I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up (36 page)

I flew to Tempe and played the gig on that Friday night, knowing that Bernie’s funeral was the next day. People weren’t there to see me mourn; they had paid to laugh, and the show must go on. I got up early the next morning and got on the plane to go pay my respects. Everyone was there at the funeral: Steve, Ced, Chris Rock, all of the many people who knew Bernie and loved Bernie. We all said our good-byes, and we all had our moment. Then we all got on separate planes, flying across America so we could go out and tell jokes.

Things didn’t feel weird to me until the third show that I was doing the next night. I was onstage and I just started crying. What struck me at that moment, what was so hard, was that I knew Bernie was sick and at the very least I could have gone to see him. I just thought that he would get better. In my mind, I’d visit and we would catch back up where we’d left off and everything would be cool. But that’s not what happened, and that’s not what would ever happen.

After the show, somebody said to me, “Well, Bernie knew how much you loved him. He knew you loved him like one of his family.”

But that’s what cowards say when they haven’t done the right
thing. That’s something you say to let yourself off the hook. How could you
know
that somebody knew you loved them? I took some comfort in the fact that Bernie knew the stand-up life. If it had been me, he would have gone on to play his shows, too. That’s how comedy is. It’s the most selfish thing in the world. I got it, and Bernie got it, but it’s very hard for someone who
isn’t
a comic to get what the life is like.

I remember being a kid and not knowing what I would do—but knowing that
something
was out there. I knew that if I stayed alive and stayed
clear
, something would come along. Given my circumstances, the odds were very, very heavily against me. But I was so sure that something was out there for me that I never even questioned it. I didn’t need to ask myself when. I was never one of them dudes, wondering why my chance hadn’t come along. I just
knew
.

The minute I picked up a microphone, I got it. It’s like when you’ve been in the dark for a long time. You’re in your apartment, and then you walk outside and the sun is so bright it hurts your eyes. Getting onstage
literally
felt just like that. It had been dark—it had been dark
all my life
—and all of a sudden the world was so bright, it hurt my eyes. All of a sudden, my words and my point of view started to take me places I could never have imagined. All of a sudden, I was being paid to say what I think. By now I’ve being doing this for a couple of decades. I’ve been doing this in all kinds of incarnations, in all kinds of places. Whether it’s a movie or a TV show, a commercial, or even this book, my skill set is my skill set. It’s like a meal at Taco Bell: It’s the same ingredients, just folded a different way. What’s the difference between a nacho and an Enchirito? It’s the same shit. That’s what my skill set is like, regardless of context.

No matter how tired I am, no matter what I’ve been through, no matter what I have to do, there is something comforting about walking onstage. It’s like your mother making you some hot chocolate when you’re sitting down in front of the fireplace. It’s that comforting to me. It’s like Max Smart’s cone of silence. It doesn’t matter what else is going on around me. When I’m onstage, everything slows down and everything is clear.

But at the same time, it’s like a high. You have to keep chasing it, and you can never get enough. You can get into this rut where for months,
months
at a time, everything is gray. Everything tastes the same, everything looks the same, everything smells the same. It’s how the ancient Greeks looked at hell, where you’re just a shadow of a living thing.

I’m not the only person to go through this. I was having a conversation with a very famous comic one time. We were just hanging out and talking. Out of nowhere, he asked me, “Have you ever not felt something for so long that you’re not sure if you can anymore?”

It was exactly what I was going through at the time.
Exactly
. It’s like those deprivation chambers where they cut off all your senses. It was during one of these gray periods that I saw this random girl wearing a red sweater in Dallas. I was shocked because, finally, I noticed
color
. I don’t know why or what happened, but she broke through out of all the gray. I went up to her and I thanked her.

She laughed. “What are you thanking me for?”

“Just,
thank you
.”

No matter how gray you feel—or rather, don’t feel—you still have to go back home. None of your family knows what it’s like to be in that gray period. Everybody is loud and moving around. You can’t hear yourself. Now it’s almost like you have to come down.

I never had the luxury of coming home and
relaxing
. I had to be
a husband, a father, a friend, and a disciplinarian in the seventy-two hours I was back—and then go hit the road again. I knew that I couldn’t be tired when I landed. I had to hit the ground running, kind of like being a father on speed. I knew that they were going to want to go to dinner. I knew that everybody was going to want to tell me everything at one time. I knew I was going to have to hug them and love them as hard as I could in those three days. If they had to be disciplined, it would always make me feel bad. Here’s this guy they hardly see, and all of a sudden he comes home and he’s shouting at somebody. It was always a balancing act, being a dad.

The cycle rarely changes. I get home on Monday; I unpack on Tuesday; I go to dinner, play golf in L.A., I lay up in the bed, and talk to my wife a while. On Wednesday, I’m already planning in my head what to pack, the set I’ll do. Then I’ll go to meetings or whatever I have to do. I’ll meet with the cats I write with. On Thursday night, I’ll go. For years, this was the approach. For
years
.

Because I’m away so much, a lot of my relationship with my family has been lived remotely. I remember when my oldest daughter, Ryan, was going off to college. They put together a slide show of memories before she left. I didn’t remember one picture.
Not even one
. I remembered the
time
of the pictures. I remembered her in that period of her life. But not one resonant picture did I remember, not one time when she was doing something in the slide show.

Much of my life is spent alone. I’ve got a nice apartment in New York City. I dig it, and it’s fun. But no one else lives there. When I’m on the road, it’s even more downtime. I read a ton, I smoke weed, and I think. I can’t remember the last time I walked to the grocery store. I went to see
The Hangover Part II
with my daughters when they were visiting me, but I can’t remember the time previous to that when I went to the movies. I’ve only ever been to one play.
One
fucking play
. The high of performing is so intense that everything else bores me in minutes.

I spent so much time by myself that I grew to hate the sound of my voice. When I’m doing shows every night, I hear it
a lot
. It got so bad that I would change the voice in my head when I read a book. Instead of hearing the book as read by D. L. Hughley, I started reading it like James Earl Jones. He’s always the voice I use because it’s the most distinctive and I don’t have to think about it. I was so sick of hearing myself think, and I started to be such horrible company for myself, that motherfucking
Darth Vader
was an improvement.

Domestically, I’ve flown almost four million miles on American, two million miles on Delta, and one million miles on United. I can tell people something about every airport.
Every single one
. I know about the secret entrance between the Westin and the Detroit airport. I know that Pittsburgh has the best airport mall in the United States, and Minneapolis is second.

Concierges got nothing on me. I know what restaurants to go to in what cities, what time, and where to get what when. You want the best lobster in the country? Go to Gibson’s in Chicago; that’s on Rush Street. This is not knowledge I have sought to acquire. It’s just information I’ve picked up along the way.

I’m not saying these things in an effort to get sympathy. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. I am the last person anyone should feel sorry for. I might
literally
be the last person anyone should feel sorry for. If they lined up everybody and asked who has it worse, I would be very close to the end of that line.

All of these things are worth it just to be onstage. There’s nothing like it. I’m the one who feels bad for people who don’t get to experience it. Once me and LaDonna were arguing and she said, “You get to do something you love, and that’s not everybody’s reality!” It
was the first time it registered that this wasn’t the way most people live their lives. It’s a terrible thing, that not everyone gets to do what they love.

I am very fortunate in that there aren’t a lot of people who get to do what I do. You have to work very, very hard for a very, very long time to be able to be a professional comedian—but it never becomes
easy
. Being a professional comedian is like being a championship weight lifter. For everyone else, lifting that weight is impossible. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for the weight lifter to lift that weight. It just means it’s
possible
for him to lift that weight. It’s still an extremely challenging thing that he is pulling off.

Because of what I do and what I love to do, I miss out on a lot. I miss children being born; I miss birthdays and weddings; I miss funerals. And I missed out on saying good-bye to Bernie, and I will never have that chance again. I wish I had told Bernie just one more time how much I loved him and how much he meant to me. I wish I had told him what admiration and respect I had for him. Bernie Mac was the quintessential guy. He reminded me of a dude with a lazy eye: At first he seems off. But before you know it, because of the power of his personality, everybody tries to line up to
his
vision. I don’t get to spend as much time with my loved ones because of being on the road—and even in my case that’s not much of an excuse.

If you love somebody, you have an obligation to tell them. So close this book—it’s done anyway—pick up your phone, and dial someone you love but haven’t spoken to in a while. When they answer,
I want you to speak the fuck up
.

I’d like to thank my wife, LaDonna, who knew there was a book in me before I was ever sure that I could read one. To my children, Ryan, Tyler, and Kyle, who have made my life richer than it ever could have been. My mother and father, Audrey and Charles, who did the best they could with what they had. My sisters, Rhonda and Denise, and my brother, Kevin, who taught me how to share when I didn’t want to. My mother- and father-in-law, Annie and Ken Murphy, who gave me the love of my life. To Sonya Vaughn, who is the best right-hand man a woman can be. To the Oates family, I love you madly. To Tommy Curry, my cat from the time we was four—to be continued. To the Iveys, the Tarvers, the Russells, the Allens, the Muirs, the Macks, my first extended families. To Gary Hughley, Alvin Morris, Red Williams, Robert Hewitt, Craig Frazier, and Gary Monroe, the oldest road manager in the world, for protecting my vision and keeping the flame alive. To Willie Vonner,
who taught me if you ain’t scared to get an ass-whupping, you ain’t scared to give one. To Mr. Boston, teacher, teacher. To Ron Wolf, don’t get drunk on the numbers. To my agents, Chris Smith, Brent Galinsky, Andy Cohen, and William Rodriquez, who helped keep a roof over my head and a chicken in the pot. To Yvette Shearer, my publicist, for explaining the unexplainable. To Michael Rotenberg and Dave Beckey, my managers for twenty years of passionate war. To Richard Abate, my new warrior. To my lawyers, Andy Gawlker and Jim Jackoway; the best 5% I ever spent. To Kim Ibrahim and Rolanda Flowers for doing their best to protect me from myself. To Mark Landesman and Susie Steingruber, my new old guardians. To Myles Mapp, my firestarter. To Alexis Martin, alleycat. To chocolate chip cookies, who kept my sugar high and my spirits, too. To Bill Maher, who taught me more than he could know. To Caroline’s and the Improvs, who didn’t let the protestors scare them. To Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme, I know we’re geniuses now. To John Webb, the big brother I never had. To Neal Clark, Newark’s finest. To Greg Montgomery, my friend and protector. To Robert Greenblatt and David Janollari, the most thorough people I’ve ever worked with. To Nick Gold for keeping me in the air at a reasonable price. To Malik S., Ali Sadiq, Brian Ricci, Clint Coley, Tim Murray, and Steve Wilson, I look forward to reading all your books someday. To the 135ives, who taught me brotherhood, strength, and war. To Walter Latham, Steve Harvey, and Cedric the Entertainer for helping me make history. To Dr. Mark Lavin, who keeps this machine humming along. To Dr. Mason Somers, the counselor of counselors. To Riley, Maxine, Paris, and Joy, my dogs that are still here. To Lexus, Malik, and Sweetie, my dogs that ain’t. To CNN,
ya tu sabes
. To HBO, for my three comedy specials. To Cloteal for making me flyer than a mug. To Trayvon Martin and all the Trayvon Martins
that will never be. To Bernie Mac, who taught me to believe I ain’t scared of you motherfuckers. To Michael Malice, if an eagle has his wings and a knight his armor, I have my you.