Int. A Comedy Club
Introductory Applause.
Hi everybody, happy to be here tonight.
Where’s everybody from?
A Voice shouts “Jersey.”
Jersey! So am I. Good god. What a place. I was in Jersey recently, my hometown, for a weekend. I made the crippling mistake of going to our hometown bar on a Saturday night. Not a holiday or anything. Ran in to dozens of people I went to high school with. Dozens! Haven’t you fuckers moved away?
Some laughter.
Saw too many of them. I’ve noticed now that when I’m with people from the past, that I haven’t seen in a while, I feel like my past self. You ever noticed that? Like when you see middle school friends and for that night you just return to your 12 year old self.
So I saw this one guy, this fucker, at my hometown bar. He was my middle school bully. He shouted my name, and went for a handshake. I just transformed into a fucking 12 year old. Laughter. I was fucking terrified by him for no reason. Honestly.
Ruined the night. Brought back all these memories I had of middle school. Like how I was the last boy in gym class to wear tighty whities.
Laughter.
Yeah, don’t laugh! It was traumatic. I still remember that first day of seventh grade, first day we were all changing for gym. Dudes were changing. A sea of boxers. Plaid and tartan everywhere. And there was my short, scrawny, tighty-whitey clad ass. Clearly someone sent the other boys a fucking memo that I did not get. I missing the fucking middle school boy convention where we decided to switch. Laughter.
That fucking dude, the bully, he kept making jokes in the locker room. Tried to pantsed me in gym class. Told the girls I wore tighties, even. It was a reign of terror. My own personal Stalinist Purges. Laughter. A week later I got some boxers, but the damage was done. Emotional scars remained. My reputation was a tighty whities wearer was sealed.
Worst part of this all is, he’s a cop now! A local cop, for fuck’s sake! Laughter. I guess this fucker liked his reign of terror over me so damn much he wanted to make it his goddamn job! Laughter, some ounds of “oooohs.”
That dude is a ginger actually. Makes it much worse. There’s something particularly humiliating about being afraid of someone who can’t go outside without melting. Light laughter. I could have just evaded him by going out in the sun and staying there. He would have been a crisp before the end of it. Tighty whities reflect light don’t they? Wish I thought of that. The sun just ruins gingers.
Speaking of things that ruin gingers’ days…How about the IRA, huh? Silence. Northern Ireland? Silence.
Fair, this was a big leap. I can’t help it, I’ve always been super fascinated by the Troubles, that whole conflict. I read a book on it recently, and one story I can’t stop thinking from it wasn’t actually about a bombing or the war itself. It’s about a guy who witnessed his neighbor’s house getting bombed, in 1994, and missed it because he was heading from his house to the shop to get, and I shit you not, COAL. To heat his house.
Let me repeat this. This is Northern Ireland, a pretty modern country. In 1994. In a normal neighborhood, not some tenement or shit. And his only source of heat was a fucking COAL STOVE? Like it was 1790s? Light laughter.
This dude probably had a fucking Walkman and was listening to the fucking Beastie Boys or Nirvana or fuck knows, until he realized, “Shit, I better go to the corner shop for a bucket of coal, or else I’ll die of hypothermia.” This man was living in the 18th fucking century while Rape Me is blasting into his ears!
Could you imagine? More silence. Another thing about the Troubles — at least one groan in the back-tough crowd, eh? Another neat story about the Troubles is how when it began, the divide was weird. Like catholics and protestants weren’t actually real ly--Hold on I’ll back up. So the Reformation was actually— -A large hook emerges from the stages and grabs me —
You guys were gre — I dissapear.