From Jester To King XLVI

The best gig? I don’t know there’ve been a few good ones. Wait. I used to play at this club in Mill Valley which was actually difficult for me to get to as it was outside the city and I didn’t have a car and always had to find someone to hitch with. But the thing was that I knew Robin Williams performed there so I always made the effort. Because as soon as I even so much as heard his name I used to get worked up and I always harboured these stupid fantasies of becoming buddies with him, with him naturally realising how great I was and coming over to me and telling me so, kindred spirits, but then it made me feel so icky to think that it could have possibly even dawned on me that he would find me funny because as much as I believed in myself and was well thought of in the industry at the time, I really just thought deep down that I couldn’t be any good and so what would be the point of going up to him and fawning and praising him like everyone else did, just to make him have to put on the usual spiel, he must have been sick of it, anyway I was trying to keep myself from doing what I so wanted to do, which was just exchange a few words. Anyway he’s hanging out backstage one night on his own just before I’m about to go on and he looks a bit lonely like almost as if he wants someone to come up and talk to him, I remember him just sitting on one of the couches with his head propped up by his right hand, and so in spite of myself I just naturally go up to him without all my angst and judgement and we just start chatting and so I ask him if he can come out and watch my set as I’m due on in about ten minutes. And he just says of course. Simple as that. He doesn’t know me, I mean maybe he barely recognises my face but we’ve never spoken before. So, man, that is obviously a pivotal moment. But as I go out I hear talking in the front row why oh why on this night rather than any other, idiots I’m going to have to argue with or try to placate or ignore and pretend they’re not getting to me and I can feel my anger rising and me going into fight mode when I get out on stage itself and realise that these people aren’t talking at all, they’re not having a conversation, but the woman is having a full-on epileptic fit and they send for ambulance which comes in about ten minutes, luckily she had calmed down before it got there, anyway we start the show again and I go back backstage and Robin is back there again and I look at him as I’m about to ask him if he’ll come and watch for the second time, fingers crossed, sheepish, and before I’ve even got the words out he’s already getting up and saying, ‘as long as you don’t do any seizure material’. 

Anyway, there’s this other guy I used to gig with, a big hunky blonde guy who hardly said anything either in life or on stage but we were sort of friends and -- oh yeah -- he’s the one who used to drive me there. And he used to be able to get women, he always chatted to women after the gig and they just liked him, so I envied his pussy power whilst it was settled that I was the better comedian and he’d envy my comedy prowess. And I was doing another gig at Mill Valley some weeks later and when I walk in there is Robin Williams filming a TV interview on a stool just by the side of the stage with proper film crew and I’m all prepared to pretend I haven’t noticed especially as he’s in the middle of something quite big but before I can he comes rushing over – STEVEN --  tells me how he’s been watching all my YouTube stuff and loves it and then he turns quickly to my blonde friend and says ‘tell your boss he needs to do the show with me’, and this blonde guy doesn’t recognise Robin at all and just thinks that he’s some random guy who thinks that he works for me. True story. So it’s like this guy can have his pussy, I’ll take Robin. That was a happy moment.