comedian onstage was saying. What if it was my turn, and I couldn’t get her words out of my head? And then I forgot my routine? And then everyone thought I was awkward, but sad-awkward not funny-awkward?
Sometimes I over-think a little.
Then my name was called. I walked up to the mic and grabbed it. My hands weren’t shaking, and my routine began to flow outward. Every joke was a breadcrumb helping my ass find its way back to my seat in the audience. It’s nice there. No blinding lights or dry mouth or feigned eye contact.
People laughed, though I’m sad to report that no one threw their underpants at me. That’s something to aspire to, I suppose. Once my eyes adjusted, I looked around and could make out the smiles of some friends and some of my classmates’ friends. I felt high.
In 2007, I was briefly unemployed after a degrading, short-lived work experience for the most personality-less woman to ever take the subway to 42nd Street - a woman colder than the frozen remains of a woolly mammoth. It was my first marketing job, and I started to question if leaving teaching had been the right move.
Kelly, my blog Samaritan and mentor, helped me get that job. Now she was helping me try to figure out how to find another one. The first distraught hours of babble boiled down to, “Ohmigod, I’m unemployed in NYC! How am I ever going to survive?! My life is ruined.”
Then Kelly told me that “Comedy equals tragedy plus time.” Someday I’d look back on the ordeal and laugh. It’s just a story I had to live out. I got another job I liked. The end.
I remembered this after I left the stage, elated to be done with the set I’d been thinking about since I first walked into comedy class shortly after my breakup. I was heartbroken and sad, but it proved to be a good source of material.
The rest of the night, I couldn’t stop talking and laughing. I felt triumphant over the shyness that sometimes keeps me quiet when I have something to say. Like the victor of tragedy and time.
I felt funny in the best way.
I read and then stayed away for a while. Called you self-absorbed. Anyone who writes memoir-style blogs is. Then I thought, well it’s not so terrible to be fixated on yourself.
I shouldn’t resent you for doing what you love doing: thinking and talking and writing about yourself. Sure, you have the cliched upper-middle liberal sentiments. When it comes down to universal health care, it’s soap-box time for the noisiest passenger. But readers, take note. Take heed and take note. When our fearless leader (comedienne! trapeze artist! blog-her! heartbreak poet!) tried to teach poor kids, something that put her liberalism into practice, she quit.
Ah, those few entries about teaching. Confronted by what sounded like unimaginable pain expressed through acting-out, you felt bad for yourself. Confronted by what sounded like administrative incompetence, you stopped doing your job in protest. Because that showed those old administrators, all right. Noisy: it was about you. You weren’t very good at something and you blamed the something.
I can see you in therapy. Your shrink would smile and nod, patient, waiting for when she really uncovers what causes the pain. It destroys me every time you assume authority on something you shouldn’t, but your shrink wouldn’t judge. She would see you for you.
Why this bitterness from a faraway reader? Because my dear, you deserve it. Only the gifted ones merit scorn, and when you break out of the bell jar, it’ll transcend all this narcissism and we’ll be able to say, I knew her when, I knew her when. When she was a wee blogger, all tied up in knots, afraid.
We knew Quentin Tarantino was talented when he made Reservoir Dogs. Then he made Pulp Fiction.
1) Your noter up there scares the hell out of me.
2) But not as much as your ex-employer does.
3) There should be a three, but there isn’t.
I agree, he scares me too. Sounds like he has some issues and should be in a therapists chair! Take care Amanda.
I wonder, exactly, what kind of doctor is “Dr. Kimball?”
It’s from The Fugitive. Pardon the spelling if it’s not correct. Anyway think he was trying to deliver a very backwards compliment but he sounds quite bitter.
Dr. Richard Kimball is Harrison Ford in the Fugitive.
What’s scarier is that I suspect I probably dated Dick Kimball, MD.
Things are starting to get juicy on the comment board.
I’ve been in sickness limbo and am just now catching up! I’m glad it went well. Did I read that wrong, though? A 3-minute set? Is that even possible?
Unlike any other place you can possibly perform, comedians in NYC often pay for open mic time. You might pay with cash, buying drinks, or the number of friends you can convince to pay to watch you. The girl ahead of me didn’t bring anyone or was unprepared or something, but she did perform only three minutes. Believe me, I wished her set was longer at the time.