Cherry on Top

by Bobbie Brown

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking Jimmy’s hand, feeling all the eyes in the room upon me.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Bobbie,” said Jimmy, kind and supportive right away. He told me that the reason he started the class was to find new talent and bring that talent into the clubs he booked. Most of his students came to him through referrals.

  “The fact that you’re here means you’re already funny, Bobbie,” he said, reassuringly. “All you need is a little help.”

  Jerod had told me to bring some set-up ideas, or premises, for jokes. Premise, tagline, punchline—that’s the way a joke is broken down. I knew that already, so I’d prepared a few set-up ideas about my dating life, which is at its core quite laughable, and with the class’s help I figured out some pretty good punchlines. I liked this comedy world with its peculiar language and passionate community. And did you know that comedy groupies are called “chucklefuckers”? I wondered if one day, in the distant future, I, too, would have some chucklefuckers of my own lining up outside the stage door, hopeful for a kiss. I mean, it’s gotta be better than Tinder, right?

  As the class progressed, I shed my inhibitions. My stories grew wilder and more crass as I dug deep into my imagination, ad-libbing about disastrous, quasi-revolting dating scenarios that had my classmates laughing but also probably wondering if I needed psychological help. I didn’t let myself worry about being judged, though. That’s what had held me back all these years. From now on, I was going to be all me, all the time.

  Afterward, Jimmy pulled me aside for a chat. “Well, you’re a natural,” he said.

  “I am?”

  “Yes. All you have to do is talk, and it’s funny. Have you thought about breaking down parts of your life story and putting that into your stand-up? You know, all the guys, the Sunset Strip, the juice?”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Telling stories about my past, my heartbreaks, my addictions, my failures—that didn’t seem too funny to me. I told Jimmy that for now I’d stick to jokes about awkward dates with strange, imaginary men.

  During my third class, Jimmy dropped a bombshell.

  “You’re ready,” he said.

  I didn’t understand what he meant.

  “To perform,” he said. “At the Comedy Store.”

  “What? Hell no!” Was he nuts? Even Jerod seemed surprised. There are secrets, theories, and techniques to comedy, things to practice and perfect—two weeks in, how the fuck could he think I was ready to get on stage under a spotlight in front of a paying audience? I shook my head. Nope. Too soon.

  “Bobbie, trust me, you can do this,” Jimmy said, getting his phone out and typing a message.

  “There. You’re on the schedule. Comedy Store. Friday night. Be there.”

  •••

  If you’ve ever cruised along the Strip’s two and a half miles, you’ll know it has two beating hearts: The Rock ’n’ Roll Strip and the Comedy Strip. The rock section comprised the Roxy, the Rainbow Bar and Grill, and the Whiskey A-Go-Go. It was the stomping ground of The Doors and Led Zeppelin in the sixties, the New York Dolls and The Stooges in the seventies, and glam metal bands like Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, Ratt, LA Guns, and Warrant in the eighties. But then something happened. Alongside the cute, long-haired boys in denim and leather, young comedians were building a scene of their own just a few feet down the street at the Laugh Factory and the iconic Comedy Store, which was run by the late great Mitzi Shore, mother of Pauly Shore.

  Under her stewardship, the Comedy Store became a training ground for stars like Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, Sam Kinison, Dave Chapelle, Roseanne Barr, Andy Kaufman…all of them and their chucklefuckers were out there rubbing shoulders with the wild-haired guitar guys and their groupies on the Strip. Rock ’n’ roll and Laughter, the two opposite sides of the Sunset Strip coin—although, in the twenty-first century, it seems like comedy has overtaken rock ’n’ roll as the big ticket. These days, there are bigger crowds lined up to hear the comedians than the guys with guitars.

  •••

  On the day of my first comedy show, a strange pall hung over Hollywood, some portent of rain. I was exhausted—the night before, I’d sat in my bedroom writing jokes until dawn, scrambling for ideas, praying to the omnipotent Comedy Goddess in the clouds. These would be the first jokes I ever told in public, on a stage. And not just any stage—the stage—so they had better be good. As dawn broke, I dug into the deepest crevasses of my psyche, searching for the little gold nuggets of comedy glimmering in the psychic mud, the jokes that would reintroduce me to the world and help me believe I still had a reason to be here.

  I turned onto Selma Avenue, and gasped at what I saw—tent after tent after tent, a sprawling homeless encampment. Upturned shopping carts. A man urinating, another buying drugs in plain view. This wasn’t a favela, a refugee camp, or a slum. This was Hollywood, yards away from the Walk of Fame, and it had turned into the gates of hell for these people. I drove by, feeling guilty about my problems, which suddenly seemed so trivial in the face of this crisis. What had happened? This town used to be different; you could be an artist with no money, and still make something happen, still have some place to live. These days, either you’re broke or you’re rich. After seeing what was happening here, I worried about the future. God, I wish I would have saved money, been smarter. I might have felt more secure had I fallen for Rod Stewart instead of a broke millennial with a dick-pic habit. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty.

  I arrived at the Comedy Store and looked at the line-up for the Belly Room. Normally, rookies are put on the bill way early or way late, but they’d scheduled me to perform right before the headliner, at peak comedy time, when the room would be packed and expectations would be highest. Shit. Backstage, I saw Jimmy. He could tell I was on the verge of a meltdown.

  “Don’t worry, Bobbie, nerves are normal. You’d have to check your pulse if you didn’t feel some anxiety about facing a bunch of strangers and having to make them laugh.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy.”

  He placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Guess what! Show’s sold out! Because of you.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “People want you to win, Bobbie. Do you want to win?”

  I heard the MC call my name.

  “Bestselling author, Cherry Pie Girl, nineties babe, and reality-TV star Bobbie Brown…ON STAGE FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!”

  I walked over to the mic, aware of the frantic pounding inside my ribcage. First, I’ll hit them with the one about the scary blowjob, then the bit about my mom screaming in the parking lot, and I’ll close with the thing about the butt parasites. I looked at the crowd; they were clapping and smiling. Jimmy was right. They did want me to win.

  “Hello, everyone,” I said. “I’m Bobbie Brown, and I’m no longer following my heart because that bitch gives bad directions.”

  All seemed to be going well. Then, a few jokes in, something very strange happened to me. It felt like I evaporated, left my body somehow. Physically, I was there, telling stories and making people laugh, because there’s video footage confirming it. But in that moment, my consciousness just sort of…left the building, rising up like a helium balloon, far above Los Angeles. Finally, I understood the blank, stunned look you sometimes see on young comedians’ faces, the equivalent of a “Be Back Soon” sign on a shop window. It’s the look that means “I’m so fucking scared, I vacated my body.” I’d only ever experienced that feeling once before. On the 134, as my car spun out of control, I left my body, and only vaguely heard my own voice, screaming, “NO, NOT NOW!”

  Suddenly, I zoomed back to earth, aware that I was on stage at the Comedy Store with a lot of people sitting in front of me, laughing. I wondered if anyone had noticed that I’d temporarily left the planet. I wound up the joke, thanked the audience, and ran off the stage, where Jimmy was wait
ing for me.

  “You still had a few minutes of time, Bobbie, why did you come off early?” I looked at him, feeling a little spooked.

  “Something weird happened to me out there, Jimmy. I lost all sense of time and space.”

  Jimmy nodded. “Oh, you blacked out. Happens all the time. It’s the adrenaline.”

  Oh. I exhaled, glad that my temporary delirium was nothing out of the ordinary. I asked him if he could tell I wasn’t quite in the room the whole time, and he shrugged.

  “Well, you did have a bit of a strange look on your face,” he said. “Like, surprised. And your movements were kind of jerky, like you were trying to restrain the mic. But don’t worry, Bobbie, you were good. Really good!”

  I nodded, taking his word for it, as the beautiful realization dawned—after all these years of talking about it, I’d finally popped my comedy cherry.

  Out of the Vortex,

  into the Hole

  Looking back on the story of your life, it’s funny discerning the high points from the low, connecting the dots, and realizing how the tiniest decisions can lead to such cataclysmic shifts in fortunes. People talk about rock bottoms, and mine came after Tommy and I split in 1995. It lasted a solid ten years, during which time I went from It Girl to Shit Girl as crystal meth pulled me into its horrible white vortex. People ask me how I stopped after such a long period of addiction, and I tell them the truth: it’s an ongoing battle. I can’t say there aren’t times when I fall off the wagon. Usually, it happens when I feel pain. When I can’t handle my feelings. Using drugs is rarely celebratory for me, you see—I use them because I hurt. That’s why I have to be really careful about getting close to people who are bad for me. When I do, I’m literally toying with my life. Because when people let me down, I self-destruct. The difference now is that if I find myself dipping back in, it doesn’t last long. My lifestyle is different from what it was twenty years ago. I’m not modeling, I don’t go to clubs or bars, and I don’t feel pressure to be stick-thin. I’m not in a place to easily adopt a heavy drug user’s lifestyle. Besides, I have bigger fish to fry.

  That said, even after I pulled myself out of the darkest phase of my addiction, I was still lost. Still hiding myself in bad love. Still wasting time and avoiding doing the work that my talents required of me. I kept my dreams in a box for many years, too frightened to let them out in case no one believed in them. But dreams don’t like being boxed. They’ll start making noise if you keep them locked up for too long.

  •••

  In 2015, I was driving on the 134, heading toward Downtown LA and cruising in my cute stick-shift 2006 Pontiac Solstice convertible. I must have been going seventy when all of a sudden, my car jerked violently to the right. Something must have hit me from the left; why else would my car veer like that? I started spinning backward toward the median in big circles really fast. I gripped the steering wheel, helpless. Time warped as the whole world turned into a terrifying slow-motion horror movie. This was it. The end. Minutes, hours could have passed as my car spun. I closed my eyes and screamed, “No, not now!” Then my car slammed into the middle divider between the two sides of the freeway.

  I should have been dead. For a second, I thought I was. Only the pain convinced me that I wasn’t. I saw a man’s face pressed up against my window. He yanked open the driver side door and asked me, “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I said. All the bones on my right side felt broken, as did my left arm and wrist. But I was alive. Someone, something must have heard me scream. I noticed another man standing by his car on the other side of the freeway. Panic welled inside me.

  “Did I hit him? Did he hit me? Is he okay? What happened?”

  “He’s fine,” said the stranger, helping me out of my car. “I saw what happened. Your vehicle just lost control. Nobody hit anyone.”

  I asked this kind man to call Josh. Things were good between us then. We knew our respective roles in the relationship, and our dysfunctions were largely compatible. Romantic codependence had helped us avoid the individual work we needed to do to progress in our own lives, and as far as toxic fantasies went, it worked pretty well. I was the breadwinner, the caretaker, the initiator, the aggressor. I was me on steroids, fulfilling the role of the man of the house with a pet who adored me—and I don’t mean Nupa. It was a devil’s bargain, of course. The balance of power in love is a delicate thing, and I had yet to grasp just how devastating it is when one partner cultivates weakness in the other, knowingly or otherwise.

  An ambulance arrived, as did the police, who examined the scene and concluded I was lucky to be alive. My health insurance didn’t cover transportation to the emergency room, and I couldn’t afford a thousand-dollar ambulance ride, so Josh drove me to the hospital in the worst pain I have ever experienced. My wrist, my arm, and all my ribs were broken. I was sent home with a cast on my arm and a pair of crutches. For months, I couldn’t cough, get up, adjust myself, or turn my head without whimpering in pain. Worst of all, I couldn’t laugh.

  For months after the accident, every day was the same: wake up, eat, take more sleep and pain pills, and go right back to sleep. When I was finally able to move around by myself, I kept getting stuck. If I squatted down to pick something up off the floor, chances were that I wasn’t getting back up. More than once, Josh came home to find me stuck on the floor of my closet, sobbing. For someone like me, so used to being independent, large and in charge, immobility was the cruelest monster I’d ever met.

  As the weeks stretched into months, the strain began to wear on me and Josh. I had always been responsible for the bills, but now I couldn’t work. He had just lost his job. The physiotherapy and healthcare bills were mounting, and all the money I had earned in my three years on Ex Wives of Rock and from my first book, Dirty Rocker Boys, was being swallowed up by the costs of getting me back on my feet. Welcome to American healthcare, a black hole designed to consume every last dime in your savings account.

  The police report came back. Because there was no proof that I had been hit, they decided that the accident must have been caused by negligence on my part, which meant my car insurer was under no obligation to cover any of my costs. I called my insurer in tears. We went back and forth until finally they agreed to give me money for the totaled car, but nothing toward my healthcare.

  One day I was on my computer and a pop-up ad appeared. “If you have a GM car and have been in an accident, click here.” I clicked on the link and learned that General Motors, which owned Pontiac, was being sued for billions and was recalling certain vehicles with a 2003–2007 model year. Some of these vehicles had a condition with the ignition switch that would suddenly turn off the engine. The article said nearly one and a half million GM cars were at risk and that the recall condition “may have caused or contributed to at least thirteen front-seat fatalities.” I did more digging and found that there had been nine recalls on the make and year of my vehicle, which taken together could cause the ignition to shut off, even at high speeds, if there was anything heavier than a key on the keychain. Imagine throwing your car into park when you’re going seventy miles per hour. It’s going to jerk wildly, a tiny car at high speed, spinning out of control on the freeway, as time slows down to a crawl…

  Finally, my car insurer sent me money to the tune of ten thousand dollars for the totaled car—a fraction of what the accident had cost me to that point, but a welcome cash injection nonetheless. Josh and I decided to use the insurance money to purchase a new car so he could drive for Lyft and Uber to support us while I recuperated. One day, I mentioned that I would be needing the new car later that week, but Josh said no. I pointed out that I didn’t need his permission to drive my own fucking car.

  “It’s not your car, Bobbie, it’s my car,” he said.

  I demanded he hand me the spare key immediately, pointing out that it was my money that had paid for the car. We fought all day, and still, he refused to give me the
keys. The power balance had shifted, and the days of our happy dysfunction were over. Each argument grew viler than the last. I started to hate him, but I needed him, and the cycle grew more poisonous with every passing day.

  “PUT THE FUCKING BREADSTICKS IN THE FUCKING REFRIGERATOR, BOBBIE!”

  It had come to this. My cute millennial boyfriend had turned on me, screaming at me and calling me names because we’d gone out to dinner and I’d forgotten to put the leftovers in the fridge. I picked up breadsticks and sent them flying in the air toward his head. As they made contact, I could see the truth in his eyes. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. His hot, older blonde with a rock ’n’ roll pedigree was now a needy invalid on crutches whom he was responsible for. The spell was broken. After the breadsticks happened, we started sleeping apart. Never again would I share a bed with Josh.

  •••

  My body ached. I felt like an old, out-of-tune piano. So, when the TV show Botched called to say they wanted me, believe me, it felt like a blessing of the highest order. I know, I know, being invited to appear on a show about plastic surgery fuck-ups might not sound like everybody’s idea of good news, but for me at that time, it was a lifeline. It was a return to work, plus a chance to get my body retuned, for free. I was so excited for a fresh start. I wanted the cameras on me again. I wanted to feel beautiful, not like the useless wreck Josh rolled his eyes at every day.

  The show’s producers told me I needed to undergo a set of tests with their medical team to confirm I was in good health, then we’d be good to go and they’d start fixing my breast implants. I took the tests, excited for my small-screen comeback. A few days later, the show doctor called with some unexpected news.

  “Bobbie, I’m afraid you have syphilis.”

  “Syphilis? Are you nuts? There must be some mistake!”

  “No, your test came back positive. It’s still in the first phase, so you should seek treatment immediately. Unfortunately, your STD diagnosis means you’re no longer eligible to appear on the show.”