Acknowledgments

by Becky Lucas

  I agreed with her, thanked the non-existent crowd, then clipped the microphone back onto the speaker and wheeled it over to my plastic seat.

  ‘I’ll just finish up with this burrito order and I’ll whizz you back to the airport, alright, love?’ said Trudi.

  I thought the trip to the gig was bad, but it was nothing compared to the trip back. I had to sit there knowing I’d disappointed an entire workplace, and the hardest thing was that Trudi’s face was still painted like a tiger. We drove mostly in silence, except for the few times she recommended I check out various comedians she’d seen over the years who were really funny.

  ‘You know, we get all the big comics here, and they’re great. It’s just practice, isn’t it, love? You just need a few more years under your belt,’ she said, smiling at me sympathetically.

  I nodded wearily, wondering how those comedians she’d listed would go performing in a shopping-centre food court.

  To her credit, though, she wasn’t wrong. A couple more years was all I needed and I would never have to do a gig like that again. Or so I thought.

  The worst gigs of my life: part two

  Some years after the Mexican food franchise fiasco, my manager asked me if I wanted to do a couple of regional gigs over the course of a week or so, starting in Longreach, Queensland, for an initiative being run by the local council. I said yes, because the money was good and, like all things I say yes to that I end up regretting, I reasoned that it couldn’t possibly be that bad.

  The gigs were a comedy competition, which was supposed to be a way of getting the community involved in the performing arts. The way it worked was that each night we’d travel to different towns where anyone could get up and do five minutes of stand-up comedy, then Luke Heggie, another comedian friend, and I would decide who was best on the night and they’d be invited to compete in the grand final. After the competition bit of the night, Luke and I were then required to perform twenty minutes of our own acts. Though I was nervous about performing for a mainly older, conservative crowd who’d grown up on cattle country for the majority of their lives, I thought it could be a good chance to get away. It was only when I was handed a box of Vegemite, which was to be the prize for the winner, that I realised what I might be in for.

  When we arrived in Longreach, we were picked up by a disgruntled council worker called Kevin, who, upon meeting us, started bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t get any comedians ‘from the television’ so he ended up having to book us. In complete silence, he drove us to the place where we would be performing on the first night, already angry at us for being, in his mind, not up to the task. The venue was essentially a large shed masquerading as an RSL, but really it just seemed like a place where people could bash each other undercover if the rums didn’t sit well with them.

  There was a woman in thongs who managed the bar. She could have been anywhere between twenty or ninety-eight years old – with her diet of beef and Winfield Blues, it was pretty hard to tell. She showed us the performance area they’d set up for us, which was complete with a tinny microphone that didn’t so much amplify our voices as warp them so we sounded as nasal as the locals did.

  The only entrant on the first night of the competition was a woman called Big Jules, who for some reason lunged at me as soon as we walked into the building, then apologised immediately. She then began lurching around and bobbing her head up and down, while screaming at her beer. Then she stopped, looked at the bar fridge and called it a cunt.

  Everyone seemed to know her and, as most small communities do, they’d accepted her as one of their own and treated her with more care and consideration than you would ever see in a more urban area, which tend to be populated with culturally bereft inner-city professionals who share posts online about the need to de-stigmatise mental health while calling the cops on homeless people.

  Big Jules got on stage, wearing speed-dealer sunglasses and her hat to the side. Her ‘routine’ consisted of her muttering some incomprehensible nonsense into the microphone. This got a few people more confident, and a big man called Cocky took to the stage and told a joke-book joke, which absolutely destroyed.

  It was then my turn as the so-called professional comedian to get up and show them how it was done. Unfortunately, country people have limited tolerance for jokes about what it’s like being a single girl living in a city that provides literally every creature comfort you could ever want. It was made clear to me early on in my set that I was neither likeable nor relatable, and a table of middle-aged women made sure I knew how they felt. After every joke, they would roll their eyes, take big sips of their white wines, and then one of them would say something snide to the others, which would set them off into giggling fits. I could at least say that I made them laugh through the act of bonding together in their hatred of me and, to be honest, sometimes that’s all you can do. I’ve often finished a show by claiming that even if you hated what I did, at least I’ve provided you some fodder for discussion in the car ride home.

  After struggling through my time, it was Luke’s turn. As he delivered his first punchline, someone struck it big on one of the pokie machines, and the sound of coins falling into the metal tray reverberated throughout the otherwise silent room. Kevin just watched on with his head in his hands.

  After finishing up the show and declaring Cocky with his joke-book joke the winner, we bashfully packed up. Kevin dropped us at our motel, where he informed us that there would be a tour manager called Lorenzo coming to meet us, and Lorenzo would be driving us to the more regional gigs over the next week.

  Lorenzo arrived the next morning, wearing diamante-encrusted sunglasses and a gold chain necklace. He proclaimed himself to be a traditional European boy who was a wedding DJ, owned his own photo-booth hire company and had just recently moved out of home at the ripe age of thirty-four. I knew then that we were in for a week of gritted teeth and derisive comments said under our breaths.

  He couldn’t have encountered two people who were less up for wanting to get to know him. Luke is a no-nonsense married dad of two and I was in one of my more depressive states, and this, combined with the sinking realisation of what we’d signed up for, meant that neither of us were up for any of the conversation Lorenzo slung our way.

  That didn’t stop Lorenzo from trying though. After hours of driving in silence, both Luke and I preferring to keep our eyes on the desert road rather than engage with him, Lorenzo piped up about how good of a DJ he was. Then he ran us through all of his Spotify playlists and insisted we follow them. We both declined in unison. Unfazed, he barrelled ahead, telling us that his favourite song was ‘Smooth’ by Santana featuring Rob Thomas.

  Perhaps the most annoying thing about Lorenzo was that, no matter what you said to him to attempt to break his spirit, he never let it get to him. His ego and self-esteem were seemingly made of steel, impervious to the flames I kept trying to light. Luke and I would try to sneak off for breakfast in the mornings, but Lorenzo would always find us. I eventually gave him the nickname ‘Weed’ and when he asked why, I told him it was because he kept popping up in places he wasn’t wanted. He thought this was hilarious and referred to himself as Weed for the rest of the trip.

  Luke and I performed in different towns every night, never to more than fourteen people. As the days wore on, and we had to endure long car rides with Lorenzo, I began thinking more and more about opening the car door and jumping out.

  One trip, Lorenzo interrupted my suicidal ideations. ‘Do you think you’ll talk about these shows in your act when you get home?’ he asked.

  I shrugged in a noncommittal way and continued staring out the car window, knowing full well that I was definitely going to talk about him in my act.

  There is no reason I should receive the amount of praise I do simply for standing up onstage and insisting that people listen to me. So thank you to the worst gigs of my life for forever keeping me humble.

  Brett Jackson

  In primary school, my friend Sophie an
d I did everything together. She was the perfect ally. We lived just up the road from each other, which was ideal for meeting up to play. It was also ideal when we fought, as it was just a five-minute walk home. We both played in the school band with flutes we’d hired, and we were both so bad at it that one time, just before a competition against a much better school, the music teacher told us that it would be best for everyone if we just mimed playing our instruments.

  One of our more famous fights happened at the local fish-and-chip shop where we’d both decided to busk with our flutes at age ten. We wore Santa hats, even though it was April, and set up a little box into which people could toss their coins. At first, we were a hit. Looking back, I suppose it’s because we were cute kids playing flutes adorably badly, and, come to think of it, people probably thought we had acute mental disorders because of the Santa hats. But we didn’t feel cute, or mental – we felt like we were important businesswomen on the cusp of making some real money.

  Things were going smoothly until Sophie wanted to play ‘Home on the Range’, which I didn’t want to play, as I didn’t feel it suited the vibe and clientele. This turned into a vicious fight with each of us saying such terrible things to the other that a woman dragged her child away from where we were playing (something that would become a recurring theme in my career). Fed up with it all, I decided to take my sheet music, flute and hat across the road and go it on my own. This made perfect sense; we clearly couldn’t work together. It wasn’t personal, it was just business. But to onlookers, all they saw were two ten-year-olds standing on either side of a busy main road wearing Santa hats, playing flutes badly and death-staring each other.

  Now, the problem with allies is that they’re only your ally until you both want the same thing, which Sophie and I often did. Then they become your competitor, and everyone knows that the more you know about your enemy, the fiercer the battle is.

  One of our fiercest battles was over Brett Jackson. He was the cutest boy in Year Six and Sophie and I both had a crush on him. The selection of boys at our school left a lot to be desired, but Brett had just moved from Canada and had feminine features, nice teeth and a blonde bowl cut.

  After school, we would sit on the floor of Sophie’s bedroom and obsess over Brett’s perfect bone structure, passionately explaining just what we’d do for a strand of his hair. We even performed witch spells together, in efforts to make ourselves irresistible to him.

  He was always toying with our emotions, hinting at wanting to go out with one of us but not knowing which one to choose. We diligently worked as a team, trying to gather clues from his friends as to who he liked more, but it was all very coy and, also, we were all, like, eleven. It really seemed like, if anything was going to happen for either Sophie or me, it was going to be because of timing, and this meant any time we could get alone with him was precious.

  Luckily, he was a bad boy who was constantly in trouble with his teachers and our exhausted principal. What this meant for us was that if we could sniff out where he’d been told to sit for half an hour as punishment, we could ask to go to the toilet and steal thirty seconds of alone-time with him.

  One day, Brett had been caught lighting things on fire and I was told (by a boy who would go on to be on Australia’s most-wanted list, though that’s neither here nor there) that Brett had been sent to the principal’s office to await punishment. The principal’s office was at the end of a long covered concrete path, at the start of which were three concrete steps that had a bar above them, which was part of the support frame that held up the roof. It was customary, if you were heading down the stairs, to jump from the top step, grab hold of the overhead bar like you would on the monkey bars, and swing once, then land past the bottom step and continue walking.

  As I walked past Brett outside the principal’s office, praying he’d call out to me, he did, and my heart just burst. I sauntered over to him, feeling truly alive.

  He spoke first. ‘Becky? Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ I answered, imagining how I was going to break the news of our relationship to Sophie.

  ‘Will you ask Sophie out for me?’

  My eyes immediately filled with tears or, as I like to call them sometimes, liquid cool. My throat had closed up by this point, so I just sort of made a noise that sounded like a yes and walked down the path towards the stairs. If I didn’t do the jump, I thought, he’d know beyond a doubt that I was upset, and I didn’t want him to know. For some reason, I felt I had to prove to him that I was totally unaffected by him.

  So I went for the jump.

  Unfortunately, my hands were so slippery from the rejection sweat that, when I was supposed to swing back and then thrust my body forward to complete the landing, I instead lost my grip and fell back hard onto the concrete, breaking both my arms.

  Not wanting him to know just how badly I was hurt, I stood up with both arms akimbo, laughed, told him I was fine, then immediately took myself to sick bay. Once there, the sadistic woman who ran that operation gave me two ice bags to put on each arm, then left the room. This was a major problem because the issue was that both my arms were broken, and I sort of needed my arms in order to hold the bags of ice against my arms properly. She swanned in half an hour later and diagnosed me as having two possibly sprained wrists, then sent me back to class where I gave the news about Brett to Sophie and saw out the last two hours of school in agonising pain. Plus my arms really hurt.

  Sophie and Brett began dating the very next day, and I returned to school with both of my arms encased in plaster in a permanent double fist-pump. Not only did I miss out on the boy of my dreams but, to add insult to injury, I also needed help going to the toilet. Despite her winning our romantic competition, Sophie was above all else a loyal friend, and she would accompany me to the bathroom to help zip my culottes back up. As she did, she would tell me all about her new relationship with Brett and, thanks to the position of my plastered arms, I always looked as though I was really psyched for her.

  Sophie and Brett broke up about a month later due to a misunderstanding about a Beanie Baby. It was rumoured that, during class, he’d gone through her locker and stolen one from her bag. He claimed that she’d said he could have it, and she said that was a bald-faced lie and that she’d merely mentioned the possibility of her lending it to him one day. Sophie and I both got over him together and set our sights on a new boy who’d arrived at school called Steven, who was far more mature and had hair that spiked upwards, a style that was now more popular than the bowl cut

  By then, my arms had healed and I was able to resume my regular activities, including going to band practice, much to the chagrin of my music teacher, who had been hoping I’d never be able to play the flute again.

  Thank you to Brett Jackson for the vital lesson that sometimes it’s cooler to just be honest about how you’re feeling and actually let someone know you’re hurt than attempt an elaborate stunt and end up with two very uncool broken arms.

  People who block the baggage carousel at the airport

  The airport is essentially made up of a collection of strangers who are either about to be trapped on, or have just escaped from, a long tube hurtling through the sky. If the tube were to crash, the results would be catastrophic. Thankfully, most of the time it doesn’t. Still, no matter how seasoned a flyer you are, the possibility is always lurking in the back of your mind. So you end up with a bunch of people who don’t even realise they are in a heightened emotional state, with somewhere pressing to be, sometimes with kids in tow, often sleep-deprived, having paid sixteen dollars for one of the worst sandwiches they’ve ever eaten in their entire life and spent several minutes trying to convince security that they’re not carrying an explosive device, all forced together into a confined space. (And speaking of security, why do we have to take our jackets off when we walk through the X-ray? Can it not see through the jacket?)

  This combination of people and behaviours can be enough to trigger 200 EPMs (eyerolls per min
ute). It’s not uncommon to see people hurtling towards their departure gate with a McDonald’s bag flapping in the breeze, having held up an entire plane full of people just because they couldn’t resist the temptation of a Big Mac. Then you’ve got the middle-aged men wearing wraparound Oakley sunglasses who take nearly fifteen minutes to put their luggage in the overhead compartment because they’re trying to not squash the twelve-pack of Krispy Kreme donuts they’ve bought, with no thought whatsoever to the line of people behind them trying to get to their seats. Sometimes you’re seated next to an older gentleman who takes advantage of the fact that you are legally required to be strapped in and, for the next several hours, forces you to listen to his perspective on the world and all that’s wrong with it – it’s the hostage situation the airline industry refuses to talk about.

  In my early twenties, I lived with a friend who was a stripper. She would come home exhausted, not just from dancing but also from what she described as the emotional labour of talking to the regulars who came to the club just looking for some company. She said a lot of the money she made was from simply widening her eyes as though she was listening and agreeing vehemently with whatever the man said. I personally have no idea what it’s like to be an escort or a stripper, but I do feel like I’ve experienced a small part of their job when I too am being forced to smile, nod and remember when to blink my eyes as a man in the seat next to me drones on and on. I wait for the end of that plane trip the way a stripper waits for the last few chords of ‘Sweet Cherry Pie’ to ring out into the night. At least strippers, like my friend, get paid at the end of their interaction. My only payment is that, once I walk off the plane, I get to not smell halitosis.

  There’s the entitled businesswoman who makes you feel like a monster for sitting next to her in your assigned seat, the smug looks from the boomers in business class as you walk past them, and the long lines for the bathroom. There’s also the constant fear of missing your flight and the at times unforgiving nature of the people whose job it is to help you navigate the entire process. Plus, there are kids everywhere who think they’re cuter than they are, when in reality they’ve just reminded you that you’ve only got a couple more hours to take that morning-after pill.