The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (10 page)

By “nobody big,” he meant no agents, no head writers, no A-list comedians looking for writers, nobody who could take you from struggling to making a decent living with just one nod.

But then Bug-Eyed Can’t Get A Date Comic came in and said, “Hey, did you hear yet? Mike Barker just walked in.”

We all stared at him. It should be noted that Mike Barker was considered the black late-thirtysomething equivalent of George Clooney, thanks to his clean-cut, accessible good looks combined with considerable acting skills. He had enough clout to assign his own rewriter to all of his scripts. And though he usually stuck to action and Oscar-bait dramas these days, he had started off in romantic comedies, so he occasionally decided to do a winter one for his original fans. But if he was at the Laugh Out Loud, “occasionally” must be now.

I knew for sure, though, that Mike Barker wouldn’t be tapping me. In the world of comedy, men hired men to do all of their writing. And even black actors would skip straight to a white male writer if no good black male writers were to be found. For everybody else in the room, though, Mike Barker’s walking in was a writer-comedian’s wet dream come true.

Right on cue, Still Lives With His Mother Comic started hyperventilating.

RISA

I
thought about forcing myself to throw up to dislodge the fear rumbling in my stomach, but then I decided not to, because I needed those three Luna bars to get through the show.

The first two bands on the bill had come and played, and I was the last act. It had been over fifteen minutes since the previous band walked off, and indie crowds didn’t get restless but club managers did, so I knew I had better get out there before the Space Camp guy came knocking on the dressing room door.

But I didn’t move. Instead I stared at myself in the foggy mirror, willing Lisa to go away and Risa to take over. Lisa was the one in charge of fussing over my clothes and my weight and my image. Lisa always felt like she was betraying The One whenever she slept with a groupie or somebody she met while bartending. Risa, however, didn’t give a fuck. Risa played the guitar hard and ate whatever she wanted to from one a.m. to five a.m., and if a cute chick gave Risa the eye, she took that cute chick home.

I was a Gemini. And at that moment I was waiting for my better, badder twin to take over.

“What the fuck are we waiting for? Let’s do this,” a voice said inside my head.

And I smiled. There she was.

That night, I played my electric guitar like NASCAR and ripped through lyrics like the Hulk. It felt like only ten minutes had passed, but pretty soon I’d gone through my entire Supa Dupa set list and there was only one thing left to decide: my last song was always a cover—but would it be a Sweet Janes cover?

My body was bathed in sweat. I could even feel the wetness inside my high-top vintage Adidas. It squished in between my toes as I stepped up to the mic.

I dipped my chin to my chest, and I waited for it.

Then I hit the pre-recorded drum track on my synthesizer and strummed out the opening riff to “Party Hard” by Andrew W.K.

There were only three females on the whole planet who could sing a metal song better than the original guy who sang it: Joan Jett, Courtney Love, and muthafuckin’ me.

The Gravestone rep, who was half leaning on the bar in his short-sleeved shirt and skinny tie with a vodka on the rocks in his hand, finally stood up and took some interest. I stared him down so hard, he turned his body fully toward the stage. Toward me. I was a future rock star. And if he didn’t know it before, he for damn sure knew it then.

SHARITA

T
he problem, I had found, with being a giver is that you can never give enough. It seemed to me that every time I got in a good place and started making headway with a guy, that was when my friends started accusing me of being a bad girlfriend, forgetting everything I had done for them with a drop of a disappointed dime.

My conversation with Thursday lingered in my head as I parked in the ridiculously overpriced garage beneath L.A. Live, an outdoor mall of expensive restaurants and nightclubs that had sprouted up around the Nokia Theater and Staples Center a couple of years ago.

The expense of parking made it even more annoying when I got to the venue right at seven, only to find that Marcus hadn’t arrived yet. However, when he came jogging up to me twenty minutes later, he looked so good in his dark denim jeans and gray blazer that I felt something release in my stomach. My heart’s crystal ball filled me with another vision of those two strong baby boys inside of him, inside of me, inside of our possible future together. I forgave him for being late even before he kissed me on the cheek and said, “Hey, baby.”

I’d loved Earth, Wind & Fire ever since my mama introduced them to me via a scratchy LP back when I was a little girl. But the best part of the concert was when Marcus pulled me in front of him during “I Think About Lovin’ You” and rocked us both from side to side, swaying to the beat.

Afterward, we ended up at the Yard House, a sports bar/restaurant hybrid, for a late dinner—a really late dinner, as it turned out, since the Yard House didn’t take reservations. Marcus hadn’t chosen a place that took reservations and then made one, like I would have if I had been in charge of the date. But I wasn’t, so, according to the hostess, we would have to wait outside the popular restaurant “for at least twenty minutes.”

“Are you cold?” he asked when we got back outside. “I can give you my blazer.”

I scooted a little closer to him and nuzzled my nose into his thick bicep. “No, I’m fine.”

“Have I mentioned how good you look tonight?” he asked me.

My heart fluttered and I looked down at my black, empire-waist date dress, which hugged my ample chest but flared out to mask my stomach. It had been a while since a man had told me I looked good. “Thanks,” I said.

He stroked my arms. “You’ve got goose bumps,” he said. “Here …”

He leaned forward and kissed me, his juicy lips exploring mine a little before his tongue slipped into my mouth. It was a good kiss. A very good kiss. I had no idea how long it lasted, only that when he pulled back I felt like he had stopped too soon.

“Hey, you want to skip dinner and go back to your place?”

The romantic Earth, Wind & Fire ballad that had been playing in my head ever since we had floated out of the concert came to an abrupt halt as I pulled out my mental date calculator. This was our third date. I liked to wait for at least the fifth before I had sex; also, I had skipped lunch, so I was pretty hungry.

But Marcus looked even hungrier. For me.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

THURSDAY

M
y last time on stage as a stand-up comedian began like all of my others. I walked out and took the mic, my movements stiff with a nauseous mix of fear and dread. I wondered, as I always did, how my father and Risa did this so naturally. How could they feel comfortable performing in a room full of people, most of which they couldn’t see, but knew were out there, staring at them, waiting to be entertained?

I shoved the fear away and with a great amount of effort opened my mouth to say, “First of all: Hello. Second of all: How about this black love stuff? Isn’t that a crock of shit?”

As usual, a stunned silence met my opening line. From the start, my bohemian appearance and my delivery had been the two things that hurt my comedy career the most. I had never been able to bring myself to “coon it up,” as my mother used to call employing a quote-unquote black accent while performing, as opposed to speaking as one does in day-to-day life. My father had been lucky. Having grown up the son of a preacher, he inherited a ringing voice that made him sound like the love child of Dr. Martin Luther King and Nikki Giovanni. But me—how can I put this?—I sounded white, exactly like my nasally Connecticut upbringing. When I opened my mouth, all my good schooling and New England background came spilling out.

At the same time, with my long green sundress, dreadlocks, and dimples, I didn’t exactly look like someone who didn’t believe in black love. My opening line was never, ever greeted with anything but a few uncomfortable chuckles while the audience scrambled to catch up.

“Let me tell you something. Here’s what black love got me.” I ticked it off on my fingers. “A bunch of his bills that I had to pay before he could take
me out, a bunch of late-night phone calls from a very classy woman named LaQuanda Green.”

I then went on to do a pretty terrible impression of LaQuanda insisting that I had stolen her man, even though he and LaQuanda had only dated for two weeks. And then I launched into the subsequent arguments with my fictional boyfriend, who kept insisting that if I would just pay his cell phone bill, he could not only call LaQuanda and tell her to stop bothering me, but also take me to a nice dinner. A really nice dinner … at Applebee’s.

Strike three against black love, I told the crowd, had been the chlamydia. “It was itchy,” I wailed. “I was like, ‘This is TOO MUCH DRAMA. I’ve got to get myself a white boy!’”

Despite my appearance and the fact that my impressions of LaQuanda and my broke boyfriend didn’t sound anywhere near authentic, the writing in my routine was usually strong enough to garner a few laughs. Not tonight, though. Tonight the audience was silent, save for a few whispered conversations, ice tinkling around in glasses as people drank to get through my routine, and one guy laughing uproariously in the back. He was probably drunk and his solo laughing somehow made the rest of the audience’s non-response that much more noticeable.

The Laugh Out Loud manager gave me the cue to wrap it up, and I brought my routine to its painful conclusion. “Heeeeey. I notice there are a lot of white boys in here. Come see me after the show. The chlamydia is all cleared up. I’m single and ready to mingle.”

I came out of my shtick with a forced laugh and stilted wave to the audience. “My name is Thursday, but I’m about the comedy every day. Thanks, guys.”

I jogged off the stage, my underarms slick with sweat, the burn of the stage lights replaced by the burn of my own embarrassment. This was the first show I’d ever done without any friends whatsoever in the audience and
I had bombed. I mean bombed bad. I fully expected to soon be receiving condolence letters from Hiroshima survivors, I had gone down so bad.

I’m not funny.

The thought appeared clear and bright, shining with truth in the backstage dark.

There had been an awkward moment a few months ago when Sharita, Tammy, Risa, and I had been at brunch. Risa had said something particularly biting, and we had all laughed, with Sharita declaring after it was all done, “Girl, you are a trip. You are the funniest person I know.”

“Me too,” Tammy said with clasped hands, trilling with laughter.

I stopped laughing. “I thought I was the funniest person you know,” I said to them.

That was the moment
, I thought now, walking through the backstage wing, which led to the green room. I should have paid more attention. Because the laughter had died in my friends’ throats and after much hemming and hawing, Tammy came up with, “Day, you’re more technically funny, while Risa’s more improv funny.”