Rachel’s dad in the 1990′s.
The first time I attempted stand-up comedy was at the Velveeta Room in Austin, Texas in the early ‘90s. The Velveeta Room was a former strip club that had never been remodeled, and the style was pure 1970’s sleaze: round, rotating blue velour chairs, matching midnight blue carpeting, and floor-to-ceiling metal poles.
The fact that I showed up at my very first comedy gig with my father didn’t make it any more comfortable. Hey Pops, what you say you and me kick it at the former strip club that they didn’t care enough to make it look more like a comedy club for father-daughter dates such as these?
In preparation for my big debut, I’d spent more than two nights writing what I believed to be excellent jokes. When my the master of ceremonies called me to the stage to perform my five minutes of material, my heart was pounding with terror and triumph. This is it, I thought. The moment of truth. The discomfort I’m currently experiencing while trying not defecate into my own pants will all be worth it in precisely five minutes, when I prove to everyone in this club how funny I am.
After all, I knew I was funny. My friends and family had always told me so. Wasn’t that proof enough?
What happened to me in those next five minutes is called, in comic lingo, “bombing”. “Tanking”. “Eating it”.
Every comedian bombs. No matter how good they are, any working comedian will bomb occasionally. It’s inevitable. Jerry Seinfeld bombed miserably at the Austin Laff Stop and all the comics were talking about it for weeks: “It was amazing. He couldn’t buy a laugh!” I’ve witnessed some of the most seasoned, brilliant comedians in the business get out in front of an audience and completely eat it. It wasn’t that they weren’t funny that night, or that they weren’t prepared. They just bombed. Bombing happens.
In my case, though, I bombed because I sucked.
I didn’t just bomb. I Hiroshima-ed. The only reason I didn’t shit my pants is that I was too busy eating it.
I told my first joke. Silence.
I told my second joke. More silence.
I told my third joke. Silence, followed by a ripple of snide laughter amongst the cluster of comics gathered at the bar. Because nothing’s funnier to a group of comedians than watching another comedian – especially a bad comedian — completely eat it onstage.
Of course, I wasn’t a comedian. It was my very first attempt, and I hadn’t learned the first thing about how to write a joke. “You’re only as funny as your material,” the saying went. My “material” was so lame, it could have been one of those “monologues” you see on Spanish TeeVee.
Finally, my five minutes ended. It felt like five years. I got offstage, humiliated, to a light, pitying applause, a few uncomfortable giggles, and many averted eyes. How could I have sucked so bad? I’d thought I’d arrived totally prepared.
I returned to my table, where my father was sucking down a rum and Coke as if he were having an asthma attack and the straw were an inhaler.
“They were pretty quiet out there,” he finally said, after a substantial silence. As if I wouldn’t have noticed. Hell, why not just go all the way and say, Gee, they really hated you, didn’t they honey?
Then, in an attempt to be supportive in spite of the shame I’d wrought upon his family name, my father offered this:
“But honey, if it makes any difference… You were the prettiest one.”
Being told you’re the prettiest comedian is like being told you’re the nicest lawyer, or the heart surgeon with the most discerning taste in socks. It’s just a clumsy attempt to shield you from your own incompetence.
When a compliment doesn’t mesh at all with your job, then you know you must suck swinging donkey dicks. “You’re the pilot with… the best taste in ties. No, really! What’s the matter, can’t take a compliment? -Hey, am I crazy, or are we rapidly losing altitude?”
I didn’t get back onstage for another year. But my most spectacular bombing episode was still to come.
I’d been doing comedy for several months at The Velveeta Room open mic. I had finally been grudgingly accepted by the other comics as “one of them” and had learned how to construct a few jokes and get a few laughs. In other words, I was puffed up with the delusional over-confidence of a rank beginner. I was cocky.
Some people say it takes ten years for a comedian to find his or her voice. Meaning, it takes ten years to figure out who you are onstage. Ten years to develop a style.
There may be exceptional people who develop into brilliant comics in less time, but I definitely was not one of them. And I certainly wasn’t brilliant enough to become good in just a few months. But I didn’t know that at the time.
Whenever I’d meet other comics and they’d ask me how long I’d been doing stand-up, I’d always answered truthfully, with a little bit of pride. “Five months.” To me, five months seemed like a long time. Five whole months! It’s like when you ask a small child how old she is, and she says, “Four and a half!” That half a year is really important. Hell, it’s an eternity to a four-year-old – excuse me, four-and-a-half-year-old.
When I’d say, “Five months,” these veteran comics would smile or roll their eyes and say, “Oh, you’re just a beginner,” and go back to sucking down their eighth beer and trying to hook up with the hard-faced, chain-smoking bartender with the fake tits and three kids.
“But I’m not a beginner,” I’d say. “I killed at the last open mic! I got big laughs.”
The veteran comics would just laugh. “Sure, you killed at an open mic, in a club you come to every week, where you know half the audience ‘cause they’re comedians just like you. But let’s see how well you’d do in a real club, for an audience who doesn’t know you from Adam. Have you ever gone up for a Black audience?”
No, I hadn’t.
“Do your act for a Black audience, and you’ll find out just how good you really are. These people talk back. And if they don’t like you, they’ll let you know.”
One day I went home to Milwaukee to visit my family. My father had convinced an old friend of his, a comedy booker, to give me a ten-minute spot in a comedy club downtown. I had never done comedy in Milwaukee and wasn’t familiar with any of the clubs, but it didn’t matter. All I cared about was that I’d been booked in a real club in my hometown, and now it was my chance to blow their minds.
The night of the show arrived. My parents had not only made a reservation, but had also talked a few of their friends into coming as well.
That night, my dad dropped me off in front of the club so I could introduce myself to the manager while he parked. I walked through the door and into the main showroom, already crowded with people.
When I saw who these people were, my stomach dropped to the floor.
The audience was completely Black. Except for the table of four silver-haired, middle-aged Jews who had come to see me.
The show started, and one Black comic after another got onstage and killed. The audience whooped, hollered, and clapped in appreciation. Then, the emcee said, “And here tonight for the very first time at the Chuckle Hut, we have a new comedian. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the comedy stylings of Rachel Ah – Ah – Ah-reeef.” No one in America ever knew how to pronounce my last name. It usually came out like a sneeze: “Ah – Ah – Ah-reeef.” I was used to it.
I stepped onto the stage into a blinding white light, trying to project the confidence that had by now completely deserted me. I couldn’t see anything through the bright lights. I felt like a Mexican caught in the floodlights of the Texas border patrol. There were no faces to look at, no eyes to look into. I heard a few hoots and whistles coming from the void, and struggled to remember my first joke.
Oh yes. Michael Jackson. Something about him being a Black man who’s really white.
No laughter. “Mmm-hmm,” a voice said skeptically.
I told my second joke, about Jeffrey Dahmer. Also not a good choice, since 99% of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims were Black men. No laughter, just a couple of hisses and one “Damn, that’s cold.”
I couldn’t see whom the voices belonged to. I felt like a blindfolded prisoner facing the firing squad. Someone else said, “Hey girl, why don’t you tell us a joke or somethin’?” and the club exploded with laughter.
I was dying. Slowly and painfully, I was being roasted on a spit for hundreds of Blacks and six Jews, my pitiful jokes dripping from my impaled ego to the floor, where they sizzled in a cloud of steam and burnt to a crisp.
All of a sudden, a soothing female voice came to me out of the darkness. “Don’t you worry ‘bout them hecklers out there. You doin’ just fine, girl.”
It was a deep, gentle voice that dripped like aloe vera over my wounded pride. I continued. “So have any of you seen that commercial with Sally Struthers?”
“Yeah, and Sally Struther’s funnier than you!”
The voice said, “You just keep going, girl. Don’t pay no attention to them. I think you funny. Just keep goin’, girl.”
For the rest of the masochistic torture session that my act had become, I directed all my energy toward that single, supportive voice. I never saw the face that went with that voice, but I didn’t need to. I knew what that woman was: a goddamned angel, gently guiding me out of Performance Hell.
I told my last joke. “Thank you, good night,” I said, to damningly weak applause and various catcalls. Then I shoved the microphone back into the stand and did my best to walk offstage, and not run like a camper being chased through the woods by bears.
The next comic onstage — a freckled, redheaded guy — began his act. I don’t remember what he said specifically. I do remember that he jumped up and down a lot, made hand signals like a rapper, and that his first sentence contained the following words fuck, shit, pussy, bitches, fuckin’, dick and muthafucka. The crowd went wild.
I returned to my table and, burning with shame, tried to avoid eye contact with everyone in my party.
“Tough crowd,” one of my parents’ friends finally said.
“They were heckling, but, uh, you just kept going…” his wife offered.
Then my dad put his arm around me and patted me on the back. “Don’t worry, honey. You were the prettiest one!”
-Written September 20, 2008
Dave Chappelle talks about bombing at the Apollo.
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