So, here’s the thing with Jill. She’s been my best friend for about twenty years. I love and want to kill her more than anyone on the planet. Not including myself, of course. Well, of course.

We met on the road doing stand-up in the early nineties…I think.

I wish I couldn’t remember because the road was so crazy with partying and stuff. But if I’m going to be honest, I’ll have to say I don’t remember how long ago we met because I’m not good at math.

The first time I saw Jill was when I opened for her at The Punchline in Houston, Texas. It was a comedy club in the lounge of some hotel in Houston, Texas. Did I already say Houston, Texas?

It was a club just like they all were back during the comedy boom. Fake brick wall. Three people in the “crowd.” It was awesome. I think I made fifty dollars for the week. Sorry if it seems like I’m bragging.

Anyway, I remember she went on stage after seeing my act for the first time and said, “If you liked Becky or you didn’t, get ready because you’re going to feel the same way for the next forty-five minutes.”

In other words (not that I really need other words), we’re basically the same person with the same sense of humor.

Wow. I know. She is so lucky.

We’ve been through it all. Jill is the first person I call when I fall in love or get arrested. She’s the friend that if I walked up to her in a bar and said, ” You need to come with me right now because we’re going to kick somebody’s ass.”  She wouldn’t ask why. She’d just politely excuse herself from the table and go help me kick somebody’s ass.

Oh my heavens, we wouldn’t actually do that because we were not raised that way, thank you very much. But you know what I mean. Jill is that friend.

One weekend she was staying at my house, and we were talking about my breakup from my boyfriend of fourteen years. She was there from the beginning. I think she was more heartbroken over it than I was. Our relationship had been the one that she held all others up to. Yeah, sorry ’bout that.

So we were having drinks, and I was trying to console her with the typical reassurances: ” You’ll be okay. These things happen. I’ll find someone else.”

“But you guys seemed so perfect together.”  She said between sighs and sips of a dirty martini.

Well, obviously no relationship is perfect, but telling her that seemed like a lame way of getting the point across. So instead, I thought I’d tell an awkward story about our sex life that would make me seem great and him seem like a judgmental jerk. Then she would feel better about the breakup and we could just make fun of him all night.

Now, either I’m a bad storyteller (really?) or she just wasn’t paying attention (more likely), and somehow our wires got crossed along the way. This is how our conversation went:

I said, “So one time we were in New York and I was ‘downtown.’ ”

Now first let me clarify that by “downtown” I meant his “nether regions.”

Also, let me clarify that I’m euphemistic and put things in quotation marks whenever I’m talking about anything sexual. It makes me feel less like a whore.

So I said, “We were in New York and I was ‘downtown.’ ”

And she asked, ” Why were you downtown? Were you working?”

I said, “Well, I was sure trying.”

(Pregnant pause.)

“What?” she asked.

Jill didn’t realize, like you and I do, that I meant his downtown. Because of course, she wasn’t listening.

I said, “I was ‘DOWNTOWN!'”

(Pregnant-er pause.)

“Huh? Ohhhh!”

She and I both started laughing.

And she added, ” Why didn’t you just say that? So what was New York a euphemism for?”

As I thought,  Come on Jill, please don’t use “euphemism” just because I used it earlier. I said, “Uhhhhh….it was a euphemism for New York.”

Then she added, “Well, why’d you have to mention New York?”

“Because we were in New York!” I screamed.

Which made us start laughing again until she was wheezing and I thought I would wet my pants.

” Too bad I wasted fourteen years with that guy. Think of all the ‘downtowns’ I could have visited on the road.” I said.

“I know, ” she agreed. ” Becky’s Urban Renewal Plan.”

I said. ” I really regret not visiting ‘downtown Buffalo.'”

The giggling and wheezing went on into the night. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when two nice Texas girls try and have an adult conversation about a blowjob.