This Will Be Funny Someday

by Katie Henry

  Will laughs. “You’re the unlikely animal friend of your own family?”

  “If anyone gets to identify with the teacup pig, it should be the adopted kid here,” Jonah says, indicating himself.

  “Teacup pigs are an inclusive community. Don’t be such a gatekeeper,” Will says.

  Mo reaches across them to get my attention. “That could be a good bit.”

  “For who?”

  “For you, duh.” She shrugs. “No offense, but your murder fantasy set isn’t working.”

  “It wasn’t a set.”

  “That’s the part that isn’t working.”

  I say nothing for a moment. Then: “Do you think I really could?”

  “Could what?” Mo asks.

  “Do this. Be . . .” I gesture vaguely, at all of them, at the room around us. “This.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t aspire to this level of clutter,” Jonah says. Mo socks him in the arm.

  “I’m serious,” I say. “You guys are so confident, and smart, and brave, and I—” I hesitate. “I know you just met me, and everything, but you should know I’m not. Brave. Like you.”

  Mo lets the silence linger, like she doesn’t know what to say back. Or maybe, like she’s trying to think of just the right words. Finally, she replies, “Maybe you’re brave like you.”

  And then it’s me who doesn’t know what to say.

  “It’s not brain surgery,” Will jumps in. “Doing stand-up.”

  Mo smiles at him. “Will would know, since he’s premed.”

  “There’s a couple basic rules, but then it’s just getting up on stage over and over.”

  “Yeah, and failing, over and over,” Jonah adds. “Not everyone’s cut out for that.”

  Will tosses him a look. “Sure. But you get better. It gets easier. You figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. You don’t have to be a special kind of person to do this,” he assures me. “You just have to be willing to try.”

  I put my cup down. “You said there are rules.”

  “Not about what you say onstage. But about how you treat the people around you. So it’s closer to etiquette.”

  “Like, be nice to the bar staff,” Mo offers up. “That’s rule number one of stand-up.”

  Jonah shakes his head. “The first rule has to be the light.”

  She considers. “The bar staff usually controls the light. So it’s connected.”

  “What light?” I ask.

  “You didn’t see it?” Jonah asks. “When you were onstage at the creepy Goth club?”

  “Her set was too short,” Will says. “She wasn’t even close to going over.”

  “It depends on the venue,” Mo explains, “but there’s usually a light somewhere in the room. Facing you, not the audience. At a real comedy club, it might be part of the bigger light setup.”

  “At the places we go, it might be the barback shining a pen light in your eye,” Jonah adds.

  “But when you see the light go up—and you should notice—that means you’ve got a minute. And when you see the light flash, that means you’re done.”

  “Doesn’t matter where you are in the set, you get offstage,” Will says.

  “Respect the light,” Mo says. “Always, always respect the light.”

  I wish we had that in the world at large. A red light letting you know you’ve talked enough and it’s someone else’s turn. Maybe I’d finally get a word in edgewise at school. And at home.

  “What are the other rules?” I ask.

  “Buy a drink if you can,” Will says. “And tip on every one.”

  “Keep your phone in your pocket when someone’s onstage,” Mo says. “Pay attention to everyone who gets up, not just your friends.”

  “Break the box,” Jonah says.

  Will shakes his head. “That’s not really a rule.”

  “It’s just a thing we say,” Mo explains to me. “The three of us.”

  “Have you heard of typecasting?” Jonah asks. “For actors?”

  I nod. “Yeah, it’s when people play the same kind of role over and over because it fits them.”

  “Because it looks like it fits them,” Jonah corrects me. “Not because it does.”

  I feel like I’ve said the wrong thing, but I don’t quite know why. Will glances from Jonah to me and takes the reins.

  “There’s a similar sort of thing in stand-up,” he says, “where you get onstage and people expect you to do a certain kind of set. Talk about certain things.”

  “Especially if you don’t fit the white-straight-comedy-guy prototype,” Mo adds. “You get boxed in to only talking about how you’re different. Even if you don’t want to.”

  “But screw that,” Jonah says. “I introduce myself onstage and you’re wondering why I’m Asian, but I’ve got a Norwegian last name? Fuck you, keep wondering.”

  “Look, sometimes it can work for people.” Will picks at his sweater sleeve. “The things they want to talk about onstage are the same things the audience expects to hear from them, and if that’s them . . . well, okay.”

  “But it sounds like it isn’t,” I say, “for you.”

  Will shakes his head. “A white dude goes up with a guitar, nobody bats an eye. I go up, and you can just see people trying to figure it out. They don’t think I look like I should do that kind of comedy.”

  “They just want a tight five about the differences between Black people and white people?” Jonah asks.

  “I guess. Or they want permission to laugh at Black culture and dialect because I’m telling the jokes, so it must be okay. Or, they want, I don’t know, to hear about life on the South Side, even though I—”

  “Grew up on a country estate?” Jonah cuts in.

  Will looks embarrassed. “It is not an estate.”

  “Your backyard’s the size of my entire hometown.”

  “That’s a huge exaggeration.”

  “It’s a huge backyard.”

  “Doesn’t your sister have a horse?” Mo asks.

  Will buries his head in his hands. “Yes, but it doesn’t live at the house!”

  “It’s the same for me,” Jonah says. “Doesn’t matter what I put in my set, I know there’s someone in the audience hoping I’ll make fun of my mom’s accent.”

  “You do make fun of your mom’s accent,” Will points out.

  “Yeah, her Wisconsin accent,” Jonah says. “I was raised by two white people in a tiny, white cow town. I can’t give the audience what they’re expecting. Even if I wanted to.”

  “But that’s such an interesting perspective to have,” I say. “To be able to talk about.”

  “Interesting,” Jonah agrees. “And complicated. You’ve got five minutes before the light, Murder Girl. Not a lot of room for nuance.”

  “I don’t have a box,” Mo says. “I have a whole Jenga tower. I’m a girl, I’m pretty visibly not a straight girl, and then on top of all that, I’m”—she waves her arm like she’s painting a rainbow with her hand—“ethnically ambiguous.”

  “What a phrase,” Will says.

  “I know, right? It sounds like a rare disease.”

  “People really can’t guess you’re Iranian?” Jonah asks.

  “No, they guess I’m Iranian,” Mo says. “But they also guess I’m Mexican, Indian, Moroccan, Spanish, and . . . Sicilian.”

  “You can go anywhere in the world,” Will says.

  “Yeah, sure,” Mo deadpans. “Full passport. Just have to get through that ‘random’ TSA screening first.”

  They all laugh, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to. I don’t know what that’s like, at all. To be seen as different or, God, dangerous for no reason. If anything, people assume I’m no possible danger at all. Like a fluffy little kitten. One that’s been declawed.

  It seems like such a painful thing to be laughing about, or even talking about as openly and casually as they are. But . . . I can see how there’s power in that. Taking something so unfair and hurtful and constant and still
finding the humor in it. When Mo makes it into a joke, she’s not diminishing what she goes through. She’s showing a shitty situation to be exactly what it really is: ridiculous.

  “One time, I was in a medieval history class and my professor asked me for the Muslim perspective on the Crusades.” Mo takes a gulp of her drink. “And I told him he would have to ask an actual Muslim person, not just a brown one, because my Zoroastrian ancestors were not involved.”

  “And that’s really it, isn’t it?” Will says. “It’s the same thing with stand-up. The audience sees you get up and they expect you to—not teach them, they don’t want to be taught—but—”

  “Explain yourself,” Mo says. “Justify your existence.”

  “Stand in for a whole identity,” Jonah adds. “As if one person could ever fucking do that.”

  “That’s what we mean by break the box,” Mo says to me. “Say what you want to say. Not just what the audience expects you to.”

  “But it doesn’t apply to me, right?” I point out. “The . . . box.”

  “Oh?” Mo raises an eyebrow. “You don’t think so?”

  “Well, no,” I say, surprised. “Because I’m . . . white.”

  “You don’t say,” Jonah deadpans.

  “And straight,” I add, quickly, feeling like I’ve missed something important that everyone else knows. “And I’ve got money. I mean, I don’t have money, my parents have money—and not that I have money like Will has money, apparently—”

  “Oh my God,” Will says to Jonah. “This is why you have to stop saying it’s an estate.”

  “Yeah,” Mo agrees with me, “you’re white and straight and not on scholarship. I get it.” She pauses. “You’re also a girl.”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “Did you notice the lineup tonight?” Mo asks. “How many girls went up?”

  I think about it. “You.”

  “And?”

  I think about it longer. “Just . . . you.”

  “You’ll get your own box, hate to tell you. It’ll look a little different than mine, but”—she shrugs—“it’s still a box.”

  I’ve never thought of myself as having a box. I just thought . . . this is the way the world is.

  “You’re a very pretty, very young girl on a stage. There are dudes in that audience who will never see you as anything but a body to look at. And there are dudes in that audience who think you are biologically incapable of being funny.”

  “What?” I shake my head. “Biologically? No way.”

  “Yes,” she says. “They might even write a think piece for Vanity Fair about it.”

  “You read Vanity Fair?” Jonah asks. Mo swats him away and focuses back on me.

  “Even the ones who do listen, who do think you can have a vagina and a sense of humor at the same time—well, they’d prefer it if you talked about sex. A lot about sex, and all the sex you’re having, so they can better imagine you without clothes on.”

  I know men do that, sometimes imagine girls naked. Sometimes, if they’re extra gross, they’ll even tell you they’re doing it, as you walk past them. But how messed up that you become a part of someone’s sex life before you even have one yourself.

  “I’m not saying you don’t have it good,” Mo says. “Or that you aren’t enormously privileged, because you are, and you know it. There are a lot of shitty things about this industry you’ll never see. But there are some you will. And you should know that, going in.”

  “Especially if you ever want a bigger stage than the Forest,” Will adds.

  That seems to spark something in Mo, who hits me on the arm lightly. “I almost forgot! We haven’t told you yet, about the All-College Showcase.”

  “Wait, Mo—” Jonah interrupts, but she brushes him off.

  “What? It’s an open call. Don’t be weird.”

  It’s pretty clear Jonah isn’t thrilled Mo brought me along, but I’m not sure if it’s because he can tell I’m lying about everything, or because he doesn’t think I’m serious, or because he thinks I’m some kind of threat.

  “You’re not scared of a little more competition,” Will teases him.

  Jonah rolls his eyes in a way that distinctly says, As if.

  Oh, he doesn’t think I can be a threat? Okay. We’ll see.

  “It’s this showcase,” Mo explains. “I think Loyola sponsors it, but it’s for any college kid in Chicago. You audition with like three minutes and they choose ten folks to go on and do their set for a bunch of industry people.”

  “And an audience filled with the losers,” Jonah says.

  “It’s a really cool opportunity,” Will says. “You get to be front of people who make decisions. And they aren’t judging you against older people with way more experience or anything, because everyone’s in the same place.”

  “The auditions are in March, I think, and then the showcase is maybe a few days after,” Mo says. “So, not a ton of time.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I nod, and try not to look disappointed. “Maybe I can try next year.”

  Mo snorts. “What are you talking about? You’ll do it this year.”

  “But you said March, I won’t be ready to perform by March—”

  “Of course you will.”

  “We’ll get you there,” Will agrees. “Between the three of us.”

  Mo nudges Jonah, who looks just as skeptical as I feel. “Yeah. Won’t we?”

  Jonah takes another sip of his drink, but he doesn’t say no. Mo turns back to me.

  “So, what do you say?”

  I think: Getting up on stage was an accident, and I don’t think I’m cut out for this.

  I think: By the way, I’m sixteen and you just gave me whiskey.

  I say: “Okay.” And then I say it again. Not because I feel like I have to. Because I want to. “Okay.”

  “You’ll try it?” Mo asks. “Will’s right. We’ll all help, the first set is the hardest.”

  “Yeah,” I say, louder this time. More certain. “I’ll do it.”

  Mo holds up her drink. “Cheers to that.”

  I tap my red cup against hers and take another sip.

  “Hey. Izzy.”

  Someone’s pushing on my shoulder, and I startle awake. “Huh?”

  “Sorry,” Mo whispers, though I don’t know why. Everyone else is already up. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “What time is it?” I ask, pushing myself up on my hands.

  “Six. You fell asleep for a little bit.”

  I rub at my eyes. After a while, everyone moved on to a no-holds-barred rehashing of the open mic and who sucked the most (obvious winner: Cargo Shorts Braden). The last thing I remember is all of us crowding on Mo’s bed to watch Airplane!, which I’d never seen and couldn’t understand without the subtitles on. And since I’m still in the same spot, I guess that’s where I fell asleep. It’s pretty embarrassing, but in my defense, I don’t think any of them had a 7:00 a.m. AP Bio lab this morning.

  “I only woke you because we’re going to the roof,” she says. “If you want to come.”

  The roof? “But it’s still dark.”

  “Not for long,” Mo says.

  The only reason we haven’t frozen to death in this concrete stairwell is because we’re so closely packed together. When Mo said we were going up to the roof, I assumed she meant the top floor. Or an observation deck. Instead, she shepherded us all up to the twenty-first floor, through an unmarked door, under another set of stairs, and to another door. This one is marked, though it’s with the words “Staff Only” in red letters.

  “This can’t be allowed,” Will mumbles.

  “It says ‘Staff,’” Mo reasons. “I’m staff.”

  “RA does not stand for ‘Roof Access.’”

  Mo turns the handle, and the door creaks open. She stops for a moment, like she’s waiting for an alarm, but it’s quiet. She turns back to Will. “See? Not a problem.”

  “Not a problem unless we get caught.”

&n
bsp; “Yes,” she hisses. “So be quieter.”

  Mo pokes her head out into the darkness, scans left and right, then waves us all through the doorway. I feel wobbly, standing on something so high up, but with no guardrails at the building’s edge, no benches or gates to crowd the view. Like we’re floating in the sky. Jonah fiddles with his phone for a moment, then points to the left.

  “That way,” he says. Mo plops down first, facing the same direction as Jonah’s finger. We all crowd around beside her and wait.

  I’m past the point of tired, past the point of exhausted. My eyes are heavy, but my head is light, and the world around me seems airy and boundless. Staring out at the city in front of me, I almost want to reach out and touch them, all those buildings, that fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces. Like a garden of glass and brick and steel, untended and unending.

  It’s so strange. You can live in a place your whole life and never really see it. A whole life, and still everything can change in a second. All it takes is a shift in perspective, and all of a sudden, you might as well be on Mars. All it takes is a new vantage point, and all of a sudden, you’re home.

  It happens like a painting played backward, flecks of nothing giving way to color, one by one. It happens like a curtain being lifted inch by inch. It happens so slowly you can barely see it at all, not until the light is already warm on your face. The world cracks open like an eggshell, easy and satisfying, like it was always meant to be broken. And I watch it spill out, the sudden sun and the warmth, red and orange and bursting. It’s almost as if I can breathe it in, fill up my lungs with the sky.

  Mo’s arm brushes mine as she turns to Jonah, cutting into a story he’s telling Will. Jonah throws an arm across her chest, talking over her, refusing to be outdone, and then they’re all laughing, and I am, too, though I couldn’t hear anything over the sunrise.

  There’s a jolt of recognition deep in my stomach, an almost-disorienting feeling. Like déjà vu, but not quite. Like déjà vu, only turned around. The flicker in my soul doesn’t say, You have been here before. It whispers—maybe it promises—You will be here again.

  “Happy you came?” Mo asks.

  “Yes,” I whisper. “I’m happy.”

  Chapter 8