Two Girls: One Cup-Omaha

I was twenty one years old and never featured. However, a booker found me online and asked me to feature. It wasn’t about me being ready. They needed more female comedians and I seemed semi-funny. The booker, an ardent chauvinist, informed me that they had two female comedians, both of which sucked. He begged me not to suck, plus he liked the ventriloquist thing.

The booker saw me perform and stated, "You are funny.....for a woman." While this backhand to the act I worked so hard on and my gender struck a nerve, I didn't take it personally. From the look of it he learned how to walk upright and speak only a week ago. Being a female comedian you get used to slights about your gender. You get used to male comedians, bookers, and managers who think you are just an open pair of legs that say "Enter, I am Desperate for Your Love." When really the sign should read, "Enter, Please Give Me a Night of Disappointment." Nonetheless, in time you learn to laugh about it. Still, I passed the test and didnt suck. I could live with that.

The whole weekend was a drunken blur. What I mean was there was a lot of drinking going on. I hadn’t meant to drink but did. Thursday my intent was to stay stone cold sober, but a waitress asked what beer I wanted. I wasn’t a beer drinker. Why did she want to know? She informed me that an audience member wanted to buy me a beer. Buy me a beer? Was I hearing this correctly? Anyway I ended up getting totally trashed on Skyline, a beer made and brewed in the Midwest. Friday night it was getting even more trashed on a mix of Skyline and Jack Daniels. I performed two killer sets and in my carelessness left May Wilson at the club. Don’t feel bad. She was totally hammered. Nonetheless, the club owner, who had two daughters cautioned me never to trust anyone I met on the road. I was a “pretty young woman and they all had motives.”

But they could all have shady motives. I was twenty one, had recently gotten out of a horrendous relationship, and wanted more than anything to meet a man with shady motives as long as he had a few dollars. Right?

My final night there a man approached me. He was creepy and looked like the distant cousin of Sling Blade. This man was from Counsel Bluffs, a rival town that everyone made fun of. They called it Counseltucky. Counsel Bluffs was a bit up the road. Anyway, he said he read about myself and May Wilson and wanted to see us live. He mentioned he was a fan of ventriloquism and had been since he was a kid. Then after my set, which the crowd was tired because they had been Labor Day pAArtying, he bought me a beer, Skyline to be exact. We chatted a while. The owner wasn’t there, and he was my guardian angel when it came to these creepy male admirers. But the owner didn’t like it when I drank Skyline or alcohol for that matter, especially when I mixed it with Jack Daniels. The owner was a killjoy, always trying to ruin my fun in an overprotective way.

This man was a fan, however.

We began talking and for as creepy as Sling Blade was, I began to like him as he told me that while I was good it was clear I was much too smart for the Midwest. This man made me feel beautiful, especially since the ex before him did nothing but cheat and lie. Nevermind I had embarked on a relationship that was doomed to end in disaster with an alcoholic who had borderline personality disorder, refused to work and wanted women to support him. My picker was not broken. Hell no. Slightly creepy but harmless I could deal with.

Sling Blade then asked how my money situation was. As a comedian I am perpetually broke, so I made a joke about it. Then Sling Blade proposed that he could assist me. Sling Blade mentioned he lived two hours up the road. He said he would give me two hundred dollars to spend the night. There was one catch though, it was a three some. While the ex before him had dated strippers and did nothing but slam that in my face, I on the other hand was sort of naïve as to what was going on. I asked who the third woman would be. Sling Blade then said, “You’re puppet of course.”

“You’re kidding.” I said not believing him.

“No, I think you are beautiful and I think the puppet is a kinky touch. I believe in helping a woman out.” That’s when Sling Blade reached into his pocket and flashed two one hundred dollar bills. He was serious. Just to make sure I knew he flashed them again. For as tipsy as the Skyline and Jack Daniels was making me, I suddenly began to sober up. I needed money to travel and had burnt some making this trip. This would give me some mad money. The greed button began to set it.Then I realized that he was asking me to engage in what is known as prostitution, and all the hours in church began to take over. I couldn't do this. I needed the money but I didnt want to be a whore. May was the whore. I pinched myself to make sure this was all real. It was live and in color. SHIT!

“My farm house is up the road. Come on.” He told me. Suddenly I knew how this was going to end. A girl, her puppet, and a creepy guy who owned a farm house. Answer, six o’clock news and a Lifetime Movie where it was revealed he preyed on women only to stuff them and make them into puppets..

At that moment it occurred to me why the club owner hated the fact I was drinking the way I was and why he had given me the advice he did. This was going to be a good story, so good that I was probably going to die at the end. All I could picture was May Wilson lying face down in the corn field with her stuffing cut out of her in the center of a crop circle. As for me, well in Ed Gein style the man might have been nice enough to make me into a chair or cushion. I am a practical woman that way. The entire time, I could hear my mother telling the world on national television about how her beautiful daughter was destined to do great things until Sling Blade murdered her. In between May without her stuffing, me as a chair, and the echo of my mother’s tears from the future I made some stupid excuse about having to go and bolted.

While he had come down kind of hard on me, at that moment I knew that club owner was a friend. While he was with his family that night, I was glad he was in my corner watching out for me. In my youthful stupidity I had underestimated how sick and twisted people could be. This man was a predator, preying on my obvious lack of life experience and lack of sobriety at the moment. Still, I was out two hundred dollars and was broke. Had I done the right thing?

Just then I heard May Wilson saying from her case, “Two hundred dollars. As in one hundred for me and one hundred for you? I don’t work cheap. Make it five hundred for me. I am not only a classy lady but did you think I might need dry cleaned after the experience. You are cheap and selfish. Didn’t you ever think about my needs?”

That is when I definitely knew I did the right thing. Recently, on a limb, May Wilson and I have been telling the story onstage and it has been killing. Hey, we are killing because we didn’t get killed. We definitely did the right thing.

Did I mention we are still broke?

Love, April

I Came, I Saw, I Sang: Memoirs of a Singing Telegram Delivery Girl

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