THE JOKE

There’s a joke I’ve been told a few times and every time I hear it, I don’t think it’s funny. I’ve heard it told two different ways now. The first telling I’ve heard goes something like this: A woman is in a grocery store at the checkout line. She’s placing her items on the checkout belt. Things like a salad kit, rotisserie chicken, some fruit….usual items. There’s a drunk man standing in line behind her watching as she unloads her basket. The man slurs as he loudly says “You must be single!” The woman turns, and asks “why do you think that?” The man, swaying on his feet, looks at the items the woman is purchasing and then back at her and responds “Because you’re so fucking ugly.”

It took me some time to really unravel what it is about this joke that I don’t find funny. It’s more than I just don’t think it’s funny; this joke makes my skin crawl. It’s because this is not a joke, but is a true story. Ladies, please raise your hand if you have ever had an unpleasant interaction with a drunk man. I can’t see you, but I suspect we are all raising our hands right now. I can’t help but believe that this ‘joke’ started out with one woman recounting the horrible experience she had while grocery shopping to a friend and then like a real shitty game of telephone, the story got passed around until it found a group of sorority boys who turned it into a joke. This so called joke then got passed around through the man-vine and became the antidote for every time a woman didn’t give them the desired attention they were looking for.

A joke can be used as a weapon.

This joke is the reason why women feel the pressure and need to always smile and please and placate. We have learned from experience that the drunk guy most likely will not stop at “you’re fucking ugly” but will continue to harass her all the way out the door. He may even follow her down the side walk, hurling slurs and attempting to touch, or grab. The drunk guy is dangerous. In most every situation, the drunk guy is dangerous. We are either tolerating the unwanted attention with a fake smile plastered to our faces or we are fighting off the unwanted attention, fake smile still in place because we are still trying to placate the drunk guy. Not because we are interested. We are never interested or charmed by this behavior. We do it all for our safety.

Not surprisingly, I have never heard a woman tell this joke because we all know the drunk guy in that story and we’ve all had relatable experiences. In fact, I wonder how funny the joke becomes when the circumstances are flipped. Recently, I heard a retelling of this joke. In his version of this joke, he’s the one the drunk guy is talking to, he’s the one the drunk guy calls ‘ugly’. The man telling this version of the joke did it so well that I didn’t even recognize it as being the same joke. His version was self deprecating, but also he had nothing to fear in this story. The man who told me this version is physically imposing. It took me a minute to see that this version did make me chuckle because there was no threat here. This version didn’t make me feel threatened.

Still, even with the change, this joke just isn’t funny. It’s mean and I’ve never found humor in meanness. The only fix I can come up with for this joke it to burn it.

SUBSTANCE

Comedian Michael has been getting back into his comedy roots, doing five minutes here and there at different open mic nights. Last night he did fifteen mins in a comedy showcase at the Groundhog Day Theatre. It was the fit time I'd seen his act. He was good. Real good.

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We all have lives from before, people we used to be, things we used to do. Life changes, we change, and then suddenly we are doing different things. We become different people. In my former life, I was a dancer and a singer. I was a musician and a sidekick, a Harpo to Chris’s Groucho. Sometimes we go back to some of those things from our former lives, but I have no desire to go back to my stage days and my Harpo days are behind me. I found new things and different outlets, like yoga and photography. In Michael’s former life, he was a standup comedian. He bartended to make ends meet, then spent the rest of his time hustling for gigs. One day he reached a crossroads. He could either step up his hustle and really try to make it big time or he could switch gears entirely, go back to school and get a useful degree. Married, with a baby on the way, Michael chose the ‘switch gears’ option.

But he missed the stage.

Sometime in the Fall there was talk of a talent show happening at work and all of Michael’s coworkers encouraged him to do a comedy act. He started going to open mic nights to get ready and working on a new set list. His goal was to keep things clean, but also to not be mean. He was terrified of dropping an F-bomb on the high school stage. Then the talent show thing didn’t happen, but Michael kept going to the open mics, still working on new material. Which has been good. He needed something, some outlet, of his own and he’s enjoying the process. Michael’s open mic nights led to an invitation to do a fifteen minute set in a comedy showcase at the Groundhog Day Theatre Sunday night. He asked me to go mostly so I could video record his set for him and partly to pad the audience, but only if I sat where he couldn’t see my face. I’m a distraction. I sat in the back corner with my phone propped up on a tall stack of chairs.

Sometimes Baby needs to be put in the corner.

I sat there listening to the comics that came on before Michael and trying my best to find them funny. Stand up comedy isn’t really my scene. I enjoy it when it is good, but when the comic is bombing, I have internal pains for that person. Sunday night didn’t seem to go to well for most of the comics. The MC has potential and I could tell that he was at least working on his craft. When a joke would fail, he’d look at his set list and say “Okay….that one didn’t work.” and move on. The two guys that came on before Michael were lost in the weeds. One was high and the other one was drunk or at least pretending to be drunk. Maybe that was part of his act. It didn’t work in his favor. The first guy had some incoherent story or joke involving Wolfman Jack and his dad. The second walked back and forth yelling “Hey!” a whole bunch. It was a relief when Michael hit the stage because I knew he couldn’t be as bad as those two. He also has a no drinking policy for himself and would at least be coherent. The woman who closed the show has the potential to really make it big but she was also too high to maintain a train of thought. She lost track of where she was in her set and had problems enunciating.

Michael was the oldest and most experienced of all the other performers and it showed. From the moment he stepped on to the stage until the moment he left, he was on point. There was a clear cohesion to his set and there were great callbacks to previous jokes. It was together and professional. And it was funny. I laughed a lot. It was the first time I had seen him perform and I think this made us both nervous. He sheepishly asked me after the show “so…do I still have a place to live?” and I just laughed without answering his question.

I like to keep him guessing.