The vast majority of my life has been spent obsessing over
details that only I can see. I’m constantly chasing ideas that fill my head
full of wonder and I let them get away from me so as to court grandiose visions
of things I have no discipline to accomplish, if it were in fact the case that
such dreams could ever be achieved in any way other than in figments of the
imagination. At times, my mind moves so quickly that I could never put my
thoughts into words, even if I had three mouths, one of which was dedicated to
drinking espresso all day.
In my youth, I was slight of frame, always scared and
yearning for the approval of others, even if it got me in trouble. I’ve since
grown, but rather than do a complete overhaul of the cracks in my foundation,
I’ve just patched over them with thousands of hours of rehearsed responses, so
as to present the illusion that I’m a fully functional, confident, charismatic
personality. When people that are close to me attempt to dig deeper, I become
offhand and quickly turn the conversation around to a point where they can talk
about themselves—a trick which works very well in our society. After a moment,
they forgot they’d inquired into my life at all, like it never happened, and I
feel safe again.
I’m not sure what agoraphobia is, and knowing that I’ll
follow a mind puzzle to the ends of the earth until I’ve contracted every
mental disease in the DSM-IV, I haven’t bothered to look it up. Very
superficially, I know it has something to do with a fear of the outside world,
and when I’m home I have it, and when I’m out, I have the exact opposite fear.
Fear of the inside, and of going home, and of being alone again, because when
I’m amongst conversation, I watch every word like I’m seeing the first aliens
to land on earth.
I soak in conversations from the periphery, cataloging
everything that’s said like a 12-year old reading baseball card statistics, and
when I see things moving in a direction where I can contribute, I’ll look
around the circle until I see someone who’s making eye contact with
everyone—that person is my way in. When the anticipation is too great, I’ll
wait for them to start speaking and engage them further with my eyes, and when
their turn in ceded, I’ll respond to them as if I’d been there the whole
time.
Within a few minutes time, I’m making everyone laugh and
remember stories that relate to the subject matter, and I’ll find ones of my
own to contribute.
And they’ll laugh
And I’ll laugh
And I’ll be completely in my element, laughing and making
jokes, and I’m never happier than when I’m doing that, which makes me wonder
why I was so scared to go outside in the first place.
I’ll go around from circle to circle, repeating the same
process, sometimes bringing with me a person or two from other circles, until
the whole thing is one big mash-up and everybody’s listening. Then I’ll plant
seeds and see which ones make purchase and which ones die away. I’ll watch
garden flourish and fall, and walk through new ones that spring up.
Then
Maybe
Just maybe
I’ll see the perfect opportunity
I’ll see a point in the conversation where everyone is
listening, where everyone so wants a discussion to continue that they’re
practically biting their bottom lips waiting for someone to do it. That's when I hear the
sweetest sound in the world...
A pause
It’s only a fraction of a second, and if you weren’t someone who was so obsessed with the timing of the thing, you would never in a million
years be able to spot it, but for me, it’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for
the whole night.
This is when I jump in to tell an anectdote. An anectdote so
funny and so engaging that I’m the only one speaking for a whole minute, and at
the end of that minute, comes the punchline. The big reveal that creates an
upheaval of laughter. Then, five seconds later, comes another one.
And another
And another
And another
Some other jolly fellow, somewhat like me, throws in
something else funny as a set-up, and I take the bait. They laugh even louder.
My mind begins to move faster and faster, like when I’m at home dreaming up
impossible scenarios. I begin to improvise with everything everyone has been
talking about all evening, weaving together the fabric of the conversations and
wrapping up the loopholes into more laughs and more laughs. At some point, it
begins to be like sex. Two bodies, mine and the party’s, working tirelessly
toward a common urge, an itch that needs so badly to be scratched.
A quip
A chuckle, which I follow with
A zinger which garners
A guffaw, and I continue into
A set-up, then
A silence...
An anticipation…then…
Bang!
A big release of everyone laughing and bending over and
slapping shoulders and covering mouths and laughing at how hard they’re
laughing and how ridiculous it all is and what a great time they’re having. I
look around the room at crinkled eyes and turn my face in a funny way, ever so
slightly, which sends them off again. I can barely talk because I’m laughing so
hard, which makes all of them laugh, in turn.
It’s there, riding the laughgasm, where I achieve the dreams
that rattled around in my head all day. It’s at that point that I’m
untouchable, that I’m at my absolute best.
If there’s a feeling better than that, then I have yet to
discover it. I look for it in every single interaction I have. I hint at it
with cashiers in the grocery store, I coax it out of curmudgeons at the bus
stop, I bait it from colleagues and acquaintances.
They say a sign of addiction is that once you start doing a
drug, you’ll continue to do it until you physically can’t consume any more of
it. I’m entirely too familiar with that mindset. I’ve gone broke just going
out—not to drink, necessarily, though I usually have a beer or two or
three—just to be out around people. If they were all eating sushi, completely
stone sober, and the opportunity to make people laugh is on the table, I’ll eat
sushi with them until I’ve stretched my pennies to their furthest point, just to chase a laugh.
It’s probably the only addiction in the world that people
encourage you to indulge in against your best interests, and I’m only happy to
oblige my enablers.
That’s why I do what I do.
That’s why I’m a comedian.
This is the story of how I became that way.
This is the story about how I became a laugh addict.
