The Bitch Is I

A trio of women walked out of my show this weekend. It was the Friday late show at the terrific Riot Comedy Club in Houston. I opened with a few jokes about the Mike Tyson/Jake Paul fight, which led me into some jokes about the election – “Speaking of rapists.”

A woman stage right heckled me a little about my Trump criticisms. As much as I wanted to take the bait and derail the entire show, I figured the rest of the audience wouldn’t appreciate it. So, I let it go, continuing with the rest of my set which is almost completely apolitical.

That being said, for the rest of the night, I felt her hatred towards me. I don’t know how else to explain it. She didn’t say anything; I didn’t even look at her. But I literally felt a negative energy coming from her party’s corner. So much so that it threw off my performance. Like, I was thinking about it the whole time. I did fine, our brief interaction stayed with me. It obviously stayed with her, too.

Bad, Michael. BAD!!!

About forty-five minutes into my fifty-minute set, I saw her party get up and start making their way to the exit. I said, “Why are you leaving?”

She said, “Because you’re not funny.”

That was news to me. The audience had been laughing throughout the show. Calling a comedian of my caliber “not funny” is like calling a gentleman of my rugged good looks “not handsome.” Patently absurd. Yet her little gibe cut me to my very quick! I am a sensitive soul. And here I must admit that what came out of my mouth was NOT my finest moment; in fact, it was downright awful. There were many words tumbling through my brain about how to respond, and I chose one of the worst. I said something like, “At least I’m not a bitch.”

Horrible, and I immediately hated myself for saying it before the words had even left my mouth.

She responded, “I’ve been called worse by far better.”

And I said, “I believe that you’ve been called worse, but almost certainly not by better.”

Then they left and I apologized to the audience for calling her that name, explaining that while I felt terribly about letting my anger get the best of me, it was actually the most toned-down of the names I wanted to call her. Better, though, would have been to not respond with an insult at all, and I’m surprised that I did so. Here, I must put on my dad hat and tell myself that I’m not angry that I responded in such a crude and tactless way – merely disappointed. Which makes me feel so much worse. Damn you, Dad.  

Thankfully, the audience was more on my side than hers; I made a whole meal out of their abrupt exit, and they were really laughing about the whole situation, but I still felt bad. I don’t want people to walk out of my shows, and I certainly don’t want to respond to criticism the way I did. My only excuse is that when a Dementor is trying to suck your soul, one sometimes respond in less-than-helpful ways. Still, it was a bad moment and I’m going to beat myself up about it for, probably, the next thirty years.

I am, of course, joking. There’s no chance I will live another thirty years.

Of course, the irony of a Trump supporter getting offended by jokes isn’t lost on me. Turns out, the “fuck your feelings” crowd has a pretty thin skin. After all, prior to her leave-taking, I hadn’t insulted her - only her emperor. And while I know, among a certain set, poking the God King Trump is akin to tearing down the nation writ large, I was still kind of astonished that she took some fairly tame jokes about Trump so personally.

I learned my lesson.

The next night, I started talking about Trump again and I asked if there was any Trumpers in the audience. A beefy guy in one of the front rows clapped. Picture a Trump supporter – that’s what this guy looked like. We had a friendly back and forth, with me asking him what was the issue that made him vote for Trump and he said he just liked everything about his first term. I responded by saying something like, “Well, I hope we have a great four years under Trump at the conclusion of which, I hope he goes to jail.”

The guy laughed and rather than continue to make fun of him, I made fun of myself saying that I’m such a caricature of a liberal that I use the women’s restroom out of solidarity, which got him more on my side and removed any tension that might have accrued had I not done that. The rest of the show was great.

Afterwards, I was talking about it with my friend, the great comic Joe Stapleton who opened for me. He said, despite what happened the previous evening, he thinks Trump people usually have a pretty good sense of humor about their man. If I’m being honest, that’s been my experience, too. Most of them recognize that he can be a buffoon, and are willing to have a laugh. One of the reasons he won, I suspect, is that they just find him funny. Which is offensive to me as a human being, but more offensive to me as a comedian. The man has never said a single thing that has provoked in me genuine laughter.

God I’m a stick in the mud, which is yet another hallmark of being a liberal. We are sticks in the mud because we take our country seriously enough to believe somebody when they threaten to dismantle a nation that’s proven pretty successful over the last couple centuries. The reason must of us sigh when somebody says something like, “At least Trump will be good for comedy,” is because he’s not good for comedy. He makes comedy coarser because he makes the culture more coarse. I shit all over Tony Hinchcliffe for his stupid Puerto Rico joke, but at least that was a joke. My first response to her didn’t even meet that threshold.

On Friday night, I gave voice to my worst instincts. Yeah, I wrung a lot of laughter out of it, but I still ended up feeling like I surrendered something important in that moment and I do not wish to do that again. I know that woman isn’t reading this, but I apologize to her. She had every right to walk out and she had every right to tell me I wasn’t funny when I asked why she was leaving. There were a million better ways for me to respond and I regret that I said what I did. Feel free to cancel me for the next twelve hours or something. I’m going to put myself in time out. In fairness, though, she was kind of a bitch.