RANT TO A DEAD GUY

I don’t know why I’m feeling like this because you’re dead and you’ve been dead, but I’m still here on the planet and its sucks because something is wrong with me because I don’t want a boyfriend I question whether my sexuality is in flux and although women are far superior beings the bad news is I’m straight but I don’t like anyone even a little prob cuz everybody over forty is a catastrophe they say things like “cool beans” which was never hip and sometimes they have small beings that fell out of some other woman’s vatootle that hover around them who according to their Tinder profile are “their life” well your “life” smells like he soiled his trousers I can’t believe everything I’m writing to you so that you will read it from wherever you are (how strange) even though you were from the Bronx I’m very confident you went straight to heaven we met at Nicks in Boston my home club  I just thought you were so good on stage and you were covering for a comic who incidentally was in my wedding (WHAT) ya it’s weird and then you didn’t say you didn’t drink but after your set that’s what we all do in Boston, I did ask you if you’d go out with the gang and you said something that resembled a “naw” and your girlfriend walked up but it was really weird because we connected later anyway through Myspace (ridickballs)  Myspace? feels like centuries ago but you said hey next time you’re in New York, hit me up and I think you texted something about going to the Cellar I got really excited because my comedy career was in a holding pattern at best and New York was on my radar (to keep with the aviator themed analogy) I was just waiting to get enough money to move we hung out it was great I totes didn’t like you like you, I just thought it was cool to have a new comedy friend one time we went to the Strip.  After my divorce moving back to Boston was weird because the scene was younger douche-bro’s who started after me and not the guys that I knew from waitressing & from being around the clubs in the 90’s a New York friend was more than welcomed and I swear I didn’t like you beyond friends but you asked about my life and if I had kids and about my parents and what was I doing with comedy and then we went to get Thai food then we went to HA where we waited around forever and then I bombed in front of 4 people – I ate it so HARD we eventually went to the Cellar and I thought your shoes were weird.  I didn’t really see anybody else because you were all I could see and you had the symbols for Om Mani Padme Hum tattooed on your bicep J.C. on the your forearm and we talked about one man shows and how all comics need to explore other avenues of expression and I always thought I would write one and you did a Moth and I wanted to be with you and I couldn’t eat and I told you about my noir fascination.  You hugged Geraldo who was surprisingly humble and such a cool guy and you had to drive me back to Valley Cottage because my 82 year old aunt was worried and had made me promise I’d get back no later than midnight and although you both were puzzled at my indulging her request, the three of us went up FDR Drive and he was frantically arguing with some broad on the phone who kept hanging up on him which was making him furiously mad and we all couldn’t help but to laugh because it was crazy. Months would go by and we didn’t talk and more months and your career got big and you were travelling and I don’t recall when I took a shine to you because we lived in different states, maybe it’s cuz you were funny, then you let me crash at your place when you were away so I could look for a job and I brought your mother raw honey that I got from Amish people I’m not sure she liked it because it was the kind that’s hard in consistency because there are no chemicals so you have to put the jar in boiling water and she was nice and your dog barked a lot but then he warmed up to me and it’s weird that night you called from a tv contest show you were on and said you were losing to a dishwasher which despite it being a slam against his heritage was very funny only because you were incensed that you didn’t win.  At your bedside there was a book about Buddhism with a prologue about Asoka Maura who I had written a paper about in an ethics class in college and I knew it was a sign I asked you how you could even do a television show and you said you just have to relax more time passed and we didn’t talk and I grew bitter and eventually gave up on you. I was really hurt and disappointed because I guess its because you made my heart feel so good and I couldn’t even remember having something to look forward to you finally did call but I was away then you were going to Boston and expected me to drop everything which I did you kissed me finally after 2 years and it was amaze nostrils because it was soft and unexpected and you were a gentlemen because we held hands.  The very last text you sent me said “I can’t wait to see you.”  How cruel the world is that it took you so young.  I got that text a couple of days before you passed.  I cried for six months which I know you know because the psychic told me it’s really hard to write about you because it makes me sad I don’t cry any more but it makes all the blood go to my face and I get weird and some moisture happens around my eye area it’s like a silent intense cry, but I pretty much am dead unless I’m performing or writing I guess I could say thank you which is weird but for the writing part?  I was so mad at you for dying but it’s not like you had anything to do with leaving your body and I know you didn’t end like completely but I still have good days and some bad ones I don’t cope well with feelings any more so for now and to end this rant all I got is om mani padme hum.

originally published February 20, 2017

WHY DO I ALWAYS WANT TO MOVE BACK TO BOSTON?

I’m writing all this out because it helps me sort out the lunacy of being a creative person in New York.  I got weepy on the plane coming back from Florida which makes no sense (I don’t really do that).  I felt I wanted to move back to Boston.  I think that coming to New York because you’re a creative person is a great, yet terrible idea.  I think I take one step forward (just performed at the Friars Club), and three steps back (I drink more now than I ever did).

I still have this issue where I don’t want to emotionally commit to comedy. 

It’s hard to commit to anything, emotionally.  I think it’s funny (or not) that men have a hard time committing to women.  I resist committing to my career because that’s way scarier than giving someone half the house.  It’s a huge gamble.  A lot of people are doing it (in New York at any given time there is a free comedy show somewhere, several, even, on a single block). 

New York is a gamble and apparently I’m Ginger from Scorcese’s Casino cuz I’m rollin’ the dice baby.  Men don’t want to commit because it might ruin their life.  That’s the same reason I resist pushing with my career.  It’s fear.  Ah, that little bugger.  It also depends on what day you catch me on.  When I used to work Vegas twice a year, I was, in my mind, in show business for reals. 

Comedians are an interesting faction of show business, because we work the hardest and get the least respect.  We are like boxers.  We take all the risk.  We are the writer, producer, editor, performer, booking and marketing person.  So, No, your wife could not be a comedian.  No wonder I want to quit often.  But I’ve only felt that way since moving to New York so I blame the Yankees. 

We get the least respect because we are alone on stage so we get heckled sometimes, and the bookers are all frustrated performers with fickle personalities, who are just looking for an excuse not to book you.  I think I’m going to a Met game.

When I got booked in Vegas, I worked at the Riviera.  You got a pink hotel room overlooking the pool and comped dinners.  Let me tell you something, two shows a night for seven days, I woulda ate Chef Boy Ardee, I was so happy.  But the reality of a day job is enough to make you want to die by some epic, old school way like consumption or sticking your head in an oven.

This double life is what is getting to me.  (And I sort of get fired a lot).  I come back to the day job after Vegas, back to the meaninglessness and futility of it all, and it’s hard to take.  No wonder I drink too much.  It’s all garbage.  That is why I cried on the plane.  First of all, I am a New Englander.  Being in the 80 degree weather of Florida in December and then parting from it is reason enough, but as I find I am scrawling this out in an airport, I’m thinking there are other reasons as well.

Everybody who is in the arts, specifically in New York City has this feeling I suspect – even if you’re crying, wanting to quit, fearing failure and/or fearing success).  But there is something that we're getting as payoff.  I suspect that it is the satisfaction that we are forging our own way in a city that many don't have the balls to move to, never mind navigate the pot hole laden thoroughfares.  New York demands the best out of an artist.  That is a good thing.  It requires an amalgam into what we aspire to.  We have to grow into that person which requires shedding old parts of ourselves.  Ultimately it’s what we want.  We want to be changed.  We just didn’t know it was going to be this hard.

Apartment Ad_Seeking Another Pterodactyl

When I committed to make the move to New York, it seemed evident that I may never get there unless I do the roommate thing, particularly because I didn’t have a job.  It’s something you can only understand if your conviction to prioritize creative projects i.e. writing and painting and you're trying to do said projects anywhere near Manhattan.  However, clearly, I need something else to write about and this roommate shit is pure lunacy.

But for the sake of accuracy, I will refer to them as the pterodactyls. 

A couple of months after moving in, the Jihad pterodactyl began penning hostile sticky notes, and donning a general sense of bitchiness and anger.  I'm not calling her Jihad out of a need to racially profile.  Rather, I get a sense that her insatiable inflammatory rage and dark features together suggest she could secure large amounts of dynamite up her vacuous, sea urchin-like vagina.  She and the other pterodactyl fought bitterly over kitchen counter territory.  They fought for months.  Then Jihad grew mad that she didn’t get a particular shelf in the kitchen.  She kept telling me to move my stuff and when I refused, she made the apartment un-livable with hostility via slamming doors, bolting through the apartment like a psycho and never speaking.  Refusing to pay the full amount of electric bill became her act of vindictiveness and then she never did her dishes.  I called her a twat, told her to go fuck herself and suggested she stop withholding her dish washing capabilities.

Eventually the (first) pterodactyl moved out, leaving me and the Jihad pterodactyl to roommate seek.  Jihad is a programmer, and I’ve been told that that explains a lot about her rigid personality.  Seeking a new roommate became an abundant opportunity for the control freak to rear its ugly head and then inevitably enable her to complain that she did all the work.  She posted an ad and proceeded to manage the schedule like an anal retentive, militant tyrant. Der Fuhrer himself would have been proud. 

One of the downsides of this mission is that we actually had to communicate.  We went back and forth about the schedule.  This is someone who does not compromise and legit has to get her way.  This person does not know how to speak to other human beings with respect.  I’m a comic, so the word cunt first of all doesn’t bother me, and is frankly not offensive enough for me to describe her.  Also I’m from Boston.  I was having a tremendous amount of difficulty NOT smashing her face into a wall.  I was still sleeping at night but my eye had begun to twitch. 

I awoke to the sound of boots on the tiled kitchen floor.  It’s bad enough that Isis (one of many nicknames for the lizard) had scheduled a cavalcade of pterodactyl replacements to interview spanning from 12:30PM to 4:30PM, but who wears boots on a Sunday?  (This bitch).  I emerged out of my restless slumber at noon to put coffee on, only to see Muhammad Incarnate going back and forth to the bathroom doing her makeup and clad in all black.  Did somebody die?

We saw several girls who timidly walked through the apartment studying camel jockey and I.  I barely got a word in, because Hitler was busy doing all of the talking.  Her irritability was bursting at the seams and was clearly on display for the would-be subletters.  During one interview, I said a few things about the apartment, cutting off the Mediterranean whore, because otherwise I would just stand there mute. 

After they all left, the Black Widow asks if I am available to see more at 8:00 o’clock.  I tell her I believe we have seen enough for one day.  She angrily snaps back “well if you’re going to be here anyway then what does it matter?”   It’s actually easier to be pleasant with people you live with but for some reason, this is just not my year.

This is why she needs to be thrown from a helicopter.  My protests to try and condense the interview process had been all for naught because she is a rigid, fear-ridden, slut who deserves to be deported.  I’m surprised in all her inflexibility, that Blackbeard hasn’t yet had high blood pressure.  I also find it somewhat baffling that in the ad listing description, she put “easy going.”  I’m convinced that she just copied that from another ad.  I finally told her to just pick whoever she wanted.  And a few months later, I moved out.

DEAD INSIDE/Rob the Mob

The only upside of getting sick is movie watching.  I seldom read when I’m ill.  Although I love reading, somehow when I have the flu or whatever, I afford myself the luxury of binge watching.  It is something I never do because my television isn’t hooked up and because I like to do creative things with my free time, oh ya and I’m weird.

At any rate, I watched this movie about a tough guy.  Tough guy is different than Bad boy.  I grew up in the 80’s where “bad boy” meant a metal or a rock guy with fucked up hair who drank & drugged.  Not my type.  I had rough boyfriends who always had weapons tucked away in various locations and had dubious ways of making money and dangerous friends, but never did I date a guy who listened to Metal.

In the movie, the guy gets out of prison.  His girlfriend picks him up.  They’re young-ish.  They get drunk, they have sex.  Next, he hashes out a heist.  They’re in love.  They’re in Queens.  They smoke a lot.  He gets a gun and they drive their giant Chevy Impala and act out their plan of holding up mafia social clubs in the neighborhood because he figures out that they have a lot of cash lying around these joints.

In act three, he looks at her and says “Florida is nice.  We should go there.  Marry me.”  This is the point of the movie where a girl tears up.  Me=nothing.  Nothing happened.  No moisture developed in either eye socket.  Doesn’t matter if you’re a broad from Boston or not.  There’s nothing like when a man softens enough to say that.  And these were great actors.  I mean they nailed this scene.  He is brutally handsome and the camera loves his face.  She is unconventionally pretty in a down to earth way.  She said yes.  I should have been balling.

But, nothing.  Am I dead inside ?

I had this marriage that ended badly.  I’ve learned over time, you can’t hold on to how you wish things could be.  (I used to have a line in my act, “I just want to go to my gay boyfriend’s house, listen to Peggy Lee and cry over what could have been.”  These days I'm less fag hag, more John Goodman.

Now that I’m older I see how you can’t long for the you that was lost in that time period, that elusive "you" that you can’t get back.  BUT, I’m also stuck.  I’m not dating.  It’s like I’m blocked.  Like a giant black box is covering my heart completely. 

I can’t help feeling there is something missing.  As if there is some seed within me that hasn’t been cooked yet that needs time before I am ready, really ready, to address the black box.  I sort of hate personal growth, gurus and motivational speakers.  I hate shrinks, I hate mediation and I hate the notion that we all need “fixing.”  Shrinks I hate because at the end of a session you feel awful and then you go, “here’s a hundred bucks.” 

Maybe it’s exactly what I need though.  Life is nothing if it isn’t paradox.  

I used to cry at episodes of Mad About You.  That was the young me.  It was a really well written sitcom about a married couple where they respectively resolved all the dilemmas that plagued their lives in under twenty minutes.  Not really sure why that did it for me, but it did.  I didn’t even cry at Casablanca (because boo hoo he’s gonna die). <--- that makes me seem shallow and vacuous, but I think romance like that plain doesn’t exist.   

Maybe I’m not dead inside but the old self in me is dying.  Am I headed for a re-birth?

QUEENS AND OTHER DEPRAVITIES

I’m drinking wine.  I just started though, so this won’t read like shitfaced Hemingway.  This may go off in several directions.  Should I start with Dunkin Donuts?  Can I get a “HELLO” for Dunks?  It’s a Boston thing (well, drinking really would take first place, but Dunkin Donuts is magic).  The first Dunkin Donuts was what pretentious Brooklyn pseudo dive bars try to emulate: authentic old school 1950’s formica laminate countertops with metal edging (for example) and stools that are screwed into the floor.  Just writing this is making me wicked happy.  I love retro anything.  I digress.  This line of thought leads to what I am doing in New York.  I mean, there are a ton of places to perform and duh, everything is here.  But it’s getting expensive and I’m getting tired.

I have this cyclical love/hate with my lifestyle choices.  I do standup and I paint and write.  As an artist, I had to come to New York… I sometimes do up to six shows a week and with that, I struggle to find time to paint while working a dumb part-time office job to pay my rent in Queens (crazy, right?) (and I have roommates so now it’s just like, I need to get some shit together).  This blog helps and thankfully it’s cheaper than therapy and less painful for my back than zazen.

I’m from New England, so it’s not as if New York is alien to me.  I’ve been coming here since I was an infant.  My mother was from New York state, and my father was from Philly.  I came back and forth to visit family growing up, and then to go see the theatre and hang with my gay boyfriends in my 20’s & 30’s.  Coming back and forth from Boston isn‘t that big of a departure, although we (us humans) have to do that provincial thing where we’re like you’re from Boston, or you’re from Philly… it’s not the same, and it’s not – BUT, it’s not like I just fell off the turnip wagon, because there are people from Wisconsin that live in Brooklyn for fukks sake. 

All of that said, I miss Boston and I wonder what the hell I’m doing.  On a good week, I performed (and got paid) at Dangerfields and the Friars Club (whose abbot is Jerry Lewis), and I did a show in a big theatre upstate and made a lot of money.  I even landed the Tropicana where you work nine shows for the week and stay in a condo on the boardwalk facing the water!  And I’ve shown my paintings in Brooklyn more than once.  On a bad week I’m thinking what am I doing?  I don’t have an agent and I currently don’t have a job except comedy.  I worry about my sister, my car is on the fritz, I really need to move, I’m exhausted and my parents are dead. 

This older gentlemen at my former job liked to comment about everything.  One day he said “you look tired.”  I wanted to reply, “you look like you died three weeks ago.”  People don’t understand the struggle.

Well, that’s it for now.  The wine is kicking in.  I wore myself out already.  My Queens aberrations rant will have to continue on another day.  The message is: stay gold.

RENO

I remember discovering the meaning of existential nihilism when I was booked to do comedy in Reno, Nevada.  I think you would be hard pressed to find a more appropriate setting for such a discovery.

So I get booked to do standup for a week at Catch A Rising Star at the Silver Legacy Casino in downtown Reno Nevada.  Considering most of the paid gigs I got booked on at the time were at indistinct wood-paneled function rooms of bygone hotels or old VFW halls in rural parts of New England from another dimension serving up buffet food and cheap wine, I welcomed the idea to get out of dodge.  Funny because Dodge City might be what you would think Reno may be like, but au contraire and even though it isn’t near Reno, it’s definitely cut from the same David Lynchian landscape.  At least, that is how it feels as a New Englander, traveling out West.

Flying to Reno is not as awesome as flying to Vegas, mainly because it’s considerably more expensive.  Also, when you get off the plane, you’re in Reno.  I’m not saying it’s not an exciting place, in fact, I relished in the retro signage and time-capsule feel of the place.  I’m not sure if it ever had a heyday, but it’s known for where people used to go to get a divorce.  Since I technically got divorced twice to the same person, Reno seemed a completely apropos place.  I was living in the moment.

I get my airfare, pack a huge suitcase and I feel like a road comic again.  Leaving Boston in December at the time was exactly what I wanted to do.  On the plane after being up in the air for some time, peering out beyond the clouds, the vegetation began to change dramatically.  By the time you’ve crossed the second time zone, the earth looks like another planet.  Everything has changed from green shrubbery and giant emerald pines to a flat desert of burnt sienna browns and beiges.  After five hours, I land at the airport and right away, it is staggering.  There’s a life sized sculpture of several bighorn sheep in a realistic wildlife setting right there on the carpet.  I’m thinking, I just want to get my bags and maybe a drink.  I wasn’t ready for fake animals.   I’m an artist.  I specifically went to school for drawing and painting, but taxidermy at the airport is more perplexing than any abstract expressionist shit I’ve ever seen.  There’s more disturbing sculptures and paintings  as I make my way down the long, narrow hallway that leads to baggage claim.  I pass a few slot machines, get my bag and then head outside.

The casino has a free shuttle.  Because of this I have gotten spoiled and have been dismayed to find out other airports don’t have free shuttles to the gig.  It’s exciting to fly to the big show though.  A lot of what I had done up until that point in standup was host and feature shows wherever I could get booked.  The most exotic places I’d worked were Vegas and Florida, so Reno follows suit, in that it’s the type of town if you’re heading there, you should pack a gun.  When you feature in a standup show, you go on after the host and before the headliner.  You perform roughly for a half hour.  There’s something about getting out of your usual digs and traveling.  I’m elated to be in the desert even with the eerie sculpture welcoming.  Plus, Catch has a legendary history including discovering and/or nurturing the careers of guys like Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld, so this adds to the elation.  After checking in, showering and spraying my hair, I head down the elevator through the lobby and down an escalator to the club.

The room is set back in the back of the casino on the ground floor of the Silver Legacy casino.   You walk through the lobby, passed all the shops and a few bars, down an escalator where you can peer at the tables and slots from a birds eye view.  Then around more slots to the entrance of the club.  You walk in to a carpeted little number with rows of chairs all facing a rather large, well-lit stage with a piano.  The emcee is Barry Gibb.  Not literally, but he could enter and possibly win a look-alike contest, if there were such a event. Although I was born in the 70’s, I never have, nor since, seen this hairstyle coupled with a beard in real life.  He ends up being the nicest guy in the world.  You couldn’t ask for a room to be warmed up any better.  He plays the piano and jokes with the audience for a good 20 minutes before bringing up the comedians.  I’m so thrilled to be performing on a real stage, with real drinks, sans wood-paneling. 

With my excitement of being in Nevada and my retro sensibilities in tow, I persuaded my friend Christian who was the manager to take me to The Sands after the show.  Its legendary title suggests Vegas swank and old school charm, as in jazz and beehives.  But the Reno version is anything but.  He reluctantly agrees.  We walk about four blocks west passed a casino and through a large parking lot through snow to get to the infamous tower.  The worn carpet of the lobby mocks us as we head toward alcohol.  The yellowing formica bar seemed to mirror the females' sour faces that glare at us like something from a Hunter S. Thompson novel.  The waitress’s gum chewing made me somewhat uneasy, but as a writer I had to confess, “This is perfect!”  Christian on the other hand, is about as excited as cat about to get a bath.  We both look at each other with wonder at the people-watching potential, but we try to play it cool even though we’re secretly fascinated, or I’m fascinated.  We ordered drinks and began to talk shop; comedy, writing, etc..  

We talked about life, wine, the Smiths and The Cosmic Trigger while the extras from My Name is Earl that peppered the bar chatted.  The brightly lit countertop of libations held the same amount of glamour as a bingo game.  There wasn’t going to be any rat pack crooning at this trailer park.  I loved talking with Christian because of his wit and intelligence.  We talked real shit.  I wish that dam gig was still around.  I talked about my family and how I’m dark.  “Dead inside?” he asked.  I laughed.  He is funny too, by the way.  I told him I felt like it’s all a big nothing.  Christian explained, "Existential Nihilism embraces cause and effect in that all feelings and bad experiences are from prior causes . . as a result, there is no free will and nature v. nurture is bullshit too, confirming the futility of it all."  

“Basically,” he went on, “the world lacks meaning or purpose.  All existence; actions, suffering, feelings are senseless.  It literally is all a big nothing.” 

“Oh my God !!!  That’s it ! ! !  That is exactly how I feel ! ! !”  I exclaimed with exasperation. I’m so excited to receive validation of what had been simmering inside of me.  The brooding, the apathy which naturally I was experiencing as a result of death, divorce and disease had a name !  This is nothing short of a revelation, I thought.  Just then, the guy next to Christian, clad in a wife beater with a drug dealer hoodie and Adidas shorts, fell completely off of his barstool.  

SHUT UP AND LOOK GOOD

I started comedy a while ago.   A long time ago.  I was married.  It was different.  I’m a comic in New York now, I’m single, and I am having a hard time.  Well, wait a day and ask me, and I will say it’s great.  A lot of my perspective hinges on where I got on last, how much money I made this month and if my new stuff worked somewhere.  But generally, and in particular, this week, things are shitty.

I’m not a new comic, but upon moving to New York I became new again in a way, having been unfamiliar with most of what goes on in the New York comedy scene.  It’s par for the course when moving to another city.

But when I ponder my situation a little deeper, what’s frustrating for me is my gender.  There comes a time when you realize, people don’t take you seriously if you are female.  People used to say “oh you do comedy that must be so hard.”  At the time I thought they were morons for saying so.  I used to think doing comedy was great.  You go to a club and work out ideas that you’ve been banging around i.e. funny thoughts, jaunts and stabs at people that irritate you.  It’s an activity that makes all the messed up stuff in your life have a shred of meaning and you make people feel better, including yourself.  It’s symbiotic and so creative.  But in time, I began to see what those annoying people meant.  Audiences are reluctant to like female comics.  And then there’s everybody else.   

When I first moved to New York a comic at Dangerfield’s said to me, “men in the Middle East have it right…women should be covered from head to toe in a berka and kept quiet.”  The same week another comedian gave me a spot at one of the clubs.  He was actually nice to me and happy to help me out, but the next night when I didn’t text him back right away, he texted, “Are you drunk or just a retard?”  Another time, in an effort to help me assimilate in New York, a friend of mine connected me with an established comic.  Long story short, the comic asked me to three-way with him and his girlfriend.

The problem starts when you actually want to make some kind of career out of it.  If you’re just doing your “sketches” at little dives here and there, it isn’t affecting anything.  You’re not challenging the status quo.  But when you have something to say, and when you want to be compensated for your work, now you are creating a wake.  In some cases, bookers don’t respect comics of the female gender, therefore, pay them less.  It is sort of known that back in the day, a now famous female comic was paid a lot less than all of the male headliners in Boston.  No wonder she left.    

In New York, it’s competitive.  Male comics will use their yang prowess to try and intimidate people they deem as inferior, I guess in an effort to stroke their own ego.  Either that or they’ll hit on you.  They’ll insult you.  At Times Square Arts Center, one of the comics said to me “I would never put two female comics on in a row…”  He really should just be embarrassed.  They also underestimate your  intelligence.  I don’t give a fuck what skinny, loser comics who are high have to say.  They are going for the easiest target which makes me question their intelligence and just screams insecurity.  They are trying to make me feel bad.  Look frightened little boy, it’s obvious you are steeped in self-hatred and exhaustion from having to suppress so many secret homosexual urges, that your shame only elicits intense insecurity, I’m here to tell ya, the rest of society takes care of my feeling bad about myself.  Women experience this constantly with sexist, objectifying images in advertising, in conversations and inappropriate glances.  Do you think your stupid comment is upsetting?  You’re just a buffoon, who’s clearly threatened by the possibility that a female comic will steal your shitty $25 dollar spot at a dump in the theatre district.  At the time, I didn’t respond.  But I probably should have at least told him to f**k off.

When frustrated with standup, I used to say “I should have been a dancer,” probably because society values women by their looks.  They really want us to just shut up and look good.  We are socialized to believe that women are second class citizens.  Female comics have to work hard despite this.[1]  Everybody acts like I’m wrong because I want to be valued for my intelligence and talent and everything but my looks.  If I felt I was good looking, I wouldn’t be doing standup in the first place and female comics who are trying to use their looks just want fame and are not into the craft and probably really want to be an actress. 

This is a bigger issue than I thought.  Because a baby comes out of our person, we are somehow deemed as less than?   When you see a guy comic two years in, who automatically receives more credibility from the audience than your 14 years, it’s disheartening to say the least.  side note: I did read Gloria Steinem books when I was seventeen, followed by Camile Paglia, among others.  But I  sort of blocked it out for a period of time. I think for a while I chose to look the other way, for fear that I would be miserable if I was always thinking about this.  However, now that I do standup, and I’m a lot older, there is absolutely no escaping the staunch reality of sexism and inequality.  It only magnifies with time.

People have gone out of their way after a show to say “we don’t usually like female comics, but we really liked you.”  A booker of a big club in Boston said to me while we were backstage about a comic who was on stage, “she’s not that funny but she’s nice to look at.”   

Another time in Boston a booker told me right to my face that “all these paid comics are hacky…”  He was only referring to some of the funniest comedians ever on the planet.  He also mentioned my then husband.  Why would you say that to someone’s wife?  Was I supposed to be impressed by a guy who never paid comics upstairs from a Chinese restaurant?  Maybe people just think that my entire gender is dumb. 

[The word cunt doesn’t offend me at all.

Most of the time when I use it, I’m referring to a man]

-Tweet from me:  @stacykendro

Often society’s message is we’re just arm candy.  How quaint.  A large part of being female (and this is deep in the psyche of most women) is the need to ingratiate yourself to people.  That’s the hard part – being so dam agreeable.  We are socialized to make others feel comfortable, which means if you are a jerk to me, I will smile.  Sometimes, that is the thing for someone with manners to do.  However, don’t mistake my politeness for passivity.  Now I’m talking about New York.  In an effort to take the high road, or to make you believe you didn’t really get to me, I might not retaliate right away.  But just know that I’m Albanian.  I will be planning your demise.  Well, at least I will go home and write about you, but take heed because if you catch me on a bad day, who knows.  Even though “vendetta” is an Italian word, just ask people in the Bronx and they’ll tell you which nationality is scarier.

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[1] I think some women are confused about where their gender fits into performing.  They dress up too much.  They dress provocatively.  A lot of skin showing.  They look like a friggen peacock.  I like George Carlin.  He dressed in all black.  Like an artist.  If you are a singer or a stripper, then by all means, wear the dress.  I just don’t see the connection with comedy.  You see minimalist theatre and they are in all black.  They’re not stuffed in a dress, in heels with their arms showing.