Page 6

A nthony

I spend all day Tuesday in the car with Emerson.

We play I Spy games, debate our favorite bands, books, and movies, before we move onto TV shows. Somewhere after we cross into Colorado, we start to play two truths and a lie and I learn a lot about her.

She hates peanuts but loves peanut butter, couldn’t wait to leave home, always wanted a sibling but since that never happened, so she settled for Layla.

She tells me about the embarrassing time that she went to a high school party and fell asleep in a guest room.

Her parents had been furious, thinking that she had been fooling around with some boy and had grounded her for two weeks.

I tell her about the time Ames, Alexander and I snuck out when we were teens. We got caught climbing back in the window and grounded for a week. That hadn’t stopped us from sneaking out again the next weekend.

I tell her about school and some of my family trips. She asks me a bunch of questions about when I first started doing stand up and I embellish quite a bit. No comic is great when they first start out but I tell Emerson I was killing it from day one.

I don’t think that she believes me.

We take turns driving, eating snacks that we grabbed at a gas station so that we don’t have to make more stops for food.

Emerson already booked us a hotel room for Chicago and I would never tell her, but I’m hoping that we get another room with only one bed again. I haven’t shared a bed with a woman before but sharing one with Emerson had been nice.

She was a snuggler.

She had fallen asleep and then rolled over almost immediately and curled up against my side. I always thought that I would hate cuddling. Just the idea of someone hanging on me drove me crazy, but with Emerson, I didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I liked having her close.

We pull into Chicago around eleven p.m. and we head straight for the comedy club. Open mic only lasts another hour so I have to hurry if I want to perform at the first club.

Emerson goes to find a table as I check in and they tell me that I can go on right away. I look around the club for Emerson but the place is dark and packed with people and I don’t catch sight of her as I follow the announcer up to the stage.

The announcer gives me a half assed introduction and I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me this is about to go badly.

It’s too late to back out now.

I climb up the stairs, trying to force the feeling in my gut aside as I grab the mic and launch into my routine.

The first joke kind of lands, but the second one bombs.

Then the heckling starts.

The set is fifteen minutes and each one feels like torture. I can feel my heart starting to beat faster with each minute, with every punchline that fails to hit its mark.

By the end of my time, I’m shaking and actually eager to get off stage. A cold sweat is covering every inch of me and my heart is racing out of control.

No one likes to bomb of course, but I take it especially bad.

I take comedy seriously. It’s been the only thing that I’ve cared about for most of my life, aside from family and friends. It’s my passion and I want to be the best at it.

As soon as my feet leave the stage, I’m replaying the set in my mind, wondering where I went wrong. Was it the audience? Was it the way that I said one of the jokes? Did I do something different tonight from the last few nights?

I walk off stage and look up, locking eyes with Emerson. She looks pissed and when some asshole in the front row leans over to say something to me, she rushes to my side. Her tiny hands wrap around my arm and she drags me out of the club and to the busy street.

“Oh my gosh! That was terrible. Why did they act like that?” she asks as she continues to march me down the street.

“That’s called bombing,” I tell her, trying to lighten the mood and pull myself out of the funk that I can feel starting to consume me.

“They were vicious! Why would they keep interrupting like that?” she asks as we reach our hotel lobby.

I don’t answer her, letting her rant to herself as I try to go over the set in my head. We walk up to the counter and I let Emerson take over and check us in. She’s got the room keys a few minutes later and I head out to the car, grabbing our bags before I meet her on our floor.

Emerson opens our hotel room door and I drop our bags down by the dresser.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

Emerson gives me a worried look as I head into the bathroom but I’m too busy beating myself up to worry about her worrying about me.

I stand under the hot water for a long time, trying to push the memories of tonight out of my head.

It’s after midnight by the time I dry off and head out into the hotel room.

I forgot to grab a change of clothes so I’ve got just a towel wrapped around my hips when I walk out and see that Emerson is still up and waiting for me.

“Oh!” she says, hurrying to cover her eyes and just like that, my sour mood starts to change.

I can see the blush staining her cheeks from across the room and I smile as I take my time grabbing a clean t-shirt and pair of sweats. I change into them in the room as Emerson covers her eyes and I toss the bathroom towel onto the sink.

“I’m decent,” I tell her.

“I’m not sure that I would ever use those words to describe you,” she mumbles and I laugh.

Thank god I’m wearing something besides a towel right now. Her quick wit is a big turn on and I can feel my body starting to react.

She drops her hands and looks over to me, studying my face.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks quietly after a few minutes and I shake my head.

“Let’s just go to bed.”

I lucked out and we got another one-bed room. I wonder if Emerson requested it. She’s already in her pajamas and she helps me pull back the covers before we both slide into bed.

I turn off the bedside lamp and all is quiet.

All except my mind.

I can’t turn it off, can’t stop thinking about the set tonight. I’ve gone over every line a dozen times by now and I still don’t know what I did wrong. Part of me knows that every comic just has nights like tonight but I still can’t stop obsessing over it.

“I can feel you thinking,” Emerson whispers and I roll over onto my side to face her in the dark.

“I can’t stop thinking about where I went wrong tonight,” I admit, hating how weak and needy I sound, even to my own ears.

“I thought that you were great. I mean it’s a little less funny now that I’ve heard the set a few times, but I still laughed. The crowd was just vicious,” she says and I feel the bed shake as she shivers a bit.

“Are you cold?” I ask her.

“A little. The room just needs to warm up a bit.”

I scoot closer to her, telling myself that it’s just to help her warm up a bit.

“Do a lot of your crowds heckle you like they did tonight?” she asks me and I shake my head.

“You get some drunk people every now and then but nothing like tonight. At least not in Los Angeles.”

“Different town, different crowd?”

“Apparently so.”

“How do you move past it?”

“Get back out there.”

“Like riding a bike?” she asks and I nod.

“Something like that.”

“When did you know that you wanted to be a comedian?”

“Since I was a kid. I always loved to make people laugh.”

“I bet you were the class clown,” she says and I can hear the smile in her voice.

“Oh, I was,” I say with a laugh.

“Do your parents like that you went down this path?”

“Yeah, they’re supportive. They just want us to be happy and healthy. What about yours? Are they happy that you got an art degree and started working at galleries? Or did they want you to be a painter instead?”

“Neither,” she admits and I can hear the sadness in her voice.

“They wanted me to become a teacher and some guy’s wife.

Then I could stay in Idaho and pop out two perfect kids all before I was thirty.

They don’t get art, don’t think that it’s a good career path, and certainly don’t like that I live and work in Los Angeles. ”

“That sucks. I’m sorry, Emerson.”

I can feel the bed shift and I know that she must have just shrugged.

“We should get some sleep. We have another long day in the car tomorrow,” she says through a yawn and I nod.

“Goodnight Anthony.”

“Goodnight Emerson.”

As I roll over onto my back and let my eyes drift shut, I realize that Emerson has done what I’ve never been able to do.

She made me forget about how I bombed.