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A man sits at a bar, pouring over jokes in a crumpled notebook. A woman approaches, walking from the back showroom, and takes a seat next to him. The floor of the bar is sticky and he can hear her suction-cup footsteps before he sees her.

“Hey, are you Brian?”

“Yeah, hey.”

“Hey, I’m Jess nice to meet you. The manager told me to tell you that you’re up in 10 minutes.”

“Thanks, Jess, are you a comic too?”

“Yeah, I just went up”

“How’s the crowd?”

“Small, probably like 10 people. There’s a couple up front that won’t stop talking and when you address them they get encouraged and talk more so I’d try and shut them down quick and move on.”

“Ah fuck, I was trying to record a tape tonight, I wasn’t planning on any crowd work.” 

“Yeah they’re too chatty for that, they’ll definitely say something. What’s the tape for?”

“I got a call back for The Late Show. They want another tape before they book me. Fuck.”

“Oh my god, that’s awesome! Congrats, I’m sorry to tell you that crowd’s not giving you a tape.”

“God damnit. No, it’s ok, it’s ok, what’s the couple look like? If I hit them quick I might be able to pivot to material.”

“It’s an old Jewish guy and a young Asian woman.”

“What? And they’re the ones talking?”

“Like, they would not shut up. I called the guy Woody Allen and he started talking about how he went to high school with Woody. He’s wasted and the woman is just slamming her hand on the table laughing at everything he says. They made the whole show about them I barely got into my material.”

“What’s the rest of the crowd doing?”

“They’re all tourists from Scandinavia, I’m not sure they understand English. They’re just happy to be in New York.”

“Oh, Christ. I need a tape tonight, this is my last show of the week. Did any of your material work?”

“I did some new stuff about being a morning-after pill connoisseur and it did well, but I think it’s cause the Asian girl took one recently? Like, the couple started dying laughing and the Scandinavians were just laughing at how hard she was laughing.”

“This is terrible.”

“Just give them something quick. The rest of the crowd knows the couple sucks, just punch them in the mouth with something funny and move on. The crowd will take your side if they speak English.”

“Thanks. Yea I’m sorry if I’m dumping this all on you. I just need a win here. The past 6 months have been slow on gigs. I just wanted a tape tonight. I’m sorry I shouldn’t be telling you this.” 

“I mean, I know who you are. I should’ve said it before but I’ve seen you do stand up and you’re just, you’re so funny, man. I saw you once at a Brooklyn bar show and everyone before you was eating shit and you went up and, I don’t know it looked like you belonged? Like comedy is such an artificial set up with a microphone and lights and a stage, but it looked like it was your home, and you were standing on crates of beer.”

“Oh Jess that’s really nice of you, thank you for that.”

“You had this bit about romantic comedies, how there’s always the rich attractive guy that you’re supposed to root against, but maybe he was just having a bad day and he’s really a good guy. It was, I don’t know, I still think about that.” 

“Yeah, thanks that’s an old bit I used to do. But you do anything long enough and you sort of fall out of love with it. Like I’m so thankful that we get to do what we do but it’s still so hard. I thought eventually I’d reach solid ground but it’s just, like I’m recording a tape right now to try to impress some TV some producer who’s 8 years younger than me. And people don’t even watch TV anymore. And my wife is at home alone right now with the kid, and she says she supports me being out late like this but she has to say that. She didn’t know it would turn out like this. I just wanted to go home and tell her I got the tape.”

“I hear you, like we’re living the dream, but why does it have to be at night? I’ve started taking naps at work, there’s this cubby that they put in where women can pump their breath milk and I go in there for 2 hours during lunch and just sleep. And you’re so much further along than me and you’ve just got different problems. I don’t know, I just know that when I saw you in Brooklyn you were having fun. It wasn’t a perfect comedy set but it was so much fun.”

“It’s funny, I don’t even remember most of that. I think that was my fourth show of the night and I just wanted to get home and I stopped giving a fuck. I was so over it. And I think the crowd was over people trying to make them laugh. If you put a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I said but I think me and the audience just had the same vibe and they appreciated that.”

“You started off by asking who wipes their ass standing up. Like out of nowhere, and this guy raises his hand and you just unloaded on him. Like he was some sort of monster because he stands up when he wipes his ass. But everyone knew where your heart was but your anger was so funny.”

“That’s right, what a dumb thing to say. I had so many jokes I wanted to work on that night and I didn’t get to any of them. But that was fun, wow I forgot about that.”

“I think you’re up in a minute.”

“Oh shit, I lost track of time. This was fun, thank you.”