“Who?” I asked, confused.
“Galifianakis. He’s amazing. Oh, and that over there is Louis C.K.”
“He has initials for a last name?”
While their delivery and content varied, most of these comics had one thing in common: they all had dicks. I didn’t have personal knowledge of any of their dicks, although a few of my ever-expanding group of girlfriends did. Some material I liked; some I didn’t. Some styles appealed to me; others didn’t. But I didn’t spend a lot of time watching women perform live. There just weren’t that many of them onstage at the shows I regularly attended.
I figured the thing to do was to write down funny stories I wanted to tell, and then cram them all into a fifteen-minute speech. Avi said I had to practice, so I did. I practiced in front of my full-length mirror. Using a water bottle as a microphone, I practiced in front of my roommate and her dog and cat (she laughed in all the right parts). Finally, I practiced in front of Avi in his bedroom.
“Make eye contact with me,” he said. “You keep staring at the ground. It makes it seem like you’re nervous.”
“I am nervous,” I said.
“Just pretend you’re not,” he said.
I pretended I wasn’t. He laughed in some of the right parts and gave me pointers on the other parts.
By the time the big day rolled around, I was consumed with nervous energy. In the classroom, I flitted to and fro like a coked-up hummingbird. My digestive system attempted to evacuate every hour on the hour. It didn’t have much to work with, because my appetite generally disappears when I’m excited. I headed back down from the Bronx to Teachers College for an early-evening class, and then a group of girls and I marched over to International House. There we met up with my comedy buddies, and my two little New York City worlds mixed together for the first time. Looking around, I realized that after eight months in New York, I’d actually made quite a few friends. It was a good feeling, warm and comforting. Then I looked around the room.
The downstairs café/performance space at International House was designed to hold about seventy-five people. Apparently, the United Nations’ International Women’s Week Comedy Night was quite a draw, because people kept filing in even after all the seats were taken. By the time the bartender shut the door, there were about a hundred people in the room. True to my classmate’s word, most of them appeared to be of the subcontinental Asian persuasion.
I was opening, which I had originally thought was the most prestigious position. Avi had explained to me that the person who closes is actually the biggest deal. The middle person is called the feature, and the opener is, well, the opener.
“The opener warms up the crowd,” he’d said. “It’s the shittiest spot to have, and it’s the one they always give newer comics.”
This was apparently true even at the United Nations’ International Women’s Week Comedy Night at International House. The woman performing after me was a professional comic about five years older than me. She had a TV show on a cable channel. The headliner, also a pro, was about five years older than the feature act. She’d done lots of television, including a few of the big late-night shows. If I hadn’t been so nervous, I might have been thrilled to perform with two actual professional female comics. I was too nervous to introduce myself to them before the show, so I sat in the corner sipping a ginger ale and quietly studying my notes.
One of my classmate’s friends hosted the event, and when she took the stage, I felt my gut lurch. But then something odd happened. As she spoke from the stage about what an honor it was to have three great female comedians in the room, and what a night of fun everyone could expect, and how hilarious all the performers were going to be, I found myself scooting toward the edge of my seat. But to my immense surprise, I didn’t detect the makings of a panic attack. And I wasn’t bracing myself to run for the door. In fact, I was instinctively aiming myself in the direction of the stage. Through some magical physiological alchemy, my nervousness rapidly transformed into enthusiasm. When she called my name, I burst out of my seat and practically ran onstage, grabbing the microphone gleefully.
“And how the hell are you, you sexy foreign bastards?” I asked the crowd. The men laughed and hooted, and the women giggled. And then, by some comedy miracle, I killed. I mean, I motherfucking killed it. It helped that I had written my entire set for them. I did jokes about grad school. I did jokes about the 1 train. I did jokes about the different languages represented in the crowd. (“For those of you who don’t have the best command of English, we’ll be redoing the entire show in Farsi at ten and in Urdu at eleven. You’re welcome, Axis of Evil.” That one blew the roof off the place.)
My timing was horribly off. I was jumpy and giggly in places where I ought to have been smooth and polished. I was raw and wordy and I went over my allotted time. I looked at my feet a lot. But when I did, I grinned at my shoelaces. I was awful, and I had a great time. Avi laughed at everything from behind the camera he’d brought, even the bits I knew he wasn’t too keen on, and he and my other friends enthusiastically led or joined in on the waves of laughter.
By the time I got off the stage to pulse-pounding applause, I had reached a record-high emotional altitude. I was sweaty and energized and gloriously, loudly alive. They had laughed. They had laughed when I wanted them to laugh. Even now that I was offstage and the host was back on the mic, some of the people in the crowd were glancing at me appreciatively and smiling when I made eye contact. People in New York didn’t just smile at you like that unless they knew you. Did they know me now? Or did they just feel like they knew me because they’d spent fifteen minutes listening to and laughing at my stories? These strangers and I had connected somehow, and for a quarter of an hour I’d held their attention. Now that was power.
The other comics did well, but their jokes about marriage and motherhood and aging didn’t go over like my jokes about MLA style had. Every comic has had the experience of doing poorly or only moderately well at a show where another comic, one with a ton of family and friends in the audience, has killed. It’s annoying, because no matter how shitty the other comic is, his or her loved ones are going to laugh. And since laughter is contagious, some of the other audience members will laugh just to be a part of the crowd.
On my first real night as a stand-up, I didn’t know that the graduate students in the crowd may as well have been my friends and family. I didn’t know that what we often find funnier than anything, even the most well-crafted jokes, is familiarity. Those students may not have known me personally, but they knew my type—young, nerdy, hopeful. I was their type, and they were mine. I was familiar.
After the class, my comedy friends and my teaching friends came up and wrapped me in a series of great big hugs.
“You killed it,” Avi said. “You wanna do it again?”
“Definitely,” I said.
“You have to look up more next time,” he said.
I shared a cab home with the headlining comic and my friend Geoff. The headliner had gotten progressively drunker throughout the evening.
“You know how old I am?” she slurred.
“No,” I said. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-fucking-seven,” she moaned.
“You don’t look it,” Geoff said.
“Thirty-seven is hot,” I said. “Jennifer Aniston is thirty-seven.”
“Yeah, and she ain’t married either,” the headliner said, unleashing a hacking cough. “Christ, I need a cigarette. And my period. God, do I need that fuckin’ thing to show up.” She look at Geoff and said, “Sorry, buddy.”
“No problem,” Geoff said. “I’m sure your period is coming soon.”
I relaxed into the seat as we zoomed down Broadway, listening to a real working comedian in the midst of a premature midlife crisis. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t imagine we’d ever be friends. But right then, in that moment, we were coworkers headed home from the office after a great day of work. And I finally knew what job I really wanted.
The Only Living Girl in New York
Fresh from moderating a couple of panels at a new media conference, I grabbed a cab to a gig downtown.
“I’m going to Comix at Fourteenth and Ninth,” I said. “Thanks.”
The cab driver was silent, which wasn’t unusual. I didn’t find it insulting. I imagine that you get tired of small talk after ten hours behind the wheel in the bitchiest city in the world. New Yorkers are many things, but first and foremost we are complainers. It’s always too hot or too cold, too sunny or too overcast, too loud or too quiet.
We were at a red light when he said it. He didn’t even turn around. He just said it.
“Do you know what is panic attack, man?”
I froze in the middle of texting whatever boy I was trying to make fall in love with me through sheer force of will. Rationally, I knew the driver couldn’t possibly know what panic attacks meant to me, how they had overruled my best instincts for so many years. He couldn’t know the embarrassment they had brought me, or the shame, or the stress they had put on the people I loved most. He couldn’t know that I’d ever even had a panic attack. And yet, I wondered for a split second if he somehow knew me—knew everything about me, knew that even now, when I traveled to colleges and little theaters around the country, when I cracked one-liners on TV and radio about politics, sex, and popular culture, there were moments before my day began when I curled up in a ball under the covers and breathed slowly and steadily, reciting to myself, “You can do this. It’s okay. You are safe. You can do this. It’s okay. You are safe,” and that was just to get my ass to sit up in bed.
The question hung in the air.
Do you know what is panic attack, man?
Yeah, I knew what is panic attack, man. I just didn’t know why he was asking me, of all people.
“Sure,” I said faintly.
He launched into a tirade.
“Yesterday I am driving. I feel like I am going to die. My heart is like to explode out my chest. You know this, man?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know this.”
“I go to hospital. St. Vincent’s, in the Village. You know this, man?” I knew St. Vincent’s. From its founding in the nineteenth century, it had been known as a charity hospital. It had been the admitting hospital for the majority of the injured on September 11, 2001. A victim of budget cuts, it would close within six months.
“I know this,” I said.
“I think I have heart attack, man. They tell me I have panic attack. They try to give me drug. I say no.”
“Why did you say no?” I asked. I figured so long as he was sharing this much personal information, I had the right to ask.
“Because I do not want drug, man!” he practically shouted. “I tell them I do not want drug. I tell them I do not want anything for panic, man. And they look at me and they check everything. For four hour I am there. Four hour!”
“Wow,” I said, thinking of my time at the emergency room back in Asheville. “It’s got to suck to be in a New York ER for that long.”
We came to another stoplight, and he turned around to look straight at me. Something in his eyes, or maybe around his mouth, was momentarily broken.
“I think they lie to me, man,” he said. “Do you think they lie?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think they lie.”
And then we talked. About the fear, the growling voices, and the shame. About recovery, management, setbacks. About pills. After about ten minutes, I think I’d actually convinced him that panic attacks were real. After about twenty minutes, I think I’d actually convinced him that the doctors had diagnosed him correctly.
We neared my destination, a posh comedy club with excellent food cooked by a real, trained chef. The place was a true anomaly in the comedy world, where most clubs serve expired chicken wings fried in the sweat of the mustachioed, molester-chic owner. I’d spent the past year and a half hosting a weekly live show, “Family Hour with Auntie Sara,” in a small but tidy space in the basement beside the lavatories. Comedians came to my show and told true stories about their families. It was one-part performance, one-part therapy. It was usually hilarious. Best of all, it was free. Actually, that may have been one of the club’s many problems. Never financially solvent, the club was in major trouble. It would close within a year.
“You think it is real, man?” he asked me as he pulled to the curb. I could see some people I knew, and some people I didn’t, filing into the club. Some were headed to the main room upstairs, where I performed once in a while. Others were bound for my show in the basement. I saw some regulars stealing a smoke with the bouncer, James.
“I absolutely think it is real,” I said.
“And you had this?”
“Oh, yes. I had this. Sometimes I still have this.” I paused and considered whether to tell him the most colorful part of the story.
“You know,” I said, getting out cash to pay the fare, “there was a time when I had so many panic attacks that I was afraid to leave my room. I was even afraid to leave my bed. Like to go to the bathroom. I was too afraid to go to the toilet.”
He whipped his head around and stared at me, wide-eyed. He nodded for me to continue.
“I even stopped using the toilet,” I said. “For real. I would pee in bowls. In my bedroom. That was before I took the right drugs.”
His already wide eyes got even bigger, until they looked like two teacup saucers glowing in his face.
“Holy shit,” he finally said. “That is fucking crazy, man.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I had a lot of problems.” I gave him his money, and he gave me my change.
“Take care, man,” I said.
He drove on to the next passenger, and I went into the club, both of us wondering how we’d ended up this way.
The Thing at the End of the Thing
At present, gratitude is my only religion. With that in mind, let’s go to church!
Thanks to my parents, Lillian Janine Teresa Benincasa Donnelly and Jonathan Steven Donnelly. You gave me life, you saved my life, and you’re very cool people to boot. Thanks to my brother, Steve, who took me on walks and made me eat raw kale while I finished this book.
Thank you, Scott Mendel, my über-mensch of a literary agent, and his lovely wife, Sara. You are delightful humans and I’m enormously pleased to know you.
I’m fortunate to work with the funkiest, most enthusiastic and dedicated comedy management team in the world: Keri Smith-Esguia, Sarah Martin, Emily White, and everybody else at Whitesmith Entertainment. My agent at Keppler Speakers, Sean Lawton, is a magical wizard. (FACT: I am available to talk to your college, company, knitting club, or private militia. We will laugh and maybe cry and then laugh again, and hopefully high-five each other at the end.)
Some of the material in the book was performed at the People’s Improv Theater in Manhattan; Ars Nova in Manhattan; Largo at the Coronet Theater in Los Angeles; Theatre 99 in Charleston, South Carolina; the Norwegian Storytelling Festival in Oslo; the Los Angeles Comedy Festival at the Acme Theater; Dirty South Improv in Carrboro, North Carolina; the Ladies Are Funny Festival in Austin; the Women in Comedy Festival in Boston; San Francisco Sketchfest; the Playground Theater in Chicago; the Brick Theater in Brooklyn; the D.C. Arts Center; and the Comedy Central Stage in Los Angeles. A hearty thanks to all the folks who brought me into their wonderful venues—especially Ali Farahnakian, Jeff Lepine, and Teresa Bass at the PIT, my comedy home.
Thank you to the badass superhero editing team of Cassie “Batman” Jones and Jessica “Robin” McGrady. Mary Schuck designed the raddest, reddest cover, and Jan Cobb took one fabulous photo. He also photographed JWOWW’s cover, which means the man has an instinctive feel for Jersey-related literature. Hair and makeup sorceress Rhona Krauss worked beautiful wonders. The hardcore sexy bitches at Pinup Girl Clothing are responsible for that pill-poppin’ red housewife dress. Kickass publicist Ken Phillips (also my future husband) hooked it up. Thank
you legal eagle Melanie Jones and copyeditrix Olga Gardner Galvin.
Grazie to all the following humans and entities: the Francis family; Aunt Jeri and the Kozielec family; Johnny Benincasa; the Donnelly family; the Faerstein family; the Hodnett family; Gee; Karen; director Paul Stein at the Comedy Central Stage; my “Sex and Other Human Activities” podcast cohost and producer, Marcus Parks; Rebecca Trent at the Creek and the Cave; all the wonderful “SaOHA” listeners; the insane hordes of Wonkette commenters; Jen Schwalbach and Kevin Smith; Kambri Crews; Benari Poulten; Sam Apple; Mandy Stadtmiller; Dean Obeidallah; Aimee Kreitzer; Warren Wilson College; Margaret Cho; John DeVore; Beowulf Jones; James Urbaniak; Hillary Buckholtz; Diana Saez; Sean L. McCarthy; Rose Miley; Nate Sloan; Todd Hanson; Zach Ward; Carolyn Castiglia; Rob Delaney; Melissa Cynova; Livia Scott; Josh Marshall at TPM; Pat Wiedenkeller at CNN; Patrice, Mona, Alyona, and all the other hotties at RT TV; Larry and Julie Bauer; Liz Gallagher; Baratunde Thurston; Gretchen Bauer Stanford and Tim Stanford; the staff at the Pisgah Institute and at Mission Hospital; anyone who has ever paid me to be funny; anyone I’ve ever paid to sort my brain troubles out.
A final thank you to Katherine Kelly Henk Baxley, Alexandra Jebet Fox, Prozac, and all cats everywhere.
About the Author
Sara Benincasa is an award-winning comedian, writer, blogger, and podcast host as well as the writer and star of the one-woman show Agorafabulous! She frequently contributes opinion pieces to CNN.com and was a citizen-journalist for the 2008 MTV News Choose or Lose Street Team. She hosts the Web series Gettin’ Wet with Sara Benincasa and the popular podcast Sex and Other Human Activities. She travels the country to speak about mental illness and women’s issues at universities and conferences. She lives in New York City.
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