The Venue, the Crowd, the Comedienne, and the Show

I tapped the microphone. The tap was followed by the ear-splitting buzz of feedback. One glance at the audience told me the reverb of the feedback did not take them back to the days of their first concerts. Mine was Hall & Oates, the Big Bam Boom tour. The concert tees were insanely righteous, and it pained me to no end when I discovered that my niece had found it, cut it off and made it into some kind of babydoll belly shirt. She wrapped a rubber band around the excess material in the back to make it fit her so tightly, I was afraid her tits were going to jump out of where the collar had been—because she had cut that out, too, and was letting the shirt hang off one shoulder. The shirt still had so much play that, again, her tits were going to find their way out of the top of the shirt and make their bold presence known to all and sundry. Not my problem except for the fact that she bastardized my shirt. I suppose if my own tits weren’t so busy pointing directly at the ground, I’d be pretty jazzed if they ever had the gumption to jump out of the top of any garment I owned.

But, looking at the audience’s grimaces through the headachy noise I had generated made me want to do it one more time. So I did.

“Oops. Hey, folks. Sorry about that. I’m my own roadie, and officially, I’m going to get this party started but first: Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3. Testing, 1, 2, 3,” I chanted the last bit into the mike. There was a lingering urge to do something else obnoxious that would increase the alienation of the audience even more, but I’d already done the mike tapping. Maybe I could put my lips directly on it, keeping it so close to my mouth the audience could hear my jaw clicking, the saliva lubricating my lips and mouth. I’m not great thinking devious thoughts on my feet, though, and the most obvious thing I could do to make these people hate me or lower their regard for me would be something along the lines of beating the mike with my shoe or dropping the mike on the ground. Dropped mikes may be all the rage with the cool kids now, from a strictly figurative standpoint, but the actual act is terribly noisy and could fall into the category of being extremely annoying, of maybe ear-splittingly horrific.

I played at trying to aim the mike toward me, pointing it down. During the battle with the mike, I dislodged it from its stand, fumbled it a little, and then played a little hot potato with it bouncing from one hand to the other, and finally, dropping the thing on the floor. The first bit, visually, was comical. There was a pop! Pop! Pop! As the mike bounced from one hand to the other. The agony on the crowd’s faces. Less than half thought I could salvage the situation and grab the noise dildo and shove it back into the little stand, and the rest appeared braced for something akin to a fire alarm. Who was right? The dildo was going to ground.

The noise was THE worst. Some of my best work. Many, many hands covered their owners’ ears. It was hilarious. “Oh, my gosh! I am SO sorry everyone. Bit of a butter fingers here.” I said with a slightly chastened tone and threw in a self-deprecating laugh for good measure. I looked up from the podium where the mike had previously been perched in its little stand and where I had unsuccessfully attempted to change its angle. Success, friends, is relative. The failure of the mike angle had been a boon to anyone who’d had a thought of just wanting to be a horrible member of the community.

Lodging the mike back in place created a gazillion other noises accompanied by some muttered swearing by me. My favorite was while I manhandled the mike and whispered, “Get back in there, you little fucker.” I looked up, covering my mouth with my free hand and tried an innocent little Betty Boop look, all wide-eyed and apologetic, albeit falsely apologetic.

Oh, my god. I was having the best time terrorizing these assholes. At some point maybe 7 cities, 2-3 weeks ago, I had quit caring about the people who came to see me talk, joke, rant, rave, and tell the stories of my life. I mean, really, who was I? Oh, yeah. I was some other asshole who decided to charge a bunch of, what I thought, were bigger assholes $150 a pop to listen to me.

“Okay, folks. A little housekeeping. If you haven’t already gone to the bathroom, bought pizza, hotdogs, beer, seltzers, or hard liquor: Do it now. The first five minutes are not enthralling, but after the first five minutes, well, I’m not gonna say stuff twice. If you’ve already taken care of business, get your phones out and take all the photos you want. If you smuggled in a flask, you may now remove it from its hiding place, which I hope is not your anal cavity.” I moved away from the podium, and goddammit, I did the thing with the mike again.

“Hey, is there someone who works here who can get me a mike stand that’s like a pogo stick and not this thing on a podium? And if there’s anyone who works here, did anyone not read my rider about my needs?”

I looked to both ends of the stage, and I didn’t see anyone who looked remotely concerned about my situation. “Paulie, can you please bring me my bourbon and a glass with one of those round ball ice cubes?” I saw activity in the wings, and Paulie pushed his way through this mess of people who apparently worked for the venue but were unable to read things like riders and who were insanely unempowered or deaf to my speaking directly to them. Jay-sus.

Once Paulie had made it to my side and handed me the requested items, I decided the podium (seriously a fucking podium?) would be useful as a wet bar. I had decided tonight would require a generous pour. I held my glass up to the light, took in the amber and the round ball of ice and said, “You know where I’d rather be?”

Some dick toward the front row on the floor said, “Not here?”

I nodded in assent. “You got that right, buddy. You got a cup?”

This dude hoisted his cup up in the air and pumped his opposite fist. These freaking assholes. I realized I was an asshole magnet. “Security dudes, could you please escort this guy to the stage?” It took these security dudes a few seconds to realize they were being summoned into action. And then the assholes in the audience crowd surfed the guy to the edge of the stage. I was actually pretty impressed. Next thing I knew, I waspouring this guy some bourbon.

“Paulie, can you have someone bring a chair or something out here for this bourbon-drinking dude?” I didn’t know if Paulie had raised hell back there because some burly guy in a polo with the venue’s logo appeared on the stage with a chair…a rotating desk chair. I couldn’t make some of this shit up. This venue…man, wow. A desk chair.

“Paulie, can you have someone bring another chair out here, too?” I was hedging my bets that the second chair would also be a desk chair. These dumb dumbs did not disappoint. “Hey, bourbon guy, what’s your name?”

“Hemi, rhymes with Demi. Hemi, like the car.”

“For real?” I asked. He nodded. “Park yourself in that chair.” He sat. I sat. We looked at each other and started laughing. “Who do you think can spin faster?”

He shrugged. “Paulie, I need you to see who can spin faster.”

Paulie hated when I made him come onto the stage, but he showed up, clearly looking pained at my summoning, but he had to do it. I paid him to do all my stuff—the dumb stuff and the important stuff. “Paulie, I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

Paulie turned toward the audience and raised a brow, and there was so much laughter. Before Hemi and I spun in our chairs, I told him, “You’re disqualified if you spill any of your drink. Got it?”

He looked at his cup and made eye contact with me, nodding, then took a huge swig. We spun around, and I had to slow down because I did not want to be photographed and put on the internet in a tornado of vomit. A lesson to all: The internet is forever.

Paulie said, “Hemi’s faster.”

“Yeah, I can’t spin fast in these shoes, and I don’t want to puke.” I pulled off my electric green patent leather Jimmy Choo’s.

“Anyone in the audience wear a ladies 39 or 8 ½?” I saw hands going up and heard screeching and a lot of ‘Me, me, me.’

“Security dudes, can you please assist whoever is closest to you and bring the lady to the stage? Venue people, can you please bring out another chair?”

Out came another spinning desk chair. This was the weirdest fucking place. The chick landed on the stage in a much less jarring way. “If you lied about your shoe size, we’re all going to know.”

She turned pink. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Pinkie,” she said. It figured. “Hemi, please put the shoe on the lady.”

He sprang from his desk chair, picked up a shoe, removed Pinkie’s Dolce & Gabbana sneaker—so bougie—and I’ll admit I was a little shocked, the shoe fit. He put the other shoe on her newly naked foot, and Pinkie beamed, which made no sense, since she showed up with $800 sneakers, which were more expensive than my Jimmy Choo’s. Whatever.

“Pinkie, these sneaks are mine now. Cool?” I asked.

The penny dropped. But what was she going to say in front of 10,000 people? I lay the mike on the floor and put on her shoes and then rubbed my hands together.

What was I going to say to these people? Try out new material? Use the tried and true? This night was already going in a completely different direction than any of my other gigs. I decided I was going to tell them a series of falsehoods. If we were going off the rails, we were going off the rails in grand fashion. Stories from my life? Nah. Not tonight.

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life.