Next week I'm headed down to Florida for a few a gigs, so I thought I'd dig out something I wrote about my last trip to Florida, a journey where I learned that my mother's hairdresser has pierced nipples AND how to handle an especially unruly crowd.

Mic Me

 At a recent road gig in a certain Florida city, I was booked for a show that was slated to begin at 10:30 PM, but didn’t get started until almost 11:55. Perhaps I should have taken this as omen:  11:55 is waaaaay past my bedtime.

Additionally, the audience members were substantially inebriated, and although each of them had paid a significant cover, ostensibly to see me perform, they were much more interested in playing bar games. You know, the old stand-bys like, “Let’s See Who Can Talk The Loudest” and “Let’s See Who Can Get Intoxicated and Fall Off Their Chair First” and my personal favorite “Let’s See Who Can Spew Drunken Vomit Closest to the Stage.”

 Such a situation is not completely unheard of in the stand-up world, and is often easily overcome with sheer volume because as the performer, you have access to a microphone. This microphone is attached to a sound system which enables you to draw attention to yourself and then use your abundant wit and humor to distract the audience from said games. You can then provide the show you are being paid (either in cash or, as is more common in the dyke comic world, in pussy and lube) to provide.

All this presupposes something very important. That the microphone works.

Alas, despite the fact that having a working microphone is a. written into my contract b. something I specifically mention in preliminary emails with the venue c. the first thing I check out when I arrive in the venue and d. something I will exchange copious sexual favorites in order to secure, the mic that night worked roughly, um, half the time.

I asked the venue to try to fix the system, but they couldn’t and my request for a back-up mic was met with an extremely blank stare. This means I never had control of the audience, no matter what I did.  I went dirty. Then I went filthy. I sat on the stage. I laid down on the stage. I did push-ups on the stage. I walked out into the crowd, sat on a stranger’s laps, and feigned masturbation.  I feigned masturbation on the stage. I considered actually masturbating on the stage, with the hopes of making a very difficult hour pass faster.

At one point during the show, I sat down next to a audience member, asked to borrow her lit cigarette, inhaled and promptly fell into paroxysms of coughing. The audience took this to be a cleverly executed bit of slapstick humor. However, because previous to that moment I had never so much as taken a drag from a cigarette, the coughing fit was actually quite real.

 It got the biggest laugh of the night.

 I was in the dressing room after my 60 minutes of public hell and one of the openers, a local drag performer, popped her head in.

 “That was a rough one,” she said, “You know what you should have done?”

 I waited expectantly. Drag queens perform in bars. A lot. Often under fairly adverse conditions like wearing hot clothes and itchy wigs and dangerously high heels. If anyone knows how to make a gig work in a tough venue, it’s going to be local drag performer.

 “You should have,” she leaned in so close I could see the glitter on her eyelids, and patted me almost maternally on the shoulder, “had a damn mic that worked.”

 And then she kissed my cheek and walked away, laughing heartily at her own joke.

 Now my sister did have a good point, albeit an obvious one. It’s a situation where being a bit more of a diva (“bitch, you better get me a mic that works or I’m not saying another word”) instead of a good natured, slightly codependent dyke comic (“Oh, it’s fine, I’ll just, um…improvise…”) would have definitely come in handy.

Perhaps that could be my new rallying cry.

 I’ll be the Nancy Reagan of the comedy world.

 Instead of “just say no” my slogan will the simple but direct “just get a mic.”