Laughing in Hell

By Tarun Shetty

Somebody once told me, "When you become a comedian, you're not just choosing a profession. You're choosing a lifestyle." I should have listened harder.

My name is Jay Starr, and I'm a South Asian stand-up comic. I went to L.A. to pursue my comedy dreams but instead got twisted up in the world of Bollywood, meeting the love of my life and became a YouTube sensation known to the world as Tiger Rai.

Tiger was everything that I wanted to become. Confident, happy, SUCCESSFUL. I played the best comedy clubs, committed infidelity with the hottest girls, and even got my own TV show alongside my idol.

In Hollywood, everything is a fantasy. Even the lies I convinced everyone about how happy I was except the one person who always knew the truth - myself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543961997

Book preview

FOR MOM & DAD

©2019 Tarun Shetty. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-54396-198-0 ISBN eBook: 978-1-54396-199-7

CHAPTER 1: THE ICE AGE

CHAPTER 2: NEW YORK, NEW YORK

CHAPTER 3: ESCAPE

CHAPTER 4: L.A. BOUND

CHAPTER 5: INITIATION

CHAPTER 6: SHOWCASE NIGHT

CHAPTER 7: NAMASTE

CHAPTER 8: SEEMA

CHAPTER 9: THE COMEDY CAVE

CHAPTER 10: TIGER RAI

CHAPTER 11: BIRTH OF A STAR

CHAPTER 12: FIFTEEN MINUTES

CHAPTER 13: GETTING TO KNOW YOU

CHAPTER 14: AFTERMATH

CHAPTER 15: HOW TO MAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD

CHAPTER 16: ENTER THE NIGHT

CHAPTER 17: REBIRTH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1: THE ICE AGE

I was enveloped in darkness. I nervously clung to my pillow and carefully monitored the movement under the blanket. The blood in my brain had left to assist the lower half of my body, which was being violently seduced by an external force. I closed my eyes as my body flooded with a heightened state of ecstasy. This feeling of exhilaration was absent the first twenty-five years of my life. A muffled scream sounded from deep within the covers.

I told you to warn me!

A pretty brunette who I had just met a few hours before, popped her head up and ran to the sink. I pressed the pillow over my face. It was a remorseful gesture for the millions of potential newborns that were being gargled out with water in my bathroom sink. She returned and curled her warm body beside mine.

You wanna order Chinese? She asked.

I ran my fingers through her tangled hair and softly kissed her.

I gotta bounce. I have one more set tonight.

Somebody once told me that when you choose stand-up comedy as a profession, you choose a way of life. For better or worse, I still don’t know.

Back in the heyday of New York comedy, there were guys like Chris Rock, Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle. They could bounce from club to club, performing twenty-minute sets in front of packed crowds, ten or eleven times a night. Comedy was different if you were starting out as a new comedian in 2005.

Jay, take these flyers and initial them, Fred barked.

He was a crotchety old man whose age spots on his face matched his tattered-green sweater. Fred owned Uncle Freddie’s Comedy Grill. It wasn’t really a comedy club, but more like a back room filled with chairs, a lighted home-made stage and a microphone. I don’t know who started it, but Uncle Freddie’s utilized ‘barking’ to fill the room.

Barking - The act of standing on a New York street corner for an hour and wrangling strangers to watch a comedy show that starred comedians they never heard of.

I sat at the bar and put my initials on the back of a hundred multi-colored flyers. My job was to give them out in the street to passing tourists. It was the middle of February and people were more concerned about getting home and not getting frostbite rather than watching a comedy show. In exchange, Fred granted me and a roster of other no-name comedians six minutes of stage time. For most of us, it was a harsh introduction to show business.

It’s seventeen degrees outside. Can I please stand inside and seat people? I said.

That’s Arnie’s job, he shot right back at me.

Fred pointed to a bearded-Russian midget who stood by the comedy room’s entrance. Arnie emigrated to the U.S. ten years ago after being kicked out of the Russian circus in the 1980s. He couldn’t speak English well enough to communicate with people, yet he believed that making them laugh would be easier.

Arnie’s act consisted of yelling phrases in a thick Russian accent like, I come from shit of cow! and My wife is calling! She wants to fuck!

Audiences would stare in wonder, and it usually set the tone that the rest of the comedy show would be equally horrible.

I carefully wrapped my wool scarf around my neck and zipped up my down jacket. Stan waited for me in the hallway.

Mr. Starr.

This was his standard greeting for me. I met Stan at an open mike five years ago. He dropped out of a CUNY School of Law to pursue a stand-up comedy career. He was perceptive like most comedians and had a gift to view the world differently through a unique lens, but couldn’t do normal things like balance a checkbook, make a timely car payment, or even eat three balanced meals a day. Stan’s tuft of red hair stuck out from underneath his black knit cap. A stack of initialed multi-colored flyers bulged in his back pocket.

We stopped to pay homage to the framed black and white headshots, hanging on the wall. Comedians were frozen in time, their images used to cover the yellow stains and rotting wall. It was a comedy memorial – Wally Chupack, Sal Leibwitz, Michelle Garcia – comedians who started their careers in this very same spot and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

I scanned down the row of pictures and locked onto Adrian Mitchell, a blue-eyed, blond young man flashing a peace sign while straddling a wooden chair. He was my best friend and one of the first barkers at Uncle Freddie’s. He left for L.A. four months ago. Comics spoke of him much like college literature teachers spoke of Davy Crockett. He worked the streets like us, moved to the left coast and recently performed a five-minute routine on The Late Show with Lenny Gimbal, a late-night comedy show.

What garbage, Stan muttered.

No other words were exchanged. We stuffed our hands into our coat pockets and braced for the arctic temperatures outside. We walked down 46th street and saw what looked like a hold-up in progress but turned out to be another comedian who had somehow gotten a shivering family to stop and examine his orange comedy flyer.

… Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Carrot Top. They will all be performing tonight only!

Lies, lies and more lies. Nobody wanted to see us perform so we conned people. This is New York City for crissakes. People are willing to pay 22 bucks for a dried-out hamburger at Applebee’s and fork over $50 for a hoodie with the NBC logo and then trot over to an amateur comedy show. It was all the same. Tourists wanted to pay for bullshit and have exciting made-up stories for their friends back home in Bumblefuck, Alabama or wherever they came from. Up-and-coming comedians were like second-rate vampires. But instead of blood, we needed laughs to grow as artists in hopes of one day playing a real club.

I took my standard corner on 45th and Broadway, by the Viacom building. I liked this spot. It was next to a trash can that reeked of garbage and urine, but there was a small opening underneath the curb. When a subway passed, a spurt of hot air would shoot up through the gap and momentarily warm my face.

After two years of doing this job, you would think that I would be good at barking