“Not funny!” She didn't say it like a heckle, but it was. As someone who hadn’t been heckled before, I expected it to feel more spontaneous. This heckle felt smug, like a bad Yelp review. Like she was the brave one for saying what everyone else was thinking.
It was open mic night at a Chinese karaoke bar on the east side. I was too afraid to look toward the voice. Not that it would’ve helped. The place was dark and windowless. It used to be a strip club, and it still felt like one. The new owners had clearly just swapped the stripper pole for a mic stand.
I stood on that little stage where women had once removed their clothes, and where I was now removing my dignity.
Stand-up is one of the only forms of entertainment where strangers think it’s totally fine to just shout their disapproval. I’ve never been to a strip club where someone in the audience yelled “Not sexy!”
She’s wrong, I thought. The joke is funny. Sure nobody laughed. But that’s because she’s heckled the last three comics, and now everyone is busy hating her. Unless.. it’s ME they hate? People laughed at this joke last night though. But what if they were faking? What everyone was just being polite? What if she’s the first person to ever be honest with me?
I’d love to tell you that I came back with something sharp. That I shut her down and the crowd roared, just like in one of those “comedian DESTROYS heckler” videos. But all that came out of my mouth was breathing, and I’m not a funny breather.
Six years later, I got off the stage. I gathered my scribbly little notepad and crammed my deflated soul back into my body. On the way out, another comic — one of the kindest performers I know — stopped me and said, “Don’t worry about her, okay? It’s just part of being a comedian. I’ve been called a bitch onstage before.”
I was stunned. Six months in, and I was already a comedian.
Oof, this captures the strange vulnerability of stand-up so well. Sometimes surviving the heckle is the sign you're really a comic!