When I was 13, I was deathly embarrassed of my mom. Not because she wore puke green dresses and too big eyeglasses (she did). But mainly because, no matter where we went, she talked too much. It wasn’t just that she brought up the weather in every single elevator or complimented someone’s shoes in every line for popcorn. She also told strangers all of our business. Someone would comment on how we were dressed up, and she would tell them all about how I had just graduated from junior high with a 4.0 GPA and that my grandmother was in town and that we deserved a treat and we were going to get pineapple shakes right after the car wash and the video store. She told every detail to surely uninterested strangers. I would cower. I wasn’t a comic book nerd, but I still pretended to put on an invisibility cloak. How. Embarrassing.
The other day I told the story of my first blowjob to a room full of strangers. And I write this blog where I recently wrote a story about how my dead father’s rotting body smelled like Korean leftovers. I have clearly surpassed my mother in the lack of discretion department. My 13-year-old self would be mortified. And have braces.
Now I’ve found a way to be even more revealing, even more honest, and even more embarrassing to any future children I may have. It’s stand-up comedy. And I think I love it. It’s like welcoming hundreds of people inside the chamber of the brain that holds all the secrets. And damn, it’s liberating. I’m seriously hooked. I walked off stage Monday night, and I wanted to immediately walk back on.
It took 12 weeks of class with 8 other students under the direction of Gerry Katzman (who teaches the best stand-up class in LA) in order to get our sets in order. On the first day, Gerry asked us to come up with a personal topic around which we would write 16 jokes. I thought the fact that I drive a scooter was interesting. No. That’s not what he meant. He was more interested in the fact that I only date unmotivated men who don’t have jobs and make me pay for them and how I do so willingly because I feel like I have to take care of them.
Oh, that.
Then, he wanted to know why and when and how. And THAT’s when the jokes got funny. The deeper you dig, the better you get. I was into it. A scooter? Ha.
After that first day, I knew I’d love peeling off more and more layers of myself in order to get to the jokes. It was easy for me (the being honest about myself part) since I grew up with a mom who talked too much and have a blog where I already share everything. This blog made it easy. Thanks, everybody. I wrote jokes about dead dads and trying to be spiritual, and how it’s hard to be single and/or masturbate, and my mom, who has since stopped buying clothes in puke green (for the most part).
After writing and rewriting every tiny part of every joke, it all came out on stage on Monday night in 9.5 minutes. There’s a silence you can feel while you’re telling a joke where you realize that you’re holding a microphone and everyone is waiting to hear what you have to say. And then you say something important about your life. And it’s out there. And it’s accepted. And it’s ok. You can admit anything up there, and it’s ok. Because you’re on a stage. And because even the deepest darkest secrets find other people in the audience who can relate. That’s what comedy is all about: Saying things that other people feel but are too scared to admit.
Once the people laugh, it’s all really ok.
So I’m hooked. And excited. And ready to do it again.
But I’m not so sure how I’ll feel when I get up there and share my secrets and nobody laughs. I know that’s going to happen. Any day now. Probably as soon as I start performing without my friends in the audience. And that’s going to be hard. And painful. But probably still pretty liberating. We’ll see. If anything, I’ll just quit and be that lady who unloads information on strangers in elevators. Whatever the case, I still won’t be like my mom. Because I do not wear puke green.
Stand-up class 2010 in post-show bliss. We know everything about each other now.We can only become either best friends or sworn enemies. We’ll see. Not so sure I trust the Koreans.