Chapter 2
“When I was a kid, a girl would tell a guy she liked him by being mean to him and beating him up.” I hold the microphone tight and plant my feet center stage. “And let’s just say all the girls loved me.”
A couple of people laugh but there’s only a couple of people here, so maybe it counts as the crowd going wild. Maybe I am bringing down the house at the open mic night at McGuinn’s, the comedy club behind the McDonald’s across the street from the airport.
“There was one girl I had a secret affair with. Secret because it was only when the teacher wasn’t looking that she’d kick me in the shins.” I look wistfully at the lights. “That girl struck fear into my heart and urine into my pants.”
A little more laughter.
“She would knock me down and kick at my special area until I was numb. Then she’d roar and go, ‘You had enough?!’ And I’d respond—” I mime removing a cigarette from my pocket, lighting it, and taking a long drag. “?‘Give me five minutes. I can go again.’?”
Louder laughter.
“Thanks very much! My name is Sean O’Brien.”
I fumble to get the mic into the stand and I step down and walk to the back of the dark room.
An old lady turns in her chair. “Great job.”
“Thank you!”
The host, a retired firefighter named Bobby Bingo, takes the stage. He has thinning hair and wears a T-shirt with a bald eagle clutching a fire helmet. All his jokes are about the length of his hose.
“Give it up for Sean. For someone with such skinny arms, that kid has big balls.” This gets a lot of laughs. “Monthly showcase is next week. Top up-and-coming comics. Catch them here before they get big and have to be careful what they say.”
The house lights come up. The performers greet friends with handshake-claps and half-hugs.
At the center table, my best friend Tony carefully removes his phone from the little tripod he used to film me.
Beside him my other best friend Andi takes out a stick of gum and folds it into their mouth.
You need to bring two paying guests to get onstage, and Tony and Andi dropped everything the second I asked.
I wasn’t planning on coming tonight at all, but when the rest of the night with Christy didn’t go as I dreamed it would, or reasonably hoped it would, or feared it possibly could, I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t stay in my bedroom.
I couldn’t stay within a ten-mile radius.
There was still time to make it to the open mic, so I begged Tony and Andi to attend as a not-yet-belated birthday present.
I’d rather not think about it, but suffice to say that instead of losing my virginity I had a minor, casual, extremely severe panic attack.
For some comics, getting onstage is a way to speak the truth and process what’s happening in their lives.
They turn their tragedy into comedy in real time.
I’m the opposite. I don’t want to process how spectacularly I just failed to have sex.
I don’t want to ever tell anyone about it.
And there is no feeling like making a room of strangers laugh.
An hour ago I was a complete failure. Now I can do anything.
I take out my phone to send Christy a quick message, but my breath catches and my thumbs stop. Maybe I can’t do anything.
The old lady points at me as she passes. “You remind me of my son when he was a kid.”
“Aw. That’s—”
A bald guy with giant arms walks so close that I have to step aside. The girl following him touches my arm and whispers, “You were hilarious.”
“Thanks,” I whisper back.
Feeling the buzz of being well-liked, I run over and sit next to Tony. Andi’s gone, probably outside avoiding people.
Tony holds up a finger to tell me to wait.
He’s uploading the video to various safety-deposit boxes.
He’s my de facto manager and is very serious about having at least three backups of everything in case of an emergency followed by an emergency.
I’ve known Antonino Zitolo III for over ten years and he’s still a chubby Italian kid with standard-issue glasses and spiky brown hair, though the almost-mustache is new.
He always wears a green shirt with a green jacket and green shoes.
It’s not a fashion statement. He just really likes green.
He puts his phone away. “Your best set yet.”
The server drops the check—three sodas and three orders of French fries—and Tony puts a debit card down for all of it.
“Thank you, man,” I say.
“No doubt.”
He gets a monthly stipend from his parents because they desperately want him to have a social life, but this is still very kind. One time, his family brought me to Disney World and didn’t ask me to pay for a thing.
Bobby Bingo leans on the bar jiggling a glass of seltzer.
The two comics next to him hold beer bottles.
Looking at the three of them gives me the same fear of being too soft that made me text Christy I was ready to have sex.
That didn’t work out but maybe I can be a Regular Guy Who Doesn’t Worry About Things as long as I’m wearing clothes.
“I’m gonna do it,” I say.
Tony’s voice deepens. “Is it time?”
“If I want to perform for more than ten people, I gotta get in that showcase. Guys who started at this open mic after me and get less laughs are already in the showcase, and the only reason I can see is that they hang out with Bobby Bingo.”
“You know how to hang out.”
“I hang out!”
“I believe in you, Sean O’Brien.”
“I’ll give you the signal if I need reinforcements.”
He salutes me.
My stomach churns as I walk to the bar.
Bobby Bingo takes out his phone. The other two comics are in their twenties and have perfectly shaped beards. Their jokes are usually about how there are so many things they can’t joke about.
“Yo,” one says, “I admire the swag.”
I’m wearing a white button-down, pink necktie, and jeans. “Thank you.”
“You look like a kid trying to dress up like a man,” the other says.
“Ha. That’s true.”
“Your jokes are a little like Joe Johnson’s,” the first says.
I’ve been a fan of Joe Johnson’s since I was twelve years old and I saw his first one-hour special, Awkward White Boy .
It was recorded in his bedroom for an audience of stuffed animals.
It gave the blueprint for self-effacing humor, for getting people to laugh with instead of at you.
Whenever asked about his philosophy of comedy, Joe Johnson says his only goal is to make people laugh.
Not think, not cry—laugh. I’ve taken that as my guiding principle.
Most inspiring of all, he’s from here, Long Island. Closer to the city, but still.
“I do like Joe Johnson.”
“Funny set though,” the first guy continues. “It was like gay without being gay, you know?”
I do not.
The other guy points his chin at the first. “Like how you’re straight without being straight?”
“Shut up.”
“And don’t make assumptions. This kid could be gay.”
They both look at me.
I shrug. “I’m straight but maybe I’ll be gay one day, if I work hard enough.”
That’s the kind of sentence I find funny, but I appear to be alone in that feeling.
“Christ,” the first guy says. “Is that what they’re teaching in school these days?”
The second finishes his beer. “If by some freak accident I have a kid, I’m homeschooling.”
Bobby Bingo puts his phone down and I jump over to him.
“Bobby! Or do you prefer Mr.?Bingo?”
“Mr.?O’Brien. The talk of the town.”
“Is that true?”
He takes a sip of his seltzer. “How many open mics have you done now?”
“Five.” I hold up five fingers for some reason. “Cool eagle shirt.”
“Thanks.”
“You think the fire hat belongs to the eagle, or do you think the eagle took it from a human firefighter?”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“Maybe that eagle fights eagle fires.”
He nods.
I don’t think I know how to talk to people.
“Anyway,” I say, “if you have an opening at the next showcase, I have no life and I am available.”
“Yeah? The crowd does like you.”
“They do, right?”
He looks at my shoes, faded P.F. Flyers onto which I painted two halves of a red heart.
“You’re a funny kid.”
I smile. “Funny like hilarious or like strange?”
He makes a breathy sound similar to a laugh. “We don’t got any spots next week.”
Heat rises to my eyes, but I tell myself to be confident and direct. That’s what Tony says his dad tells him.
I stand taller. “Give me three minutes, Bobby. I’ll kill.”
“You can keep coming to the open mic.”
“I’m sure—”
“Next time bring guests who laugh. One of your friends looks at his phone the whole time and the other scares people. Asses in seats are good, but we want ones that actually laugh.”
I believe I am about to cry. “Laughing asses!”
It’s time for me to go. I give the signal to Tony—a thumb in my back pocket—and my phone buzzes.
He’s texted: Say “argh, the old ball and chain won’t get off my back”
“Sorry,” I say, “my girlfriend…”
He texts again: Say “she wants to make out right now? It’s a weeknight!”
“I gotta go.”
Bobby Bingo points his seltzer at me. “Tell your girlfriend to come next time. And tell her to bring friends.”
Outside, the air is hot and sticky. I cross the parking lot pulling at my tie and unbuttoning my shirt. Tony runs past me. He pops the trunk of his bright green Jeep, unzips a duffel bag, and passes me a water bottle and a protein bar.
Tony and I lived next to each other when Mom and I were in our first real house.
One day Mom wasn’t paying attention and pulled into Tony’s family’s driveway instead of ours, and we walked in and literally sat at the kitchen table before wondering why there was a giant crucifix on the wall.
Tony has stayed my brother-from-another-mother through all the times Mom and I have moved.
Sometimes Mom would drop me at Tony’s for a weekend or the whole summer, and I’d learn about Jesus and St. Anthony and how to pronounce the names of Italian cheeses.
I take a bite of the protein bar. “Bobby Bingo shot me down.”
“Bobby Bingo doesn’t matter.”
“He does if I want to get out of this garbage club.”
And this garbage island, really.