This is the work of Irene Adler.
I am a problem wherever I go. I test the rules just existing. I do not plan it that way. I just cannot act right. I get (de?)-moralized out of human groups fairly often. I just do not know how to shut up. As Lady Shrink tactfully puts it, I am an activist by temperament.It is the late 80s, and I am busy trying new jokes out in a motel bar Open Mic, where comedians hang out and do the same. Not much civilian audience, if any.
If you are a man, you can stand up in front of the mic and just say fugga fugga fugga suck and every.body, particularly the drunk Penn students in the second row, laughs and claps. If you are the only woman comic in the room and you say the word clit, your fellows grimace and make horns at you and sigh loudly in disgust. 1987.
Women just are not funny right? Women comedians, particularly women comedians who did sexual humor, were struggling against active male resistance. Maybe they just did not like me? Maybe I am just an annoying snowflake? Well yeah but even the annoying have feelings. Sniff.
Jim Gaffigan followed me out of an Open Mic once, I was near tears. Jim apologized for the beating I was taking because I was doing sexual humor. What a funny good man.
I was working out of the Arts Cafe in Princeton New Jersey in a sketch comedy troupe I produced: Ultrasonic Theatre — Only Dogs Can Hear Us.
When Art Kelly got arrested, every other male comedian had a pedophile joke. I was pregnant out to there and I had this pregnancy and abortion joke. Okay it was kind of sick.
Troupe, I have this joke.
What’s the joke.
The joke is: I am 43 years old, and I am pregnant, but I am not worried. If it turns out to be a cretin, I will train it to eat me and I can still have orgasms when I am 85.
Disgusting. You cannot say that.
Hey, it’s gallows humor. Black humor, you know. Gets people through war and pestilence. I am talking about death and deformity.
Sick and disgusting. You cannot say that.
A woman who is pregnant at 43 stands a 1 in 26 chance of birthing a handicapped child. The kid might have a hole in its spine and never walk or talk. The only test you could have at the time was given at 4.5 months. One could not get the results until 5 months pregnant. Meanwhile, you can feel the kid jumping around inside going “It’s great in here.”
If the kid is defective, you are bumping up against the 23-week mark upon which the fetus has a chance at survival. You going to kill it because it might be like me, ODD, even though you can feel it doing cartwheels going “It’s great in here.”
t was a hardass time. Nobody wanted to let me talk about it. Wanted pregnancy. Turned out to be a girl named Jessica Lorraine. All her fingers and toes.
I was crestfallen. Shamed even. I am a grown abused child. I have a big problem with shame. I decided to tell my joke to Lady Shrink. I am bipolar. Most comedians are bipolar according to a study I read.
Once, I said to her, “Never leave me.” She said “Don’t worry. I am taking the phone into my coffin.” That is pretty funny for a PhD. I feel safe. She never pushes my shame or defiance button. Woman saved my life by treating me for free for a while. I am sending her a link to this opus.
I told her the joke. Shrink practically falls off her chair she is laughing so hard. I am getting worried. Finally, she wipes her eyes and says
“Mary, I will pay you any reasonable sum if you do that joke for the Parents of Handicapped Children Support Group to which I belong. We will laugh our asses off.”
Who is/was the sick person here? Censorship sucks the big badoodie. Hurts me. Hurts society. I will believe censorship is useful when we censor stochastic terrorism to the same degree we censor sex. It is a pet hate of mine, and I think I will write more about it.
I will close with a short eulogy for Lenny Bruce. For those who do not know who Lenny Bruce is, he is The Fool who made it safe for all the rest of us to say the word FUCK and defecate verbally on religion. The Governor of New York formally forgave him for the crime of obscenity 30 years after his death.
My Hero who did too much heroin for the pain, played Carnegie Hall and went to jail for saying fuck.
Join me. Let us give Lenny Bruce the tribute he has earned. On the count of three, let us all yell FUCK as loudly as we can wherever we are.
One, two, three: FUCK! Good night, Lenny, wherever you are.
Play the video. This is a multi-media experience.
“There is only what is and that’s it. What should be is a dirty lie.”
― Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
”If you can’t say “Fuck” you can’t say, “Fuck the government.”
