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The set was almost finished and Kankuro was looking forward to dropping the last joke and heading home when the heckler made her move.
“You’re a terrible comedian,” a voice called from the crowd.
Kankuro looked at the audience and met the eyes of a gorgeous woman in the third row. She had dyed hair and a trenchcoat that was half-open at the front. His gaze dipped down before – with a herculean effort of will – he dragged it back up again. Something funny, something funny, say something funny– “Uh. Hello. What’s your name?”
The comedy club wasn’t very full, with perhaps two dozen people watching him perform, which was pretty good for a Wednesday night. They’d fallen quiet at the interruption, happy to watch either him or the heckler get verbally eviscerated.
“Anko,” she introduced herself.
“And do you know a lot about comedy?”
She shook her head. “Not really, but then again neither do you!”
There was a round of laughter from the seats near her.
It wasn’t Kankuro’s first time dealing with unwanted audience participation but usually the wannabe joker was a fat middle-aged man with a few pints in him, which made delivering a clever counter much easier. Sure, he could land a cheap shot or two on the stunning woman in the audience, but he didn’t really want to.
“In my defence, I’ve worked a lot of other jobs, and I wasn’t much better at them,” Kankuro said instead. “One in particular made it really hard to be a stand-up comedian.”
“Which job is that? This had better not be the setup for another shitty joke.”
“If it gets a laugh out of you, will you buy me a drink later?” He threw a wink on at the end, projecting a calm he wasn’t feeling. She was very attractive but also very imposing.
She gave him a slow once-over and he fought back a blush. “Eh, why not. You’ve got yourself a deal. I don’t laugh easily, though.”
“When I was a kid I learned my home-town’s traditional trade. We’d do big puppet shows. I realised just how much I liked performing, but also that big ensembles like that don’t leave much room for creativity or originality.”
“Where was that?” Anko asked.
Kankuro shrugged. “It’s a long way from here, and I left a long time ago. My family was… difficult and I haven’t wanted to go back to see them. I joined a travelling circus for a while and it led me out here.”
“Does this have anything to do with your jokes?”
“I’m not stringing you along, I promise,” he said.
Anko groaned and threw something at him, which didn’t quite make it onto the stage.
“Keep your panties on ’til later, the venue’s pretty strict about that sort of stuff.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows and she groaned again, to cackles from the audience.
“Surely you can do better than that,” she shot back.
“Of course, I’m just getting warmed up. Where was I?”
He hadn’t actually forgotten, but he wanted to see whether Anko had been drawn into the rhythm of the routine.
“You were talking about puppets.”
Kankuro paced the stage as he reached the meat of the story. “So anyway, it turns out puppets aren’t all that popular. I was kicked out of the circus, and do you know how embarrassing that is? I picked up all sorts of odd jobs to make ends meet while I worked on a new one-man show. There was a lot of busking involved, but also some real work. A friend needed security staff for some events he was organising, and I volunteered.”
There was a security guard at the back of the venue, though Kankuro had never seen him leave his chair and he looked more of a threat to pies than people.
“It’s easy work most of the time. There were weddings, birthdays, all sorts of parties, and people behaved themselves. Then things went a bit wrong.”
“What happened?” someone called from the audience.
“Well,” Kankuro lowered his voice to a stage whisper and the audience drew closer, “the last few gatherings he arranged were orgies. I was still working security, and I was paid extra well, so I didn’t complain.”
“How’d that go?” Anko’s eyes were filled with curiosity.
“It felt a bit weird to be wearing a uniform next to a queue of people all waiting to have sex with the same guy or girl, I won’t lie, but sometimes there was some jostling for position and I’d need to crack a few heads together, so it wasn’t too different from other bouncer gigs I’ve had in the past. Just smack the line around as and when it’s necessary, you know?”
“That’s a great story for a comedy gig though, why is it a problem?”
“It’s more the physical aspect, the actual punching. It grew to be a habit, and now that I’m doing the comedian thing for a bit, it’s not a good habit to have.”
“How could that possibly be relevant to comedy?” she asked, incredulous. “Do you deck people on stage?”
Kankuro licked his lips, nervous. This was the make-or-break moment. “Well, you see, sometimes when I tell jokes I accidentally punch up the fuck-line.”
There was a moment’s silence, then the room erupted into laughter. Anko was no exception.
“You’ve been a fantastic audience, thank you all so much and goodnight!” Kankuro shouted. “And anyone who owes me a drink, you can find me next door in a couple minutes’ time.”
Anyway, that’s the story of how I met your mother.