Salacious Stand Up: A Funny Lesbian Romance by Nicolette Dane (2016-06-22) Read online

  It’s like one of those Zen koans or something. How many times can Macy fail at a relationship before it makes her famous?

  So what do you need to know about me… let’s see. Ah yes, one of my defining characteristics is that I’m small. I’m 5’2” on a good day, I weigh about a buck o’ nine with a wet towel wrapped around me, and I’m flat as a board up top. Some think I descended from gnome-people and they wouldn’t be wrong. Shortness runs in my family. My Dad is, like, 5’7” and my Mom was about my height when she was alive.

  Oh yeah, I almost forgot. My Mom’s dead. She died when I was 16.

  Eleven years ago. Has it really been that long? It’s crazy to think about so I try not to dwell too hard on her death or else I might break down and have a freak out. Hold back the tears, Macy, you’ve got to be stronger than that if you want to make it in comedy. Let’s see what I can tell you about my Mom.

  Beautiful woman. I take after her, of course. Pretty brunette, kinda wavy hair, also like me. Brown eyes. Like me. You get the drift. I look a lot like my Mom and my Grandmother as well. Mom was super kindhearted and supportive, always there for me. And damn was she funny. What a goofball. She would say the craziest stuff, pull the weirdest jokes out of her butt, no matter what company we were in. Very twisted sense of humor, you know? In a way, I think she always wanted to be a comedian, having grown up in Chicago during the early This Saturday and Improv City days. I know she took an improv class at Improv City but that was about the extent of her comedy career. She opted to raise a family instead.

  Can’t fault her for that. Thanks Mom! I’m glad to be alive, even if you’re not.

  Mom died in an accident with a commuter train. She was riding her bike across the tracks in a spot where there were no safety arms that came down. The train was hard to see. That’s about it. I mean, what else can you say? It was shitty. I don’t want to think about it anymore.

  After the accident we settled with the train company and a rather large sum of money was put in a trust fund for me. I’m not going to say how much. It doesn’t matter. I’d give it all back to have my Mom still alive. But the money has helped. It allowed me to get through college and earn a very useless degree. And it continues to allow me to live the wayward life of an aspiring stand up comic. What? You think I could hold down a job and still go out and do comedy every night? Are you mad?

  You know what’s disappointing? When you go to the Wikipedia entry of one of your favorite artists, actors, writers, comedians, and you look into their history and try to figure out how they made it. How were they able to afford to spend all that time just working on their craft? Didn’t they have to hold down a full-time job, push themselves to work on their art well into the night, and make sacrifice after sacrifice just to get noticed? Then you read that they had help from a rich family member, inherited a bunch of cash, or even worse their mother or father were already in the business before them and family nepotism got them in.

  “Sally, I just don’t know how you did it,” you say. “What’s the secret to your success?”

  “Hard work,” says Sally. “Oh, and talk to my uncle Barry. He’s produced, like, every movie for American Pictures for the last twenty years.”

  Right.

  And that’s what you’re going to read in Macy Maxwell’s Wikipedia entry. “Maxwell inherited a buttload of money when her mother got smashed by a train.” Damn it, Macy, you too? Can’t any of us ordinary suckers catch a break?

  But what a perfect combination for a comedian. The tragedy to light the fire and the money to keep it burning. Hopefully I don’t drink and screw through my fortune before I hit it big. I don’t really think that’s going to happen though. My bank account is pretty swollen.

  I’ll be honest with you here. Don’t panic. All this talk about my Mom has reminded me of the very large hole in my heart. Can you imagine losing your mother when you’re only 16? It wrecks you. It’s a nasty proposition, something I wouldn’t wish on even the meanest comedian, even a comic who steals jokes. No, I hope everybody makes it through their teenage years with their loving mother still alive. Trust me, all that money in the bank, all of the material I’ve gotten for my act, I would give all that stuff back in a flash. If my Mom were still alive I might not even be a comedian and I would be totally fine with that.

  Let’s just move on from this conversation. I don’t feel like talking about it anymore.

  So… I’m single. There’s that. The problem with being a funny girl and, if I may say so myself, a smart girl, is that a lot of other girls find you intimidating. What’s up with that? It’s like they feel your entire being is an affront to their own intellect or something. But it’s just not the case. I can be dumb and girly at times, too. Though when everything presents itself as an opportunity to crack a joke, a lot of girls just don’t find it very charming. It’s very uncouth to make poop jokes at the wrong time.

  I mean, c’mon, everybody poops. But not all of us hold it in like these anal retentive chicks that just can’t seem to know a good girl when they— no no, I’m calm. Yeah, I can turn it down a notch.

  Another weird thing about the girls I meet, they all seem to want children. I mean, what? Is that the style of lesbian I attract? The chick wants to pop out a bunch of little critters, though not from their own body of course, and I don’t want to make that sort of commitment. Maybe something’s happened in our culture recently because all these women end up talking to me about wanting kids. What’s up with that? Do you see this little body of mine? Pushing a big head out of this tiny hole is just not going to work for me. I’m getting stretch marks just thinking about it.

  “But you’d make the perfect mother,” some people have said to me. “You’re funny and easygoing and unflappable.”

  Well, I mean, thank you. I know I’m pretty great. But why is it that the only people who tell you this stuff are other people with kids? “We need a woman like you at our mother circle.” I think these people just try to get others to join up with the cult so they have someone they can relate to. Because you know what inevitably happens when your friends have kids? If you don’t also have kids, you pretty much cease being friends.

  “Hey, I’m doing a set tonight,” I say. “You should come out.”

  “What time is it?” says my friend with kids.

  “My time slot is 10:30,” I say. “It should be a lot of fun.”

  And they just look at me with that frightened, deer-in-the-headlights face. Like, what am I? Insane? How would this mother of two go to a comedy club on a weeknight, way past her bedtime, just to see someone she’s sort of friends with talk for ten minutes about accidentally putting a tampon in backwards after getting too stoned?

  We live in different worlds.

  I don’t begrudge my friends growing up, taking stable jobs, buying houses, having kids. But it’s just something I don’t understand. Sometimes — and I feel comfortable admitting this to you as we’re fast becoming friends — sometimes I do get a little bit jealous of their lives. From the outside, it looks like they have it all figured out, everything put together, nice and neat, on a trajectory toward happiness. I look at them and think, “man, I’d love some of that happiness too. Why can’t I be happy like them?” But I’m not stupid. Just because someone looks happy on the outside, that doesn’t mean they’re not freaking out on the inside. And when it comes down to it, I don’t want a job, I don’t want a house, I don’t want kids. I mean, a partner would be nice. But all this other normal stuff, I just can’t figure it out.

  I’ve got to learn not to compare myself with others. Not with these friends of mine who’ve opted for the “safe” route, nor with other female comedians who’ve made it big. Just because someone else got on the sketch show This Saturday when they were 22, that doesn’t mean my life is over at 27. Rodney Dangerfield didn’t even become a success until he was like 40. So I’ve about about 13 years still before I need to start worrying.

  So yeah, I’m an odd duck. A rare bird. A turkey
lurkey. Just… something small with feathers and beady little eyes. I didn’t ask to be this way and somedays I sit alone, holding myself, rocking back and forth and incanting my desire to just be normal. It never works, though. I’m still me. It could be worse.

  I live on the top floor of a classic Chicago three-flat greystone. Hardwood floors, nice vintage doors and molding, pretty cool space actually. My floor is smaller than the other two floors below me, just a two bedroom. Well, actually, it’s more like one bedroom and a small office. I can’t imagine fitting a bed in that room. It’s a comfortable living arrangement though I’m getting to point where I have too much crap. I don’t spend all that much time in my apartment anyway. Too much going on in the outside world, you know?

  If I’m not hanging out at the comedy club, I’m usually at my local coffee shop. It’s a small, dimly lit kind of place with rustic wood floors and wood paneling. It’s the kind of place Ernest Hemingway might hang out at if he was a young hipster living in Chicago. He’s from Chicago, you know, or rather just outside of the city. He hated it and got out pretty quick. Me, I grew up here and I still live here. I wouldn’t say I hate it, but my attachment to it is waning. It’s a good place for comedy, though, so I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

  So, really, that’s my life in a nutshell. You can expect to find me in either my apartment, the coffee shop, or the comedy club. My Mom’s dead and I try not to think about it too hard while also trying to keep her in my memory, just about everything is a joke to me which is an easy way to hide my pain and my struggle, and I just can’t seem to find a good girl, not that I’m looking to settle down, buy a house in the suburbs, and squeeze out a replicant of myself. And I’m a total lesbian who is basing her career off of a lie. If I haven’t lost you yet then I think we’re gonna be friends.

  My ultimate hope is that you find my jokes funny, even if you know the secret behind them. I just want to be upfront about that. They can’t all be zingers, of course, but this is what I do. I mean, look, you probably go to your office every day and work really hard doing whatever it is that you do and the end of the day you hope that your efforts are appreciated. That’s all I want. My job is entertainment. My life is entertainment for you. And this story I’m about to unfurl for you is most certainly one big joke, a giant pie in my face. But that’s just how it works. You never know how romance is going to play out and you can’t try to control it. It’s only when you stop trying to control life, when you take your hands off the wheel for a little while, that you really start to figure things out.

  How would you balance a chaotic love life with an equally chaotic work life? Would you meticulously plot stuff out, weigh your options, meditate hard on what the more prudent move would be for you? Or would you shoot from the hip, screw up, push people away and then try desperately to get them back? Would you choose the wrong path, the path of most resistance, get yourself in trouble, and offend your biggest supporters? What do you think I would choose?

  Let’s get this party started. Pour yourself a bourbon (that’s what I’m doing), slide back into a comfortable leather chair, and suspend all disbelief for how much one girl can goof off, screw up, play games with her life, and make everybody laugh themselves silly in the process.

  “Hello folks, I’m Macy Maxwell, I have the mic, and you have to listen to me because it’s totally rude to get up and walk out once the comedian has begun their set. Deal with it!”

  “All right,” I said, easing back into the low couch, a pad of paper and pen in my hands. “Let’s see what you got.” Across the coffee table sat Petra in a chair, her own notebook open, her eyes looking down into it. Melodic electronic music played in the background, a kind of music that could only be defined as ‘chillwave,’ and over that the grinding sound of the espresso machine could be heard. The coffee shop was small, with a handful of big leather chairs, some tables at which single people sat, and one large table around which a group of four people, obviously coworkers, sat with their laptops open talking about whatever chart they were analyzing.

  “Okay,” said Petra, tapping her pen onto the notebook and thinking. “How about this one? So I’m about two years divorced. She tried to take a percentage of my income in alimony payments, but as a stand up comic 50% of zero is still zero.”

  “Not bad,” I said. “Maybe instead of ‘a percentage of my income’ just say ‘half.’ You know, ‘she tried to take half, but as a stand up comic half of zero is still zero.’ Try to make it snappier.”

  “Okay,” said Petra. “That’s good.” She scribbled a bit in her notebook and then wrote down my note.

  “Are you going for the mopey divorced thing?” I asked. “I mean, is that the comic you want to be?”

  “I don’t know,” said Petra. “I’m still struggling to find my voice. After Janet left me I saw it as an opportunity to do what I always wanted. But when I started stand up, and still now, I just struggle to figure out what I actually have to say.”

  “Dude, it can take comics years, even decades, to figure it all out,” I said. “Look at some of our modern greats. Louis CK, for example. I mean, he’s been doing it forever and only recently has he really exploded. He’s a genius, but it took him like 25 years to really figure it out.”

  “I’m 30 and I’ve only been at this for two years,” said Petra. “I guess it’s gonna be a while.”

  “You never know,” I said. “You never know when it’s going to find you.”

  “Do you have any new jokes you’re working on?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “I try to write five decent jokes per day.”

  “Your decent jokes are better than my great jokes,” she said.

  “Stop the moping,” I said, leaning over the coffee table and slapping Petra on the bare knee. “You’ve got to cultivate an attitude in comedy. Nobody likes a mope.”

  “Nobody likes a mope,” she repeated, writing it down in her notebook. “Any thing else, Socrates?”

  “Do you want to hear a joke or not?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Okay,” I said, looking down at my notes. “Do you know how hard it is being single? Guys today expect you to be fully shaved… you know, down there. When you’re in a relationship you can just let that shit grow like crabgrass. I mean, what’s the guy gonna do — leave you? Oh… wait!”

  “I like it,” said Petra. “The epiphany at the end is clever, like, oh so that’s why I’m single.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m still trying to tighten it up. It might be a little too clever and not get the immediate laughs.”

  “I just…” said Petra, trailing off. “I’m beginning to feel uneasy about your material not, you know, matching up with who you are.”

  “It’s just my stage persona,” I said. “Let’s focus on the jokes, okay?” Petra sighed.

  “Well, you can always try it tonight at the club,” said Petra. “If it bombs, it bombs.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s kinda getting hard for me to try out untested material there. People are coming out, you know?”

  “Coming out to see you,” she said. “Yeah, I know.”

  “There’s a lot more pressure on me now,” I said. “It’s not like it was when I was a nobody.”

  “That horse you’re riding is pretty high,” said Petra. “You might want to slide off it for a few.”

  “Funny,” I said. “Real funny. But dude, I’m getting write-ups, people are taking notice. What if some producer happens to walk in on the night I shit the bed? What if Tabitha Bloom comes in and I bomb? That would ruin my chances at This Saturday.”

  “Do you really want to be on This Saturday?” said Petra. “Do they even take comics anymore? You really don’t do improv or sketch or anything.”

  “I’m thinking maybe I should get into it,” I said.

  “Well, that’s cool,” said Petra.

  “I mean, I don’t really know what I want to do,” I said. “Or where I wa
nt to go. I’m just eager to make this whole thing a profession for me.”

  “Me too,” said Petra. “Us and every other person who gets up on stage.”

  “Yeah, but I’m funny,” I said.

  “And I’m not,” said Petra.

  “I didn’t say that!” I exclaimed. “C’mon, Petty, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Just then, my eyes averted from Petra to take note of a girl walking in through the door of the coffee shop. She was a slim girl, but lightly muscled under her clothing, tight black jeans and a wavy white t-shirt, with matte black boots on her feet. Her hair was a bit wild — short, blonde, choppy, and unkempt. She looked tired, like she was overwrought or cracked out or something, but in an alluring and mysterious way. Under her arm was a small, thin aluminum laptop computer, scratched up from her carrying it around without a case, stickers applied haphazardly on the lid. This chick looked really fucking cool.

  “Oh my God,” I said in a low whisper to Petra. “That writer babe is here again.”

  “Who?” said Petra, turning around to check out the girl.

  “Don’t turn around!” I exclaimed, but still in a murmur. “She’ll catch you looking.”

  “All right,” she said, facing me once more. “So who is this girl?”

  “I see her here a lot,” I said. “She comes in with just her laptop. No bag, no charger, not even a phone. She sits down at a table and just writes until her laptop battery dies.”