Men's Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny

by Alisha Gaddis

  Everyone preaches “What you create is yours, it’s your art, nobody can ever take away from you what you give birth to,” which is such bullshit, as you well know as an artist. . . . Well, when you used to draw whatever that propaganda was back in college. . . . “Graphic design,” sure, label as you will. But the thing is, anybody can drain whatever they want out of you. I mean, fuck, we ask for it, practically falling all over ourselves to get our dick sucked or a Groupon for a colon cleanse, right? I know, who uses Groupon anymore? It’s such a scam. I just think that the only thing we can really keep is the stuff that we don’t put out there. Prolificness is a joke that a capitalist society makes you believe is so vital, if for nothing else but to have a new title on Kindle or in Costco, but look at Harper fucking Lee! You think anything beyond To Kill a Mockingbird would have been as good? Hypothetically, she writes To Maim a Red-Breasted Robin, gets a fat check, gets ripped apart by critics, and a little more of her soul dies. Fuck that! And even writing that first book probably ruined her. And the movie? I’d have more respect for her if I had no idea who the hell she was. There is a second book? Oh God, she should have Sylvia Plath’d herself.

  I say internalize your work. It’s not creative constipation—it’s holding down your food and not vomiting on cue like some trained bulimic monkey. The creative energy within is what makes me, me, and you, you, right? It’s what allows us to sit here as friends and just commiserate. I don’t have to tell you, but you know if I really put myself out there, I could be on the Billboard Top 10 or the New York Times Best Sellers list. It’s not hard—it’s just feeding into whatever fast-food flavor of the week the masses want, right? But who would I be after it’s done? Would I be compassionate? Would I have the best in mind for humanity? And I don’t mean spokesmodeling for some overhyped charity that does nothing for the starving kids in Africa, parading them around like puppets. Besides, their hunger, my hunger, your hunger, it’s all equal in way. And not to be iconoclastic here, but I think I feel that hunger more than those kids, which is maybe why I feel this concept so acutely. I can’t keep enough creative energy in my bowels to keep myself fed. Every interaction, every sentence I speak is giving up a little of me. I was at Mount Sinai last week for exhaustion, did you know that? It’s a wonder I don’t collapse every fucking day. But you know what it’s like, you’ve put yourself out there, you gave your heart to this girl and now you’re getting a divorce. . . . Right, married. . . . Okay, really, is there a difference? Each a big three-ring circus of how much or how little you care for somebody? It sounds exhausting. Trust me, emote as little as possible, hold it in like oxygen and you’ll be the last who needs to come up for air. Just last week, my therapist said that I had too much empathy at my job at CVS, so I quit.

  Vaguely related tangent—you can grab the check, right?

  On a Bended, Bruised, Battered, and Broken Knee

  (or How Not to Not Propose Marriage to My Daughter)

  Jeff Bogle

  JEFF, 52

  JEFF is the father of two girls in their early 20s. He is speaking to a boy in the foyer of his house, a nonroom of constant flux, while one of his daughter is upstairs getting changed (again).

  JEFF Listen, while she’s upstairs changing clothes again. We have some time to talk. . . . Future son-in-law, I need to save you from yourself. Listen up . . .

  It may surprise you that for many women, still, to this day, regardless of the strides made in equality and the women’s liberation movement as first spearheaded by the tireless singsong efforts of a sashed Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins’s England, the idea of being proposed to, by a man and on bended knee, remains one of life’s most eagerly awaited occasions.

  How will he do it? When will he do it? Where will he do it?

  The Hollywood rom-com industry is built, in part, upon these eternal questions. Cast Patrick Dempsey in the lead, and shazam! Another summer blockbuster tailor-made for girls’ night out. Who’s bringing the wine?

  You should know that there’s nothing else in the world that blends, so seamlessly, both the commonplace and the cinematic quite like the wedding proposal. You can probably already picture it: handsome and earnest you, on single knee, her hand in yours, your eyes to the heavens, the sun setting behind her back, her face as a silhouette, her mouth agasp.

  Your parochial wonder in that exact moment of bliss is only found in a boy whose heart is free of emotional shrapnel.

  People once got excited about going to war, too.

  And I get it, I do, that instant when boy asks girl and girl says yes is a time and a place that will be filed away in a woman’s own personal Library of Congress, archived away with her first kiss, first baseball game with dad, first pint of ice-cream after that first bad breakup, first nonfaked orgasm. This all means that you should try really extra-super-duper-hard not to screw it up. Because shit memories are cataloged too, and a misstep on the marriage proposal tip will haunt you ’til the end of days.

  Trust me.

  My old girl and I worked at the same financial services company throughout much of the opening salvo of our relationship. Ours was a classic story: we were young, we were in love, we were cash poor, and we were bank tellers surrounded by twenty-dollar bills. We were the most boring adaption of Bonnie and Clyde ever conceived. We’d met at that bank on the corner of Second and South Street in Philadelphia, the exact spot of which, I should tell you now, is a toilet inside an organic ice-cream joint, a fact that I swear is a metaphor for exactly nothing. While we first conjugated our love in the land of cheesesteaks and soft pretzels, we quickly followed each other out to the ’burbs for a fresher start and for fatter paychecks. After the first couple of weeks of being together, it was a foregone conclusion we’d someday tie the knot. But I was never a Boy Scout—I couldn’t tie shit together properly. When it came time to eventually get married, after we’d eradicated our baggage, like her ex-boyfriend who was still living in her parent’s house and my credit card debt, which played the role of my ex-boyfriend, I had to propose. I guessed. I was never any good at kindergarten sequencing. She was, she was better, and she assured me that yes, the proposal picture comes first. We had a date and location picked out but we weren’t technically, in the eyes of the law or prim and proper society or her family and friends or not even me, engaged to be wed.

  Thankfully, I had a plan, the perfect plan. Airtight.

  I’d whisk her away to Detroit (seriously) and I’d get down on bended knee and officially ask her to be my wife on the steps of Joe Louis Arena, the home of my beloved Red Wings Hockey Club (seriously). Because, I figured, if I had to do it, I would insert a bit of my own fantasy into the situation. That seemed only fair, by WWPDD Law; that is exactly what Patrick Dempsey would do, too. I mean, yes, he would probably gallop down Steve Yzerman Drive on a horse, but still, close enough.

  Conveniently enough, I was already scheduled to travel to Detroit for business reasons, and my girl, she was going to be my companion during the trip. With my own airfare, hotel, and car rental covered by the company we worked for, all we needed to do was splurge on a flight for her and tickets to a Red Wings game, both of which were booked solid. Like I said, airtight.

  With that locked down, it was time to lock down my fiancé. Not literally, of course. She wasn’t into that. Still isn’t, despite my assertions that I will not lose the keys. But a funny thing happened on the way to the arena. My brilliant fallen-American-city-hockey-stadium-wedding-proposal scheme? Yeah, it didn’t quite come off. What did happen was this:

  The client canceled the trip. No one was going to Detroit. Most people would be high-fiving about missing a trip to that depressing, crumbling-even-then American city. Me? Not so much. I was catatonic. When we met for lunch later that day in the company’s airplane hanger–sized cafeteria, I was despondent. She couldn’t understand why, obviously—she wasn’t hip to what I had in store for her and she wouldn’t quit asking why this was bothe
ring me so much. Yeah, we’d miss a hockey game, she said. We’ll catch one later down the line, she said. No biggie, she said. To her it seemed I was code red over missing a stupid regular season hockey game. Which, had that been all we’d be missing out on, would have been idiot, yes. But you know now what she didn’t then, that this was way more than a hockey game. What was more idiotic than my psychotic behavior was what I finally said to her. Yeah. No kidding.

  In a moment I will never live down, in a moment stored away until the end of days, a moment I’d like you to try hard to imagine so as not to make the same mistake I did, I told her that I was going to propose to her. In Detroit. At the Red Wings game. Oh but I didn’t just tell her, oh no, I yelled it at her, in the middle of our company’s cafeteria, in the middle of lunchtime, as if she was to blame for the client putting the kibosh on my master plan.

  Of the many sentences a man can mutter aloud to a woman he loves with a mouth full of turkey club sandwich, “I was GOING TO propose to you” is, without a doubt, the dumbest.

  And that, son, is how not to propose marriage to the woman you love.

  So, you best get it together, Junior, and rent the entire Patrick Dempsey oeuvre, stat. Come to think of it, now might be the ideal time to learn how to saddle up a horse, too. You’ve gotta give my daughter the fairytale proposal scene she deserves . . . otherwise, she’ll archive away your stupidity and make you wear it like a sash for the rest of your life.

  Twinsies!

  Evolution of Masturbating

  Kenny Madrid

  CARL, 40

  CARL has just realized he’s no longer young, because his teenaged son was just caught doing something that used to be taboo for him at that age, but now he does with reckless abandon, because whatever . . . his wife’s not giving him any. It takes place in his living room, the most open area for someone to be caught masturbating, and his son, 16, has had enough time with himself (so to speak) to not care about the risk of being caught.

  CARL Son, I know you have grown up in a time where the Internet is a fact. There was no time for you that existed before the Internet, which is a scary and monumental achievement for all of mankind. The Internet has brought us closer together in ways my parents and grandparents could not have imagined. Sure it has its problems, but it also has unlimited possibilities to spread good around the world. So the fact that I caught you nonchalantly masturbating to several videos at the same time, on almost every screen in the house, is quite startling for me. Masturbating to porn wasn’t always so easy in my day. Now, don’t try to interrupt, this could get graphic.

  Sure, you could lay in your room and use your imagination to picture two women making out while you take turns plowing the two, but we aren’t all Pablo Picasso and can paint beautiful and strange portraits of boobs out of thin air. Most of us need some kind of visual aid.

  My first case of self-pleasuring came so early in life, I can’t even recall it. One night in my senior year of high school, I had my girlfriend of several months over to eat dinner with my family, my dad, mom, and sister. For reasons I won’t get into now, we shall refer to her as Beelzebub. Though Beelzebub was no stranger to my family, it was the first time she had sat down to dinner with all of us. My family took this opportunity to recount every moment that could possibly embarrass me: the time I accidentally kicked myself in the face and broke my nose, peeing my pants at baseball camp, breaking my wrist after chest bumping my dad. But the kicker was when they revealed to Beelzebub that during my sister’s countless dance practices and recitals, I would hump things. When I say things, apparently it was whatever object was closest to my wiener. Something I could press up against rapidly and furiously. My first masturbation experiences involved dance squads practicing their routines while I stood in the corner and pushed my baby penis against a couch. Beelzebub later told me the story made perfect sense. “You’re a humper,” she explained. Thanks, parents. They weren’t cool like me, they were dicks.

  My first sentient case of masturbating came from the monthly Victoria’s Secret catalogs that would come in the mail and “mysteriously” disappear along with the occasional People magazine featuring anything with Carmen Electra in it. Let me take a step back. Magazines are like those books that nobody touches in those buildings called libraries we see people in the movies studying in. Victoria’s Secret didn’t even sell anything as risqué as thong underpants at the time. Tame by today’s standards (you can see more on HBO or even FX nowadays). But still, the women were beautiful, and my hormonal fireworks were ready to light up the Fourth of July. Of breasts. Those magazines would give me satisfaction for the entire month, sometimes longer if I couldn’t get my hands on them before my mom did. It did not occur to me until telling you this how messed up masturbating to the pictures of women wearing the clothes my mom might ultimately purchase really is.

  The next discovery on my long list of masturbation sources was my discovery of channel 96. Now, televisions did not always connect to a cable box. Cable cords went directly into the television and you turned the channel up and down, as opposed to today where the television never changes channels, everything is worked through the cable box. During this caveman period of watching television, channels only went up to 99. I’m sure most areas varied, but for my house channels 75 through 99 were nothing but static, or “snow” as many called it. There was rarely a reason to view those stations, until one glorious day when I discovered a scrambled porn station on channel 96. I don’t understand how most things work in this world, so I’ll save you the terrible explanation of why stations get scrambled, but needless to say it looked like the She-Hulk had gone into porn. Once in a while, it would unscramble enough and I could make out a breast or two, or something even more scandalous. Like a butthole. This posed a huge problem for someone as young as myself at the age of ten. My parents never wanted to leave me at home by myself, constantly fearing home invasions, child rapists, and toy parts I could swallow. Occasionally, I would convince them to leave me alone if I promised that I would be fine. That is, if “fine” meant watching scrambled porn. Or I would be brave enough to watch it and hope that I would hear whoever was about to turn the corner and change the channel before they entered the room. Keep in mind, I was still in my stage of only being able to hump and push against things. Much easier to disguise why I’m hunched over a couch than if my hand was down my pants. Eventually, this grew too dangerous to maintain, but luckily for me, my parents plugged our computer into the Internet for the first time entering a whole new era of masturbation.

  At first, my Internet use was fairly G-rated. I would play simple 2-D computer games, type up reports, and browse through Encyclopædia Britannica CDs. Like a good little child. One day, a friend introduced me to KaZaA, a crude version of a torrent site. When I say crude, I mean a three-minute video could take days to download. Makes the “I’m horny and need porn right now” situation a little more difficult. What if you had downloaded an Asian girl masturbating but were in the mood for anal penetration? It was anarchy. Preparation was required. I started off slow with a lot of music downloads, you know, the reason why the music industry is failing. Every once in a while with much deliberation, I would search “Britney Spears naked.” It would come up with a series of fake, naked pictures of Britney Spears. At the time “Hit Me Baby One More Time” had come out, there was nothing better than Britney. I escalated quickly to searching the dirtiest things I could think of, like “boobs,” “breasts,” “titties,” and even “paginas.” (Side note: No, I wasn’t searching for the Spanish-to-English translation of “paginas.” When I was little, a friend had told me that a girl’s private parts is called a pagina. Why wouldn’t I believe Matthew? He had been my best friend for over a year and had never pushed me off of a slide.) Though searching on KaZaA was a perilous task: there were no preview pictures, only titles. A video could be downloaded after days of waiting and end up a video some guy’s penis who had pranked all of these unwittin
g kids. Again, not realizing how messed up this is until I just typed this out. Keeping in mind that I was doing all of this on our family computer, I continued at a rate of near exhaustion for both my computer and my penis until one day my mom asked me why her e-mail inbox was full of deals for porn. I had never given out her e-mail, or any e-mail for that matter, but clearly that doesn’t keep malware from doing their thing.

  For a few years of high school my porn habits stayed dormant, knowing that I could not continue to wreck my family computer all in the hope of seeing breasts every once in a while. The Internet was still fresh enough that there was no centralized area to view porn. You had to risk getting a virus nearly every time you downloaded porn. And forget streaming, YouTube was in its infancy. Besides, dial-up Internet was so slow that any streaming service out there would buffer every two seconds. Nothing takes me out of the story of a porno more than buffering. But on my eighteenth birthday, I finally set foot inside of an adult video store. It was awful. I hated it. There were dildos so massive I immediately questioned whether I had lost the better part of my penis during circumcision. (Side note: I’m average. No girl has ever been stoked or appalled at the size, just so we’re all aware). The Paris Hilton sex tape was on sale. For ninety-five dollars! This seemed entirely outrageous to me. After I purchased the items on my younger friends’ shopping list, I left, vowing to never return. I was thankful I didn’t see any adults other than the store clerks.

  In college, there was not much need for porn because of the crazy parties going on. That’s not to say I was sleeping with a lot of (or any) girls, but many nights girls would be walking around topless. It was like interactive theater. But for porn. Moaning could be heard in the halls every single night as I would sit in my room watching Judd Apatow movies, thinking “Who has sex on a Monday?” Still, there was plenty live material to work with until the day a friend revealed to me the plethora of porn sites that don’t require download, credit card information, or effort of any kind. Sites like YouPorn, PornHub, and XVideos brought porn viewing into the twenty-first century. It was as if I opened a treasure chest and the gold bitcoins from inside shined in my face. Only the gold was actually, tits. Most boys grow up masturbating but I was one of the few that graduated from one platform to the next as the porn technology did. It’s a confusing time for anyone at that age, but thank God I had good friends and either a completely naive family, or just one that gave up after they found me humping a couch at the age of three.