Jason worked as hard as he could to get ready for his first performance on stage in front of a live audience. He doubted he was ready, but that didn’t matter now. It was open mic night and he was staring at the brown walls in the comedy club’s green room waiting his turn. Two other guys nervously paced the room, mumbling their bits. In fifteen minutes, he would be on stage, performing. He had practiced his routine over and over again, trying out different tempos, placing the emphasis on a different word each time he run through his material, hoping to capture the maximum funny.

He worried about the reception he would get. Feedback would be instantaneous and ongoing. Three jokes in a row with no laughter could mean disaster. Sure, people gave well known comics a little breathing room, but a rookie like him? They’d be ready to pounce. The first laugh he might hear could come from something a heckler said. 

His girlfriend, Babs thought he would do fine. “I have listened to you rehearse at least fifteen times, Jason. You’re always funny, every time.” But Babs was the kind of woman who laughed at everything. She still watched The Andy Griffith Show, convulsing with laughter at everything Don Knotts did. Of course, Jason wasn’t relying solely on Babs’s opinion. He performed his three-minute set in front of the guys he played poker with on Thursday nights. They loved it.

The only reason he got into this comedy thing was his cousin Steve, who dragged him to Bastedo’s Comedy Depot one night after work. There wasn’t time to change, so he still smelled like the kitchen where he worked, a mixture of fish, spaghetti sauce and French fry grease. He put on some cologne. It didn’t actually mask the odor. Now he smelled like a cook who wore Ralph Lauren’s, Polo. It was an open mic night and after every performance Steve kept saying, “You’re way better than that guy. You’re always making people laugh, Jason. You should try comedy, man.”

On the way home, when Steve kept it up, Jason said, “I don’t think it’s as easy as it looks to stand up there and be funny. And some of those guys were pretty funny.”

“Yeah, a few guys were funny and that black girl, man she was like, the bomb,” Steve said. “I still think you could do what they’re doing, Jason. You could make a living at it, dude.”

“You’re crazy, Steve. The last time I was on stage in front of an audience, I took one look at those kids and their parents and vomited my breakfast across the footlights right into Sister Velvet’s lap.”

“Whoa! How’d she take it?”

"She sentenced me to another year in the fourth grade. I was already doing fourth grade a second time. At least I set the school record.”

“See? That’s good stuff!”

Jason hated his job. Working in the kitchen at a weird Italian restaurant depressed him. The owner named it Orciuoli’s which nobody could say, or spell for that matter. But the big problem was the menu. Along with a few Italian staples, the guy offered hot dogs, fish sticks, and of all things, egg foo yung. Claudio took enormous pride in his creations, but as Jason liked to say to his co-workers, “I don’t think the Drive ins, Diners and Dives guy will be visiting.” He liked to skip a beat and add, “We might get a visit from the FDA, health department and OSHA guys though.”   

Jason went back to Bastedo’s twice without his cousin. He watched each comedian go through their routines. He studied the way they crafted their jokes. Most of them were offering observations about the world they lived in, relationships, politics and work. He went one more time on another open mic night. He could see now the difference between the rookies and the more polished performers. Maybe Steve was right. Maybe he could do this. He knew he was at least a little bit funny. People often laughed at what he said. But being funny over a few beers wasn’t the same as trying to earn a living making people laugh. He didn’t think he could do that.

Getting fired from his job changed his mind. When Claudio decided to add a traditional lasagna, stuffed with sushi, to the menu, something he claimed came to him in a dream, Jason blew up. He had attended culinary arts school for almost five months, after all. Okay, he didn’t graduate, but he had his standards. We wouldn’t prepare it. When he told Claudio, “The last time I ate that, I threw up on a nun,” Claudio, who knew the grade school story, fired him. And that was that. Time to try something else.

Sitting in the green room, he could hear the audience laughing. The show runner told him he was up next. “Get out there as soon as you hear your name.”

The call came. Somehow, he managed to stand up and start walking. His opening line was going to be about the sushi lasagna. Somebody told him that the footlights made it hard to see the audience. He found this comforting. But it wasn’t true. He could see them all, looking at him in anticipation. He grabbed the microphone from the MC and started. He remembered nothing after that, but the club’s manager and the crowd liked him. And he didn’t vomit.