Dax McGraff: Vibes Only

Hello, Baltimore!

Honestly, that was a pretty weak response, Baltimore. I was looking for wild cheers. Are you guys even awake out there? My goal for the next thirty minutes is to wake you up - to make you bust out laughing so hard that at least three of you pee your pants. Not talking like adult diapers level - just a little bit of muscle failure that leads to some embarrassing questions from your date later tonight.

If you’d asked me ten years ago, I’d’ve told you I would never do stand-up comedy, not in a million years. I was a writer; I wrote a weekly column in a local newspaper, and yeah, I was funny sometimes, but on paper. But this? Really, this is a dream come true, being on stage and making people laugh for a living. It’s something I was never honest with myself about - not until a few years ago, when something happened that changed everything for me.

My name is Dax McGraff, and if you want to know what the name Dax means, I can’t tell you. I want to talk to you all about names tonight, so I used ChatGPT and asked it what mine meant, and it said - get this - Dax is a town in southwestern France and the name is more about style and vibes than substance. How freaking funny is that? It’s like my mom and dad looked at me when I was a baby and were like, This one’s not ever delivering a TED Talk, but he'll have a soapbox he drags around in case he’s feeling the moment.

That's what stand-up feels like to me sometimes. Like I'm trying to make you laugh, but I'm also trying to deliver a message. So you guys are going to have to tell me at the end if I gave you substance or vibes.

Back to names. So I have always found it hilarious when people are named after virtues, and it’s not because I think the names are dumb or anything, you know? Everyone's got the right to name their baby whatever they want and just because my parents gave me a one-syllable vibes only name, that doesn’t mean that’s the right way to do it. No, the part I find hilarious is that every single person I’ve met that’s been named after a virtue has been the living epitome of its opposite.

Like this is not a joke. Kid in my third grade class, looked me dead in the eye and told me if I gave him my yogurt that he’d pick me first for kickball - then he went and picked Tommy Della first and they spent the whole game laughing and double-teaming me. Want to know that kid’s name? Loyal. I did not make this up. Third grade, 1998, Newton Elementary in western Baltimore County. Loyal Myers. You can also note Grace Kennedy, who was a freaking klutz and awkward as hell - like no physical grace and no social grace.

But it went on and on from there. Girl in high school named Felicity. I asked her how her weekend was once and she said, “Two days closer to death.”

I had all this evidence, and then I met the girl of my dreams, and none of this mattered anymore. We met at a coffee shop - yes, so cute, we had a little meet-cute. Of course, when I tell you the end of this story, you’re not going to think it’s all so cute.

It starts with me being rear-ended on the way to my father’s funeral. I was so angry, but I’d also just been crying, so I got out of the car all awkward, almost tripped on the way back to unload on whoever hit me. But then I looked up and the guy sort unfolds himself out of his pick-up truck, like he’s a Transformer and the vehicle was actually hiding how big he was. Then this guy started yelling at me.

“What the hell, man?” he said. I swear, it took me a beat to remember that he’d just crashed into me. He was just so - confident. It was like when my older brother used to steal my French fries and I’d tell him to stop and he’d just say, “These were mine to begin with,” and pick up the tray and walk away from me. Like how do you argue with something like that? I wouldn’t. I’d just sit there, convince myself that I dreamed the fries, and move on with my life.

Honestly, I was late for my dad’s funeral, and I didn’t need to deal with this guy. I did, though, want to take some kind of a shot at him, because I was pissed. So I noticed that a girl had gotten out of the truck, too, and she was beautiful - long brown hair, giant eyes. Like it definitely seemed like a Beauty and the Beast situation was happening to me. So I walked over to her, scribbled my number down on a piece of paper, and handed it to her. “For insurance - or whatever else,” I said. Then I winked at her, and I got back in my car and drove away before Beast knew what to do with himself.

I know - you didn’t think I had that in me, did you? But I do. I’m like a professional rom-com character, for real. Like I can’t beat guys up but I could get a brick wall’s number. I don’t even flirt, really. I just talk regular and the rest is just dark magic and these cheekbones.

That day was hard already, and throughout my dad’s funeral, I kept having flashes of the Beast’s face through my mind. When I was in undergrad, I took a psychology course and we read this book called Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Dr. Robert D. Hare. I don’t know why I kept thinking about that book; it was something in the Beast’s eyes as he watched me approach his girlfriend.

I never thought I’d see them again, but then the girl showed up at the coffee shop a week later, and we started talking. She’d just broken up with the Beast, she told me - not for me, she assured me, but because the Beast was crazy. “A narcissist,” she called him, and I was incredibly pleased with how this rearender had turned out for me.

So we start seeing each other, and it was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. Except for my dad being gone - or maybe because of it, kind of. Like I was raw with the grief and it made me even more grateful to meet the love of my life.

Then she tells me she’s pregnant.

I’m going to go ahead and fast forward and tell you that the little man is here and he’s five years old now. He’s legit. The reason why I always want to speak his existence into the room right away is that when she told me she was pregnant, I was scared she was going to want an abortion. It would’ve been her right, and I would have supported her - yes, yes. I’m pro-choice, and the internet is gonna come at me, but do you all hear those cheers from women in the room? I’m not just cheekbones; I’m cheekbones with principles.

Anyway, I would have fully supported her, I swear to you - but I immediately wanted her to have the baby. Now, this was shocking to me. All my life, I’d said that I didn’t want kids. When people tried to convince me that I would someday want them, I would explain to them in great detail my commitment to mid-day napping and never stepping on a Lego with bare feet.

Then this girl was standing in front of me, pregnant, and I wanted to be a dad. I’m sure losing my dad so recently had something to do with it; grief made me cry on the subway, eat a lot of cheese at three a.m., and change my thoughts on parenthood, apparently. I was thirty-three at the time, so not a young kid, and this woman made me so happy. I proposed to her a week later - super romantic, wrote it on a coffee cup at the cafe - but she turned me down, said she wanted to focus on the baby.

He was born, healthy and strong, and let me tell you, I love this kid, but parenting is not easy. It’s no joke. He was an insane toddler, and even just a regular toddler is insane. Like my kid, he had two speeds - super chill and adorable, and pouring oatmeal into my Xbox. Nothing in between, hand to God.

He’s five now, and he just started kindergarten, and kids starting kindergarten is a legit trauma that no one talks about. You know, I’d been home with him every day, teaching him right from wrong, and then he came home one day and I told him to put his shoes away and he threw up his hands and said, “What the fuck, Dad?”

I sat him down right away and asked him when he heard that. “Samuel says it at school when Ms. Miller puts him in time out,” he told me, his eyes real big. “I probably shouldn’t say it, right?”

“You probably shouldn’t,” I told him. Then I waited to get my parenting gold medal in the mail for not laughing once throughout that whole conversation, but it never came.

When he was really little, I had fun talking about these parenting moments on stage because, being a single parent, I didn’t have another adult in the room with me to exchange glances with. You know, those looks parents exchange, like when their kid is doing parkour throughout the grocery store and you can tell the adults are both thinking the same thing: “He gets this from you.”

I’m going to pause for a beat here and acknowledge that you guys are looking at me funny now, and I know why.

You’re wondering why I’m a single parent if I got the girl of my dreams pregnant.

Now, here is where I tell you that the way I found out that my son’s mom was not the girl of my dreams was through a stand-up bit. I was at a show with some buddies and the guy on stage was killing it, and he made a joke about relationships. “The real test of any relationship is whether or not your partner leaves their phone unlocked,” he said. “If you notice they don’t, you have a choice; you can either trust them, or you become an amateur hacker.”

My son’s mom - she always kept her phone locked. Locked, and usually out of reach.

And yet I went home that night prepared to trust her. She was prepared, too. That was the night, coincidentally, when she came clean and told me she’d been lying to me for our entire relationship. Our son was three months old; she’d just stopped breastfeeding. And she told me that for the entire time we’d been together, she’d still been married to - and sleeping with - the Beast.

She had this smile the whole time, too. You ever notice that with someone? Like they’re not giving you a happy to see you smile, but more of a I just tied you to a chair and I’m going to reveal my evil plan sort of smile?

I can tell that none of you are sure whether or not you can laugh. That night, I didn’t laugh. I was dumbfounded. Because not only did this girl tell me all of this - she told me she was leaving. That all of this had been an elaborate revenge plan by her and the Beast to get back at me because I’d pissed him off.

“This?” I said to her, astonished. Our son was asleep in the next room. “All of this? Because I gave you my number?”

She was gone the next day - all of her stuff packed, not a word about our infant son, and all I could think about was the freaking name thing. Because I should have known, you see. Because this girl’s name? Honesty.

That one’s on me. I’d met Loyal, and Felicity, and the girl named Patience I knew in college who was always pacing back and forth like she was in a hostage negotiation while she waited for her latte to be brewed. If you’ve got a virtue name, you are the epitome of the opposite of that virtue. Honesty was a liar - and don’t even get me started on the morality of any human who walks out on their infant child without a single conversation about who is going to care for it.

But the answer was me. I loved my son then, and I love him now, and I take excellent care of my kid. The lucky thing is that Honesty let me name him - looking back now, I guess she really didn’t care what he was named - and I chose a name that meant nothing, a name I just liked because it matched with mine - Pax. Pax and Dax. I loved it even before I knew we were going to be a little team like we are now.

But we’ve got another member of our team now, too. I feel like I gotta tell you about her so that you know that Pax and I have survived the insanity of our insane fairy tale of Honesty and the Beast. About two years ago, when Pax was three, I met another girl in a coffee shop. Well, Pax did, actually. He was playing in the little play area at the shop while I waited for our coffee and muffins, and I glanced over and a beautiful woman was sitting down, reading him a book. I went over to check on the situation, and she got startled and very awkward. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “He asked me to read it.”

I looked down; it was a Curious George book, one of his favorites. “He does that,” I said, smiling. Pax grinned up at me. “You want her to keep reading, bud?”

He nodded, and the girl relaxed. “I’m Dax,” I said to her, holding out my hand.

Her hand was trembling a little - I’d learn that this was standard for her, everytime she met someone new. “I’m Faith,” she said.

I told her I’d grab both our orders, and I did. Then the three of us sat and drank and ate together.

Now, Faith is the same as all the others with the whole opposite rule, because she has no faith whatsoever. She’s a ball of anxiety. She has faith in literally nothing - not herself, not the world, not the goodness of mankind. The apocalypse is coming and Faith will be ready, her mom told me the first time I met her, and Faith just nodded right along, because she’s got canned goods and an anxiety disorder and she doesn’t care who knows it.

We've been together three years now, and we're getting married next fall - yes, thank you, thank you - and the thing that I’ve realized is that maybe I was wrong about the whole name thing. Because all of these virtue name people - maybe their name is actually about what they’ve given me. Loyal’s grade school betrayal, which I like to call Kickballgate, instilled in me a deep sense of responsibility to the people I care about. Watching Patience pace got me to calm down. Honesty - maybe she got me to be honest with myself about the life I wanted. A life as a dad, and a life as a stand-up comic, which I only started doing because I learned I had to find the funny in all of the hardness of life.

And Faith - who’s sitting right here in the front row - she gave me my faith back. In women, in love, in everything.

You know what else? I screwed up. When I named Pax, I tried to just give him a vibes name - a name that rhymed with mine. But Faith, she told me I was an idiot.

“Pax means peace,” she said. “Look it up.”

She was right - and that tracks, because even after the oatmeal in my Xbox - and yes, that was a real story - my son brings me a sense of peace I’ve never had in my life.

Thanks, folks - you’ve been a great audience. Now tell me - what did I give you? Vibes, or substance?

Both?

Great.