“Little dummy, sit at that table,” Keith ordered.
I looked at the table where Big Jay and I had sat and thought about the prospect of eating there alone, like a lost puppy, for two hours while these guys were having the time of their lives. Then I decided: “I’m gonna sit right here with y’all. Who are y’all to tell me where I can and can’t sit? Patrice, you shut your fat ass up. You wanna talk about smells? You got rolls of fat so big you gotta use deodorant underneath ’em.”
“Ah-ha, Patrice is fat!” another comedian yelled. “Patrice smells.”
If this was just about being in grade school again, I could handle that.
I sat at The Table and crossed my arms over my chest. I wasn’t going anywhere ever again. However, whenever I tried to join in the conversation, they still shut me down:
Patrice: I still need a tag for that joke.
Me: What about—
Patrice: Shut up!
Keith: You’re too green. You don’t deserve to be part of these conversations yet.
Me: Better to be green than old and rusty.
Everyone: SHUT UP!
I’d made progress, finally. I may have been the greenest comic at The Table, but at least I had a new aspiration: to become an equal to everyone there.
Jay never came back to New York with us, but I kept taking the buses to City Line Avenue and driving Keith to New York. Under his tutelage, I began studying the comedians there at an even finer level of detail. I started regularly taping my own shows in Philadelphia and reviewing the performances afterward for the same subtleties. As the weeks passed, Keith went from introducing me to comedians to introducing me to comedy club owners to helping me prepare for auditions.
“How you gonna get out of this maze if you don’t know that you’re in a maze?” he kept saying.
The first audition he helped me land was at the Boston Comedy Club, which had an urban night on Sundays. I easily passed—not because I was so good but because I was so ready. I’d been to the club dozens of times. I knew the audience. I knew the comedians. I knew the waitresses, the bookers, the tables, the lights, and every single drink on the menu. I was so comfortable there that it was impossible to fail.
Standing on stage at the Boston Comedy Club at that urban showcase felt like a major milestone: I was performing in New York City!
Keith was right to make me wait so long to perform. You only get one chance to make a first impression—and it turned out to be a good one, because they asked me back the next week.
I often speak about the value of hard work, but hard work is not enough. I’ve seen many people sabotage their career before it’s even started by refusing to do anything unless they’re compensated or rewarded directly for it. Or they become bitter, expecting that they’ll be rewarded in exchange for just working hard.
One of the key factors for success—beyond work, talent, timing, relationships, and all the other qualities I’ve mentioned—is the glue that holds all of these together: commitment.
What is commitment? Here’s what it means to me: keeping the promises you make to yourself and to others. I promised my mother I’d figure out a way to survive in comedy. I promised myself I’d find a road out of Philadelphia and on to bigger opportunities. I promised Keith I’d trust him and stick with the process.
All three of these promises turned out to be much harder, and take much longer to keep, than I’d expected. I still wasn’t surviving on my own. I still wasn’t getting big opportunities. I still wasn’t done with Keith’s mentorship. I was still spending more than thirty hours a week getting to and from and around New York just for that five minutes on stage on Sundays. Though my sleep, time, finances, relationship, and even my patience and self-esteem were negatively impacted and I wanted to quit many times, I remained committed.
That’s the biggest difference between the amateur and the professional, between the wannabe and the star, between the dabbler and the expert. The unsuccessful get halfway to the finish line, then turn around. The successful get halfway, then keep going. Both run the same distance, but only one makes it to the finish line.
To win the race, then, having talent, speed, and endurance help, but those things are nothing without commitment. To commit successfully, you don’t have to always believe in yourself—because, let’s face it, we all have our doubts at times. But you do have to believe in something higher than yourself: your purpose. If you believe in your purpose, you can survive the most challenging times, because God or destiny or your will—or whatever you prefer to believe in—is on your side. If you know it’s your purpose to win the race, then you’re not going to turn around, because there is no other option but to win.
And for me, there was no other option besides succeeding in New York.
The other comedians would say, “Get Kev out of here.” They’d tell me to “beat it.” They’d tell me I was a “hack” and that I was “never gonna make it” and that I should “crawl back home.” But I’d never leave, and I’d never keep my mouth shut. I was relentless. Even Keith said he’d never seen anyone with this level of focus and drive, which is why he stayed committed to me.
I wanted in and I would not stop, no matter how much the older comedians tried to discourage me. I went back and forth to New York for years—studying their style, studying their poise, studying comics from a generation back, and studying myself—until, eventually, I became one of them.
Life Lessons
FROM THE GRIND
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Without the grind, there is no reward. Think about it: What kind of sex have you ever had that hasn’t started with a nice grind? I’ll wait.
On the outside of the Comedy Cellar table with Jim Norton, Dave Chappelle, and Keith Robinson
44
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WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER LEND ME ANYTHING THAT BREAKS WHEN IT HITS A HIGHWAY MEDIAN
Eventually, I landed auditions at two more clubs, Stand Up NY and Gotham Comedy Club. I passed them both and was soon performing in New York more regularly, although I wasn’t going up until one in the morning sometimes, to play what they called “food spots.” What this meant was that instead of getting cash for performing, I got a hamburger and a Coke.
Because I now sometimes had gigs in New York when Keith didn’t, I begged Torrei to let me borrow her 1995 Maxima so I could get up there on my own. However, more food spots in New York meant fewer paying gigs in Philly, and unfortunately my landlord wouldn’t accept “food rent.”