Archive of Our Own

[Applause, minor microphone feedback, and the sound of a camera's digital focus.]

Hello hello. Hi. Yeah. [Applause continues.] Getting the feeling you guys are waiting for something—either that or you have no idea what's coming, which, honestly, makes more sense based on the excitement level. If you don't know who I am, sorry in advance. [Laughter.] My name is Richie Tozier. I was a comedian, and then I was a hermit, and now I'm trying to be a comedian again. So bear with me and get ready for more dick jokes and shitty impressions than you'd hope to hear from a grown man. [Applause and whoops.]

No, actually, things are actually gonna be a little different. Um, I don't have a ghost writer anymore? Which I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk about, but who the fuck is gonna know but you, my hundred closest friends? [Laughter.] I feel like I trust you guys to keep a secret, but maybe that's the false intimacy of a darkened room talking. Maybe we should just do therapy instead. Do you guys wanna do therapy? [Applause.] Okay, so my therapist says I use gross out sex jokes to project the kind of person I wish I was: a person who is funny and has sex. [Like a tiny amount of laughter.] I don't know why she said it like some big revelation, but yeah. Duh. I am a human person, of course I want people to think I'm hilarious and that I fuck. And it turns out now that I am having sex, all the time—and I'm sorry, I know that sucks to hear when you've never felt the sweet embrace of a lover, I get it, but it's just so great to say that and not immediately get a laugh at the idea of you having sex. This is a level of self-esteem I didn't even know existed.

But it turns out now that I'm not pretending to have sex I don't have to pretend to be funny either, I can just actually do both, and all my problems are solved! Thank you therapy for getting me laid and paid. And it's not like I'm gonna turn into a saint. I don't think they let saints be comedians. Mother Theresa never did a tight thirty. [Little laughs.] And just because I didn't take that obvious cheap shot—except, I guess I just did. [Laughter.]

So yes, there will still definitely be dick jokes, just fewer— I feel like my comedy—"my" comedy, but whatever, I told the jokes, I'll own it—but my comedy appeals to a very... nerd-adjacent dudebro type. You know, the sort of guy who always wished he could crush a can of beer on his forehead but never could, and used to spam you with those shitty eCards where they'd, like, put your face over some cartoon elves chopping up a dead body or something for Christmas. Remember those? Or like guys who make fun of gross Rick and Morty fans but are one breakup away from being gross Rick and Morty fans. The human equivalent of vaped PBR fumes. I'm just gonna keep throwing proper nouns titles etc until it sounds like I'm actually saying something. Can you tell that the reason I brought this up is in case these jokes uniformly bomb? [Laughter.] Guess applause for my possible failure still stings.

Basically, any minute now I'm expecting a thank you Edible Arrangement from Chris D'Elia for the sudden surge in fans defecting from Team Trashmouth. [Laughter.] I really am. Y'know, and he'll probably bribe someone to make all the pineapple dick shaped or something, [Laughter.] combining my two favorite things: gay jokes at my expense and novelty shaped fruit. Also it's just useful. My husband is always warning me about getting scurvy, and— [Laughter.] Yeah, it would be nice to avoid that speech for the night.

That's not a joke, actually. I know this is a comedy show, but that's one hundred percent serious, my husband has a lecture on scurvy, complete with statistics that yes, are "periodically updated to reflect new research," I shit you not. Which is obviously insane, because we live in a major metropolitan area and not on a pirate ship in the seventeenth century or a frat house in the any time ever, but it does mean we always have orange juice in the house. That's why I will never, ever seriously complain about the scurvy lectures, because the tradeoff is him keeping me in the finest orange juice money can buy, and that is absolutely fucking worth it.

There's nothing as satisfying as drinking an entire carton of orange juice in one sitting. I don't know what it is about it that makes me go absolutely feral. Like, I don't have a lot of self-control generally, sure, but that shit unlocks a primal corner of my brain that nothing else can touch. Apple juice? Sure, that shit fucks. A nice cran-raspberry blend? Don't mind if I do. But you put a gallon of OJ in front of me and suddenly I'm waking up in an alley in North Florida with empty cartons littered around me like some kind of citrusy werewolf.

In college I used to work at this fancy ass grocery store, and one time we had— [Pauses at laughter.] Yeah, you think you know where this is going. Well I was the bottom of the literal food chain, and kind of a hectic dick, not very customer service friendly, so they mainly kept me in the back. One night I was supposed to look over the orders for the next week, which I had done before with little to no issue, but it was midterms and I hadn't slept more than eight hours in the entire week so I was just whacked out, that natural insomniac's high, and I lost a page down the back of the busted freezer that I was using as a desk. It got covered in this shiny wet stuff, no dick joke, like some freezing agent stuff, and the whole thing was mostly illegible, so I wrote it back out, and I... [In a small voice:] I maybe wrote twenty cases instead of two. [Laughter]

And it was just the most Lucy shit— I was there for truck day, and we got to lunch and still hadn't gotten back to the juice, so when everyone was eating I went out there and did the whole thing myself. And I have nooo upper body strength, never in my life have I pulled up, but in a surge of "I cannot lose this job" Hulk strength I got all this fucking juice out of the truck and shoved it in this weird room around the corner from the main storeroom where there were all these extra freezers no one ever used, kinda hoping I could just sneakily replace the boxes in the fridge section and everyone would just keep pulling out these infinitely spawning juice crates and no one would notice that we hadn't actually ordered orange juice since February.

But it worked! For a while. I was hypervigilant the whole time, ear to the grindstone for any hot juice goss, and no one seemed to figure it out, or at least they weren't looking a gift orange in the mouth. It got a little rough around inventory time; I was always paired up with this girl Heather, she was snarky but chill, I guess you'd say, "alternative," whatever the fuck that meant, but I kinda got a little carried away trying to convince the manager to assign us to the refrigerated section every day and she sort of avoided me the rest of the time I worked there. She definitely thought I was on something. [Laughter.] Or that I should be on something. I caught her trying to sneak a pamphlet for this outpatient clinic in Jersey into my jacket pocket one day. I thought she was trying to feel me up, which just made it worse, and I— [Richie laughs a little.] I maybe instinctively elbowed her in the face, but that's a different story. [Laughter.]

But the juice thing. It went pretty well for a while, which is when I had to go and fuck it up. It was like a really slow weekday about three weeks after my citrus calculation error when the second part kicked in. Not only was the expiration date on all these bottles fast approaching, but I realized that the reason no one used that room of freezers was because the outlets in there were shit and would sometimes short out for hours at a time.

So they sent me back to grab some primo grass-fed jerky or whatever and I went to check on my juice babies like I had been not-so-diligent about that day, and it was like stepping into a Floridian sauna. It was hot and sticky and citrusy and I flipped into caveman mode, running on pure instinct. In classic Lucille fashion, I panicked and started shoving it all in my mouth. Just unhinged my jaw and poured gallons of orange juice down my gullet like a jailed suffragette, channeling my future self's dick sucking skills and breathing through my nose for twenty minutes straight as I chugged room temp extra pulp.

And this was some fancy hand-pressed shit, straight from the Orange Mother's tit in a sacred underwater cove off the coast of Florida. I'm pretty sure it cost more than my parent's total mortgage, and here I was mainlining the whole thing so fast I lost some taste buds from the citric acid stripping my mouth raw. Eventually someone balancing the books would wonder where all those Harmony Providence Organic Farms bottles went, but at that point I assumed either the Vitamin C overdose would give me the superbrain power to come up with a way out of the situation or I would just be dead—so either way, not my problem.

At some point the power clicked back on, but I was in this primal state where I didn't even know what electricity was anymore. All I knew was the luscious orange of the bottle made me invincible, imbuing me with the ancient power of the first man to see the waxy surface of an orange and think, [Self-assured caveman voice:] "Oh yeah, I'm gonna smash that to death in my mouth." I had regressed completely, and I think I only got through a few bottles before I passed out from the effort, but what an invigorating few minutes. When I came to the power was out again, and the motion activated lights were out, and I just sort of lay there in a juice coma thinking I had actually died and was now in some post-apocalyptic purgatory where the only remnants of human life were me and the distant memory that once there was an orange. 

And I had to piss, so bad. I definitely pissed into one of the empty bottles—again, because I was totally convinced that I was alone on earth and there were no rules. But uh, the musty orange smell sort of covered it, and I think I passed out again. I think it's also worth mentioning at this point that I was surviving on microwave rice and beef jerky, so I wasn't in the best of health.

Eventually the lights came back on, cuz the motion sensor was shitty and didn't notice when I got up to pee, and I realized the bottle I had peed in wasn't actually empty. And that there were a bunch of other bottles. Which were also full. And all looked identical. And that's when the full hubris of my actions really set in, cuz then I realized that after all that, after all the fucking orange juice I drank, after all the skittering around my co-workers making sure they didn't catch onto my citrus crimes, to the point where they genuinely thought I was on coke and were maybe planning an intervention, I realized... I was gonna have to pour it all out just to avoid selling some vegan bitch piss juice.

So I, with my fruit hangover, the lingering traces of a Planet of the Apes mindset making me feel like the lonely, primal weight of the human race was on my shoulders, barricaded the door as I poured hundreds of dollars of organic orange juice and zero dollars of mystery piss down the drain in the floor, money down the literal drain.

And I think that's why my husband's lectures on scurvy don't phase me at all; I'm pretty sure I drank enough orange juice that one day in '98 that I literally never have to eat fruit again. No one can tell me anything about Vitamin C that I have not experienced in extreme, hallucinogenic technicolor. [Laughter.]

I haven’t done a lot of recorded specials, uh—I mean, I've done CDs, back when people wanted CDs, which I guess is The Past now, but not a lot of video based stuff. I don't really like my visage being recorded like that, y'know? Cuz it always feels a little haunted, and I don't trust like that.

I don't mean that in some weird philosophical way, like, "It's a record of your state of being in one moment, but the person you were then is dead now, living only in this Comedy Central special." I mean literally I think there's something haunted about pictures of your past self. Like, when rich people in the olden days would get their portraits painted? That shit's so haunted! You'd be sitting for hours in one position and you'd fall asleep for just a second but as soon as you woke up, you'd feel like something's missing? Like something's slightly wrong? And you'd think, "Oh, just the passage of time," but then twenty years later when you die and wake up hanging on the wall it's like... Shit, that was my soul, huh? And every other painting around you goes, "Yeah, no shit," and you're stuck with the ghosts of every ancestor you ever had in some undead Our House type scenario. Like if Haunted Mansion was populated entirely by Dorian Grays, but the Dorian Grays were actually Mulan's ancestors.

[Laughter dies out awkwardly as Richie fumbles with the mic.] Sorry, hang on. [Puts mic on stand, rummages through pockets.] I just gotta— [Pulls out paper. Camera focuses weakly, but it's too far to make out anything other than that, yes, it is indeed a piece of paper.] Okay. Sorry, I have— Actually now I kinda wish we were recording this so you could zoom and see this is totally legit, but I have this list of things Eddie, that's my husband, things he said are categorically not funny, and I'm just...

Yep, okay, Chris D'Elia, check, pissing self, check, specific Disneyland attractions... Oddly enough "our sex life" isn't on here, but that's probably because most of the joke-able shit there is actually about me and he thinks I won't publicly humiliate myself like that. Which... [Richie pulls a disbelieving face. Laughter.] Does he know me at all? My entire career is based on public humiliation. [Laughter again.]

Actually, he knows me way too well, so I'm starting to think this was reverse psychology so I would talk about the time I tried to pick him up and put him on the counter while we were making out because the fact that I'm way taller than him deluded me into thinking I could lift him, which I couldn't at all, and then when he didn't move even a centimeter but I kept trying, my socks slipped and I almost gave myself a concussion on the fridge behind us. Joke's on him, though, because I won't. [Laughter.]

No, but I do love my husband. I think he's maybe the funniest person in the world, which sounds like some sappy spouse shit with a side of endearing self-deprecation, but I genuinely mean that. He's way funnier than me. It keeps me grounded, y'know? And inspired: if I'm not on my A game, always pushing myself, he could take over my life Talented Mr Ripley style. I couldn't do his job, which has a bunch of math, I don't know, data transponster shit, but he could absolutely do mine, and way better. Keeps me on my toes, that man of mine.

I don't know if it's just that he is funny, because the shit he says does crack me up, or if he just does so many things that are objectively hysterical without any sort of intention. Like he's funnier by not trying to be funny. I try so hard it hurts, but he just takes things so seriously that it becomes comical. And when he actually does jokes, it's that much worse! Because you know he was just waiting for the right moment to absolutely eviscerate you, and all the rest was a buncha accidents that still blow your entire career out of the water.

Like, in middle school—to be fair, everything about middle school is either deeply funny or deeply traumatizing, I know, but this was really up there. In middle school everyone had to pick a music class, and we ended up in band together, which was a mistake because the mitigating forces of our friend group had either picked orchestra or were in the better band class, so there was no corralling us. It was just pure unadulterated Richie and Eddie Chaos everything third period, which completely nuked his last traces of kiss ass status and put him firmly in the "a menace to have in class" category where I resided based on sheer personality.

Anyway, I obviously went for the most obnoxious of instruments, the trumpet, and this kid picked the clarinet, I think mostly because it came in like a little briefcase and he was gearing up for his future occupation of Nondescript Business Man Who Yells At Traffic. I don't know how many of you also suffered through public school band, but the woodwinds definitely had the steepest learning curve. Brass, you figured out how to blow air and hit buttons, and basically everything else was just volume control, which I naturally didn't bother with. The woodwinds, though, and especially the fucking clarinets, they would squeak, every single note, until they figured out how to do some crazy shit with their mouths (also good for future dick sucking skills, I'm sure). And even then, whenever they had to learn a new note, a chorus of choking baby geese, every time.

In that way, I think band class comes at a particularly cruel time, because everyone's voices are changing. And the parallels just draw themselves, but the second you make the joke, you're on everyone's shit list for eternity, because that's a raw nerve for every teenager, every single one. But like, they present you with this perfect fucking metaphor, and expect you not to take advantage of it? No one should have blamed me for that. As a budding young comedian, that was the cruelest thing. Forget all the slurs and swirlies, punishing me for adding that particular gem to my clarinet-based joke repertoire was the meanest thing to happen to me in middle school. I think we all dodged a bullet when I didn't end up with my second choice, saxophone, or else I would have been immediately expelled for wandering the halls and squeaking at people every time their voice broke.

I was going to say he was a better man than me for not doing exactly that with his clarinet, but I think that was mostly because he was already the squeakiest of the group, and so would mostly have to terrorize himself. Instead he just croaked his way through every Big Band Standards medley for three years and whipped me in the face with his cleaning cloth every time I honked in his ear from the row behind. He stayed after school to practice a lot, to escape his mother but also so he'd squeak less, and it started working after a while, but there was this one time during the beginning that I will never let him forget. I bring it up to this day, we'll be at brunch or some other middle-aged gay thing, and I'll say, "Hey, remember that time you screamed obscenities at a pack of fifth graders and they hero-worshiped you for five minutes before you got locked in a band cubby," and he'll spit out his mimosa and immediately go into the same excuses tirade as he has since literally the day it happened.

I'll set the scene: [quasi-Rod Serling voice] Eddie Kaspbrak, age eleven, is a pipsqueak. I have his express permission to describe him as such, but don't let the editorial control fool you, because this is all still one hundred percent true. Eddie has been playing the clarinet for all of two months, and he is by far the worst offender in the clarinet section when it comes to honking like a human-sized rubber chicken run over by a semi. No matter how hard he tries, he always breaks on anything above an F, and because his embouchure (a word I remember solely for this story) is shit, to even get any sound out he has to blow an insane amount of air, so you can hear his squeaks from space.

Now, Eddie is generally a well-behaved boy in public. He's a pedantic asshole with his friends, but in the presence of teachers he's the most polite, meek little kid that it makes you want to strangle him and pinch his cheeks simultaneously—which, don't worry, I did often. Usually he'd bide his time until you were away from authority figures, at which point he would rip into you for whatever obnoxious thing you did this time, say, make him laugh so hard he snorts pudding out of his nose. But band class really takes him to the edge, both because of the squeaking and because the trumpet section was right behind the clarinets and I would aim my out of tune horn as close to directly in his ear as I could possibly manage.

So he starts practicing outside of class, sweet-talking the band teacher with his baby angel voice into letting him use the practice rooms during lunch. I'm pretty sure the director was gay, she was like an old school butch, real Bulldagger Dyke. She definitely had some psychic gay thing going on, because she never said anything when I inevitably also showed up and we spent the entire time dicking around in the only-sorta-sound-proofed room, hanging all over each other and yelling and stealing each other's shit—you know, middle school flirting—but that's another story.

Sometimes he did practice, though, and one of those times he wasn't actually playing anything we were doing in class, he was trying to learn the cantina song from Star Wars by ear because that song bugged the shit out of our other friend, Stan. I assume you all know the cantina song, because this is twenty-first century America, almost said twentieth, what the fuck, but anyway, the cantina song has all these jumps in it, right? Very boppy, very fun to watch aliens play, but absolute hell if you are an eleven year old playing the clarinet for the first time. And our sweet little Eds is well aware that if he fucks it up in front of Stan, not only will it not have its intended annoying effect, but it will most likely result in him getting annoyed. Stan was secretly the most brutal of motherfuckers and he had this smile that didn't laugh at you so much as make you feel like your soul was being torn apart. Like: [Slight smile, like a movie villain as you realize you've walked right into their trap]. Very Hannibal Lecter. Totally eviscerating. Stan could dish it as good as he could take it, but if you really pissed him off and he spots a weakness, you were done for.

So Eddie practices this thing for months—he even makes me write it out for him, because I was way better at actually reading music. [Half-hearted hair flip, laughter.] He's reading along on this wonky staff, insert joke here, written on regular notebook paper and covered in eraser marks and my own attempts at drawing the funky lil cantina dudes, and he's actually doing pretty well; I'm coming down the hall and I can hear it, that dun da dun da dun da daaa getting faster and faster as he gets the hang of it, and I'm coming to tell him lunch is over, but there's a pack of fifth graders in the middle of the hall on some "here's what bullshit you have to look forward to" tour. Like middle school is about how cool it is to have a water fountain in every hallway and not, y'know, the daily torment that comes of throwing kids at all stages of puberty into the same poorly ventilated building from the fifties.

The head secretary is leading this pack of ten year olds right to the band room, actually, talking about how excited everyone is for the fall yadda yadda, and she's actually a big fan of Eddie's, talks to his mom all the time about making sure the bus drivers are on time and that Eddie is on the right list for food restrictions at lunch or what the fuck ever, like he wasn't chugging Cokes and melted malt cups with the rest of us.

But the secretary sees him through the window of the practice room and waves, and Eddie doesn't see her, almost to that part where they do this, like, trill thing, that he never gets, and I'm right behind the kids, and I can see they're bored out of their soft skulls. And then Eddie whiffs it—the loudest squeak I've ever heard, even through the door, and before anyone can laugh, like they absolutely were going to, even the secretary, he just starts screaming every curse word he knows. This tiny kid in the world's brightest aquamarine polo, pristine white shorts and a fanny pack, going, [Yells in an eerily good impression of young Eddie] "Mother of goddamn fuck, John Williams you son of a bitch, I hope you choke to death on your own dick, who the fuck even thinks you can jump from D to high B, fuck you!" [Pause for laughter, Richie holding the mic with impressed heart-eyes.]

So I married him. [More laughter.] Eventually. First, he kicks the music stand, still yelling, and it clatters into the door, at which point he looks up and sees all of us standing outside. There's me, grinning like a loon with even bigger eyes than usual. Mrs. Jacobs, who looks about to faint in a very [In what is absolutely just a Scarlett O'Hara impression:] Oh My Stars, Well I Never way, that wholesome dismay, like she just walked in on Howdy Doody getting railed by his puppeteer. And then there's the fucking fifth graders, and they're just... starstruck. One of them actually starts clapping; they've all got their mouths hanging open, a couple look ready to just get down on the sticky linoleum, prostrate. Eddie is totally mortified, and then the kid starts clapping and he just sort of shoves his way out of the practice room and runs out into the main hallway. He refused to talk about it— swore me to secrecy, promised that if I ever spoke of it to anyone he would tell everyone that rumor about me jerking off in science class was true. [Laughter and a few whoops.] Which it wasn't. I know that's hard to believe, but it wasn't. That rumor almost destroyed my life once already, and I had told him about how it had really fucked with me, so I knew he was being serious and laid off.

And honestly, we all did insane embarrassing shit all the time, so I sort of forgot about it. There were more pressing issues, like missing children and psycho bullies and Eddie breaking his arm and all of us beating the shit out of a demonic clown that lived in the sewers. [Confused laughter.] It was... A Summer, and in the midst of all that it faded into only this nagging feeling every time I got the cantina song stuck in my head. It wasn't until the start of the next year when it all came rushing back.

Seventh grade is a special layer of Hell. I'm convinced that when I die, I'll get Downstairs and knock on the door and it'll swing open into Coach Walsh's gym class, complete with a pile of brand new dodgeballs ready to be broken in, the stereo blasting that fucking Pat Benatar song, and every boy I conspicuously avoided making eye contact with in the locker room. Seventh grade did have a bright spot, though, at the very beginning, because—I shit you not—when we walked into the band room the first day back, a pack of sixth graders fucking swarmed.

Usually a swarm of sixth graders is also awful, but this was a very special swarm, because these were Eddie's fans. Yes, this motherfucker had groupies. The same kids who saw him flip shit at the Star Wars song joined band just to see him, and they followed him through the hallways, asking him questions about what it was like to be a seventh grader, who was the coolest teacher, what did he do when he was their age, inane hero worship shit. I feel like maybe I should've been at least a little jealous, but it was just so fucking funny. Some of these kids were taller than him—okay, a lot of them, pipsqueak—and they were just hanging on his every fucking word. He looked so uncomfortable; someone would ask him where his locker was and he'd say he didn't really use it (not mentioning it was because if any jackass walked passed he'd get shoved in automatically) and they all swooned, [Starry-eyed Schoolgirl voice:] "Wow, Eddie Kaspbrak, too cool for lockers." [Laughter.]

I mean, I know I was like that sometimes, but that's totally different. All these fifth graders saw the world's tiniest dork, a kid who carries around two fanny packs, and thought, [Considering Impressive Man:] "Yes. This one. This one knows the ways of the cool. I shall imprint upon him."

I guess the story doesn't end in a really funny way. The new eighth grade gang picked up on Eddie's entourage and locked him in one of the big cubbies in the band room meant for, like, the fucking trombones. Not the tubas, not the biggest ones. [Laughter.] No, sweet lil Eds fit just fine in the trombone cubby. I didn’t get there until after the band teacher let him out, but the mental image fueled me for a week at least. His fan club disappeared after that—one of them had actually asked him to sign their music folder, which he did, for some fucking reason, and the next day she showed up with his dinky Palmer Method Hancock covered by an entire sheet of Care Bear stickers, which was as funny as it was tragic. [Ghost story voice:] And some say if you whistle the cantina song within five feet of him, you can see a split second of that same shocked expression on his face that he had when he first saw his own name peeking out from under a crooked Tenderheart before his glare melts your face off. [Laughter and applause.]

Thank you, thank you. [Mock bowing with a side of genuine smile.]

[Unintelligible mumbling. Richie clears his throat.] Any lesbians here tonight? [A few woos.] Okay. Not as many as I would've hoped, but we'll work on it. I asked my manager to get as many gay people in the audience as possible, but I'm not sure if he thought I was joking or not. [A few laughs.] Which is fair cuz I don't know either. [More laughter.] Uh, lesbians, I hope it's alright that I said "dyke" in the last bit. [One person whoops.] Okay. I meant it from a place of love. Y'know, solidarity.

[Slowly and self-seriously raises one fist to enthusiastic gay clapping and hetero silence. At this mixed response, Richie actually smiles.]

"Solidarity" is one of my new words, I'm really excited about using it. To be totally honest, one of the reasons I was really raring to get back to performing was because of all the words I get to say now. I don't mean I'm walking around saying slurs every day out of nowhere, I'm very aware of the fact that I'm still an adult white man. I just mean— Like, I'm excited to talk about my husband. Not even cuz he's a great font of comedy— [Laughter. Richie grins.] I mean he is, he's great, but also just saying "husband" is fun. Husband. Huuuusssbaaaaaand. [Laughter.] And, okay, it is a little fun to say "fag."

[Brief silence.] Yeah, no one laughs at that one. [Laughter.] Everyone's real afraid to be caught laughing at that one. That's why it's so awesome to use. It's a great conversation stopper. Like, I'm out now, but obviously not every person I meet knows that. [Shrugs facetiously, staring at shoes.] I get it. It's a big city. I'm not that famous... [Turns to metaphorical camera.] Yet. [Laughter.] But even though the word doesn't hold as much power over me as it did as a kid, I've still got this sixth sense of when people are about to say it. And now it's fun, cuz I get to say it first. Nothing trips up a homophobe like calling yourself a slur before they can. [The single lesbian who whooped earlier cheers.]

The other day I was in a thrift store in Chelsea, which you would think is way too gay a setting for an anecdote about homophobia, but there I was, looking for more signature terrible button ups. I got cranberry sauce on my white one with the giant T-Rex head on it and my husband refused to work his laundry magic on it, claiming it was a sign, and though he definitely knows I kept it anyway I am now too afraid to wear it in public for fear it was, indeed, a sign.

I was down to two options: this Baskin Robbins cotton candy swirl long sleeve or, swear to God, the exact shirt Weird Al is wearing on the cover of Dare To Be Stupid. [Laughter.] If you're laughing derisively you can shut the fuck up right now, that shit is serious. [Laughter decreases by a factor of ten.] Okay, some of you stopped way too quickly. But yes, both very good options, you'll agree. On one hand, Mr Yankovic's perfect blend of prime nostalgia and fashion iconography, but on the other, the sheer audacity of that weird blue and pink as a long sleeve button up. It raises so many questions. How? Why? What kind of person did they have in mind designing that? [Points silently and exaggeratedly at self, mouthing, "This guy, holy shit, this guy right here."]

So I had the cotton candy one on, really seriously considering myself in the mirror, when I catch sight of this guy giving me The Look behind me. You know, The Look. The "Wow! I'm going to say a slur now!" Look. And I catch his eye in the mirror and, without turning around, just say to him, "Be honest: is it too faggy?" [Some reluctant laughter and some very strong laughter.] Oh that was fun, now I know exactly where every gay person in the room is based on sound alone. [More solid laughter.] Yeah, because "faggy" is unfortunately very fun to say. It's a fun sound shape. And now I get say it, and think about myself like that in a way that doesn't make me want to throw up. Which is awesome.

I did check with my friend about "dyke," though. I wrote that joke and thought, "Ehhh, I dunnooo," so I called my best friend and said, "Hey, do you think it's cool if I refer to our middle school band director as a dyke? Because she definitely was." And he said, [Slow, atonal] "Richie... Why are you asking me..." Because he's also only recently gay... and a man... and also is my husband.

So then I called the Best Friend in my phone with the other set of heart emojis [Laughter.] and I said, "Hey, do you think it's cool if I refer to our middle school band director as a dyke? Because she definitely was." And Bev said, [Turns to one side] "You know I'm bisexual, and also l took choir." [Turns back.] "I know." [Turns again.] "Well, as long as it's not overly derogatory you're probably fine."

I'm pretty sure half of why she said that was because she knew how hard joke writing was going already and didn't want to wreck my burgeoning confidence— [Laughter.] Hey, fuck you, I'm fragile! [More laughter.]

It's hard. Comedy is hard. I don't know if I'm allowed to only start complaining about it this deep into my career, but in my defense I didn't really know until now. Writing jokes? Sure, it can be tough. Telling jokes? Easiest thing in the world, just slap some wacky inflection on someone else's words. But writing your own jokes and then saying them out loud to people? So much harder!

Cuz suddenly it's all on you. You can't blame it on the writer sucking, or the delivery sucking, because all the sucking is on you—and I'll have you know, I'm a pro at sucking, yes in all the ways you're thinking, but sucking in the bad way, in public, never feels good. [Quiet and contemplative.] Really prefer the other sucking... [Laughter.] Thank you. Thank you for confirming what I've known my entire life: dick jokes are the pinnacle of all comedy.

If all my jokes are about childhood, I apologize. Well. Kinda. Kids are fucking funny. Once you're far enough removed from actually being a teenager and all its slings and fucking arrows, you realize that all teen years are objectively ridiculous, and now that I have to write my own jokes and my sex life is unofficially off limits if I ever want to keep having sex with my husband, which I really do, a lot, I have to go down the ol' memory mine and dig shit up.

Part of it is also because I've been thinking a lot about being prepubescent lately. Not in a weird way, just shit like that's when I started getting really into comedy, when I met my husband—and I don't know if you could tell by the number of your mom jokes I've made over the years but a decent chunk of my personality was formed at age twelve. There's also a lot to unpack there. Just a ton of shit that happened and I was immediately like, "Well... I should probably deal with that... ... ... Eventually..." [Laughter.] And then of course never did. [Laughter.]

Sometimes even the shit you thought you dealt with turns out to be bullshit. I actually was halfway through a bit about the time my mother and I emptied out her mother's storage unit before it got weird. I was, like, twenty-one, at college in New York, but they moved as soon as I left that first year to Toronto, of all places. She called a few weeks before the end of the year and said she wanted to come down and help me move out, which was weird until she mentioned that on the way back she wanted to stop and visit my aunt, and then, when she picked me up, that we were going to finally empty my grandma's storage stuff cuz my aunt didn't want to pay for it anymore. She's from New York, and her mom died when I was in middle school, and apparently all this stuff was just sitting there for years.

This doesn't— Every single face here is projecting, "Jesus, alright dude, is there a joke? Please tell me there's a joke," so violently I can feel how much psychic damage I'm taking, brain cells dribbling away. It sounds super heavy, I know, but it really wasn't. There wasn't time for any of that. We spent all day either driving up and down New York or actually packing shit. My mom thought the key to the storage was with her uncle in Levittown, where the unit was, but it turned out it was up with my aunt up in Rochester, so we had to pack up all my shit, move out, drive up to Rochester, wait for my aunt to get off work, get the fucking key, spend the night at a motel cuz it's fucking torrential outside, leave around noon because it's still pouring, drive back to Levittown, through rush hour traffic, and only then can the shitshow begin.

By the time we got the thing open it was like three hours before they closed and raining again. Apparently since my aunt last checked like a month before some mold had gotten inside, and we had to work through every box with this clinical speed, running things out to the car or to the payphone just outside the storage place to call my aunt like, [A voice that, despite not knowing what Richie's mom sounds like, everyone can tell is exactly like the real life Maggie Tozier:] "Hey, did you want the carousel horse trivet or can I have that? Richie wants the ceramic frog—" It was a super cool frog, it had a huge mouth, I always felt a kinship with it. "Rich wants the frog, did you— Ohhh, she called dibs, sweetie, I'm sorry." Standing out in the rain debating who gets what of the fucking cheap shit from the Jersey shore and filling garbage bags full of dried up Post-Its and expired makeup.

Cuz that was the thing, this place was just packed full of crap. There was, uh, [Counts on fingers:] a chemistry set from the forties missing most of the pieces. Baby books. Ancient Tupperware. Leftover construction paper from a preschool class she taught in 1963. [Laughter.] All this shit, and—

My grandma got cancer, pretty young, only fifteen years older than I am right now which is a little too freaky to think about ever, let alone onstage. But basically all this stuff had been in there since she went into hospice when I was in seventh grade, and, like, there were just piles of crap, entire bathroom cabinets emptied into re-purposed liquor store boxes. And my mom opened one of these that had, like, a bunch of those little creamer things from diners and a bottle of sunscreen, and she just said, "She really thought she was coming back for this stuff," and then fucking went on with it cuz we'd been there for two hours already and had no time for emotions.

It was incredibly strange—and I was twenty-one, just coming into a serious understanding of things like mortality and my parents being actual people with inner emotional landscapes and shit. I didn't have the capacity to deal with that! There was so much shit to— Like, box number three or something, my mom was going through this pile of stuff from my grandma's desk or something, and she pulled out this piece of paper with some notes on it and said, "Oh, I have to call Meg, I think this is about Johnny." And I said, "Who?" cuz my mom has a lot of cousins and I could never keep them straight, and she just says, "The baby Nana gave up before me," and I just. [Semi-awkward laughter, which grows less awkward at Richie's comically baffled face.] What the fuck? All those years of hoping I had an estranged wealthy uncle who would leave me all his money and a castle somewhere, and you're telling me that might actually not be totally out of the realm of possibility?? [Laughter.]

And the whole night was like that! Just: open a box of every scrap of your grandmother's life, find something super heart-wrenching like a journal from the year she lived with a cousin in France and wrote all you kids letters she forget to give you, and then pack that shit into the car and move on to the next box because you're sweating through your raincoat and wondering if black mold is just any mold that's black and why you think it has something to do with the plague. I'm forty-one years old and I'm only just now like "...Holy shit, wait, what?" because there wasn't enough time to even literally unpack all that, let alone, fucking, emotionally.

But I guess that's just life. You're so busy living it that there's no time to do anything more than that. Not to get too existential in the second act of this comedy show, but I've realized I've just been sorta going through life like that, not processing anything, just trudging through every day until I get to fucking shut up and lie down at the end. I don't know if you can tell by how I had a semi-public breakdown in which I dropped off the face of the Earth for five months only to reappear, get married, and come out, in that order, at age forty, but my life really took a one-eighty this past year, and a lot of that has been through just remembering shit.

Some of it's normal regret stuff, like how I wished I'd paid more attention in college; not that a fucking theatre degree from NYU was real backbreaking shit, but because there was a lot of stuff I feel like is obvious in retrospect that if I'd just thought about a bit more while it was happening I would've realized, hey, that's important. Or the people I was friends with in middle school. What it was like to be part of this great big pack of friends, how great that felt, like there was always somebody there to turn to. The way my parents always got matching pajamas for the whole family at Christmas, even though we didn't celebrate it, because my dad's family who did were never as cute as us in all our matching footies.

And sure, some trauma too. The world is so fucking different now, and I don't mean just because kids don't throw rocks at each other as much as they used to. [Laughter.] God, we threw so many rocks. But I see kids nowadays who are gay in middle school and I just find it totally fucking baffling. Not that I wish they had to go through the self-hatred and bullying I did, or even in a bittersweet "It sucks I had to live through that but at least now other kids don't" way, I just do not understand. How do you figure that shit out, and then tell everyone, and then that's your life? Cuz when I figured out that I was gay in middle school I just... completely forgot. [Laughter.] Just went, "eh, future Richie's problem," and never thought about it again. Left the metaphorical stove on for twenty-something years. [More laughter.]

It— I would say that's the greatest procrastination of my life, but that title actually belongs to me telling my husband that I love him, which I figured out before I knew I was gay, and then, after we met again I thought, "Live like you're dying, might as well come out to somebody at least once," but when I went to he kissed me and it was like, [Smacks forehead.] "Shit." [Laughter.] "I knew there was something else." Like I left the metaphorical stove on for decades, so I guess all the kids who called me a flamer in high school weren't actually that far off.

That's life! Sometimes you're living so fast and furious that you don't remember you meant to tell someone twenty-seven years ago that you loved them until their tongue is down your throat. [Laughter.] The two major hazards of a rock and roll lifestyle: forgetting your sexuality and severe drug-induced brain damage. Suddenly all those stories about Mick Jagger that I thought were urban legends seem totally legit.

Earlier I was trying to think of something funny that happened not when I was twelve, which was harder than you think. I mean, I only remembered half this shit a few months ago, and yet not I can't think of a single funny anecdote other than that orange juice shit that does get weirdly dark or anything.

I think that's part of the reason someone else had to write my jokes for me, cuz not only do I never do anything funny, I just never do anything period. I don't even know how personal anecdotes are supposed to go.

Since I got married— Since I dropped off the map pretty much, I guess, I've been extra boring. Actually, I remember one time in college my roommate's friend's cousin's shitty emo band was playing at this dive bar and I had nothing to do so I went, and when I woke up it was four in the morning, I was on a boat, missing a shoe, no wallet in my pocket but, instead, fourteen broken glowsticks. My dick was glowing so bright I thought I was about to become the world's shittiest superhero, Atomic Jizz. And that was a Tuesday. [Laughter.] With absolutely no effort. I could just show up places and shit would happen to me—and then of course I'd forget how it happened so there wouldn't really be a story to tell, but still, it would happen.

Now, the most exciting thing that happened to me this month was my husband got a VPN and we've been binging whatever's on all the foreign Ne—

[Jump cut to mid-laughter break.] And I guess, if I really wanted to I could get back to waking up on a derelict yacht in the middle of the Hudson with a fluorescent dick and no wallet, but it's so much easier to rewatch Scott Pilgrim and accidentally drink too much wine.

I do feel slightly bad cuz like... I do know some famous people? And I know they can get up to some crazy shit; I won't name names, but suffice to say that the one year I got the spare underling SNL rep player ticket to the Emmys, um, someone did invite me to his after party at the LA Zoo with the promise of ketamine. His name maybe rhymes with Dribble. Drimmel? Whatever. But sure, I met a lot of crazy-famous people hosting SNL, and I see them around sometimes doing crazy shit, or you just catch wind of shit being "in the industry" or whatever. Like, the craziness is out there, I just truly don't care enough to get into it. I wanna watch Netflix with my husband, it's just now... good for comedic anecdotes.

I was in LA recently and ran into Ali Wong— [Applause.] Yeah, absolutely, she's great. We've met a couple of times but I'm afraid of actually becoming her friend, she's way too cool. But she works on Fresh Off the Boat, and a friend of an SNL friend called me about this pilot—apparently people like my jokes as long as I'm not telling them. But I ran into Ali Wong in this office, which was strange number one because both of us are very much people who do not belong in offices.

She maybe could belong in a really cool office? Like Silicon Valley Wolf of Wall Street, cutthroat, kinda raunchy, intimidatingly cool. I look like the overgrown lunatic who still works in the mail room even though I haven't been eighteen in decades and, at the very least, someone should've put me out of my misery. Honestly, I don't even look like that. I look like the guy who watches that movie. And then the stoner mail room guy, who's played by, like, Adam Devine, turns out to be the boss's illegitimate son and they have to pretend he was just learning the ropes but now he has to inherit the whole company?

No one— Hey, TM, TM, TM. [Laughter.] Original work do not steal. Next time they fail to keep me out of an office building I'm pitching that, you can't have it. That is box office gold. 

Anyway, Ali Wong told me about this movie she's working on and how she's trying to get Keanu Reeves in it. At which point I, a blossoming homo in the Bill and Ted era, was immediately ready to destroying the last shreds of my dignity for a chance to be even, like, a PA on that set. Look, we were all hot for Keanu, alright? We're adults enough to admit that. My husband, love of my life, light in my darkness, could absolutely leave me for Keanu Reeves and it would be an uncontested divorce, like, I get it.

But she's telling me about how this movie would have, like, the character is Keanu but turned up to eleven, and how to write this Keanu caricature she's been reading all these super chill-but-crazy true life Keanu stories. Y'know, not coke and strippers, but the dumb stuff that only crazy rich people do, like flying their pet ferret to Switzerland for routine surgery. Apparently he bought Harleys for everybody doing SFX for The Matrix—yeah, Matrix, so basically everyone alive. As a kid he wrestled Alice Cooper? He was going to play hockey in the Olympics but decided to be an actor and dropped out of high school? One time his plane was grounded and he hired vans to drive him and the other passengers two hours to LA? Keanu definitely has a haunted portrait. The dude's immortal, he probably has a whole warehouse full of haunted portraits.

I guess if I was Keanu Crazy Rich I could do Keanu Crazy Rich Stuff. Though honestly, I think I'd just give away most of my money. I'd feel too guilty, y'know? And sure, Keanu donates a bunch to charity and random strangers too, but I think that's just cuz he's a kind soul. I would one hundred percent do it out of guilt. Like, get a plane and shovel buckets of cash out of the open doors shouting, [In that echoey half-shouting effect that one adopts to sound like they're far away:] "I am so sorry! I am so very fucking sorry!" And then probably having a panic attack when we land cuz why the fuck did I spend all that money on a plane. Like even just renting it is too far.

If I was Crazy Rich, though, I don't think I could give away all of it to strangers. My husband wouldn't let me. He would absolutely get way too into it, like a neurotic Melinda Gates, with spreadsheets and proposals of where and how to best spend our Crazy Rich money to help people in natural disasters and stop Wall Street people or whatever.

Even now I can hear him in my head correcting me, [Not an impression, Richie is explicitly forbidden from doing Current Day Eddie impressions.] "No, asshole, going after Wall Street is a stupid idea. If you want to get anything done you go for the lobbyists first, and even then we're not spending our money in fucking Washington, it's all about grassroots campaigns in swing districts that won't take PAC money but still need support, dipshit."

My husband is what you call an over-planner. He loves a good binder—he's got one with the manuals to everything we own, manuals he's legitimately read. Until he moved in I had never owned a highlighter, and now I have seven, of varying thickness and color and, like, viscosity. Apparently highlighters are like booze, they have percents alcohol. I know all sorts of shit now, like what "kills ninety-nine percent of bacteria" really means and, fucking, the history of how public schools developed their current lunch money programs, and also how much they suck. When he went on rants like that as a kid they were all mostly bullshit and urban legends, but now that he has the internet and we've cured him of his WebMD addiction, he's like a genuine public affairs savant. He knows everything about anything that's even vaguely related to health and safety.

He's actually thinking about becoming a lawyer. Or maybe a nurse. Yes, my husband is forty-one years old and he's considering a drastic career change that, regardless of where he ends up, absolutely means more college, now, in this economy. [Laughter.] Just in case you thought I was the only midlife crisis in this marriage.

I actually think he would make a great lawyer. He loves arguing, and he's really fucking good at it. He's got tactics and shit. The way he got me to start using conditioner after three decades of washing my own hair was he bored me with science until I was lulled into a false sense of security, at which point he said he would put his hands in my hair more if I did and my brain snapped and I immediately took a shower, voluntarily, for the second time that day. [Laughter.] And I'm pretty sure it'd work on non-horny people too.

He also, like, cares about a lot of shit to an absurd degree. Like, he'll get really worked up about how to fix economic disparity in rural America. This man hasn't been anywhere more outdoorsy than Central Park in decades and yet he's got all these statistics and shit, and I'm like yeah, okay, hang on that totally makes sense. Like, I'm an idiot who is pretty sure "subsidy" is a made up word, but he whips out this fourteen point plan and the way he explains it makes me want to give him all the money ever to talk his way into solving all of the world's problems.

I feel like people who've met both of us are just fucking baffled by how we haven't killed each other by now. People have been wondering that about us since the moment we met, age seven, him yelling at me to get off the roof of the playground [Baby Eddie voice:] "before I break your legs myself, moron." [Laughter.] I know. What can I say? Sandbox love never dies.

But I get it—we're not complete opposites, but we definitely look like just the right kind of opposites to really piss each other off. I'm a super messy person who seems laid back to the point that it's genuinely concerning and he's like a walking ball of rage and anxiety. There's really just two things to know. One, any time he looks at me there's an eighty percent chance I go weak at the knees. No matter what kind of look it is. He glares at me cuz I ate the last of his celery and peanut butter and my heart thumps out of my chest like a cartoon character. He's got a direct line to my love— On my heart is a soft apple bruise that only he can press his thumb to. To put it poetically.

But two is that he's not as straight laced (gay joke here) as he looks. Because while it may seem that his number one descriptor is killjoy, it's actually fucking hypocrite. He can assess risk til the mad cows come home, but he'll still fucking do it. He's a complete hypocrite! [Laughter.] That's what I love about him! He always has been! He'll get all riled up if you make a joke about his mother and then fifteen minutes later he'll come back with this zinger about fucking your sister, he's amazing. One time when we were kids he went on this whole rant about how we were all gonna get sepsis from the river water as he was trying to drown me. To be fair, he was probably drowning me because he was talking about meningococcal whatever, because he knew he had no response to my sweet ninja cock jokes, but still. He's as crazy impulsive as I am; he just hides it better.

I think the best example of that is the fact that we didn't talk for twenty-seven years and then five months after we met again he had divorced his wife and we were eloping in Niagara. I don't know if it really counts as An Elopement if you're older than, say, thirty, cuz at a certain point I feel like no one cares one way or the other whether you have an actual wedding, but it was still that impulse decision kind of thing. We were in the grocery store and he was talking about steel cut oats while I zoned out watching the mister things in the produce section. They had this corny thunderstorm sound effects which was cute, but then it reminded me of going to Niagara Falls as a teenager, and seeing these two kids who now seem barely older than I was who got hitched on the boat ride, and I just blurted out, "Hey, wanna get married today?" [Laughter, but not in a "haha funny" way but a "haha aww" one.]

And we did. [Haha Funny laughter.] He looked at me really hard and didn't even say yes, just kissed me really quick and nodded, like, twice. We didn't buy the oatmeal but we got everything else, waited at the checkout super nonchalantly, and we went got home and put away all the healthy shit and the Count Chocula—I won the rock paper scissors so we got Count Chocula instead of Frankenberry, cuz Count Chocula kicks ass. And then we grabbed some clothes and our passports and fucking drove to Niagara and got. Married.

[Applause.] Yeah, it was awesome! Like three hours out of the city we realized, oh wait, we have friends actually nearby who would probably kill us if we got married without telling them, so we called them from the road. Bev chewed our heads off but you could hear her and her boyfriend getting in their car in the background, and it was all nice stuff said in an only-kinda-serious frustrated voice. It turns out pretty much all our other friends were in town that week too so she picked them up, and they were bitching us out the whole drive, which, also fair.

We got there first obviously and I don't know if you've been to Niagara but it's a total fucking tourist trap. It's awesome. It's basically Canadian Atlantic City but on a cliff. It was October so the boats closed early, before we got there, but they have this fake boardwalk area with arcades and mini golf and a fucking Hard Rock Café, all sorts of stupid shit—and this is on the Canadian side, so it's comically American instead of tragically, which made it actually really cool. We went to the Midway and played Skee-Ball until we had enough tickets to buy one of the stupid plastic rings at the counter. Then it turned out he had a real ring he bought the week before— [Laughter.] Which was good for him because I had one I bought the week before that. [More laughter.] So he didn't get completely upstaged by my super romantic gesture.

And eventually our friends showed up and we got married and we all convinced the guy at the go-kart track to stay open for another hour and then ate mini donuts until someone threw up. And it wasn't even me this time!

But it was an awesome wedding, the kind of shit you always wanted to do as an eleven year old and is actually just as kickass to actually do as an adult. Not like when you realize, "Hey, I'm a grown up, I can go full Home Alone and eat a pancake-waffle sandwich with ice cream and sprinkles covered in chocolate sauce," and you end up giving yourself IBS. It's more like when you're on an airplane and sure, it kind of sucks, the asshole in front of you immediately reclined his seat and you have legs longer than even your dick, [Brief pause for laughter that does not come.] and it's gonna be a long six hours to wherever, but then you look out the window and you're seven years old again and it's this exciting, impossible adventure because you're really flying in the air, look at all the little people. That's what getting married was like. [Applause.]

Honestly, that's what being married is like. Y'know, whatever, whatever, gay people reliving their lost childhoods, but— Okay, example. Last week I woke up way too fucking early because the feral cats who live in our alley were having an all-night rager, and I went into the kitchen and Eddie was standing at the counter wearing this huge t-shirt, total cartoonish deer in the headlights look—and listen, you haven't met him, but the dude already has fucking doe eyes, so this was some intense shit—and holding a mug with at least two more mugs worth of whipped cream on top balanced on it. [Laughter.] And he was about to bite off the top of it, teeth bared, when I walked in and he freezes and says— [Richie laughs.] He says, [Suddenly stern but cracking at the edges.] "Who the fuck told you to wake up?"

[Richie laughs again, as does everyone else now.] No explanation for why he's going full Home Alone in our own kitchen in the dark at fucking four in the morning, why he put on the Muppets shirt he hates because every time I see it I have to do the Fozzie voice, where he even got the whipped cream cuz I know it wasn't in the fridge the night before when I was gonna make crazy hot chocolate even though it's May. Just... "Who the fuck told you to wake up."

I was still mostly asleep, but that moment was like I got shot in the heart, like... Holy shit... I get to be married to that. I get to be married to the guy of my dreams before I even had dreams, and he'll roll his eyes at me cuz I just made a shitty jizz joke about his whipped cream mountain and then he'll let me steal some of said whipped cream jizz mountain, and that's way better than wrestling Alice Cooper or doing K with Jimmy Kimmel in an abandoned zoo, or any Home Alone sugar rush. [Applause.]

My parents are still in Toronto and we visited them after we got married in Niagara. They were so pissed—not even that I hadn't bothered to come out before showing up with a husband who, by the way, remember that boy I was obsessed with as a kid, with the fake asthma? [Confused laughter.] Don't get me started on the fake asthma. Honestly, that's the comeback special, the extended saga of how my husband found out he didn't actually have asthma, or poor circulation, or allergies, or an iron deficiency, but did, in fact, have a panic disorder.

But no, obviously they were mad about us not inviting them. Which is fair, since we eloped but specifically to the country they live in. In my defense, we didn't mean to invite anybody, and I called them right after. Well... the next morning. And actually first we had sex, and then breakfast, and then sex again, and then we went on the boat tour. But I definitely called them then because one, we couldn't have sex while my brand new husband was making sure we didn't get pneumonia, on account of the whole, y'know, standing around in freezing water in October for twenty minutes, and two, he hung up the shitty free ponchos in the bathroom and I needed a break from the adorableness or else I was gonna pinch his cheeks, and I was still too emotionally fragile for divorce jokes.

My parents insisted we come visit, my dad literally pulled up directions and started reading them out while we were still on the phone, and we decided why the fuck not. Eddie hadn't been on a vacation since mandatory fun with his mom—and I get it, mandatory fun with Mrs K was always a good time. [Half-hearted comedic leer.] No one knows that better than me. But just because we didn't really have a wedding didn't mean we couldn't have a honeymoon, and ooh, baby, what better honeymoon than visiting a couple of aging Jews in suburban Canada in October? [Laughter.]

As far as honeymoons go it was... deeply unsexy. Uh, my mom did a lot of fawning. I mean, she's always liked Eddie, but it definitely wasn't totally personal. I have two sisters (in case you couldn't recognize the discipline problems and comedic cries for attention that come with being the middle child) and she always said she wished she had three girls, but I think I finally won. My older sister's ex is an asshole and my younger sister is a militant art lesbian in Seattle who recently got arrested for tagging the Amazon headquarters, so I got to swoop in and claim the perfect child role for once in my life. [Triumphant but also defiant:] "Look, Ma, one of us finally married a nice young man, are you happy now?" [Laughter.]

And then, when finally I thought I had done it, I was golden, no more maternal expectations, my dad asked if this meant they were finally getting grandkids. [Richie gesturing with empty despondency as if to say, "But I just..." and sighs.] Because it was definitely a joke, they already have three, but the man can't read a room and my mom's fucking eyes lit up and— [Laughter.] Back to square one!

And I don't know. I'm barely able to take care of myself—the other day I tried to eat a Pop-Tart the right way for the first time, actually toast it and shit, and immediately it was on fire. I didn't even get to plugging it in. Last month I forgot stamps. Just straight up forgot their entire existence. I was gonna send my dad a birthday card, because I'm trying to be a better son— [Applause.] Aw, thanks. Yeah, but I forgot about stamps? I was super confused, I thought Eddie was putting a sticker on it and I was like, "Well, I'm the last person to begrudge someone childish regression," until I remembered— [Laughter.] Riiight. The money stickers. [Laughter.]

I can't imagine what having a kid would be like. I mean, I seriously can't. I haven't known any children since I was a child—I have nieces and nephews but really they're just sort of abstract tiny people shapes in my mind. I've never even had a pet, I don't— Like what the fuck would that even look like. Something else living in your home? [Laughter.] That you're in charge of? At least I can assume my husband can handle his own shit if he's out of sight for more than two seconds. I don't have to keep track of what room he's in, I just do that for fun. [Laughter.] Being hyper-aware of whether I could sneak up on him somewhere is a tough habit to kick.

But if I had to actually be paying attention because a kid could, like, do all sorts of dangerous shit? Everything is scary when it's next to a kid. Fucking soap, symbol of purity, is a killing machine to an unattended baby. I have the attention span of a goldfish and you want me watching a kid's every move for hours on end? [Laughter.] Every nerve in my body would be on such a fucking high frequency I'd short circuit. They'd have to take the Richie Bot in for maintenance every day, and not even in a sexy mechanic role play way.

[Richie sets the mic on the stand and leans on it contemplatively as the crowd laughs.] Who the fuck would even let me be a dad? I never even learned how to spell refrigerator, how am I supposed to teach a kid, like, how to lead a good life? I don't know shit. I'm pretty sure eighty percent of being a dad is knowing all the answers to "why" questions and, hopefully, not irreparably fucking up your kid, cuz the bar is underground. Me as a dad would be like the dad from Calvin & Hobbes but worse, just making up the most insane shit whenever the kid asks, "Why is the sky blue?" and "How do they get the ink in pens?" or whatever. Which is great for a comic strip, and a stand-up comic, but probably not for actually raising a kid.

I think maybe I could be a mom. From what I remember, being a mom is about: step aerobics, knowing how to make mac and cheese not from a box, and watching old movies. That's... pretty much it. [Laughter.]

My mom is definitely a mom for, like, after you're a kid. No shame, she just wasn't super great at parenting. Like— [Laughter.] No, I mean, guiding a kid through the process of growing up was not her forte. Which is fine! She's a great mom now that I'm a fully realized human being with opinions that she can talk to, but as a kid, like, I was weird, and she didn't really "get" kids in general, so we would watch fucking TCM and she would politely smile at my terrible imitations of whatever the fuck Katharine Hepburn had going on and that was pretty much the extent of our relationship.

And then once I had, like, autonomy and opinions and shit, and could call her up like, "Hey, kinda fucked up how much food costs, have you heard about this guy called Bob Dylan, what do you think about the new Scorsese?" Then we got a little closer.

So maybe I think I could be a parent like that. Maybe. But at this point it all seems kinda... Like maybe ethically wrong? With the way the world is? And living in 2017 has sort of broken my long term thinking, which was already fucked up. I feel like there would be all these Parent Worries I just couldn't even conceive of now. Like college: if my husband's gonna go back to school, we definitely won't be able to afford to send a kid anywhere for a long while, at least until he becomes, like, president of the ACLU and I can finally become the trophy wife I was born to be. [Laughter.] You know, as a comedian, I can tell the difference between laughing at and with, and can I just say: ow. [Laughter and applause.] Double ow.

But every time I try to think about something like that I hit this fuckin' fatalistic brick wall. Who's to say there'll even be a planet by then? Maybe it'll be like that Busted song and we'll all live underwater. My husband probably has a backup plan for that. It's in the filing cabinet in his office—yeah, he owns filing cabinets, plural, in the 21st century—filed under M for McBusted, B-3000, "In case of future subaquatic society." [Lots of laughter; we love Eddie.]

My husband definitely has the skills for a younger set; as a kid he was basically parenting the rest of us. But even if he couldn't go crazy with outlet protectors and shit, that kid would be so taken care of. Everything would be planned out for them. Not in an overbearing helicopter way—I think we've both too aware of how our own parents fucked us up to fall into that trap, or let each other fall. Hopefully they'd know all the planning just means he wants you to be safe, the grownup equivalent of yelling about how you're going to break your leg even as he's climbing up the playground with you.

There are really way too many ways to fuck up a kid, and I don't mean like colic or accidentally letting them eating batteries or whatever. I remember being a kid and doing an impression of the grumpy neighbor for the first time and my dad laughing so hard he shot milk out his nose, and now I'm a comedian. [Laughter.] That one laugh set my entire path in life. When you're a kid you start out knowing nothing, so every time something happens it's like a huge proportion of all the things you know. I had a cousin whose mom used to dress him in a lot of orange cuz he was always running off and she wanted to spot him in a crowd, and to this day, the motherfucker is still always wearing something orange.

So much hinges on the tiniest things. What if we got a kid, like, space sheets and they grew up wanting to be an astronaut and then died in a shuttle explosion? I can't be held responsible for that! They were just on sale! [Laughter.] I didn't think they'd lead to an early death. Maybe if we'd gotten the dinosaur ones they would've become a paleontologist. That's a nice, safe career—well, Jurassic Park, but that would be cool. But still fatal! And now buying sheets is a matter of life or death. I don't think I can handle that kind of responsibility.

I guess that's the question, really. It's not "should we have kids, are we ready," but "how exactly would we fuck up a child and is it worth it to risk that." Maybe they'd end up way too much like me and get sent to the iPrincipal3000's office every week, or too much like my husband and become so convinced that they have asthma that they start genuinely having asthma. Maybe no matter what we do they'll get their own fun list of ways their parents fucked them up to never repeat. One thing's for certain, though: that kid would never get scurvy.

[Wild applause.] Thank you everybody, my name is Richie Tozier and I hope you weren't disappointed.

[Richie smiles and sort of bows, in the way you do when you feel like this is a bowing occasion, but going all out would look weird and you're honestly not sure how to bow without being sarcastic. The recording ends here.]