I've been thinking about trying out standup, but I don't think I have the body for comedy. I'm a firefighter and I look like a firefighter. Not the stereotypical Mister October made-for-tv firefighter, but like an actual firefighter. Like a 49-year-old, twenty-years-on-the-job firefighter who's losing his hair and taking supplemental testosterone. I look like I can probably still deadlift 450 pounds, but I'm just as likely to eat a whole box of thin mints.
In a time when a lot of people are exploring the mismatch between the person they, internally, know themselves to be, and the physical presentation that they manifest on the outside, I can fully understand what it feels like to be uncomfortable in your own skin. I’m comfortable in my gender presentation and I'm confident in my sexuality, but there's still something that doesn't seem to fit with me. I'm a straight, white, cis-gendered, middle class, heterosexual, American dad. I'm a fireman, a paramedic, and a small business owner. I'm a pretty good carpenter and a damn good welder. And all those things, taken together, conjure a whole host of other images - most of which I don't feel myself to be at all. I'm also an artist and a musician. I can recite Emily Dickinson poetry from memory. I can play the drums and the banjo, and I don't give a shit about football or capitalism, really. I don't drive a pickup. I've never owned a boat. I don't have any white shoes or a belt clip for my phone. And it I’m writing a book about my experiences. So, part of me feels like I ended up in the wrong body.
I wanted to be thin and angular, like David Bowie or Marcel Duchamp. I wanted fingers like prayer candles not these Irish, potato, digging-in-the-dirt fingers. I wanted to appear thoughtful. And if that didn't work, maybe I could at least be funny. But you've got to play the hand you are dealt. I did a little standup routine a few years ago in a local bar, and someone called me the "creepy Tampa Henry Rollins". The Henry Rollins comparison was the part that bothered me the most.
I look this way partially because of genetics, partially because of the job that I do, and partially because I grew up in the eighties with an older stepbrother who wore tight jeans and kept a pistol in his back pocket. He worked as a crane operator before he joined the Marine Corps. He rode a motorcycle that he made us all refer to formally as "Mr. Bike". Eight-year-old me wanted to be just like him, and I guess a small part of me still does. I wanted to dress like him, to feather my hair like him. I wanted to smoke Camels and refer to Charlotte, North Carolina as "North Clit".
He and I don't share any blood. I've never shot a deer. I've never owned a Jeep or even a pair of cowboy boots, and he's all Jeeps and boots and deer killing. He's been a cop now for longer than I've been a fireman, and despite what a lot of people think, those things are opposites too. For all the ways that I'm nothing like him, and despite the lack of any blood relation, I'm built just like him. And it's not a body for comedy. It's a body for law enforcement and coaching football.
When was the last time someone got funnier AFTER they got muscles? Joe Piscapo? Carrot Top? Ricky Gervais? Joe Rogan? Dave Chappelle? Muscles are the death of comedy. Imagine if Woody Allen looked vaguely threatening - and not just in a sexual predator kind of way. Who wants to be entertained by someone who reminds them of their oppressor?
Straight. White. Cis-gendered. Middle-class. Heterosexual. American. Dad.
Threat. Threat. Threat. Threat. Threat. Threat. Threat.
How funny can that combination be? A little bit of menace can add some edge to any performer, but there’s definitely a limit. Nobody wants to dance when the cops are in the club.
I think I've always felt this way. Even as a fourteen-year-old suburban punk rocker, I always felt like I looked like a cop who used to be a crane operator. Everybody else always had more flair than me. Their looks ran deep and seemed effortless - like every surface had another perfectly weathered surface underneath. And all of it fitting together into one cohesive unit that looked like they were just born that way. If I ever did anything to add a little bling to my own ensemble, it just highlighted how plain the rest of it was. I know people who can walk around town in a fedora with a giant feather sticking out of it, and nobody will say the first thing to them about it. Not me. Every single person I passed on the street would just smirk and say, “nice hat (dipshit)”. And if I decided to push the issue, I’d just be That Guy Who Always Wears The Stupid Hat. My vibe has always been more Village People than Sex Pistols so, I stopped trying to accessorize early on. I’ve never gotten a single tattoo, and that’s saying a lot for a Gen-X firefighter who’s played in punk bands. I told myself that being an incognito weirdo was better anyhow. I learned early on that it's hard to be a criminal in a flashy car. Better to blend into the background. Keep all your weirdo ideas hidden under a thin veneer of normalcy.
These days I joke with my wife that she's the only reason people recognize me at all. There's me with my whole jeans-and-a-t-shirt, medium height, white guy thing going on. No tattoos. No distinctive scars or tics. Not even a piercing, or a birthmark. And then there's her - a Black Trinidadian woman, gorgeous, with dreadlocks to her waist and a slight accent. I've seen it happen a thousand times. I walk into a room ahead of her and there's not even the faintest hint of recognition on anyone's face. They've seen thousands of me. Millions. And I get it. I don't really want to see another one of me either. But then they see her, and their faces light up. And in seeing her, suddenly, they see me. I'm with her.
She doesn’t like it when I point this out, I’m sure because she feels like I’m exoticizing her when what I’m trying to do is show how nobody gives a shit about me. It’s tough. Everyone sees everything from their own frame of reference and her life experience has largely been one of being the one thing that is not like the others, whereas mine has been the opposite. I am all the others. And there is probably as much power to be had in anonymity as there is to be had in recognizability.
I'll take it. The downside is that nobody remembers that I've actually been around here for a long time. I've lived in this same town now for almost fifty years. And I've done a lot of different things here, but there's often not a lot of crossover between them. There are plenty of firefighters I've known for twenty years who don't know that I play the drums or make large kinetic sculptures. And there are plenty of musicians and artists who don't know that I'm a twenty-year veteran of the fire department. I’m the perpetual rookie, the younger brother. There’s a lot to be said for that in terms of keeping yourself humble, but the ensuing imposter syndrome can be difficult to overcome when you need to convince yourself or others that you are, in fact, qualified for the job. I’ve largely settled on showing people rather than telling them, but that’s easier in some respects than it is in others. As a fire Captain, my experience and authority is immediately recognizable. I step out of the Captain’s seat on the truck, and I’m the one with the white helmet. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. What’s interesting to me is that whatever small amount of authority comes from me being in uniform changes the way that I interact with people on every level. I’m no longer the rookie or the guy I assume nobody wants to talk to. The uniform is a calling card that says “You’re safe with me”. I find myself entering easily into conversations with strangers on even the most sensitive of subjects. I can be thoughtful and vulnerable and sensitive. But I can also be funny and irreverent and self-deprecating. And the more I enjoy the privileges of the instant familiarity that my uniform brings, the more I wonder if that wasn’t, at least partially, what I was after all along. But it would be weird for me to wear a white helmet up on stage for an open mic in a bar.