The Comedy Store Tragedy

Another date, another car accident.

Sorry; another date, another train wreck.

Sorry; another date, another blimp explosion.

Sorry; another date, another fiery asteroid hitting the earth and causing all of the dinosaurs to die… again.  Because we still have dinosaurs alive and their names are crocodiles, motherfuckers.

I might have gone a lil’ overboard there, so let’s roll it back on the “how disastrous was the date?” scale, and just go with the “train wreck” metaphor. Because that’s what happens whenever I go on a date: it’s destined to go off the rails, and someone usually dies.

This was a date that was two months in the making. It may have even been three months in the making? I don’t keep record of these things. (That honor goes to my grandmother, who is informing me that I’ve been on 11 dates this year and they’ve all been, in her words, “a fucking disaster.”)

I met a girl online, and we would chat intermittently. We had a good amount in common, including a proclivity for writing, but we were both busy people. We had never met in person, and quite honestly, I had given up on the possibility of it ever happening. In my world, if you are actually interested in a person, you wanna “meet them” and “see what they look like” and “smell their hair”.  I’m sure most of your share my sentiments.

But one day, I randomly ask her if she wants to go out to a comedy show and she’s like, “Yeah!”  Exclamation point included.

And so we have a date for the next night, which is a Tuesday.

She had revealed earlier to me that she has only been on four dates all year, and expressed the magnitude of creepy “creepy guy” shit that she has suffered during some of those dates, and being the confident feller I am, I vow (in my head) to make this the best of her five dates.

It shouldn’t be that hard.  I knew my choice of date location was money:

The World Famous Comedy Store.

A Tuesday night show featuring 16 of the best comedians out right now, taking place in the historic Original Room, which seats just 148 people, and promises an up close and intimate experience, and a good chance you’ll get heckled by the performer on stage, lasting over four hours, all for just 15 bucks.

Sounds amazing, right?

How could that ever go wrong?

How could that ever… go… wrong?

(*locks self in closet*)

(*cries*)

(*stops crying*)

(*is still locked in closet*)

(*cries again*)

We met outside the club somewhere around 8:30 pm. I got there first and told her I’d be out front and to just find me. And once I got to my post, I spent the entire time waiting just staring straight up at the sky, eliminating the chances of me walking up to some random girl being like, “Hey are you my date?” and her being like “Get away from me you creep! I have mace!”

Also, since I had never met her in person, who knew if I was about to get my ass catfished?

“Hey,” I heard in a voice that matched that from our one phone call.

I looked down and gave myself a proper moment to identify my accoster.

It was her alright:

Salamandra. (Here on referred to as Sally)

She looked just like she did in her photos… maybe even better? Which is insane, because she had just gotten off work and came straight here. I mean so had I, but girls tend to look more like a worn-out disheveled mess by the end of their shift then guys do. Typically their eye makeup is running off their face and they smell like a wet poodle. But not Salamandra.

I couldn’t get a good sense of her body through her cleverly concealed work clothes, but I was happy knowing that she wasn’t a midget, an irrational and sudden phobia that paralyzed me just minutes before our meeting.

I extended my hand to meet hers.

“Nice to meet you… in the flesh.”

She flashed a warm, radiant smile, and my heart skipped a beat.

We stood next to each other and waited in line to get into the club, which only took about 10 minutes, but gave us ample time to chat. We discussed our roommates (and lack thereof), our favorite comedians (of which ours intersected), and other stand-up specials that we were pretty sure we had watched, but had simply been too high to remember details.

I had given up drinking and smoking for two weeks (a personal lifetime record) and was a few days away from the finish line. The Comedy Store has a two drink minimum, and I felt a tinge of remorse knowing that I was going to be a huge faggot letting Sally drink alcohol by herself.

What I did happen to have in my backpack, however, was a marijuana edible, an unassuming little gummy thing with “highly potent!” written on the box.

I didn’t have plans to eat this thing prior to the date, but her talk of being too high to remember Netflix specials was enough to plant the idea in my head.  I reached into my bag and took the edible out.

“What do you saw we take this little gummy guy right here and split it? It’s 100 mg; I think we could each do 50?”

It took no more convincing than that.  Sally gave a zestful “hell yeah,” and I began taking the edible out of its packaging.

Before I could divide it between us, we were escorted inside by the table-seater guy and given seats along the aisle, about 30 feet from the stage. The Original Room was even smaller and more intimate than I had imagined.

I pulled the edible back out of my pocket and went to put half of it in my mouth.  Sally stopped me.

“Why don’t we start with a quarter each first?  We could always eat more later.”

The voice of reason.  This girl really seems to have her shit together.

And so I ate quarter, Sally ate hers, and the keyboardist in the room was already summoning the first comedian to stage.

The show had begun.

The first comedian, clocking in at 52-years old, told a bit of jokes, and spent the rest of his 15 minute set roasting everyone in the front row of the audience, calling special attention to an afro’ed white guy claiming to be an actor on some Amazon show that he didn’t even know the name of.  Sally and I laughed at the poor bastard and agreed that we would never sit at the front row of a comedy show.

“Fuck that shit.”

“I would die,” she said.

And then the second comedian came up. And I was starting to feel pretty high, quicker than I was expecting it to hit me. I needed a beverage.

The waitress made her way over to get us our first drinks.  Out of the limited non-alcoholic drinks category, I asked for a water—wait no—a Pellegrino. I had to show that I was a man with class and sophistication. Sally got a double of gin and tonic.

We clinked our glasses and were back invested in the show.

That second comedian was a fucking legend. Those were my exact words to Sally after he finished his set. The guy barely got to his pre-written material, and spent 80% of his time up there just utterly shitting on the audience. Afro’ed White Guy got it bad. The comedian took it a step further and got Afro’s girlfriend involved, offering a convincing case for why their relationship was doomed once they met each other’s parents.

The best part came when a girl from the audience got up to go to the can in the middle of the comedian’s set, and he started grilling her as she was leaving the room.

“Where did you eat before coming here?”

And, “What did you eat?  Steaks?  Hmm…”

When she left the room he immediately confided to the audience, “If she’s back in 2-3 minutes, she’s taking a piss. 4-5 minutes, or any longer, she’s taking a shit. If she’s back in 1 minute she pissed and didn’t wash her hands.”

Auspiciously, she was back in 3 minutes.

The third comedian was even wittier.  Or maybe I was just that much higher.  I was laughing at all of this guy’s jokes, and his flannel shirt.

After a couple of his best jokes, I would laugh and then turn to Sally, expecting her do be doing the same… but she wasn’t. Her face was endowed with a grin, but there was no laughter coming out of her mouth. Oh. Maybe she just didn’t find this guy funny.

She had to have liked the next comedian though, right? The first big name of the night: Sebastian Maniscalco.

Unanimously voted “family fav” by the 5 other comedians in my immediate family, although I never understood why? I saw his stand up once and was like, “Bleh.” I figured that the fam liked him because he’s a Chicago guy, and speaks like a total goombah and speaks to the inner-Italian inside all of us.

I was happy to discover that the love for this guy was all well-deserved: Sebastian was a fucking riot.

It was during his set, and not even an hour into the show, that I began laughing not just with my mouth, but with my entire body. I went full grandpa mode, slapping my knees at times, and slapping Sally’s shoulder at others.  Not in an abusive way, but one of  “get the fuck outta heeeuh” gestures that the Italians are known for.  I figured she’d respond in kind, but shockingly, she didn’t seem to think that this set was funny, either.

The grin on her face was fading.

And now I felt bad.  I felt bad because I brought her to a show where she didn’t seem to be into it.

And then I felt really bad.

Because just at that moment, it dawned upon me:

The edible was hitting me HARD.

My eyes got watery. My mouth was dry. And was I hot? Cold? Should I take my hoodie off? Yeah, that’s what’s got me feeling fucked up; all these extra layers.

I pulled my hoodie off and immediately regret it.

Turns out, I had been cold.  And now, I was even colder. My hands felt like I had just delivered a pack of polar bear cubs and had spent hours touching polar pussy. But since I had just taken the hoodie off, I had to commit to it. I’d look like a confused imbecile if I took it off and immediately put it back on.

And what’s this; was I itchy all of the sudden?

I went to scratch my arm pit, and to my complete horror… my arm pit… was perspiring.

“Oh my word,” I thought.

I never get B.O., mainly because I had thyroid surgery in high school and that eliminated almost all of the sweating on the upper half of my body. And also because I never forget to wear deodorant.

But had I forgotten to wear deodorant on this day? The one day I needed it most?

I needed full confirmation that my pits smelled bad. I needed to sniff them, and I needed to make the sniff look smooth and natural.

As the comedian on stage continued to kill it, I knew that I’d have my chance during his next big joke. The joke came out, the crowd collectively reacted, and that’s when I feigned a huge roar, and made it look like I was burying my face into my arm from laughing too hard. But while my face was buried into my arm, I quickly slid my nose near the odor holes of my pits and took a mini-ninja whiff.

I didn’t smell anything. But really, who knew how reliable my nose was? My senses were all fucked up. Poor Sally was the one sitting next to my right arm pit. If I smelt, she knew all about it.

I decided to keep my arms down for the rest of the show.

Sebastian finished, and we were only 1/4th through the show.

The next comedian was Chris D’Elia, whom you recall (from this recent blog: Congratul-Asians 2) I had just seen at the same venue 3 weeks ago. I was really interested in how similar his set would be to the one weeks earlier. And the answer was, completely different.

…From how I remembered it.

It may have been the exact same set; there’s no way of knowing.

And that’s because, from this point onward, this is where my memory starts to fail me.

I was high as fucking bejeezus. I was so high that I didn’t even want to laugh. Because I couldn’t laugh. Because I didn’t even know what was funny anymore.

My mouth turned into a big sheet of sandpaper. I had the driest mouth that I had ever had in my life.

Even with my second Pellegrino sitting right in front of me, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before it was gone, and I’d need more, and more, and more.

I looked for the waitress but couldn’t get her attention. She was too busy dishing out everyone’s mandatory two drinks. I already had mine. I cowered at the thought of the moment when I wouldn’t have a drink on my table.

I needed to divert my thinking.

Sally. I spun my head to face her, and fired off the first thing that came to mind. I wanted to ask her who her favorite comedian of the night was so far, but my language failed me and this is what came out:

“S-s-so, who d-do you, uh, like… now? Here? Tonight. This show.”

“I… don’t even know.”

She didn’t know what I was trying to ask her, most likely.

D’Elia finished his set, and he started to introduce the next comedian:

Joe Rogan.

Upon hearing that name, all of the synapses and neurons in my brain began to light up.

Joe Rogan is my hero. The man behind my favorite (and objectively the best) podcast around. I had been wanting to see Joe live since the beginning of eternia. And he was now walking up to the stage, within arm distance from where I was sitting.

As the crowd gave him a rousing welcome, I tried too. But I could not express my enthusiasm. I didn’t want to clap, I didn’t want to “woo,” I didn’t want to stand, or nothing.

The only thing I could do was sit there and continually think,

“Oh my god. I am off my fucking rocker right now.”

Also, “Why does his head looks so big and disproportionate to the rest of his body?” I couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating or his head was really that big.

Sally asked my to stand up so she could slide out to go to the toilet. She might be headed there to pee. More likely, she’s going to puke. If I was feeling like this much of a mess, she must’ve been feeling something too.

I tried to use that alone time to get it together. Focus, Darby. Recover. Handle this shit like the alpha male you are.

When Sally came back, I was twice as high as when she left. Also, I wasn’t sure if she had been gone 2 minutes or 20 minutes.

Joe Rogan eventually finished his set, and knowing that I needed to commemorate this experience in some way, I reached out and high-fived him as he passed through my aisle on his exit.

Good thing I have this keepsake memory, because I can’t tell you a single thing he talked about up there.

The next comedians were all comedians I would have been equally excited about; Bert Kreischer, Joey Diaz, Jeff Ross, Theo Von… but every time a new comedian would come out, I felt myself slipping deeper and deeper into a dark void.

My Pellegrino was long gone, and I realized that it hadn’t even done shit for me in the first place. My dry mouth was corrosively affecting my whole body. It made me reticent and withdrawn. My communication with Sally had all but stopped.

I needed to say something to her. I needed to take the reigns and turn this date around. It took me 5 minutes to prepare for what I was about to say. And then finally I turned to Sally, prepared to speak, and

By god—her eyes were closed.

I think she’s dead.

I should shake her. Check her pulse. Ask how she’s doing.

But I needed to hydrate. This was the moment.

My memory started to serve me again, and it reminded me of my “Water in a Box” that I had had in my bag from earlier in the day. Security didn’t check our bags when we entered… did they?

I reached in my bag and found the carton inside. There was still liquid in there, thank god. I looked around, spotted the waitress walking around, located security in the corner of the room, waited for them both to look away, and then inhaled all of the water from inside the box like a bolt of lightning striking a lake. And then I threw the carton back into the bottom of my backpack unnoticed by staff.

I didn’t swallow (I never swallow) and slowly and deliberately swished the water around in my mouth and tried to come back to reality.

It was a transcendent experience.

And then I was ready to speak.

“Uh… hey. Sally. I uh… are you alright?”

From behind her closed eyes, she said, “I think I need to go home.”

Wow. Who saw this coming?

I spent the next 20 minutes trying to wave the waitress down and get our bill. And then we had our check and I tried to leave cash on the table so we could just get the fuck outta there. But Sally informed me that the waitress had her credit card. And there would be even more waiting to get that back.

The bill was 40 bucks. I wanted to pay. Whatever it took to get out of there.

Sally started taking her wallet out and I put the money on the table.

She wasn’t letting me pay for it.

And so I figured we would compromise.

I put down 40 dollars of cash on the table and offered it to Sally.

“Here. Do something with that. Get the tip or whatever.”

She stared at the cash for a long time. That’s when I flashed back to an earlier conversation that we had, where she said she felt insulted with one guy she went on a date with who tried to pay for her, that it was a slap in the face to a hard-working independent girl like herself.

Finally she tacitly accepted my offer and threw down some cash for the tip.

And then we got up and started walking outside. This would be the right move. A little fresh air and we would both feel resuscitated.

Nope. Even after stepping out into the brisk night, and spotting another one of my heroes “Ashy Larry” from Chappelle’s show drinking in the lobby, I gave Sally some space and then asked her, “How do you feel?”

“I feel nauseous.”

“Do you want to take a little walk? Maybe we could get a milkshake or something?”

“No, I need to go home.”

No fucking milkshakes??

The thing was, I was supposed to have an EEG test on my brain the following morning, at 9:45 AM. And that mandated that I could not sleep that night more than 4 hours. So I was planning on staying up late anyways. I just wanted her company, and the 24-hour diner place down the street with milkshakes was where I had hoped we would be able to take our post-show antics.

Alas, that would not be happening.

Sally’s Uber showed up minutes later, and I walked her over to the car. As I opened the door, I apologized.

“Listen, I’m really sorry for how this turned out. I uh… didn’t know how strong those edibles would be.”

“Yeah…” she said, getting into the back of the car.

There were no hugs, handshakes, or anything remotely suggesting that same warmth that once emanated from her smile.

“Can you text me when you get home? So I know you’re safe?”

Either the question didn’t register, or she just ignored it.

I closed the door to the vehicle, and to the end of a train wreck of a date.

I went back inside and watched a couple of other comedians by myself before tapping out and returning home around 1.

I never got that text from her about her safe arrival home.

The next day was pretty horrendous. I made it to UCLA to do my EEG test in the morning, after sleeping exactly 4 hours. It wasn’t easy, especially because edibles aren’t exactly cathartic.

But I got to the brain lab, where they attached a bunch of wires to my head and then flashed a nauseatingly fast strobe light in front of my eyes repeatedly. I was sure that I was going to have a seizure.

When I finished, I went to work and put in my 8 hours from a zombie-like state.

That whole day, the day after the date, I didn’t hear a single word from Sally. From my understanding, if you go on a date and don’t hear from the other party the next day, you can effectively rule out a second date.

And that sucked.

I have no problems with dates going south and ruined opportunities, but the worst part was that I had talked with this girl for months, and all of that time spent getting to know each other was for naught.

But what can you do about it?

In my case, I guess I’ll just have to keep failing and being shitty at dating. That’s my M.O., and I’ve come to accept it now. I’ll get better at it one day. I swear.