This Is Not Fame

by Doug Stanhope

  “Suck that dead niggers cock you aids ridden cunt!” followed by “Go fuck your mother, you inbred twat” and then upped the ante with the eternally quotable Mark Twain quote “Go rape your dog you twat.” They were all equally inane and only one contained the word “nigger” and another softened to “black.”

  With the litany of abuses he blurted in a row, I couldn’t understand how you could possibly pull out one that is punishable with a prison term while all the others were deemed inconsequential. Someone is getting imaginary AIDS here! There is a hypothetical mother being made love to by her own offspring! And what about the dog that is being raped? Does no person on this wicked island care about the animals??? For the love of Pete! The only person here who seems to be faring well in these fantastical trolling scenarios is the so-called nigger. He’s getting his dick sucked as he lies dying. AIDS be damned, who wouldn’t want to go out like that? He is the hero in the whole played-out troll. If the kid had to go to prison for unimaginative tweets, my outrage lies with the imaginary dog being raped. I’ve seen what that can do to people. Dogs can’t even go to therapy.

  Now the cyberbully article switched from Liam to me, who victimized her by referring to her as a cunt. Once. On the Internet. Oh, the inhumanity.

  “Stanhope turned out to be an American ‘comedian’: being horrible and offensive is his job description.”

  No, my job description is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. Horrible and offensive, if that’s how you see it, is simply my style. It’s your style as well, but you do it to incite, not to entertain.

  “Doug invited his unmerry men to join in the fun. Stanhope has 83,000 followers on Twitter and he directed them to “read this—Allison Pearson’s column.”

  In full, my first tweet on the matter read: “To fully understand my rage and upcoming vitriol you’ll first need to read this cunt @allisonpearson’s column…” with a link to the rubbish article. I posted it so that people would be familiar with the piece when I talked about it onstage that night. Allison failed to understand that my act is my “column.” I use Twitter to promote it. I’m sure she’d have no problem fitting the entirety of her hollow and hobbled arguments into 140 characters and still leave room for a hashtag, but I try to flesh it out more and save it for the stage.

  “Over the next 48 hours, I learned a lot about Stanhope fans as they swarmed over my Twitter timeline like killer ants.”

  No kidding. My followers can be fucking brutal. They even scare me sometimes. I sometimes feel like the leader of some sub-Saharan African nation that changes names every four months and never makes the Western news despite the constant bloodshed. Meaning I fear that the small populace who was once loyal to me could turn on a dime and necklace me in a burning tractor tire in the town square with the same fervor with which they’d once elected me.

  Pearson had previously tweeted that they were like a swarm of locusts and in another article she called them “swarming killer termites,” both of which are a bit more creative than “ants.” I liked “killer termites” the best. Before that I called my fans the “Sausage Army” without much enthusiasm as I didn’t want to exclude the ladies who already seemed to be excluding themselves.

  The moniker “Killer Termites” has stuck ever since for my hardcore followers. She couldn’t even understand the concept of an Internet troll. A troll is an anonymous person starting shit for the sake of it without fear of retribution. I am not a troll.

  I stand up alone in front of people nightly, my exact location announced well in advance, and speak my opinions openly and publicly. I have no personal security team and the ones the venue employ sometimes charge me the ticket price or don’t let me in at all. Sometimes my only security is luck, when I’ve stepped out to smoke and violent marauders go after the gay guy onstage instead.

  People like Allison Pearson have always been the trolls, sitting hunched over with a finger sandwich hanging from their mouth, typing out whatever reckless pap they please for the daily news with impunity. They are quickly becoming moribund vaudeville acts. The shoe is on the other foot as we, the people, have columns and readers of our own. She wrote what I found to be loathsome, I gave her a bad review on Twitter and all of a sudden the flurry of email she got wasn’t so pretty. And I’m not even famous.

  Tony Nicklinson lost his case with the high court for his right to die that year. Shortly afterwards, he died of natural causes. I like to think that he died naturally like Mother. And I like to believe his last word was about Allison Pearson.

  BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK.

  The Killer Termites went on to do things under the banner of good as well. Rebecca Vitsmun had her house blown to rubble in a tornado in Oklahoma. She barely escaped in time to save her own life as well as her child. Wolf Blitzer managed to corner her in the wreckage of what had been her house for an interview. He closed the interview by asking her if she thanked the Lord for her good fortune of leaving just in time. He was probably used to a lot of Lord-thanking in Oklahoma.

  Rebecca shyly responded, “Actually, I’m an atheist.”

  It went briefly viral with Blitzer looking like a dick after a meth-jack.

  I was drunk when I saw it and immediately had Hennigan set up a page on a fundraising site. We put it out on social media and within days, the Killer Termites and atheists everywhere raised over a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to rebuild her home. She didn’t. She fled the Jesus mongers in Oklahoma and bought a house outside of Seattle.

  The people who follow me aren’t all mean. But they are for the most part all bored and angry and, good or bad, they need an outlet.

  Sometimes I think I could start a cult. Sometimes I’m sure of it. It could be funny in a certain state of mind. Like when you’re hammered and everything is hilarious. But in the morning, I’m sure I wouldn’t want to.

  Fame is something I’ve had a taste of only enough to show me that I wouldn’t want any more. Like eating eggplant. If you don’t like a little, you wouldn’t like a lot. To a very small group of people, I’m very famous. It can be disconcerting to have a girl unable to speak and start crying at the merch table after a show when you’ve just played in some sweat-locker dive that wasn’t even sold out and only a dozen people in line for a DVD or a T-shirt. But to that one girl, it’s Beatlemania and I feel like it’s my fault for not being more widely known. Especially because it’s a girl, a rarity in my fan base.

  I’ve had a lot of people get tattoos of either my face, my autograph or quotes from my act. Some are terrible and I don’t know how to react when they show me. Google image search “doug stanhope tattoos” and see what I mean. If it’s a tattoo of my head, well, you’ve seen my head. Unless it’s a cartoon version or the artist in question took enough artistic license that he faced losing his license altogether, it’s not gonna look good. The autograph tats are even worse. My signature is a lazy, indecipherable scrawl where you might be able to make out the D and possibly the S depending on the level of my booze tremors when I originally signed it. Skin is difficult to sign anyway and the oils fuck up your Sharpie. The looser the skin, the harder it is to sign, which has led to many embarrassing moments when a drunk gal thinks it’d be cool to ask me to sign her baby-drained cleavage. Dudes as well. I was out after some show when a guy asked me: “Will you sign my balls? Because last time you signed my dick.” I don’t doubt that I had.

  “No problem. Pull ’em out and batwing ’em.”

  I like the tattoos of my quotes. My favorite might be one guy who had a dagger plunged downwards through the skull of a fetus with a ribbon around it that read: “Would You Know My Name.” It’s a nod to a bit I did about going to heaven only to be confronted by the angry abortion that I’d had. The bit trails off with those Eric Clapton lyrics written about his child who died crawling out of the window of a high-rise. I’m flattered but I wouldn’t want to be that guy trying to do the entire bit in order to explain the ink.

  I’ve had
a standing request for friends who tell me they are going to have a child. I ask that if the baby is born disfigured or deformed enough that it could actually sell tickets in a freak show, they will give it the first and middle names “Doug Stanhope” regardless of gender. This hasn’t happened yet but if it ever does, I will tattoo the names of the parents on my ass as my first tattoo. Quid pro quo.

  As I’ve said before, I’m only famous within a hundred yards of my show and only for an hour before and after. I rarely get recognized in general life so when it does happen, I usually find it pretty fucking cool. It’s cool when you’re sitting in first class dressed like an asshole (I find it important to always be dressed ridiculously if I fly in first. It upsets the people you are pretending you aren’t one of) when some kid walks by boarding, stops and looks at you.

  “Holy shit! You’re Doug Stanhope!”

  I will fist-bump him and smile, knowing that for the rest of the flight, all these stooges sitting around me will be wondering what a “Doug Stanhope” is other than a fashion god who just made some young man spatter his pants. I fly often enough that I have top-tier status on Delta and usually get bumped up to first. If I’m traveling with Bingo and I get bumped up without her, I’ll keep the upgrade even if I plan on slumming back with her in coach. I’ll drink my free pre-flight cocktail in first and wait until everyone is onboard before retreating back to Bingo before takeoff.

  “Excuse me, fat uncomfortable guy holding in your own girth in a bear hug. Would you mind trading that middle seat for a seat up in first class?” which is always greeted with cacophony from every other middle seat in earshot. “I will! I will!” Of course I could have just told the airline at the counter that I wouldn’t need the upgrade but fuck them. I want the credit for regifting that prime seat. I earned that seat by flying 125,000-plus miles a year. I want the accolades.

  First-class and diamond status are addictive and if I find that I’m short of the required mileage towards the end of the year, I will start flying and I won’t stop until I hit my mark. Tucson east to Boston, all the way west to Anchorage and then back home. Never leave the airport. That was an easy one. Others were through LAX and then fourteen hours to Sydney, Australia. Stretch your legs for a couple hours before getting right back for the same route home. The longest was Tucson through Atlanta and then fifteen hours—the longest nonstop commercial flight going at the time—to Johannesburg, South Africa, for a few hours where thankfully they have a smoking bar. Hit the gift shop to take in the culture before catching a plane to Amsterdam long enough to have some drinks and a few cigarettes in the Delta Sky Club that is also blessed with a smoking room. Then off to Detroit just in time to catch the flight to Las Vegas where I hit the smoking cubicle and napped on the floor before I headed to Salt Lake City where they had smoking cubicles (evidently they’re getting rid of them) and then back to Tucson. Seventy-seven hours total, fifty-seven of them in the air. More than twenty-four thousand miles. Diamond status achieved. For twenty-two hundred dollars I’d get to skip the line and be bumped up to first class for another year. Plus, I got to see the world! If you find yourself flying Delta in any given December, check the hashtag #AirportPubCrawl on Twitter and maybe I’ll see you in a smoking bar.

  I enjoy telling people that I am flying to Africa without any follow-up or reason why. I want them to believe I have any interest in travel outside of getting airline status. I would feel far more intriguing. The truth is that I have zero interest in any country’s culture, history or landmarks. I like their bars, prisons and mental institutions, the latter two not easily toured. I find no reverence in playing on the same stage that Buddy Holly or Bert Convy once performed. It’s quite possible that Geronimo once squatted and shat on the very same earth where I set up a game of cornhole in the yard. That is nothing but random trivia and that poop is long gone, turned into soil and possibly even grown a tomato. It’s way cooler to think that I may have eaten Geronimo in a BLT. It doesn’t mean anything to me unless it’s funny. Taking a dump on the same toilet that Elvis died on would be worth a tour of Graceland and the residual backlash from the security guard who chased me out. That story would have comedy mileage.

  I don’t need to see the Serengeti in person. I have the gift of cable television and I don’t even look at the African plains on National Geographic channel unless I can pause it, get a fresh cocktail and not risk ebola or a violent government overthrow. I only needed to see one video of a botfly being pulled with tweezers out of some dude’s eye to dismiss going on an African safari. Fuck Africa. Aside from the airport smoking lounge, an oddity as rare as the protected species in their wildlife refuges.

  The one time I did leave an airport during one of my mileage grabs—this one Tucson through Seattle to Narita, Japan, to Honolulu and then back through LAX home to Tucson—was only due to the twelve-hour layover in Hawaii and the fact that Roseanne Barr was there. She lives on the Big Island but I texted her early on during the run on the off chance that maybe she was in Honolulu, and she was. We made plans to hook up at my second favorite day-drinking joint, Arnold’s Beach Bar, well hidden in Waikiki. I got there before the bar opened and checked into the seedy yet still overpriced hotel next door just to leave my backpack and change from my garish polyester 1970s traveling suit into some khaki shorts.

  I ate breakfast at the overcrowded egg joint out front with a balcony view of Arnold’s below. I ate an egg and a piece of toast, nursed a coffee and newspaper while waiting for any signs of life at the bar that doesn’t open until the ungodly hour of 9 a.m. As soon as I spotted the cute bartender hauling chairs outside, I paid my tab and went down to help arrange the patio. I’ll do the chairs, lady. You have more important work to do. Like that bartending thing I’ve been waiting so patiently for. Her name was and probably still is Dawn and she’s one of the best bartenders in the world who I can remember. “Remember” is a key word. Next I spent approximately forty phone calls trying to explain to Roseanne the name and address of the place repeatedly as well as instructions on how to call a cab.

  Roseanne is one of the funniest human beings I have ever met. By the time she’d maneuvered her way through the odyssey of figuring out getting dressed and getting in a taxi, it was already 10:30 a.m. and I was getting a bit souped. Remember I’d already logged about ten thousand miles and the equivalent amounts of Xanax and cocktails. But I know that Roseanne can catch up with you in a single shot of dark tequila or Maker’s Mark.

  Dawn the bartender, Roseanne and I had this hole-in-the-wall tiki bar to ourselves and by 11 a.m. we were dancing to Chuck Berry on the jukebox. By noon I knew that I had to get food into Roseanne if she was going to stay upright any longer. We went down the street where we got an appetizer at a hotel bar as well as more cocktails. We sat on their patio alone and drank and smoked. You can’t smoke on the patio and Roseanne doesn’t really smoke but she was smoking and nobody said shit because she is Roseanne. So I smoked too.

  The thing about Honolulu is that when you are shitfaced in the afternoon, you can decide to go swimming in the ocean to wake up. Unlike Costa Rica where the ocean freezes over ten months out of the year. We zigzagged our way to a beach gridlocked with people to jump in the ocean in our underwear. I told Roseanne that we could just leave our clothes and her bag with some kind folks on the beach. I pointed out a nearby couple that seemed ethical, who she rejected as untrustworthy based on the book he was reading. It wasn’t Mein Kampf or Fifty Shades of Grey. Just something innocuous that queered her on some personal level. She’ll be the first person to tell you “I’m batshit crazy and people don’t even know the half of it!” We then meandered the beach while she profiled people worthy to keep an eye on our shit. Finding qualified candidates, we stripped to our skivvies and jumped into the ocean, laughing like children. It was one of the happiest afternoons of my life.

  Nobody would have known that this was Roseanne Barr unless she opened her mouth to talk but all we did was laugh. We grabbed another drink on the way back a
nd then I poured her back into a cab. As I wandered, trying to remember my way back to Arnold’s, an urgent need to piss came up on me in a way that made me regret never getting a prostate exam. Honolulu is like walking the Las Vegas Strip without the conveniences. Giant buildings that seem close but would take you ten minutes to get from the sidewalk to the front door. And these aren’t even casinos. These are mostly condos and time shares. I didn’t have time to pass a credit check and sign a lease in order to take a crucial piss. Finally I saw one that seemed to have a sign for a lounge and was closer to the street. I raced in only to find that the lounge was only open on certain days for happy hour and only open to the residents. When your colon or bladder have heard the news from your brain that you are that close to a bathroom, there is no printing a retraction.

  I ran out and spun the corner of the thirty- or forty-story superstructure looking for anything to piss behind. A tree, an electrical box. A heron or a hobo. There was nothing but open air and full views. I made the decision to try to pull my short dick down and out of the long legs of my shorts and surreptitiously piss while I walked towards the back of the building. This resulted in me pissing all over my leg, shorts, socks, shoes and my hand. Mid-piss, I thought I’d gone far enough around the building that I could turn around and finish pissing on the way back. I turned around just in time to see that I’d been being followed the entire time by an angry, retired DEA agent. I’m profiling here but that’s what he looked like. There was no doubt about the angry part.

  “What the fuck are you doing???” he said as though he had to eat dinner off of this same walkway.

  I wanted to explain the whole story. The whole day, the whole crazy flight. Every reason this city sucked when you had to piss and the drunken bliss of fatty-dipping in the sea with Roseanne. Instead I just sped-walked past him without eye contact and finished pissing in my shorts. I got back to Arnold’s with enough time to tell Dawn that I’d pissed my pants and to have a few more drinks before changing back into my suit, ditching said shorts in the hotel room and catching my next flight.