——

“Im going to miss Chicago.”

“Running around all over the city. Taking the train. Running from one mic to the next. Getting drunk and having sex with random people.” Sam looked out the window. He had a distant sadness to him. Like that of someone who had come to terms with a recent death.

Driving back into Mexico City, we were somewhere at the point where trains began their network into the city. It was still suburban sprawl, but the rail lines had started their crawl so we knew we weren’t far. It was dusk, the light had drained from the sky and the glow of the platform whizzed by us as we sped down the highway. This glowing racing view produced a melancholy that matched Sam’s reminescence. This pretty day we shared was also racing to the past, destined to live the rest of its days only in our memories just as our old comedy scene. In the pandemic, the vast network that connected us prior had been snatched away.

It was a racetrack, the circuit. Everyone participated in it differently but it was the common thread. I would finish my job in the dense energy of the loop and figure out which mics I wanted to hit before going home. Sometimes several, sometimes none. But when I did there would be a hodgepodge of familiar faces. I would find my corner of friends or I’d sit alone. Maybe order a beer and then hawk for the list. As we sat around, we traded jabs and jokes waiting for our turn on the stage. Sometimes it was a hang mic, the room was okay for jokes but it was a comfortable time. The host ran it like it was their living room. Sometimes it was a productive mic, where there was somewhat of a crowd and you weren’t yelling the same half-baked joke to the same half-attentive comics. Regardless of the quality, it felt like you were in pursuit of something together.

We saw each other bomb, and kill, and grow. We did the same jokes for each other in dingy bars where no one was particularly interested in our comedy. When you watch someone tell a joke dozens of times, you begin to see the person underneath. It’s similar to repeating the same word until the meaning sloughs away. No longer tied to an idea, you instead hear purely the sound underneath. You see them when theyre confident and the joke hits. You see them when the stakes are high, or when they don’t believe in themselves. After we performed we’d run off to another mic, another stage, and another set of faces to play with. A new set of faces that could help us understand our idea as we uncovered what made us laugh at the world.