Stud Puppets

Marc Geary wasn’t doing bits when he called to ask if I would be a backup dancer for Judy Tenuta at the Chicago Comedy Festival. He was presenting me the best opportunity I’d heard in my career as a stand up comedian. I was off to a rough start.

I was a recent film school graduate and had all the direction and purpose as a receipt for gum. I started doing stand up with the contorted notion that it would legitimize my lack of employment. When people asked what I was doing, it was much easier to say “stand up comedy” than “trolling for bar trash on fistfulls of Riddlin.”

The only problem was that I didn’t want to do “joke” jokes, and worse, I didn’t think I had to. I’d just go on and be Richard Pryor: cool and black and so natural that I could just talk and be outrageously funny.

This landed like a five minute cry for help. I told my best stories, wildman tales from a life on the fringe. Where I hoped for laughs, I garnered genuine concern for my well being. They could have heckled, but instead people pulled me aside and gave me hotline numbers.

I tried to write jokes, but I couldn’t crack it and that made me feel worse. So I did what many floundering extroverts do: I incorporated dance.

It’s an easy enough thing to do in a stand up set. They play you on with music, and you holler back to the booth, “Let it roll!” and just dance for as long as you can.

It was boobish, for sure, I won’t sell myself short. I’d elected dance over gym in high school, so I had years of tap and modern under my belt. In college, I received a pot-fueled A in Advanced Dance Composition, so I like to think I knew how to build a compelling routine.

It began I was just getting into the music, some basic head nodding and looking around. ‘Wow! Nice groove!’ Then I’d do some head and shoulder isolations, soon the arms were involved and I’d throw in a dramatic turn or a jump-back before I journeyed into full body pop-locking.

It worked. I was high-energy, spontaneous and fun. The audience was on my side. Then they’d cut the music and I’d have to start talking and in crept the tide of disappointment.

So this is why Marc Geary had asked me to dance behind Judy Tenuta. He’d seen me go up at the point in my comedy career where I was too proud to give up, but too lousy to get laughs. By all rights, I shouldn’t have been allowed within 300 feet of the Chicago Comedy Festival, but my desperate flailings found me a backdoor. I was going up with one of the headlining comics, a legend. I had died a hundred deaths for a reason. I was legit.

Tenuta wanted two dancers, and Mark Geary was leaving it to me to find the second. The only person to come to mind was my friend Tony Delio.

Obviously, I wasn’t picking Delio for his dance ability. Tony has all the physical grace of a wounded hobo. I needed him with me in this because Tony was unstoppably funny. The best stand up to never take the stage. The man had a vasectomy at age 25, and when he told me about it, he kept me in stitches for months with great bits about his swollen balls and slamming the door on the faces of ex-lovers holding “Tony Jr.” It was so funny that I forgot to ask any of the serious questions you need to ask your 25 year old friend who’s just sterilized himself.

When I invited him to join me in the Tenuta enterprise, he launched into her classic bits, and it suddenly occurred to me that I’d agreed to do this before I’d accurately remembered who Judy Tenuta was. All Tony had to say was “OOOoooo Judy Judy Judy...” and her act, fairly big in the early 90s, came flooding back. The accordion, “the Love Goddess,” “Men are piiiggs.”

In my excitement to be a part of the Chicago Comedy Festival, I’d neglected to understand what it was I’d agreed to do. This was pretty schtick-y stuff with a mostly gay following. Tony was understandably reluctant.

“You know that her “stud puppets” (and that is what she calls them) are all geeked out on steroids and do a techno (mm tt mm tt mm tt mm tt) thing with no shirts on...”

“Uh, maybe, but it’s guaranteed ridiculous.”

Performance didn’t interest Tony, but public spectacle held certain allure. I remember getting call from Tony on Thanksgiving, well after the meal. His family’s traditional feast had proven insufficient, and he needed a ride to White Castle. About 16 sliders deep into his sack of 30, a bottle of red wine between his legs, Delio was dripping sweat, so he removed his shirt. He made vicious protest as we were escorted out, and devoured the remaining burgers in view of the drive-through window before vomiting all over the sidewalk.

For dancing behind Tenuta, I promised beer (knowing he’d bring his own whisky). Thank God. He was in.

We met at Kmart to buy our costumes, which we found in the Boys Section: a tiny, matching shirt and shorts set priced at $4.99. Green with grey trim, the outfit had a vaguely athletic feel, appropriate maybe for a few T-ball games before it fell apart in the washing machine.

A Boys size 8 is a tough fit for anyone over 65 pounds. Slender and large of head, I came out looking like a Billy Babbitt-esque man-child, a tragedy kept in the attic by his parents.

Delio, however, enjoyed a daily cheeseburger with gyros meat, ranch dressing and a side of five beers. There was plenty of Tony. It took both of us to shoehorn him into the outfit. The thin cotton gave everything away. He was all man-tits and flying squirrel.

“Are we doin this?” he asked. It was a fair question and I owed him real conviction.

“We’re doin it.”

The night of the show, we arrived two hours before curtain. Judy and her manager were talking through the opening. He face lit up when she saw us.

“Stud pickles! This is going to be so much fun! The show’s called “2001: A Love Goddesssy. Get up here, we’ll walk you through it.”

Tony grabbed my arm. “Alright,” he said, “I got us here. You’re going to get us through it.”

Dread quickly consumed me. Tony and I were not a dance team. We mostly smoked grass and played pinball together. I had no idea what we were going to do. The song started. I made the moves simple and called them out as we went. “March, arm up, palms out, elbows bent. Drop to floor and steamroller...”

Her manager watched us in appropriate horror. We weren’t buff. We weren’t gay. We were uncouth flotsam that somehow washed up on his dirty stage.

Along with dancing behind a few songs, we were to flutter some sashes around Judy during a fashion show bit, lead some staccato clapping, and set-place a prop sheep. There was a long debate when the sheep should come out. It didn’t seem to go with any specific bit. It was just a prop sheep.

When we were done, we were thanked and handed to a stage manager who took us down to a dark, tiny room that smelled of venereal disease.

We wrenched ourselves into our costumes and sucked down beers as fast as we could. Judy’s manager peeked his head in, the first to lay eyes on us in the excruciating get-up.

“Woah!” he said. Then, sadly, “Mmmm.”

He was holding two extra-large “Love Goddess” t-shirts, our only compensation for this shitfire. The look on the guy’s face made it clear to all who saw it that still, it was he who was getting the raw deal.

The theater was packed, 900 people according to the stage manager. From the wings, their faces made a dim ocean, a mass alive.

The opener was crushing. I’d never stood in front of any audience and heard such laughter, let alone one this size. The material was sharp, everything was working. It was beautiful. This was the kind of stand up I wanted to be, but wasn’t.

Instead, I was a man so off the mark that his stand up comedy act was mostly dance, a man about to take the stage in clothing made by and for a nine year old Chinese kid.

I looked over at Tony, my only ally in this mess. He resembled an exploded bratwerst, coming out of his costume in places where there were no holes. He was standing right behind the stage manager, urinating into a trash can, smiling and looking right at me.

As I clamped down on my penis to avoid wetting my pants, I realized that at long last I was free. After tonight, I could walk away clean.

The opening strains of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” began, announcing the dawn of the Love Goddessy. We staggered dramatically from the wings while Judy rode through the smoke on a riser. People went wild as she came out, and her first few jokes landed sound. She turned and saw us in our costumes and didn’t miss a beat. She winked at me before turning to the crowd. “Come on, stud puppets! Dance for the Loooove Goddess!”

The beat picked up and our barely rehearsed dances quickly devolved into rolling around on the floor and striking bizarre poses. I don’t know what the audience made of us, it was tough to tell and I really didn’t care. On that stage, between Tony and I, we got the all the laughs I’d ever need.