What’s Your Opening Line? by Nina Welch

“It’s the hardest thing to make someone laugh especially if you’ve had nothing to laugh about.” –Tracy Morgan

“You know, I’m homeless.”

Silence.

“Hey you in the second row. You look surprised. Do you think I’m too cute to be homeless? It’s pitiful. I don’t have a floor, a roof over my head, a refrigerator to put food in, a place to shower. Do you feel sorry for me? Ah, a few of you. Don’t. I’m a poet. I don’t follow the rules, and I get inspiration looking up through the moon roof of my 2008 Buick, La Crosse, Gold Mist. My grandpa left it to me in his will. I think of him every night as I sleep under the silver apples of the moon and wake to the golden apples of the sun. You probably think this is a poetry reading. Don’t worry, it’s not.”

Laughter.

My grandpa, Maxton James Harris. The old man whispered stars. He loved poetry. His favorite poem was The Fish. He’d recite Yeats’ little poem to me about the fish that hides in the ebb and flow of the pale tide when the moon has set. How I miss the layers of his attention. He encouraged me to pursue my dream. “Do you know what success is, Maxie?” I didn’t know. I thought it might be money. “Success is to achieve what you want to achieve.” Grandpa’s advice stayed with me. It’s so simple; it’s complex. I wanted to achieve comedy no matter what the hurtles. He was at the back table at my first appearance at the Ha Ha Café in North Hollywood. I bombed half-way through the set. Since I didn’t get one laugh, I thought I might as well go for a record, then it happened.

“I know this is painful. I won’t keep you long. Henry VIII said that to his wives.”

Grandpa told me afterwards at the bar over honey-glowed whiskey, “The power of a laugh can change the audience’s mood.” He also said not to get too cocky over a little bit of laughter from a lame joke. “You’re funnier than this, Maxie. Don’t be the kind of comedian you think you should be. Be yourself. When you try to be someone else, it’s boring.” I never forgot the wisdom of his perception that night. I knew I needed to be stripped naked up there on that stage with everything to bare. Bare it all.

I grew up in Oregon with five older brothers. When Mom went to the hospital for two weeks with my ailing father, it was like someone let the monkeys out of the cage and there was no getting them back in. They were like Groucho and Harpo and the rest of the Marx brothers. They pantsed me; gave me noogies and chased me around the house with live frogs and snakes. My brothers were out-of-control. Dad was my hero. He kept the monkeys away. He used to say, “Punkin, I know your brothers like to tease you but you’ll be tough for it, someday.” After he died of a heart attack when I was 14, my brothers were relentless. I actually didn’t mind when they locked me in the upstairs closet for hours. The solitude in that dark space was my salvation. With the lightbulb hanging over my head, I wrote down my thoughts, poems, and jokes. The jokes didn’t seem like jokes at first. I was angry. Then I learned anger can be a little funny. Writing jokes made me laugh out loud. I realized later that if you don’t laugh while writing your jokes, they won’t laugh. I did know that funny is funny. Funny has a certain life to it. It’s magic.

“I was a single girl in LA going to UCLA, living with my grandpa and his girlfriend, the hussy. I hated her. I spent a lot of time at a fraternity house with a horny college boyfriend. There was a room in the basement with girls’ names spray-painted on the ceiling, called the ‘conquest ceiling.’ They took turns in that room. Every three minutes, high-pitched groans would come out of the sex-cave. Yes, those college boys reached their peak as fast as a three-minute egg. I guess that beats hearing Grandpa and the hussy going at it longer than a minute. Have you ever heard the noises an old man makes on Viagra? I’ve run out of superlatives to describe his ecstasy, and trust me, you don’t want to hear them. At least he spared me the dirty talk.”

I often thought Grandpa Max was just staying with the hussy for the sex. And I wondered why he liked that Yeats poem. Maybe he felt trapped when caught like the fish, and how it leaped times out of mind over the little silver cords. I learned through not getting laughs and getting laughs, that stand-ups have to talk about their lives. When they’re honest, they’re good. Of course, Grandpa Max didn’t know that the honesty of my sets after his death was about being homeless. The irony is my sets got way funnier after Grandpa died. He would have been proud.

“Yeah, yeah I’m homeless. Get over it. You don’t have to feel badly for me. I made a little cash writing tags for a mattress store. Do you like it firm or soft? Oh boy, what a dirty audience, I’m talking mattresses, people. Of course, no one likes it soft. I didn’t make enough to buy clothes so I had to panhandle. It’s not a fun thing to beg for money. I had to have a believable story. ‘My car broke down and I need money towards the repair.’ If I said I need money for food, they’d buy me lunch. I didn’t want lunch; I wanted money.”

Each set got funnier or I got more comfortable on the stage. Jokes are supposed to be funny, but if you don’t say it just right, it bombs. I learned that it’s not just about writing something you think is funny. It’s about the delivery. It’s about the timing. I was hooked.

“I’m from Oregon. I know, I know, you think we hate Californians. Not me. I wanted to be an Angeleno. I wasn’t homeless in Oregon. The bearded, hipster coffee- drinkers are too busy trying to give off the vibe that they just don’t care. I went to way too many barista jams. One even had a latte art throw down. For guys who act like they don’t care, they sure put a lot of effort into those gigs. Have you ever heard of grown men body-painting each other with organic coffee grounds?”

The car was a good temporary home for me. The big backseat, just the right size for my 5’10” frame, was my bed and the trunk held all my clothes, my journals, and my laptop. To shower, I cruised to the beach in Santa Monica and soaped up and rinsed off after the tourists went home. Not everyone would recognize me as homeless if they saw me strolling down the street fresh, pretty and stylish and not pushing a shopping cart.

“Here I am in bold, glamourous, flashy LA. I know, I don’t look homeless. I can put together a Vogue outfit from the Goodwill on Melrose, shoes and all, for a little over five bucks. Talk about glamour, you in the front row, did you just get lip injections? Your lip gloss must come in super-sized tubes. Nice leather mini skirt and gladiator sandals. You’re not going to Denny’s like that are you?”

If someone told me that I wanted something so badly I was willing to sacrifice a roof over my head, I never would have believed them. Not everyone knows that the picture of homeless isn’t always what society depicts. Families, students, single divorced women, and teachers. I learned that each person should be valued regardless if they’re homeless.

“I’m going to ignore the eye-rolls in the first row. You might not believe I’m homeless. I don’t look dirty. Do I smell? Get a little closer. I wash my hair in the bathroom sink at the beach and spray my rose-bush with Summer’s Eve. I don’t want to offend anyone. Well, maybe with my jokes I do. Do you know what’s worse about being homeless than my hygiene rituals? I don’t date much. What would I say when a guy wanted to come home with me? You want to come to my place to see my leather-wrapped steering wheel and cupholders? I even have cupholders in the back seat, and I have a simulated wood dash. Ooh impressive.”

Grandpa knew I had the talent to be a comedian. “The baby in the family is usually the comedian. You have the weird role as attention-breaker, you see everyone’s mistakes, and you try to avoid everyone.” I didn’t know that’s what I wanted to do until I saw my first stand-up female comedian, Josie, at the Laugh Factory when I was attending UCLA. “I’m not a lesbian, I don’t even like to lick stamps.” While performing at open mics at all the clubs, I was told not to ask for help from other comedians. They want you to fail. I found this out when I asked Josie how many minutes she got for her set. She said, “Keep your nose out of my business and I’ll keep my nose out of yours.” Well, I didn’t want my nose in her stinky business anyway. I wanted my business to be telling jokes. We didn’t have anything in common. Her stand-up was old school but she had a great Phyllis Diller delivery plus she wasn’t homeless.

The homeless usually get a bad rap. Of course, there’s Skid Row where the true meaning of bum comes to life on those nose-bloody streets. They stoke bad juju. The addicts, the life- drop-outs, the insane in their cardboard houses with the lovely scent in the air of Eau de Urine. I know a woman who wears clothes from SAKS and sprays her cleavage with Channel No. 5 but she lives in her Cadillac two blocks from me. She’s a class act.

“Anyone can be homeless but I was homeless-lite living in my Buick next to the beach. Don’t worry, I get by. I have a laptop in my car and I’m a freelance writer at 10 cents a word. How many words can pay my rent? How many roommates and Uber rides can your kid’s 7^th grade teacher manage to stay off the streets? Do you think that’s funny? You in the third row? Do you know how much rent is in LA? You look like you just got off the cover of So Cal Weekly. You’re probably seven months behind on your Mustang payment and the bank is foreclosing on your house in Belaire. Oh, I bet you’re sorry you sat in the third row.”

 I left my late set at the club on Sunset and my Buick was gone. My home, my heart, my memories, the center of my world. Not only was my home gone but all my belongings except for my cell phone and my backpack full of journals. My rival, Josie, stuck by me. Called the police.

“Someone stole my house. My house had wheels but I’m not quite trailer trash. Hey, you with the mullet. Yes, you. Don’t look behind you. Did you have to remove your toothpick for your wedding photo? Yep, someone stole Grandpa’s Gold Mist, Buick, La Crosse while I was doing my midnight set. That was my bedroom. My living room. My kitchen. My everything. Looks like champagne brunch at my place is cancelled.”

After Grandpa died, I promised myself I wouldn’t depend on someone else for a roof. I can’t believe I made the bad times work. Sipping out of that Beam bottle Grandpa stowed in his trunk, writing poetry while gazing through the moonroof, taking swigs, and writing jokes about my pitiful homeless life. I didn’t have to face the squalor and gloom of the sunken streets in the sanctuary of my Buick. After I lost my home-on-wheels, I got brave, went downtown, walked into a couple of shelters and walked right back out. Weird people pacing, scratching their bed-bug bites, with hygiene issues. I didn’t need to visit another shelter to realize how they were. I had to embrace the fact that my life went from drinking coffee with hipsters in Oregon to possibly the concrete misery of crack whores, mental illness, and addiction on Skid Row. Out of shear desperation, I asked Josie if I could sleep on her couch. She wasn’t too keen at first, but then she saw the fear in my eyes. “Alright, two weeks rent free and that’s it, you’re out.”

“I bet you’re wondering how this happened. Does anyone want to sign my cast? I broke my foot when I tripped and fell down the stairs to get to my set. See what I would do for a laugh? I guess I reached the bottom so to speak. I’m homeless, carless, and couldn’t even afford one of those stupid knee-scooters. But the doctor at the free clinic was hitting on me, and when he saw how cumbersome it was to seduce a girl on crutches, I got a free scooter. I guess the barter system works.”

My sets got better, I got earlier time-slots, and Josie became my mentor. “What’s your opening line? Please don’t say, How’s everyone tonight?” She introduced me to the bartender at the club, who gave me free drinks and he offered me a job. It didn’t pay much but a room came with it above the din of comedy drenched in desperation and passion. And guess what? Josie does like to lick stamps. Not mine. I prefer men, but I don’t judge. Sex is sex.

“I want to succeed. I want to make money at my art. Don’t look at me like that. Yes, comedy is art. The art of making someone laugh. You in the second row, are you a college girl? I thought so. You’re about my age. Do you think I’m crazy? You don’t? You’re going to college to get a fancy job to make a lot of money, and I quit college to stand on a stage to get a laugh. Look who’s crazy? Yep, I’m a laughter-whore. I’m addicted to laughter. You and I have more in common than you think. Is your name emblazoned on the conquest ceiling at Alpha Chi Alpha?”

Did you hear the one about the bad blind date?

“I’m dating more now. I can actually take a guy to my apartment to see my etchings. That’s an old-fashioned term Grandpa used. It’s code for sex. I had a promising date last week. After a nice dinner, he invited me to his place to see his etchings. Oh boy, he’s getting lucky tonight, but alas, there were no etchings. He actually showed me his frisbee collection hanging on his living room wall like an art exhibit. I told him I had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it. I’m Maxine-Jay, I’ll be here all week, thank you very much.”

Nina Welch

Image by Pexels from Pixabay – single stand microphone against a purple lit up background.