The Honeycomb Hideout

I once spent thirteen and a half months hiding out in a gay bar. Now, despite my six-foot frame and the fact that I bought myself “The Perfect Push-Up” for my birthday, I am straight. Sorry ladies, but it took me forty years to figure out how my vagina works, I don’t have time to be messing with yours.

Okay, why would a hetero woman spend over a year of her life in a bar for homosexuals? Well, if you think it’s because that community is accepting and there’s no judgment there, then apparently you’ve never hung out with gay men. There’s nothing but. That’s why it’s so fun. A gay man doesn’t need to know at whom or why you’re mad. They just need to know you are, and then, let the good times roll.

I’m not exactly sure what I was hiding from really, but there I’d sit night after night, a dirty martini in one hand, invisible cigarette in the other, taking to the transvestite next to me. “I’ll tell you the problem with comedy,” I’d say, followed by, “The people who book The Tonight Show can kiss my ass.” Then I’d blow fake cigarette smoke in her overly made-up, pre-op face.

“Fuck ’em, honey,” she’d say politely before grabbing her pony of Budweiser and heading for the men’s room.

Exactly. Fuck them.

I felt like a woman scorned. As if I’d put stand-up through medical school and it had left me  for some open-mic chick.

I’ve spent my life busting my hump on the road. I’ve given up everything for comedy. I’ve never owned a refrigerator or had a kid. And who knows how many times I could have been married.

I don’t know, perhaps the bald young lady with the skull and crossbones tattooed on her forehead was right. Maybe I just need up lighten up a little.

Looking back, I realize that my time spent in that bar wasn’t a total waste. Because with each passing day, the transvestite I was talking about, began to look and dress more and more like me until she was my doppelganger. The lesson I learned is this…when a man who is becoming a woman chooses to emulate you, it makes you remember that you are truly fabulous.