When the trio gets to the club, it looks like there’s a pretty good crowd. They make their way inside, then Martin leads them directly to the bar. The bartender notices the group and looks up. “Can I get you guy-oh, Martin! Hey. Looking for Herb?”
“Yeah, is he out back?”
“No, uh, I believe he’s over by the stage. He said there was someone he needed to talk to.”
“Oh okay. I’ll find him, then. Thanks.”
Martin finds a table for Hilda and Ian, then spots Herb at a table by the stage talking to…Landon Freeman. Huh.
“So do you do drugs?” Hilda asks Ian.
Ian squints with the caution of paranoia. “Yes. Why?”
Hilda laughs. “I was just wondering if you were insane or altered from your normal mindset.”
“I’m not high now, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Hilda stops laughing. “Oh…oh? You wear a tux as loungewear all the time, then?”
“Well I certainly don’t just do it when I’m high. That would be pretty pretentious.”
“But who does that at all? Most people only wear a tux for prom or weddings.”
“Hmmph. Clearly you don’t understand how fancy I am.” That’s it. Hilda doesn’t know what to say.
She is thankful when Martin returns with Herb in tow before she has to suffer through much more awkwardness. Ian stands up to be introduced.
“Hey guys, this is Herb Rollins. Herb, this is Hilda,” she waves timidly, “and Ian.” Ian cheerfully shakes Herb’s hand.
“Nice to meet you, Herb. This is quite the place you have.”
“Thank you, yeah, it’s kind of a crumby neighborhood for a club, but luckily I know some people who are good at marketing. Can I get you guys some drinks or anything? They’re on the house since you’re guests of our headliner.” Pssh. Martin knows Herb’s just teasing his ego.
“Ha. Headliner. You can get better headliners than me, Herb. You and I both know that.”
“Better known, perhaps, but not as entertaining.” Herb nudges Martin playfully, and Martin can’t deny that Herb is a fun host. Martin just isn’t gay.
“It’s not gonna happen, Herb.”
“Ha. We’ll see, Martin. We’ll see.” Hilda and Ian are both aware of some present subtext in the conversation, but neither of them knows what it is exactly. Herb quickly distracts them from pondering by asking once more if they’d like drinks. Martin heads backstage to get himself ready.
One thing Martin’s known for is his improvisation and originality. He even does his best to never repeat jokes, though that leads him to not do a lot of shows. Tonight’s just one of those nights, a night when he could really use the fucking money.
Somehow Herb’s pulled in a guy to do the lead-in act on short notice. He’s this kid who does a lot of quick shows at clubs with open mics, and he tells the same jokes over and over again. Martin understands the value of a popular joke, but he can’t stand people who are known for one act and just milk it. Now it’s his turn.
Martin strolls on-stage with all the confidence his skinny body can muster. He’s met by a rousing applause and a few whistles. Not a bad entrance. He waits for everyone to quiet down.
“Hello.” One person shouts back a “Hey!” Martin laughs. “What the hell is this? Someone says ‘hello’ to you, and you just ignore them like they’re a piece of shit? Jeez. I know I can be an asshole sometimes, but you guys make it seem like I have no conversational value whatsoever.” The audience likes his intro. “No really, how are you guys?” They cheer. “Okay, well ‘yeeeeaaah’ isn’t really much of an answer, but nice try. I…I don’t even care anymore. I just thought maybe all of you had a friend die yesterday and that’s why you’re giving me shit. Luckily for you, I’m pretty quick to forgive.
“Don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I have a sister. Really, I do. She’s kind of a strange woman, though. And to be clear, I don’t mean she’s a strange human being who happens to be a female. She acts strange considering she’s a woman. I thought it was well understood that guys want chicks with huge tits who dress like sluts and know how to suck dick. It’s totally perverse and chauvinistic and blah blah blah, but that’s what we want! Bonus points if you can figure out how to rub your tits in my face while you’re giving me a blowjob. Don’t expect me to help, though. If you ask me to hold your leg in some position so you can attempt that, I’m just gonna immediately turn into deadweight. Except for my boner, of course. I don’t have any control over that son of a bitch traitor. Oh, speaking of boners: back to my sister.” Laughter. Phew. “My sister, Michelle, seems to think that guys can empathize with women, like we understand how emotions work and what it’s like to be periodically insane or something, and I’d like to just point out, for the record, that my sister is a moron. Don’t get me wrong, please. I love her, at least to some extent, I guess, but she’s gotta have some sort of mental defect to think that every guy is going to be sympathetic to her problems as a woman. She asks me for advice with this kind of shit, and then she caps it off with ‘you must understand what that’s like from a woman’s perspective, yeah?’ Are you fucking kidding me? Those aren’t magic words, sis. You can’t just say ‘you must understand’ and expect me to hold your hand and say kind words to make you feel special. If you could control guys just by appealing to their sympathy, no woman would ever let a guy have sex unless he’s Clooney or Pitt.
“By the way, I know at least one person will probably be tempted to come up to me after the show with a ‘hey, I thought you were great, but you have a lot of misinformation and bad opinions mixed in with your funny jokes’, and I’d like to prepare you for what I’m going to say back to you. The reason you might need some preparation is that it’s not really words that I’ll start with. First, I’ll give you a look like ‘bitch, please’, and then I’ll flip you off. THEN I’ll probably tell you that I say a lot of things specifically because they’re funny and not necessarily because I think they’re the gospel truth and I gotta get up here to preach before my spirit testicles explode with righteousness. Just…just thought I’d get that out of the way.
“So guys, I’d like to try something new tonight, okay? We’re gonna have a tiny bit of audience participation. Specifically, I want you guys to give me a subject for a joke, and I’ll make it funny. I swear, and not just canned shit that could be applied to any subject. Oh, and I don’t have plants in the audience like a damn magician or anything, alright? Just shout some stuff out.” Martin’s sad when only a few people give him suggestions. “Okay okay, clearly you guys aren’t in the right mood for this, but you gave me something to work with.” Martin paces back and forth while he processes. “So I’m gonna take my three favorites out of your suggestions. I heard ‘math’, ‘beer’, which I’m turning into ‘alcohol’, and ‘comedy’. How meta. I have to say, actually, that I’m pretty thankful that I’m well-versed in all three subjects. So here we go:
“Alcohol is funny on its own, which I really appreciate as far as comedy subjects go. I’m going one step further, though; I’m going to combine alcohol and mental instability, because – let’s face it – they’re both funny on their own, but the synergy is just phenomenal. My roommate, okay, my fucking roommate,” Martin can’t help but laugh as he thinks back on all of Ray’s oddities, “he’s a strange guy. Let me start by saying that he’s obsessive-compulsive, majorly OCD. Ray’s obsessed with the number five, and as a result I end up compelled to punch him in the head. And I don’t mean to say that I want to punch people with mental problems or that I have anything against the number five. My problem is what he does with his obsession. Ray doesn’t turn the lights off and on five times or wash his hands five times to prevent whatever disaster he thinks is about to happen. Ray drinks. He drinks five drinks. Five alcoholic drinks? Ha, well that’s the great bit. Nope. Ray picks up six-packs of non-alcoholic beer, BEER, which should be alcoholic, and he drinks five of the beers from the six-pack, then he collects the stragglers from each six-pack until he can form a new six-pack and drink five of those. It drives me nuts. Again, that alone is just quirky, and maybe not enough to justify my outrage, but then he has some strange need to act as though he’s actually been drinking. Yesterday I came home to find him on the floor, pretending to be passed out, and pretending that his speech was slurred! What kind of sick drive do you have to have to carry on with that sort of delusion? Christ. No worries, though, beer companies. I made up for it by drinking my share of the good stuff later in the evening.
“Now, let’s see…comedy? Why would you possibly suggest comedy as a subject? I bet you were assigned topical analysis papers in high school and you chose topical analysis as your subject. I would also bet that it was a shitty paper and your teacher hated you for it, but they probably gave you a good grade because they pitied you. I don’t see how that would come up in your head and pass through whatever filter you have that separates good ideas from bad ones. I’m pretty sure if your average audience member was trying desperately to come up with something to suggest as a subject and ‘comedy’ came up in their head, they’d sooner stab themselves in the hand than say something so embarrassingly annoying. It’s just a ridiculous idea. And see, what I’ve done here is close the loop. Instead of making jokes based on your subject, I made jokes based on the idea of your subject. How’s that for meta?
“Maaaaath! Who suggested math?” An average-looking guy to Martin’s right raises his hand. “Alright, I’m gonna guess you’re one of two types of people, so sorry if you hate being pigeonholed. The way I see it, you’re either a nerdy kid all grown up who’s looking for vindication or you’re some hipster douchebag who thinks math can be neither interesting nor funny. People have made math jokes before. Not good ones, mind you, but math jokes have been made. There are references to being tangent to a girl’s curves, there’s talk of filling asymptotes, and I suppose they’re funny within the scope of mathematics, but on the whole? Meh. Math nerds can be funny, though. I dated a nerdy girl one time, and I think my favorite part about dating her was just that she put out. Nerdy girls who are willing to have sex pretty much get carte blanche from me. But then something awful happened, clearly. We’re not dating anymore. So what happened…well, one time I mentioned that I thought it was kind of weird that she was so quiet during sex. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t make any sounds, really, but she said she enjoyed it. Then, she tried compensating by just saying whatever came to mind while we were doing it, so she’d start talking to me like I was a famous mathematician from history, or maybe she’d just start reciting different formulas and theorems. That’s fine, I guess, but it was a little boring, and I think it was weirder than her not making any noise. So I tried pushing her in the right direction, I said to her, ‘No no, try saying something dirty.’ She responded with ‘Oh, oh yes, point nine repeating is almost, but not quite, equal to one.’ I stopped. My dick went limp. It was horrifying. I looked at her and said, ‘I told you to say something dirty, not fucking retarded. Now get out!’” The math guy and a few others go nuts. It might have gone over the heads of most of the audience, but Martin thinks it was worth it.
“Thanks guys, I hope you had a good time!”
[Margo] About That Business Card…
14 years ago
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