Your friends may love you, but the problem is that they love you as you are. You play a role in their lives that they’ve gotten used to, so they don’t always want you to change. Most of them think their job is to keep you humble and in your place.
As for the person you’re dating, he or she may support you or not. It depends on a few variables: how good the relationship is, how old the relationship is, how your last plan turned out, and whether this change will bring you closer to or further away from that person. Fortunately, my relationship with Torrei was new and I had a good track record with her, so she was supportive. “I think you’re funny. You can do this.” Those few words meant a lot.
I had never thought that being the fun guy could be a legitimate career. I was always being told to get serious about my life. Sure, I’d seen Eddie Murphy cracking people up, but he was Eddie Murphy. I was Kevin Hart, a sneaker salesman struggling to pay the rent and hoping one day to get hired by Nike.
The next day, Alice and Michelle told the other employees that I was going to try stand-up comedy, and they all came up to tell me I’d be great. Their confidence was probably what ended up motivating me to go through with the idea.
I called the comedy club, the Laff House, and asked if they had spots for new comedians. The woman who answered said they had an “amateur night” every Thursday where anyone could perform: sign-up was at seven in the evening, the show started at eight.
I asked how much it paid. She said it didn’t pay anything.
29
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RISE OF THE BASTARD
“What’s your name gonna be, Kev?”
I was confused by my friend Raheem’s question. I’d been trying out some jokes on him, my roommate Paul, Zachary, and Spank in the car to warm up for amateur night at Laff House. But they were barely laughing—and when they did, it seemed to be out of politeness. I was starting to have some serious doubts.
“What do you mean?” I asked for clarification.
“Your comedy name. Everybody got a comedy name: You got Cedric the Entertainer, Earthquake, Sinbad. So what’s yours?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean to tell me you be thinking up all these jokes and you haven’t thought of a name for yourself?”
“I guess so.”
“The Bastard.”
“What?”
“Yeah, your name should be the Bastard.”
“Why?”
“Cause your dad ain’t never around.”
Unlike my jokes, Raheem’s got a laugh. Maybe he knew what he was talking about. “Y’all think that name’s funny?” I asked.
“That’s funny as hell,” Paul said. “When people hear that, they’ll go crazy.”
Raheem turned down the stereo, then announced, “Philly, make some noise for Lil’ Kev the Bastard!” and cranked the volume. Everyone in the car started whooping.
“All right, if y’all say it’s funny, I’mma go with that.”
In retrospect, I wish I’d put a little more thought into it. A stage name is like a relationship: easy to get into, but hard to get out of.
In the days that followed, I tested out jokes on my coworkers and customers. I practiced every night on my roommate. Everything became a joke or a potential joke. If I burnt food I was cooking, I’d say, “Yo, I just burnt the food. Uh, I got food burn. I shoulda put suntan lotion on.”
Paul would smile politely, and I’d ask, “That was a funny joke, right? You think that’s a funny joke?”
My pocket was full of paper scraps with joke ideas I’d written on them. If I ran into a friend, I’d pull out a scrap and say, “Tell me if you think this is funny.”
Fortunately, my friends continued to “encourage” me:
Paul: I don’t think that’s funny, man.
Spank: That ain’t gonna work, Kev.
Zachary: You sure you wanna do this, man?
Even Kenneth: Hey, you’re my little brother and I love you. So whatever you do, I’m gonna back you. But I don’t know, man. I just don’t think this is your thing.
When the day of the show came around, I had so much nervous energy, I couldn’t sell a thing at work. All my friends thought I was fun to hang out with, but none of them seemed to like my material. My other worry was that each amateur was allowed only five minutes to perform. The night before, however, I’d practiced in the mirror and timed my routine to seven minutes and some change. And I couldn’t get it any shorter.
Please don’t let this go badly, I kept praying. Please, God, let me be funny. That’s all I ask for.
I was so inexperienced, I worried that if I sucked, people would throw tomatoes at me. That’s actually what I thought happened at comedy clubs. It never occurred to me to go to the Laff House or check out another comedy show first.
Some friends were planning to drop by only to see me fail, so they could fuck with me about it later. My brother was coming with his buddies—dudes who knew me when I was four years old. They were all expecting to watch something horrific.
Of course, they had every right to set the bar low. The last, and only, time I’d been on stage before was at my swim team’s graduation banquet. If this were a musical talent show, I could play some shitty song and everyone would politely clap afterward. They could even yell and scream like I was a star. But this was comedy, and laughter can’t be faked. I would know instantly whether I really was funny, like Alice and Michelle said, or whether I was a joke, like my friends thought.
My enemy that night would be silence.
I had to do everything in my power to get that room going, to shine on stage or die trying, and, most importantly, to prove my friends and brother wrong.
Sometimes, other people’s doubt can be the best motivation there is to succeed.
Life Lessons
FROM PASSION
* * *
Putting all your eggs in one basket will lead to the birth of chickens that you will have to eat. What I’m trying to say by this is love what you do, which of course means . . . What are we talking about again? This writing stuff is tough sometimes. Just read the section.
With Torrei
30
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THERE’S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE THINGS YOU’LL NEVER DO
I rushed into the employee locker room, changed into my nicest pair of pants and a button-down shirt, and ran to the Laff House. When I entered, I saw a few people signing up on a list. They didn’t look like comics, I thought. Then I realized that I didn’t really know what comics looked like. They probably didn’t all wear red leather jumpsuits.
I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself. Okay, this is it, Kev.
I signed up; I was the fifth name on the list. The other comics had notebooks and were going over their material, writing things down. They all looked like regulars, and they didn’t pay any attention to me. They were too worried about their own performances to make a new guy feel comfortable.