"I can't believe you would tell personal things about us while you're onstage. People see me there with you - it's embarrassing!
A few hours earlier, I was on stage at the Laugh Factory in front of 200-plus USC fraternity brothers. They were rich, young, handsome trust fundish kids with Greek lettered t-shirts and the type of tooth whiteness that, until ten years ago, was only available to people with meth addictions and a bottle of 409 tile cleaner. Tan, young, fucking bastards. They probably still smelled each other's fingers.
Driving home at the peak of DUI hours, I found myself in the familiar and unenviable position of rolling logic algorithms around in my mind in an attempt to systematically break down the 'what the fuck?'-edness of yet another sentence set forth from a woman's mouth. The exercise was par for the course with women in Los Angeles.
I stopped myself short - both physically and emotionally. Deep breath, Bill. Use the tried and true Scientific Method. You have a theory about what's happening, so experiment and find evidence to prove your thesis. Drill down on the problem.
"What... are... you.. talking... about?" Right to the heart of the matter. I suppressed the urge to hurl every curse word I knew at her.
"The joker joke. It's just rude," she snorted back.
What a downer. While I'd adapted well to single life in Manhattan, the isolation and general sense of disconnect I've experienced in LA - my new home - has begun subtly rewiring my brain to want, and need, a companion. Sure, we'd only been seeing each other for a short time, but I liked Alison. I was looking forward to dating her.
Alison was beautiful and sexy with soft yogi skin and vocal tones. She was a booze hound, which juxtaposed nicely with her daily Buddhist chanting. Ironies in female behavior more and more seem to be what gets me out of bed in the morning. Plus, I took some comfort in the fact that it made it easier to get her naked. That being said, sex wasn't the point. It was more about having a new best friend who just happened to be gorgeous. We'd just had lunch that afternoon and spent two solid hours talking about books, movies, philosophy... and of course, spirituality.
I had to remind myself that it was 'okay'. It was okay that I found myself, once again, attracted to an archetypical 'spiritual actress.' I reminded myself that I am, at times, a spiritual actor. Come to think of it, at times I'm a spiritual actress.
If you don't know WHAT a spiritual actress is, let me explain it as succinctly as possible:
A 'spiritual actress' is an actress who doesn't work as an actress.
Because this 'actress' doesn't really work, period, she has hundreds upon thousands of hours to read 'The Secret' and Eckhart Tolle and every other self-help/new age/personal development book in the clearance bin at Borders. While I think self-improvement is a valid and worthwhile goal, I find it odd that NONE of the spiritual actresses I've dated (I'm drawn like moths to a flame) have ever found hilarious irony in the fact that they continually justify their needy, selfish, actress insecurities with the eternal, selfless, gentle platitudes of generosity and worth.
The image of two actresses in a casting office trying to out-Secret each other for a role before either has even auditioned would be funny if it weren't 100 percent accurate and observable on a daily basis. 'Spiritual actresses' have become one of those Hollywood clichés where the truth is always stranger than fiction. Go to any yoga class in LA and watch how many women immediately check their iphone to see if they got that call from their agent. No? Okay, I'll hang out at Coffee Bean and set up a small business for 4 hours.
But I digress.
At lunch, Alison said she wanted to come to the show that night and hang out. I said "sure" because, well, she was hot and had a booze tooth. I went into my hosting duties that night convinced the Trojan fratboys in attendance were going to hate me. I grew up ugly, pale, and public-school poor. I have bad teeth and the beginnings of skull glow from the sloth-like thinning of my blonde hair. They were going to heckle me. And they were going to outsmart me when they did it.
As the show got into full swing, I got Alison a couple drinks from the bar, touched her and flirted with her, all while fulfilling my duties as a host. I was sure I was going home with her. This was the beginning of an awesome relationship. Maybe I'd have a girlfriend in LA my first week here..
Because life is all about the opposite of expectations, I destroyed with the fratboys. They listened politely during the set ups and went nuts during the punchlines. When I accused individual audience members of being gay, nerdy, or Asian, they took it as... well, as a joke. They loved it. It was one of those rare audiences that was the perfect amalgam of rowdy and polite; the type of audience that you always want but rarely get. I was loathe to leave the stage when the red light came on, but I relinquished control of the mic with the knowledge that, as host, I made this crowd come alive.
At some point in the second half of the show, while hanging out with Alison at the bar in the back of the room, I noticed that this particular crowd wasn't just hot. They were mantle-of-the-earth, molten magma-hot and it struck me that maybe it was time to get a hair dirtier. I got up onstage, brought the previous comic off-stage, and looked around. Young kids. Boys. They were eager for laughter, yes. But they were eager for something else, as well. They were eager for knowledge. Like most of my good sets, the right joke just popped out of a little box in my head and said, 'Yeah, do me! Fucking doo me, daddy! ' I smiled for a brief second and launched into it:
"Okay, I think it's time for a little Sex Ed. You're young, you're impressionable, and clearly most of you aren't getting laid, so let me give you some advice: you need to face the place. Eat at the "Y". Take the beef curtain call. That's right, fellas, you've GOTTA go down on your girls! You guys go down to the Chinatown fish market, right?"
There was a burst of errant rowdy clapping somewhere and some awkward appreciation for the erudition of my statement, but in general the kids had saucer eyes. A big creepy door just got opened and they were collectively peeking around the corner to see what the fuck was coming.
"Do it, guys, get in there. As a matter of fact, I think the same thing applies when Aunt Flo is in town.... I'm saying go down on your girls during their PERIOD! That's right, faggots! I don't care if it's a heavy flow day and her vagina looks like the elevator scene in The Shining. Be like Mike and JUST DO IT!"
This is the exciting part of the bit. People get uncomfortable; some, although I've made them laugh for 20 minutes already, are starting to distrust me and fold their arms Some groan and cover their ears while the hint of a heckle starts to bounce around the room. It's a delicate moment. I have to proceed cautiously now, like a surgeon.
'FUCK YOU, YOU PUSSIES!'
Okay, not like a surgeon. I have to corral them like a calf-roper. The calves are getting spooked. Time to bring them in, relaxed, and ready for the punchline.
"Hear me out, okay? Just hear me out first... Here's why: women are hornier on their periods! Right, two women here? They're hornier on their periods. But best of all guys, YOU can make it fun for yourselves. Here's what you do: get down there.... Really dig in... go for it (the miming gets people uncomfortable)... and then right when she gets that intense, I don't quite have control of myself, pre-orgasm face, come up abruptly, look her in the eyes and say....... WHY SOOOO SERIOUSSSS!?"
If my impersonation is on that night and the audience is following me, the reaction it gets is pretty remarkable. In my mind, it's the best laugh you can get - it's a laugh launched from bottled-up tension, from nervous energy, from fear that galvanizes into a roar straight from the collective gut of 200 people.
This was one of those nights. The joke tapped into a weird, aggressive energy locked inside those 19 year old libidos and the room exploded. So much so that I was unable to get out my tag: "Heath Ledger wasn't wearing make-up in that movie, he'd just gone down on an Olson twin! You're right - they have way too many eating disorders to have periods." Nope, the eruption started right as I licked my lips and stretched out the WHHYYYYYYYYY.
I brought up the next comic, hopped off stage and sat next to Alison to bask in the afterglow of the moment. About 30 minutes later, as the show wound to a close, Alison told me she had to 'get up early' and she promptly left.
Befuddled, I sat there drinking until it was time to go home. I got in my car, pulled away from the club and began calling her (perhaps a little too incessantly???) until she finally picked up the phone.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I can't believe you would tell personal things about us while you're onstage. People see me there with you - it's embarrassing."
"What... are... you... talking... about?"
"The joker joke."
"What? I wrote that bit like 3 days after the movie came out, long before I met you."
It's just a joke about going down on a woman during her period, I thought to myself.
"And besides.... I never went down on you during...."
I went down on you during your period!? Really!?
I don't know what was more disturbing: that I didn't remember going down on her during her period or that she didn't tell me when my tongue put in just south of the belly button ring and began its run through the Red River Valley.
The silence on the phone was deafening. Finally, I mustered a response.
"That joke had nothing to do with you. Trust me. And even if it did... you saw me do ONE of my stand-up jokes. ONE. And you fled the scene and avoided my calls because it offended your sensibilities?"
"Don't judge me! -- I'm just expressing my opinion."
"Don't judge you?" I felt an aneurysm forming in my left temple.
"Yes, it's not very enlightened to judge!"
I took a breath.
"Look: It doesn't matter, this clearly isn't going to work. I can't, for a second, worry about what I say onstage. Ever."
There was silence again. And like that, I knew it was over. Like every other spiritual actress on the planet, she couldn't and would NEVER realize the shortcomings in her logic... and neither would or could I.
We managed a terse but cordial goodnight. I deleted her number from my phone. Not out of some malevolent, impetuous need for comeuppance, but because I knew I would never, ever need it. It made me sad. I'd been intimate with this sweet girl and now I would probably never see her again. It made me a little heartbroken and lonely.
I looked in the rearview mirror, saw a tragic expression, and got a little spiritual with myself.
"Hey Bill.... WHY SOOOO SERIOUSSSSSS!?"
It made me laugh.
Hahaha. Fuck her.
Posted by Bill Dawes at 9:34 PM