Thunder Sandwich #26 - Rich Stone fiction

ON DECK

"You're next," the emcee says to me. "Right after Chester's done bombing. You got five minutes - tough room tonight. Red light with one minute to go."

I take a sip of water and go through my pre-show ritual. Neck twist; deep, diaphragmatic breathing; shake out the arms. I look at Chester up there. He's doing the bit about his dog, Spotty. I've heard it a hundred times. The audience is tough. Not a heckling audience, but a non-attentive audience; a talking-among-themselves audience. Far worse than hecklers. With hecklers at least they're paying attention to you. I've done shows where the hecklers were my saving grace. I'd focus on them for the whole set and get a few laughs at their expense. Of course, there was the time when that coed's boyfriend waited for me after the show and sucker-punched me as I was hailing a cab. That was an easily forgettable week -- mainly because I don't remember it. The blow to the back of my head completely wiped out any memory of that night, and I was in a coma for the week following it. All I have to go by are the eyewitness accounts. Try getting information from a bunch of stand-ups. Ten seconds into the description and they're riffing on something else completely. I'm not immune to it myself. After doing as many sets as we have, it becomes second nature to change the subject and move on if you're not getting the response you want. Speaking of which - am I up yet?

No. Chester is still up there pitching: "I think Spotty is your father reincarnated," he says, impersonating his mother in a thick Bronx falsetto. "Why?" he answers himself in his normal stage voice, "is he drunk?" A solitary forced sympathy chuckle emanates from the back of the room. It's Chester's wife. She comes to almost every show. Between the cover charge and the two-watered-down-drink minimum, it must be costing them a fortune.

Chester's red light flashes. He goes into his closing bit, not that anyone is listening. Tough audience. And it's not like it's just a bunch of drunks hanging out in the wee hours of the morning. It's only 9:30!

"Thanks for listening," Chester says ironically, relinquishes the mic to the emcee and slinks off stage.

"Let's hear it for Chester Field, everybody." Some polite applause, highlighted by his wife's thunderous claps from the back of the room. I hope she stays around for my set. At least one person will be listening.

The emcee does his own lame attempt at comedy for about thirty seconds, then gives me a nod. He screws up my intro and mispronounces my name. I believe it is intentional. Good thing no one is paying attention.

"How are you all doing tonight?" I greet the apathetic audience. "Welcome to my very public nervous breakdown." Nothing. Not even a chuckle. Not even a polite laugh. Maybe I'm just not funny. Maybe they've grown tired of laughing at pathetic people. Perhaps that's been it all along. They used to derive pleasure by laughing at you, but now they've evolved and they just feel sorry for you. Don't laugh at him - it'll only give him the wrong idea. I decide to incite the crowd. I offer a string of profanity-laced non-sequiturs followed by a graphic description of pornographic images that would make purveyors of the hardest of hard-core smut blush.

"Get off the stage, you pig," a woman's voice shouts.

I thank the stand-up comedy gods for the heckler, and begin to rip into her. I feel a throbbing sensation in the back of my head. I suppose it's Pavlovian.

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