I was married to the very funny Carol Leifer from 1981 to 1986. Sometimes we'd be so crazy as to go out on the road together as "Co-headliners." Even though she was funnier, I was bigger and louder so I'd close the beer-joints-airport-hangers-and-barns turned comedy clubs. The deal was usually she'd take the middle slot for 25 to thirty minutes and I'd close with the contractually minimum forty-five.

My pre show ritual was to stand in the back of the room blasting Elvis Costello through my Walkman headphones until my spinal cord was pure electricity.

The problem with a headliner as a middle is sometimes they forget someone else has to close the show. One night in Atlanta Carol was killing the crowd. She was having one of those shows where the audience howled at every move she made. She was beyond her regular material, improvising enough new material to fuel three Letterman shots. Thirty minutes in and she was still in this rarified air for thirty minutes and not looking for a place to land. Without realizing I was saying it out loud, I punctuated each of her jokes with, "Close with it!"

Finally, an audience member walked back to me and said in a deep Georgia drawl, "Take it easy on her, man."

I turned on him, "Hey pal. She's my wife."

He watched me bouncing with my pre-fight energy for a moment before saying, "Damn."

He returned to his table and whispered into the ear of a woman who shook her head sympathetically and kissed him. The guy probably used me to score points with his wife. However, I always picked laughs over everything, probably one of the reasons why Carol and I divorced in 1985.