Last week I got on a stage to do stand-up comedy for the very first time - sort of on a dare. Of course, I was extremely nervous. Anyone who knows me knows I very rarely perform because intense stage fright + short term memory loss (thanks teenage years!) = not a good idea. To the best of my memory (adrenaline can cloud things) this is what happened...
I was only allowed three minutes. The hosts told me I'd see them wave an open cell phone (light) once when I had one minute left, and then continually when I was outta time. My turn came and I walked up to the mike and told the crowd to calm down - that I wasn't gonna be that funny. (They did, sorta snickering.) I told them that my mom had suggested I open with a joke. (They laughed, good.) Then I told the following joke, How do you get a dog to stop humping your leg? Pick it up and suck it's dick. (They laughed pretty hard, great, feeling less nervous.) Then I started dissing on the credentials of the foolish chubby dude named Grant who books the open-night show I was performing at (who I misidentified as Greg on purpose) and his Asian "midget" sidekick. (Audience sorta half-laughed, didn't know what to thing, thought hmm, maybe I'll lean into that.) I made fun of him for booking me sight-unseen through a DM from a friend of a friend on Facebook. (Which was true, but again, FUCK, just a half-laugh.) I said I imagined his mom must be real proud of him for telling jokes to other peoples friends who were polite-laughing in a basement. (They didn't really laugh at all, I panicked for a sec, had gone too far, then I lost where I was, room'd gone silent.) I said, I shouldn't complain though cause I didn't have to ask anyone if they liked comedy. (Biggish laugh this time as everyone realized I was referring to the amateur comics who stalk Times Square trying to get people to come to the show - they generally need to get like 5-10 people in before they're allowed to take the stage, anyway, they laughed and I thought, whew, good.) Went on to complain that sometimes it's like a receiving line and you're always saying no to everyone cause you're on your way to meet a friend - i.e., Do you like comedy? no. Do you want to help starving children? no. Do you want to save whales? no. Do you want to support the Democratic Party? no. (Huge laugh, niiice, I relaxed a bit.) Continued, But don't you hate how there's always the one black comic who's like, do you like black people? (The crowd sorta nodded but didn't really laugh, which is what I thought they'd do when I'd read the joke to myself, I took a bit of a breath.) I went on, I don't need that! That sort of stuff messes with my, like, racial ballast. (I may have said racist, I'm not sure cause that comment was followed by a VERY uncomfortable laugh, at which point, I thought, okay, at least they're laughing, I'll lean into it.) I said, Like have you ever had a black guy grab your arm to tell you you dropped your wallet or something, black folks, you can just butt out or something for a minute, this is really between us white people. (And from my perspective, I thought I saw the black people laugh and the white people kinda half-boo, thought um, wow, shit, they're booing me, the cell-phone light waved once, one minute left, panic, what am I um saying?) I said, This is just between US. (Another half-boo.) I said, When a black guy grabs my arm in public, they're a mugger or a beggar. (The audience booed again, louder, no laughing, and the timekeeper began to frantically wave the cell-phone light despite the fact that, I thought, only a second or two had passed, are they yanking me?, totally panicked, couldn't remember what I'd said last, jumped forward to the only remotely self-contained "joke" left in my script and heard myself say, as the timekeeper and Grant started to come after me, down the aisle)... That was my race jokes, I've got one more for you, What do you get when you cross Michelle Obama with Condolezza Rice? an African-American cunt. (Enormous booing as I thanked them and left the stage.)
So... yeah ...
There were two more comics to follow, and each of 'em commented on me like (I'm paraphrasing) Whew, wasn't that guy too much, Ever heard of P.C., stuff like that. It was very cathartic for everyone, I suppose. Except me. I sat myself down on the couch next to the black bathroom attendant and tried not to hyperventilate. Managed to keep from crying. Couldn't quite remember what I'd said or what had caused all the booing I'd heard. Nobody would come near me. When the show was over, I thanked Grant, who gave me an understandably cold shoulder. Also thanked the Asian chick who gave me an even colder one. Then, as I left the club with my solemn and embarrassed posse, my best friend's BF, a Puerto Rican guy who identifies as black, decided to lay into me. Called me names and stormed off with her in tow. It was an absurd three-ring circus. (The kind you can really ONLY have on a Manhattan street, btw.)
Post mortem...
Few things are as scary as America's history with racism and, more specifically, slavery. From this history, the country has developed all kinds of problems (ask TI or Magic Johnson) and developed many conflicting proposals for dealing with them (ask Bill Cosby or Michael Eric Dyson). But, I've never felt fully implicated in this regard until this happened. I grew up in Salt Lake City and Montreal, where different ethnic conflicts took priority - Mormon vs. non-Mormon and French vs. not-French. Before moving to DC in the late 90's, I'd always viewed black vs. white racism as something that was exclusive to the American South. I didn't realize that not only is racism endemic, but, DC is worse than most places, as it definitely has one foot firmly planted in the South. Yet, it was still very shocking to my sensibilities when I realized that all the black and white people were almost completely separated. Different neighborhoods, restaurants, clubs, etc. And it seemed that this separation was enforced by both sides. I remember being surprised by the sight of two downtown dance clubs, each with a rope line, one for blacks, one for whites. (The clubs, not the lines.) I sat and watched in amazement as people approached the clubs and sorted themselves by color. Another educative moment came when my first-ever BF, Rob Kabwe, came to visit me and one of my friends pointed out that my "first BF was black." It was true. Rob was. But, god's truth, I'd never noticed. Sure, Rob was half-African but nobody in my group of friends in Montreal ever cared about that. We were too busy being impressed that he was (oooh, scary music)... half-French.
After living in DC for 8 years, I realized there was no easy way to buck the system. At first, I traveled in AA social circles (I'd moved there to get off drugs) and these folks mixed pretty well. But as my AA meeting attendance tapered off and I moved on from these circles, I found myself losing touch with the handful of black friends I'd made there. Before I knew it, I found I had almost no black friends at all and began to catch myself having thoughts that had once seemed foreign to me. Black people had slowly became poor, rude, uneducated, and dangerous. There was nothing I could do about these thoughts. It just happened. They'd been implated somehow. So I decided not to sweat it. Who cares if I have those thoughts. They must be common to everyone else, eh? I mean, I didn't originate them and I don't agree with them, soas long as I acknowledge them, they can't hurt me, right? But, my experience at the comedy club taught me that others don't quite agree.
Last week, I was struck when, in a speech commemorating black history month, Attorney General Eric Holder said: "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." I saw it on Hardball because, liberal news-junkie that I am, I'm addicted to MSNBC. But they reported on it in a section that examined only one angle of the story - "Did he go too far?" It struck me as odd since they never seemed to ever ask, did he have a point? I guess we'll never know? Cause it was never discussed on Hardball. Nor on Keith Olbermann's show. Nor on The Rachel Maddow Show after that. They just kept asking other commentators (mainly black ones), whether or not he'd gone too far. Had he gone too far? Did he go too far? Was "cowards" really appropriate?
So sure, I could try to explain the missing parts of my botched race jokes. But, I'm not going to. I'm just gonna hope that folks will laugh at what a tard I am. That they'll give me the benefit of the doubt and try to understand what I really meant. I mean, I'm just doing the best I can with what I've got. Natural-born coward that I am.
