What I Thought Was Comedy Part 3 by Anthony Corvino

Barking. I know if I ever move back to New York there is a street corner somewhere on W. Houston with my name on it and quite possibly the smell of homeless men urine. Barking has become a strange right of passage for a lot of young comedians in the big city. Your value to a lot of clubs is determined by how many people you can bring to the door. And after you’ve exhausted your friends, family, and friends of friends and friends of friends of family of friends the next logical choice is barking. You stand outside on a busy street corner and shout at nice strangers and complete bat-shit psychos all living in one wonderful city!
“Great live comedy show! $4 beers! $5 margaritas! Judah Friedlander! Rich Voss! Donnel Rawlings!”
“Great live comedy show! Couples love comedy! Judah Friedlander! Rich Voss! Dave Chappelle!”
“Great live comedy show! I’ll be going on sometime near 2:30am! I suck! $5 margaritas!”
The great thing about barking was that it reaffirmed my life long ambition to both look and feel irrelevant. I could have just as well been shouting, “Free existentialism and copies of The Bridges of Madison County.” Most of the time the audiences had a vaguely familiar feel. Largely empty clubs with a sprinkling of shit-faced patrons making a last stop before the ferry or train ride home, the touristy couple from another country who could barely speak English, and me sitting somewhere in the back as to not disrupt the atmosphere. The rule was if there were six people in the club the show would go on. It wasn’t bad business either with tickets ranging from $15-$20 a person and a two drink minimum. Did I mention $5 margaritas?
Barking wasn’t all that bad. In exchange for my irrelevance I saw a lot of strange things happen. I saw an old man moving slowly across the crosswalk toward me collapse down to the ground. He laid there gasping for air, obviously in need of help but this being New York and me being from suburbia, I had heard all the horror stories of decrepit old men falling to the ground begging for help up only to secretly be searching for unsuspecting teenagers to mug using their walker with pistol whip-like veracity.

So I waited…just to be sure. And then the traffic light turned green…and I reconsidered.

A woman from across the street spotted the impending disaster, grabbed the old man and dumped him right in front of me, not before shooting me a look. “She obviously hasn’t heard the horror stories and furthermore I don’t think this old man is interested in the $5 margaritas I’m pushing.” I thought. So I mustered up the only shred of courage I had left and offered to accept his offer that I help him home. Yea, I’m a dick. As we walk, my arm tucked around his back propping him up on one side, stopping every minute to catch his breath, in the rain (because you can never describe the setting enough), it dawns on me that this old man will die and all I wanted to do tonight was tell dick jokes. We pause half a block from his house when I spot a bar with a bouncer and another woman curiously watching me drag an old man’s half-dead ass across the sidewalk. Obviously, I had become the one thing New Yorkers hadn’t seen before and they gave a shit. With help from the bouncer we carried him into his apartment, sat him down in his chair and offered to call his family. Everyone is dying all the time, but this man actually looked it. He tried to reassure us and we left him alone in his apartment, sunk into his chair, dying.

I got home around one in the morning that night which was pretty early. For some reason I just wasn’t in the mood to try to ‘act funny’. Odds are there was nothing lost or gained by me missing out on performing that night. This was just another night, and I was nineteen. This happens all the time, right? Theoretically, what would have been better was after helping the old man, I kill at the comedy club and then have to keep that routine of helping an old dying man make it home in order to be funny. But I was tired and wet. And I don’t like being wet.

Anthony Corvino is from New York originally and is now a stand up comic in Wilmington, NC and an improviser with the Nutt House Improv Troupe.  You can check out his website here