Last night, I did one of the weirdest shows I’ve done since the days when I used to rig a device in my pants that would make it look like I pissed myself. (True story.) You guys, it would really look like I peed my pants! It’s hard to believe that I ever did that in the name of comedy, but that was literally another century ago, years before I would allow myself to be gay onstage. Instead, I used to play a character of myself on stage, a viscerally uncomfortable girl, nervous to the point of trembling, who’s closing joke was topped off with a good pants soaking. I’d do stuff like that instead of talking about things that were actually relevant to me. I was 22, nothing was more important to me than it really looking like I peed my pants. It’s funny that what’s funny at 22 is embarrassing at 33.
So, last night I’m invited to this very cool, alternative, hipster comedy show in, for lack of a better description, a super shitty part of town. On my one block walk into the bar, I was kissed at and called “Mami” by no less than three Latino men. Honestly, it made me feel good.
Inside the dark bar, an old friend greets me and thanks me for doing the show. He’s a very talented African American gent who has grown his hair out and his beard long and gray. He looks like George Washington Carver, I tell him. He’s the agricultural genius who is responsible for popularizing the peanut in this country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/george_washington_carver
My friend tells me he keeps being told that he looks like Frederick Douglass, another great American. And he’s right. It’s uncanny. He looks just like him.
With that exchange stuffed into my consciousness, I start to watch the show. It’s lots of great comics and one shitty microphone that keeps cutting out. I go up 9th, which is next to last and a good two hours after the show starts. It’s going well at first, though I’m scared to touch the fickle mic. It’s going well, until I launch into my bit about Barack Obama. I say his name, and a guy from the dark of the audience makes a guttural noise. As is my way, I call him out and make him talk to me. He’s backlit, but here’s how he appears to me: he has what seems like a 19th century afro. So, I tell him he looks like Frederick Douglass. Which is exactly when I feel the crowd turn. There’s audible boos, people stirring in their seats. They think by calling him Frederick Douglass, that I’m making some racial epithet, as if I’m saying the guy looks like a real “n” word. I’m so confused, but not as confused as the majority of the audience. Because the majority don’t know who Frederick Douglass is. I can feel a wave of disapproval from the evidently poorly educated yet super defensive audience. I tell them that Douglass was a great American, a role model, a historical hero. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/frederick_douglass
But they either don’t believe me or they don’t care; they think I’m racist and that I probably eat black people for breakfast.
I’m flustered because this has never happened to me in my 16 years of doing stand up. I’ve done that Obama bit probably 100 times. Sure I should write new material, but that’s not the point. It’s never come close to offending. That’s not my shtick. I’m not a shock comic; I’m not Sarah Silverman. Sometimes I wish I was, because she’s pretty. But, so not the point.
I’m on stage and I hear a girl at the bar mutter “she lost me when she…” and she trails off. But I totally hear her, and suddenly, with nothing to lose, except for my life if I have to walk to my car unescorted later, I grab the mic off the stand and I hop off the stage and approach her. I say “When did i lose you? I really want to know!” And she tells me that she thought it was mean when I called the guy Frederick Douglass. I ask her if she knows who Douglass is. She says no, not really. I ask her if she was educated in the California public school system, whereupon I lose a bunch of other people in the audience.
When I get back up on stage, Frederick Douglass yells something from the audience, so I take the mic on a second trip to talk to him. When I get a close up look, he looks nothing like Frederick Douglas. I apologize and he says it’s ok, and that he thinks he looks like Snoop Dogg. No one turns on him when he says this. Then he says I look like Hilary Clinton. Everyone laughs, and I want to commit self-murder.
Back on stage, I can’t wait to get the eff out of this place. I’m viscerally uncomfortable, suddenly nervous and I think, now would be a great time to piss my pants. Instead, I launch into my Prop 8/gay marriage bit and explain that I’m not an insensitive person. I believe in equality. I’m gay, for shit’s sake! I do my gay marriage joke, and people laugh. I can feel the haters soften. It feels like maybe they get it, that I’m not a terrible person who keeps black people in her basement. I’m just political and confrontational and I have a message. By the time I finish the joke, I feel like I’ve won them back. I get off stage and someone taps my back. It’s Frederick Snoop Dogg. He gives me a big hug and tells me I’m funny.
A couple of my friends are at the show and thankfully, they walk me out. On my way to the exit, I get a few shoulder grabs from the other comics. I feel okay, like I took a potentially disastrous situation and made it only slightly disastrous. I b-line for my car, even though I really have to pee.
