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Sleepwalk With Me

Page 3

by Mike Birbiglia


  Looking back on it, could there possibly have been a more confusing acronym for trying to keep kids from experimenting with drugs than DARE?

  “Kids, we’re here today to DARE you not to do drugs! We DARE you to accept our DARE!”

  “Officer, does that mean you want us not to do drugs, or to do drugs?”

  “We DARE you not to do drugs!”

  “But I thought we weren’t supposed to do things we’re dared to do. If you dared me to jump out of a tree, I shouldn’t do that, right?”

  “It’s just an acronym, son.”

  “What is an acronym?”

  It was confusing, but I still got a free DARE T-shirt, and the day before we were to receive our DARE certificates of completion, I took the chance that could ignite my fledgling rap career. I approached Sister Mary Elizabeth and proposed that my friend Eric and I perform a two-man rap song called “Bust Them Drugs,” a takeoff on Young MC’s popular hit “Bust a Move.” Originally there wasn’t going to be a talent show portion of the event, but I thought a parody rap song with all-new lyrics was in order, and for whatever reason, she thought that was a good idea also. Maybe she had the foresight to realize that twenty-two years later I would need a ridiculous anecdote for my book to demonstrate what an attention-starved delusional maniac I was, or perhaps she thought it would buy her another five minutes to sit in the back row with her eyes closed reconsidering her lifelong commitment to Christ.

  If Young MC had happened to walk into the basement of St. Mary’s School on that spring morning and witnessed Eric Marciano and me prancing around with microphones, screaming our made-up lyrics to “Bust Them Drugs” over his 1989 hit “Bust a Move,” he would not have been impressed. We were a good three or four bars behind the beat, repeatedly referred to our notes for lyric reminders, and since we didn’t have the instrumental version, our lyrics collided with his actual lyrics, quite harshly. Even Eric and I, who thought we were pretty good, realized that our rap performance would have to be cleaned up a bit before we headed out on tour. We’d also need to get an instrumental version of “Bust a Move.”

  To be a comedian you have to be delusional. I think it’s because the human brain can’t process the amount of judgment that an audience casts upon you when you do standup comedy. If you’re in a play and it doesn’t go well, the audience thinks, We didn’t like the script, or the set, or the costumes. In standup comedy, there are two hundred strangers in a room thinking, We don’t like you. All this stuff that you’re about—we’re not into it. To become a comedian you have to tell yourself it’s going quite well, otherwise you wouldn’t get on stage the next night. You’d just think, I guess human beings don’t like me.

  I can’t even describe my first time doing standup. I was in a contest and it felt like I was under anesthesia. I came off stage and asked my friend, “How did it go?” And he said, “You’re gonna be okay.” I do remember the second time.

  One of the judges of that contest was a comedy club booker/restaurateur named Evan. He asked me if I had a car. I didn’t, but my girlfriend Abbie did, so I said, “Yeah.”

  He said, “I can set you up at a place called Fat Tuesday that will pay you $50 if you can perform thirty minutes of comedy.”

  What I should have said was, “I only have about eleven minutes of material.” What I did say was, “Perfect.”

  I drive Abbie’s mint-green Ford Taurus to Fat Tuesday, one of those days-of-the-week restaurant chains: T.G.I. Friday’s, Ruby Tuesday, Ash Wednesday’s, Holy Thursday’s. Fat Tuesday wasn’t as much a comedy club as it was a bar that had a comedy night. Frankly, “comedy club” is a pretty subjective term to begin with. To have a comedy club all you need is a bar and a wall of eight-by-ten photographs of comedians. Actually, they don’t even have to be comedians, just people in black and white looking zany.

  I’m nineteen years old and I show up at Fat Tuesday. I look up at the wall of photos of people who may or may not be comedians and think, These people must be geniuses. How do I get my picture on a wall like this? I try to pick out the famous ones—the Chris Rocks, the Jerry Seinfelds, the George Carlins. They are not on this wall. It’s like being handed a stack of old baseball cards and flipping through them trying to find the Reggie Jacksons or Pete Roses, but it’s just all Felipe Orlandos and Dan Pasquales. Optimistically, I think, These must be the real comedians. The underground guys who are the real deal.

  So now, thoroughly intimidated by the headshots of Katherine Clousterbom and Ted Finklestein and his red puppet Fiddlesticks, I’m whisked backstage—backstage being the sidewalk of a strip mall. I’m scared to death because they’ve agreed to give me fifty dollars for thirty minutes of comedy. And I know that I do not have that.

  I ask Matt Marcus, the comedian I’m opening for, “Hey, what happens if I run out of material?”

  “Just make fun of people.”

  I say, “I don’t know if that’s going to go so well. Whenever I do that, people punch me in the face.”

  “You’re the one with the microphone.”

  I don’t understand. Am I supposed to hit people with the microphone if they try to punch me?

  I’ve discovered since then that making fun of audience members is an entire genre of comedy. Comedians have entire acts that consist of pointed nuggets like, “Nice shirt, faggot!” To which the people around that gay-shirted audience member reply, “It’s so true! His shirt does suck! This guy’s a genius!”

  I’m standing on the sidewalk, holding a 3x5 index card with five bullet points. I’m desperately trying to figure out how I’m going to stretch this into thirty minutes. It says: “Stick Insects. Cookie Monster. A-Team. Teletubbies. Millionaire. Slash.”

  This was the material:

  Stick insects

  I’d hate to be a stick insect because all the other insects are always bumping into you because they don’t know you’re there, and you have to be like, “Watch it.” And they’re like, “Yeah, you look like a stick.” And you’re like, “I have eyes.” And they’re like, “Yeah. They were closed.”

  So that’s stick insects. That’ll last three to five minutes.

  Cookie Monster

  I’m not sure if Cookie Monster is a great role model for kids. I mean, do you think this guy might have an eating disorder? He only eats cookies, and the back of his throat is sewn up. The cookies just kind of fall off his face. Who is that guy kidding?

  That’s the whole joke, there. That’s gotta take up about five minutes.

  A-Team

  I love that show The A-Team, but sometimes I get the sense that they weren’t really trying. If you’re on the run from the law, you might want to go easy on the gold chains and feathers. Maybe take the red stripe off the van . . . Just a couple of ideas.

  We’re probably somewhere past twenty minutes now.

  Teletubbies

  I just read that Jerry Falwell was upset because he thinks the Teletubby Tinky-Winky is gay. And I’m like, “Which one isn’t gay? Is it Dipsy or Laa-Laa?” Like, “I think Dipsy and Laa-Laa are definitely heterosexual, living in the Midwest, starting a family, etc., but I have a feeling about that Tinky-Winky.”

  Nearing twenty-five minutes, I think. Is there time to squeeze in a few last bits?

  Slash

  I was watching the show Politically Incorrect and the musician Slash was on and he was complaining that there was too much violence on television. His name . . . is Slash.

  I’m staring at my notecard and it’s dawning on me, this is definitely not thirty minutes. And then the manager opens the door and says, “Mike, go.” I turn around and throw up on the sidewalk. It’s like my body can’t take it and is like, What do we do? Let’s get rid of some food!

  I walk through the door. And the guy on the loudspeaker says, “Please welcome Mike . . . Ba . . . hooski!” which is really not even close to my name. I’m so mad. I think, You didn’t even try. You just said B and then whatever you could think of and you made me Polish and that’s a really spec
ific choice. I stand on stage and perform four minutes of comedy to complete silence. It’s almost as if these people haven’t watched Sesame Street, Teletubbies, or The A-Team in years.

  I walk off stage and apologize to the audience under my breath. The manager calls me into his office. And I’m so nervous. It’s just me and this strange man in his office the size of a telephone booth and I fear the worst: Does he have a gun? Is he going to punch me?

  He doesn’t.

  He takes out fifty dollars and hands it to me. And I say, “Thanks,” as though that gun scenario has never crossed my mind.

  He says, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have an eight-by-ten photograph of yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Can you send me one?”

  “Okay.”

  I drive home and I know what I have to do if I want a comedy career: I need to get an eight-by-ten photograph of myself immediately.

  At one a.m., I walk into Abbie’s apartment and she asks me, “How did it go?”

  I pause, and think for a moment. And then I say, “It was amazing.”

  PLEASE STOP THE RIDE

  In seventh grade, people started making out with each other. This was very upsetting to me. I didn’t even understand the concept of making out. I was like, People we know are making out with other people we know? But how?

  My sex education to that point had been minimal. I had certainly always been interested in girls, but I wasn’t so sure they were as interested in me.

  Leslie Saliba lived across the street from our house when I was four. Two years older than me, smart and pretty, Leslie was “the girl next door,” both in the way she’d be characterized in Hollywood and in her location. She was the first of a string of women in my life who have viewed me as a very good friend.

  When Leslie and I became friends, I was so young that I could barely speak. I’d call her on the phone (which was absurd because she lived seventy yards from my house), and if she wasn’t home, I’d let the phone ring endlessly, while staring across the street at her driveway waiting for one of her parents’ cars to pull in. I was three; I did not have a lot of other appointments.

  “Hello?” (Out of breath.)

  “Can Leslie come out and play?”

  “What? No. Leslie’s not home, Michael. Leslie will call you later.” I wouldn’t wait until later. I’d call back in about forty minutes. It felt like four hours.

  When Leslie and I did play, usually we’d walk in the woods and Leslie would invent fantasy scenarios. Queen-servant. Princess-ogre. Occasionally we were fellow explorers, but even then I would take the fall. She’d make a mud pie (out of dirt, not chocolate) and ask me to taste it. I would. I was the same person who shat in the backyard.

  Leslie and I played almost every day for the better part of seven years, after which Leslie went to middle school. I’ll always remember the day she came home and said to me, “I met a boy.”

  And I thought, I’m a boy. But I said, “Cool.” I knew I didn’t stand a chance with those middle-school kids. I was Tinkles.

  Around the corner from us lived Jesse Nolan, who was responsible for my sex education from ages nine through thirteen. Jesse was also two years older than me and very wise in the ways of women. At least that’s what he told me. He’d say, “I don’t know what it is, girls just like something about me. I can’t put my finger on it.” And I couldn’t put my finger on it either. Jesse was this hyperactive, eye-shifting, husky guy who used to trade baseball cards with me in a way that left me with fewer and less valuable baseball cards after every session.

  One day Jesse took me into the woods behind his house and showed me a stack of porn he had stolen from older kids. He kept these issues of Penthouse and Hustler in tree trunks, not the most weather resistant of hiding spaces. So we’d leaf through pages of soggy old porn. This was my first experience with nudity other than my own. The closest I had come to seeing a woman naked was in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Since my parents never gave me a sex talk, all I knew was that sex had something to do with swimming.

  Jesse had a discrete furnished basement and a TV with HBO, which in the eighties played soft-core porn around 2:30 a.m. So if we could coax our bodies to stay up with the help of candy and soda, we would find ourselves watching a film that might or might not have a woman in skimpy or no clothing. Sometimes we got burned. One time we stayed up late to watch Candy Stripe Nurses. The description in TV Guide was “Young sexy nurses and their hospital adventures.” Perfect. Adventures! We know what that means, right? Well, their adventures weren’t all that sexy. Take for example “Marisa,” who was ordered to do volunteer work as a punishment for assaulting her teacher. She fell for a young man accused of knocking over a gas station and did some investigating to try and clear his name. And then there was Dianne, who fell for a basketball player, whom she tried to talk into giving up drugs. Those were not sexy adventures but quite thoughtful. I felt like the filmmakers had played a trick specifically on sexually frustrated insomniac twelve-year-old boys.

  One summer Jesse introduced me to masturbation. I was in his furnished basement when he put on some bootleg porn, got under a blanket and started moving around furiously.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Jerking off.”

  “What?”

  “Grab a sock from that drawer.”

  “Why?”

  “To jerk off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you touch your dick?”

  “Sure.”

  “Till white stuff comes out?”

  “I think so?” I hadn’t. But I played along.

  I grabbed a sock, put it on, and then jerked off until white stuff came out. That was very satisfying, I thought. I’m going to do that a lot.

  And I did.

  At one point Jesse introduced props into the solo-sex trade. He took out a banana-shaped “vibrating muscle massager” from the Sharper Image catalogue that his dad used for his sore back.

  Jesse said, “You can use this.”

  “For what?”

  “To put against your dick.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Go in the bathroom and use it. It’s great.”

  “Um, okay.”

  I went into the bathroom and tried to use this muscle massager. It didn’t feel too great. I felt like I had when Jesse tricked me into trading my George Brett rookie card for assorted Boston Red Sox “future stars.” Also, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure that massager was intended for women.

  So in the seventh grade when people started making out, this came as a complete shock. It just seemed so intangible—like this alien ritual, where these two aliens just attached orifices all of a sudden. I was like, “I am not doing that!” And collectively all the girls in my class were like, “That is fine. You are not on the list. You’re not exactly a first-round draft pick for this new activity.” Making out always seemed kind of gross to me. It still does. I’ve always heard this homophobic argument, “I don’t like it when I see two dudes makin’ out in the street!” I feel that way about anyone. Making out is sloppy. It’s like a dog eating spaghetti.

  The only prerequisite for a makeout party was a furnished basement, a two-liter bottle of Fanta, and a Debbie Gibson CD. I remember kids I had known my whole life suddenly started making out with each other. It was as though this had been their plan all along. Like there was this secret conspiracy. “Once we’re twelve years old, we’re going to just start making out with each other. But don’t tell Mike Birbiglia. He might try to get involved.” Everyone I knew was losing their mouth virginity.

  These makeout parties took place about once a month and one by one I lost my closest friends to the makeout club. For a while, my closest ally was Matthew Sullivan. We would regularly write off the members of the makeout club: “Making out is stupid.” “Frenching is for losers.” (Since when do kids know anything about French culture?) I felt like one of
those kids who proudly wears a chastity ring but secretly hopes that someone will just start having sex with them. So Matthew was in the non-makeout club with me. Informal, of course. There were no meetings of the non-makeout club. Those would be sad meetings. “I call this non-makeout meeting to order. First order of business: Nintendo. Second order of business: Why doesn’t anyone like us?”

  So Sullivan and I were in the non-makeout club, but I knew it was only a matter of time. Michelle Calandria was on his tail. Michelle planned an end-of-the-year birthday party, timed with a New Kids on the Block concert she had gone to the night before. Romance was in the air, and Matt would need every bit of strength he had to hang tough.

  I remember being in Michelle’s basement, listening to “Stairway to Heaven” and pouring myself a cup of Fanta with no ice. I looked up and saw Matthew Sullivan locking lips with Michelle. Next to them was my friend Eric Marciano making out with Margaret Billingsley. I had lost two friends in one night. I still don’t like Led Zeppelin to this day. I try to intellectualize it, but I think the truth is I’m still angry that they created an eight-minute makeout anthem that separated me from friends I had known my entire life.

  The non-makeout club was lonely. I started thinking, I want to be part of the makeout club. My only prospect was Lisa Bazetti, an adorable girl I’d become friends with—thanks to an alphabetically ordered seating chart. We spoke daily on the phone about homework and one time I made her laugh. And I thought, I gotta do that more. So I did. And then at one point I got her laughing so hard, she said, “You gotta stop, I’m gonna pee myself!” It was the closest I had ever come to a vagina. I spent the next fifteen years trying to get Lisa Bazetti to pee.

  Lisa had many suitors; Tim, Rajeev, Jeff, and me. I was in fourth place in all the trade publications—7th Grader Weekly, Middle School Monthly, Pre-Teen Beat. Lisa was a popular gal, always on the verge of peeing. One night when we were on the phone, I built up the nerve to ask her to go to the carnival. And she said yes.

 

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