“Ok, five minutes till you go on stage.” Five minutes. 300 seconds or so. A little less than that and Midge will know if she’s capable of going in front of more than a hundred people and tell jokes. She knows that she can tell some, and good ones. But in front of strangers? What if she’s not that good? What if she shits herself on stage? She needs to look back at her text, right now. She pulls out her worn-out notebook and frantically flips through the pages. “Don’t do that. It’s too late for that.” “What?” A man was standing beside her, looking at the comedian on stage. The audience is going nuts with him. He’s killing it. “Stop studying your jokes like you have a test tomorrow. You’re not in school here, kid. Tony is killing is killing it right now, would be a shame to fuck it all up after him.” “Isn’t that more a reason to make sure that my jokes are tight?” The old man gazes again at the comic on stage and chuckles. “You’re shitting yourself. Not ideal, but still, not the unfunniest thing for the audience to see on stage.” Great. Shitting her pants in front of the crowd. What could be a better outcome for her first real gig? She had a great run in Galveston. You could say that she was the best in town, joke-related. But Galveston is not New York. She’s deep-in-Texas-funny, not fucking Comedy Cellar-funny. She hears the crowd exploding again. It continues, for what seems to be minutes. The sound is deafening. It surrounds her, attacks her, even if it’s not directed at her. The absence of laughs will be even more noticeable when she comes on stage. Her breath is short, her eyes a bit lost. “You already know your text. Relax. Now is the easy part. When your name is called, go on stage, nod to Tony, hit the mic, and tell the audience to clap for him.” “That’s it?” “That’s it.” Why the fuck is she listening to that old man? “Oh and last thing. You’ll have the lights on your face, Don’t blink too much.” “Are you fucking kidding me?” The old man is taken aback. He stares at her. “Don’t blink, don’t shit yourself. Those are your advices?” “Simple as that, yes.” “Anything about being funny maybe?” “That’s not my problem. I couldn’t care less if you bombed. Just taking care of the mood and the stage. Don’t want my set to be fucked because you spilled your guts on the floor from both ends.” “Well that will be a nice joke for you to start with. “Don’t worry, she’s not in pain. We’ll put her down just because she’s not funny.”” The old man chuckles again. “That’s funny. You should use that some day.” He gazes back at the stage. Tony is nearing the end of his set. In the audience, a visibly drunk man gets up and starts to insult the comic. Something about his mother, various fluids, and the general “fuck you” vibe. The rest of the crowd looks at the wasted man, then at Tony. They’re invested in that fight. Midge is at a loss. “Great, now hecklers. I thought the Cellar was a safe place.” “It is. The safest of all. Nobody will do anything to you when you’re on this stage.” “But you still have to deal with drunks, bigots, racists and dumb fucks in the crowd!” “So you’re saying that you’re not better than them?” They both look again at the stage. Tony dealt with the heckler, with as much (if not at least better written) insults on the drunk’s mother and whole family. The old man seems proud. “For the next 10 minutes, this stage will be your arena. Yours. So you enter there and you automatically establish your rules, based on how you decided to play with it. Tony took the stage 10 minutes ago, and he made it a field where grenades are allowed, but only because he knows how to deflect and send them back, ten times harder than they were thrown at him. Make the rules, make the statement, and the crowd will deal with it.” Midge is not reassured. She comes from a place where you don’t fight to tell jokes. But people here seem defiant of the comic in front of them. As if they were here to make them laugh, at all cost, and fuck you if you can’t do that, you’re the lowest piece of shit if you fail. “Use the light if you feel that you’re losing them”, says the old man. “If shields and isolate you from the crowd. Don’t try to look at it though, you’ll just look like a brain-dead looking for divine light. You won’t find any God in here.” Behind them, a red light starts blinking. That’s the signal for Tony to end it. Every comedian knows, you don’t cross the red light. “Again, if you completely freeze, just shit yourself. I could use that great opener of yours”, says the man with a grin. Midge can barely hear him as he says “Good luck kid”, as the crowd is rupturing in thunderous applause. Tony is ending it and calling for her name. “What’s your name by the way?” “You can say “The asshole in the back”. Or just Nate Powell if you feel like I didn’t break your balls too much.” Time to enter the arena. She walks, maybe a bit too stilted, and steps on the stage. Tony fist bumps her on the way out. He has the smile of someone that knows that he’s funny and did the job. Maybe she could steal that smile someday. Midge grabs the mic that Tony’s giving her, and goes to the center. The old man was right. The lights are almost blinding. Her eyes flutter a bit to adjust, before setting on a point just a bit above the crowd. She starts to feel invincible. The applause starts to dwindle after Tony’s exit. She can’t let the silence completely settle. Right, grab the mic, thank the comedian, don’t blink, don’t shit yourself. “Good evening everyone, keep the applause coming for Tony Tamarico!” Yeah, she’s right at her place here.