Chapter One: The Act You''re Not Good Enough to See Five comedians sat on a train. They were Dick, Shit, Fat, Chink, and Buick, so pseudonymed for their specialities de fare: Dick, who did dick jokes; Shit, who did shit jokes; Fat, who did fat jokes; Chink, who made fun of the way Oriental people spoke; and Buick, the observationalist, whom everyone called Buck, and so he came to be called Buck. "Hey, get down off there!" ejaculated the conductor, and the giggling colleagues dismounted and took their rightful places inside the gleaming trispangled Amtrak Minuteman, bound for Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., towns where comedy was king and the audience peasants. Near the back of the train, the comedians found a suitable enclave where three could face two and sprawled inside it. Fat took up two seats alongside his mentor, Dick, while the Damon and Pythias of comedy, Shit and Buck, sandwiched their protégé, Chink, on the opposing bench. The boys were dressed in the casual attire of the day: sneakers, Sasson jeans, sweatshirts, button-downs, and almost-leather jackets or blue hooded parkas.
Except for Buck, who enjoyed the distinction of always dressing in a sports jacket and tie. They could have passed for any other five young white men who were completely out of their minds. After the train pulled out of Penn Station, Shit got up to use the bathroom and then returned to his seat completely naked. The other boys laughed at the sight of him, although certainly not as hard as they would have laughed if it was the first time they''d seen him do such a thing. It was the first time for the other passengers, however -- but since they were New Yorkers, they probably had seen naked people in public before, probably that day. What they didn''t know was that Shit and his friends were not actually dangerous, just comedians -- young comedians at that -- and playing was simply their day job. Amtrak conductors dreaded groups of young comedians. Sometimes comedians could cohabit for a while in an enclosed area, but more often than not, play-fighting would get out of hand or one of them would attempt to pick something off another''s fur and cause a yelp, or drop a rock on his head, and pretty soon the conductor would have to come by and distract them with bananas.
This quintet counted itself more mature than most young comics, which is a little like saying absolutely nothing at all. It was difficult, in fact, even to measure maturity among comedians by any of the usual societal yardsticks; certainly, age was not a factor. Shit and Dick -- who, in fairness, had outgrown their nicknames, earned during those first few panicky months of stand-up, when mention of those subjects was the only way they knew to ensure the steady oxygen of laughter -- were the eldest, at twenty-nine and thirty-five. But Shit, as worldly as he was -- and he was -- just liked to get naked. He was especially fond of walking into the men''s room of a nightclub when one of his friends was onstage, then emerging sans attire for a casual stroll back to the bar. Of course, the comic onstage would have to stop Shit to ask if he hadn''t forgotten something, at which point Shit would feign embarrassment and hasten back to the loo, only to reemerge with a drink in his hand and a thanks for the reminder. Not that trains and nightclubs were the only places where Shit liked to get naked: bachelor parties, double dates, hotel rooms, Yankee Stadium -- any place where other comedians were around to appreciate it, and the chance for arrest minimal, would do. The chance for arrest on the train was getting a little stronger as Shit remained nude in his seat, but Dick was in the middle of a story, so Shit''s arrest, if it came, would have to wait.
Especially since the story was about Shit and Dick and another comedian getting naked the week before at an all-girl Catholic school in upstate New York, where the trio had been hired to perform. "You didn''t tell me about that," Buck whined. "Do I have to tell you every time it happens?" Shit joshed. Still, Buck was a little hurt. "So we walk in," Dick continued, "and there''s two nuns and another woman -- not a nun but, you know, nunlike -- and they were all real nervous that we were gonna say something improper or do something like, Christ, I don''t know, get naked or something." "Why did they book you in the first place?" Fat asked. "Who knows, shut up," Dick said quickly, but then smiled at his idolator. "Anyway, they didn''t want us anywhere near the girls, so right away they hustle us down into this underground rec room with a lot of pictures of Jesus on the walls and a Ping-Pong table.
" "Jesus loved Ping-Pong. He invented that Chinese grip," Buck offered. "Although for some reason he''s better known for other things," Shit added. "They had Ping-Pong leagues back then -- the National and the Aramaic," Chink topped, with -- to no one''s surprise -- the better joke. "Anyway," Dick tracked, "they put us down there and tell us to stay put until it''s time to do the show." The boys were laughing already, because they knew the punchline. "I had to." Shit smiled, and everyone nodded sympathetically, as one might for a more normal addiction, like gambling or defecating on glass coffee tables.
"But I didn''t have to!" Dick shouted with a big laugh. "Except now I''m the only one with my clothes on, so -- " "Peer pressure," Buck said. "Exactly -- I mean, hey, what am I, not gonna get naked? No. So then the two nuns and the other chick come back, and these boneheads are playing Ping-Pong -- " "Naked?" Fat asked. "Have you been listening to the story?" Shit asked him. "Yeah, naked," Dick scolded Fat. "Naked, okay? We were naked, this is a naked story. We''re naked.
And then the nuns come in -- the nuns were not naked, did I make that clear? -- and they see two guys playing Ping-Pong, and their dicks are flopping around, and I''m standing on a chair over the net like I''m judging!" Everybody howled at that. Then Fat asked: "Who won?" More howling. More big passenger-alarming howling, which made the conductor come by, and he was howling mad. But Shit had talked his way out of nakeder spots than this, and he toddled off to the bathroom to get dressed. When he returned, though, Shit was in a decidedly fouler mood than when he''d left, which may have been due to the restrictiveness of clothing or just because he liked descending into fouler moods. "Mind if I eat while you smoke?" he snarled at Dick and Buck, who had lit up just as Shit removed the foil on his Amtrak-microwaved lunch. "Easy, pal," said Buck. "God, you''re as ornery as.
" "As a man stuck for a metaphor?" Shit countered. "Boy, you''re in a mood," the normally apolitical Chink interposed. "What''s eatin'' ya?" "Comedy, boys. Comedy is eating me alive." With that the others sang out in ridicule of Shit, condemning him for the negative attitude he was now imposing upon their jolly sojourn. They all liked to perpetuate the myth amongst themselves, and especially among civilians, that they were special members of society by virtue of their exemption from all accouterments of the rat race -- i.e., alarm clocks, regular hours, long days, bosses, offices, or the need to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds.
They wore the deadly sin of sloth like a badge of honor, and they relished the chance run-in with childhood friends who''d listen, mouth agape, to the description of a life comprised of recess. But Shit wasn''t buying it today. He bullishly pressed on with a discussion of reality. "We''re being exploited," he said. "They''re filling that room every night of the week, getting a five-dollar cover and a two-drink minimum, and we''re getting cab fare." Shit was referring to The Club, the premier Manhattan showcase club on the Upper East Side, where the boys were among forty or so young comedians and comediennes presently getting their acts together. On this particular Friday afternoon, however, they were taking those acts on the road, and on the road -- well, the wages sucked there, too: $250 a weekend for the headliner, $150 for the middle act, $75 for the MC. But at least now, in 1979, there was a road.
Veterans like Dick and Shit, who''d already been at this game for four years, remembered when the only places for a young comic to get onstage were the handful of showcase clubs in New York and L.A. These hot spots, of which The Club was currently the hottest, presented a score of comedians every night, offering them exposure in the country''s media capitals and a place to "work out" in exchange for their services, gratis. But as the decade drew to a close, a major new trend in the comedy boom was catching fire: the local comedy club. In cities all across the country, a new vaudeville was slouching to be born. Restaurant basements, hotel lounges, old coffeehouses -- even storefronts -- were being converted into clubs where two or three of these young comedians from New York or L.A. could be brought in each weekend to perform stand-up comedy.
It was a trend that fed on itself: Encouraged by the expanding number of young comics available, clubs opened up by the score, and encouraged by all the places to work, hundreds of young men and women began to quit their day jobs. So what wasn''t to like? To Buck, the recent comedy boom was the ultimate in bad luck. Because he was not part of a trend! He was one of the ones who was born to do it! He would have been a comedian in any era, and curse the luck that he came of age just as every asshole in America who had ever gotten a laugh at a fraternity party was now crowding the field. For decades, to be a comedian had meant you were literall.