In 1977 I was attending law school in Washington, D.C. when Howard, a friend and classmate, suggested I try doing stand-up comedy. He took me to the basement of a church, where the Iguana Coffee House housed the nation's surviving hippies, all sipping herbal tea and praying for the end of Disco. I followed a poet whose last line was, "Like the mango, we are ripe for the revolution." I had memorized about five pages of what I thought was funny jokes. Two chess players interrupted my slow painful death to shush me. I left the stage after getting exactly one half of a laugh, an abrupt "Ha."
Howard decided I might do better if I were paid. He booked me at the Gay Cabaret in Southeast Washington, where they paid local performer/mental cases $10 on a Tuesday Talent Night. Having been there to see Waylon and Madam and the Drag Queen shows, I knew they had a mixed audience of straights and gays.

The night we showed, the room was not mixed. It was filled with women. I'm out of my mind, thinking I am definitely going to get laid tonight. After a quick talk with the management, Howard tells me that Tuesday Night Talent Night has become Ladies Night, and not just ladies drink for half price Ladies Night, but Ladies Who Love Only Ladies Night.

However this was my first paying gig and I wanted that ten dollars. I bombed so much more badly than at the coffee house. Nothing in my imagination or one show experience prepared for this type of bombing. This was worse than no laughs, worse than a silent rejection. My presence and terrible jokes had created a roomful of swirling hatred. My act was creating a laugh vacuum that was sucking laughter from surrounding communities.

At one point my subconscious took my mouth off the joke recitation and blurt out an adlib, something about my show being their worse nightmare. It got a big laugh. In a classic Way of the Amateur, I mistook this laugh as a sign of acceptance, a hint to start into my list of jokes again. Almost instantly, a big lesbian emerged from the darkness, and without a word led me offstage to thunderous applause. She deposited me on the street. Howard soon joined me, handing over my nine dollars, keeping a dollar for his commission.
I didn't try standup again for a year.