A budding lesbian comic receives some help from lesbian comedy legends.
It was Girl Splash week in Provincetown, MA. All the famous lesbian comedians were in town performing: Vickie Shaw, Kate Clinton, Sandra Valls, Mimi Gonzalez, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Jennie McNulty and Poppy Montgomery.
“You should sing in the Girl Splash Idol contest,” my wife encouraged me, as did several people around me.
“No way! I can’t sing!” I said.
“It’s like a talent show. You can do other things,” someone said later.
“Can I do comedy?”
“Of course! We’re signing you up!”
I had never performed comedy before, only written stuff down, but never practiced it out loud. Then I saw the judges. Of course it was four of the top lesbian comics: Vickie Shaw, Sandra Valls, Mimi Gonzalez, and Suzanne Westenhoefer, with emcee Jennie McNulty. My legs were shaking as my time approached. I gulped down one Long Island Iced Tea.
“What song are you going to sing?” Jennie asked me when they called me up on stage.
“I Want to be a Comedian by Vickie Shaw,” I answered.
They all looked at me, puzzled.
“They said I could do comedy,” I said.
“Okay,” Jennie said.
I then started to say a few lines.
“I was in a cab in Arizona with my 20-month-old son, just him and I, so the cab driver assumed I had a husband at home. He asked, ‘Your husband is at home? I told him no. Then I thought, I’m just gonna tell him. ‘I’m married to a woman,’ I said. He said, ‘Your husband is married to another woman?’”
The audience laughed as I did the rest of my gig. Then when I ran out of things to say I looked at the five comedians sitting behind the table on stage and said, “This comedy shit is hard!”
They roared and started clapping for me.
“You got balls! In front of five lesbian comics!” Jennie said.
“We all freeze our first time. You didn’t even do that,” Vickie said.
“I peed,” I said.
Mimi Gonzalez stood up to see if there was any liquid on the floor below me.“Well, Kelly, the first thing you gotta do is turn on the mic,” Mimi said.
I didn’t win Girl Splash Idol 2015, but I definitely crossed comedy off my bucket list. And with some constructive criticism from Sandra Valls, I know how to improve for my next performance–if there is one.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
Comedy is scary! Eleanor Roosevelt was not a comedian otherwise she would have had a heart attack at a young age.
But doing something scary can be a lot of fun. And the rewards can be infinite. The real reward in doing something that scares you is that you are no longer afraid of it anymore. The more fears you get rid of the more confidence you have to do anything.
But just because I conquered a fear of open mic comedy, it doesn’t necessarily make me funny…
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