Big Daddy Gouda

I sat at a small table on the side of the stage at Caroline’s staring at a picture of my dead grandfather, John. It was supposed to give me luck, supposed to give me confidence. As I stared at the picture of myself, 5 years old, at the carnival with grampy, I thought maybe it was a bit morbid that I had it.

“What’s that,” asked Mary Demino, a professional comedian who was helping out at the show.

“It’s my grandfather,” I said, without looking up from the photo. “I guess it’s for luck.”

Mary leaned over the small table and glanced at the photo.

“Oh, you’re gonna make me cry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “That’s so sweet.”

Oh great I thought, my comedy debut and someone is already crying.

Mary glanced over her note cards.

“So this is your first time,” she said. “Are you ready?”

“Mmm-Hmm,” I replied, trying to sound a lot less nervous than I actually was.

The MC, Katie, said the magic words,

“Making his debut here at Caroline’s, all the way from Connecticut, Walt Gogolya.”

As I walked to the stage I couldn’t help but think, ‘I can’t believe she pronounced my last name right.’

I walked up on to the stage and pulled the microphone out of the stand. The rumors were true: With all the bright lights shining in my direction, I couldn’t see anyone in the audience. It really didn’t help though. I had watched the crowd file in through out the night. The place was packed with 200 people ready to see me make my stand-up comedy debut. I couldn’t see them yet one thing was for certain; All eyes were on me.

Breaking from my script, which I had rehearsed about 100 times prior to this moment, I asked the audience a question.

“Do you guys read the newspaper?”

From out in the darkness, I heard a chorus of Yesses respond to my simple question.

I paused and looked around.

“Well, fuck you guys then,” I said casually.

Even writing this, that statment doesn’t sound that funny. But people laughed. Some giggled, some laughed really hard. I heard Mark and Bub, somewhere out in the blackness, laugh loudest.

I was on my way.

TO BE CONTINUED

This entry was posted on January 8, 2009 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.