Waiting for the Punch

by Marc Maron

  BIG JAY OAKERSON—COMEDIAN

  I was driving strippers and escorts to bachelor parties. A friend of mine said his girlfriend’s dad works for this company.

  “Yeah, he just goes and drives the girls and you stand there and collect the money for them and then you leave.”

  I thought it was going to be the best job ever, but it’s a very dangerous job. You get a bunch of drunk guys around like one vagina, it gets hostile pretty quick and they’re all jockeying for position. The thing is, on the phone you can’t call a company like that and say flat out, “Do these girls fuck if you pay them?” They’ll always be like, “You know, they have fun.” When you get there you never know what’s going to happen.

  You walk in, nine times out of ten, these guys have an expectation like, “Well, how much does it cost to fuck the girl?” Then I got to go, “Ahh, she doesn’t really do that.” They’re like, “What?” They get angry and they start getting aggressive.

  Marc

  You would go bring one girl to a place and there’d be five guys who want to fuck her?

  Jay

  Oh man, I wish those numbers were right.

  No, it was one or two girls and there’d be fifteen to twenty guys.

  I thought everyone would be docile like myself and they’d be excited there was pussy in the room and they’d be too nervous to try to do anything else and they’d leave.

  I had a gun pulled on me. The first time I ever got confident in a physical confrontation in one of these shows, a guy pulled a gun on me in Atlantic City. It was two girls and they were getting changed back into their clothes. It was after the show. An old Italian guy is banging on the door trying to get in. He wasn’t a scary-looking guy at all. I walked out of the room and I told the guy, “You can’t go in. The show’s over. It’s all done.” He says, “No, I’m going to go in. I paid for this.” I was like, “No, no, what you paid for is over. The show’s done.” He says, “Well, I paid for it so I say I can go in there.” Very confident I say, “Well, I’m saying you can’t go in there, so what are we going to do?”

  He pulled out a gun and put it right between my eyes. Loaded, cocked, I have no idea, but he put it right between my eyes. I remember the first thought in my mind was “I don’t give a shit about these two girls at all. They’re just animal drug addicts. Why do I have a gun in my face?” I used to be afraid of rain when I was a kid. I’m a mama’s boy and I cry more than I should and now I’m trying to be here and be like a badass to protect these two animals. They don’t give a fuck if I get shot for them. They’ll go out there and fight the guy themselves. This is better than their home life, what they’re living right now.

  Marc

  What did you do?

  Jay

  I said nothing and then he laughed and put the gun down by his side and walked away. I love telling stories like that and your friends always say, “Dude, he just walked away and put the gun down by his side. I would have fucking tackled—” I’m like, “Would you have? I’m happy he didn’t shoot me in the face.” I feel like I won.

  “Oh, dude. Man. He turned his back on you? You could have—” “Could have what?” I was proud of myself for not shitting my pants when he did that. Proud of myself. That was one of the scares, gun in my face.

  Another time I had to drive two miles down a dirt road. The boss called me up and he really presented it to me very bluntly. He says, “You’re going to drive this black girl and this Puerto Rican girl to a racist biker party.” I thought he was kidding. Do you care about these girls’ safety at all, because what am I going to do?

  We met the guys at a liquor store because they said we wouldn’t find the place. This was in South Jersey. Right when we’re driving down that road, I always assume we’re in agreement. I always think these girls aren’t, like, ballsy and they’re afraid too, but they’re never afraid. We drive two miles down this dirt road, and as I’m driving on the road, I’m looking at the girls. I thought we were all in agreement that we’re going to leave. We’re going to wait for them to get far enough ahead where we can just turn around and we can bug out of here. The girls just wanted to go in and make the money. They really didn’t care. They kept saying, “We’ve got a job to do.” Like they were doing noble work. “Hey no, we signed up for this. We’re not going AWOL.”

  I had to go in first to call the boss, and when I walked in, everything was confirmed. There was a bed. There were guns all over the bed. It was the biker version of when you come to a party and someone’s like, “Put your coats on the bed.” There were guns all over.

  I called my boss. He says, “How is it?” I was like, “Nah.” He goes, “Is it scary?” I was like, “Yeah.” The bikers were all around me, so I can’t say that there are guns. He says, “Are there are guns?” I’m like, “Uh-huh.” He says, “Are they holding them on you?” I say, “Not yet.” He says, “I talked to them on the phone, they’re good dudes,” and just hung up.

  They actually didn’t cause much of a problem with me. There was an internal biker problem. It scared the shit out of me. The girls went into the bathroom to change into their stripper clothes and a lady came out in a robe from a bedroom, clearing her eyes like she didn’t know that there was, like, a very loud biker bachelor party happening in the next room. Just confused by the whole thing. Tries to go to the bathroom and the strippers, they have the class of nothing, so they were like, “Bitch, we’re in here.” She got mad and started a big fight.

  Then her husband, I guess, her old man, he came out of the bedroom in tighty-whiteys and nothing else. Real scrawny, feathered hair, and he starts arguing and I guess one of the bikers was his brother and they went over and started fistfighting right in front of me. My jaw was on the floor. I was very visible at this point. All these bikers are like, this guy’s not going to do anything. I was terrified. They pulled out a gun and the brother in the tighty-whiteys ran through the screen of the back door. Right through it. Just took the screen right out and jumped over the deck and took off into the woods. The brother shot into the woods like nine times.

  For the hour I was there, he never came back. I don’t know if he was dead or hiding, but either way, that was the least of my concerns. At least it wasn’t me they shot at. Now I could try to brownnose up to him like, “Your brother’s kind of a dick, huh? What a weirdo. Stay out there in the woods, jerk-off!” I was trying to be on their team.

  Then, I never confirmed if it was a joke or not, but they were in earshot of me. I guess they didn’t know that and the girls were changing back into their clothes and I heard one guy say, “What do you want to do with this fat kid when we fuck these chicks?” I yelled out the words “Thirty seconds” to the bathroom. “Thirty seconds!” Then I went and started the car and we got the fuck out of there. They didn’t come after us. I guess they were preoccupied, thank God.

  It was a forty-five-minute drive back to Philly, and all three of us were teary-eyed. I was crying. They were yelling that I’m the worst bouncer and I knew it.

  I know, I’m awful.

  DANNY MCBRIDE—ACTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER

  I went through a really bad breakup with a girl I’d been dating since college. She moved to Los Angeles with me. Then she started wearing slinkier clothes, and everything just went downhill really fast. When you move here as a young kid, you’re right out of film school, you’re twenty-one years old, and there are guys who are twenty-eight and have some real money, and you’re still living on $25 a week.

  Marc

  And you realize that you’re just there to provide them with new girlfriends.

  Danny

  Exactly. I can remember still today when I found out that it was over with. I was working at the Crocodile Café in Burbank, which is no longer there, and I went to the manager and just told him, “I don’t think I can do my shift today. I don’t know. My girlfriend just broke up with me.” I’m sitting there like, “Don’t cry,” and I start crying in front of this guy who doesn’t give a shit, and he’s
just looking at me. He’s like, “All right, just get yourself together. Go take some time off.” He puts his hand up. I assume that he’s going in for a hug, but he wasn’t. He was going for a handshake, and I’m hugging him, crying, with my apron from Crocodile Café on.

  I remember just walking back to my apartment with my apron wrapped up and my white polo shirt with my name tag. I’m just like, “Fuck LA. I hate this out here. This is the worst.” I hit rock bottom with that, definitely.

  Something even worse happened with her, which was when I got back on my feet in Glendale, starting a new life with me and two of my other buddies. I got a job, I got things going. Then I get this phone call. One of my roommates answered the phone and it’s the ex. He was not supposed to give the phone to me. That was a solid rule, but he smiles. “Hey, the phone’s for you.” This had been about six months since we broke up. She is on the phone and she’s crying.

  She’s like, “Danny, you got to come get me. The guy that I’m seeing just threw me down the stairs and beat me up. You got to come pick me up.” I don’t want to be with her, but I still am tortured over this. I’m like, “Okay, I’m all in.” I get my two roommates, and I’m like, “We got to go over there and kick this guy’s ass. We’re going to go save her.” We get the golf clubs out of my roommate’s car and we’re driving to Burbank. I remember “Satisfaction” was playing. We could have no hesitation. We have to pull up and smoke this fucking guy.

  We roll up to where she’s at. We’re looking for this street. It’s in Burbank. We pull up, and she’s just standing there on the corner with this dude who’s six five. He’s a personal trainer. He’s this huge muscle-bound dude, and all of us just stay in the car. We’re just like, “Okay, come on. You can just come on in this car. Just get in here.” She goes to the car and he doesn’t let her in. He grabs her back, and so I’m in this weird position where it’s like, “Fuck, I guess I got to get out,” so I get out of the car and none of my roommates come out. They just hand me the golf club through the window, so I’m just standing there with the golf club. I’m just like, “Come on, man. We got to let her get into the car now, man.”

  The guy just looks at me and he’s like, “What the hell are you going to do with that golf club, huh?” He comes up into my face. I’m like, “I can’t believe you’d hit a girl, man. What’s wrong with you?” He’s like, “What are you going to do with that golf club?” It’s this big challenge. He had challenged me, so I had to do something with it, so I fucking swing back and crack him in his knees as hard as I can and I just hit him with the shaft. It literally just breaks, and he’s just standing there looking at me. I’m holding just the handle of the golf club. Eventually, I just try to chase it with, “Aw man, how messed up are you that you would hit a girl.” Needless to say, that dude just fucking pounds on me. I’m getting the shit beat out of me. My roommates are still sitting in the car watching it all. The ex-girlfriend gets in there and she’s hitting him and finally I’m trying to get everyone in the car.

  The dude just walks over to the passenger seat. My buddy is sitting there with the most useful weapon, which is a baseball bat. Just sitting there, shaking in the passenger seat. The guy just comes over, opens up the door, and just grabs the baseball bat out of his hand and then just starts going to town on my car, and it’s just like, Jesus Christ, this whole thing failed. So we get her in the car and get out of there. Then on the way home, it’s just like, “Who the fuck are you dating? What is this? What’s happened?”

  We get back to the apartment. That’s when she tells us that this guy knows where we live and all this stuff, so we’re screwed. We found out that this guy has a criminal record and he’s coming for us. I’m trying to calm my roommates down. They’re pissed, like, “Why the fuck are you getting us involved with this shit?” I’m like, “It’s going to be fine. This guy’s not going to mess with us. He has his own deal with her. We were just picking her up.”

  No bueno.

  Next thing we know we look out our window, there are six SUVs circling the front of our place. We’re in this really weird apartment complex that was backed up to the LA River. Apparently they had been on a date before, so he knew where our house was from across the river. They’re trying to find out where we are.

  My roommates are gone. They’re out to their car. I just grab a handful of stuff and a kitchen knife and I’m moving through this fucking apartment complex. We’re the only white guys that live at this apartment complex. It’s all Asian families. They’re all eating dinner and I’m crawling around with this knife looking for my roommates and end up getting into the parking garage. I get to my car, but my roommates’ cars are still there, and I was like, “Fuck, these guys, they haven’t got out. This is my responsibility. I got to go back for them.”

  I’m looking for them. We all run into each other, scaring the shit out of each other. We got in the cars and literally left and never went back to that apartment for six months. We were paying rent there. All of our stuff was there, but we were so fucking scared, we just never came back there until we had to move because our lease was up. Even to that day, we were tiptoeing in, in disguise, trying to take things out.

  TOM SCHARPLING—COMEDIAN, WRITER, RADIO AND PODCAST HOST

  I was at Luna Lounge with my friend, and at that point I was working in a music store. My friend was writing for MTV, writing commercials. And there’s young Marc Maron onstage. I was already feeling not good about where I was in life, and you were telling some story up onstage there, and then you said, “That’s like the difference between someone who works at a music store versus a guy who’s working up at MTV.”

  Literally, I was next to my friend, and it was that dynamic. I was like, “Oh, this is not good. I am not in a good place at all. Now people onstage are making fun of the hole I’m in, like using it as a demarcation point where I’m actually at in my life. My friend is literally working at MTV now, writing up there.” That kind of spurred me, I was like, “I have to change things.”

  BIG JAY OAKERSON

  I wasn’t getting enough work with the strippers, so I asked the boss, “Can you give me a little more?” He says, “Well, by day we send out people to kids’ birthday parties dressed up like characters, like Elmo.” He goes, “Would you want to do that?” I was like, “Sure.”

  The costumes were awful. He bought like these generic ones. Not the real characters. It was like a brown Winnie-the-Pooh. The first one I ever did, I was Elmo, but the outfit had no feet coverings so it was just my Nikes sticking out. It was sweltering hot, there’s no AC, and these outfits are like a burlap sack, a costume made out of carpet. Rug art. You know like the hook art? It’s like that. I’m profusely sweating and miserable and the mom kept yelling for me to do the hokeypokey. That’s the only kids’ song she ever heard of. She kept screaming that and called me motherfucker. There were children everywhere. No one cares at all.

  The guy gave me a tape of the hokeypokey and a costume and I don’t really know what in the hell I’m supposed to do. I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk. I’m familiar with Elmo. Not super familiar, but I just didn’t know if it was just dancing the whole time or playing with the kids or do I play a game with them. I had no preparation. He just told me, “Go be Elmo for an hour.”

  I have a bag and an audiocassette tape.

  The moment it started to feel good was like the little girl whose birthday it was, some of those kids were really shy, but she was affectionate. She hugged me and she said, “I love you, Elmo.” I thought she was a pretty cool child. It was pretty neat. I had younger siblings, so I’m good with kids.

  Then the punk kids in the neighborhood showed up, fucking destroyed everything that I just built with this little girl. They started telling everybody that I’m not the real Elmo. One kid called out my sneakers, which really stung, because I was like, “Maybe this girl won’t notice I’m wearing Nikes.” He says, “If he’s the real Elmo, why’s he wearing Nikes?” Then he started looking through the mouth
. He’s obnoxiously looking right at my face through this little thin screen and then when he realized that I was white he lifted the sleeve of the outfit and screamed, “Elmo’s white!” Like Paul Revere’d it, to the left and to the right. People really stopped what they were doing. Everything was sort of like the record scratching, everyone turning around. Like everyone was shocked that I was white. The kids didn’t like me anymore. It was so weird. I got awkward.

  Then the kid goes, “Let’s see if Elmo has nuts.” I lost him in my vision because I had about a six-inch range and I remember my plan was just to start spinning in circles and I would see him, and then I wouldn’t and I’d try to go the other way. I tried to keep him in front of me and he kicked me from behind. He got behind me and fucking put a foot deep in my ball bag.

  Because it was so hot I wasn’t wearing pants. I just wore my underwear underneath. It was the most flush shot I’ve ever taken. I went down. The mom just kept yelling at me to get up and it was hell. I felt that the stripper things were going to be the worst, but I’ve been equally scared at those kids’ parties.

  LOUIS CK—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR

  In the late 1980s, you could do ten sets a night at all the comedy clubs and they were fifty bucks each. I had a motorcycle then. A Honda Super Sport 750. I used to go on the FDR Drive doing literally a hundred miles an hour so I could get to shows quicker. I’d do two shows at the Boston Comedy Club in the Village, one at The Cellar, two at The Village Gate, and then I’d run screaming uptown to do Catch a Rising Star and The Comic Strip. We’d get fifty bucks a show. Pockets full of cash.

  I remember one night I had done ten shows and I was like twenty-three years old. I parked my bike at my garage in the Village and my pockets were bulging with cash that I had made. You know, fifty bucks a show, ten shows. That’s five hundred dollars. Five hundred bucks for a night’s work, twenty-three years old. Then I’m walking to my Bleeker Street Village apartment.