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Fourteen
Ha-hahahaha-hahaha!
You hear that? That’s a comedian’s favorite sound in the world. Well, favorite when it’s the effect of our own killer joke. A strong start to the tour. Go, me!
After this very unusual day, I was champing at the bit to get to the club for our eight o’clock show. Capital Comedy is no amateur comedy club, or so I learned when I walked through its snazzy, brass-facade doors. Inside, pink and blue neon lights glisten off the many rows of round tabletops and giant posters of America’s comedic heroes dress the walls. It’s Saturday night and the room is bursting at the seams, which is perfect because every comedian knows the closer you pack them in, the more laughter you can create.
I can’t wait to tell Imani about this later—like Told ya so!
Then just as I’m hitting my stride, the sound of my voice dims like a candle flame extinguished by a gust of wind. I continue but my mic has very obviously dropped. And not in the oh, hell yeah way. I tap the mic cage. “Hello. Hello. Is this thing on?” What I really want to say is, What the hell is going on?
I look over at Nick standing off in the corner. He’s as confused as I am. I shade my eyes from the spotlight and catch a panicked expression on the audio tech’s face.
Unbelievable.
Now everyone is staring at me like it’s my fault the show stopped. Nick waves me to continue as the stage techs scurry around for a solution—at least I hope that’s what they’re doing. I continue with my last joke.
“So I know my relationships are over when my boyfriend starts a sentence with, ‘My mother says—’ ”
“We can’t hear you!” someone calls from the back with his hands cupped near his mouth.
“Oh.” So I make my hands into a megaphone. “How ’bout now?”
“Louder!”
I step closer to the edge of the stage as if trying to get a better cell connection. “Can you hear me now?”
“Kinda.”
Finally, someone taps me on the shoulder with another mic. I thank him and regain my power—sort of. “How’s this?”
I catch Nick’s eye again and he seems to be trying to send me a message telepathically like, You got this, Olivia, or maybe it’s Don’t bomb, bitch!
I clear my throat, take myself back to the moments before whatever electrical phenomenon that was, and pick up again. But I can’t seem to recover the lost momentum. My cheeks grow hot. Sweat beads in my palms like it’s rerouting moisture from my mouth. Every second of my remaining ten minutes is a losing battle despite how I’m working my ass off up here. Half of me is counting the seconds before it’s over, and the other half will stop at nothing to win another laugh. So I give it one last-ditch effort with my final punchline. And guess what? On the Richter scale of laughs... it wouldn’t even register.
“That’s my time, everyone. I’m Olivia Vincent. You’ve been great!” A total lie.
Uh, I feel sick.
The emcee retrieves the mic, and I exit stage right and meet Nick. “Didn’t get them as warmed up as you did last time, did ya?” he says.
I can’t look him in the face but at least I have the courage to state the facts. “Nope, I totally bombed.”
“Yes, you did.”
This is the part where he’s supposed to say something encouraging like, You’ll get ’em next time, slugger. Instead, his crumpled expression reminds me that the stench of my stinky set hasn’t dissipated. Great, now I have to come to my own defense. “I mean, it’s not totally my fault. The mic stopped working. What the hell was that anyway?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Nick says.
With balled fists, I take a long breath as if to exhale the frustration. How can this happen to me? Sure, I’ve bombed before. We all have. But why tonight? I had them in the palm of my hand. One tiny malfunction and it just slips through my fingers. A disaster, just like Imani said...
“Hey, at least we’ve got another show after this,” Nick finally offers, and the emcee calls him to the stage. “Wish me laughs.”
There’s that phrase from the other night at Funnies. Perhaps if I’d said it before going onstage, I wouldn’t feel like such a loser right now. “What exactly am I supposed to say to that?”
“Don’t say anything. Just wish me laughs.” He walks backward a few steps before turning toward the stage, swaggering over to the mic. And I mean swagger. It’s like he’s trying to cheer me up with his ass.
It helps a little.
