I'm Not High (15 page)

Tracy would see this and say, “Everybody in the ghetto loves you! They love you like they love Jim Carrey.”

I was walking out of the bodega around the corner one afternoon and from just outside the door, I heard, “Get him. Get him.” I looked up to see people scattering out of the way of this short, skinny black guy who was running right at me, with a bunch of slow-footed cops trailing after him. For a split second I thought, “If I put my shoulder out I could take this guy down easy. I could be a hero.” And then I thought to myself, “You’re a guest in this community, on good footing; don’t screw that up.” Was it the right thing to let an alleged criminal run right past me? Probably not. But knowing the relationship between the police and the residents of Harlem, I was taking the side of the people who lived there.

The show got a lot of notoriety for its sketches and its musical acts—we had Wu-Tang Clan, Mary J. Blige, and Kriss Kross on—and a lot of attention right away for the snap contest, where cast members and comics would end the show going head-to-head onstage, trying to outdo one another with “yo mama” jokes. Monteria Ivey and Hugh Moore were the geniuses behind it. André Brown came by a rehearsal early on and announced, “We’re gonna need a white guy to do some snaps, too.”

I volunteered but ultimately could not bring it. Growing up, I was really good at insult humor. I could paint a mental picture that would just nuke someone, but by the time I got it out, it wasn’t exactly a snap anymore.

So I got up onstage and said, “Your mama is so fat that they need a crane to get her out of bed, and once she’s out of bed, the neighbors think there’s an earthquake and—”

“Okay,” Kevin said. “That’s enough.”

“What?” I said.

“We don’t have all month,” Kevin replied. “That means you’re up, Rob.”

“Nah,” he said. “Snaps aren’t really my forte. I don’t think so.”

“Well, I do think so,” André said, admonishing him just a smidge. “So take a day to work on some. Hugh will help you out. Come back ready tomorrow.”

Hugh Moore was a funny young guy from Minnesota who carried himself so slowly and deliberately that he reminded me of Grady from
Sanford and Son,
so I started calling him that (until he asked me to stop shortly thereafter). He was also the best snap writer ever.

Rob showed up the next day pretending he was sick. He had a scarf around his neck and a cup of tea, and as he dunked his tea bag, he explained that he was getting laryngitis and really needed to rest his voice because he had to do a show later that night. We all knew he was faking, but he was not budging on trying to worm his way out of it.

“No one’s gonna be able to hear me,” Rob said.

“That’s okay,” Kevin said. “Just do your snaps quietly.”

So Rob gingerly took the stage, armed with Hugh’s snaps, wearing a scarf around his neck and gently dunking a tea bag into his cup. He wore a total deadpan look on his face and as he slowly whispered, “Your mother is so fat, she can’t wear an X jacket, because helicopters keep landing on her back,” then took a sip of his tea, we all knew that we were witnessing something amazing. A character was born.

The first week he did snaps, Rob became a star. The crowd ate it right up, and a Harlem crowd is the toughest. If they don’t like you, they’ll just point right at the door and stare you offstage. If you crush in front of them, it’s a huge accomplishment. With his droll delivery, Rob sounded like a menacing mobster who was not to be crossed, and for ten straight weeks, he blew the competition off the stage. It put him on a real high, and rightfully so, because it was such a genius execution. Hugh and Rob were as formidable a team as Mickey and Rocky. Until one day Rob showed up and broke the news that he now was writing all of his own snaps and didn’t need Hugh anymore. Hugh had created a monster and Rob got cocky. Hugh sort of shrugged off the news, and when it came time for Rob to deliver his own snaps, he got annihilated instantly and lost the title.

Initially, being away from Dee so much was tough. We’d moved to an apartment way out in Hillsborough, New Jersey, a great distance from the city. Dee had friends out there she wanted to hang with (but never did) and for our money, the apartment was a heck of a lot bigger and nicer than anything we’d seen closer to the city. Here’s the thing: The seventy-five-minute commute to New York City turned out to be a monster. My long hours and our poor communication led her to call it quits on our engagement several times when the show was just coming together. You gotta remember, this was a time when there were no cell phones. No texting. No e-mail. And I couldn’t tie up the club’s phone with my personal calls, and most of the pay phones in Harlem didn’t work, and when one did, I’d have to use a little calling card that I’d bought at the bodega and hope she was home from her job as a car checker. (She worked at this place I thought was kinda scammy, where they hooked up computers to people’s cars to diagnose what was wrong with them.) I could leave a message on our machine, but she had no real way of getting in touch with me.

Before we had figured out how to make it work, there was one time when Dee and I were feuding. I wasn’t going to be funny with conflict eating away at me. So, about midway through rehearsals, I walked up to Kevin Brown and told him I was leaving for the day.

“Things aren’t going the hottest at home right now,” I said.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I gotta split for today and clear some things up with my fiancée so I can come back tomorrow with better focus.”

“You go do what you need to do, Jim.”

Like I said before, the Browns appreciated and respected the value of family. So with his blessing, I drove home to New Jersey. But, naturally, when I got to the apartment, Dee wasn’t there. And it looked like she hadn’t been there since the morning. My worst fear was that she’d left for good. I was already envisioning telling my parents and friends that the wedding was off and I was now single. Then the phone rang. It was Dee.

“What the hell are you doing at home?” she screamed as soon as I picked up. I could hear car horns blaring and pedestrians in the background. City noise. She was furious.

“Where are
you
?” I said.

“I came to visit you!” she yelled.

“I took off work early to surprise you!” I said.

“Well, this was a great surprise!”

“Dee,” I said, “just come home now, so we can be together before I have to be back there tomorrow. Sorry, honey. I thought you’d appreciate me trying to work on us.”

“I do!” she said, finally warming up to me. “I have to figure out how to get back from Harlem.”

It’s at that point that I think I might have told her to go
east
on 125th Street and look for signs that would take her to the George Washington Bridge, and that would bring her safely back to New Jersey. I meant west. Regardless, I didn’t hear anything from her for a while, and when I did, she was not in New Jersey.

“I went over a bridge,” Dee said. She was calling from another pay phone. “And it wasn’t the GWB. It was way smaller. Now I tried to turn around, and I have no idea where I am.” There were more city noises in the background. It was getting dark out and I’m pretty sure I was more nervous than she was. She just sounded annoyed.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “I think you might be in the Bronx.”

“All the buildings look like they’re going to fall down.”

“Yep,” I said. “You’re in the Bronx.”

She hung up and another two and a half hours went by. I had the phone next to me and the TV turned on, watching the news, waiting to see her overturned car in flames on-screen somewhere. Believe me, the visuals going on in my head were not pretty. Finally, I heard a key turn in the door, and Dee walked in, completely exhausted. With the help of a few gas station attendants, she’d gotten turned in the right direction, and despite the drama, the engagement was still on.

When Tracy Morgan joined the cast, he’d never been on TV before, but we all knew how hilarious his stand-up was. He would help with sketches, but he wouldn’t write. He couldn’t sit still long enough. So if you were anywhere near him, writing was your job. Not that I minded. Sometimes Tracy wasn’t even part of a sketch originally—he’d just wander by, start casually riffing with you, and automatically take whatever you were working on to the stratosphere.

And he’d disappear into character for who knows how long. It was hilarious and annoying at the same time, because it was impossible to get him out of it. When he came onboard, he and I hit it off like two kids who found each other on a playground and liked to play the same games. He became my best friend on the show. No matter what was thrown out there, we could both imitate it and go nonstop. He was by far the most physically gifted comedian I’d encountered.

Tracy would take the train in from the Bronx, wearing this little beanie hat like the one Spanky from
The Little Rascals
wore, only Tracy’s had a propeller. He was late every single day and he’d always set rehearsals back even further, because he’d come in with a story and then start doing all of the characters in it. He could adopt the tics and mannerisms of anyone he saw, even if only in passing—it could be some lady he saw dropping cantaloupes at a supermarket, a crotchety neighbor he’d gotten into an argument with, the conductor on the train, a bunch of people from the last three blocks of his commute, whoever.

He would freely riff on any topic and hold nothing back. When you see him on TV being interviewed and he starts acting crazy, just keep in mind that he’s not acting. That’s his real unfiltered personality. I liked how honest he was and that would lead to deep conversations between us.

“Where you from?” he asked one day when we first met.

“My family’s from Long Island, near Queens,” I said.

“I’m straight ghetto, if anyone asks,” he said. “I don’t mind saying it. That’s where I’m from. I’ve been a ticket scalper. Sold some other things people might frown on. I do what I gotta do to provide for my family. Bottom line.”

One day I was rehearsing when I heard fireworks right outside the front door.

Tracy emerged from another room and said very matter-of-factly, “Who got shot?”

I laughed, and he said, “No, really, someone got shot outside.”

“Sounded like firecrackers to me.”

“Nah,” he said, “that was a drive-by.” He peeked out the window and then said, “Come on, he’s across the street.”

Sure enough we saw a young black man, down on all fours, bleeding all over the place right in front of the deli I ate at every day. Tracy and I approached him as a crowd of about fifteen people gathered around and watched him struggle. He was bleeding so heavily that it was rolling off of the sidewalk, down into the gutter. He repeatedly tried to get up, only to fall powerlessly back to the ground. You could hear his flesh slapping the cement every time this happened.

“Look at you now!” a woman screamed at him. “Look at you now!”

There was still gun smoke in the air. The paramedics showed up quickly and did their jobs, but the dying man seemed almost like an interruption to their day. They were mostly white guys and never broke their conversation about baseball for too long as they strapped him to the gurney.

“Yeah, I don’t know why they traded for O’Neill. I liked Roberto Kelly.”

“Well,” his partner said, “Kelly just wasn’t—” Then he paused to address the dying man, who was still for some reason trying to get up under his own power. “
Listen, stay down, man. Quit moving!
. . . Kelly just wasn’t living up to his potential.”

They moved with the nonchalance of a train conductor collecting tickets on the LIRR. They hoisted him into the ambulance and drove off. Just another day at the office.

After the shooting, Tracy and I were sitting out in his car on 125th Street, discussing the situation. He was playing old R&B— stuff like the Isley Brothers and Al Green—and despite what had happened earlier, it was nice to hang out and talk without it being a work situation. Later, when we were both on
Saturday Night Live,
he and I would share an office, write together, and get to hang out a lot more outside of the show, but on
Uptown,
no one really
wanted
to hang out. It was like we all lived together anyway. After spending fourteen hours a day with each other, when we were done working we all just wanted to go home. At the time, Tracy had four young kids waiting for him, and he took his parenting very seriously.