This Is Not Fame

by Doug Stanhope

  I came close to that dream years later when the burn victim guitarist from Metallica was in the audience at a show in Mill Valley, California. I didn’t have him thrown out but I did voice my displeasure in how they fucked up a good thing that had just started working for me and spewed a string of abuses to pass along to the smarmy drummer fuck. I took from the smirk on his face that he hates the drummer too. Or maybe that was just scar tissue.

  The Internet still survived in the wake of the Napster ruling as did stealing shit, and my shit was getting out there. Here and again someone would email me and tell me they liked my ill-gotten tracks and were coming to a show. My show. Not just comedy and not just some dudes I’d dropped acid with two years ago in Seattle. Actual fans.

  Horse may have not been the first one but he’s the first one I remember. Horse had found my stuff online and drove several hours with his wife to a show on a Wednesday night, a night where only about eighteen people who actually lived in that city bothered showing up.

  That made it even creepier, figuring this guy must have been under some unfortunate assumption that I was popular.

  After the show, I went next door to some sweaty bar for beers and invited Horse and his missus along with me. He was my first fan—at least on that level and, fuck, they’d got a hotel for the night and everything. I felt like apologizing for some reason.

  So I got juiced up, and we played some pool. He and his wife not only drove a long way to see me but brought gifts. Like I was a big shot. He brought me a sweater based on a rubber-fist joke from my first CD, a joke that I didn’t remember, a joke which he had to repeat to me. I drank with them after the show even though I had nothing to say. I was so perplexed that I had actual fans from this new world of the Internet that I felt an obligation I didn’t know how to handle. I wanted to pay him gas money for his trip. Instead I suggested we have breakfast the next day. I say a lot of things when I’m drinking that I won’t mean in the morning.

  My social skills are dependent solely on my alcohol consumption. Breakfast with me consists of silence with my head buried in a newspaper and zero eye contact. But breakfast we did, followed by some photos and a quick ga’bye.

  Through no fault of his own, I’d given Horse every indication that this was the start of a close friendship rather than an extended “thank you for coming.”

  Horse emailed more and more and each one got longer. Lots of personal stuff that I wouldn’t even want to know about my actual friends. He’d come to every show anytime I was in the area, always bearing gifts, and sometimes staying at every show for the full long weekend. I was on the verge of hiring writers to come up with things to say to him while he was busy saying anything and everything about nothing to cover the painful silences. Usually, if I have anything to say at all, it’s only what I have to say onstage.

  Don’t get me wrong, Horse wasn’t a bad guy. I’d overcompensated and led him to believe this was more than a comedian-audience relationship. And I couldn’t find an easy way out of it. I started it and didn’t know how to tell him that the show was over. It felt deceitful to read awkwardly intimate emails that one should only be telling to a deeply trusted confidant.

  Eventually I decided to handle it the way I do most sensitive situations. I got drunk and said it rudely. Horse and I were not destined to be brothers in arms, do a cross-country road trip or sit in our golden years looking back at the good old days. I’m sure I hurt his feelings at the time, especially in the way I conveyed it. I was without question the dick. But we got past it and we’ve still shared an email here and there over the years. Usually it’s when he’s dying of cancer or is considering suicide again because of it. But now we can laugh about it without him thinking I’ll be a pallbearer.

  Horse taught me an important lesson as my first fan who traveled a long way to see my show. Like they tell rookie athletes who overcelebrate a minor accomplishment:

  Act like you’ve been there before.

  Just don’t be a dick about it. The way David Cross was to me once and I have been to people far too many times since.

  This is not to let the audience off the hook altogether.

  There is a little-known phrase I’ve recently learned for a person, called a “shot-clog.” It is used to describe an irritant who is only tolerated because he is buying the drinks. I know him well. In the early years of living glass to mouth, we as young, broke comedians—we needed that guy. Later he became my reason to flee the bar. Now I may have become him. Who knows.

  What I do know is that there is no such thing as a free drink. I’ve never bought a drink for a lady who I didn’t know just because she looked thirsty. There is always some level of expectation, if only a thank you.

  Most times, someone buying me a shot after a show is just a common way to say thanks. But then there’s always the one guy who needs way more than an hour of laughs. He probably hated the fact that he had to sit through the show to get to the part where he needed the “more.” He needs someone to talk to, he needs a friend. He’s heard your stuff and knows that you and he are so much alike that you should listen to his ideas or his jokes or his outlooks. And if you do that, he will still need more.

  He will need you to leave a voice message on his friend’s phone. The friend wanted to be there but is on house arrest. He will tell you that the friend’s name is Chance so you should “fuck with him about that,” as though the name is somehow inherently funny. You go along this far because you can’t find a way out. He smells that and buys another round of shots. Remember, this is a guy who didn’t even buy your DVD at the merch table. That would have been an even trade that was quick, cut and dried. He wanted to buy you a drink so you would owe him your time.

  Now he wants to take you to his favorite bar and it’s really close and it’s fucking wall-to-wall pussy and you’ll love it and he’s fine to drive. You look around and all the people you really did want to talk to have left, and the comedy club is closing so you capitulate and agree to go with him. His car is a 1984 Pontiac Fiero and you shouldn’t mind all the stuff on the floor. The bar, it turns out, isn’t very close at all and he wants you to listen to a cassette tape of his trance music he’s been working on. You try to be polite and listen but he keeps turning it down to explain what inspired it or to apologize for the quality of the recording or to ask if that’s a cop behind us. Then he calls his friend and says, “You won’t believe who is in my fucking car right now!” You cringe as he tries to explain who you are, right in front of you, to someone who doesn’t know or care. He offers to pick the friend up while you make passive-aggressive gestures to the fact the car is a two-seater. He tells you not to worry about it, that his friend won’t mind jamming in. You pick up the friend and have to sit sideways as they start talking in disjointed stories that were really funny to them but you really had to be there and you’d have to really like the band Yes.

  You get to the bar and it’s a near-empty rib joint where he used to work and he was hoping that his other friend would be bartending so he could get free drinks, but the other friend got called back up to active duty and was about to be shipped off to war. This casts a pall over your hosts, who start parroting CNN as though they are political majors while the bartender says they are closing early. You ask to buy a round because somehow you feel like you still owe him. You ask for a beer but all they have are local craft brews. You ask for the one that tastes most like Miller Lite and the bartender looks at you like you’re a peasant. The guy who brought you sees that look and says, “Do you even know who this motherfucker is? Oh, man!” but then gets distracted before you even get credit for being a comedian. Any comedian.

  You overtip and drink a beer that tastes like socks while he orders only a Coke under the auspices that he has to drive. With the bartender having his head in the cooler, your guy pulls out a flask to spice up his soft drink. He winks at you to assure you’ve seen him pull the Big Con. Your only hope is that you will now be going home since this fantastic bar is shutting down. Bu
t then your guy starts telling you about an even better bar that you have to see and tells you not to be a pussy. You order a shot just before the bartender locks the cabinet and he glares at you like he’ll have to milk the liquor out of his own prostate. The other friend who sat half on your lap in the car has left with a waitress and yelled that we’d “meet up” at the other place.

  Follow this through as long as you like. This guy will never have enough of you. You could be doing prison time for him so you wouldn’t be a rat. You could be midwifing his illegitimate child so he didn’t get busted for cheating on his old lady. You owe him for that drink.

  No matter where or under what circumstances you finally walk away from this guy, he will tell you that you are “all Hollywood and shit.”

  And then you are the dick.

  I have found three sure-fire ways to get out of these situations after a show when you just want to decompress and have a lonely drink at the bar. Three ways to get away from That Guy.

  One, tell him you will be right back, that you have go to get paid. He will not come between you and cash, especially since he thinks you must be rich anyway since you were onstage and all. He will think that money is probably gonna come back and pay for all of his hospitality. You know, since you guys are friends now.

  Two, look over both shoulders and tell him in a hushed tone to stay put, that you’re about to hook up some drugs. Don’t be specific about what type of drugs. Leave it open in case there’s a drug he wants to be in on. Even if he doesn’t do drugs, he will immediately feel like he is “in the loop,” a confidant and a trusted lookout or a getaway driver.

  Number three is pussy. If you tell a dude that you have to sneak out because you’re about to get fucked by a stray chick from the show, he will back off and most likely fist-bump you. If he tries to stop you, he’s your brother-in-law. And even then he’s a dick.

  As bonus advice, this also works in reverse with hitting on a chick after the show. Tell her you are trying to avoid some drunk dude and that the only way he will leave you alone is if he thinks you’re about to get laid. That allows you both to “pretend” to be flirting. And drinking leads to dancing.

  Also, don’t give away your trade secrets in a book. Now they will see it coming when I tell them that I’m about to get laid by the drug dealer who is going to pay me for my show. All Hollywood and shit.

  GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL

  I’d set a 4:45 a.m. wake-up call with the front desk to get the hell out of Costa Rica, unaware that my bowels would be twisting me awake on their own merely ten minutes before the phone rang. My guts shed one of those evacuations where you’re afraid to look down afterwards because it feels like it must have been all hot innards. That much blood spilling out of you wouldn’t leave you a lot of time to cancel the taxi and say your goodbyes.

  Turns out it was just perfectly timed, gut-wrenching water-shits. I was just getting off the toilet when the front desk called to send me on my way. It’s odd when you want to high-five your own violent diarrhea for it’s fantastic timing.

  Bingo had skipped her sleeper pills so she wasn’t so hard to prop up in the elevator to the taxi. Her regular meds make it difficult enough for her in the morning. Sleepers and an early flight on top of them would make her so comatose that some valet is gonna need to be overtipped.

  We’d had problems at Liberia airport the previous year from a loud-mouth passenger and this time we got it from the pigs. Costa Rica has come into the new millennium when it comes to overzealous, undertrained and simply dirty, mean and bumbling police work.

  The gals at check-in were cheery, probably glad they didn’t have to be working in a brothel to make a living but that’s just a guess. I guess the same as when I see girls working the Arby’s counter and they aren’t unhappy.

  One asked Bingo if she was okay—Bingo’s eyes were at half-mast—and Bingo said she was just tired. It was 6:30 a.m. and we’d just taken an hour-long screaming cab ride, like a flat roller coaster with potholes and livestock on the tracks. Any person would look like they aren’t all there.

  While I was trying to con my way into first-class upgrades, the chummy girl wandered off to talk to some other airport employees. She motioned towards us, I assumed trying to get me an upgrade. Nothing seemed amiss.

  After we got our boarding cards and fond farewells from the happy cunts at the check-in, Bingo and I went out front to smoke our final “we only smoked because we were out of the country” cigarettes. We’d quit for nearly a year going into the vacation but smokes were something like seventy-five cents a pack in Costa Rica. It felt like we’d be losing money not to start again.

  There were rows of seats four to a section facing each other in four different groups. We sat on a couple of chairs and lit up. A couple sat directly across from us. They had tags around their necks yet were in street clothes. They appeared to be low-level employees who’d probably have enough access to steal from your bags but would still have to take off their belts to get through security.

  The guy was scary, an attribute as rare in Costa Rican men as “gorgeous” is in their women. They have smoking-hot hookers in Costa Rica but those are 99 percent Colombian or Brazilian imports. This guy was Turkish scary. If this were Midnight Express, this guy would be Hamidou, the sadistic prison guard. And the girl with him looked Costa Rican.

  I was smoking and begging for time to pass so I could fall asleep on the 8 a.m. flight when I saw that prison guard guy was giving me death-eye. If it was merely stink-eye I would have chalked it up to simple “I hate Americans” and I would have had empathy. But this was seething death-eye. Someone who wanted to fuck you up, and right now for no discernable reason.

  Angry paranoia is as much a part of my mornings as coffee is in yours but once Bingo noticed, I knew it wasn’t just a delusion. Bingo isn’t observant. She wouldn’t have noticed if we boarded a sailboat home instead of a plane but she noticed this guy. This was something personal. We got up and moved to the next row of seats where now our backs would be to them. They got up and moved with us immediately like shadows, sitting straight across from us again, and staring. We were like boxers between rounds in our corners.

  Now that we knew it wasn’t an accident we moved once more, very deliberately, and once again to the last row of four seats. Seconds later there they were across from us, fixated and glaring like angry hypnotists.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I said more like a beleaguered time-share sales mark than someone who wants a confrontation.

  No reply.

  The sense of dread that was coming over me shot my booze shakes into full rattle. And I could feel another wave in my colon rumble. Bingo followed my lead and we got up to ask two uniformed police officers nearby if there is a smoking area inside, past security. They said there was. It was the only direction to go that was away from the creeper couple and towards our goal of home. We put out our cigarettes, took our bags and headed that way in a hurry.

  The goon duo followed us and when we went through the metal detectors, they went around security without a word spoken or a question asked, like it was their own home. Now we knew we were fucked. They had to be undercover cops. We got through security with no issues. The two had disappeared into the airport as we collected our bags from the conveyor belt. All the while I had to shit but now I was afraid the door would be kicked in as they thought I was flushing whatever they thought I was hiding.

  They were waiting for us in the smoking area inside the boarding area. Crafty cunts. Now we had to go to them. And although we now knew they were caging us, we weren’t going to leave our secret smoking vacation without burning a few more cheap cigarettes.

  We walked into what would be ten square feet and two benches of smoking area with just the four of us. I wanted to cut to the chase.

  “Can I help you?” I had a tremor in my voice.

  Then Bingo chimed in—which she tends to do when she should absolutely not. Bingo can never grasp the good cop–bad cop play.
Anytime I go bad cop she goes all the way into Chicago cop.

  “Why the fuck are you following us around? What the fuck do you want?”

  “We are the police.”

  “Well, what did we do? Did we do something wrong? Are we not supposed to smoke here?”

  “No, you did nothing wrong.”

  And then back to the blank devil stares. The dead eyes of the robot-dyke were now as frightening as the raging young tico.

  After a cigarette, two more men in sport coats and badges showed up with that smiley cunt from the check-in counter, the one who’d pointed us out. She said, “These are government men and need to talk to you.”

  Of course, these government men spoke no English so she began talking for them.

  “What do you do? Why is she not well? Where did you stay? What hotel? Do you feel ill?”

  “I am a stand-up comic. She is mentally ill and her drugs make her drowsy. We stayed in some place in Flamingo. What kind of mental illness, you ask??? Schizoaffective, bipolar disorder? Why? Are you familiar with it? Are you a doctor? We have the prescription drugs in her checked bags if you’d like to see them.”

  Then it got very scary. “They need to separate you to interrogate you.”

  I sincerely believe that the word “interrogate” was just a poor translation choice when she really wanted to say “ask you some questions.”