Mic 44 Bucket at Brothers

It’s Friday night, 9:00 PM, and I am at the Brothers Lounge. This is a booked show, but a comedian dropped, so they are bucket pulling a couple of 5-minute spots for other comedians. I toss my name in the bucket. 

The evening was wearing on and I was going to pack up and leave when the co-host came over and let me know I was on-deck, my name was pulled. 

I have been performing open mics with this crowd since mic 3 or 4. The comedian faces in the room are the same. They are friendly, welcoming, and supportive. 

They are also comedians, so they are judgmental, condescending, opinionated idiots. Some at tables, but most hulled up in the darkest back corner of the bar. 

I say this in the nicest court jester kind of way

I have felt very off-kilter when the audience is just comedians. As if 35 years of being on stages and in front of people, commanding attention and driving narratives, counted for nothing.

I let the “sprung for a cage” narrative follow me in the worst possible way. I was not a divorcée having a crisis, nor a housewife who needed a voice or an empty nester who’s therapist suggested she get a hobby.

 I have been standing center stage since birth in 1968, and somehow, I had forgotten that.  

I think when you take a class or start something newish -, you feel like you should be a beginner for a while. Additionally, my politeness doesn’t allow me to boast.

I need you to know my friends and family will not agree with that last statement.  

I have declared a day for myself. February 24 is not just my birthday – it is the day I was gifted to the world. 

I throw self-absorbed birthday parties. I put out gift list, register, cook and entertain for 60-100 people and it’s not an easy list to get on. 

I speak in decrees, and I frequently remind people that I am, in fact, The Missy Hayes. 

As if it carries mobster, presidential, royal weight.  

This has been tucked away since I started this comedy thing.

Maybe because everyone is half my age.

Maybe because I felt out of shape, physically and mentally, to be sparring with peers on politics, trends, and the general malice of the world. 

Maybe I am looking for a worthy opponent. 

I am not sure, but whatever it was, the fog started to lift at the Brothers as I walked to the stage. I was so sure I wasn’t going, I stopped running notes in my head. 

I took the stage and the mic and started with sour dough and tested some Gen X material.

I do come from the generation who drank from a hose 

so I am white suburban person with some street cred.

I bought my first pack of Marlboro reds when I was 10.

I had a note. 

It was the 70’s if you got back in that car without the right smokes and exact change you brought dishonor to your household. 

It was a good five minutes. It got some laughs, and the timing went well. Comedy is not speech writing or presentation giving It is a relaxed dialogue.

I maybe in shape, I just wasn’t flexing the right muscles. 

I mean, god dammit, I am Missy Hayes.