All the house is a stage

I’ve always been somewhat of a clown, the kind of kid who’d show up to Hebrew school wearing his father’s athletic support cup on his head as a yarmulke (I called this character “construction worker rabbi”). As an adult, I’ve become more of what you might call an in-the-shadows performer: I do my best work in the darkened privacy of a radio studio, but after a year of being off the air, I’m feeling the need to perform. And it is my wife who bears the brunt of this.

Today, to cheer her up (and because I have no clean clothes), I’ve donned her pink sweat pants, the word “Juicy” emblazoned across the posterior. I perform a favourite scene from Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

“Please take off those pants,” she says.

“My father’s left the house in plenty worse,” I say.

“I don’t have to sleep with your father,” she says.

“I wonder if Godzilla ever sleeps,” I ask.

This is not so much a joke as it’s something to make you go “hmmm.” Emily does not go hmmm. Instead, she asks: “If you need an audience so badly, why don’t you try stand-up comedy?”

The one time I came anywhere close to trying stand-up was at a comedy karaoke bar in Chicago. It was like the singing kind of karaoke except instead of song lyrics, comedy routines scrolled across a teleprompter.

As people got on stage to perform, there was a general feeling of warmth and beery encouragement in the air. It all ended when I got up.

The jokes scrolling across the teleprompter were bad, but my thought was that the material shouldn’t matter, that a true humourist could stand on stage and get laughs while reading an eviction notice. It was all in the delivery.

My routine was chosen from a folder entitled, “My parents hated me.” My strategy was to deadpan my way through.

“I tell you,” I began, “I had one hell of a childhood. I’m not saying my parents didn’t love me, but my bath toys were a radio and a toaster.”

Nothing. Complete, joyless silence.

As I walked off the stage, no one in the audience would meet my gaze. The inside of my shoes were squishy with flop sweat.

I’d rather flop in front of my wife. The drinks are cheaper.

“Ever hear the one about the woman who married a whiskey maker who drives her crazy but she loves him still?”

“I’m living it,” she says.