by Lance Rubin
I never told Dad about Improv Troupe.
But the more I think about it, the more I can’t imagine joining. The idea of performing is stressful enough, let alone when I’ve just found out my dad might (but probably won’t) die. The Steven Wright article is still up on my laptop, and my eyes land on a joke quoted toward the end: I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
I look again at the photo of me, Mom, and Dad on vacation. I place a hand over Dad to see what the picture looks like without him.
6
Okay, since you’re probably desperate to know, here’s the terrible, traumatic thing that happened at my bat mitzvah.
The theme of my party was “Winnie’s Funny-Joke-Haha Comedyland” (Dad and I came up with that together), with table names that were all comedy-inspired (“Bridesmaids,” “The Simpsons,” “Kate McKinnon,” etc.), so my sweet father thought it could be fun if I did ten minutes of stand-up during the party. My first reaction? AWFUL IDEA. I was stressed enough preparing my Torah portion, trying to wring every inch of Judaic pathos from my wavery off-key alto, and now I was supposed to make my stand-up debut too?
“Come on,” Dad had said, “it makes perfect sense that as you become a Jewish woman, you would embrace your sense of humor, which, for centuries now, has been one of the essential gifts of our people. Besides, you love this stuff, and you’re always saying you wish there were a place where you could get your feet wet performing.” I had been saying that, but I hadn’t actually meant it. Yes, I’d been doing impromptu bits with my parents my whole life, and those bits usually killed, but the idea of testing that material on people who weren’t them was—how should I put this?—terrifying. “Well, here’s your chance!” Dad had continued. “There’s no friendlier crowd than your family—they’re gonna eat up everything you do.”
If only that had been true.
I reluctantly agreed, cobbling together a set out of some of my personal Greatest Hits: impressions, characters, my best material on the foibles of middle school existence.
I even started to get excited about it, maybe even a little cocky. So much, in fact, that I didn’t follow my instincts and speak up when Dad suggested I do my set immediately after our family entrance. I don’t know how many bar/bat mitzvahs you’ve ever been to, but usually at the beginning of the party, everybody gathers on the dance floor as the DJ announces the bat mitzvah girl and her family, who have been awkwardly waiting outside the room during the first couple of songs. They then enter to something horribly cheesy, like “We Are Family” (don’t google it), and everyone cheers, and it’s all pretty mortifying. (I had asked my parents if we could skip this part, but they both thought it would be “fun.”)
Anyway, the plan was for the DJ to then turn off the music and hand me a mic, and I would stand in the center of the dance floor and tell jokes. Seems great, I foolishly thought. Catch everybody while they’re riled up and feeling good, after my peers had thrown back a couple Shirley Temples during cocktail hour.
So I stood there on the parquet floor, all my friends and classmates sitting around me, rows of cousins and aunts and Mom’s coworkers standing behind them. Leili and Azadeh were just below me, which was helpful, and to my right was my current crush at the time, Rory Tan, a quiet artist boy who I’d recently started having actual conversations with. A few days before the bat mitzvah, we’d even joked about how he was going to dance with me at the reception, and we were going to do the tango, and it felt like maybe we weren’t joking. So I was, of course, highly attuned to Rory’s presence as I began my first bit.
“Hi, everyone! I’m a woman now!” I shouted. “Hope this doesn’t mean I have to start packing my own lunches!” It was an easy joke, and everyone laughed, including Rory. It was to be one of the last genuine laughs I would receive that day.
Throwing on a huge, curly wig with a bow in it, I segued directly into my impression of Gilly, one of Kristen Wiig’s most famous Saturday Night Live characters. As I said her famous line (“Sorry”) and moved my eyes back and forth, I got a huge laugh, but as I repeated that same line over and over again, it dawned on me that the character doesn’t work without other actors to play off of. Like, at all. The laughs petered out until I was staring at a brick wall of plaster smiles. I decided to abandon my character bits and go right to my more relatable stuff.
“What’s the deal with middle school, anyway?” I asked. (I had recently become obsessed with Seinfeld.) “What is it exactly that we’re in the middle of?” I hoped this high-concept joke would click with my peers, but other than generous pity laughs from my parents, Leili, and Azadeh, who smiled and nodded with everything they had, the room was silent. Some guy named Steve who Mom works with coughed a few times. I made eye contact with Rory, who quickly looked away.
I knew it wasn’t going well, but I thought I could steer the plummeting plane to safety. I went into a riff comparing the way kids treat each other in middle school to the various dinosaur behaviors in Jurassic World, and sure enough, I started hearing giggling from some boys just left of my feet. An adrenaline rush of pride coursed through me. I knew the dinosaur stuff would click with them; boys are so predictable.
But the laughter was continuing too long, and when I looked down, I saw Patrick Valenti trying to sneak a peek up my dress, four other dudes—not Rory, thank god—egging him on and cracking up.
I was so shocked I didn’t even have the words to call them out on it. I just took a few steps backward and went on autopilot with the rest of my material. It didn’t even occur to me that I could end early.
I wish it had, because right after that, I was talking about what life must have been like before tables existed—admittedly some of my weaker material—and over the speakers came the sound of canned studio laughter, like on a sitcom. I assumed the DJ had accidentally hit a button, but he gave me a thumbs-up and a wink, like I got your back, and inside I was like No, please, don’t do that again, but I didn’t have the words to stop it. The next two minutes were torture, a sea of horrible sound effects—studio laughter, rim shots, sad trumpet sounds, and, most devastating of all, fart noises—cutting into the spaces between my jokes, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
The most brutal part is that the sound effects actually got people laughing again.
“That’s all the time I have,” I said, finally, just how I’d seen it done by so many before me. I waved, there was pity applause, the DJ who’d comedy-gaslit me cued up “Bad Blood,” and I beelined out of there to the women’s bathroom, where I huddled in a stall and tried to disappear.
Here, of course, was the problem with positioning my set at the beginning. Now I had an entire party to get through. Mom and Dad tried to get me to come out of the bathroom, to convince me it wasn’t as bad as I thought, and a half hour later, I succumbed. I suffered my way through “Hands Up” and “YMCA” and candle lighting and unsolicited comedy advice (“You should have been louder,” Grandma Mitzie said, “really shouted the jokes out, you know?”) with the unshakable feeling that I was walking around with egg dripping off my face.
And that’s why I swore to never ever perform comedy again.
Oh, and this goes without saying, but Rory Tan and I never danced together.
He and his family actually moved to San Francisco the next month. It was probably unrelated, but it’s impossible to know for sure.
7
Dad is buttering toast while listening to NPR, and Mom is out the door to work moments after I step into the kitchen. Just a normal day in the Friedman household.
I’m almost tempted to ask, “So, that whole ALS thing…Did that really happen or…?” But Dad starts ranting about something Congress did, and I join in, and it feels regular and routine and reassuring, so I don’t.
It’s only when I bump into Leili at her locker before school and she gives me a huge hug and tells me she’s around to talk about my dad whenever that I have confirma
tion it definitely happened. I tell her thanks and smile and say nothing else, which Leili knows means I don’t want to talk about it. So she makes a quick pivot to the status of my involvement with the Manatawkin Improv Troupe.
“Oh man,” I say, tugging on the strings of my green hoodie. “I keep forgetting that’s today.”
“No pressure,” she says, “I just know you were thinking about joining.”
“Yeah, totally.” I try to ignore the panic rising in my stomach like thermometer mercury. “I think…I decided last night that now isn’t the best time.”
“Of course, sure.” Leili gently closes her locker, the opposite of a slam. “It can be kind of cheese-town anyway. Though…it might be a nice distraction.”
“Maybe, yeah, but…Thanks, Lay. You the best.”
“Come on,” she says, rolling her eyes and blowing me a kiss as we walk in different directions.
Of course, that immediately gets me rethinking my decision.
I think about it pretty much nonstop for the next seven periods, rancid bat mitzvah flashbacks aggressively looping through my brain until I can finally say for sure I’m not going. I know I could be funny, but I’m not in the demon-confronting mood.
“Winnie?” Mrs. Tanaka says, in a tone that suggests it’s at least the second time she’s said my name.
“Oh,” I say, “yes?”
“Would you care to take a stab at the question?”
I, of course, have no idea what the question was, let alone the answer. I know she’s asking something having to do with chemistry. Because that is the class we’re in.
“I, uh…” All eyes are on me, a feeling I generally despise. I stare at the board, hoping for a lifeline, but it’s not helpful. There’s just one word scrawled up there: meniscus. On a different day, that would definitely make me giggle. I take a wild stab in the dark. “I think if you combine—”
“Please pay attention in my class, Winnie,” Mrs. Tanaka says, mercifully cutting me off before I can embarrass myself further.
“Yes,” I say. “Sorry, I…Yes, I will.”
I’d usually be mortified by something like this, but today I appreciate the brief brain break.
For the rest of the class, I do my best impersonation of a focused student, nodding vigorously at everything Mrs. Tanaka says, and I keep that can-do spirit going into Mr. Hutnik’s US history class, too. When the final tone of the day sounds, I grab my books and head for my locker. I’m not doing Improv Troupe; it’s just not in the cards right now. Evan Miller will have to live without me.
“Hey there, soldier,” Evan says, as if I’ve summoned him by thinking his name. He falls into step next to me.
“Oh, hi.” I wish I’d said something funny or at least halfway clever. Then again, he’s wearing a red Elmo T-shirt underneath his plaid button-down, so this might not be someone I should be trying to impress.
“You’re coming, right?” he asks, ruffling his shaggy brown hair in a way that seems practiced.
“I, uh…”
“To the first improv meeting. More fun than Nam, remember?”
“Yeah, I know what you’re referring to, I just—”
“I already told Mr. Martinez you’d probably be there, so.”
Why the hell…?
“Well,” I say. “I already told Mr. Martinez you probably wouldn’t be there, so. Looks like we’ve got quite a conundrum on our hands.”
Evan laughs. “See? So frickin’ funny. Conundrum. Who says that?”
“Me.” Not gonna lie, the rush I get from making him laugh is the best I’ve felt all day. Maybe Leili was right. Maybe a distraction is just what I need.
“I’ll be there,” I say.
“All riiiiiiiight,” Evan says.
* * *
—
I’m overcome with nausea and nerves once I walk into the auditorium, the phrase WHAT AM I DOING reverberating in my brain. Aside from the Bat Mitzvah Incident, my last time on a stage was in sixth grade, in the middle school production of Annie, pretty much killing it as Annie’s dog, Sandy, a portrayal equal parts mischievous and heartwarming. I want to draw confidence from that, but who am I kidding? I was playing a dog. I didn’t even have any lines.
“Ahhhh,” Leili says, practically galloping my way before enveloping me in a hug. “I’m so glad you came.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s gonna be fun. Pinky swear.” Leili pulls out of the hug and sticks out her pinky. I grab it and pretend to rip it off. She pretends to scream in pain. I pretend to put her pinky in my pocket.
“Thanks, Leili,” I say.
“Come sit over here.” Leili pulls me down the aisle to the third row, where two girls are standing and chatting. “Hey, you two, this is my friend Winnie. She’s really funny.”
“Oh, hey,” the tall girl facing me says, leaning slightly to see around the head of the girl she was talking to. I remember her from the performances I saw last year, super-confident and super-loud. (I have a naturally quiet voice, so I’m always impressed when people don’t.)
The black-haired girl she was talking to turns her head and torso toward me. It’s Jess Yang. “Hi,” she says, barely interested, definitely not remembering me from play rehearsals, before animatedly restarting her conversation with the tall girl.
“That’s Rashanda and Jess,” Leili says, thrown by their lack of friendliness but trying not to make a deal of it. “But you already know Jess from Arsenic—”
“Right, yeah,” I say, cutting her off so Jess doesn’t hear, which would make me feel more painfully uncomfortable than I already do.
Leili stares toward the back of the auditorium. “Once Mr. Martinez gets here, it’s gonna be really fun.” I know she feels some personal responsibility for me coming and wants to make sure I’m having a good time. I stare along with her. It’s not too late to make a mad dash for the door.
But then Mr. Martinez glides in down the aisle. “All right, everybody, we’ll get started in a minute,” he says. “Sorry I’m late.”
Leili sits and pulls me down into the seat next to her. She’s beaming with excitement. “That’s him.”
I get it. Mr. Martinez is a very handsome man, especially for a teacher. Black hipster glasses. Soulful brown eyes. Light stubble beard. Leili says he’s twenty-four, “which means that he’s only nine years older than us, so once we’re out of college and in the real world, it won’t even make a difference,” which is where I get grossed out. Come on, he’s still a teacher.
He walks up the steps to the stage, dropping his blue messenger bag and organizing some papers before turning around to us. “Welcome back, my friends. Why don’t you all join me onstage?”
My organs shrivel into raisins. But Leili is already on her feet, urging me to mine. I head toward the stage.
Evan Miller appears ahead of us, leaping up the stage steps like a frog, his limbs flailing outward, then compressing down to the ground as he shouts “Ribbit!”, cracking up at least four people around us. Highly cheesy. I am again tempted to make a run for it.
“Cheesy,” the guy ahead of me says to himself, and it’s the hugest relief. I realize it’s Fletcher Handy, who I had no idea was into performing. We were in algebra together last year, and now we’re in the same homeroom and English class. Over the summer, he transformed his curls into a flattop, which I’m about to compliment him on until I remember Phoebe Robinson’s book You Can’t Touch My Hair. Definitely don’t want to be the white girl exoticizing his hair. I don’t even know him that well.
“Go go,” Leili says behind me, lightly shoving my back in her eagerness to prove to Mr. Martinez the depth of her improv devotion.
“I’m going as fast as I can, Lay. Chill out.”
“Sorry,” she says.
When we get onto the stage, we join the fifteen or so of our peers
sitting and facing Mr. Martinez, who’s still standing. “So, okay!” His hands gesture wildly as he speaks. “Hello hello! I’m excited to be back with you all. I see lots of faces I recognize, and some I don’t, which is great, and I just want to say year two of Manatawkin Improv Troupe is going to be even more spectacular than year one was.”
Lots of people cheer, including Leili, who makes a triumphant shrieking sound I’ve never heard from her before.
“What what,” Evan Miller says in a deep voice.
“Now, before we go any further,” Mr. Martinez says, “a question for our new folks: Do you all know what improv is?”
“No, I ain’t got no idea,” Evan says in a Southern accent, getting a huge laugh.
“All right, all right,” Mr. Martinez says. “We’ll get to the funny stuff soon. I’m asking for real, though.” He looks straight at me, so I feel like I have no choice but to speak.
“Um,” I say. “Improv is, like, uh, making up things on the spot.”
Leili softly grunts with concern, which is annoying, because I know I’m right.
“That’s true,” Mr. Martinez says, a twinkle in his hipster eye, “but I actually asked a yes-or-no question, so your answer is incorrect. Listening is a huge part of improv.”
Dammit! Fell right into that one.
“Ohhhhh,” Evan Miller, Tim Stabisch, and a guy I don’t know call out in unison, each with one hand cupped around his mouth like a megaphone.
I stare down at the stage, searching for a trapdoor to fall through.
“So let’s try again,” Mr. Martinez says, his brown laser beams pointed at me. Oh, please, for the love of all that’s holy, move on to someone else. “Do you know what improv is?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Great.” He smiles and gives me a thumbs-up, which is simultaneously a relief and extremely patronizing. “What is it?”
“It’s when you make things up on the spot. Like, in scenes.”
“Awesome. And what’s your name?”