Beyond a Joke 5: A rose, by any other name...

Yesterday was my last class in Beyond a Joke, the stand up comedy course run by Klare Murray. I know last week I banged on a lot about how great the course is, and now I'm going to do it again.

Next week is my first gig. I've been wanting this for a year. Whether I die on stage or completely smash it I fully intend to get in as much stage time as I possibly can, for as long as possible. I am so excited. I'm uneasy about what my friends will think or if they'll laugh, but I am hugely comforted knowing that Klare and the guys from class are going to be there, they aren't going to make fun of me - they will have too much sympathy. I really don't know how people get on stage totally raw.

However, I need to learn my stuff properly. I've lost a lot of the emotion I first had for it. When I practice I'm more focused on memorization than delivery, so as a result it all sounds a bit... flat. Obviously when I practice now I'll have to inject more emotion - but I'm resistant to this; I spend a lot of time out of the house and somehow I feel like uttering an emotional monologue while on the train (pausing here and there for comic effect) will sound more mental than muttering it under my breath whilst staring out the window.

For me the biggest highlight of our last class was when I floored everyone in the room with the word 'cunt' used casually in one of my jokes about an air bed. It sparked laughter, which pleases me, and shock, which does not. I don't want to be a shock comic even though people think I'd be great at it. At the heart of the matter I feel that women comics are looked at with contempt when they attempt to shock. Even the most shocking ideas I could come up with would probably not top the jokes that loads of men have heard, when the ladies are not around, when there is no polite society.  If I just stood on stage and ended every punchline with cunt it would sound childish to most audiences. Didn't my mother raise me right? And if I pulled out all the stops and was really disgusting - racist, sexist, prejudiced, all in one enormous 'man walks into a bar' type joke, I would just alienate everyone.

Also, there's no scope in shock. There's no imagination. It's no fun.

But cunt! Cunt is just.... my cunt! I love my cunt! It's the bee's knees! Look at the word: in lower case the first three letters are like little symbols of what it is. It's got history: it's quaint. At 26 I am not used to being told off for using the word purely as the definition of female sex organs. And the joke isn't all cunt and no substance, it's just that the whole joke would be ruined if I said vagina (too medical) or pussy (too porno). There are plenty of other words, but they're all ambiguous. Klare has taught us to spell things out for every audience, even if it seems unnecessary: as soon as the audience is confused, it's fucking over man.

I am surprised to learn that cunt is still kind of a big deal in the UK, certainly in Liverpool. I guess it is a big deal, in a way - there's a reason it's used less frequently in the standard dialogue in any YouPorn video than 'pussy'. Cunt is a stronger word than cock. 'Shall I fuck your cunt with my cock?' is a bit like saying 'Shall I paint this room with my finger?' It's ludicrous. Cunts fuck; pussies get fucked. I have no problem with this by the way, I'm just exploring the differences between these words, and how we interact with them.

 But still, with all the dicking about and cock ups going on, it seems silly to me that my innie doesn't get to have as much fun as the outties.When I stayed with my friend Genny in Glasgow (also Canadian), we used the word 'cunt' with the same frequency as the word 'that' (i.e., we kept saying 'that cunt'). Her S.O. wasn't much thrilled to hear it every two minutes - in fact I think in one particularly passionate rant duet we used it like 60 times - but his objections were pretty mild.

I've been catching a lift to class with one of the other newbies since he lives nearby, and we discuss each class on the way home. So recently we started talking about women saying cunt and his response was a little alarming... he thought it was hilarious that I said it, but also 'mad' and 'not what women say'. Yesterday on the way home he was still in stitches over the joke, but after awhile he recognised for himself that there is a difference between laughing at a woman saying cunt and laughing at the actual joke. Because he is a nice man he apologised for being patronising, although I assured him that if there were more people in the audience like him on Tuesday, I'd cane the cunt for all it's worth - I am not walking off stage with no laughs, feminism be damned.

I've been away from Canada for two years, and I've forgotten a lot about what it's like there. Liverpudlian behaviour has started to replace normal human - sorry, Canadian behaviour in my mindset. People respond to cunt a bit like I've just expressed my commitment to a strange religion, like they may start hiding behind the furniture if my cunt and I come knocking round. That didn't happen in Ottawa. Maybe it was my social circle.

For all that Ottawa gets accused of being so conservative, the line between the genders is sharper here. My aunt told me about what I now call the half pint double standard: the reason that some bartenders offer me an empty half pint glass to go with my full pint of cider is so that I won't be seen publicly drinking from a pint glass. The implication is I can't handle the pint glass: it's too big for my girlish hands, it makes me look like a classless alcoholic, and I'll probably tip it all on the floor the moment someone asks me the time. Half pints are just simpler. And that's really the issue here, isn't it? Vagina is the half pint. Cunt is a whole pint.

Well anyway, all that malarkey aside: less than one week til I can officially start telling people I'm a comedian!