I'd Eat the Cheeseburger, Darling.

I did a bringer and I only brought myself; myself apparently worth $35.  Seeing as I refused to bring any friends, the show’s runner insisted I act as my own bringer, and buy my way in like any comedy-fan: $10 ticket and two drink minimum. Hoping to get my money’s worth, I ordered the stiffest drinks I could imagine and the bartender, recognizing my despair gave me a Jack-and-Coke-sans-Coke and a vodka tonic, (hold the tonic.)  After two glasses of virtually straight liquor (I do believe there was an ice cube in the Jack) I was bumbling and ready to go, but I wouldn’t go on stage for hours, after I had sobered-up, dozed-off, and urinated 13 times. 

I hate shows like these.  The crowd starts off hubbub with energy. Usually they are at the preliminary stages of intoxication. They are bewildered to be at a comedy show (regular people, it seems, do not go to comedy clubs every single day. I know; I was shocked myself.) They laugh at just about anything, save for the poor souls stuck going first or second, while the crowd is still texting their friends directions and staring in bewilderment at the beer prices.   The comics who go in the middle of the show have it made.  Comics can coast through their sets, a rapt, happy-drunk audience at their disposal.    It’s during this portion of the show, the wheelhouse I call it, that I sit in the corner room, drunk and antsy and desperate. Desperate to get on stage while the energy is still high, desperate to deliver my jokes to a crowd that I could kill.

I go on stage just after 12:30 am, or in Gregory-Standard-Time, five hours before I need to be up for work the next morning.  This is no longer the wheelhouse.  They are no longer, happy, Opening-Day buzzed; they are miserable mid-August-Kansas-City-Royals-fan shitfaced.  They have suffered (and I do believe that word to be appropriate here) through two dozen amateur comedians doing seven-minute sets laden with masturbation jokes. No one is really pays attention during my set, save for one intoxicated woman up front who may or may-not have wanted to sleep with me.

Earlier in the evening, while running a 10K between the comedian’s standing room and the toilet, I continually encountered a sloshed college girl who took every opportunity to make pleasantries.  I never pick up on things, and figured she was just being drunk-friendly with everyone, until she cornered me by the bar and talked my ear off. At one point she put her hand gently on my shoulder as she laughed.

Uh oh.

Now I found myself in the awkward position of having to tell sloshed college girl that I have a girlfriend and want nothing to do with her. I’ve always been bad this maneuver.  I never know where to sneak this info into the conversation.  Usually I try to pick up on any bait which I could segue way naturally into an anecdote about my girlfriend. (I’m terrible at this; in my younger days it has taken me months. This is one of the reasons I look forward to marriage because then I can just scratch my forehead vigorously with my ring finger until the girl leaves me alone.)

I couldn’t find any gateway and I was beginning to get desperate.  I was going to take anything I could get, maybe blurt out something like Oh I see you have jeans on. My girlfriend just bought some new jeans a couple months ago or something like that when sloshed college girl gave me an opportunity. She found out I was from Boston and coyly said that we couldn’t be friends anymore because she was a Yankees fan and then wallah! a window.  I let her know that my girlfriend is a Yankees fan and we get along just splendidly.  Sloshed college girl doesn’t notice or at least doesn’t acknowledge and went right on. I am left with only one option: I tell her I need to go the bathroom and I hide on the toilet. 

I didn’t see sloshed college girl again until she was my only fan and it was almost one in the morning.  I did my set, the usual stuff and then went home.

As long as I’ve broached the subject allow me to ramble.  

I have this theory. I think being in a committed, monogamous relationship is similar to being a committed vegetarian. Here’s my logic:  I’ve been a vegetarian for over two years and I no longer crave meat. I’m often say that if a cheeseburger and a pile of cocaine were placed in front of me with a gun pressed to my head, I would grab a rolled-up dollar bill and a credit card and get to work, Mia Wallace style.  And I mean it. The thing is I used to love meat. I would salivate over the prospect of a mid-evening bacon-cheeseburger. It’s not as if I’ve forgotten how delicious cheeseburgers are, it’s just that I made a conscience decision to not eat them, and I enjoy being a vegetarian enough to not eat the burger. After a couple years, a cheeseburger no longer looks appetizing. I would most-certainly vomit if I ate one.  It’s the same thing with being in a monogamous relationship. It’s not that I don’t notice other women are attractive or sexy, it’s that I’ve decided to commit to one woman, and the relationship is way-too wonderful and means way-too much for me to screw it up by, I dunno, eating the woman. And after a period of time, other women don’t look so attractive, and I would assuredly vomit if I made out with one.   

It’s a pretty nifty theory right?  It is, but it is essentially flawed, because it doesn’t take into account that in the two-plus years I’ve been a veggie, not once has a cheeseburger approached me, lettuce hanging out and buns exposed, and begged me to eat it.  There isn’t much risk of confronting temptation beyond the smell of a random summer barbeque.

So I guess the question then becomes, if a gun were pressed against my head and in front of me sat a cheeseburger and a willing beautiful woman, which choice would I make? Oh darling, it’s easy. I would eat the cheeseburger.  I would eat it with the bacon topping and the buffalo-chicken-kickers side. I would eat them all and never regret it. I promise.