The green room really turned out to be green. An offensive vomit color whose irony wasn’t lost on me as my stomach roiled. I knew how much was riding on this appearance; it was the pinnacle-defining moment of my career. Cora was swept away by an assistant the minute we arrived and seated in the audience. I was shown to the green room and perched on the edge of a molded resin see-through chair that probably cost more than Ma’s car and was uncomfortable as hell. I read through my notebook, repeating punch lines to myself under my breath, preparing my bits, and walking through my set. I didn’t sleep a wink last night, but that was okay because I had evolved. I didn’t need to sleep anymore. I was becoming super human, paving the way for evolutionary breakthroughs that only happen every few thousand years.
I stayed up all night reading and rereading my notebook, and after listening to a podcast encouraging me to take more risks to earn more rewards, decided to rewrite my entire act on the hotel stationary. I scrawled page after page until my hand was tight and cramping. Genius on every single line. This six-minute set would launch me into the stratosphere, and by God, I was ready. I deserved it. Worldwide fame was finally going to shine its warm light on Freddie Angel.
The closer we got to the appearance, the more on edge I became. My belly was a stormy sea in a hurricane. I pulled the flask from my jacket and took a nip to calm my nerves and stop the shaking in my hands. My entire life rested on this one moment in time. The terrifying pressure was starting to manifest as hairline cracks.
“Welcome to your downfall.”
“This is the end.”
“You’re out of your league.”
It was hard to read my jokes with the chorus of nay-sayers in my head, each louder and more obnoxious than the last.
“Shut up!” I screamed, and then there was a knock on the door before it opened.
“Everything okay in here, sport?” There he was. Jimmy. Fuckin’. Bravo. Clad in a dark grey suit with a teal tie, his hair thick and expertly coiffed. It was a look that screamed ‘I am important.’ “Are you hearing voices?” he asked with a smirk, as the two handlers wearing headsets and carrying clipboards behind him cackled in response.
“Just a few,” I joked honestly, hoping it came off as a lie.
He thrust out a hand, and I put my sweaty one in his.
“Nice to meet you.” He said then discreetly wiped his hand on his trousers.
“You’re disgusting.”
My hands gripped into tight fists at my sides as the urge to wrap them around Jimmy Bravo’s smug, self-important throat surged through me. My nostrils flared as I felt myself breaking into pieces that I gathered feverishly to pull back together. Inside, I was disintegrating and terrified, while on the outside, I forced myself to project calm. The contrast of maintaining both realities was a heavy weight that exhausted me.
“So, we’ll bring you out to the couch, do a little interview, and talk about the movement. Great name, by the way. The Funologist—you should trademark it.” His words were host-snappy perfect like he knew every word that came out of his mouth was going to be quoted for years to come.
My shoulders unclenched with his warm flush of praise, I nodded like I understood what trademark meant. I did not.
“We’re live, one of the only shows who’s balls enough to do that anymore. So, no matter what, you gotta keep talking. You got it, champ?”
I nodded like it was my job.
“Then we’ll have a commercial break, and when we come back, you’ll do your stand up. Six minutes, so keep an eye on the camera man. He’ll count you in and out. You’re gonna be great.” He squeezed my arm, then strode out followed by the chattering assistants, and I finally exhaled. The entire exchange lasted about five minutes, and it had worn me out. I pulled the flask from my pocket again and took a long sip to calm the hammering in my heart, and then another just to make sure. The booze made me smile wider and feel like butter. Calm euphoria welled up in my gut.
This is it. This is your time. You have to own this.
Twenty minutes later, there was a quick knock on the door, and I was urged to follow behind a thin woman dressed in all black. We dodged lighting equipment and old props, a single-file walk down cluttered hallways as the volume of laughter and applause increased. Each step closer amped up the tension in my gut. I shook both my hands out to try to dispel the nervous energy.
“Stand here until you hear your name,” the woman whispered close to me, holding an arm in front of me like a gatekeeper. “Then walk out and take a seat in the chair next to Jimmy. Good luck.”
“Our next guest is an internet sensation. He calls himself the Funologist. Have you heard about this guy?” There were a couple of whoops and a light smattering of applause from the audience. I exhaled through my mouth and wiped the sweat off my forehead.
“He’s been doing some crazy good deeds out there. Let’s put him in the hot seat, and he can tell us all about his adventures. Please help me welcome, the Funologist, Freddie Angel.”
I walked out onto the stage, smooth and supple, shored up by liquid confidence.
Thank you, vodka.
I thrust out a hand and shook his, then sat down in the seat next to his desk. It was a dark heavy wood surface with a coffee cup and a Venus fly trap. In seconds, the plant grew two inches, like the one in Little Shop of Horrors.
Feed me, Seymore.
I shifted away, waiting for it to grow big enough to swallow Jimmy’s gigantic head whole, but shockingly, the applause made it shrink instead.
In the corner was a collection of naked Troll Dolls. Crazy-colored hair in tufts of red, orange, and rainbow rose like flames from their heads.
Jimmy was speaking, but his voice was far away. It was like listening to someone who was under water. I rocked and jiggled my leg up and down. My skin felt electric and surging, energy levels soaring.
“It’s over, you moron,” the red troll doll said with a sneer. He was the leader of the pack, the rest assembled in a shoddy army behind him. The red doll turned around, squatted, and defecated on the desk. Then he picked it up, waving the warm steaming pile and taunting me. “See this? This is what you are. Shit. Complete and udder shit, and in an hour, everyone will know that.”
“Freddie?” My eyes snapped back to Jimmy, who was signaling me to answer. I had heard the word lottery and focused on an answer to that question. My brain was firing on nearly one-hundred percent of its capacity. I no longer needed to pay attention to mere mundane tasks like listening. I knew without knowing.
“Yes, I won the lottery, and instead of keeping it all to myself decided to YOLO it and give it all away.” I smiled as the audience applauded.
They love me.
“No, they don’t, asshole. Everyone knows what a mess you are. No one has ever loved you, ever,” the troll doll with the blue hair spit the truth at me.
I jerked away and forced myself to focus on Jimmy’s mouth and words. Hearing them through the clamor of angsty voices weaving in and out of my subconscious was proving to be problematic. Piecing together word fragments and deciphering them in front of a live audience will make you shake and sweat.
“You’ve risked life and limb.”
“Yeah, it got pretty dicey the night I brought an ice cream truck to Hidden Hills,” I admitted as the audience gasped.
“In case you have been in a hole and have no idea what’s been going on, a man pulled a gun on Freddie while he was out giving away ice cream to little kids. Check out this clip.”
The viral video popped up, showing me head-butting the gunman, and the audience went wild. Clapping and screaming my name, “Fred-die, Fred-die!”
“That was a crazy night,” Jimmy said.
“You could say that,” I responded. “But he was just a regular guy having a bad day.”
“Wait,” Jimmy scoffed. “Are you defending the gunman?”
“Not defending, just acknowledging his struggle. You don’t pull a gun on someone unless you have no other choice.”
“Well, that is a bloody incredible way to look at it. Right, guys?” He hammed up to the studio audience. “Don’t you think we need to take this Funologist movement to the moon?” The audience clapped and hollered. When they finally settled down, Jimmy flashed a smoothly veneered smile at me. “I’m in for a hundred-thousand to keep this crazy train on the tracks, and…” he dragged out the word and paused for effect, “I will match every donation that you receive over the next forty-eight hours! To keep me honest, let’s do this right now, live on the show, because we can!” The audience whooped.
He pulled out his phone as the cameraman panned in tighter, and he made his donation right there on the spot in front of me. “I’m pulling up Venmo, @thefunologist, six little numbers, and here it is in black and white.” He turned the phone to the camera, showing off his full donation. The audience burst into applause.
“Are you serious?” I was stunned, my jaw dropping open.
“Dead,” he said with a smile that oozed confidence, then turned back to the audience. “Freddie here is a stand-up comedian, so how about we give him a six-minute set when we return? Are you guys down with that?” The audience let loose again, chanting my name.
Then he broke to commercial, and his sunny host warmth turned off and his eyes focused on mine.
“Thanks for the shout-out,” I exclaimed. I could feel the phone vibrating in my pocket like crazy already and was itching to pull it out and look at it, but didn’t dare.
“It’s a great cause and good publicity for the show. Now, don’t screw this up, and you might be able to turn this fifteen minutes of fame into a real career in comedy.”
That comment paralyzed me. Boldly declaring what was on the line, just in case I wasn’t already aware. I was whisked to the wings and told to wait, taking the opportunity to turn away and conceal the two long chugs on the flask in my pocket. I wiped my mouth while the team worked feverishly to pull together the set change. An assistant who wired me for sound popped a wireless mic in my hand, then they pulled me onto the stage. A teal velvet curtain hung behind me, and I climbed a small gold stage ringed with layers of incandescent yellow bulbs.
“You’re gonna want to stay put,” she said. “You have two minutes and then we will count you in.”
I stood on the platform, the anxiety mounting, my heart rate climbing higher and higher, the heart palpitations a drum beat that echoed deep in my core. Finally, the warm wishy-washes of vodka spilled over me, and I began to relax.
“We’re live in three, two…” Then the cameraman held up a single finger. I stood stunned and blank. He started circling with his hand, trying to get me to speak as another assistant pointed to the red light indicating we were live blinking on the camera. Their eyes and gestures got more and more animated the longer I was silent. I was frozen to the spot, standing in the light, freaking out inside, searching for even one remnant of a joke I could begin with. All the time I had spent in the week leading up to this opportunity, writing and rewriting every joke in my six-minute set had vanished. All that remained was the vast void. A silence I was desperate to fill.
The laughter inside my head was reaching a fevered pitch, evil cackles and passive-aggressive guffaws. My mouth was thick and dry. Blank. Empty. Void. A deep cavern of nothing that spooked me like nothing else ever had.
“White privilege… hashtag me too,” I said in the microphone, and the audience gasped with open mouths at the first five words. They were the punchline of a couple jokes, but for some reason, they came rushing out of my mouth the second I opened it. I tapped the microphone. “Is this thing on?” I smiled tightly and dug deeper.
“It’s tough being a white man in America,” I mused. “Was wondering when that white privilege thing kicks in. Do you have to fill out an application on a website or be nominated by a state senator? Because I have to tell you, I’ve been over here, standing on the corner, white as hell, and getting my teeth kicked in at every opportunity.” It sounded funny in my head, but when the words were released into the wild, they fell flat like boulders crushing me. I heard a low rumbling of boos begin shifting toward me in a wave.
“I’m glad there were no smart phones and video cameras around when I was in my twenties because I don’t want to give away any big secrets, but I think that my chances of running for a political office were ruined by the grinding I engaged in on dance floors in the early nineties. Now, you can’t even hug a person without being misconstrued. You can’t offer anyone sympathy. I don’t know where to put my hands anymore. It is quite a conundrum. And forget about telling a woman she’s beautiful because God knows that’s offensive. It’s like we’ve turned into politically correct and unemotional robots. Now, I’m not saying we gotta go full-on R. Kelly mode, but come on. There’s got to be a balance.”
Still nothing. The audience was silent, and I felt the hum of a building rage seeping toward me, yet I continued, sure that, eventually, I’d win them over.
“We are all so sensitive now. Aren’t we? The really good comics are offensive, they’ve always been. I grew up watching the classics— Richard Pryor, George Carlin, you know the guys that say the thing that makes you laugh and then you feel like a douche for laughing? And you’re thinking, did he really say that? It’s so sick and so wrong, but that’s what makes it funny.” I looked out into the light. “But now, we have to sanitize it all, make it politically correct. We have to be tolerant and woke.” My voice faltered as I lost my train of thought.
“You’re not giving a TED Talk, dumbass. Make them laugh or you’re dead.”
“My girlfriend is in the audience now. Cora, give them a little wave, sweetheart.” A small round of applause spurred me on. “What initially drew me to Cora was her gorgeous red hair. I mean, it obviously wasn’t her rack. The woman is as flat as a pancake.” I passed my hand straight down in front of me for emphasis. “Apparently, I’m attracted to women with the same body type as pre-pubescent teenage boys. Not sure what that says about me; I should probably have my head thoroughly examined.” I turned to the side and affectionately cupped an entire handful of my own flabby pecs. “But more than a handful is a waste, am I right?” I said to a smattering of nervous giggles. “Waste not, want not,” I mumbled into the microphone. “My girlfriend is obviously blind and with a severe mental handicap.” I proudly turned from side to side. “She’d have to be to sign up to screw this.” I laughed awkwardly as the joke refused to land.
“Up until the last month, it was looking like I’d die in my mom’s basement,” I said, setting up the next joke. “With the big lottery win, I was thinking I’d level up. Buy myself something nice. A new plastic sheet in case I pissed myself drunk one night. Get the four mil instead of the two. I mean, really make it classy.” I pretended to sip a cup of tea with a haughty accent. “For men of a certain age with discriminating tastes, it is the Cadillac of rubber sheets, so you can piss yourself in luxury.”
Again, dead air, not a single laugh in the room, and I was nosediving, plummeting to earth fast. The ground was rushing up like I had jumped out of the helicopter with a faulty parachute that was tangled and twisted and a harbinger of my imminent demise.
I swear I could hear them blinking, each of my senses now razor-sharp. I was sweating through my clothing; the lights were so hot they burned.
Finish big. Leave them with something memorable.
“The internet crowned me the king of the Funologist movement.” I paused. “It sounds like an unfortunate poop, doesn’t it—the movement?” I looked down. “Like something that happens the day after you participate in a corn on the cob eating contest chased by a bazillion blue raspberry popsicles.” I paused. “It’s art. I make art. With my colon. It’s a gift.”
The audience snickered. It was getting harder to breathe. An immovable weight was lodged on my chest, and my thoughts were swimming, racing past me, and then disintegrating into the abyss. I sipped at the air, shallow peckish breaths, searching for one last bit, one last shiny comedic nugget of brilliance to leave them with.
“You’re fucking up, boy,” my dad’s voice hissed.
I took a step forward toward it and stumbled off the stage, face planting onto the floor as the audience gasped. Landing in a hard pile of twisted fleshy limbs as the surprised cameraman recovered and swung his camera back to Jimmy.
“We’ll be right back,” Jimmy oozed effortlessly into the camera, not skipping a beat. The house band cued up and jazzy music was the soundtrack of my walk of shame. I pulled myself to a standing position, and the assistant appeared again and removed the wireless mic from me.
“How was it?” I asked with a wince, eager for even a single morsel of praise. Desperately praying it wasn’t as bad as I thought it had been.
“You’re overreacting.” I heard Ma’s voice. “It’s fine. Everything is fine.”
“It was… ah…a little rough,” the assistant said brusquely, beckoning me to follow as she walked off the set on sharp stilettos.
“I was afraid of that.” I followed her backstage to wait out the end of the show. Going over the performance in my head, trying to separate the facts from the fiction. Piecing together an apology that would get me back in Jimmy’s good graces again.
“Let’s go, Freddie. Jimmy set up a cab for you.”
“Oh, he did?” I stumbled behind her. “But my girlfriend is in the audience.”
“Are you sure she’s going to still be your girlfriend after that set?” she said to me. “Don’t worry, we’ll get a cab for her, but I have strict instructions to send you to the hotel ASAP.”
“Can you thank Jimmy for me?” I asked.
“Sure,” she offered, in an effort to end the conversation as quickly as possible, and I walked out into the cold air. I sucked it in, the sweat under my dress shirt freezing instantly. I stumbled into the car, and the driver sped away back to the hotel. The buzz was wearing thin and the reality was starting to clear in my mind, still swirling, but the overwhelming sense of dread was building. I could barely remember what I said onstage. I pulled my notebook out and paged through it, instantly recalling the words I had practiced, the ones that I planned to say that were now so easily rolling off my tongue.
Traitor.
I cursed my poor performance and pulled out my cell phone to try to reach Cora. I saw the incoming text bubble pop up and waited. Then no answer and it disappeared. I sent two more texts with no response.
She couldn’t be mad. Could she? I had thrown her under the bus, but everyone knows that a comic’s friends and family are fair game, right? It was all for the laughs, just a joke. She had to know, didn’t she?
Twenty minutes later, the taxi pulled up to our new hotel that provided a shuttle to the airport in the morning and a truly terrible continental breakfast. Thick with carbs and little else, it was something tacked on at the end that was supposed to add value to your stay.
I stuck the key into the slot and opened the door, fully expecting to see Cora there waiting. When she wasn’t and further texts went unanswered, I pulled out my flask and did a proper post mortem. It was bad. My socials were blowing up. Donations had come to a screeching halt fifteen minutes after I’d said the words “white privilege.”
The hate came fast and furious, outing the public as a fickle taskmaster who was riding high with you in the Bentley, but jumped ship when you crashed the ford focus.
Smug over-privileged asshat.
Why is he even famous again?
Worst set ever.
You made the entire state of Missouri cringe, you worthless prick.
Waste of Space
Funologist = Useless Has Been Hack
Go kill yourself.
“Looks like they don’t love you no more, Freddie Angel.”
There was still almost two-hundred thousand in the Venmo account. An idea broke through the surface. It was hazy at first as I sipped on the last of the vodka in my flask. How fast could the Funologist burn through the last of this money? We were about to find out.