I'm the One That I Want by Margaret Cho Page B

vanished, leaving the entire audience breathless and somewhat red in the face. I shook myself off, pulled in my pretty-flat-stomach-considering even further, and tried to leave the premises as quickly as possible. I didn’t care about seeing my friend. I would explain later, having more than enough of an excuse.
    Right before I got out the door, the nerdy guy with the Tower Records bag caught my arm and said, “Hey, aren’t you Margaret Cho?”

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    WHY YES, I AM MARGARET
     
    “You came offstage, this was at the Punchline in San Francisco, and I said, ‘Good set.’ And you said ‘Thanks’ and then you goosed me,” Paul said.
    I honestly didn’t remember that, but Paul insisted that it was true. He came to the Laugh Factory recently to see me. When I walked into the club, I saw his face and distantly remembered it but I couldn’t place it. I couldn’t imagine ever goosing anyone, but I took his word for it. At that time, I was just learning how to be an outrageous diva, so there were quite a few missteps along the way. Goosing people, pink wigs, and rhinestone bow ties all play a part in my humble beginnings. It took some time to let my own style emerge. I was brain-washed by the female comics of the ’80s, and felt compelled to wear shoulder pads and to be a bawdy, wisecrackin’ broad.
    Paul and I were both working the road gigs all over California in the late ’80s. There was a chain of restaurants called the Sweetriver Saloons that had comedy on the weekends, so every Friday, comics would drive to Eureka, Santa Rosa, Pleasanton, and Merced for the shows.
    Merced was the worst. Not only was it a three-hour drive, you had to stay at the Happy Inn, which was anything but. It seemed like a lot of suicides happened there. Even so, there was no death quite as painful as the one you would die onstage that night, as the Merced intelligencia would congregate around potato skins and daiquiris and judge your comedy and your city ways.
    Ed Marques and I played it once, and we laughed and kept the doors to our Unhappy rooms open because they wouldn’t close all the way anyway. The road could be fun sometimes and the Sweet-rivers were good gigs because we were paid well ($50 per show), and we were given a food ticket worth $12. That could be two meals if you were savvy, and we were in those days.
    I did all those one-nighters and stayed in all those crappy motels and drove a million miles and stuffed the loneliness with food and pot and dreams that maybe this would all lead to something.
    I don’t reminisce often about the days when I would do my best fifteen minutes for a bunch of drunks in suburbia. It felt good to do it, but it felt better to be done.
    Paul reminded me that my success did not happen overnight. It took so many years of working the road, hoping for those occasional TV spots, deals that were made and that never went through and opportunities lost and found to get to where I am today.
    The night he came to see me was typical of the legendary Saturday nights on the Sunset Strip, where the “big boys” play. These prime headliner slots at the club on the weekends, when the crowd is pumped and every young comic is champing at the bit to get on, were all I ever dreamed of as I was coming up. I wanted to come to the big city and kill. I knew that it was possible, someday. Now, the day has come, and I appreciate every second of it.
    I went onstage and remembered all the sorrowful nights at the Sweetriver Saloons when I couldn’t buy a laugh from the stupid crowd. That night, so many years later at the Laugh Factory, I killed the audience. They were laughing so hard the room was shaking. I got so high from it— this is my life and this is what I do best. I came offstage thinking my best fifteen minutes got so much better after ten years.
    When the crowd is with you, the jokes are fresh, your timing is just right, and the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. You feel like you are