🎧 AUDIO QUACK 🎧
Skip introduction: 2:20
“Maybe you should wait a month before you start cracking jokes.” Sausage was giving me dating advice as we walked along the Hudson River.
“What do you mean?” I said, offended. “They love the jokes!”
She then lifted my left hand, showed me my own bare wedding finger, and said coldly, “Clearly.”
I pulled my hand free and hid it in my jacket pocket, then changed the subject of what we should do on a Friday night in New York. I suggested a comedy show.
“Ok…” Sausage said, reluctantly. “As long as you don’t use the jokes on your next date.”
I’ve loved stand-up ever since watching Peter Kay on my parent’s telly. Garlic Bread!? Live at Apollo introduced me to Stephen K. Amos, and he was the first comedian I saw live. Since then, I’ve seen Mike Birbiglia, Trevor Noah, Sara Barron, Suzy Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans, Iliza Shlesinger…and more.
As well as solo shows, I have gone to comedy nights in London and Oxford to watch a variety of comedians perform. I was intrigued to see what New York had to offer.
At the local stand-up shows in Oxford, I usually grab a Lucky Saint and find my own seat, like a real-life grown-up. New York, you are not trusted to do this. A man takes you from the door to the stage area and tells you exactly where he wants you to sit. Our man took Sausage and me straight to the front row. He may as well have been trying to get us to sit in seats covered in jelly.
“No.No.No.No.No,” Sausage and I said in unison. Everybody knows you don’t sit in the front row of a comedy show.
When I went to see Josh Berry’s stand-up, I had no choice but to sit at the front. I was with a male friend, and we got hounded by the warm-up act, asking why we weren’t dating. “Why are you two not dating?” “Who rejected who?” And it went on and on and on …. Torture.
So, it was a firm no to the seats at the front. The man took Sausage and me safely to the back, next to an Australian woman. We didn’t know it then, but this Australian woman was going to be one of the main characters of the night, and therefore, the main character of this Quack.
When the first comedian started their set, I noticed something was strange. Usually, an audience laughs during a comedy show, but this audience was silent or tittering at best. It was as if they had their shows muddled up and they should be sitting in a Shakespearean tragedy.
The comedians would call us out for being hard work. “It’s not me! It’s them!” I wanted to yell. I was doing my part, after all. I laughed at everything. Some of it was truly funny too. Like the joke about Task Rabbit. The comedian said how turned-off she was when her boyfriend hired another man to put up a shelf. Sausage and I were in stitches. The audience was not.
But sometimes, I laughed only because I was a people-pleaser. It’s the same personality trait that makes me intensely watch air stewards when they are pointing out exits on an aircraft.
Cheers AI
Funny or not, the crowd was hard work, and this was made clear when the comedians dared to ask the audience a question.
“Is anyone here on a dating app?”
Silence.
“Has anyone here been to China?”
Silence.
“Anyone here gay?”
Silence.
I wished more than anything I could have said yes to one of the questions, but I can’t lie. So, I pressed my nails into my palms, wishing someone in the audience to be gay.
“Anyone here an only child?” one comedian asked and was met with the usual silence. “Really? Nobody here is an only child?”
“Move ooon!” The woman next to me heckled. And this was not the only time we were going to hear from the heckler that night…
One comedian made the mistake of asking a man in the front row where he was from. “Australia,” said the man.
Well, my neighbour got very excited.
“Where bouts in ‘Stralia?” She called out.
Oh no no no no no.
The comedian squinted in our direction, as I leaned dramatically to the right……. far away from my neighbour. It was critical for everyone to know that I was nothing to do with this.
“What did you say?” said the comedian with a smile.
“Where bouts in ‘Stralia are you from?”
“This is not a speed dating event,” The comedian said. He got a small chuckle from the audience and was about to move on, when…
“Just wanna know where bouts in ‘Stralia he is from!”
“Do you know how this show works?” The comedian asked, impatiently.
“I just want to know where in ‘Stralia he is from!?”
The comedian was no longer laughing. He clearly didn’t want his set to be hijacked.
You would think that would be the end of the Aussie Heckler, but no, she appeared again. One comedian, coming to the end of his set, said, “Ah, one minute left. How should I end this?” And the Aussie Heckler just started clapping…. hard.
CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP
“Oh.” The comedian laughed nervously. “Is that my cue to go? Ha?”
CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP
And that was that. The comedian was off the stage.
As Sausage and I left the club, I couldn’t help but to feel something went wrong in there. I’m used to being in pain from laughing so much after a comedy night, not pain from being so tense. It wasn’t the vibe I was used to. Sausage wondered if the New York comedy crowd were harder to crack.
Was it that? Or was our audience particularly difficult? Or were the jokes not funny enough?
I guess I’ll have to find out, when I use the material on my next date….
“Do you ever use Task Rabbit?”
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