Who’s Q.? [PART 3], by Q. Reyes – Artistic Warfare #9

February 8, 2009 Q. Reyes 2 Comments

I got to the USS Carl Vinson Aircraft Carrier and I found it to be a lot harder to adjust than bootcamp.  This was a serious place, with all sorts of moving parts all around me, and people’s lives at stake.  Planes being catapulted and landing on this huge ship.  “Ship”, actually, is an understatement – it was a floating city.

The Carl Vinson had a couple of stores, Laundromat, Post Office, college classes and anything else you needed.  It even had it’s own radio station. I actually volunteered my time at the ship’s radio station whenever I could.  The record selection was very limited, but it was just fun talking through the mic to the fellow sailors.  Not that anyone listened anyway, but it was still fun.

I will fast forward to after my Navy days – since those days are a long, long, story – a story with it’s own beginning, middle, and end.  Did I ever end up in the “Brigg”?  Yes.  I will reveal the details one day.

After my Navy days, I found myself married and working as a security guard, not necessarily in that order.  Why security?  Well, because that’s what most Navy guys do when they get out.  Security, UPS, or Fed-Ex.  Not much you can do when your sole experience is helping fighter jets land on a floating aircraft carrier.

I worked as a security guard in a cemetery at night, and I was scared as hell.  I never did my job.  I stayed in the office in the front.  If they really thought I was going to drive around and protect dead people, they got the wrong man for the job.  Not for six twenty-five an hour, at the least.

During the day I went to school.  Community college in Oakland.  Laney College to be exact.  I got a certificate in television production, but, still, I had a different voice speaking to me from within.  I always admired stand-up comics for their courage, and to be able to get on stage in front of an audience and make them laugh, all by themselves.  No help from anyone.

I remember growing up and watching In Living Color and Def Comedy Jam with my sister, and thinking that’s what I wanted to do.  So I did it.  I went to an open mic one night with some scribble words on a piece of paper and tried it out.

The place was called Dorsey’s Locker in Oakland and it was frequented by nothing but true O.G.’s.  Cats that had been around a couple of times and they weren’t in the mood to laugh – at least not at me.  Yes, I bombed horribly.

I went back, though.  I went back to Dorsey’s Locker and another place called The End Zone for a year straight without getting any laughs.  After a while I just didn’t care anymore.  One time I just stood on stage in silence for five minutes and left.  I thought it was a lost cause, but I wasn’t ready to quit.

Was I humiliated?  Yes.  Did I get booed?  Plenty of times.  Did my mic get cut off in the middle of my act?  Of course.  Did someone throw a towel on stage once, like they do to defeated boxers?  Yes, that happened.  Still I was there every night looking for the formula.  I had courage and that was half the battle.

I befriended other comics that didn’t get laughs neither and I listened to the advice from the veterans that had been doing it a lot longer than me.  I just wanted to succeed.  At least once.

Everything looked dim, until that miraculous night when I performed at a place other than Oakland.  It was a neighboring city called Emeryville.  It was a new comedy room, and I figure I venture out of my comfort zone, if you want to call it that.

I remember that night vividly.  I told my first joke and people actually laughed.  It felt good.  I never felt that before.  I told another joke, and they laughed again.  Wow, two in a row?  I told another joke and another joke and they were rolling non-stop.  I was on a roll.  It was like when Richard Pryor described the comedy gods coming down and blessing you.

I got a standing ovation.  Me!?  I got a standing ovation!  I couldn’t believe it.  I never got a laugh before, but here I was basking in the cheers of complete strangers that thought I was funny.  I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face, and at the very moment I realized a lot of things, and I was grateful for many others.

I realized that the audiences in Oakland are some of the toughest audiences in the country.  I also realized how grateful I was to have started doing comedy in Oakland.  It shaped me with toughness, and from that point on I was determined to be unstoppable.

[TO BE CONTINUED…]