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Authors: Ron White

I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability (10 page)

BOOK: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability
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I
don't know. You hate to judge. But they searched Michael's bedroom, and they found life-size dolls of little boys, one of them dressed in a Cub Scout suit.
Now, maybe it's innocent, but if they searched my bedroom and found a life-size doll of a woman, everybody would assume I was fuckin' it.
And they'd be right.
B
efore I went back out on the road after I rehabbed my knee, I was doing a few small comedy clubs to warm up before doing big theaters. And I did a show at this little 250-seat club in Atlanta.
The crowd didn't know I was gonna be there. And when I walked out onstage, I saw this big bachelorette party down front that I didn't know was gonna be there. And if you're a monologist, if you just talk for a living, a bachelorette party is never good news.
Because they're a self-contained entertainment entity. They don't need you. You're just floating out there on their periphery.
Now, I love women. And I especially love drunk women. I always have. But you can't compete with a bachelorette party for attention, because they've got novelty items.
They've got their own little straws, and the top of the straw is shaped like a little penis.
Sip-sip-sip.
And they've got pacifiers, and the pacifiers are shaped like a little penis.
Suck-suck-suck.
And as the night went on, these ladies laughed harder and harder. Not at me, but at themselves. Because apparently the drunker women get, the funnier they find little tiny penises to be. Which I guess is why I like 'em so much.
Well, in twenty years of doing comedy shows I've seen a million bachelorette parties. But these ladies had something I'd never seen before. These ladies had an eight-inch-long chocolate penis on a stick, and it was wrapped in cellophane, and nobody was touching it. It was just sitting there in the middle of the table.
And try as I might to ignore it, I could not. Because instinctively I knew that before the night was over, this big chocolate dick was gonna hurt me.
And I was right.
It's a great show, I've got about five minutes left, and for some reason, these girls decide to get this thing out. And they start passing it back and forth to see how much of it they can get in their mouth at one time.
Nobody
is watching me anymore. Everybody is watching this dunk contest.
And the thing that struck me as odd is that nobody was offended by it. All the women are watching them going, "Oh, aren't they having fun! Don't you remember when Becky had her bachelorette party, and how much fun we had, and where we went, and how much we drank, yakkety-yakkety-yak?"
All the men are going, "Is this free?"
And it's a double standard, folks. Because I guarantee you, if a group of men had whipped out a little sack of gummipussies, everyone would get bent out of shape.
"Slurp, slurp, slurp!" Or however you do it.
I only tell that story because I love to say gummipussy. It's one word by the way. If you say it as two words, it's something else entirely.
5
BACKSTAGE: BANNED ON THE ROAD
I
n the early 1990s, there was a small stretch of my career where my behavior seemed, to some club owners, irresponsible.
I was performing in Columbus, Ohio, at this club I'd played many times. They loved me there. The audiences loved me, and the staff loved me. I was a popular fucking guy. The staff are all younger than me, and I party like a dog with them. When they know I'm coming to town, everybody naps beforehand to rest up and be ready.
Now, in all the times I've performed at this club, I've never had sex with any of the women there. Sunday night comes around, and I'm having fun. I'm at the bar, and I'm doing purple shots, green shots, red shots, clear shots, whatever--I'm taking all comers.
Well, there's this girl there. Let's call her Kathy, just for the purposes of this story; I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. She's really cute. I'd seen her at this club every time I came to town for years, and she had recently become the girlfriend of the manager, a guy I really liked. Let's say his name was Greg. It was kind of unspoken, but people knew they were dating.
Greg's not there. Kathy's coming up to me and rubbing my leg and whispering to me, and I'm thinking, "This wild woman is hittin' on me."
The club had a little side room where they had music, and this James Taylor-sounding guy was playing there that night. He sounded great, the place was rockin'. And Kathy goes to request a song, and then she comes back and says, "I dedicated this to you, 'cause I've always thought you were hot."
One flirtatious remark leads to another. Just like one drink is leading to another. And we end up going into the women's bathroom and making out up against the wall. She's telling me she wants me to take her home.
We walk out of the women's bathroom. Guess who's standing right there?
Greg. He's just come in.
I know it looks bad. So I don't even say anything. 'Cause I can't think of anything to say.
I've just been enjoying a taste of your girlfriend at her invitation, Greg, and seriously, man, my compliments. She's really hot.
I don't think so.
Well, nobody really says anything. We just kind of nod at each other, and I head on back to the bar. And I start talking to one of the waitresses, a girl named Alison. She has long black hair and she's as cute as she could be, and I've also known her for years because of performing at this club. And I know for a fact that she hasn't had a steady boyfriend for quite a while.
That night she's drinking a little at the end of her shift. I'm still drinking.
And Alison goes, "Why don't we go back to my place and watch TV?"
I'm like, "All right! You're goddamned right we'll go watch TV." I'm sloshed.
We get back to this duplex apartment she shares with another girl. And I go upstairs to her bedroom, I take off my clothes, and I get in bed.
I'm laying there waiting for this little treat to come get in the bed. She's sitting on the couch downstairs talking to her mother on the telephone.
I'm laying on the bed thinking, "She better get up here quick, cause I'm gonna pass out. Fuck it, I'm gonna go get her."
So I walk down the stairs naked. I probably weighed twenty pounds more than I do now, and I've got a hard-on. I say, "Hey."
She looks up and screams like I've got a chain saw and a hockey mask.
Apparently, she wanted to watch television. It wasn't code for anything.
So then she says, "You're going back to the club. Get dressed."
I say, "Oh, wait, I'll be cool." I'm still thinking I can fuck her. But I get dressed, and we go back to the club.
Right next door to the club there was an Italian restaurant with a bar that stayed open late. Alison drops me off at the club, and I go over to the restaurant bar, and there's the rest of the club staff having a few drinks before their day off Monday.
Everybody's there except for Kathy and Greg, and I figure they're off somewhere arguin' or makin' up. I'm hoping it's the latter.
And I'm like, "I'm still in this game." 'Cause there's another cute waitress from the club there, and I take her home. And I do get to have sex with her.
The next morning I'm going to the airport. Guess who's driving me? Greg. And we have the most awkward ride. Finally Greg says, "Kathy said you kissed her in the bathroom."
I feel horrible, because I like Greg and I've known him longer than I've known Kathy. And I don't know exactly what Kathy has said.
So I say, "Yeah, I kissed her."
"You mean you just gave her a smooch? Or did you mash her up against the wall, stick your tongue down her throat, and put your hand in her pants?"
I'm like, well, she told him everything. She just fessed up our whole little sordid affair and put it all on me.
Greg was about to move with her to Portland. So I said, "OK, Greg, here's the deal. We were both drunk, she was hitting on me--"
"That's not what she said!"
"No, I'm sure it's not."
The next day at the club, there are four people who have similar stories to tell, and they're all about the same person: me. Kathy tells her story about me hitting on her in the bathroom, what a skunk. Greg, about me hitting on her in the bathroom, what a skunk. Alison, about me coming down the stairs naked with a hard-on, what a skunk. And the waitress I did fuck is saying, "I was third? What a skunk!" She's madder than the rest of them put together.
Not that I blame her. Finding out you're third choice is flat offensive.
Now, in Atlanta at one time there were three clubs called the Punchline, all owned by the same people. They had a number of Punchline Comedy Clubs throughout the South and Midwest.
I was working the Underground Atlanta Punchline, during the same stretch of my career, and I was throwing too many substances into my body. But I was still doing the job. That's the thing about stand-up comedy. Since you're only working forty-five minutes to an hour a night, you can get into almost any amount of shit and still have time to recover to perform. Until you run into a stone wall with that behavior, and you either change it or it changes you--permanently.
One of the too many substances was acid. They didn't have a Sunday show at the Atlanta Punchline. And on Saturday night, when I was gonna do my last two shows of the week, I had two hits of blotter acid in my pocket that I had bought in Alabama.
That same weekend, friends of mine were performing at the Sandy Springs Punchline, at the Comic Cafe up in Marietta, and at the Improv in Buckhead. And we all make plans to party together on Saturday night at this condo in Buckhead where the Improv put up its performers. The place was right off Atlanta's MARTA rail system, which connects Sandy Springs, Marietta, and downtown. So everyone can get to and from the party safely.
Now this really good friend of several of us--let's call him Bob Hill--was going to be there. And Bob was always a good connection for whatever. Bob was going to get everybody else their acid. And I had the two hits of blotter acid that I bought in Alabama.
We synchronize our watches and agree that after the second show, we'll all eat the acid at the same time and then meet at the condo in Buckhead and trip together all night. I don't have a show the next day, so I feel free to hoot, hoot, hoot.
The Underground Punchline was in a beautiful Victorian 350-seat theater. If it was full, you could really beat it up. It didn't seat a small crowd well, but it sat 350 well. Both my Saturday shows were sold out.
After the first show I start thinking, "They're all gonna be getting their acid from Bob Hill, who always gets the best acid. I got blotter acid from Ala-fuckingbama. I bet my shit is bunk. No great acid comes out of Alabama."
So I eat both hits right then, put 'em under my tongue, two hits, all I've got.
Apparently this acid wasn't made in Alabama. Apparently it was made in a very high-tech lab in California and shipped across the country. And some of it landed in Alabama.
BOOK: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability
12.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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