Read Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child Online

Authors: Bert Kreischer

Tags: #Humor, #Form, #Essays, #Biography & Autobiography, #Entertainment & Performing Arts

Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child (16 page)

BOOK: Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child
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Always the friend, Tony motioned me over and introduced me to Tracy Morgan.

“Yo Tray, this is my man, Bert, but I call him Sugar Bear.”

Tracy gave me a long stare, a mean mug, and a nod, and continued the conversation he had been having. Making sure not to overstep my bounds, I went back to barking, only this time with much more ammo. “Hey guys, we have a great show tonight. Tony Woods, D.C. Benny, Judah Friedlander, and from
Saturday Night Live,
Tracy Morgan.”

By the time Tracy hit the stage I had brought in enough patrons to earn myself a few minutes to watch a pro at work. At this time in my career, anyone who had made it out of the clubs and onto TV, but who still came back to the clubs to work out material, earned all the respect I had. So I stood in the back and watched as Tracy Morgan took the stage.

“Alright, we all do crazy shit,” he opened a bit. “Same shit, crazy shit. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Alright. Who remembers finger-fucking by the handball courts?”

The crowd stared at him, simultaneously turning their heads in the way of the confused. Their drinks sat still on their tables as if they were confused, too. If “finger-fucking by the handball courts” had been a defining moment in Tracy’s childhood, one thing was clear: it had not been for this audience. Sensing their reluctance to identify, Tracy tried again. “You know you remember that shit, don’t you?” A couple of really white people, who were uncomfortable with the fact that a TV star wasn’t getting a laugh, chuckled, giving him permission to dig deeper. His focus now was directly on them.

“You do remember that shit, don’t you?”

Silence from most of the people, except the white table who still giggled uncomfortably, like you might while the host of a dinner party slaughters a chicken for you.

“You post that bitch up, back against the wall, and just pussy pop that bitch.”

Tracy has an undeniable talent for losing himself in a character. He acted out the scene, throwing one arm against the brick wall of the club, “pussy popping” an imaginary woman.


Bam, bam, bam,
just pussy poppin’ that bitch!”

Jaws dropped. He lowered his head and talked directly into the mic now, soft and intimate.

“Arm against the wall, head in yo jacket, smelling yo own stank.”

By this point, I was lost in the imagery, imagining a pre-
Precious
Precious staring at the passersby as Tracy aggressively finger-fucked. Despite the fact that I had never taken part in said activity, he was getting me there. I felt like I was one of his classmate friends, holding a basketball, waiting for him to finish so we could wrap up our game.

On my way back to work outside, I heard, “Yeah, I need a fat bitch, with stretch marks and a C-section scar.”

The way I heard it at the time, Tracy had booked
SNL
having never performed in front of white people. He was forty pounds heavier, and wore a red, blue, and yellow beanie with a propeller on it. Did he do this material? Did he do impressions? Or was Lorne Michaels so insightful that he could recognize genius even when a crowd couldn’t?

After ten minutes, Tracy came out of the club bubbling. Maybe he was expecting his friends, but finding me, he opened up. “Damn, that was hot. Yeah, real hot.”

Not sure how to respond, I simply agreed. He smiled, looked up and down West Third Street, and said five words that would transform that night.

“Yo, you wanna get high?”

I have never said no to that question, even when I wanted to. I am exactly the person they were referring to when they talked about peer pressure in seventh grade. Now as an adult, I find it outright rude to tell someone who has taken a chance and told
you
that they do drugs and would like you to partake with them, “no thank you,” that you are better than them and will not partake in said activity. Another thing to know about me, as well as yourself, and about life in general: If you’ve never gotten high with a black man, you are not living the way God intended.

The list of black comics I’ve gotten high with looks like the set list for a Def Jam reunion show, so before Tracy could finish his sentence, I’d already said yes.

We walked west and took a left on the first side street, Sullivan. As we walked, Tracy did none of the things the other black comics did, like fill the air with small talk—about their set, or about the chick they planned on fucking that night. He walked silently, like a soldier, to a place I would know we had reached only when he’d decided we had.

It occurred to me that I had no idea what “getting high” meant to Tracy Morgan, so you can imagine my relief when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a joint. It looked like the work of an amateur—crooked like a croissant, like a joint that had been rolled at Woodstock and had been dodging fire ever since.

Tracy looked around, lit it, and hit it hard. He then passed it to me. I nodded and took an equally hard hit.

I should note that everything that follows is hazy and suspect. I’ve heard this story told back to me many times, and it’s never the same, nor am I ever as innocent as the last time I’d heard it.

As I inhaled, I sensed instantly that something was amiss. This didn’t smell like weed and it definitely didn’t taste like weed. I looked at Tracy with confusion. “What is this shit?”

He smiled. “What is this shit?”

“Yeah, it tastes weird.”

“Oh, you never smoked sherm before?”

“Sherm?” I said.

“It’s wet,” he said as he hit it again.

“Wet? What are sherm and wet?”

He rolled his eyes and started walking back to the club. “So you never smoked PCP before?” He laughed, disappearing into the foot traffic of West Third.

The answer was
no
. Not only had I never smoked PCP, I had also never been offered PCP. There were a lot of things I wished I could have told him. Like, for instance, “Hey, when you smoke PCP with a person you just met, you might want to ask them if they would, in fact, like to partake of your PCP, rather than just assuming that they are hip to the fact that the joint you possess is indeed ‘wet.’” Also: What fucking year is this that we need to add PCP to our joint to improve our buzz? Had this been 1978 and we were two kids at a Molly Hatchet concert trying to share a handjob from an old lady who had just been dumped by her Hell’s Angel boyfriend, I might have gotten it. But it was 1999, and weed was fucking awesome as is.

I walked back to the club hyperaware of what I was feeling, which was mostly panic. From what I knew about PCP, any second now I was going to be covered in spiders.

I entered and went directly to Tony Woods. I pulled him aside and urgently whispered,
“I just got wet.”

“Then dry the fuck off.”

“No, sherm-wet. I smoked wet sherm.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I smoked PCP with Tracy Morgan.”

“When?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

“No, I did. Tracy asked if I wanted to get high, and apparently when he says ‘get high,’ he means PCP and I said yes not knowing it was PCP, and we smoked a joint that tasted funny and it was sherm, he said.”

“Tracy doesn’t smoke PCP.”

“No, he does and he did, and I did, too.”

“No, he doesn’t, I promise you. He’s just fucking with you.”

“But he said it was PCP.”

“No. He’s fucking with you because you’re white.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you’re white and you probably made some weird white-guy comment, like you do, and Tracy thought he’d play you, and now you’re played.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, look at you. You were about to call an ambulance, and all, ‘Tony, I’m wet, I’m wet!’ Take a deep breath and relax.”

I took a deep breath. “So I didn’t smoke PCP?”

Tony took a second and thought about it. “Probably not.”

“Probably?”

“I wouldn’t go home if I were you.”

This panicked me. “Why not?”

“Because I know you, and if you go home you’re gonna sit in your apartment and start to think you’re on PCP. So stay with me and I’ll watch you.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re just gonna drink and keep cool.”

I went on stage that night. Or maybe I didn’t. If I did, I bombed. And if I didn’t, I did and I bombed.

What I know for sure is that Tony and I ended up at a club called Madame X. Madame X was, and maybe still is, one of the many clubs on Houston Street. One of those clubs where you have to walk down a small flight of stairs to enter, and the second you do, you feel like you’re in a different world. Red velvet walls breathed in and out, as you pulsed like blood toward the back of the club.

And in the back that night, there was a one-man show going on called “Tracy Morgan: Real Talk.” Tracy was holding court for any and every black man that would listen. There were twenty by the time I got there.

“Here is the thing you need to know about Tracy,” Tony said to me. “He doesn’t give a fuck. TV, film, none of that is why he’s here. He’s here because he’s real, and all these niggas know that. He’s famous, but he treats all of them like they ain’t no different than him, he just got money.”

And by the display of champagne bottles that littered the surrounding tables, that was clear. Every time the waitress walked by, Tracy ordered more like someone was going to prison the next day. “One more bottle. Fuck it, make it two!” The tab, I assumed, was so sizable, it could easily swallow a couple of Heinekens, but regardless I snuck over to the bar and paid cash for my drinks. I wasn’t used to this kind of hip-hop decadence, but I had definitely heard about it. Tonight I had a front-row seat.

Tracy is the kind of unbridled genius that comics automatically appreciate. On stage, reins are forced into its mouth, but at a club, around friends and half in the bag, his genius was in full gallop.

“I got a pretty
dick
. You can suck it with the lights on,
and
I don’t even have to know your last name!” The phrase stuck with me. I had never thought about how much of my sexual activity took place in the dark or at night, or with strangers. How ashamed we are of our bodies, and how vulnerable we become when we get naked in front of strangers. I tried to recall any oral sex I had received in the light from a girl whose last name I didn’t know. To present my body in full display, either with overhead lights or in sunlight, and to allow a woman to get so close as to perform a direct examination, made me chuckle in embarrassment. I felt like telling him he should write that down and work it out, because there was definitely something there that people could relate to, but I got the feeling he wasn’t about to slow down and pull out a pen and a notebook. He was on a roll.

Everything he said that night was a diamond, but a blood diamond, because as the night continued, a small fortune of alcohol accrued on that table. At the end of the night, when the only energy left in the club was Tracy’s, the white waitress appeared through the crowd of brothers with a smile and a bill. She quickly scanned the crowd—landing her sights on me, the lone white guy. Tony chuckled as she handed me the bill and my asshole tightened. Was I going to have to itemize this bill and ask everyone what they ordered and tell them how much to chip in? By the time it was in my hand, it was clear that she assumed I was going to pay, because, by her assumption, I was the one white dude with a mess of black men, and therefore I had to be their lawyer, or agent, or coach. As I fumbled to explain I wasn’t the man she was looking for, Tracy’s eyes wandered my direction. Here, he popped off.

“Ah, fuck that. I’m the rich nigga in here!”

Nervous for a second that I would get stuck with the bill, I smiled.

“Fuck that white boy, he works the door!”

Dissed, but fine with it, I nodded at the waitress. “I’m not on this bill. I was buying drinks at the bar.” Too preoccupied to listen, she was pulled back into conversation with Tracy.

“Hey bitch, I’m talking to you!”

This got her attention. She quickly handed the bill in his direction.

“No, fuck that shit. How you going to disrespect me in front on my mans and dem? I’m the rich nigga in here! I’m on TV!”

Whatever Tracy’s goal was, it was working. Now the whole bar was watching—including the bouncers, two ex-NFL linemen, who were standing close by.

“I apologize. Here you go, sir,” she said.

At “sir,” the group of black dudes hissed like it was a slam-dunk contest and she had just missed.

“Oh, now I’m ‘sir’? Couple of minutes ago I was just some nigga who couldn’t pay a bill, but now I’m ‘sir’?”

“I wasn’t being racist,” she said.

“But you gave him the bill ’cause he’s white. He ain’t got no money! Why didn’t you give it to me? ’Cause I’m a nigga. But I’m a rich nigga! I’m on TV!”

At that, Tracy ripped off his shirt and threw it in her face. And just like that, the bouncers were on top of him, standing so close they cast shadows over him. Tracy was no more than a quarter of their combined weight, but that didn’t scare him. As they stood there, the bigger of the two spoke his last two words of the night. “My man.”

Tracy looked at him with disgust, smiled discreetly to our group, and answered as if he was seven feet tall. “I ain’t yo man,” he said, and threw a punch.

This is when I snapped back to my reality: I was
definitely
on PCP.

I quickly stood up, looked at Tony, who was trying to break up the fight, and walked directly out of the bar. I passed people who were just now realizing that a fight was going down, but I knew there was a tsunami coming and I was headed for high ground.

I quickly made my way up the stairs two at a time and as I stood on Houston, pacing, I kept thinking to myself,
This isn’t happening. None of this.

After two minutes of waiting, I turned west to head home, when Tony exited the club. “Damn, Sugar Bear, shit going off!”

“Really? Is he winning or losing?”

“What do you think?”

“Should we wait?”

“I say we give him a minute.”

We stood there for what couldn’t have been more than forty-five seconds, when the doors of the club were burst open—by Tracy’s head. The bouncers held him limp, shirtless, parallel to the ground, and threw him up the short flight of steps. He landed on the sidewalk, his body lying at Tony’s and my feet as the doors shut behind them.

BOOK: Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child
2.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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