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“Yeah, maybe.” Part of me desperately wants to be there in Midland and the other part of me wonders if I’ll be able to breathe when we pass through.
“Here you go!” A staff member slides a full tray between us. My mind completely shifts focus to the feast in front of me. Wide-eyed and salivating, I’m dying to dive in, but I gesture for Nick to unwrap his burger first. He takes a big bite, and I watch him the way he watched me last night with the beignet.
“Eh?” I ask, encouragingly.
With a full mouth, he manages a smile. “Oh, yeah. That’s good. Really good.”
“Yeah, take that, Shake Shack.”
“Whoa, let’s not go that far, Texas.”
Now it’s my turn. I’ve waited long enough. Feeling the weight of all those gorgeous ingredients in my bacon cheeseburger, I ease it into my mouth. Not too fast, not too slow, wetting my lips before I take the first bite. First bite in forever.
“Oh, God, I missed this,” I say.
Nick wipes a little mustard from the corner of his mouth and sets his burger down. “So if you could have a burger with any comedian, dead or alive, who would it be?”
I want to say my dad. Even if he took the mic for only one night, I’d count him as a fellow stand-up. But that’s not what Nick’s asking, so I say the closest thing to it. “Eddie Murphy.”
“Good choice. I bet he’d be a blast to have a burger with.”
I let out a small laugh thinking about the McDowell’s scene in Coming to America. “Yeah.”
“Why Eddie?” Nick asks.
“He was my dad’s favorite,” I say, keeping my eyes on the bacon. “What about you?”
“I’ll go with Bill Hicks. He grew up in Texas so he’d probably enjoy a Whata... whatever kinda burger this is.”
I raise my milkshake, thinking of the late, great comedian. “To Bill Hicks.”
Touching his paper cup to mine, he adds, “To your dad.” Tears threaten again but I swallow them back with another burger bite, stuffing in an onion ring for good measure.
Nick sets his meal down and dusts his hands. “Okay, let’s talk shop. Last night’s performance was a good start. Now, I want you to take that playful energy into tonight, but I also want you to think about a few other things.”
“Like what?” I manage with a mouth filled to the brim.
“For instance, I’ve noticed you don’t allow a lot of silence during your sets.” That makes sense. I’m not big on silence. Too high a risk of my mind running away. Nick continues. “But it’s good to have some. Start by sitting in it a second longer than you want to. It helps build the anticipation. It works great on late-night TV.”
“You’re the expert. I’ll give it a try. Anything else?” I ask.
“Yeah, remember when you told me about watching Margaret Cho for the first time?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Between now and showtime, I want you to find a way to reconnect with when you fell in love with comedy in the first place.”
“Okay...” I can’t say there was one moment when I fell in love with stand-up, it was many little moments—listening to comedy records with my dad, watching stand-up on cable, seeing live comedy for the first time. “What about you? When did you fall for stand-up?”
Nick leans back in the booth, his eyes on the ceiling as he rubs his stubbled chin. “Man, I haven’t thought about that in a long time,” he says with a chuckle, and allows an extra second of silence. I lean forward, stuffing a fry in my mouth. “For me it was when I was sixteen, I think. My uncle was in his twenties, living in the city, and somehow snagged us tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld live.”
“Wow! What was that like?”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed that hard in my life. He was just so effortlessly funny. And seeing him live was so much better than any televised special I watched. That was a tough time in my life but for the hour that Jerry was onstage, I forgot about all my bullshit and just enjoyed life for a bit. Sometimes I forget that’s what this is really about.”
Funny, eating burgers with Nick does for me what Jerry did for him that day. For just a bit, I forget about my precarious career situation, Imani’s across-the-world move, the Late Night Show audition, and all the other details that have been nagging me on this tour. It’s nice to be in the moment. Maybe that’s why I fell in love with comedy too. Because when something’s really funny, and you’re laughing so hard your stomach hurts, there’s no better place to be.
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