Jimmy Yang - How to American

“I’d guess it’s probably around the same number as me.”

Tarrell: “Probably. How many for you?”

Without skipping a beat, Guam answered:

“One sixty. Half of them were strippers when I DJ’d at the strip club.”

Holy shit, is that even a possible number? I’d never even talked to a hundred and sixty women, and definitely not eighty strippers! My mind couldn’t comprehend such an astronomical number. What was even more surprising was that this seemed completely normal to everyone else. Nobody flinched or asked any further questions. They just nodded in agreement. Tarrell calmly acquiesced: “Yeah, that sounds about right.” So I kept my mouth shut and acted like everything was normal, while my brain melted with shock and envy.

Guam then turned to Robert, a shyish comedian on the other side of the table. “Yo, Robert, what about you?” Okay, maybe Guam and Tarrell are just crazy. I’m glad to hear a normal guy like Robert’s perspective. Given that he was forty and fairly handsome, I was guessing eight.

“Man, I lost count after, like, sixty.”

What the fuck?! Robert too?!

Guam casually pressed on: “It’s gotta be over three digits though, right?”

“Yeah, I think around there, I don’t know. One time a girl came up to me and said, ‘Hey, remember me?’ And I had no idea who she was. Apparently I had sex with her before.”

Did everyone have sex with a hundred women but me?

Everyone laughed as Guam reached across the table to give Robert a high-five. I sat there, shell-shocked. For me, the thought of having sex with a hundred women was like thinking about the vastness of the universe; it’s unfathomable for a meager human brain. And just then, Guam pivoted to me.

“Jimmy, what about you?”

I looked up at him in a confused panic, like the soldier who was holding his own severed arm in Saving Private Ryan.

“Me?” I stalled. “Ummm, like…”

I pretended to count in my head.

Guam started laughing. “What? Like six?”

Everyone cracked up.

Six is six times more than my real number. And they are laughing at that?

I broke out in a cold sweat. My number was so off, I didn’t even know how to lie. I just nodded and agreed. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Yo, we gotta get Jimmy laid!” Guam screamed out.

“Shit, Jimmy don’t even know what pussy is yet,” Tarrell added.

That night I felt like I needed to crawl under my bed and reevaluate my entire life and have a real heart-to-heart with my penis. I wanted to be cool like Guam. Even though he was dreaming to win the lottery, I looked up to his sexual prowess. Hong Kong Jim wanted to DJ in a strip club just like Guam Felix.

Stand-up comedy was my first experience with the real world after being institutionalized in school my entire life. What’s normal in the stand-up comedy world was far from normal in the real world. Going to sleep at three in the morning, waking up at noon and dreaming of becoming a strip club DJ. Even though I knew something was off about this world, I wanted to fit in with my frat brothers. The Comedy Palace was my only escape from my lousy real life, and I was loving every moment in this alternate universe. I’d show up during the day to take reservations on the phone, seat the audience in the evening and then fold envelopes at night. If they had let me sleep there, I’d have fully moved into the Comedy Palace. I even brought my Xbox to the back room. I’d call Tarrell during the afternoon, five hours before the show.

The boys from the Comedy Palace. Tarrell Wright (left), Guam Felix (right) and Lowball Jim. I looked like an aspiring scumbag.

“Yo, Tarrell, wanna come get your ass kicked in NBA 2K ?”

“I’ll see you at the club, bitch.”

Reality always strikes when you’re having too much fun. I was finally finding some meaning to my life at the Comedy Palace, but I soon realized my sixty-dollar weekly paycheck wasn’t paying the bills. I was living way below the poverty line, even for a comedian. I ate instant ramen with a ninety-nine-cent can of Vienna sausages five nights out of the week. I’d save up enough money to go to either Denny’s or pig out at HomeTown Buffet once a month. Maybe Guam was right about trying to win the lottery. I was praying for a car to plow into me so I could get some insurance settlement. My dad was right all along: “Pursuing your dreams is for losers. Doing what you love is how you become homeless.”

I approached one of the managers at the Comedy Palace about my dire financial situation, hoping he’d give me a raise from seven fifty to eight dollars an hour. “Jimmy, you’re great, but there are plenty of desperate comedians out there who would kill for minimum wage,” he frankly explained to me. And he was right. I had zero leverage on asking for a fifty-cent raise. He advised, “Why don’t you ask around for a second job? All the comedians here have day jobs.” “I don’t know, I don’t think anybody wants to hire me,” my low self-esteem responded. “Dude, everyone loves you here, just ask the next person who comes in the door.” And just like a trite sitcom plot, the door swung open and Jay, a middle-aged comedian, entered. I turned to him.

“Jay, where do you work?”

“I sell used cars.”

“Can I get a job with you?”

“Yeah, sure, come down to the lot, I’ll get you a job.”

And that’s how I became a comedian/used-car salesman. Apparently, you need zero qualifications to become a used-car salesman, just like becoming a stand-up comedian.

The dealership was a crummy used-car lot that specialized in selling shitty old cars to people with bad credit. Our customers’ credit scores were so bad, when no other car lot in the city would sell them a tricycle, we’d jump in to sell them a 1998 Dodge Neon at a 24 percent interest rate. It doesn’t take a master salesman when you’re people’s last resort. Our slogan was “Either you buy our shitty car or you can take the bus.”

The car lot manager, Larry, was a sixty-year-old veteran car salesman and a career alcoholic. He would vanish from the lot for days at a time to go on a binge. Then he would make a miraculous comeback from the dead and push ten Dodge Neons in a week. I never judged Larry based on his addiction, and I looked up to him as a top-notch car pusher. I learned a lot of old-school salesmanship from Larry and soon became the young hotshot at the shittiest used-car lot in town. It might not have been Smith Barney, but I felt like a baller who could afford HomeTown Buffet once a week. I knew if I worked hard, someday, just maybe, I’d be able to afford Red Lobster.

HOW TO HANDLE RACIST HECKLERS

Getting onstage was a tremendous high and I was hooked. For the fleeting moment when I was onstage, I was able to forget about all my life’s problems and be truly in the moment. I’ve seen comedians trade money, weed and sexual favors for stage time. If stand-up is your addiction, stage time is your crack. During my first two years of stand-up, I did seven to ten sets a week and I didn’t get paid for a single one of those early sets. I would do any type of show, at any venue, in any situation. I’ve done stand-up at a nursing home before bingo night and I’ve performed at a children’s party where I had to compete with Spider-Man for their attention. My friend who ran a bar in San Diego asked me to do his Monday stand-up show at his bar. “It’s a fun show, the crowd’s a little rowdy, but it’s a good crowd. You should come do it.” I needed a hit of that crack.