Free If at Birth You Don't Succeed by Zach Anner Page A

interested in the television crew: instead of checking her makeup outside and wondering how she was going to look on camera, she went and got a hot dog. As was preordained, I invited Ella to see me perform stand-up the next night, even though, at this point, it was akin to me saying, “Hey, I really like you. Wanna come to my vasectomy tomorrow?”

    I was supposed to start writing my comedy routine after speed dating, but it was close to one a.m. by the time I got back to the hotel and we had to shoot interviews in the morning. In all likelihood I’d be performing my entire set for the first time, onstage, with no rehearsal. The next day there was just one break in the schedule, a two-hour window where I could talk through jokes with Eric and draft material. With the pressure bearing down, I sought a muse that had never failed me before: the Olive Garden, this one in the middle of Times Square.
    The rest of the crew had abandoned Eric and me at the mere suggestion that we have lunch at the world’s best restaurant, and their snobbery had given us the perfect opportunity to focus. We’d been tasked with taking the whirlwind of the previous two days and making something funny but still airable. We came up with a few icebreakers about my wheelchair and built from there. I’d gone on a helicopter ride over Manhattan on the first day, and the pilot had forced everyone to wear life jackets, then took one look at me and said, “Except you. You don’t have to.” Why this distinction had been made was a mystery to me, and Eric and I wrote some material explaining that I was in fact a cripple and not a merman. We went on like this, bouncing ideas back and forth while I sipped a Shirley Temple and shoved breadsticks down my throat.
    The closer for the act was perhaps the most difficult to pull off because it involved me ranting about speed dating and would be a largely improvised routine. I’d ask if anyone in the crowd had speed dated before and then I’d play out a scene with a random audience member, much like the mock wedding I’d staged ten years earlier. I’d ask her what her name was, and before she could even say “Cynthia” or whatever, I’d cut her off and say, “BOOM! We just dated!” Then I’d explain how the rest of our relationship would go:
    â€œMaybe we realize we both like crochet and that we have the same Michael McDonald album. So we decide to just move in together for a while and give it a shot and see if we’re compatible. Then in bed I have to confess to you that I have a belly button fetish, but when we’re at Thanksgiving at your parents’ house, you get a little tipsy and bring it up, which makes your mom feel awkward, and then I’m on the hook with your parents and we get into a huge argument. But we find out later that night that you’re pregnant, and we’re not really ready to be parents, but what are we supposed to do? Because you’re Catholic and we’ve gotta have this baby! Then we’ve got to babyproof the house, we have the kid, and one night you’re searching through my browser history and discover I’m into all sorts of weird shit and you kick me out of the house, and then we go into a co-custody scenario and decide that while we’re good parents, we’re just not that good of a match…” And then I’d pause and say, “And that’s just the first two minutes!”
    This ending monologue required rhythm and timing that took an amount of practice there wasn’t any room for in the schedule. Everyone just expected me to wing it. It would be another three hours before I’d even get a chance to go through the jokes again because now, after only one Shirley Temple refill, I had to go out into Times Square and start inviting people to a show I was 85 percent sure would be a disaster. I even invited a few of the stewardesses from the Broadway production of