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    She’ll never admit it, but I believe that my Catholic-but-starstruck mom gives a free pass to people in Hollywood on certain moral issues. The affair between JFK and Marilyn Monroe was blessed by my mom in ways that Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton’s affair wasn’t—and they only had oral/cigar sex!But Bill Clinton’s saxophone-playing appearance on Arsenio Hall was not enough for my mother to consider him Hollywood royalty. My mom doesn’tcondone abusing prescription drugs, but to her, Judy Garland is a saint and a victim. She’ll forever blame the movie studios for handing Judy the pills. And I remember when her best friend called to say that John Lennon had been shot—my mom said over thephone, “Oh Ruthie. It’s just not fair. A Beatle shouldn’t be allowed to die.”
    As long as my mom and I were having a heart-to-heart, I summoned up the rest of my gumption and told her that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. I knew I was killing her dream of my owning my own little local dance studio or becoming a Broadway actress. Her response was, “Are you even funny? You are very dramatic,Jennifah.” I reminded her of how I’d always wanted to be voted class clown in the Pollard Middle School yearbook. (By the way, “class clown” seemed to be the moniker given to the most humorless and bullying jocks. What class clown really means is “most popular”; the kids who grow up to be truly funny are shoved into lockers.)
    AGAINST MY MOM’S wishes, I continued the pursuit of stand-up comedy,but I did live in my childhood bedroom, with no male visitors, like a good, celibate twenty-two-year-old girl. Every night I clicked and clacked on the Kirkman family word processor, attempting to write jokes.
    One of my first jokes was about Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign from the 1980s. I have no idea why that was still on my mind in the 1990s. The joke was horrible. It wasn’t even ajoke. It wasn’t even a complete thought. It went something like this: “Nancy Reagan says to ‘just say no’—well, I say that’s not realistic. I think you should ‘just say maybe,’ and then try to walk away from the drugs. It doesn’t make you look like a dork who says no. It just looks like you have something else to do.”
    I thought that joke would immediately cement me in the pantheon of great edgypolitical comedians who also comment on the sociology of humanity—like Richard Pryor or George Carlin. I started to read it to my mom and she just looked at me. She put herhead in her hands, much like that gay hairdresser who’d had to shave my head. “Oh, Jennifah. That just isn’t funny.” I rolled my eyes and said, “Mom, you just don’t get it.” I stormed out of the house and got in the trustywhite Oldsmobile and struck out for Cambridge, Massachusetts, and my first open mic in the back of a bar at the Green Street Grill. I was headed for my Brenda Walsh moment.
    I swilled a few cheap glasses of merlot before I sat down on the stool onstage at the open mic. I drew a breath and got ready to tell my Nancy Reagan joke. I looked out at a bunch of people my age, waiting expectantly, actuallylistening before I’d even said anything. I could hear my mom’s voice: “Jennifah, that just isn’t funny.” I made myself laugh as I thought about my poor mom sitting in her recliner, tens of thousands of dollars poorer because she’d spent her life buying food, faux designer clothes, and cassette tapes for my two sisters and me, and this was how I was repaying her.
    It made me laugh out loud. SoI skipped my Nancy Reagan joke and I just told the audience that I was a college graduate who lived with my parents and my mother did not think I was funny. And then I started to impersonate my mom. I’d been imitating her since I was a kid around the house—but until now it never dawned on me to impersonate my mom in front of strangers. It was always more of an in-joke with my family.
    I killed.I’m not bragging. All