I'm the One That I Want (11 page)

A small crowd gathered around a threesome, a woman, a man, and a transvestite. The woman and the transvestite wore matching blue corsets, and the man was in a leather codpiece. The woman was suspended in a leather hammock and she was lying with her back against the man. She leaned her head back and looked deeply into his eyes while being vaginally fisted by the transvestite. The whole picture was quite romantic. There seemed to be so much affection between those three, and even though they were being watched by many, it still seemed intensely private, and completely beautiful. I must be pretty jaded, when seeing something like that makes me go “Awww . . . ,” but it was something that made me understand that love is everywhere, and takes many unexpected forms. Any kind of love is fine, it’s your hate you have to watch.

The party was well under way, and I noticed the woman who had been the victim of the rape scene at the beginning of the evening was now walking around collecting cups and paper plates. Later, she was fast asleep in a dark corner, snoring like she was sawing logs.

I ran into a drag queen acquaintance of mine named Nigel, and he strapped me to one of the crosses and put a scouring pad on my leg, but it was just funny, not sexy.

It’s odd, but I always get recognized at the most inconvenient times. We went into the dungeon area, where there were people in cages, and one girl who was behind bars and tied up hopped over and said, “Hey! Aren’t you Margaret Cho?” I was excited, because it was early enough in my career that being recognized still felt like an accomplishment. But at the same time, it was kind of weird considering where we were. Besides, she was hog-tied!

Suddenly it was late, and I was one of the last people to leave the party. I had had a great time and was looking forward to the next one. San Francisco is such a great place for sexual exploration. There are so many things to do, so many closets to come out of. It’s not just a gay-straight-bi question. It really is multiple choice. The attitude is so playful and friendly, more like a sexy theme park than perversion.

I didn’t get another opportunity to go to a sex party for many years. My career started to move and I was scared that these forays into alternative sexuality would somehow catch up with me. That was such a stupid idea, especially because I was talking about it on stage.

Much later in my career, when I was in the middle of
All-American
Girl
, the tabloids went and took a picture of Stormy Leather’s signage and told idiot readers that I had worked in a “steamy sex job,” but they never explained what it was.

After my TV show was over, and I was spending a lot of time drinking and doing drugs and playing comedy clubs, I went to see a friend of mine perform in a production put on by the Til Eugelspiegel Society, New York’s oldest SM organization. The theater wasn’t opened up yet when I got there, so quite a few people were milling about in the lobby. I sat down on a hard bench, and soon an older woman dressed in a leather corset and very high heels teetered over to me and bent over. She got uncomfortably close to me, and I wanted to move, but I didn’t want to be rude. Her lover, a gruff mature man wearing a menacing-looking bullwhip on his hip, snapped a wooden cane over the woman’s rear, just barely missing my face.

I decided to move. Obviously they didn’t care about my feelings, so why should I worry about theirs?

The theater finally opened, and we all filed in. The audience was instructed to stand in a circle and the performers walked into the center. There was a rather large assortment of characters, almost as many as were watching. There were women wearing large head-dresses made of tree branches. A man and a woman, both naked, stood with their long hair woven together so they were hair Siamese twins attached at the braid. There was some chanting, and then some holding of hands and walking in a circle, and then all hell broke loose. The inner circle began to attack the outer circle. A bald man who looked just like Anthony Edwards dressed in a diaper grabbed me and demanded to see my underwear. I was so scared but didn’t want to appear to be, so I remained as calm as I could, even though my period had spontaneously started and the exit sign was nowhere to be found.

I bled and bled and ran away from the
ER
diaper man. The emcee, a tall, striking-looking man in a top hat and fishnet tights, emerged from the crowd. He started to make loud demands on the inner circle. “I want a cowardly man! Bring unto me a lily-livered coward.” A nerdy guy clutching a Tower Records bag was snatched up by a girl with antlers and brought to the center of the room.

“Bring me a pair of young lovers!” My two friends from the lobby were thrown into the center of the room. I bled and bled, but things started to get fun. It was kind of hilarious, all of this posturing, this pagan ritual with a bunch of art students, career nerds, and bridge-and-tunnel swingers. I pulled away slightly from the circles and leaned against the wall.

Suddenly, the emcee screamed, “Bring me a fat woman! I want a fat woman now!!!!!”

It was as if everything stopped, and the entire room turned to face me.

“Who—me? No no no no!!!”

The
ER
diaper man grabbed me and dragged me over to the emcee, who was wearing a lipstick smile from ear to ear. I was horrified, and bleeding harder than ever and yelling, “But I’m not fat! Hey!!! I am not fat!!!!!”

The emcee tossed his head back and cackled like a scary witch. “No. She’s not fat. Just a little bit chubby!” With that he grabbed a handful of my stomach and shook it. I would have started crying, but the lights suddenly came up, and all the players 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?”

9

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 exactly where you should be, and there is nothing better. Comedy is a rare gift from the gods, an awesome invention. It propels you right into the heart of the universe.

No wonder all the great comedians had such destructive private lives. Lenny Bruce had to shoot up, Richard Pryor had to freebase. Sam Kinison was just as abusive towards himself as he was to the crowd. After you get the audience into that kind of frenzy, and you are being worshiped like the false idol you are, how do you leave the stage and transition back into real life? How can you just come down? How can you ease back into mortality? What will you do for an encore? What is there left to do but set yourself on fire?

I went home. I left my old acquaintance Paul and thought about what a little girl I used to be onstage, and how I grew up there. I remembered how I wore long black gloves with little red bows on them. I remembered the times I tried and failed and bombed so very bad. I remembered how I tried to sleep in the barren and desolate motel rooms after. I remembered how my face would burn when I was up onstage, working hard but hardly working. I remembered what I wanted to be when I grew up, and realized I had become just that.

Most comedians say that the best thing that you can hope for as a comic is to have your own sitcom. This is the top. This means you have “made it.” It is supposedly what we all aspire to. I guess this was what I wanted, too, but I never really thought about the work that it would entail. I believed being rich and famous would somehow take care of all that for me.

I thought that I would innately know what to do, and even if I didn’t, I’d have many shrewd advisers. I pictured myself sitting on the set, in a crisp white shirt and a black leotard, straddling my folding chair, and barking out orders to yes-men as I dragged deeply on a Chesterfield. I’d spend my nights getting to parties late, and drag my faux fur across the floors of crowded rooms. I’d throw my head back when I laughed, have orgasms from intercourse, win Emmys and deliver acceptance speeches while prettily holding back tears. I’d receive diamond necklaces from millionaire suitors and give them to my friends, like Madonna in that video. I’d enjoy being a girl and ultimately become the beautiful swan I knew I was inside.

Not having a clear vision of what I wanted from this business, aside from these fantasies of the glamorous life (“Hills that is, swimming pools, movie stars . . .”), I just started saying I wanted what everyone else wanted. Looking back, I realize this was my biggest mistake.

We must know who we are, so we can know what we want, so we don’t end up wanting the wrong thing and get it and realize we don’t want it, because by then it is too late. We are powerful enough that we can manifest anything into our lives. To use this power with great care and love is the secret to living a happy life. I wish I had known this then.

I moved to Hollywood around the time when stand-up comics were being sought out for sitcoms. The successes of Seinfeld and Roseanne paved the way for many would-be stars like me. For a few years I had been working on the road and accumulating television credits here and there. My
Evening at the Improv
and MTV credentials got me a tiny bit of notice. I even got to be on
Star Search
.

It wasn’t regular
Star Search
, it was
Star Search International
, this ghetto version of the show where they would put all the performers that were foreigners, or at the very least, not white. The prize money was significantly reduced, and you got to compete in only one round. The comic from India got a booking and had to be replaced by some guy from Canada, which I thought was really pushing the “foreign” angle. I was representing Korea! This was ridiculous because I was born here and I am probably more American than most people. The talent coordinator for the show knew this, and actually asked me if I could make my act more “authentic.”

“Could you be more, oh I don’t know,
Chinese
?”

“I’m Korean.”

“Whatever.”

What was I supposed to say?