Baring It All Near Stage

Towards the beginning of this year, circumstances forced me to stop doing standup for a few months.  And in this context, "circumstances" is only partially code for "chronic self-doubt mixed with crippling depression, fundamental laziness, and an habitual predilection towards quitting."  All good reasons to be sure, and when combined with a promotion at work, endless family emergencies, and an inability to resist the temptations that come along with an HBO Now subscription, I simply didn't have the time to pursue my dreams for a little while.  Though on the upside, the time off did allow me to catch up on some much needed sleep, which allowed me to pursue much more exciting dreams about becoming a crime-fighting ninja who is unexpectedly partnered with a wise-cracking cat.

But as things often do, life eventually began to calm down, and my dreams about mixed feline-human martial arts were replaced with stress dreams about missed work deadlines, endless commutes in over-crowded subways, and at least once, being married to an elephant who insisted that I should not forget to vote for Trump.

But about a month ago, armed once again with a new found drive and a modicum of free time, I started getting back up on stage again.  And the minute I took the stage for the first time in weeks, I immediately realized just how much I had missed it.  I missed watching ideas develop into jokes, and getting to hang out in a crowd of people who were far too cool and clever to ever willingly share a lunch table with me.  I missed having places to go and goals to accomplish.  And most of all, I missed being forced into close proximity with complete fucking weirdos who regularly fill my life with its most interesting stories.  Because you don't have to go very far in the New York comedy scene to realize that it is as full of wonderful, amazing, talented people as it is full of extra salty nut bags who have enough awareness to realize that their mental breakdowns will be considered socially acceptable if they happen on a stage, but not enough awareness to realize how uncomfortable they are making everyone who witnesses them.  And those are the people who make you realize why you truly love comedy: because it is so easy to find in the world, especially from people who have no idea that they are giving it to you.

I'd only been doing standup again for a couple weeks when I decided to revisit one of my old regular mics.  After my longest period of inactivity since first starting to do comedy, I was feeling anxious about shaking off the considerable amount of rust that had accumulated, so I made a point to show up for the mic early to ensure that I had plenty of time to decompress from work and try to memorize a few new jokes that I'd been working on before show time.  Comedians and New Yorkers being two of the least punctual groups you could ever hope to find, the room was nearly empty when I arrived.  The host was setting up the check-in station in one corner, while a single comic sat on the other side of the room, poring intently over his notebook of material.  I decided to keep a healthy distance from both so as not to disturb them as I paced and muttered punchlines to myself, for the only thing more tedious than hearing old material at an open mic is hearing it chanted repeatedly for twenty minutes before it shows up on stage like a new idea.

But the room started filling in pretty quickly, and I looked around at the new arrivals, trying to gauge how confident everyone else was feeling.  Almost immediately, my eyes came to rest on a man who I was sure felt very confident indeed.  He was feeling so confident, in fact, that he was almost completely naked.  That is to say, there was nothing but a thin pair of ratty boxer shorts to separate the room from his confidence.

The host of the mic looked up from her check-in table and caught sight of this fellow a few moments after I did, and seemed equally taken aback at the amount of him that she caught sight of.

"Oh my," The Host said, pointing to the back.  "You know, there's a bathroom back there."

The Nude Man looked at her with the sort of self-assured condescension that can only be mustered by someone who has never once considered the possibility that other people might have feelings about things.  "Do you need to go?" he asked, spitting out the line in a way that told you he'd been waiting for someone to give him a reason to use it.

"No," The Host said, a weary resignation creeping into her voice as she began to accept that nothing productive would ever come of this conversation, but that she was too late to stop it.

"Well, neither do I," The Nude Man said.  With that, he turned his attention back to himself and resumed adjusting his socks.

As we would soon learn from his distracted muttering, there was a reason for his state of undress.  Not a good reason, mind you, but a reason nonetheless.  Turns out, he needed to change for his performance, and had even contemplated the much more conventional changing strategy of doing so in the bathroom.  However, he immediately decided to abandon this idea as soon as he decided that the bathroom in question was too small.  Now, at this point I should probably point out that this particular open mic is in the basement of a pretty swanky jazz club in Manhattan, and as such it has one of the nicest, cleanest, and above all most spacious restrooms that you could ever hope to find in New York City.  It is so nice, in fact, that most people would find it a pleasure to use, assuming they didn't possess the same deep-seated shame regarding their bodily functions that leaves me people like me unable to use a urinal unless it happens to be surrounded by unusually large partitions and a major waterfall.  But my point is, anyone who has ever used a New York bar bathroom and wondered what that puddle might consist of, or whether or not the graffiti on the toilet is just there to cover up the decades-old layers of filth that no God fearing janitor would ever dare to tackle would take one look at this bathroom and think that they'd died and made a pit-stop on the way to heaven.

As such, I would tend to assume that this fellow was not so much afraid of changing in the bathroom as he was afraid that no one would notice that he was changing at all.  After all, most comics attending open mics wear either their work clothes, or whatever they had deemed to be minimally acceptable before heading to the unemployment line that morning.  So it's most unusual to find someone who has so great a level of commitment that they would feel the need to put on a bow tie and suspenders when performing for ten other comics on their phones in a basement.  And it's only human to want a little recognition for going the extra mile.

I, for one, was quite curious to see more from this particular individual.  Judging by his age and attire, I guessed that he was dusting off a forty-year-old set from the Catskills to see how well it would age if he replaced the word "telephone" with "cell phone."  But I would have been equally pleased if he opened his set by hooking his thumbs behind his suspenders, leaning into the mic, and saying, "So Tinder is weird, right?"Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to find out.  About an hour and a half into the mic, The Formerly Nude man just got up and left.  It is of course hardly unprecedented for someone to leave early from an open mic.  Some people who perform early will sneak out towards the end when things are starting to drag, and others will leave immediately after their sets to go try to hit up another mic (comedian code for "go home and watch Netflix"), leaving the room an empty shell of awkward silence by the end.

But even so, most people at an open mic haven't invested so much energy into preparing and making the room uncomfortable.  So when they go to such lengths, you can only hope that they will see things through to completion.  Giving up on your dreams after countless nights of performing late to an empty crowd is one thing.  Giving up an hour after showing off your string bean calves and deflated beer belly to a group of unwilling participants shows a remarkable lack of commitment.

Open mics are always an interesting experience.  You can see some remarkably talented people who make you wonder why they haven't advanced to the next level already.  And you can also see remarkably untalented people, who make you wonder why you're still stuck sharing a stage with such losers.  Or, if you possess the sort of exceedingly delusional mind that is common among performers, you're equally likely to see the first group and act as though you've seen the second.  Either way, you'll see people succeed and fail while you succeed and fail right alongside them, and if you watch other people and pay close attention to what they are doing, you'll always be able to learn something that you can take back and apply to your own work.

What did I learn from from The Nude Man?  I learned that being the best dressed person in the room doesn't excuse you from humility, especially if it comes right after being the the least dressed person.  And I learned that if you're going to take off your clothes in public despite the fact that no one has asked you to and would really rather you didn't, then you'd better be prepared to show them something worthwhile.  Otherwise, they won't be left wanting more so much as wishing they could return what they've got.

Also, no matter how far your comedy career goes, you're only as good as your last set and your current pair of underwear.  So try to keep both as tight and fresh as possible.

-TC