Funny

I will never be as interesting in real life as I am on stage.
Why am I saying this now? Or at all, for that matter?
Because sometimes I hang out with audience members after a show.

After twenty minutes of me just listening, not saying much, someone will inevitably ask (usually a girl who is usually drunk), "Why aren't you being funny?"

You know why? Because it is fucking hard to be funny! I mean really funny. Look, in a pinch at a party, I could probably pull off amusing or witty. But funny?

For god sakes, lady, it took me nineteen years to come up with the fifty minutes you just watched.

Nineteen years of grossing less than thirty five thousand dollars a year. Nineteen years of living in run down, rarely-cleaned apartments.
Nineteen years of sleeping on a second handthrift store mattress soaked weekly in broken dreams and semen.

Nineteen years of cigarette smoke and chicken wings.
Nineteen years of having a high school dropouts wearing a tank top and a ballcap on a Saturday night yell at me from the back of a dark room, "Say something funny."

Nineteen years of self doubt.
Nineteen years of regret.
Nineteen years of bad decisions, bad dinners, bad flights, bad behavior, bad haircuts, bad girlfriends and bad sets.

Isn't that funny?