Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
I started doing standup comedy in my junior year of high school. I preferred to spend most of my nights in comedy clubs and bars with mid-twenty and thirty-somethings. The Boston comedy scene was grimy, and dirty, and a little rough, and a lot toxic, and incredibly glamorous. I was underage but the clubs’ bouncers knew me. I never tried to get a drink; I was a harmless novelty. And because of that novelty, I was instantly more popular among this grab-bag of Harvard Lampoon writers and store-brand alcoholics than I’d ever been at school. They’d holler my name when I took the mic. “Sammy!” they’d yell, dragging out the ‘Y.’ Sam-eee! Me and Jack (22, Northeastern) or Evan (26, adult-job, 2-years sober) would drive an hour up to New Hampshire on work (school) nights to do terrible shows in Chinese restaurants that paid nothing and had no audience. It was worth it just to sit in AP Physics the next morning, knowing my particular brand of sleep deprivation was unique. Even Jennifer Cross liked me, and she pretty much hated everyone.
Jen Cross was a hot contender for ‘Boston comics most likely to actually make it in this industry’, or at least she would have told you so. She’d say things like, “I think I’ll probably do Conan in the next three years,” or “Amy Schumer’s career is really hurting mine because we operate in the same comedic space,” as if acknowledging one’s healthy sexuality automatically got your name on some shared Wikipedia entry with one of the biggest comedians of the decade.
Jen Cross was funny, but she wasn’t very nice to anyone she perceived to be a threat. This wasn’t exactly her fault; we all thought we were in a rat-race. Boston’s standup scene was like if an active war zone tried to pass-off as a school talent show. There was so much masculinity that testosterone was the second most common smell at a show, right behind stale PBR.
I didn’t threaten her, though. She was a twenty-six-year-old who’d been doing standup for five-plus years, had a job, and a master’s degree; I, on the other hand, was...a legal child with two jokes about hickies in my act.
Sometimes I would help her with the tickets at a show she ran in Allston, in the false hopes of someday getting a spot. After one particularly good show, in which my only role was counting tickets–a task so menial even an unpaid intern would scoff at it–I stacked chairs with Jen, not at all dissatisfied. Of course, I would’ve preferred to perform, but as a six-foot-tall, 17-year-old wearing a blue, H&M blazer–wishing it was a J-Crew blazer–I was starting to realize what it felt like to be looked at like an adult. The audience members with email confirmations on their phones, the venue manager, the bartenders: they didn’t say much to me, but they never brought up homework and they, not once, asked me how my college essays were coming along. My maturity, to those who didn’t know better, was a lie of omission. But lying feels good sometimes and you can’t tell me otherwise.
As a lifelong theatre kid, and dabbler in sleight of hand (middle school, give me a break), it seems too obvious to say I liked standup for the attention, the laughs. What was really so seductive was that, when I held the mic, anything I said was true. I could be anybody, have any history, simply by saying so. Usually I stayed myself, but who would blame a boy for trying on some different versions of himself? It’s just for a night, after all.
“Thanks for helping with the show, bud,” Jen said, as we said goodnight to the last comic.
I’d always hated when she called me ‘bud’, but I never said anything.
She asked if I wanted to smoke with her (weed, obviously) and I said yes, because why do any of us do any of the things we do?
We left the bar and she brought me about twelve feet away from the entrance where she started rolling a joint. I looked up the street for cops, but all I saw were BU students, walking poorly.
“Right here?” I asked. “On Comm-Ave?”
She glanced up at me.
“Sammy, you’re white. And I am also white.”
She had a point. So we smoked, or rather she smoked and I coughed.
She asked if I wanted to hang out and I said yes, because why do any of us do any of the things we do? It wasn’t unheard of for me to hang out with comics, socially; Evan and I went to a Louis CK show together on Valentine’s day. Don’t hate me; this was before we realized what he said on stage was true. Heroes disappoint.
Jen and I began walking toward her apartment in Fenway. I kept my hands jammed in my jacket pockets for warmth against the late, New England winter, while she complained about some comic who’d been bothering her before the show.
“Can you believe Shawn Ellis asked me if he could get a spot sometime? He’s a fucking open-micer,” she said.
‘Open-micer’ spit out of her mouth like a slur. I myself, at this point, was an open-micer, so I just nodded.
As we neared Fenway, I took a moment to imagine where exactly my evening was going. Here’s what I pictured: She had a good day job, so I saw a chic, but small one-bedroom. She was always well dressed, and so must be her abode, yes? Perhaps a Rothko print– no, Warhol, but not the soup cans, something more niche. Small leather couch, just big enough for two people, and a vintage, wooden coffee table. We might talk comedy, gossip, discuss plans for the future. When would she move to New York? (As it can be assumed any self-respecting Boston comic will.) Should I apply to college or just do comedy full-time? It would be an evening of mature discourse. A merging of the comedy-underworld with the metropolitan lifestyle I was surely destined for: one of mid-century modern decor and craft beers I’d learn to like when the time came.
We arrived at her three-story walk-up in relative silence and she let me in. Conversation hadn’t petered off as much as it vanished into the cold air, replaced by a tension of ambiguous nature, I thought. She closed the door behind us. Any intelligent thoughts either of us might’ve had seemed to fall to the floor, strewn about haphazardly like hastily discarded cloths. There, we left the niceties of the civilized world behind.
Her apartment was dark, until she turned the lights on; then it was just gloomy. It wasn’t exactly dirty, nor was it cluttered; one must possess belongings to achieve clutter.
Jen hurried around removing her jacket and disorganizing the contents of her tote-bag. She acted with a destinationless urgency, as if under the impression that if she moved quickly enough, I wouldn’t be able to see her life, naked before me.
She poured us two mugs of red wine.
Jen sat on the couch, and I joined her. It was a disgruntled, three-cushion couch that made you wish it was a futon. There was dog hair, but no dog.
“Do you wanna watch ‘Parks and Rec.?” Jen said, having already pulled it up on the TV.
“Sure,” I said. “Love Amy Poehler.”
She flipped through the episodes on the screen in the way one does only when they’ve already seen every episode. With a click, an episode somewhere in season four filled the screen.
Jen on the left cushion, remote in the center, me on the right. The three of us pointed, parallel, strictly forward at the TV. With bare, shadow-colored walls, what else would one gaze upon anyway?
Approximately halfway through the episode, Jen reached forward and lifted a jar of Whole Foods brand peanut butter and a suspiciously not-shiny fork off the wood-veneer coffee table. She proceeded to consume the peanut butter–plain–for the remainder of the episode. She didn’t even offer me any.
The silence felt strange, but what did I really know? Very little. There were many things I’d never done.
When the episode was finished it auto-played to the next one, and neither of us protested. As the title sequence played, Jen recapped the peanut butter, placing the fork and jar absentmindedly, yet precisely, back where they began on the table.
A short moment into the second episode, Jennifer lifted the remote from its place between us, and extended her arm forward, placing it on the coffee table, before reclining back into the couch cushion. This small action might have appeared pointless. If you were to imagine a passerby, peering through the window, they likely wouldn’t have even noted this change. However, a three-story walk-up is as immune to inquiring eyes as a seventeen-year-old boy is immune to foresight. Simply, where once sat an object of control and order, now sat only space to be filled.
Wait:
Before you continue reading, I must admit I have written two endings to this story. First, I wrote the ending that in precise detail actually occurred. Then I wrote an alternate conclusion that deviates rather crudely, explicitly, from the facts, and leaves a sweeter, yet sharper, flavor on my tongue. As a twenty-five-year-old with a comfortable job and a moderate addiction to hindsight, I chose the ending I could live with and deleted the other forever.
Proceed:
It was just before midnight. Chris Pratt mugged to the camera and the closing credits began to play.
“I’m gonna head home. Thanks for...” I trailed off, unsure of what to thank her for.
She gazed ahead and said: “Sure, seeya.”
Jen sat deflated against the armrest of the couch, one leg tucked under the other. She looked drained. She rolled her neck, and then stood up abruptly and smoothed down her black, cloth dress over her legs.
“You know the way out,” she smiled, sort of. “Bye.”
I don’t recall how I got home, though I’m quite sure I made it one way or another. I might’ve taken the train; the green line is such a pain, though. I probably splurged for an Uber. What difference does $20, or really any small decision, make when you’re young, anyway? Very little. Really no difference at all.
She actually never called me ‘bud’ again, after that night.