Comedy Sex God

by Pete Holmes

  This is how I got to know her—dragging her up a cobblestone street in shackles as she writhed in a bright red bodice, clogs, and an ankle-length denim skirt. She would spit and scream that she had been falsely accused to every tourist we passed. I would yell like a town crier, listing her accusations, but underneath it all I had a strong crush on this blond, feisty woman, scorning her publicly, but secretly just excited that I got to hold her arm.

  The commotion conveniently led the onlookers to our box office, where they would be sold a ticket at a reasonable price to a show composed entirely of actual testimony given at the first-ever witch trial to take place in America. There was no set, just wooden folding chairs assembled in the round and a privacy shade in the back where the college actors would transform into middle-aged pig farmers, young girls, and nosy neighbors, each accusing Bridget Bishop of a different crime: appearing as a specter in their bedroom and sitting on their chest, choking them; causing an apple to fly from their hands; coming through their walls, tormenting them in the shape of a familiar—in this instance an evil creature with the body of a monkey, the feet of a rooster, and the face of a man. Bridget, my crush, would watch the testimonies from the dock, still chained and protesting loudly, me occasionally rapping my walking stick on the floor, demanding order in the court.

  After each testimony, we’d take questions from our jury of modern-day tourists. This was always my favorite part, because it was hilarious. Sometimes people would ask the witness if he’d enjoyed being sat on by an attractive woman in his bed, which got laughs, or they’d ask what the monkey creature looked like, leaving the actor to stand up and walk around contorting his body, monkey-like, then point to a face in the audience that most closely resembled the demon’s human face, which also killed. Everyone in the cast always hoped that someone would ask the midwife where the incriminating birthmark—“The witch’s mark”—was found on Bridget’s body, so the actress would have to stand up and say with a straight face, “It was found midway between the anus and the pudendum.”

  Sometimes audience members would ask stupid questions, like where we pooped, which was funny, or occasionally they’d get up and offer their own improvised testimonies, disrupting the show with their false accusations of sexual arousal in an apple orchard, or joyrides on brooms. Doing it three times a day did get old, though, and the cast was always desperate to find new ways to entertain ourselves. Some days, we’d see how many movie quotes we could work into the show, stifling giggles at every “I’ll be back” or “You can’t handle the truth.” Other days it was ’80s music lyrics, the judge turning to the next witness with a “Who can it be now?” or adding to a guilty verdict, “She’s a maniac!”

  Some days there was no theme and we just passed the time by making the show as silly as possible. My friend Tony once ended the show early as the jury of modern feminists kept yelling to let Bridget go, so he did, exasperated, fifteen minutes into a forty-five-minute production. Everyone cheered and no one asked for a refund. My best friend in the cast, a tall, good-looking Texan named Daniel, would routinely crack me up giving the testimony of the monkey creature and having it speak, for no reason, in a Boston accent that got thicker and thicker with every show. We were deeply unprofessional.

  My future wife, however, was famous in the Cry Innocent! community for being a tough laugh. She took her job seriously and prided herself in never breaking while in character. I found this wildly appealing and considered it a personal challenge.

  Every show I would try a new gag, determined to make her crack. After weeks of bad puns and silly accents, I still remember the bit that got her. It wasn’t even that good, but I think by this point my persistence had finally worn her down. Changing backstage behind the partition, I came out to give my testimony in a red overcoat, over which, for no historical reason whatsoever, I had fastened a thick leather belt, like Santa Claus. At first, as she watched me from her confinement, I could tell she thought this was stupid. And it was. But as I shared the bone-chilling account of finding voodoo dolls hidden under a stone in her basement, I kept grabbing my huge belt, really making a meal of it, running my hands across the front, resting my thumbs in it, framing the buckle with two hands like a sheriff. And after all the solid material I had slung her way, it was this idiotic belt gag that got her to finally lower her head laughing, trying to hide her face with her hair, her shaking shoulders giving her away. The audience busted up as Bridget, trying to stay in character, called me an idiot, cursed me, and vowed to take her revenge.

  I was so happy.

  OUR ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP STARTED WITH INNOCUOUS sleepovers. Me and Daniel the Texan would come over after work and hang out with her and her roommate, who worked in the box office. We were all Gordon kids, but they were older than us and had already graduated. They had beer and cigarettes and, best of all, no open dorm policy. The doors to their apartment were closed, the lights were dim. I had somehow wandered into the tall grass of adulthood, and I liked it.

  Usually we’d have five or six beers before calling it a night. Too drunk to drive, we had a good excuse to stay over and pair off. Daniel would go with the roommate, and I would go with Bridget Bishop, stumbling back to her bedroom to sleep. And I do mean sleep. I was still very much planning on remaining a virgin until I got married, no matter how many Michelobs I had consumed, so I strictly kept to my side of the bed. My future wife was more experienced than me and probably thought this was weird. Or sweet. I have no idea what she thought, but for the first few nights, we didn’t even kiss. Eventually, I worked up the courage to ask her to spoon, and I wrapped my arms around her, dangerously close to her breasts, her warm butt pushed into me, the two of us pretending not to notice my erection the way people ignore a fart in an elevator.

  After a week or so of sleepovers, we eventually started making out and even doing the occasional jean jamboree. I was finding my boundaries and figuring out which lines I wouldn’t cross. For the most part, I was staying true to the card I had filled out in Sunday school, and I was proud of that. See? I thought. You can be a believer and still have fun! I’m being wild and wholesome. Like Bon Jovi!

  This worked for a while. Then one night, my spooning partner told me she had something to tell me, and it looked serious. “I don’t think you’re going to like this,” she said. I braced myself for earth-shattering news. The room grew quiet, and she dropped a bomb on me: Daniel and the roommate had been fucking.

  I felt like I had been hit by a bus. My jaw dropped, and my entire head with it, my pulse suddenly audible. I felt betrayed. I thought we were all in the same club here! I thought we were Christians! I expressed my disbelief, and my disappointment. Suddenly what I had been doing didn’t seem so innocent. I thought we had just been playing bad—Bon Jovi!—and here I was, this whole time in a real-life den of iniquity. I didn’t know what to do, so my brain went to the Apple menu and clicked Shut Down. (I fall asleep when I’m panicked.)

  That night we didn’t spoon. The next day at work, in my floppy sun hat and knee socks, I started to look at Daniel differently—he seemed so grown up and secular. His monkey creature from South Boston was suddenly less funny to me. I was dressed like a Puritan, and I felt like one, disappointed and heartbroken to discover that my friend’s suitor was no gentleman but, in fact, a scoundrel.

  Still, we continued our nightly routine as Daniel was getting laid and I was falling in love with the woman I sent to hang three times a day. Walking around Salem to drum up an audience, Bridget and I would steal kisses behind trees or a stack of fliers I’d fan out, as kissing in costume was against the rules, like smoking cigarettes or using the pay phone.

  Things were getting serious, and at night, in her bed, I started to feel more pressure to take things a little bit further. I’m not pointing fingers, but it was definitely her idea. That’s right—she pressured me. Take that, Common Understanding of Who Usually Pressures Who for Sex! Bridget would point out that Daniel hadn’t been struck by lightning, and she was right.
He seemed okay. These conversations wore me down, and they eventually led to the exact moment I knew we were going to get married.

  I never proposed. There was no bended knee, no heartfelt speech, no gazebo filled with rose petals and a jazz band lightly covering “Kiss Me.” There wasn’t even a ring.

  There was just a blow job.

  I remember it vividly. Not the blow job—the panic. This meant we were serious. It meant she was the One. So instead of enjoying the moment like the heathens one bedroom over, I was stuck in my head breaking down the logic: Oral sex is sex. Sex is for married people. God can see.

  I’m calling a caterer.

  She didn’t know, but I did:

  It was our engagement blow job.

  married

  THE DECISION TO GET MARRIED WAS CEMENTED BY A conversation I had with my mother at a Chili’s in Burlington, Mass., where she gave me her blessing over a basket of chips and salsa. She was loving, and wonderful, and supportive of my idea, and this meant everything to me. After we talked, and the chips were gone, we held hands across the table and prayed, thanking God for His guidance, trying to ignore the waitress dropping the check midprayer.

  In the parking lot, I immediately took the red-plated Nokia cell phone out of the side pocket of my carpenter jeans and called my girlfriend, enthusiastically telling her that I had spoken with my mother, who thought it was a good idea, and we should definitely get married. That was it. No proposal, I just excitedly shared the good news that my mom thought it was okay.

  (With some careful folding, this book can be turned into a barf bag.)

  Part of the reason for getting married was that I wanted to move to Chicago, a decision I had made after reading an article about Chris Farley moving there, joining a theater company called Improv Olympic, and quickly getting discovered by SNL. This was my dream, but I was too scared to go alone, and “living in sin” with my girlfriend was not an option.

  We spent our honeymoon driving to my first improv class. We took the scenic route, stopping at bed-and-breakfasts along the way for heavy meals and okay sex—my fault (the first time we did it I only lasted six pumps, and I’m counting “in” as one and “out” as two)—our Jetta’s six-CD changer filled with the unabridged Lord of the Rings.

  Once we were in Chicago, we settled into our first apartment, a first-floor one-bedroom on North Leavitt Street that her cousin helped us find, practically sharing a wall with a Jewel supermarket. My wife got a teaching job and I started working at a Bennigan’s downtown, where my size quickly earned me the nickname “Moose.” And just like that, I was out of the Gordon bubble and thrust into the real world. I loved it. The restaurant was in the Loop so there was a busy lunch rush, which meant I could work from eleven to four and get out in time for shows, writing joke ideas on the back of my receipts.

  Even though I was in the clear with God sexwise, I was surprised at how much shame still lingered in the back of my mind. One of the big reasons I got married was to have sex, and frankly I was disappointed at how not-great it felt even within the warm embrace of matrimony. I still felt guilty. I still struggled with pornography, googling “pornography addiction” a decade before people were talking about it, even though I only looked at it maybe twice a month. Like a true weirdo, I kept tabs on how long I could go without jerking it, disappointed that being married didn’t put a stop to my sex-shame woes.

  AT MY FIRST IMPROV CLASS IN WRIGLEYVILLE—WHICH was as exciting as my wedding day—it became very clear that a lot of tall, doughy white boys who were also the stars of their college improv teams had read the same article about Chris Farley. Droves of loud, silly Bill Murray enthusiasts who looked and improvised just like me seemed to be pouring out of buses, wheat husks in their mouths, asking if someone could point them to that Lorne Michaels fella. What’s worse was that the founding father of improvisational comedy, Del Close, had died shortly before I got there, and everyone—and I mean everyone—was telling me how I had missed out on the guy, that I would never be as good as my heroes on SNL because the great guru of “yes, and . . .” was gone.

  I was feeling outnumbered and a lot less special. So, like a lot of people with self-worth issues, I started doing a lot more stand-up. I had done it maybe five or six times in Boston to reasonable success but preferred the safety in numbers of an improv team to the lone-wolf, caught-in-a-spotlight feeling of doing stand-up alone. But when I finally mustered up the courage to go to my first open mic at a bar called the Lyons Den on the North Side, a short walk from my house, I was surprised to feel at home and discovered a community filled with people I didn’t know would become lifelong friends.

  I met a nervous unibrowed Pakistani named Kumail Nanjiani who would chain-smoke before shows, a decade before his muscles and his film career, helpfully telling me to pronounce his name “like email.” I met young John Roy, Matt Braunger, and the hilarious bar hero Kyle Kinane. Occasionally I’d see Hannibal Burress, who was so quiet and shy when he started that everyone made fun of him. Midtwenties T.J. Miller blew us all away, merging improv and stand-up in a way none of us had ever seen.

  My wife never came to shows, sparking a rumor that she didn’t exist. The truth was, I was too green and nervous to have anyone I knew watch me flail and fumble through my early years. I was okay, but I was such a Seinfeld rip-off onstage—“Do you think the phrase ‘spill the beans’ originated in a situation actually involving beans?”—that I knew well enough not to invite anyone.

  We all slowly started getting better. Before long, we were killing as hard as the heavy hitters we all admired at the open mic, and some of us started to get the itch to leave for one of the coasts. This decision was made for me when the Seinfeld documentary Comedian came out. This movie was the open-micer’s Passion of the Christ. Kumail and I bought tickets and went to a matinee opening day at the Landmark theater on Clark. Seeing Jerry and Orny doing multiple sets a night in Manhattan, zipping around in cabs, rubbing elbows with Chris Rock and Colin Quinn . . . it’s no exaggeration to say that it changed my life. I knew I had to move back east. When the lights came up in the theater, we looked around and noticed that the audience was made up entirely of comedians we knew from the Lyons Den, some of them having the exact same revelation we were. We could have had an open mic then and there.

  I told my wife, just as abruptly as I had announced we should get married, that we had to move to Brooklyn. She was kind, and loving, and understanding, so we hatched a plan, eventually looking up public schools and faxing a résumé that we made with the help of Clippy the paper clip.

  One of the happiest days of my life was when one of the schools called us back to say that it was willing to hire her for the following school year. We were off to New York City, to the big leagues for me, the place where I could take my dream of becoming a real working stand-up comedian to the next level . . . while she could start teaching at a New York City public school, where she would struggle, and be overwhelmed, and cry, and eventually become fast friends with the star teacher, the man with whom she would eventually fall in love.

  sleepy hollow

  I NEVER GUESSED MY WIFE WAS CHEATING ON ME.

  We spent our first three years in Brooklyn happy, kind, and loving, and without a single fight. Mostly we ate amazing pizza on our couch and watched The Sopranos on DVD, back when you kept multiepisode binges ashamedly to yourself.

  The only problem we had was her job. The school we had randomly found on the map back in Chicago turned out to be deeply underfunded and somewhat out of control. My wife had started her career teaching English literature in the basement of a small rural church, but her sweet classes of church kids cracking open Walden had been replaced by metal detectors and fist fights and classrooms of kids who would never, ever settle down and listen.

  I felt terrible and did whatever I could to make her life better. On the weekends, we would drive forty-five minutes upstate to Rockefeller State Park, a hundred-acre nature preserve, where we would walk in the sun, sit on
the grass, and eat bagels. My wife was a country mouse, and I could see once we got her back in nature, she started to come back to life. Her shoulders lowered, and a smile I never saw her smile in Brooklyn would reemerge.

  Once I had found a little success in the city, occasionally doing paid gigs and appearing regularly on VH1’s Best Week Ever, we took that money and used it to move again, this time for her benefit. Instead of living in the city and driving to the country every weekend, we decided it made sense to flip the script and try to live in the country and visit the city on the weekends. We found a place that was literally steps to the park we loved and packed up our stuff and made our way north.

  I fucking hated it.

  WE LIVED—GET THIS—IN SLEEPY HOLLOW, BEHIND A cemetery, on Gory Brook Road.

  Our apartment was the first floor of a house, sandwiched between an elderly woman upstairs—Molly, the owner—and her son, Charlie, downstairs in the basement, who had never moved out and somehow also appeared elderly. He lived with his wife, his high school sweetheart, whom I never saw but was told was blind and wrapped in bandages because of a skin disorder. I’m not proud to admit it, but I was terrified of this mummy woman. I was always waiting for her to appear in our kitchen window as I looked up from chopping vegetables, or in our kitchen as I closed the refrigerator door, revealing her, horror-movie style.