I Was Not Funny Enough

I
Stand-up comedy often attracts broken people. Broken people have the most material for jokes. Comedy = tragedy + time.

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My favorite place to perform in New York City was a venue called the Klimat Lounge (77 East 7th Street), which is now closed. It was a Polish bar with a comedy room downstairs. You always walked in through a curtain, and as soon as that curtain draped off your face, you were greeted with the smell of pierogies and $5 beer. Fitting for a Polish bar, everyone in there was miserable in a very European way (which is actually cheerful-looking to most Americans).
The conversations in the air usually contained dissatisfaction with work, dissatisfaction with sex, and were steeped in a very culturally millennial misery. Well, that was the case for the younger crowd anyway. The older people who were genuinely Polish or Eastern European in accent, outlook, and heritage usually sat in a corner and drank alone.

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I fit in strangely well in the basement of those open mics. I was raised American, but I was born in Ukraine, lived there for the first five years in my life, and grew up in a Russian-speaking home. So performing in a depressing Polish bar in the Ukrainian Village made sense for someone like me.

Many aspiring comedians were trying to get into the clubs. Since the open mics at Klimat were popular enough, the comics who were getting passed at Broadway Comedy Club or New York Comedy Club usually went there to brag.

But I was caught in a weird world where I was considered one of the funnier comedians at Klimat, but was not professionally funny enough to get into the clubs. So, true to my nature, I was already considered somewhat of a cult comic in the making. Eventually I earned the reputation as the guy who performs comedy for himself, because I refused to compromise my voice for the crowds.

 

II

Anyone in their twenties has a certain perception of themselves and what their lives might lead to. In the ten years that I did comedy, I genuinely thought that I was pursuing a career. Of course, I had to face the dark truth about myself eventually: my temperament was better suited for writing. It wasn’t just because my humor translated better to the page. I simply did not enjoy performing in front of people the way most comedians should.

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The friendships I developed in Klimat, however, were fundamental for my growth. Mostly because, like me, these people were not made to do comedy. They were caught in a transitional phase in life the way I was—that early-to-mid-twenties phase where they weren’t sure if they should focus on their day jobs, go to graduate school, or find a rich woman or rich man to marry.

What fascinated me the most were the comedians I met who were middle-aged. Some of them had successful careers, even families. But they still felt like something was missing in their lives. They found comedy as a second home, a second family, an alternative life that they never had when they were younger.

 

III

Some people do comedy hoping for a career. But comedy rarely becomes a career. It’s a strange self-discovery journey, one that often involves squirming and struggling and posturing uncomfortably on a stage in front of both audiences who are strangers and comics who know you too well. It’s a no man’s land. Sure, if you get into the clubs, it becomes a career (sort of). But when you’re doing comedy in the basement of a Polish bar, you may as well be gesturing in the dark.

Real careers require suits. Real careers require professionalism. And real careers often obfuscate your true, awkward, uncomfortable self—whereas nothing illuminates it in its plain ugliness the way open mic comedy does.

 

Dmitriy Kogan is a fiction writer based in NYC. He’s currently seeking representation for his first short story collection, Stories 1.

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