I’m single, which probably goes without saying. People in relationships don’t have this much free time. It’s hard to balance a social life with comedy every night of the week.

I’ve been casually dating a guy who lives about an hour north of the city, but he didn’t seem that disappointed when I told him I’d be busy for the next 40 days. He travels a lot for work, still, nothing says you’re free to date other people like a seven-day turnaround on a one-word text response.

Back on Coffee Meets Bagel, my most recent foray in the search for love on the Internet. I’ve connected with a guy who went to college with a friend of mine from high school. That sounds nice and safe. I get dressed for an early open mic at Broadway Comedy Club in something that can double nicely for my date.

I’m pretty lazy with fashion. My mom describes my style as, “early 90s college kid” (the rest of the world would call it grunge, or hipster without the irony) and is fully convinced that my life would change if I would just “class it up.” She lives in Colorado, so her definition of classing-it-up is the ‘dresses and skirts’ section of the Prana catalogue. I’m wearing my dressed-up-for-a-show uniform of black leggings, a black Prana skirt (think: stretchy and totally comfortable for riding a bike), black flat boots (his height on the site is 5’8”, which, best case scenario, is likely somewhere between 5’5” and 5’6.5” in the real world) and a green, long sleeved, v-neck, T-shirt with a tree design on it. For me, this is quite dressy.

The show is fun. I found Nurse Sophia’s mic a few months ago and I love it. There’s rarely a civilian audience, but she lets you do tons of time and the other comedians are usually pretty supportive, so it’s a great place to practice. Also, she goes through the list twice, so, if you forget something in your first round, you’ve got another chance. I usually try to prepare for my first set and play around in my second one.

Sophia moves the list around to let me get up for a second time before I have to run across town to the date. It’s usually (more or less) first come, first serve. By the time I leave, I’ve done 18 minutes of comedy (10 in the first set, 8 in the second).

I’m a little late out the door and running across town in some misty weather. My naturally curly, but almost always straightened, hair doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be doing by the time I get there.

“It’s all material,” I tell myself as I catch a glimpse of myself in a glass reflection on my way to the table where he is already seated and try to lick my fingers and subtly wipe away the mascara that is contributing to the dark circles under my eyes. This guy is a little older than I am, but no need to push it. I whip my now frizzy hair up into a bun and am pleasantly surprised to find he looks exactly like the best of his pictures. Bonus!

Our drinks lubricate the conversation: mine tequila, his whiskey. We get more comfortable with each other and when he suggests food I’m all for it (it’s actually a welcome necessity, after three glasses of tequila) but I’m doing the math in my head and playing a scary game of poker with my finances. I like him enough to want to offer to split the bill, just in case that’s what he expects, but I know I can eat for a week on my share alone. The place isn’t expensive, especially for midtown, It’s just that I’ve become very creative with my food/finances.

I think it went well. I offer to split, but he insists on picking up the $100 tab. I breathe a sigh of relief that he didn’t call my bluff and think (once again) that I probably shouldn’t be dating until I get my finances in order. He kisses me on the cheek and walks towards the lot where his car is parked. I walk to the subway, thinking, a little drunkenly, that he’s cute and I wish he’d gone for a kiss on the lips.

On the subway home, I alternate between reading my book and fantasizing about how much material he will provide for my act. I stumble into my apartment and am telling my roommate about the date as my internet date texts to say he got home safely and did I? My heart melts. Caring that I got home safely is on my top five list of sexiest things a guy can do; right next to telling me that he had fun spending time with me. Maybe there’s hope?

Tonight is my favorite open mic, and, before you judge me, even I can’t believe I pay $14 a week to perform for 5-9 minutes when I’m thinking about giving up my apartment because I can’t afford my rent, is the one at The Comic Strip Live.

DF Sweedler, who runs the mic, and books it in advance so there’s no stress about getting up, also was the teacher of a comedy class I took when I was first starting out. That class feels like it happened lifetimes ago. I never know what to say to people who ask how long I’ve been doing comedy.

“Too long, not to be further along,” is my standard retort, with a playful smile on my face.

The truth is that I was on stage for the first time in 1998. I was young. DF taught me how to craft a joke. I performed once a month for the next year, had the worst bombing of my life (when one of the audience members asked loudly if they could turn down the mic - during my set!), and then decided to move to LA to get famous.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, I bounced from running a comedy theater to producing AIDS Rides to life as a ski bum in Aspen, Colorado. I’m infamous in certain circles (ask any Groundling from 1999-2000 about me), but famous, not so much.

I can make excuses. I was young. I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed more life experience. All of that is true, but the most true is that I really needed to work harder…which is what this 40-day experience is all about.

My life so far has been a quest for material. I’ve outlined a book about working on the AIDS Rides (that someday I hope to find the focus to write) and written six screenplays, all loosely based on experiences I’ve had and/or wished I’d had. And then there’s comedy. No matter how far up the mountain I run, comedy seems to find me.

A group in Aspen started doing stand up and I talked my way into one of their shows. I was still a guppy, but now I was a guppy swimming in a puddle instead of a guppy lost in the ocean and doing her best to avoid the circling sharks in LA that looked at her as just another piece of chum.

I wrote sixty minutes of comedy about living in Aspen, dating ski bums and Serving Bait to Rich People at the local Nobu, which was also the name of my show. I got myself booked around the US and Canada in festivals and at clubs and even coffee shops, toured the continent, and then moved back to New York City.

Record scratch. What?

I moved back without a plan and without a big enough savings account. Is there such a thing as a big enough savings account for moving to NYC without a job?

Oh, and my only recent experience is bartending, which I haven’t pursued because the hours conflict with comedy clubs. I’ve spent the past year half-heartedly looking for a job and half-heartedly trying to start over in comedy. They’re both taking a toll on my psyche.

When you start over in comedy you leave your ego on your nightstand and you go to open mics. I trolled the sites: badslava.com, freemicsNYC.com, Laughing Buddha. I gave $5 to the guy at the door of the Village Lantern and another $5 to the server for a glass of rancid grapefruit juice (my fault, for choosing grapefruit juice, but I was trying to stay healthy) to listen to something much closer to a therapy session than a comedy show. I found an all women’s open mic that I love, and need to go back to, but then they changed from weekly to bimonthly and I haven’t been good about keeping up with which weeks they have shows.

Then an angel, in the form of a sixty-something year old man hitting on me in a coffee shop, gave me a gentle push in the right direction. He bought me a chocolate chip cookie (dark chocolate always being the easiest way to my heart), sat down, and started telling me about his friend who runs shows at a club on the Upper East Side called Comic Strip Live, had I heard of it?

“Is your friend DF?” I asked, and a plan was born. The next week my name was on the list to perform at the open mic.

Flash forward six months and I’m auditioning this Saturday for a spot on the late night roster at that very same club. The angel is going to be our host and I’m a dreadful mix of nerves and excitement.

I get it. I’m right back where I started, but, after doing lots more of the work, this time I feel like I’m where I belong.

A woman is hosting the show I am in and I’m squirming.

I like her. She’s a nice girl, young, funny, super-hot, but desperate, even on stage, for attention, and hitting on all the men in the audience. She’s talking about her vagina and inviting one of the male comics to be a guest there. I want to give her a hug and remind her to love and respect herself…but I am trying to accept that I am of a different generation of comedy.

I love the humor of Sarah Silverman. I am all for taking back female sexuality, but, just because talking openly about sex can be hysterically funny in the hands of pros, it doesn’t mean that the reason it’s funny is because you are talking about sex. I don’t want to sound Puritanical, I love smart, sexy, female humor, but come on, ladies. When we tell jokes about how we’ve “had consensual sex… once” (a young lady I saw at a bar show a few months ago) we’re not taking back anything, in fact, we’re giving it all away.

I once interviewed Christopher Titus and, while we were talking, he described laughter as “implied agreement.” The comment stuck with me. As a comedian, you have a platform (even at an open mic) and, if you want people to listen to you, you should probably have something to say.

I understand that, as we get started, many of us are still figuring out what we want to say. Unfortunately, when your jokes imply that, “men taking advantage of me is funny,” or “I am just an object here for your sexual pleasure” you are telling your audience that you think it is okay (funny, even) for men to objectify women.

Extreme? 

Maybe, but you don’t hear anybody talking about Jerry Seinfeld’s famous joke about raping women (there isn’t one). And, before you throw Wanda Sykes at me, or Louis CK, or even Sarah Silverman’s joke about getting raped by the doctor, go back and listen to those jokes. They make fun of the rapists and the culture that promotes rape, which is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT THING.

I’m not saying that jokes can never touch on rape or the objectification of women, quite the opposite. Much of the best comedy is about shining the light on things that are morally wrong to get that implied agreement that moves us forward as a culture. I’m just suggesting that we all think about what we are promoting in our acts. If you plan on doing this forever, at some point people are going to look at what you say as a reflection of who you are…just ask Trevor Noah.

But let me climb off my soapbox and go back to the story of my night.

This may sound contradictory to my previous rant, but, regardless of the jokes anyone is telling, I do believe in their right to tell them. I believe in free speech, I just think it’s important to remember that free speech extends to everyone and includes the people who disagree with you. Feel free to blow up the comments below and tell me I’m crazy or a hypocrite. I’ll defend your right to do it. ;-)

A young woman making herself into a sexual object and aspiring to be used by men in her act is her right. The problem is when she is the host of a show and introduces me by saying, “this next comedian has a great rack, probably a C cup, maybe D.”

What the F#$k?!?

Make yourself a sexual object, sure, that only reflects on you, but don’t make me one without my consent (that all-important C-word). My “rack” shouldn’t even be addressed in my introduction. And, I’ve worked my ass off to get people to listen to what I have to say, not as a woman, or “someone I might fuck,” but as a human with a brain and a point of view. In seven words, she destroyed that. And she’s a woman, how does she not know?!?

Looking back on the moment, I wish I had addressed it onstage as the opening to my act, but, stunned, I plugged through my set. I watched the next few comics and then raced up to support a friend in a Caroline’s bringer. On the subway, the intro was still swimming in my head. Is this where comedy is going? I’m not one to change my style to follow a trend, but I do acknowledge that I have to fit into the NYC scene. I need stage time and opportunity and, to get those two things, the people booking shows, frequently other comedians, need to think I’m funny.

I tried to put it out of my head.

The show at Caroline’s was mostly up-and-comers, but the guest-pro was Maureen Langan. I met her years ago when she was at a comedy festival in Aspen and she’s amazing. With gratitude I watched her take the stage with confidence and kill with brilliant jokes on her humanity, not just relying on her sexuality. My hope came back, but it was short-lived.

A very attractive, young woman came to the stage. Am I part of the problem for referring to them as very attractive? I hope not. I don’t want to live in a world where we can’t call people attractive. I think everyone should feel very attractive and that attractiveness is more about what you are than what you look like…and then her opening joke made a parallel between her feelings about anal sex and Cadbury crème eggs.

Mic drop. Hands thrown into the air. For realz?!?

I think I’m the problem. It’s clearly a trend that is going through the comedy scene and I love that young women feel free to share their voices with the collective. I can go blue (sexually graphic/wraunchy – for those of you not in the comedy world) when the situation demands, and I like being sexual, but in my own way and on my own terms, and that goes for whether I am behind a mic or not.

I want these women to feel free to talk about anything they like, but I know, for me, that when the late night shows come calling, I’m going to need more up my sleeve than a great rack. I’m trying to respect what they are doing, and I hope that in the future they will respect that it is something I am not doing.

So, if you ever find yourself introducing me, or any other woman at a comedy show, please ask her permission before you make her intro about any of her body parts. Better yet, if you can’t remember her credits or come up with something creative, just introduce her as “very funny,” that’s why they paid the cover and bought the drinks.

Oh, and before I sound completely ungrateful, “thanks for the compliment on my rack, young, female MC. Totally appreciated, this was just the wrong venue.” 

It’s hard to believe I’m starting for realz.

Before I typed it, I kinda hope the z would make me look tough. Like, if I sounded younger, and like I know what I’m doing, maybe that will make everyone believe that I actually have a plan. Notice the gratuitous “like”? Youthful yet confident, right? Are you falling for it?

I guess the most important thing is that I fall for it.

It’s Sunday night and I’m starting where it all started…my hometown.  Well, I was born in NYC, so I guess I/it technically started there, but I’m from Montclair, New Jersey. Montclair is where I grew up, to the extent that I’ve embraced grownup-ness. When I get famous (which I’m fairly certain is going to be on September 14, 2015), the Montclairians are the ones who are going to claim me.

Ironic how they don’t want that much to do with me until that date, but I get it. Where do the kids go who don’t get off the Hogwarts waitlist?

For a girl who hasn’t actually read any of the books (or seen the movies), I’ve really beaten that me-as-Harry-Potter analogy into the ground. I think I prefer being compared to Neo. His story was more believable (I also kinda like the idea of a USB port in my brain) and there are times when I’m convinced that I can see the matrix… but more on that when you know me better and are comfortable with my flavor of crazy.

I’m not that nervous waiting for the show. Is there even a significance to the first show of a series? It’s almost better if I tank, nowhere to go but up. (I just looked it up and found that 39% of baseball teams who lost the first game went on to win the World Series – see, not terrible odds.)

I have friends coming to the show and my ego won’t let me tank-tank, for them or for me. One of them is a now-married ex-boyfriend from our early 20s, another is a guy ten years older than me on whom I have a crush. Rounding out the group is one of my best friends from high school and a small group organized by a friend of my mom. It’s not a “bringer” show, but it’s a cool show where we all try to contribute to a good audience.

As I get ready to perform, I kick myself again for not spending more time preparing my set. I drove to town early, had lunch with my friend, went for a walk with her around the park and then spent barely an hour in the Upper Montclair Starbucks over a coconut milk latte slapping together a set list. I couldn’t focus. Ten minutes isn’t hard to fill, but it always goes better when you have a plan.

Did I have a plan? I’m trying to get together a tight five-minute set to use at my audition to become a late night regular at The Comic Strip Live. I put together a bunch of jokes about dating, hoping to keep it universal rather than generic and to stand out from the other females by avoiding jokes that made me seem slutty or like I hate men. I plan on narrowing ten minutes of material down to the best five. Tonight is a test.

If I’m setting the scene properly, at lunch my credit card was declined and I had to use my debit card, so money is on my mind as well. Money is always on my mind. I’m tired of not having any of it and I’m thinking about going homeless. I can’t seem to find a job, probably because I spend my time writing jokes and hustling stage time instead of applying for jobs. I want to write, create, perform, and I’m ready to get paid for it.

So I’m nervous and excited and ready for a big change. What else? The show is in the bar around the corner from where I grew up. Tierney’s Tavern. I grew up with Mike Tierney who is behind the bar and always laughs the hardest at my joke about how most hot bartenders have to sleep with the manager of a dive bar to get the job. I guess that joke is a little slutty.

My friends can’t seem to follow directions to their seat and it’s pissing off the woman who runs the show. They want to hang out at the bar. Somehow I’m in the middle of it.

I’m also trying to figure out my set and meet the other women in the show. It’s called the Fun Fabulous Female show and I love the fact that all of the women are truly funny in different ways. My favorite does a bit about how when she tells people she just got married they tend to ask, "Who's the lucky guy?" Her standard response is, "anyone who didn't marry a lesbian."

Unfortunately, the show is hosted by the black hole of humor (at least in this room). He goes onstage and the audience visibly shuts down as he sings show tunes about coming out. (“Your son will come out, tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that he’s gay!”) It’s good that the women are strong, because each of us spends our first one to two minutes onstage just trying to get the audience to open up enough to laugh.

My set goes well enough. I’m not killing it, but it’s a respectable showing. My friends tell me I was amazing, but they’re my friends and they have to say that. Friends are supportive, but rarely reliable. I did tape the set and might post it here at some point.

After the show I go downstairs to hang out. I tell my friends that I‘m abstaining because I have my car and am driving back to NYC. The rest of the story is that I’m not in the mood to waste the $25 I made that night on alcohol when it can feed me for two to three days.

One of my friends is there with her fiancée and doling out the advice that I need to be tougher on the men in my life. I’ve told her about my latest three month stretch who has now taken to disappearing for multiple days at a time.

“Dump him!” she demands. I now refer to standing up for myself as: channeling my inner Heather (her name).

I drive home quickly, no traffic from Jersey to Brooklyn at midnight on a Sunday. On the way I think through my set, the night, and how I’m going to make it through. I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m wondering what I’m doing.

I’m also definitely excited. It’s starting and I tell myself I can feel the momentum building.

This is my first blog post on this site. 

I am going to start documenting my adventures in the NYC stand up world and this might be the venue I use...so I'm trying it out.  Let's see how it looks. Simple. Basic. Lots of room for words. If you have strong feelings in any direction about what you see or read here, please feel free to comment. And tell me how you found the site, because I haven't told anyone about it yet.

Okay... Ready. Set. Go.

I'm nervous, excited...mostly wondering if I can do it. I've tried and failed more than once. Okay, maybe every time. There's a great quote from the movie Cousins (I think?) where they describe the guy as "a failure at everything but life." My best friend once told me that quote made her think of me. It was a compliment, but I may have identified a little too closely with it over the years. I've lived a great life, but on paper? On paper, I'm the cautionary tale your parents warned you about when they told you to major in accounting and work on your novel/screenplay/community theater at night.

The problem with being a failure on paper is that, at a certain age, you look around and realize that you may have missed the train that you never wanted to take, and the man at the ticket counter is keeping weird hours and doesn't seem to want to accept your form of payment...which, even though you still don't really want to get on the train, though company on the platform would be nice, but only if they're willing to leave the station and explore all the other cool modes of travel the world has to offer, oddly makes you wonder what you've done wrong. Your adventures shift from cute to quirky to adventurous (but said with a skeptical tone and some vowels pronounced much longer than necessary) to, "wow, I could never live like that!"

And then you start to look at your life through the eyes of the Muggles. Sure, Harry Potter was special, but he was a kid. All kids should believe that they are special, just in case. It's somewhere around 27, 28 when, if there is no evidence to support the assertion, the rest of the Muggles expect you to fall into line. Marry a guy you sorta like, buy a house you can sorta afford, find a job that sorta doesn't make you want to kill yourself and keep society going. 

I've never been good at sorta...but I've been working on some of this stuff for too long to be okay with feeling like I'm still swimming upstream. I'm starting to wonder if my lightening bolt (Harry Potter's scar that indicated he was "the one," for the six of you who don't know the basic premise of the books) might just mean that I'm clumsy and tripped as a kid, landing on something sharp.

Sometimes that wonder makes me want to give up...take the easy road...jump in a boxcar hobo style and cuddle up with a feral cat who smells like a combination of failed dreams and hot and sour soup.

It's weird how failing yourself is so much easier than failing someone else. The one person you can't hide from is also the easiest to let down. I quit on myself a lot. I get sidetracked, sometimes with the best of intentions. Usually with the best of intentions. I'm not sure what I'm expecting from this experience of not quitting for 40 days (check out the significance of the time on the about page), but I do know that I would like my life to change. 

No pressure, Universe. I'm going to do 40 mics in 40 days and it's up to you to change my life. Dramatically and...uh...for the better, which goes without saying, but also might need to be said. I'd hate to find myself in an I-told-you-so situation with the nay-sayers in my brain (and sometimes my world).

The goal is to step up my comedy game and start taking myself and my creative career seriously, to show my intention to myself and the universe, and to not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Okay, the NYC Open Mic scene isn't exactly Walden Pond and the lines you'll find on this page are not going to be on par with Thoreau, but this is my version of diving in and giving it a shot. 

As my favorite casting director taught me to say, "this is my audition."