Brenda Monk Is Funny (5 page)

Brenda nodded again.

‘OK, good.’

‘I’ll probably head out while you’re asleep so I’ll catch up with you at the Attic Bar later or something.’

Jonathan adjusted to this newly carefree tone.

‘I’m doing
Late n Live
tonight, actually, so maybe come there…’ ‘OK, cool. Can you put my name on the door?’

‘Yup. I’m on third.’

‘OK.’

Jonathan kissed her on the head and went to his bedroom.

Brenda felt a new reality opening up at her feet, a tentative crack in the earth. Was this the kind of exchange Jonathan wanted when he complained that she was ‘too intense’? It certainly felt cool and detached but there was no love in it, no need or passion, no relationship that you could find any expectation in. Brenda was disconcerted and part of her felt a lurch to go straight into Jonathan’s room and snuggle up to him, apologise for being weird and ask if she could come to his show after all, to re-establish the connection between them or at least to revive the usual dynamic they were now so used to. But Brenda didn’t. Maybe a week ago, she would have. Maybe even a day ago. But for some reason she was sitting still, staying put. Why, she did not know. It made her feel a little sick but she still had three batteries full of cool mountain air inside her and that was enough for her to power on with, whatever this was.

Brenda was excited about Fenella’s show. She arrived in good time to the venue: a theatre space set on three sides, with a sunken stage in the middle. The Box Office had issued her ticket with no trouble and she now sat on the back row, as the excited babble of her fellow audience members bubbled around her, rising and popping in vertical streams.

The stage was bathed in a dimmed amber glow, waiting to be occupied, dominated. The music had a low, thumping bass line but Brenda could not hear the top line because of the chatter. She felt a brief sensation of vertigo at the thought that Jonathan was less than a hundred metres away in his own venue, starting his own show, and once again itemising her sexual proclivities to strangers as she, herself, Brenda, sat right here. Not just an idea, a set up-punch, but actual flesh and blood with agency and autonomy. She stifled an urge to get up and run over to Jonathan’s show, to take her ‘proper place’ at the back as part of his ‘team’. As she pictured some other version of herself there, right now, waiting with docile loyalty to hear her life laid out for the laughter of strangers, another universe of possibilities borne out of the choices she did and did not make was instantly created and she felt so out of bodied that her stomach actually twisted. She shook her head and to her surprise said, ‘No.’ But not so loud that anyone could hear it. Then suddenly all the lights went out, and a voice boomed,

‘Ladies and Gentlemen and everyone else, please welcome Fenella Lawrence into your lives.’

The crowd burst into applause and Fenella bounded onto the stage, already miked up with a radio device clipped round her ear that sat along her cheek and stopped next to her mouth. She wore exactly the same outfit as she had before and her hair gleamed like dark, silky melted chocolate under the lights. Brenda wondered if it was a wig, but then Fenella started talking and she forgot about her hair. She forgot about everything except Fenella Lawrence and the master-class that was unfolding before her eyes.

Fenella had easily as much command of her audience as Jonathan, and to Brenda’s mind, even a little more. The material was good too – sharp and relevant, punchy without being crude and without that reliance on sexual charisma that Jonathan often fell back on, although she certainly had sex appeal and wasn’t hiding it. She didn’t flirt though, that was the difference. There were no biddable women on the front row imagining, even planning, their accidental encounter and subsequent seduction with every minute that passed. And so, unlike Jonathan, there was nothing to distract Fenella, no easy route to an easy laugh. Fenella didn’t have to play to the Gag Hags – the one solid gold advantage of being a woman in comedy.

Brenda laughed more than she usually did in stand-up comedy shows which showed that Fenella’s jokes had the ability to surprise and wrong-foot even the most committed comedy fans. Her gloriously ironic, self-mocking riff on how her rape jokes were morally superior to male comedians’ rape jokes was a joy. ‘I used be so against comics that did jokes about rape, I’d be like, how could you? Don’t you have any self-control? I said rape gags would never happen to me, I’m not that kind of comedian. But then I got drunk at a gig and one just came out, so I guess I have to take responsibility. No really, I shouldn’t have had that extra pint of Bailey’s. I was asking for it. I had it coming. Yeah, I’m now doing material against my own consent, so this may be a bumpy ride…’

No wonder her audience was in raptures. Every slight piece of improvisation or audience participation was dealt with deftly and would be used to enhance the show, indicating a comedic architectural ability to structure on the fly that eluded most comedians. This skill was the difference between goodness and greatness and what was clear was that Fenella was soaring into this league with barely a flap of her wings. She had found a comedy thermal and was riding it, curling up and up. Tangible effort minimal; effect maximised and total domination the result. This was a top predator in full health doing exactly what she was designed to do. By the time the show finished Brenda felt high as a kite.

Standing outside as Fenella’s audience poured past her, Brenda wondered where she should go to catch Fenella after the gig. Her mind was buzzing, a new horizon seemed to suddenly stretch out before her though what was beyond it she couldn’t say. She didn’t have to wonder long, however, as Fenella appeared right behind her as the last couple left the building. The tight turnaround of shows every hour meant that there was no hiding backstage for the performer. The venue spat you out as the last seat flapped up on its hinges, leaving comedians blinking and sputtering in the real world as the tide of one they had spent an hour delicately creating rolled back to reveal fresh sand for the next act to draw on.

‘Brenda Monk. I’m so glad you came.’

‘Thanks for the ticket. I loved it. I mean, shit, I don’t have the vocabulary to say how much I loved it. There is nothing original to say, only clichés, I can’t…’

‘Let me buy you a drink.’

‘No, let me buy you a drink.’

‘You can buy the second one.’

Fenella walked away without looking back.

In the bar at the back of the second small Pleasance courtyard that lay behind the main courtyard, Fenella bought two pints of cider and set them down on the table they now occupied. People were keeping a respectful distance from Fenella, but the nudging and looking was rife.

‘So, you honestly don’t mind Jonathan raping you for material, then?’

Brenda spluttered her cider back into its glass.

‘He doesn’t
rape
me.’

‘No, not literally, I mean figuratively. Did you give your consent for him to talk about you like this?’

‘He says it’s implied when you’re in a relationship with a stand-up comedian.’

‘Jesus.’

‘You’re not a fan, then.’

‘I think he’s a great comedian. I think he’s an awful man. I am able to tell the difference. Sadly, not everyone can.’

‘He’s not awful, he’s…he’s…’

Fenella cocked her head.

‘He’s a genius.’

‘Oh please. You’ve got it bad, haven’t you? Listen, I know he’s good in bed…’

‘Uh, OK.’

Brenda adjusted, absorbed, adapted and did not ask. She had got good at this. Fenella continued, oblivious.

‘But that does not make him a genius. If he was a genius, he wouldn’t pick his shirts quite so carefully.’

‘You don’t pick your outfits carefully?’

‘Of course, but I am a genius so it doesn’t apply to me.’

Brenda laughed in spite of herself.

‘Look, Brenda Monk, I’m not here to split you and Jonathan Cape up. I just saw his show and I thought, I’d like to meet this woman. And now here you are. If you’re happy with what he’s doing – if he’s convinced you that you are part of some important art project and you believe it, then that’s your business. I just think if he needs you that much for material then maybe it’s you that should be onstage. You perform you and let him figure out how to fill the gap, you know?’

Brenda drank her cider and looked at the cobbled ground, trying to keep calm. This was a giddying new perspective, and not one that had been terribly forthcoming from Jonathan’s group of comedian friends. Linus had ineptly hinted at it once, but the integrity of his concern was slightly undermined by the fact that he was clearly trying to brush her breast with his knuckle as he spoke. Fenella looked straight at Brenda.

‘Am I freaking you out?’

‘A little.’

‘OK, well, forget I said it then. What do you do?’

‘I’m a journalist. I write pieces on women in media, mainly. And I review comedy for fun for online blogs and stuff like that.’

‘So you’re a writer then.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘How far would you go?’

Brenda started to feel that Fenella was possibly coming on to her. She shifted slightly in her seat, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

‘I’m not a lesbian, Brenda Monk, so don’t panic.’

You can’t hide anything from a comedian at the top of their game, Brenda reminded herself. They read micro-signals like Derren Brown and if they don’t expose your thoughts out loud it’s because they are choosing not to. She uncrossed her arms self-consciously.

‘I wasn’t panicking.’

‘OK. Not every comedian you meet will want to fuck you, you know.’

‘No, it’s just you don’t meet the 1% very often.’

Fenella laughed.

‘We do exist in a world of priapic schoolboys, it’s true.’

Brenda noted the ‘we’ and liked it.

‘It’s not even flattering in the end. You realise that with some of them you only have to be warm and wet and you’re in. I mean, where’s the struggle?’

‘Oh you like a struggle?’ asked Fenella.

‘Once you’ve picked all the low hanging fruit, what’s left?’

Fenella nodded and drank half a pint in one mouthful.

‘My round,’ Brenda said and rose to go to the bar.

Standing at the bar, looking back at Fenella who was now studying her phone and trying to look inconspicuous, Brenda had a chance to consider their conversation.

She hadn’t met a real woman comedian before. She had met female comics who talked loudly and crudely to impress their nihilistic male colleagues, but she had always found their noise jarring. The brash confidence hid insecurity and a need for the approval of men that was off-putting to Brenda, and depressing too. Jonathan had accused her of being an unsisterly bitch when she had hinted at her misgivings so she had never raised it again. But Fenella was quite different. She seemed genuinely confident. It was calming rather than spirit rattling. Brenda had met female journalists through work who had this same aura, and admired them, was drawn to them, but never until this moment had she seen it in the female comedians she had met. She knew they were out there but they didn’t hang around with Jonathan and his friends and so she had almost decided they didn’t exist. She had always assumed it was the women’s loss. Jonathan and his friends were, by their own assessment, at the cutting edge of stand-up comedy and anyone who didn’t want their company must therefore have sold out or couldn’t hack it. This was the received idea Brenda had been carrying around inside her for a year now, since she had been admitted to the inner sanctum. But this crack of the new reality was widening a little and she felt at some point she might have to decide which side of the crack to jump to, lest she plunge straight down the middle and into the abyss. You have to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything, Brenda recalled being told by a drunk political journalist one Christmas, before he was sick into his own inside jacket pocket.

Brenda brought two fresh pints of cider back to the table and took her seat. Fenella immediately put her phone down and gave Brenda her full attention.

‘So, have you ever reviewed me?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. No particular reason.’

‘Were you scared I wasn’t any good and you wouldn’t look very sisterly giving me a slagging off?’

‘No. Maybe.’

‘We ladies must stick together, eh?’

Brenda conceded defeat.

‘I don’t believe in that, but…’

‘Good, neither do I. None of that “women in comedy” bollocks, thanks. I don’t need a special disabled person’s permit, I don’t need a special parking space near to the laughs, I don’t need anything they don’t need.’

‘I know. But it’s hard, isn’t it? I mean, it is harder.’

‘The more we talk about it, the harder it gets. That’s their trick, see. If we keep having to talk about it, it cements the problem in people’s minds and then it doesn’t go away. You have to ignore it. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist – I’m not an idiot – but the strategy is to ignore it.’

‘You have a strategy? Like a planned strategy, with other people?’

‘Of course. If you don’t have a strategy how will you know when you’re going wrong?’

‘But what if the strategy’s wrong?’

‘Then you change it.’

‘But if you can just change it any time, what’s the point of the strategy?’

‘So you know if you need to change it.’

‘That’s not an argument. That’s just some weird circular logic that eats itself.’

Fenella shrugged.

‘Perhaps you’re right, but that’s the way we’re doing it.’

‘We?’

‘Yes, me and a few others. We meet for drinks every now and again, to shoot the shit.’

‘Just women? Women in comedy?’

‘Yeah’.

‘Then doesn’t that rather disprove your point? I mean, if it’s women only, how is that ignoring it?’

‘We ignore it in public. In private we do whatever the hell we want. That’s the strategy. Why don’t you come along?’

‘I’m not a woman in comedy.’

‘No. Not yet. Are you funny?’

‘Yeah.’

Fenella let out a shriek of delighted laughter.