This Might Get a Little Heavy

by Ralphie May

  Easier said than done. While I was in Houston, I was staying at a place we called the Comedy Frat House behind Star Pizza off Shepherd Drive by the freeway, and I couldn’t remember the phone number there. I couldn’t give her my phone number in LA either, because I didn’t have one yet. I was still getting settled. So I gave her the next best thing: my 1-800 pager number that I got from JJ, the King of Beepers.1 Twentieth-century baller, baby!

  She called me the next day. I didn’t call her back. The day after, she got the phone number of the Frat House from someone at the Laff Stop and left a message:

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this. You told me to call. I have legitimate questions I want to ask you. Don’t give out your fucking number if you have no intention of talking to the person.”

  She had a point. I called her back immediately.

  “Why didn’t you call me back the first time?”

  “I had to make sure.”

  “Make sure? Of what?”

  Basically, I was testing her. I wanted to make sure that if I spent time teaching her about comedy, my time wouldn’t be wasted. I wanted to know that she was willing to go after it, to chase her dream, because that’s what this business is all about. The test to see if she’d call back was a snapshot of the entire business she was trying to get into, and a measure of whether she had it in her to persist and persevere.

  That’s what I told myself after the fact. In reality, I was probably nervous or high, or nervous and high.

  I went back to LA shortly after that, and we kept talking. We’d talk on the phone almost every night. Over the next year or so, I was back and forth between Los Angeles and Houston a lot, partly to work and partly to see Lahna. Even when I was in town, though, it was difficult to see each other in person. I worked normal comic’s hours, and she worked crazy hours at Channel 13 News. Her shift started at 3:30 a.m., which was pretty much when I would be getting home, and she’d get off at about 11 a.m., which was right about when I’d wake up. We were on almost exactly opposite schedules. We could make it work when I was in Houston, but when I was back in Los Angeles, we had to develop a system. Every day I’d call Lahna around noon, right before she would take a nap, then at night she’d call me before I left to do spots at the clubs. We’d talk for hours when we could, cracking up laughing the whole time. That was our routine.

  Never in a million years did I think I would date Lahna Turner. She was from a rich Jewish family in Memorial—a fancy Houston suburb—and I was a dirty-white-trash Methodist from Arkansas. I was fat, she was fit. I sold weed on the side, she was a good girl. She wasn’t some dizzy broad either. She had a good head on her shoulders. She didn’t drink, she didn’t do drugs, she just wanted to do comedy. She obviously noticed how mismatched we were (it was hard not to), but we could both tell that this was more than just a friendship developing, that something special was here, because this was back in the day before cell phones and anytime rollover minutes. These were long-distance phone conversations we were having, and that shit was expensive.

  I was back in Houston for the holidays later that year when Lahna invited me to dinner to meet her parents. It was at some fancy French restaurant way out in Memorial the weekend after Thanksgiving, so her sister and brother-in-law would be there too. We weren’t even officially dating, so my plan was to be casual and polite and talk about Lahna from the perspective of a fellow comedian.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Turner,” I said as we all sat down to dinner, “it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Y’all should be so proud of your daughter. She is so funny and she has so much talent.”

  “Who are you to tell me about my daughter?” Lahna’s mother shot back.

  So it was going to be one of those nights, huh?

  My apparently presumptuous comment had broken the seal, and Mrs. Turner just started laying into me. Dinner turned into a two-hour volley of accusations, explanations, rebuttals, and judgments. I felt like a hostile witness in a special episode of Law & Order. She grilled me on who I was, where I came from, how much money I had in the bank, what I was doing with my life.

  “You mean you didn’t go to college?” she spit at me like venom.

  “No, ma’am, there isn’t any college for what I love to do.”

  Lahna’s sister and brother-in-law didn’t say a word. Periodically I would try to catch their eyes, but they were heads down in their meals. This place must make some great fucking bisque, I thought, because these people were silent the entire dinner, even as Lahna’s mother got more and more out of line. I couldn’t believe Lahna’s father didn’t intervene to tell his wife to knock it off. Not out of any sense of decorum, Lord knows, but from a strategic perspective.

  Assuming Lahna’s father felt the same way as her mother, what could they possibly expect to gain by attacking my life choices when those were exactly the choices their daughter was trying to make? I stood up for myself at every turn, which meant I was standing up for Lahna by extension. Obviously they didn’t like the idea of their beautiful daughter seeing some fat goyish dude, but still the whole thing was absolutely crazy to me, because we weren’t even officially dating yet, and all they were doing was pushing Lahna closer to comedy and deeper into my arms.

  In the aftermath of our disastrous family-dinner date, I invited Lahna out to LA to spend some time with me and then accompany me to the Palm Springs Film Festival, where a film I had a small part in, called On the Turning Away, was entered into competition. Mama Turner did not like this one bit. She liked it even less when Lahna said yes.

  * * *

  We spent three or four days in LA together before the film festival. We went all over together. We went to the beach, we went to Beverly Hills, I took her to the Comedy Store and the Laugh Factory—it was so great.

  The day before we left for the film festival, we went for a walk down the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard and ran into a woman I’d dated briefly the spring before. But this wasn’t just any woman. This was Tara Weissmuller, the granddaughter of the guy who played the original Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller. She was doing a charcoal etching of her grandfather’s star on the Walk of Fame when we bumped into her. Tara was a striking figure who had worked as a model. I think she even landed a Vogue cover. I introduced Lahna to Tara as my friend from Houston, and we all had a good laugh when Tara pointed out how interesting it was that the Lana Turner’s star on the Walk of Fame was close by. Like any exchange with two women you have had, or want to have, sex with, it got uncomfortable quick. I told Tara we had to get moving, and she responded by giving me her new phone number and telling me to call her … right in front of Lahna. No chill on that one, I tell you.

  I felt like I knew Lahna well by that point, so I wasn’t too worried about what her response to that exchange was going to be once we got back to my place. And even if I was, I had bigger problems to deal with at the moment—I had to piss badly. We’d been walking forever, and all the Diet Coke I’d been drinking had filled my bladder to capacity like the ballast tank of a crab boat. My car was parked up by the start of the Walk of Fame on La Brea, but I wasn’t going to make it. I gave Lahna the keys and told her to go on ahead, I’d catch up.

  Hollywood Boulevard is both the worst and the best place to have to take a leak. The street is infested with homeless people, so shopkeepers don’t let anyone off the street use their restrooms. But since the street is infested with homeless people, it’s already a urinal. The only place in the immediate vicinity that felt safe to let it rip was next to an empty building with one of those street-level window wells that had wrought-iron fencing around it so people couldn’t fall in. I was basically pissing into a window, which meant I would fit right in on Hollywood. I hadn’t been going for more than ten or fifteen seconds when I saw a black-and-white Caprice come rolling around the corner in my peripheral vision.

  Shit, LAPD. Lahna’s mom already hated me. Imagine if she had to fly her daughter home because she’d emptied her checking account to bail her not-quite-boyf
riend out of jail for public urination. I quickly stuffed the yogurt hose back into my pants, with the spigot still open, and whipped around to see if I had to make a run—or more likely a vigorous walk—for it.

  On the list of Worst Types of People on Earth, my top three are child molesters, rapists, and terrorists. But number four, and they don’t lag far behind, are assholes who buy cop cars at auction and don’t repaint them. Do you have any idea how many accidents those motherfuckers have caused? And I mean real accidents, not the kind I just had in my pants.

  When the adrenaline dump finally subsided, a wave of relief overtook me, but it couldn’t change the damage that had been done. I’d peed my pants. What can you do in that situation? I got back to the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, turned to Lahna, and blurted it out: “I just pissed my pants!”

  When I told her what had happened, we laughed about it all the way back to my place, which, mercifully, was only eight blocks away. Pissing yourself is hilarious right up until the water part of the urine evaporates from the fabric and all you’re left with is piss crystals. The last thing you want is to be stuck on the 101 in bumper-to-bumper traffic when that happens.

  Once we made it back to my apartment, I started a load of laundry, took a shower, and we just hung out, talking. Lahna tried to be casual about it, but eventually she had to ask, “So, um, who was that girl?” She didn’t ask in an angry, accusatory way; more like a “Wait, do I have competition here?” way. Having this gorgeous woman essentially pursue me in front of her sort of threw Lahna, I think. Then, combined with how I stood up for her to her mother barely a month earlier, it started to click for Lahna that maybe I was somebody she could date seriously. She has never admitted it, but I’m convinced that our little run-in on the street with Tarzan’s grandbaby went a long way to getting us together.

  The next morning I got up early to drop a deuce, burn some incense, and brush my teeth. I wanted to present myself in the most positive light instead of running the risk of coming off like a living, breathing, shitting stink machine. When I finished, I hopped back in bed and Lahna got up. She brushed her teeth, hopped back into bed with me, and we just started making out. It was amazing to have a beautiful young girl in my bed to make out with. But it was so fucking frustrating to have a beautiful young girl in my bed who only wanted to make out. My balls ached so bad, it felt like someone squeezing a beefsteak tomato right up to the point that it exploded in their hand. And not in the good way. When Lahna finally went to the bathroom to take a shower I furiously beat off twice—once for each ball—just to relieve the pain. Caged monkeys haven’t cum that fast.

  We drove out to Palm Springs for the film festival later that day. In keeping with the spirit of the low-budget indie film I was there to support, the producers put us up at a Super 8 Motel out in Indio, not even in Palm Springs proper. I wouldn’t call it a shithole per se, since the desert out there is so dry that when you shit, it just turns to dust and disappears with the wind, but I wouldn’t call it the Four Seasons either. Regardless, it was good enough for us to pick up right where we left off with the make-out session in LA and maybe take it to the next level. Foolishly, I thought that with our being at a fancy film festival, as an invited guest of actual Hollywood producers, this would be the night that she gave up that monkey, but she was resolute. All we did was make out … for her entire visit. At the time I was in equal parts agony and ecstasy, but now I kind of believe that if she had given it up on that trip, we would never have gotten together for real.

  After the film festival we were both headed back to Texas by way of Lafayette, Louisiana, for a gig. Getting ready to leave, Lahna stopped in the doorway of my apartment at 1440 North Gardner. She was wearing overalls, and her long brown hair, wet from the shower, was soaking the overalls straps.

  I’ll never forget the look on her face. “What’s going to happen when we get back to Houston?”

  “Well, we can just pretend like none of this ever happened.” I knew a bunch of assholes were waiting for us back there, who knew she was out here with me. I wanted to protect her, so I gave her that out.

  “I don’t want that.” She thought it might even be that I was ashamed of her.

  “Lahna, that could not be further from the truth, sweetheart.”

  “Okay.” She sounded relieved.

  We agreed to keep on seeing each other and kissed right there in the doorway, sealing the deal. We were officially dating. January 9, 1999.

  * * *

  The gig in Lafayette was a two-nighter—Friday and Saturday. I was headlining, my buddy John Westling was the feature, and Lahna was doing a guest set, which effectively made her the opener. It was the first time we worked together as a couple, which could have gone any number of ways. It could have been weird, it could have been a disaster, it could have been torture. It ended up going fine. The only part that was torture was that Lahna and I shared a room and again all we did was make out. I knew she wanted to take things slow, and I respected that, but even a sloth would have been, like, “Lord Jesus, won’t you people just get to fuckin’ already?!”

  We came back to Houston from Lafayette on Sunday morning, and I drove Lahna to her parents’ house, where she was living. I knew they were out of town that weekend, so a little part of me thought that this could be the day if I played my cards right. I knew Lahna wanted to be sure, and she needed to feel totally safe and comfortable before we had sex for the first time, so I devised a plan to expedite that if she invited me in … which she did.

  Lahna had a pet cat named Whiskers, who was important to her. She talked to me about the cat frequently. Once she even mentioned that the cat didn’t like her last boyfriend and how that was a signal that maybe he wasn’t “the one.” I was going to make goddamn sure that Whiskers loved me like I was made out of catnip and toilet water. So at breakfast before we left Lafayette, I saved some of my bacon and put it in a little baggie that I stashed in my pocket. This being a Jewish household, I knew this fucking cat had never tasted anything resembling the magical deliciousness of bacon. My hope was that after his first bite, he wouldn’t stop following me around and he’d jump on my lap and nuzzle me, showing Lahna unequivocally that I could be trusted.

  It worked on both counts.

  When Whiskers took down that piece of bacon, he looked at me like one of those deaf babies right after the doctors turn on their new cochlear implants for the first time: What is this magical world am I just now discovering for the first time?!

  Lahna looked at Whiskers looking at me, then looked at me like Whiskers looked at bacon, and upstairs we went. We ended up making love for the first time that day, right there in her parents’ house, which made it kind of weird, but also just so, so karmically sweet with her mother.

  You mean you didn’t go to college? No, ma’am, but I did just go to town.

  The next day, Monday, Lahna and I planned to meet up at the Laff Stop for open-mic night. She was going to get there early to sign up, but I was going to be a little on the late side since I was scheduled to teach defensive driving at the Comedy Showcase from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

  I pulled into the Laff Stop parking lot around 9:30 p.m., walkin’ on sunshine, and there was Lahna outside, waiting for me.

  “Ralphie, everybody is talking about how you and I are having sex. Why are you telling everyone that we were hooking up when we weren’t?”

  What the fuck? Lahna is a composed person, but she was visibly upset, which made me upset. I knew something like this might happen with these fucking assholes, but what I didn’t understand was how they found out. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours since we had sex for the first time—I barely believed it still.

  “They’re saying all sorts of awful things too, telling me you’re a liar and a hack and a joke thief, and that I shouldn’t be with you. How do they even know we’re together, Ralphie?!”

  I hadn’t told anybody that we were having sex, or dating for that matter. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to tell the worl
d from the minute we kissed in the doorway of 1440 North Gardner, but I had kept everything to myself.

  I went completely insane with anger. I grabbed the bat from under the front seat of my 4Runner, went inside, and told ever motherfucker in there that if they didn’t shut their goddamn mouths, we were going to have a big fucking problem. And if you had a problem with me, come on and meet me outside. I was ready to literally kill anybody who crossed me or wanted to get smart with me that night. Nine people had to hold me back from going after every single guy in there who I knew had tried to fuck me or prank me or talk shit about me or run me out of comedy. I wanted Lahna to tell me which one of these malicious assholes was saying the things she told me out in the parking lot, but she wouldn’t do it because she could see the murderous rampage that was about to snap off up in that bitch.

  What was most frustrating of all about that night was that it didn’t need to go down like that. A large chunk of what they were speculating about with Lahna and me was actually true, but their intent was to divide and cause harm. To her immense credit, later on Lahna calmly explained to people at the Laff Stop that we actually had slept together and we were dating, but that they all needed to stay out of our relationship and mind their own fucking business, because next time she wasn’t going to stop me from using that aluminum bat upside their worthless skulls.2

  * * *

  Our relationship remained long-distance for nearly two more years. We saw each other maybe once every two weeks—either I’d come to Houston or she’d come to LA, or we’d work together on the road somewhere—but it was never for long stretches. You have to remember, Lahna was still just a young comic in Houston trying to make headway and make a name for herself, just like I did when I first arrived in Houston a decade earlier.

  She was doing it too. Unfortunately, she had to do it against a headwind of hot air being blown by all those cancerous asshole comics who were constantly trying to get in her head and under my skin. They were intent on undermining our relationship, and they nearly succeeded. After the incident at the open-mic night, Lahna was more guarded and wary of me than she ever was before. For years, she never completely trusted me because she had no way to know for sure that I didn’t tell anyone. The drama and jealousy of the local club comics—most of whom are now out of the game or right where I left them when I left Houston—nearly cost me a marriage and two beautiful children.