Waiting for the Punch

by Marc Maron

  It does simplify things. I think that for them that was the only way that they could relate to me, by simplifying things. They hadn’t met me yet, they had seen pictures of me.

  Marc

  Now they know you. Can they pronounce your name?

  Kumail

  Yeah. I was like, “It’s Kumail like e-mail but with a Ku, like Kumail.” Then they called me E-mail for a little while. It was funny.

  When I first had Thanksgiving with them, Emily had prepped them or whatever. I was sitting around with the family, and it was fine. Then I made some crack. We were talking about the airport. I made some hack joke, you know, whenever you’re with the family you make a hack joke, some hack joke about getting stopped at security or something because of being brown. They laughed so hard, like way harder than I expected. They were like, “Finally, he’s admitting it!”

  W. KAMAU BELL—COMEDIAN, WRITER, TELEVISION HOST

  I’m married, my wife is white, but I realize from being with her that her ethnic identity is Italian Catholic. Even though a very small portion of herself is Italian, but her grandfather is 100 percent Sicilian, she grew up in an Italian family, all the food, all the talking. I realized, oh, her ethnicity is Italian Catholic.

  A question I get a lot from her family is, “What’s your experience here?” First of all, the dynamic of somebody dating your daughter is always going to be a screwed-up thing, no matter how alike you are on the surface. Let’s just start with that. I think her family was way more alerted to the fact that I was a comedian, an unsuccessful comedian in their eyes, and my eyes, than that I was black.

  Certainly, there’s other aspects of the family, where I would look around and be like, “I’m the only black person here at these big family gatherings,” and I can’t help but think about that. There were times where things would happen and I would be like, “Is this because I’m black or is this because I’m me?” I think that’s a burden that the Other carries a lot, not being able to figure out what’s happening.

  At the time, I had really long dreadlocks, and I think that had a lot to do with it. If I had been a black lawyer, I think it would have been different, but I was a black comedian with long dreadlocks who was older than their daughter, and it was like, “What is this dude? This is not the dude we ordered.” Black was maybe on the list somewhere, but it was not the top of the list.

  Now, on the other hand, I couldn’t sit down with her family and be like, “Let’s talk about my blackness.” I don’t think they would have had any time for that.

  I think the fact that Barack Obama is actually of a white parent and a black parent is why he’s able to be president the way he has. He very much is always reaching out to white people because he had to reach out to his relatives.

  PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

  My mother was the biggest influence in my life and this wonderful woman, but I am raised without a dad. An African-American, but not grounded in a place with a lot of African-American culture, and so I’m trying to figure out how I’m seen and viewed and understood as a black man in America.

  What does that mean? I’m absorbing all kinds of stereotypes and ideas from society. Like Richard Pryor or Shaft. I’m trying on a whole bunch of outfits. Here’s how I should act. Here’s what it means to be cool. Here’s what it means to be manly. You know, you start smoking. You start drinking coffee. You’ve got a leather jacket.

  Then at a certain point right around twenty, right around my sophomore year, I started figuring out that a lot of the ideas that I had taken on about being a rebel, or being a tough guy, or being cool, were really not me. They were just things that I was trying on because I was insecure or I was a kid. That’s an important moment in my life, although also a scary one, because then you start realizing, “Well, I actually have to figure out what I really do believe and what is important and who am I really.”

  A lot of that revolved around issues of race and being able to say that I don’t have to be one way to be both an African-American but also somebody who affirms the white side of my family. I don’t have to push back from the love and values that my mom instilled in me. She instilled in me these core values that for a while I thought were corny. Then right around twenty you start realizing honesty, kindness, hard work, responsibility, looking after other people—they’re actually pretty good values. They’re homespun. They come out of my Kansas roots, but they’re the things that ultimately ended up being most important to me and how I tried to build my life.

  W. KAMAU BELL

  There’s a lot of racism in the alt-comedy scene.

  DWAYNE KENNEDY—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR

  A whole lot of nigger going on.

  Kamau

  Exactly. “I think he just wanted to say ‘nigger.’ I don’t think there was a joke there.” There have been many occasions, we’ve been at alt-comedy shows with comedians who are known and unknown and suddenly be like, “I think I got to leave,” and it happens from comics you never expect it to happen with. It’s weird, it’s like I can’t talk to white comics about it because then they think I’m crazy, because I think a lot of people think because they stand on a comedy stage and they’re a good guy it can never be racist, no matter what I say.

  CHELSEA PERETTI—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR

  After I graduated from school, my brother and I did a Web site, Black People Love Us, which was these two white people bragging about their black friends and how well liked they are by them and testimonials from their black friends that are sarcastic implications of annoying white people. We wound up on Good Morning America facing off with Diane Sawyer mediating with two black people. She had one of them be pro and one be con. It was six in the morning. I was so tired I couldn’t think. In general, I think I learned from it never to try to have a serious intellectual discussion about a joke. I would much rather just be like, “I thought it was funny. Bye.”

  DWAYNE KENNEDY

  In the scheme of things, just in society, black folks are expendable. I can say “nigger” all day long without any consequence to my show business career. If I went on stage talking about “kike,” that would last about one show. Not that I aspire to do that. I don’t even want to do that.

  W. KAMAU BELL

  Racism is defined as a hate crime and I think that’s not always true. It doesn’t always end up in death. I feel like there’s levels of racism.

  Marc

  I think fundamentally, racism is, “We are not the same because you are black.” It’s not necessarily “You are black, you should die.”

  Kamau

  No, no, no. After you decide we’re not the same, what is your next thing? I’m not going to hang out with you or I’m going to kill you?

  Dwayne

  I’m not going to hire you.

  Marc

  That’s racism.

  Dwayne

  Which does impact your life fundamentally, eventually, in waves and ripples. “I don’t mean you any harm, but I don’t mean to help you in any way.” When a large group of people feel like that and it becomes consensual, then it does begin to marginalize you and that does begin to impact your life. Less goods and services in your community, and less health care, and going on on on on on. Now the quality of your life is diminished a little bit, but it wasn’t anybody directly doing anything, but it’s this consensual thinking that pushes you away.

  Kamau

  It’s also just the feeling of being otherized too. We were talking about this today. I was like, “I don’t think white people realize how many white people there are out there.” I don’t think white people look around like, “There are a lot of white people out there.” In that sense, I think white people take it for granted how safe that feels.

  RUSSELL PETERS

  The whole world speaks English. That’s the funny thing, the world is smarter than we are. Because in America, we think that everybody else is stupid. Actually, no. They speak their shit and ours, and then, not only that, they speak ours better than we spe
ak it.

  W. KAMAU BELL

  People think that white is the absence of culture in race. They think that, well, I’m not anything, I’m just an American, or I don’t really know what I am. I feel like what it comes down to is if white people thought about their whiteness more, it would change the way in which they interact with other people. I don’t think white people think about their whiteness enough in this country. When the news says “White people blah blah blah,” every white person says, “That’s not me, I’m not White People.” Whereas when the news says, “Black people blah blah blah,” even if I don’t relate to that, I know that’s me. I have to accept some responsibility for that, or I have to choose not to, but I can’t act like I’m not involved in it. I feel like a lot of times white people act like they’re not involved in the race discussion in any way.

  There’s people in this country who are filled with fear, and they’re raising kids. Yes, if I’m in Brooklyn, there’s a bunch of black kids on skateboards with tattoos, with their hair sprayed up, in goth bands who are like, “Yeah, I just sort of do whatever I do.” You go outside of San Francisco, forty miles outside of San Francisco, there are white people who feel like they’re in Texas.

  Those of us in urban environments overshoot that a lot, because we think in my neighborhood it’s not that way, but there’s a lot more of America that’s the other way.

  PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

  I always tell young people, in particular, do not say that nothing’s changed when it comes to race in America unless you lived through being a black man in the 1950s or 1960s. It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours, and that opportunities have opened up, and that attitudes have changed. That is a fact.

  What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives; that casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.

  Racism. We are not cured of it.

  And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say “nigger” in public, that’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened two to three hundred years prior.

  W. KAMAU BELL

  I think white people are shortchanging their community. Everybody has a community. My dad is from Alabama. I go to Alabama every year and hang out there. You can feel the community, and there’s pride in the community, and sometimes that comes with a Confederate flag, but not all the time. There’s a sense of “We are this thing and we define ourselves through our community,” that just I think starts to not happen so much in urban environments. I just think that white people are shortchanging themselves. Have some white pride, as I say.

  Marc

  Be careful with that. There’s a small jump from white pride to white power.

  Kamau

  Yeah, but I feel like white pride has been taken by bad white people. There’s got to be good things to be proud about when you’re white. There’s got to be. The same way there’s a black nationalism that is “get some guns and start taking out some white fools,” and then there’s the black nationalism that’s like “get an Afro pick with a fist on it.” That literally makes me feel better to be black.

  It’s by degree and direction. In America, I can’t speak for the world, things move in a more progressive direction in general. This is the nature of evolution. We’re talking about gay marriage now daily, we weren’t ready to talk about gay people fifty years ago. This stuff is all inevitable. People are always going to pursue more freedoms and the freedom to be who they are. Get past the gay thing, because gender is coming next.

  LAURA JANE GRACE—MUSICIAN

  I would have this experience of extreme dysphoria and then, like, bingeing and purging, being like, “No. I’m going to be a man. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to pretend I do not feel this way.” I’m living two separate lives. I’m married, I now have a kid, we bought a house and I don’t know who I am.

  I fell in love and I didn’t want to fall in love, but I fell in love. It was more that like I fell in love and ignored really being totally honest probably about who I was. Just like suppress, suppress, but that made me more and more unhappy, especially as I’m kind of pushed into fitting this cis-normative lifestyle of husband, wife, kid, cars in the garage.

  Yeah, and then I’m like, “Oh my fucking God.” The walls felt like they were coming in more and more. I probably didn’t hear the word “transgender” until I was like maybe even twenty-six or twenty-seven.

  I didn’t understand myself. It’s not like I was carrying around full knowledge of “This is who I am and I have to hide this from everybody.” It was like, “Oh my God. I have all these feelings that are tearing me apart inside and I don’t know how to reconcile them with life and what I’m doing and who I am. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this.” The idea of transitioning was a far-off concept that I’d only ever maybe heard about once or twice.

  I dealt with these feelings to the point where I was like, “This isn’t going away.” The idea of whatever that meant of coming out with the way I felt and saying, “Look. I’m transgender or I’m a transsexual. This is the way I feel. I want to transition. I don’t know what that means, but I want to transition.” I mean, the level of information out there was like “YouTube testimonial videos,” you know? Like, a couple fucking lo-fi Web sites that point you in directions, and I was living in LA at the time, staying up late watching these testimonial videos and it’s like, “Okay, I think you can get on hormones. There’s doctors that can do surgeries.” I don’t fucking know where to turn to.

  I just came out to my wife and said, “I’m a transsexual. I want to transition.” She didn’t know what that meant.

  You’re in this stupid fucking high-stress situation where you’re like, “Okay, I got to go into some shitty department store to buy clothes that I don’t even want to wear really because it’s not my style, but this is the only way I can fucking relax and really express this fucking way I feel. To calm this tension that I feel inside of me because otherwise I’m going to fucking snap on someone and just lose it.”

  You feel like you’re almost having an affair and you are hiding something and it’s like, “Why can’t I just fucking be who I am whenever I want to be who I am?” By owning it, I’ve been able to feel a lot more comfortable and confident in a “fuck you” way, in a punk rock way. When you’re hiding it you feel shameful and that in turn makes you feel defensive and closed off as opposed to being open about and just being out there and being like, “Look, I am who I am. You may not fully understand that and I don’t really care, but I am who I am and I have a right to be here. I have a right to shop in this store. I have a right to do whatever I want and don’t have to explain it to you or justify it to you. I’m just going to do it, and if you have a problem, it’s your problem.”

  Hope you can deal with that problem.

  LENA DUNHAM—ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER

  A lot of people thought that the world had equalized itself. We’ve gotten where we need to go. We’re good. It’s behind us. It isn’t, and I feel anger and frustration every day, some of it intellectual and some of it very visceral about the way women and women’s stories are handled in the industry in which I’ve chosen to make myself a part.

  I feel like by announcing that’s a concern of yours and by making it clear that’s where your passions lie, you are pushing the ball forward and encouraging other women to also announce themselves when it would be so easy to feel like you were the bummer at the party.

  I think so many women are self-conscious because they love men and they’re friends with men and they don’t understand. “Does feminism mean that I have to be angry at all men? Does feminism mean that I have to distance myself from the guys in my life or fight back?” I’m like, “No. Feminism means that you have to take
the space that you feel that you’re comfortable in.”

  JONATHAN AMES—WRITER, ACTOR

  Maybe men are getting weaker and weaker, all this estrogen in the water. Maybe a weakening of the male is a good thing, since men are so destructive. I mean, they’re good at building highways, but they’re also good at blowing up highways. I guess, what I’ve been moving toward would be greater parameters for masculinity or maleness. I don’t think I’ll achieve them in my life.

  RUPAUL CHARLES—ACTOR, DRAG PERFORMER, SINGER, MODEL, WRITER, TELEVISION HOST

  Part of the reason people have an aversion to drag is because it breaks the fourth wall, because it is so punk rock, because it says, “You know what? Look. I’m a man. Boop. Look, now I’m a woman. Look, now I’m a cowboy. Now I’m a sailor. Now I’m this. Now I’m that. Now I’m this thing, this alien.”

  Ego loves identity. Drag mocks identity. Ego hates drag. Because the thing is, humans always want to identify. I’m this and I’m that. And drag is really the antithesis of that because it’s like saying, “Oh, look, and I’m this. Now I’m that.”

  I don’t identify. I don’t care. You can call me whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. The whole identifying thing. That’s something humans do. It’s part of the machine. We are programmed to say, “Well, I am this. I am that.” I’m like, “You know what? I am whatever.” It doesn’t even matter, really, honestly.

  I have this scene in my head that, with my father, where actually, on weekends he was supposed to come pick me up, and I would sit on that porch, and he would never show up. Well, let me tell you this. That scenario in my head is a benchmark. I had inevitably looked for situations to strengthen my identity as the little boy who was left behind because on some level, that identity is what drove my buggy.