Jen Kirkman: I’m Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine)
Air date: May 22, 2015
Look up. – Yeah? – Jen. Oh, my God, Amanda. Hey. What are you doing? I didn’t think you could get in. The stage manager let us in, but we can’t stay. – Well, he can’t ’cause… – Well, he’s too young. Alcohol is being served and they don’t let kids stay. – I don’t think my act would… – If you could talk to him directly. It’s not healthy for children’s development for adults to pretend like he’s not here. So, yeah, just talk to him, just normal. – Allistar, this is Jen. – Hi, Allistar. – She’s Mommy’s friend from… – We went to college together. – In Los Angeles. – Yeah. Do you need something to drink? – I want juice. – There isn’t any juice. Oh, Jen, that’s actually not how we answer him. – But there is no juice. – When you say that there is no juice, it makes him feel like there is no juice. – So… – Because there’s not. But we want him to feel like anything is possible. Allistar. Allistar, darling, the world is full of juice, and you can have as much juice as you want. OK? Maybe Jen can come over afterwards for some juice. – A juice party! – Oh, I can’t. – I leave so early in the morning. – But we never see you. I know. But I have a second show after this and then it’s wrap up, – and then they load out and we… – But we never see you. I know. I always tell people, like, don’t get your hopes up when I come through town because it’s just work. I don’t even know where I am right now, ’cause I’m always traveling, you know. – It’s not good hang time. – Yeah. So are you seeing anyone? Uh… Didn’t… No, remember, we emailed a couple of weeks ago. The guy, British guy. Do you remember? No? Oh. He… That’s… I mean, I don’t want to say. Allistar, Jen is talking about a man who broke her heart. And I mean, he… He didn’t, uh… Oh, you can just say it. He wanted to have sex, and I thought we were in a relationship and we weren’t, and he didn’t want commitment. Four years ago when I got divorced, I thought I don’t want commitment either. – I was, like, fucking a lot of people. – Oh, we don’t swear in front of him. Oh, I was making love with a lot of people. I don’t feel like I’m saying anything right. Do you know what I mean? I don’t understand why you want to hang out with me so bad when I keep getting corrected. I’m a grown-up at the comedy club and this is my world, so I don’t know how to, like, adjust it all up for you right now. OK, hon, it sounds like you are just really stressed out. I’m not. I wasn’t. I want you to come to our house. I don’t care how late it is. – Just come and be around family. – I have a hotel room. Big fluffy pillows, there’s room service. Stand up. There we go. – All right, well… – OK. Don’t worry about me. So afterwards hopefully we’ll see you. Juice party. Juice party, juice party, juice party. OK, am I good? Like, I’m, like, freaking out right now. – Yeah, girl. – Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Jen Kirkman!
Hi. Oh, my God, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m not a political comic or anything like that, but I think about certain things like climate change. I’m not a denier. I believe. I know it is real. But what I want to know is when I’m reading these articles and the scientists are like, “There’s one ice cube left! Everything’s fucked! It’s happening!” I’m like, do they mean in a scientist way? A scientist, if you say the Earth cannot hold human beings in 5,000 years, it’s all over ’cause of climate change, that, to a scientist, is right now. So do you mean in 5,000 years? Basically, what I want to know is when can I start smoking again? Like, that’s how I need it… I need it to be put in those kind of terms for me. If we only have five years left, I’m living totally wrong. I will start smoking again. I’ll put butter on my face. I’ll fuck someone’s husband. Like, I will change my life. So I would like more specificity in my climate change reporting. But mostly I’m not really worried. What I think is gonna happen is everyone’s gonna get so stupid that we will just start spontaneously dying. I feel like people will just start driving cars into humans. Then people will be like, “You’re not supposed to drive a car into a person.” Then the person driving will be like, “I didn’t know.” “Well, we used to not have to tell people not to drive cars into people.” “Well, OK, you should say something.” So it’s gonna keep getting like that. Because I went to a frozen yogurt shop, and there was a 20-year-old girl working there. I went in and she goes, “Do you have any questions about how the frozen yogurt works?” And I was like… “God, no.” And if I do, please shoot me in the face, please. “End my life here in the store, and tell everyone what a dumb question I had.” ‘Cause I… I don’t think she meant, like, how the molecular structure works. I think she really… And the thing is that’s ’cause someone came in there at one point with a question about how frozen yogurt worked. Like, somebody walked in and saw the handles and was like, “It’s like a cow or something!” And they kept doing that. And then they’re like, “Why is there cereal?” But I do not have any questions about how frozen yogurt works. I see more people in a week than I bet you guys do. I’m not bragging. I’m telling you that it is bad out there. Everyone is stupid. Not you, not me. You are smart. You had to get in the door. You’re facing the right way. You’re not tipping over like, “What’s gravity?” You know what I mean? I’m talking into this thing. I’m not like, “This is the devil’s work!” And, sadly, that’s about as smart as it gets these days. I feel like except for two scientists that won’t tell me when I can start smoking and then us, everything else is an abomination.
I’ll tell you what I saw one time. And this is real and I know it’s just one person, but I feel like there’s probably a lot of people like this guy out there and it makes me nervous. I was on the road, I was at a bar, I was making some notes to myself and this guy walked in. Normal guy. What I mean by normal is, like, somewhere in his 40s. Seemed like he’d lived a life. He’d had conversations with people before. He’d seen some things. He had a button-down shirt tucked into his pants, with a belt. iPhone clipped on the belt. Not a great fashion look, but maybe he’s important. Maybe he’s got to get that phone. “One-ring Dave. What do you need? Never gonna let you down. I got it. I got this.” Right? So… Speaks English. Not that that is abnormal to not. I’m just saying he has full control of the language. He is not high, he is not drunk. He walks right in and says, “I’d like a vodka tonic.” The bartender said, “Do you want a lemon or a lime with that?” And then he just went, “Uh, yeah, no… ” “I, uh… Lemon or lime. I… Um, uh… ” And she goes, “I’m sorry, do you want a lemon or a lime?” And he just went, “No, yeah… ” “The green one. The green one.” And I was like, “Oh, my God.” So now I start watching. This guy doesn’t know what a lime is, you understand? Actually, I start thinking, “He also doesn’t know what a fucking lemon is either.” Because she questioned it, “Do you want a lemon or a lime?” If he knew what a lemon was, he would have been like, “I know I don’t want a lemon, so I must want a lime.” But he couldn’t even answer that. And he said, “The green one.” Now, I can’t believe she didn’t freak out on him, but she didn’t, because I don’t know if you know this, but, men, when you act stupid, sometimes women act twice as dumb in your presence just so as not to emasculate you because we could every second if we wanted to. So… Thank you. So she doesn’t say, “Yeah, that’s a lime.” She just starts naming green fruit. Now she’s making no sense. She’s going, “Grapes, some apples, kiwi, watermelon!” And he’s going, “The green one!” I’m like, “What’s happening to my country?!” And so… So finally, he sees a bowl of limes behind her. And he goes, “That. That’s the one I want. I want that one in my drink.” Now he’s talking like a toddler. I’m wrong. He’s not even like a toddler. No offense to toddlers. Because a toddler would be in a suit, so concerned with not getting carded that he would be up there… If he didn’t know the question. “A lemon or a lime?” “Both, sounds refreshing.” He’s not gonna start pointing like a grown man does who doesn’t know what a lime is. So that’s when she finally says, “OK, sir, that’s a lime.” And he goes, “I know.” I’m like, “No, you didn’t!” And it made me angry. When I see stuff like that, I can’t leave it alone. My mind starts going a million places.
This Earth is overpopulated by billions of people, and there’s too many people on the planet, and people blame the two cutest groups, right? They blame babies, too many people having babies, and they blame old people, old people living too long. I don’t care. I like babies and I like old people. Keep ’em. It’s us, white people, 20 to 60, doing nothing. I’m yelling, you paid to watch it. This is stupid. I have a dumb job, I have a dumb life, so do you. Taking up space. But… But I’m hoping, maybe we all do one good thing a day. Or at least we know what a lime is. Like, we’re not causing chaos with our stupidity, right? I’m hoping. But I think, “Who is this guy?” Maybe he has someone’s 401(k) in his hands. He has someone’s house mortgage in his hands. People rely on Dave and they have no idea that he doesn’t know what a lime or a lemon is. So they go into his office. “It’s gonna be a great year for me and Marcia, right? You think we can cash that thing out?” “Looks great, guys.” But they never thought to go, “What’s the yellow one?” What’s the green one? You know what I’m talking about, Dave. “What are those two citrus fruits?” They don’t do that. But if they did and they saw his face, the face that I saw, they would run out of there and put their money under a mattress. So it makes me mad because I don’t have time for wastes of space like this guy.
And I travel a lot and I see those signs in the airport. “If you see something, say something.” And I hate those signs. Not my fault you fucked it up the first time. That’s a 9/11 joke. That is about… That is not a conspiracy inside job. That is someone let a terrorist through and was just like, “How was your date last night?” Someone wasn’t watching someone go through. And now it’s my job to say something at an airport and I don’t care. If I’m at an airport, you know I have just taken a Klonopin and bought an Us Weekly. I’m not seeing anything. I’m laying down. I’m enjoying myself. I’m putting eyeshades on. I’m sorry if a terrorist blows up my flight. She died doing what she loved. Nothing. But if I could see some things, and I wish I could fuck with those people. I wish I could call and go, “I saw something.” I saw a lady with her kid on a leash.” “Ma’am, that’s not what this number is for.” “OK! But you don’t say what it’s for, so I have more things to tell you. I saw the soap dispenser wasn’t working in the Delta Airlines lounge.” “Ma’am, please, this number is for reporting terrorists only.” “I don’t know what a terrorist looks like!” So I wish, though, I could have those “see something, say something” signs in real life. Because why can’t I alert someone about Dave? I really don’t want him here. Why can’t I call a number and someone from the government picks up? “Hey, I saw something, I’m saying something.” Yeah, I saw a guy who didn’t know what a lime was. Yeah, and a lemon either. It’s a long story. “Um… Can you come by? OK, great, thanks.” Then someone from the government comes, and they stick a little pin dart in his butt. Not painful at all. He just slumps over. He falls asleep into his eternal death, and they throw him in the ocean, we have one less fucking dumbass on the planet. Wouldn’t that be nice? OK. Now you’re awake. Oh, Texas. I… Let’s kill people! Whoo! “What did he do wrong?” “Nothing!” I don’t have any more jokes about killing people. I’m trying to do a comedy special. Seems as though I’ve started a rally. I want everyone to… We’re going to calm down. But the worst part is this guy… This is what I don’t like about stupid people. He doesn’t realize he’s stupid. He’s not embarrassed about it. He just goes to the woman, “Hey, hon, why don’t you turn on the hockey game for me?” I’m like, “Ugh, less sports, more pop-up books of fruit for you, buddy!”
I had a birthday, as everyone does. Thank you. You don’t even know what I’m gonna say. I could have said it sucked. No, I am 40 years old now. Now, here’s the thing. I was bragging about turning 40 and looking young because I know that I look a little younger. I was saying to people, “I’m not gonna have wrinkles when I turn 40.” I’m not gonna have wrinkles.” And I didn’t. But God got me for bragging, because I got something else. Right before I turned 40, I got some gray pubic hairs. And that’s confronting. And I’m not stupid. I got rid of them. There was a few. I got rid of them. I do all the things to this that women do. Pluck, mow, whatever. I do it all. What I’m trying to explain to you is, I’m not gonna treat them the way I did cockroaches that I saw in my apartment in my 30s, right? “Oh, I’m sure they just came in from the outside. “There’s no more where that came from.” That is not true with this. These came from the inside and there’s a lot more where that came from. Why did I care about wrinkles? Who cares? Wrinkles? That doesn’t mean you’re old. I knew people in their 20s that have wrinkles. Their faces are jacked up, they look awful. But it doesn’t mean they’re old. It just means a lot of different things. It could mean maybe they smoked all through their teens. Maybe they laid out in the sun and just burned their faces to a crisp. Maybe they’ve had a hard life and they’re like, “See these lines in my face at this young age? I’ve seen some shit.” You know? But this only means ageing. You don’t get these unless you’re old enough to. This means that the factory inside my body is starting to shut down, right? And it’s laying off all non-essential employees. So… The little elves that paint the hairs black, they have been given a pension. Thank you for your 40 years of service. She doesn’t need you anymore. Now there’s two guys in there. Just keep the kidneys going, keep the bladder going, keep her alive, she’s on the last 40. Like, it’s happening. Don’t be dumb. Don’t moan. Oh. Zero to 40 was fun. You were born… You don’t even know where you are. You had your first kiss, not right away, but I’m saying that you had your first kiss during those years. You had some masturbation, you had some sex, you had some drinking, you had some driving. Nothing good happens between 40 and 80. I understand what’s going to happen. First, I’m gonna get that cougar chest with the, um, with the freckles. And then I’m gonna die. That’s what’s gonna happen. None of that is enjoyable for anybody. I cannot say about this, “Well, my vagina smoked in the ’80s, didn’t it?” Or, “I put that thing right out in the sun with tinfoil sometime.” Just burned it to a crisp. Of course it’s got gray pubes.” And I can’t say, “My vagina’s seen some shit.” It’s been a pretty boring life for the vagina. But I worry. Now, here’s the thing. If it was white hair, no problem. I’d grow that out silky like Kenny Rogers’s beard. Grow it right out. Or I’d shave it into a mohawk, like Billy Idol. Punk-rock pussy. But gray is a mean color and when it finally all grows in… Gray is the color of barbed wire. It sends a message, doesn’t it? “Get outta here!” Get out, you young people! Stop trying to climb up on this. I’ll cut you! “No one’s allowed in here anymore! Don’t you see?”
So I get nervous. I know guys don’t care. They say, “We’re just happy to be there,” and that’s very sweet. But I don’t want you to have fun here and then get there and think, like, “Did your mom just come in and tap you out?” I feel… It’s an upsetting thing because I feel like, um, I feel like this is a house. Go with me here. It’s the house on your street that the old lady lives in and is no longer being kept up. Right? I feel like what it used to be was the young house. You go trick-or-treating to it and it has a warm glow and there’s candy in there. And you’re happy to ring the bell. Then you go to the next house and you’re like, “Oh, my God,” and it’s dark and there’s no more grass, just dirt and one weird weed that doesn’t make sense. Not indigenous to the area at all. “That house was not like that last year.” What happened to that house? Did that house turn 40? I am not going near that house. That house doesn’t even make candy anymore. “If I put my hand in that house, I’m gonna get dry pennies.” I might just turn this into condos or a golf course. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.
I’m also divorced. Hate to just keep throwing it in your faces, how great my life is. But let’s review. So, shortly, 40, divorced, gray pubes. Yoo-hoo, fellas. So now, listen, I’m loving being divor… I mean, it’s been four years, but people still get upset. They still worry about me. It’s really just a legal term meaning no one’s farted in my bed in four years. It’s not a big deal. There have been people in it, but I don’t get close enough for them to get to farting level. Because that’s where it all ends, really, when he’s, “It’s intimacy.” No, it’s a secret hatred, is what it is. Someone is gassing you ’cause they secretly hate you. But you bill it as intimacy and all the other things married people say about the awful things that come with making yourself live with a person for no reason other than you want someone to find your corpse someday. I mean, that’s really all it is. I do want to say this. I’m not against… marriage. But I do think that married people kind of suck. I really do. I know. Don’t be offended. I know you’re good people, like, individually. You’re like, “I give to Kittens Without Whiskers charity every year.” I know. But the way you treat single people… I have been on both sides, so I know. I remember what I did. The way you treat single people is not good. We have single people here, right? Do you agree with me, the way you get treated? Your married friends invite you over and they put you on the couch, and they stare at you like you’re a pillow that doesn’t make sense to them. Like, “What do we do with that? We have to match that somehow.” Or they think it’s fun for you to have dinner with them, just the three of you. And you feel like their weird 30- to 40-year-old kid that never left the house. And they’re like, “Isn’t this fun?” You’re like, “No, ’cause I’m not in the marriage.” I wanna go where the people are outside. This is your own deal. “I don’t have to be part of this.” But they want to take care of you all the time, and I really resent that because I can take care of myself. I don’t want my married friends to treat me like I’m a kid. I wasn’t thinking about single people when I was married, so I’m here to apologize to the single people on behalf of the married people, because you guys know what you did and it’s time to apologize. I did it, too. I went on a honeymoon, right? That’s fine. That’s my business. I went somewhere tropical with my husband. Rainbows, sunset, fruity drink, palm trees. So cute, right? We took a picture of ourselves. “We can’t get it. We have to get someone… “Are you… ” You see another couple. “Are you guys married? We just got married, too. Will you take our picture? OK. Oh, my God, everyone’s married!” You think the whole world is married. Which is fine. But do you keep that picture in a photo album or in your phone? No.
You try to keep the party going that Christmas. You turned it into that year’s Christmas card. That’s a very rude thing to do. That’s the single people’s most lonely, most suicidal time of year. They don’t need to be sitting there on the couch, watching Lifetime movies, ironically, drinking eggnog, spilling it on their lap. Their cat’s on their lap, they lick it off their lap. Who cares? No one’s looking at them! Then your love card comes in. “Happy Xmas-Marriage-s.” You make up some word that has nothing to do with anything. You’re offending Jesus now, too. It’s awful. So don’t do that. And I have to say, I am so embarrassed about the type of bride I was. I never thought I would be this way. When I was in high school, I was smoking cigarettes behind the school, wearing all black, “Yeah, society’s stupid.” And by the way, I was right. Society is stupid. But then I forgot along the way. At age 35, I got engaged. And then I lost it. I was like, “Presents! Presents! I want presents.” And you have to buy them for me.” I had plates. I’d been working for 20 years. “I don’t want those plates anymore. Those are single-person plates.” I want married-person plates and not all that old energy around me. So, everybody, crateandbarrel.com, please. Do not make me some bowl from your pottery class. “This is not about a loving gift. This is a business transaction.” You start calling people. “Meredith? I want 12 snack-nut bowls.” No, Meredith. Not snack bowls. Oh, my God. Snack-nut bowls. There’s 12 kinds of nuts. They each need their own bowl. Snack bowls are something different. Susan’s getting those. Maybe if someone loved you, you’d understand the adult things I’m talking about right now. “I want one of those cheese boards that spins.” When you’re married, you can’t reach the cheese. It has to spin towards you. That’s how it is. I started getting crazy. I’m a vegetarian. I wanted a gravy boat. “I want a gravy boat. I might put rose petals in it. Who knows? My life is changing rapidly.” And you think everybody cares. Once the wedding’s over, everyone’s sick of you. But everybody doesn’t think so. Everyone’s like, “No, my wedding was fun. It was like a party.” No. No party starts with church. No, it wasn’t. But you get home, after the honeymoon. You have all your things. Snack-nut bowls, spinning cheese thing, trays. It looks like a party no one wants to go to. ‘Cause that’s what it is. Your friends are done for a little while. You still want them to hang out. You call your single friends, thinking this is exciting to them. “You want to come over? We have snack-nut bowls.” They’re like, “We were gonna try to get laid.” You’re like, “Oh, my God!” Suddenly go, “That’s disgusting. Meredith’s gonna go have some sex with someone she just met. “I don’t know why she doesn’t want to put on pajamas at seven on a Saturday and just really grow up.” Sometimes your other married friends don’t want to hang out with you either because they have marriage responsibilities as well. You’re like, “Come over. We have snack-nut bowls.” And they’re like, “Oh, we can’t. We have 12 stemless wine glasses.” We have to stay home with them.” “Oh, I get it. OK. OK.” Well, maybe put your wine glasses on the phone with our nut bowls. “That would be fun.” I got lost in my mind. Now, I’m not against… I am against marriage, but I’m not against marriage. I’m more against weddings. I swear I would get married again. I know I sound stupid. I would if someone needed me to. I really would. But I’m just against weddings. Here’s the thing that’s a problem for me. I don’t understand why we need to have family involved. I know that that sounds awful, but there is no reason to make a list of people you don’t like, and then go, “Let’s invite them to the wedding.” I don’t understand. You have to think about certain things when you include family. Like, I can’t play the N-word version of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” ’cause some of my relatives might be like, “Yeah, finally, Jen.” Like, no, no, we’re not… No. No, no, no, no.
We’re following traditions that we don’t need to follow. In the 1800s, you had to have a lot of people, a lot of family at your wedding. Because you all ran the farm together and you couldn’t stop. Someone had to milk a cow. Everything had to be done at the same time, all together. You might die on the altar and your cousin fills in. You had to have family around. But there’s no reason now to make out in front of your uncles on a stage. It’s the weirdest thing. And I’m not good with family. Like, I had a mother-in-law. I know that it sounds like I’m some hacky comedian from the ’40s. But it’s very strange to have a second mother, right? I already had a mother. I have a mother. And she’s great. But I had a mother. Do you understand? I don’t want a new one suddenly. And no woman thinks, “I met the man of my dreams. It’s great.” He’s my best friend. It’s romantic. God, there’s something missing. If I could just get, like, a 65-year-old woman to just crawl up my ass and stay there. Oh! This would be just… “Doves will fly. What a day that’ll be.” My mother-in-law liked me too much. She’d go, “Do you want to go to Zumba class?” “No. No, I don’t. Not even when I’m dead. Please cremate me so that you can’t drag my body to Zumba class. Please.” We didn’t live in the same city. She wanted to Skype. “I miss you!” “You never knew me for the first 59 years of your life.” “That’s why I miss you.” So we’d get out the computer and I don’t really have much to say to her. She’d go, “Hi,” and I’d go, “Hi.” She’d go, “Hi.” I’d go, “One of us is gonna have to whip a boob out for this to get interesting.” I do know one thing. I like to imagine what I want and try to attract it into my life. So I know the man for me. And he’s great. And his entire family is dead. They always tell you, “Date men that love their mothers.” No. No. Date men who don’t have mothers anymore. Here’s a thing about being divorced. I feel a little alienated from my married friends. My friends now call me to tell me what I’m not invited to. I used to go to a couples’ dinner every weekend. I’m still friends with all of the people. I’m just not in a couple anymore. But my friend decided I can’t come. She said, “I’m just calling to say” maybe you and I, together, start a new tradition. But the couples’ dinner thing… I feel like it might be weird if you come alone, “because we don’t want you to be sad.” I go, “I won’t be sad. You’d be uncomfortable. That’s what it is.” Because I think inviting a divorced woman to a married persons’ dinner, it’s kind of like inviting a political radical to show up. You know what I mean? I might just bust down the door with some pamphlets and start telling the truth about some things, man. Hey, turns out it is just a piece of paper. Guy’s gained all this weight since you’ve been married. You think, “Thank God we’re not on the singles scene. It’s so judgmental.” Not true. You can have sunlight on your face. Everyone’s fucking each other out here. It’s a good time. You can get right back into it. I gained some weight after I got married. I gained 40 pounds in a year. It was a lot. I’ve lost it since then. But the married people thought that was normal. They would say things to me. “That’s your body. It does that after marriage.” “It adds a protective layer.” “Of what? Skin that my husband doesn’t want to have sex with? What?” “No, Jen, you’re not understanding. You’re nesting. You’re nesting.” I go, “Oh, I thought I was eating a block of cheese with my bare hands” like a sandwich, in front of the TV.” “No, nesting.”
It’s hard when you gain weight. I don’t know if you’re someone that… You weigh yourself once a day, a pound here or there, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the kind where you can tell you’ve gained a lot. You’re like, “I know what I’ll do.” I will not get on the scale. I’ll lose the weight I think I’ve gained, “then get on the scale to the weight I want and it’s fine.” You keep doing that. Suddenly, you’re wearing bath towels. You’re like, “What? I’ve always worn these.” It’s hard to admit to yourself. As a woman who gained the weight, it… Pants didn’t fit anymore, but not where you would think, like right here. Suddenly my pants didn’t fit here. I was like, “Did my balls drop?” No one tells women that that happens. So I start making promises to myself. I belonged to a gym, but that wasn’t good enough. The reason it wasn’t working is ’cause I wasn’t going. But in my head, I had to come up with something new. I was like, “I’m going to start jogging, at six every morning.” Be done by seven, have the whole day ahead of me. Why didn’t I think of this before?” So, I go to bed at nine or ten. Get a nice eight, nine hours’ sleep. Set the alarm. Here we go, 6 a.m. It rings at 6 a.m. and you feel like a different person. You’re like, “What the… ? I’m not getting up.” There’s murderers out there! It’s dark out. Not even farmers are awake right now. They can’t see the crops. Who the fuck gets up at 6 a.m.? The rapists, all kinds of crack people who still think it’s the same night. I’m not going out there. What am I, a nurse? I don’t need to get up this early. And why am I getting up early? To lose weight? For what? For society? For men? “I don’t think so! I’m a size healthy!” And I just… No one’s saying anything. It’s just me in my bed, yelling. It is tough, though. When you get on that scale and you see that 40 pounds, you’re like, “Oh, shit.” I’m either gonna have to gain 40 more and really own it, you know. “Get my own daytime talk show as a judge.” Or you’ve got to lose it, like, that night and do stuff like jog at 6 a.m. I don’t have any dieting tips for you. I just eventually lost the weight. I think by, uh, standing up, watching reruns and smoking the occasional cigarette. Don’t do it. But it did work. I think divorce helps, too. Your weight doesn’t want anything to do with you either. It’s just like, “Oh, God, get away from her.” It just… it just runs away.
I feel bad, making fun of marriage. And, like, you know, how it’s silly or not silly, or whatever it is, because it’s not legal for everyone to get married in this country. I’m not trying to have my… There’s no American flag gonna come up and, like, “Let’s take it down for a minute.” But I’m fucking serious that it’s a civil rights issue and it’s embarrassing. I feel like I will be embarrassed about this in 20 years when I was just so flippant about it, and people are hurting. I just wish the president could get on TV and be like, “Marriage equality. Gay marriage is legal. See ya! Bye!” Why can’t we do that? That would be nice. Thank you. I swear to God, I wasn’t pandering. I swear to God, I wasn’t pandering. Do we have gay friends here tonight? Oh, a smattering. Tell other gay people that I’m funny. No, but I do. I fight for your marriage equality rights. I tweet sometimes, and I… I do what I can. But I get upset. I get upset at senators who say things like, “Well, if we let gay people get married, what’s next? People are going to marry their pets?” I’m also fine with that, you psycho. Marry a table. Life is hard. Get whatever you can get. All right, because I am sick of going to weddings. I really don’t want to go to any more human weddings. I get the invitation in the mail. “Jim and Cindy. Destination: wedding! Labor Day weekend.” You’re like, “Oh, my God! That’s expensive.” I had plans that weekend. You’re so selfish. “Go to the town hall. Get over yourselves.” You don’t want to go. But if I started getting invites that were like, “Cindy and Mr. Mittens.” Destination: wedding.” Oh, yeah! Oh, my God. Finally. “Honey. You know my friend Cindy who never met anyone?” Remember when they let gay people get married and then everyone started marrying pets and shit? Cindy’s gonna marry her tuxedo cat, Mr. Mittens. Oh, honey, I don’t know if he’s gonna wear a real tuxedo over his fur one, “but I can’t wait to find out.” And guess what? Mr. Mittens does wear a tuxedo over his fur tuxedo. Because you went to that wedding. You go to the wedding. It’s a beach wedding. It’s wonderful. Cindy’s so beautiful. She’s so happy. And Mr. Mittens is terrified. He doesn’t like water. He’s never seen a tide before. He’s taking it personally. He’s on a beach. He thinks it’s his litter box. He pees everywhere. Cindy still doesn’t care. She loves him and he loves her. She’s the only woman who ever fed him. He loves her. You don’t have to sit through human vows. “I love you.” “I love you.” Then someone’s mom can’t find her glasses and has to read a dumb poem by Shel Silverstein. None of that. Maya Angelou did not write those words for you two drips to have at your wedding. She would unwrite everything if she knew what the fuck was going on with her poetry. But the cat-people weddings are great. There’s no vows, ’cause Mr. Mittens doesn’t speak English. He doesn’t speak. He just stands there, being a cat. You’re like, “That’s so cute.” And then Cindy’s there. Then they throw catnip at everyone as the party favor. And everyone gets high. You go, “I didn’t know humans could get high off catnip.” You never fucking let people marry cats before. That’s why you didn’t know. And love is love is love is love is love, right? Mr. Mittens and Cindy, it’s no different than human love. In ten years, she will be in bed with something fatter and hairier than when she first met him. And unlike people, who are dumb and marry other people, and you have to wipe each other’s ass at 80 and look at them and be like, “Oh, you’re old and awful,” Mr. Mittens dies at ten. Cindy doesn’t have to deal with any of that shit. And she gets to decide when he dies. She can have ten cat husbands in her lifetime if she wants. I didn’t mean to equate… being gay with bestiality. I meant… I meant… I meant, doesn’t it suck when people do that? As long as we’re talking about it, though, here’s a fun thought.
So I will tell you a story about the first date I went on after my divorce. When I say divorce, I mean separation. I mean the day that you and your partner shut the door and one of you is in the apartment and the other is on the other side, looking for somewhere to live. That day that it’s over is not actually the divorce, but that’s the day it’s over, right? I went on a date two days after that day. And I felt judged by my married friends. But they didn’t understand how horny I was. Because I don’t think people understand, when you get divorced, you probably haven’t been having sex. It’s not like, “Oh, my God. We’re fucking all the time” in this thing of not liking each other. “In this home we built where we despise each other, we fuck all the time.” That’s not happening. But it feels weird, ’cause someone’s in your bed and you should be with them. But you’re not. So your body is very confused. It’s not the same as single horniness. Single horniness… It’s quaint that you even would complain about being horny when you’re single. You’re like, “Oh, I’m kind of horny.” Should I call an old friend? Or maybe get a pizza or just fall asleep.” Divorced horniness needs to be taken care of right away. Because your body starts going into heat, like an animal. The minute that door shuts, you’re not in control anymore. Your body’s just like… Like, my body was… I was just following it. It was trying to sit on fire hydrants and stuff. I was like, “Body, stop it.” It was like, “Help!” Like, it was just going nuts. It’s like if you have to get in the house really fast and you have to pee and your body thinks you’re home, you’re like, “Don’t wet your pants, body!” You know, it’s that. So I was like, “Oh, my God.”
I didn’t know the horniness of a divorced person. So I went out to see a band play, which is something I never did when I was married. I went to talk to the drummer after. I thought he was cute. I wasn’t thinking about how old I was as opposed to how old he was. And that’s where the story gets… sad. ‘Cause I was 37. He was 20. – Ugh! – Ugh! Ugh! Yes. I was a cougar for one night. Don’t “whoo.” It’s not good. It’s not a good thing. I was a cougar back when Demi Moore and Ashton were still happy. And so I thought it was cool, too. Yeah, older women getting some… No. The reason she lost her mind and had to go to rehab for being 50 was because when you’re dating a hot young guy, he’s hot and young and he doesn’t have to work at it. So he gets to run around, throwing Frisbees and whatever young people do all day. If you’re older, you have to sit at home going, “Don’t eat anything!” Like, it’s a lot of pressure. And that’s why they had to send Demi Moore to jail, ’cause she lost it. But I was still buying into the myth that being a cougar was cool at this point. Let me tell you something. Now I don’t think it’s cool. There is no word for a man who is in his 40s and dates someone younger. That’s just called a man. Right? Sometimes “silver fox.” That’s kind of a cool-sounding thing. Cougar doesn’t sound that cool. Cougar doesn’t sound cool, like a lion or a tiger, like… Cougar, to me, sounds like an old woman in the woods in a spotted coat. “Oh, I hope someone comes by.” It’s sad. Don’t look up to me with this story, but learn from it. So I talked to this kid. I don’t realize he’s 20. I don’t realize I’m 37. I hadn’t been single since I was 27, so I’m still at that age in my mind. He asks me out for the next night. My body is like… I’m like, “Come on, body, we can make it one more night. It’s fine.” So I say yes. I get home, my friend says to me, “You know that guy was 20?” I’m like, “Who cares?” I’m a cougar. This is cool.
So he texts me the next night, he’s supposed to come and get me. He says, “I can’t come and get you, my car broke down.” I’m like, “Oh, my God. I’m such an old loser.” He doesn’t want to hang out.” I’ve never texted with a 20-year-old. Except for my nephew. So I don’t know what to say to these kids. So I was like, maybe he will like the same things as my nephew. “Do you need money for college books?” Like, I don’t know. He’s like… He goes, “No, no, I really still want to hang out.” I really just can’t drive. My car broke down.” So I went to get him. It turns out his car didn’t really break down. His car ran out of gas because his bank account ran out of money. So no problem. I go get him. But the thing is, my life is in transition. I’m moving things. I’ve got furniture in the front seat. I can’t move it. So I pick him up at the gas station like some bad mother who just lets her kid hang out… I saw the other mothers looking at me. “You let your son hang out at a gas station?” I’m like, “He’s not my son. I’m gonna fuck him.” So I pull up. Beep-beep! “Hey!” Get in the back seat, honey.” He gets in the back seat. I’m like, “I didn’t bring the car seat.” I’m gonna get a ticket if a cop sees this. Lay down. Put a blanket over your head. “If a cop pulls me over, I’m going to get a ticket. All right.” So I don’t want to drive him to a bar or something because I don’t want to get arrested. So he should come over to my newly single bachelorette cougar pad. And he’s blown away when he sees my place. It’s not even that great. But he’s blown away. “My God. Why are there sheets there?” I’m like, “Oh, those are called curtains.” “Wow.” “Futons are for guest rooms, if at all.” He’s like, “Oh, my God.” He didn’t know anything. So I offer him some wine. He goes, “When did you get the wine?” I was like, “I don’t understand what that means.” When did you get the wine? I thought maybe I’m misjudging this young man. He is a wine connoisseur. What he is asking me is what vintage year is this wine. But he said, “No, we didn’t stop at 7-Eleven on the way home.” I was wondering when you got this wine.” I was like, “Sweetie. Let me explain. Um… ” When you’re a grown-up, you can just have wine waiting at the house. Sometimes you’re just too old and fat to open it. Like, ah, forget it. But it’s nice that it’s there. It’s like having a roommate. No, that’s not a pretend guillotine, that’s a wine rack. Yeah. You can have three, four or five bottles. “Doesn’t even mean you’re rich.” So now I think he liked me as kind of his teacher. He was asking me questions. I have a Sassy magazine. If you ladies remember Sassy magazine from the 1990s? It was like the alternative chick’s Seventeen magazine. I still have some of them from when I was a teenager. I have this really cool coffee table that I put collectible items in. It’s glass and you can look at it. And I had my Sassy from 1992, with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love kissing on the cover. He goes, “Dude, that’s so cool, where did you buy that?” I go, “Buy that? I didn’t buy that.” I got that in the mail at my parents’ house in 1992.” And I was like, “Oh, my God, I feel so… ” He was like, “What was it like when Kurt Cobain… ?” Ah, ah, ah, ah! Do not remind me… that I could be your mother if I had been a whore. Please stop. This is not rock and roll trivia, old lady edition. Stop. I’m not teaching you about grunge. I’m not. But I have guy friends who love that stuff. I have a guy friend in his 40s, dating someone in her 20s. She doesn’t know who the Beatles are. And she doesn’t give a fuck. I don’t like that. I think older men who date younger woman, you’re deplorable. How can you put your penis in someone who doesn’t care who Jimi Hendrix is? Have some self-respect, right? Let me explain something to you. It’s a vicious cycle. If you guys keep dating 20-year-old women, then I have to date your sons. And then you look out at the world and see a bunch of 40-year-old men with younger people. It looks like there’s just a bunch of mentally ill, middle-aged people with their helpers. It doesn’t look cool. It doesn’t look sexy. Don’t make me go through this. I understand. I understand that age-inappropriate sex is more fun. I get it. I get it. I know, when you’re in your 40s and you’re some guy, having age-appropriate sex and age-inappropriate sex is sort of like two different kinds of plates. You’re some 40-year-old guy and you’ve got nice china. ‘Cause you have your shit together. But every once in a while, you just want to eat off a paper plate, in front of the TV. “Yeah. I can get grease on this and it doesn’t complain.” I can flip it around. I can throw it in the trash and someone else gets it tomorrow. “I don’t care.”
I’m an old piece of china at this point. It’s effort to sleep with me. You’ve got to take me out. Dust me off. Be polite, ignore any cracks you might see. Wash me off and put me back when I’m done. That’s what a woman my age demands. But I think it’s nice to be with people your own age. If he says something like, “I see cellulite,” I can be like, “You have hair in your ears. Fuck you.” “Let’s stay together.” That’s it. But now I’m a hypocrite because I did go to bed with this kid. I shouldn’t say it like that. I didn’t chase him down the hall. “Put on your jammies.” We had sex. Of course it was fun. But the next morning it got a little weird. He was very hungry. I don’t have food in my house because I travel a lot. And I forgot about when you’re young and don’t have any body fat that you have to eat right away. He doesn’t have 40 pounds of reserves stored in certain places. He’s like, “I’m hungry.” I’m like, “All right.” He’s like, “No, I’m hungry.” I’m like, “You want to go to Denny’s later?” He’s like, “I have to eat right now.” I’m like, “Shit. All right.” I just started breast-feeding him. I didn’t know it wouldn’t work. I wasn’t lactating. I’m not his mother. He couldn’t latch. It was awful. I’ll never do that again. Here’s what happened. I’m embarrassed to say, I got a little obsessed with him. I was excited. My body was like, “Yeah!” It was alive again. – So I started looking at Facebook. – Oh, no. Yeah. And I saw his profile. All these women writing stuff on his wall that I don’t understand what it means. ‘Cause I could be their mother, too. It’s like “XO,” picture of a watermelon. Smiley face. I’m like, “What does that mean?” Because when I was his age, there was no Facebook. I couldn’t tell if my cute boyfriend in a band was having sex with other people by just going online. I had to do some research. I had to look people in the eye and find out things. It’s a totally different thing, this generation. I had it different. I’m proud of myself. When I was his age, if I thought that someone was fucking around on me, I had to get out of bed, get dressed, get drunk, go to a party, get more drunk, get in his face and in front of God and everyone go, “Are you fucking her?” And if he wasn’t, he would start fucking her because his crazy girlfriend showed up drunk to a party screaming, “Are you fucking her?”
But I’m proud of myself. I respect myself for what I’ve been through. So I don’t have kids and I know you’re like, “I did not see that coming.” “You seem so maternal.” Now, I really never thought it was a big deal that I didn’t have kids, but it was people’s reactions to it that made me keep talking about it because I never thought it was anyone’s business but my own. But it seems to be the only thing that some people can talk about. When I go to parties, “Do you have kids?” “No.” Then they don’t drop it. “Kids!” Oh, my God, they just start freaking out. “Kids!” People go, “You’ll change your mind.” I go, “I didn’t ask your opinion about what I’ll do with my mind.” I’m not going to change my mind. I can’t change my mind anymore. I’m 40. My ovaries are like sweaters in those collapsible bags. They’re under my bed. I can’t get at them. But I don’t go up to pregnant women, six months along, “You’ll change your mind.” They probably want to. If you’ve been one of these people that pressures other people into having kids just because you love it so much, stop it. It really bothers people. If you do something as big as having a kid, which is a big life commitment, it’s a big deal to raise a human, you’ve gotta have an urge to be good at it and an urge to do it. And I’ve never had the urge to ruin my life. So why don’t you leave me alone? Thank you. Now… I don’t think I’d be a great parent. My parents are great parents. But I feel like the way that you can really fuck up a kid is by just saying things to them that you think are totally normal and they are like, “What?” I know I would do that to my kid. My job is to say crazy things. I think about my mom who tried so hard. She’s a great mom. She put me to bed every night and we prayed together. It’s a beautiful thing to introduce your child to spirituality and giving up all your troubles to God before bed. It was nice. She meant well. Every night she put me to bed and starting around four, I started to remember what was going on. She would just get in my face and tuck me in, my mom with her Boston accent, and just say, “OK. Jenny, let’s say the prayer.” ‘If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ “Good night, Jen.” She shuts the lights off. Shuts the door. I’m like, “What?” That’s a comforting prayer if you’re 90 and on a respirator. But when you’re four, it makes no sense. You’re like, “What’s death? Why would I die this young?” Who is the Lord? What’s a soul? He gets to come in here and take it? Not even Santa gets to come in my room. “Fucking fight for me, Mom!” Right? I’m just like my mom. I’m just like her. If I had a daughter, I know it. If she was in the next room, “Mommy, there’s a monster under my bed,” I’d be real with her. I’d be like, “Of course there is, that’s where they live.” I’d get my 20-year-old boyfriend. “We’ve got to get out of here. There’s a monster.” So, the tough thing is… There’s nothing tough about not having kids. It’s tough to be misunderstood. My friends say things to me like, “Don’t you just want to come home to something after a long weekend working?” I’m like, “No. That sounds awful.” I don’t even want to come home to my mail. If it’s piled up, I’m like, “Stop looking at me! I’ll get to you.” I have to take a Valium and like, “Mommy has to lay down.” I get easily overwhelmed. My friends… This is the hard thing. Now I have to be friends with people who are having children. That’s tough. Because I’m not interested in children. I wish I was, but I’m not. I like my friends’ kids because they are little mini versions of my friends and I think it’s fascinating and cute. But some of my friends ruin it. Because one of my friends is taking a psychology course about raising a toddler. Which is great. Let’s all do better than our parents. My parents could have done better. They smoked with the windows up. I now have mild to severe asthma. It’s fine. God bless people trying to do it differently. But my friend is taking a class called “How to keep your toddler empowered.” I’m like, “I don’t think that group needs empowering.” I’ve seen them. They do whatever they want in public, all the time. But my friends so desperately want me to know everything about their child-bearing and their child-rearing. My friend is reading a lot of self-help books about how to raise a good kid. And how to never have them have trauma or fear in their life. She posts these long Facebook updates, my friend from high school… these long Facebook updates about her parenting. Her newest thing… She has a one-year-old toddler named Andy. Her newest thing that she read was, you know how they say if you have a baby and it’s crying, you breast-feed, you comfort the baby. As they get a little older, maybe one, you let them cry themselves to sleep. Well, as I read on the Facebook post, according to my friend, according to the book she read, that is child abuse. I’m like, “This is Facebook abuse, this thing that you’re doing.” She writes this whole post. “Well, I put Andy down last night.” I called her. “Whoa, dude, what?” Oh, my God, I can’t even believe you didn’t say anything sooner. I’m not judging, though. I’m serious. It’s quality of life, not quantity. If you were going to have to keep giving him operations “just to keep him around, I get it.” She said, “Jen, I put him to bed.” I said, “You said put him down.” That’s what you do to a dog when he dies.” She goes, “Well, that’s what parents say.” That’s the language we use for putting a child to bed.” I go, “You don’t get to do that.” You don’t get to use words that mean something else just because you’re a parent. “You don’t go, ‘We stabbed Johnny in the face last night.'” “That means ‘gave him a bath.'” Why don’t you get your life together, Jen, and start understanding language more? “Adults talk this way.” So my friend goes “OK, we put Andy to bed last night.” He was crying for a while, so I did what the class taught me. I empowered him.” I go, “How did you do that?” She goes, “Well, I snuck into his room.” I stood in the corner, in the dark. I was in his peripheral vision. He could sense me. “Not like a perfume, like a pheromone.” “I know what a pheromone is.” “After an hour of my presence, he felt so empowered that he made the decision to go to sleep.” I’m like, “Oh, my God, none of that happened.” You understand, you psycho, that you went into a child’s room and stood in the corner, in the dark, like Dracula or something. He did not… He just fell asleep. That’s all that happened. He’s this big. He ran out of water. It’s like a drunk passing out or a woman who cries at night. That’s it. He was going to die or fall asleep. That was it. That was nature. “That’s it. He did not… No.” He was not in the crib going, “Oh, I sense something.” Not a perfume, you assholes, a pheromone. My mother is here. For some reason she’s been standing in that corner, in the dark for an hour, staring at me, and it is not freaking me out at all. I’m starting to feel pretty stupid here because I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. If I want to go to college someday, be a lawyer, have a family of my own, what am I doing here crying like a baby? I feel so empowered right now, I’m gonna get my fucking eight hours. I made a decision.” Like, that didn’t happen. She also has a four-year-old named Lee. “I want you to get to know Lee.” I go, “That’s weird.” I didn’t know any of my mom’s friends. Your mom’s friends should not be your friend when you’re a toddler. They should be coming over, smoking and ashing on your head. “Ugh! Lee’s here.” I’m not supposed to be part of the family. I’m supposed to come over when they’re in bed and we’re supposed to have wine. Don’t involve me. But my friend goes, “I really want you to be in Lee’s life more.” I come over, he’d already gone to bed. “I promise, next time I come over.” So, Lee comes running out of the room, screaming. “I’ll do it right now. I’ll get in his life. I’ll take care of this. What’s wrong, Lee?” He goes, “I don’t want to go to bed at 7:30.” I go, “Why the fuck not, Lee?” I would love to go to bed at 7:30, can I tell you that? I’ve been in bed at 7:30. Sometimes your mom calls me and goes, ‘You’re divorced and bitter. Don’t stay in bed.’ I go, ‘I’m not, I just love being in bed.’ But when you’re my age and you’re in bed at 7:30, people call it cute words like depressed, over it, despondent, shit like that. They call for help. Why don’t you enjoy yourself right now? You don’t have to get up until 7:30 a.m.? That’s cute. You don’t have to get up to pee. You can do it on yourself. Why don’t you stop coming in the living room and wasting our time here “and just go back to bed?” My friend goes, “That’s not what I meant about getting involved.” I go, “Well, that’s Aunt Jen. That’s how she does it.” There’s always an invisible cigarette when I’m doing something I think is badass. It’s weird because parents get to say things like, “I don’t like kids.” I only like my own.” Every parent I know doesn’t really like children, they like their own. Child-free people have to walk around not looking like monsters, so we have to say lies like, “I love kids, they’re just not for me.” That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they be for me if I love them? Other things I love I make part of my life. I like sex, I’ll have some sex. I like pizza, I definitely have pizza. I don’t walk around going, “I love it, but I can’t.” It just sounds weird. “I love kids.” It sounds weird to not have kids and be yelling, “I love kids.” If I could just have dinner with a toddler… “Oh, where my kids at?” It’s dumb. I am not really that interested in children. I hope they all do great. They will be taking care of me someday. Another thing, “Who is going to take care of you when you’re old?” “Servants. I don’t know.” I want someone with a prescription pad. If my kid ends up a web designer, I’m fucked. I’m gonna go to a place where they do that professionally. People get mad at me ’cause I don’t like babies on planes either. And I know, I know, I know. I sound really mean now. Now, here’s the thing. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be on planes, I just wish they didn’t have to fly at night because I can’t sleep. And I have a very important job. I’m a comedian. I have to deliver the laughter during times of war and strife. And I cannot be tired. But a baby has trouble sleeping on a plane, maybe because the air pressure is too much for their tiny body, and no one was supposed to put them in a plane ever. They were not… We shouldn’t even be in planes. Someone this big certainly shouldn’t. They’re probably crying ’cause they’re looking out the window going, “Why am I in the sky?” They don’t know. They think they died and became an angel. They don’t know what’s happening. My friends go, “Jennifer, you are very rude.” They call me Jennifer when I’m being bad. “Jennifer, you’re very rude.” We have to take our babies on planes because my parents live across the country and I want him to see his grandmother. ” I go, ” Not my problem. Why don’t you get in touch with the fact that you moved across the country from your mom? And as long as you’re lying to the kid about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, tell him the fucking neighbor’s his grandmother. What does he know? It’s a lot cheaper. When you tell him the truth about everything else, go, ‘That lady’s not your grandmother.’ “He’ll go, ‘I don’t care, I don’t wanna hang out with old ladies anyway.'” Thing is, I like living alone now. I didn’t used to. I think it’s nice. I know the consequences. I understand. If I don’t get in a relationship again where I live with someone, I understand what can happen to me. I know I could hit my head on the bathtub and no one will know. And I’ll die, I’ll bleed out. Then three days later, a cat will eat my face. I understand. I don’t have a cat, but when a single woman dies alone, a cat appears. It’s a thing. You have to take precautions when you live alone. I take big vitamins, and I’m afraid of choking. So, what I do is, I go outside when responsible people are walking their dogs, and I take a bottle of water and I go… And I take my vitamins in front of them. Because I figure, if you own a dog, you also know the Heimlich maneuver. I don’t know if this is true, but it seems they have their shit together. If I started choking, they would help me. Whereas, if I’m alone in my apartment and I come stumbling out of the elevator going… … my neighbors would be like, “Oh, my God!” and not let me in. So these are things you have to think about, right?
One thing I like about living alone is I don’t have to ask permission to do anything. I can just do whatever, whenever. Right? I never have to think about things like, “When am I supposed to masturbate?” And thank you for laughing. Sometimes people get uncomfortable. I’m like, “Women have been masturbating for five years now. It’s totally fine.” I think if you’re in a relationship, you live with someone, you should pretend you don’t masturbate. You don’t want my advice, I’m divorced. I’m telling you, just pretend you don’t. Just say you don’t. I know sometimes, guys, have you ever been at work, and your live-in girlfriend or your wife calls you and goes, “What time are you coming home?” You say, “I don’t know.” She’s like, “What time do you think?” “I don’t know.” Then you get home and she hasn’t done anything, there’s no dinner ready. You’re like, “Why does she care?” She was masturbating. When she says she’s going to read in bed, she’s masturbating. And I feel like we shouldn’t be so free with admitting that to each other when we’re in relationships. It eats away at things. Just act like you’re only attracted to that person. I swear, I think that might work. I really do. But I might be wrong. But the point is, I don’t have to worry about it. I can do it whenever. Now, the point is, I’m not great at it. I mean, physically, I know how to do it. I am a smooth touch. But my head is so… It just doesn’t stop. And I cannot relax enough… to masturbate. If you’re uncomfortable with the word… I’m uncomfortable with the word a bit. It’s gross. You start picturing things. I start picturing, like, a guy doing it. Which is gross. It’s like a garden hose out of control, like… When women masturbate, it’s cute. It’s like ringing a doorbell. Like, ding-dong, ding-dong. You know. “My God, I hope no one’s home, I wanna keep doing this.” Ding-dong. So I’ll say ding-dong. OK, so I don’t ding-dong that often because… I can’t just look at a picture of a cute guy. I have to have a situation that is true. Something that has happened, or absolutely could happen. And I never prepare. It’s like how I was with homework. I never prepare a story for myself. And I get into bed and I’m like, “Time to ding-dong.” Right? And I lay there and I go, “OK, I’m at a bar. That’s realistic.” What dress am I wearing? You don’t own that dress. Take that off. Start over, Jen. “Not my fault you didn’t do the laundry. You can’t just make up a dress.” And then I have to keep starting over until I just fall asleep. And I wake up the next day so angry ’cause I didn’t get it out. “Goddamn it!” If you know any women that are bitchy, they’re not on their period. They don’t have a story. That’s why. They can’t release, ever. So… Now, I know this sounds stupid. A friend of mine goes, “Just think about Johnny Depp.” You think he’s cute.” I go, “Do you listen to me at all? I can’t think about Johnny Depp.” I do think he’s cute, and I know that’s kind of sad. At this point, he does look like a cigarette with a scarf on. I know. But I’m a child of 21 Jump Street, the television show. So I go, “But I can’t think about Johnny Depp, it’s not feasible.” I’ve never met Johnny Depp. He lives in France half the time. I don’t have a work visa. He’s gonna marry a 25-year-old model. I’m 40 with gray pubic hair. He doesn’t want this. He has stepchildren. I don’t even wanna be a stepmom. “The kids don’t love you as much. It’s a whole… I can’t.” I know with guys… And I don’t mean to gender stereotype, but come on, I think it’s easier for guys. Or at least, people who are visual. You look at a naked whatever in a magazine. Men, women, whatever you like, and you’re like… and you’re done. You put your seat belt on and start the car and… drive to work. I can’t do that. I have a guy friend who’s kind of like me. He likes stories. He goes, “I think about Megan Fox. I’ve got a little scenario.” I go, “What is it?” He goes, “That she’s fucking me.” I go, “That’s not a story.” He goes, “Yeah, it is. She fucked me.” I go, “That’s not a story.” How? How? How would that ever happen? You have mustard on your face.” “She loved it. She loved it, she was fucking me.” “You leave Megan Fox alone!” You know, I start getting angry. “Stop that.” Another guy friend of mine goes, “I just think about boobs.” I go, “Whose?” He goes, “I don’t know.” I go, “What do you mean? Whose boobs are they?” He goes, “Boobs!” And he just… And I go, “What do you mean? Are they on, like, an assembly line?” Do they have wings? Is it like Whac-A-Mole boobs? I don’t understand what you’re saying.” He’s just like, “Boobs!” I’m like, “OK, forget it.” ‘Cause I can’t just think about a penis. I could. I tried and I’m embarrassed to admit I tried. So, I thought about a penis one time. Here I go, try and be normal like everyone else and just objectify a body part. “Hello, penis. Thank you for showing up in tonight’s fantasy.” So far, so good. I like… I like what you got. Why aren’t you attached to anything? What is going on? There’s a penis in the woods. Oh, my God, there’s a penis in the woods. I got up at 6 a.m. to go jogging. It was dark out. I went to the woods. I felt something, I thought it was a log. I touched it. I’m like, ‘Aah! There’s a dick in the woods.’ There’s a penis in the woods. I know what happened. Some alcoholic was beating his wife. She cut his dick off, she drove to the woods, she threw it out the window and then it landed there and I touched it. And now my DNA is on it. So I have to call the cops and go, ‘I found a penis in the woods. I had nothing to do with it. My DNA is on it, but I think some other lady’s is, too. I was just trying to get up early and lose some weight. “I cannot masturbate to a penis in the woods!'” Thank you. I… I have one fantasy that I’ve allowed myself, even though it isn’t based in reality. I think it’s pretty good. It works… every time. I’m in an alley, in some kind of Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider outfit. I look good. And an ex-boyfriend comes towards me, one I really loved. And he doesn’t say anything, right away. And he just leans me against the wall and gets real close and he whispers, “You’re right, I do need therapy.” Every time. So, I worry, though. I do worry about young women who say things like, “I just wanna get married, so I can grow old with someone.” And I go, “You won’t, hon, ’cause men die first.” Like, that’s… you have to think about that, you know? I don’t know why that happens, it’s just how God made it. Maybe he’s trying to make up for all the men having all the rights for so long. And he’s like, “Oh, fuck. I fucked up.” All right, let’s just kill everyone at 60 with some kind of prostate shit. Let’s just get rid of all the men. All the ladies, you sit down, you sit in that chair with that remote and you watch The Price is Right for 30 more years. I’ll come back then. “I am so sorry about sexism. I am so sorry. I did not even think.”
Right, so I say to women, have a back-up plan, right? Get another man, get a best friend or just be OK with living alone. I think about my grandmother, died at 99. I think she’d be so proud of me. She never really lived to see me do stand-up. Now, my grandmother was a woman who got married, never had a job, wasn’t allowed to. Raised children, wasn’t allowed to get a license, per her husband. Never got on an airplane. So, when her husband died at 60, she didn’t really care. And people were so sad for her. “She’s a widow.” She’s at home eating saltines, having the time of her life. Doing whatever she wants. But she used to say to me, “Be independent so that you’re not dependent as an old woman. Start now.” Now, she would say things to me… I never met my grandpa Freddie. But she was the perfect example of men die first. She lived till 99, he died at 60. She would say things to me about him. She would say, “I don’t think he was such a great man all the time.” I think he was cheating on me. “I don’t know with what. I never saw anything good down there.” “Merry Christmas, Nana. Grandpa had an unsatisfying penis. Thanks.” We were like, “Nana… ” She wanted to live till, you know, 100. And she wanted to die in that house. ‘Cause Freddie built that house. And he died in a hospital. And she said, “I’m gonna die in the house he built and I’m gonna win.” I don’t know what she’s gonna win, but that was what she wanted. We’re like, “Nana, go to assisted living.” We didn’t understand how independent she wanted to be. “Go to assisted living, they’ll take care of you if you fall down.” She goes, “No, I don’t want to go somewhere” and just sit and stare at a wall all day and take drugs.” I go, “Oh, can I have that number? I would love to go to assisted living.” That sounds nice. I am very tired, Nana.” I mean, when I think about it, I’m like, “This is dumb.” I stand up for a job. Stupid. And I’m tired. I’ve been walking for 40 years, chewing my own food for 40 years. That sounds old, doesn’t it? If you go to a cemetery from the 1800s, everyone died at 13. If it was colonial times, I’d be like a god or something. Like, “Why won’t she stop living?” You know… it’s time to rest. I don’t want to die, I just want to rest. I would love to go to assisted living and have a Demerol drip in my hand and some pudding and some dorks from a high school come tap dance for me. I’m like, “Oh, wonderful! This is wonderful.” This is just like yesterday.” “What about your hopes and dreams, Jen?” “The tap-dancing children are wonderful.” But not my nana. Now, she believed in heaven, hell and purgatory. And she believed that Freddie, who wasn’t a great man as she said, was in purgatory. Heaven and hell, we know what that is. If you’re not an old-school Catholic, purgatory is where God puts you if he can’t decide if you’re good or bad. And after that, it’s like American Idol. You get voted out by prayers. People on Earth go, “God, please, let him up to heaven.” God’s like, “All right, I heard you.” The voices. And, you know, he lets you up. My nana said that the day Freddie died, and for 30 years, she heard a knocking on her wall every time she went to bed. She’d go, “I know that’s Freddie knocking on the wall every night.” I’m the one. One prayer left that can get him to heaven. “So every night, I just say, ‘Go to hell, Freddie!'” And that’s… that’s how she spent her time. And I’m proud of her in a weird way ’cause she did win. She died in that house at 99. She made it that old. Yeah. Not in her bed. In a black bra and no underwear on the kitchen floor. Not even Amy Winehouse died in such a fucked-up outfit. My grandma didn’t fall and hit her head, she wasn’t trying to get dressed. She was… hanging out. Everything was hung up, all her clothes were folded and hung and everything was put away. I think that’s what she wanted to wear that day. I really think, if you wake up and go, “I think I’m getting a cold,” you must know if you’re gonna die that day. You must be able to go, “I’m getting a death. I’m going to die today.” She goes to the drawer and she’s like, “Well, one last outfit.” Doing this for the last time.” Puts on the black bra and goes, “Ah, fuck it! Let ’em find me!” Let ’em wonder. I’m gonna mosey on into the kitchen, ’cause I like that nice cold linoleum. Because my genitals are 99 years old. And they are constantly sore. They’ve had gravity on them for 99 years. They feel constantly hung-over. I would like to put them right on the cold floor. And I’ve done everything I can do in this life, confined in this house. I’ve got one last wish, and don’t you judge me if this is how I want to go. If I want to drag my pussy across this floor, then that’s how I’m gonna do it.”
Thank you guys so much for coming. Thank you, North Door. This was a blast. Good night. Thank you again.
Hey, Jen. – Oh, hey! Sorry, do I… ? Have we… ? I don’t know you. No, no, you don’t, you don’t. No worries, I’m Jake. Oh, hey. Nice to meet you. I just wanted to say I really liked your bit about the young musician. – Oh, thank you. It’s true. – That was really funny. – I… I’m actually… I’m a drummer. – Oh, cool. And I’m… 21. I kind of have a thing for older women. Could I buy you a drink? No, no, no. Oh, my God, you’re so cute. No, I’m 40. And that was a one-time thing. And the joke is I don’t do that. But thank you. I get free drinks anyway. Thank you so much. – I’ll be around if you… – You’re so sweet. You’re cute. – Thank you. OK. Thank you. – That was a great set. Bye-bye, guys. – Jen? – Hi. Hi. We’re friends with your sister. We saw her post about the show on Facebook. – Cool. Thank you so much for coming. – We weren’t laughing. No. We didn’t find you funny at all. Those jokes about the wedding? Our wedding was fun. No, it’s about me. I have nothing against marriage. No, the thing is, you screwed up your marriage, but that doesn’t mean all married people are old fuddy-duddies. No, no, no. I have a couples’ dinner, and it’s my business. We can’t… She can’t have her face appearing on your show with laughing at those dirty jokes. The signs outside, that’s consent. You’re probably not gonna be in it because it’s not a show about the audience, to be honest, not to be rude. It’s a show about me. You’re not on… – Make sure we’re not on camera. – I can’t have that. How about I give you your money back? – No, we love supporting the arts. – No, I’ll support the arts. Here. Take your 20. Just take the… Take the money. We don’t want your money. Just take us off the camera! – I changed my mind about everything. – What? Yeah. Yeah, this is my boyfriend. – This is what I’m talking about. – Twenty years younger. I am not surprised. You little tramp. You little whore. – Little tramp? – Rude. – I changed my mind, buy me a drink. – That was crazy. Yeah, they’re insane. Do you wanna come back to my hotel? I hate being alone. Yeah, let’s do it.