Brenda Monk Is Funny (15 page)

Brenda held this in her mind as she arrived, introduced herself to the MC, and expressed her gratitude at the ten minutes she had been allowed in his club. She got herself a drink. She sat down in the green room and used every part of her being to force herself to remain there. She greeted each nervous new comic as they came in and chatted lightly with a couple of them. She went to the toilet, just for a moment to herself. She came out and quietly ran over her set in her mind. And then, just as Fenella said, there suddenly came the moment when it was her turn. She walked on stage as if in a dream, her legs taking her there, her mind shut out of the proceedings in case it let her down. This would become muscle memory soon and though her mind would still produce the fight or flight chemical that was so powerful, she would teach it that flight was an impossibility and so fight was the only option available and that energy would be turned into what is called ‘stage presence.’ Or what is really the audience’s instinctive ability to sense fear and be entranced by the will to overcome it and even to beat it back into submission by looking relaxed and natural and in control.

And then the lights were on her and the beam warmed her chest and her face and there were upturned faces and they were laughing and she felt confident and open and invincible.

‘Hi, I’m Brenda Monk. Yeah, I know, my dad didn’t want a girl – he really wanted a Scottish TV detective.’

First laugh. They were on her side. She had a certain amount of credit now that would last a little less than a minute. The follow up needed to be good to prolong it.

‘I think he’s proud of me though, now that I’m a comedian. To be honest, I think he’s just pleased I’ve finally got a boyfriend who thinks I’m funny. Yeah, my last boyfriend was a comedian too and didn’t think anyone was funny apart from him. It was a good arrangement while it lasted though. He used me for laughs, and I used him for sex. Yeah, people always want to know what it’s like dating a comedian. “Did he pump you for laughs?” they ask. Yeah, I say – literally.’

Second laugh.

‘The worst thing was he would do impressions of me onstage, you know, my orgasm noise… I never knew I sounded like a dolphin trying to impress Simon Cowell…’

Third laugh.

‘My current boyfriend’s much nicer about it, much more gentlemanly. He doesn’t like to talk about my orgasm noise because it’s too personal. No, he prefers to tell everyone about my snoring instead. Apparently that’s more like Simon Cowell when Cheryl Cole’s trying to impress him…’

Brenda walked off stage knowing she’d had a good one. She wanted a drink badly and she grabbed a large glass of white wine from the bar and drank it quickly. She stood at the back of the room to watch the others come on and go off and had a sense that she was probably the third best out of eleven in total. She savoured the feeling of being here on her own terms. She had stood at the back like a good girl, waiting for Jonathan to do his exemplary turn, so many times but always felt that the space around her was rented.

Now she owned it. She had bought her place here with sheer bloody minded determination, and she liked it. And she had done well, too. The audience had laughed consistently, but more than that, they had liked her. They had been on her side, she had made them feel relaxed enough to sit back and enjoy themselves. She silently congratulated herself on this achievement and was already thinking of how she could replicate it as many times as possible in the gigs to come.

Brenda walked the three miles home. She felt too massive inside to squash herself into any form of public transport and the excess energy had to be got rid of somehow. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, but for some reason she resisted calling Pete. She had a strong instinct that she needed to be alone for this, and in any case she didn’t especially want to discuss the gig in depth. The material about her and Pete was still fresh in her mind, and actually talking to him might confuse the issue. At least, that’s what she told herself. The gig had been good, that was the main thing. She had been good. For the first time in a long time she didn’t feel the need to call anybody at all. She was enough.

The Gong Show is not a format to be trifled with. A dozen or so new comics, one MC and an audience who actually want to see humiliation on stage. Unlike most stand-up shows, where people come expecting to laugh and are annoyed if they don’t or become paralysed with cringing horror when a performer has a bad night, a Gong Show crowd actively wants to see something awful happen on stage. It’s part of the fun. Each comedian takes their turn and has to try to last a full five minutes without being ‘gonged off’ by the MC, who hits the brass cymbal with barely disguised glee if they feel that the act is failing to ignite the audience. It’s brutal but the survivors know they have passed a rite of passage and it spurs them on.

Brenda was up for it. She felt good today, but tried not to trust that feeling too much as she knew it could lead to complacence. She had bunked off work for the afternoon claiming an appointment at the dentist and sat in a coffee shop over the road from the grotty West End venue holding tonight’s horrors, drinking Americano after Americano and trying to keep her mind still. As the hour approached, the good mood vanished, until finally she rose from her seat, caffeinated to the eyeballs, shivering with nerves and sick with anticipation. She tried to tell herself that this would be the same five minutes of material that she had performed three times in the past fortnight, and that each of those times it had gone perfectly well. One gig had been great and the other two fine, but nothing terrible.

It was the same jokes, she repeated to herself as she descended the red carpeted staircase into the club. But she knew that made no difference. You could perform the same joke over and over again and get a different result every time. She knew that it was her demeanour, her delivery, her attitude that partly made the material work and far from being a comfort, that knowledge made it more frightening. It was not her jokes that would be judged but herself and she knew she was far from consistent. In fact, she didn’t know herself well enough inside yet to control the external version she projected on stage. When it was her turn, the ramped up atmosphere would bring out her most essential nature, and then 375 strangers would judge her on it. The sound of the gong would be the crash of self-realisation – has the insistence on self-awareness ever been so brutally delivered?

Brenda lasted exactly 3 minutes and 42 seconds. The first 3 minutes and 30 seconds went pretty well, certainly nothing to be gonged off for, and Brenda’s burgeoning sixth sense of feeling how long she had been on stage told her the end was in sight.

‘No, seriously,’ she said, easing up to a bit she had worked on about her observations in the East London pub which she now considered a fairly safe laugh.

‘I mean, where does it end? It’s like kids’ food can’t just be kids’ food. It’s so ironic now…’

And then she caught his eye – a middle-aged man half way back in the crowd, burly to the extent that he nearly took up two chairs, arms folded across his large chest, chin tilted and a look of pure disgust on his face. She blinked a little, and then he was all she could see, obliterating all else like the Eye of Mordor.

‘I wonder if they… if they will get ummm turkey faces, I mean dinosaurs, turkey dinosaurs… and potatoes with their mums…’

She stammered a bit, and she couldn’t remember the next bit. How did this link? What did it link to? She knew she’d fucked it up, and she knew she couldn’t start again, so simply fell silent for a moment. The man shook his head slowly and smirked. The seconds ticked by. And then Brenda made the utter, toe curling faux pas of apologising.

‘Sorry, I… sorry… so the next bit is…’

She looked at the writing on the back of her hand for too long, trying to make the words come into focus (fatal) and the gong sounded.

The audience cheered with pavlovian simplicity. Brenda waved as her heart plummeted and she tripped off stage in a blur to the conciliatory glances and gestures of everybody backstage. A drink to take the edge off, and then the door opened and in walked Rossly.

‘You were doing alright til you fucked it up,’ he slurred. He smelt of beer.

‘Why are you here?’

‘Thanks.’

‘Sorry, that came out wrong. I mean, why are you
here
?’

Rossly shrugged. ‘Us old timers like to pop in on a gong show every now and again. I just did my early set at the Store and thought I’d see what was going on over here before I go back to close the late one.’

‘Well, you’ve seen it now.’

The last act had just been gonged off after twenty-two seconds to blood curdling cheers. The crowd had become medieval; the executions came thick and fast.

‘Why did you just grind to a halt like that? You were going well.’ ‘I don’t know. I just suddenly clocked this guy three rows back and he looked like… like he hated me. Like nothing I could ever do would ever please him. Like he was disgusted by me. And it was like my brain froze and I was sort of sucked into a vortex of cold, black nothing and I couldn’t remember what I’d just said or what I was going to say next.’

‘So you had your first Stone Waller?’

‘Uh, I suppose so.’

‘Everyone gets a Stone Waller every now and again, Brenda. For fuck’s sake, you can’t let them get to you. If you just crash into a Stone Waller headlong you’ll only hurt your head. You’ve got to look round them, look over them, look anywhere but them. Either that or you take them on directly. Ask them why they’re not laughing, but you have to be pretty on top of your game to do that because you can risk losing everyone. But whatever you do, you can’t just stop like that.’

‘I know,’ Brenda said miserably.

‘You been gigging?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’

‘I entered a competition too.’

‘Even better. All good experience. Come on, come with me. I’ve got to be back at the Store for the late show. Come and watch.’ Brenda walked across Leicester Square with Rossly to The Comedy Store, and entered the infamous building with the same thrill she always got. She let her eyes scan the numerous black and white framed pictures of comics past and present that covered the walls. The dark red colour scheme lent itself to the sense that this was the beating heart of stand-up comedy in London, Britain, maybe the world. It was certainly pumping tonight. The late show was already underway and the room was hot and heavy with bodies, booze and laughter. Rossly bought Brenda a Jack Daniel’s and coke and they stood along the far side of the room, next to the raked seating, and leaned against the wall with the other comedians that had been on, would go on, or had just popped in to see what was going on after they had finished their own gigs around town.

They silently greeted Rossly and turned their attention back to the stage where a young comedian was having an extremely good night. His material concerned race mainly and how it felt to be one of only a small number of black people growing up in a remote area of North Wales. He stood in the middle of the stage, very still, holding the mic to his chest, leaving one arm and hand free to provide all the movement he needed. He was so relaxed and confident that it seemed the laughs came from nothing, just bubbling up to greet whatever remark he casually chose to make. Brenda had never seem him before, but she’d heard his name a lot recently: Bradley Wilson. As he embarked on a spoof rap in a broad Welsh accent, Brenda felt the shame of the gong show lift and the joy of a good gag engulf her. Here, in the dark, she let it go, just… let it go. Rossly, sensing that this must be Bradley’s closing bit, whispered, ‘wait here’ and then weaved through the chairs that surrounded the stage and disappeared behind a concealed door that led to the green room.

Five minutes later he was on stage, having what appeared to be the time of his life. He was closing – the most senior role – and the added prestige suited him. He danced around the stage, his long, wiry limbs wheeling and pointing and striding. He could cover so much ground in one step, it seemed he could jump over the whole audience with one leap if he wanted. He made his act seem improvised and spontaneous, but Brenda had seen enough of his performances to know it was not. It was just that he had built up so much material over the years, that he could pull anything out to fit whatever was going on in the room – ‘always acknowledge what is happening in the room’ – so it seemed he was making it up as he went along. Brenda noticed that he barely flirted, though the women were rapt almost without exception. He was crude, sexually aggressive in his language and ideas, but it never felt threatening – why? Brenda couldn’t say for sure. There were certainly other comics that used similar language and in their mouths it was off putting. Maybe it was some instinctive sense that Rossly liked women, he fundamentally liked women. He was not furious with them because of fear, which was an affliction some other male comics laboured under, and it leaked out of them unconsciously.

Twenty minutes later and Brenda was outside with Rossly, smoking a cigarette.

‘So, how’s Jonathan?’

‘OK, I think.’

‘You haven’t heard from him?’

‘A bit. He’s busy, I’m busy. You know, different time zones and all that.’

Rossly nodded, obviously taking this in.

‘How’s… yours?’

‘Nina? Nina’s great. Yeah, she’s something else. She used to be a model.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Rossly suddenly seemed slightly embarrassed, as if he knew he’d exposed something of himself he hadn’t been intending to. But he shook it off quickly.

‘If those girls I was at school with could see me now, with her… Christ, that’d give them something to think about.’

‘Were you not a sexual hit at school, then?’

‘On the Gold Coast? Nah, you had to look a certain way to get any there, and trust me, this isn’t it.’

He gestured to his long thin form, black hair, rock-gothic style.

Brenda didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t seem that Rossly was after any particular reassurance from her. Nina clearly provided what he needed in that regard.

‘Once I got good at stand-up though – fuck. If I could go back and tell my fifteen-year-old self the kind of pussy I’d be getting aged thirty-six, he’d have dropped dead on the spot in a pool of vomit and involuntarily ejaculated semen.’

Brenda laughed.

‘You liked that, Brenda Monk? OK, well, I’ll have to try that out at my next gig. Could work. Yeah, could work nicely.’

‘Is there anything you wouldn’t say on stage?’

Rossly thought for a minute.

‘My mum was in a wheelchair practically all my life. She had MS. I guess I wouldn’t… well, I haven’t up to now. That’s the only thing, I think. Never say never, though.’

‘You’d joke about your mum’s disability?’

‘If I had something to say about it and I could make it funny, yeah.’

‘So why haven’t you?’

Rossly considered this for a minute.

‘I guess I just haven’t found a way to make it funny yet.’

Brenda nodded.

‘So you think nothing should be off limits?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘What about hurting people’s feelings?’

‘That’s not my concern.’

‘Shouldn’t it be?’

‘No. I’m a comedian. I work in comedy clubs. I’m not a kids’ show presenter. People who come here are grown-ups. If they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t come. Or they should just go and see the big tours of the nice, safe stand-ups they know they already like and will never say anything that will challenge anything they already think and feel.’

‘But surely not everyone has to be out there, shocking people all the time. There’s nothing wrong with just being funny.’

‘Yeah there is. It’s a waste of talent. If you can deliver truths whilst being funny, that’s a powerful place to be.’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know about that.’

‘Look, Brenda Monk, being a stand-up comedian isn’t just about being funny, it’s about talking about things people won’t talk about in their everyday lives. Things that they’re too scared to look at. Anyone can get laughs, I mean, look at you…’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘No, I mean, think about it. You got up on stage for the first time and people laughed, didn’t they? I mean, maybe they weren’t like constantly hysterical, but you did make them laugh.’

‘Yes, I suppose so…’

‘So, it’s easy to make people laugh. That’s what no-one gets about this job until you do it. Anyone can make people laugh at least once. Most people are nice and if you get up on stage they will laugh just because they’re expected to half the time. Getting the laughs isn’t the challenge. It’s getting the exact type of laughs you want to get, that’s the difficult part.’

‘So, all the laughs I’ve got so far are just… meaningless?’

‘No, not all of them. Some of them are, though. Think about what you want to say then try and work out how to make it funny. If you can do that, you’re worthy of the word comedian.’

This was slightly blowing Brenda’s mind and so she didn’t quite notice Rossly was very lightly kissing her until it was already happening. She pulled back.

‘Oh, hey, no. I don’t… I don’t think I want that… just at the moment…’

‘Sure, no problem.’

Rossly lit another cigarette as if nothing had happened. He seemed so unfazed that Brenda also brushed it aside, even wondering if she had imagined it. He smoked silently for a moment. Something was bothering Brenda.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘You can ask me anything you like, babe.’

‘That gig when you said you’d fuck me afterwards and then your girlfriend was there and it was like you’d never even said it… what was that? I mean, what was that about? Did you mean it?’ ‘Dunno. Maybe.’

This was a maddening response but Brenda gave him the benefit of the doubt. She had effectively just rejected his advances, after all.

‘’Cos it seemed like in the end, you were just taking the piss out of me.’

‘I don’t know what I was thinking, really. I just said it ’cos I felt like saying it. I was interested to see what your reaction would be.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Me and Nina, you know, we’ve only been together a few weeks. It’s not like we’re married or anything.’

‘No, but still…’

‘So do you want to fuck tonight?’