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Eight
It’s the eve of the tour and I can’t sleep. After tossing and turning endlessly, I flip on my light, slide on my glasses, and pull my oversized suitcase from underneath my bed. I don’t think I’ve used this since I moved to the city. The dust bunnies are confirmation of that. I brush them away.
Huh? There’s something stiff in the front pocket of the suitcase. Then, my heart sinks as I remember what it is. I unzip it and pull out Eddie Murphy’s self-titled comedy album.
On vinyl.
The cover is slightly worn from being squeezed in between a collection of albums for thirty-some years. Photo strips of Eddie doing stand-up crisscross along the back. At least one of them is from Funnies. Which, looking at it now, carries new meaning for me. It was my father’s favorite. He used to listen to this album shamelessly while making dinner on Sundays when I was young. I’d listen with him while I finished my homework at the kitchen table. He didn’t even care that there were a lot of bad words in it.
Every now and then I’d look up and watch my dad laugh at a punchline. The context of which I couldn’t wrap my head around. It wasn’t until I was a teen that Murphy’s material started to make more sense. The rest continued to elude me until I was old enough to vote. Listening to a good comedy special, whether it was Richard Pryor on vinyl or Sinbad on HBO, was the only time I’d see my dad really relax.
Looking back, I have to give him some credit. It couldn’t have been easy being a single dad with a little girl. My mom took off when I was three. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen her since then. From what I understand she was a free-spirited dreamer, always chasing something. Something that wasn’t us.
Since the circumstances with her were such a mess, I tried to make my dad’s life a tad easier. Jokes brought him joy, so I learned to tell a few. They were no more clever than run-of-the-mill knock-knock jokes but he always laughed like they were really funny. I could tell because his nose would crinkle the way it would when he laughed at John Leguizamo’s Super Latin Dad bit. It’s the same way mine does when I watch Bo Burnham do his Kanye West–Chipotle bit in autotune.
And then there was that one moment. I must’ve been eight or so. We were sitting on the floor, sorting through a bag of Canel’s chicles from Mexico. Each colorful wrapper printed with the name of their flavor in teeny-tiny letters. I didn’t speak Spanish. Still don’t, but I’d try to guess how to say each one and he’d inevitably correct my pronunciation. I picked up one called anís, flashed him the label, and said proudly in my innocence, “Anus!”
He lost it. Laughed like crazy. Nose crinkling. Wheezy laughter. Slapping his thigh. I had no idea what I had done but somehow I’d made my dad laugh the way Eddie Murphy did. When he finally got ahold of himself, he gently explained the meaning of the word anus—which I thought was totally gross. My expression became very serious, trying to make sense of it all. I held the gum between my fingers. “Are you telling me this chicle tastes like butt?”
Another belly laugh barreled out of him. This time he had tears coming out of his eyes. I wasn’t sure I understood the joke but his laugh was so infectious I couldn’t help but join in too.
“You’re hilarious, Livy. You should be a comedian,” he said.
I remember thinking that there was no way I could ever be a comedian since it seemed like a boy’s job, but I liked that he thought I was funny enough. And so the seed was planted. Of course, no parent really dreams of their child growing up to use foul language in a punchline, performing for a bunch of strangers like little laugh whores. At least, I’ve never met any.
He never actually encouraged stand-up. Instead it was all—Get good grades, Livy. Go to college, Livy. Get a good job, Livy. All so I could have more luxuries than we could afford on his modest, manual-labor salary. So I did what I was told because Livy’s a good little girl. And now every day, I vow never to let someone else dictate the terms of my life ever again. Not even him.
I slide my thumb inside the lower corner opening, pulling out a faded photo of my dad. Taken sometime in the early ’80s, it’s older than I am. He’s standing on a small stage in front of that quintessential brick wall, holding a mic in his hands. There’s a sign behind him of a white speech bubble that says the hoot in bold red lettering. The spotlight shines on his feathery dark hair and big, charismatic smile. He’s rockin’ brown corduroy bell-bottoms too.
Probably from the Vinnie Barbarino collection.
To think he played this album over and over, and I had no idea this vintage photo was hiding here the whole time. Not until I discovered it two years ago. Right after he kicked the bucket.
That’s what he called it—kick the bucket. Said it sounded like something Charlie Chaplin would do.
It’s sad, I know. The guy who taught me how to ride a bike and eat with chopsticks is gone. Poof! Show’s over. But the thing is, I can’t reconcile the man I knew with the one in this photograph. Yes, he loved comedy, but to think he actually performed stand-up. Didn’t he think that was valuable information when I started performing in college while maintaining my GPA? Instead, he scolded me and said I was wasting my time, that I should focus on school, and that stand-up is nothing more than a pipe dream.
And you know what? I convinced myself that if he, a comedian lover, was talking shit about stand-up then maybe he was right. And so I stopped. Well, I stopped performing as much and I never said a word about doing it again. Not about the first time I got a laugh that seemed to raise the roof or the time before that when I bombed harder than a dive-bomber at Pearl Harbor.
Bad joke, I know. But now you know how epic it was.
I collected my degrees and piles of student debt and went on with my life. And while I was just beginning my life, his was about to end. That has to be the saddest part about losing a parent so young. Especially when you don’t see it coming. You don’t realize there won’t be time to ask them the questions that really matter. And you never really get your answers. Let’s face it, I got shortchanged. And now I’ll never know the whole story—why did he stop performing? Did he perform once or was he a regular? Where’s The Hoot? Why did he keep his stand-up days from me? And the question that haunts me the most: Why would he want to keep me from stand-up?
