It's Not Every Day You Get to Perform in a Sex Dungeon

12 or So Days of My Life in Show Business

Today I write to you from the Delta Sky Club at Laguardia Airport, something I mention not to brag but simply to mock my would-be captors and assailants, who know all too well by now that by the time they read this I will be long gone. Actually, my flight doesn’t leave for nearly three hours, so there is a good chance I will still be here. But I am ready for them, assuming they are Delta SkyMiles members or have an American Express platinum card, the only two ways they can get in.

You are probably wondering which category I fit into and I will just come out and tell you I have an American Express platinum card, not to brag (but also to brag because it heavy so as to suggest some sort of accomplishment). I know- I can’t believe it either. I thought you had to be a millionaire to get one or at least have a proper job with an assistant named Donna in the Paramus office and everything, but they are pretty much handing them out to anyone with a wallet these days, I guess.

Anyway, I landed into JFK from London a couple hours ago and cabbed it over here to LaGuardia to eat chicken marsala and some sort of beans while I wait for my flight to Cleveland, where I am going to visit family for a few days and also be on the lam. I am bad at being on the lam, which is why I just came out and told you where I was going. Rule #1 of being on the lam: Shhhh!

I am pretty wiped out from my UK invasion, having done twelve shows in as many days while drinking what the medical community might describe as “too much beer.” Most of the shows were sold out but there was one in a sex dungeon too so let’s call it even. I guess sex dungeons are slow on weeknights, so if they can make a few extra bucks by putting on a comedy show on a Tuesday instead, so be it. Hot Sauce Jerry and his harness will just have to pump the brakes.

UPDATE: A few people have complained that they wanted to hear more about the sex dungeon in this entry. Fine. Here’s what I know- it’s in the basement of a bar in the Islington section of London. There is a small hotel connected to the bar. I guess the whole place used to be pretty raunchy, but in these sanitized times, most of the raunchiness goes on down in the basement. The photo above was take in the stairwell to the basement. I guess if you have to put up a sign asking people not to get naked in the stairwell, it’s a decent indicator that business is good. Or bad, depending on how you look at it. Either way it was nice to get out of the house even though I made sure not to sit on anything in the sex dungeon. Rule #1 of sex dungeons: Don’t sit on anything.

It was great to get back to London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, three of my favorite places on earth (I’ve narrowed the list down to fifty or so places, but these three are high on the list). The shows were all super fun (including the sex dungeon one within reason) and it was nice to meet so many nice folks. After one show, a man named Rashad asked me to sign a couple of my books he had brought with him, which meant the world to me. With each book I write (I’ve just finished my fourth, something I mention to definitely brag. It’s called The Awesome Game and it’s out October 17th), part of me wonders if anyone will actually read it once it’s out, so when people tell me they have and are holding the copies to prove it, I am absolutely thrilled. Thank you, Rashad. Also, take that, everyone from high school!

The last show of the trip was in London with my friend Adam Pally, whom I’ve known since my Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre days in New York. We did a super fun show at a place in Hackney called the Moth Club, which used to be an old working men’s club. For the uninitiated, working men’s clubs are private social clubs in the UK that were originally for working class men to go to and drink beer on the cheap while calling each other the “c” word. The closest American equivalents would maybe be a VFW hall or an Elks Lodge. But the working men’s clubs are haunted with way more chainsmoking ghosts and it feels like stepping into a time machine back at least sixty years as soon as you walk through the door. Our dressing room had a large portrait of Winston Churchill in it, for example.

It was also nice to catch up with so many friends on my trip, most of whom I hadn’t seen since the last time I was over in 2019. One night in London, I watched Eurovision for the first time with my friends Andrew and Pete and their three dogs, Milo, Tommy, and Jeannie. I was instantly hooked. It probably didn’t hurt that I’d been drinking for hours, but I still know a good production when I see one. Personally, I was rooting for Estonia, or at least that’s what Andrew, Pete, and the dogs told me the next day. We’ll get ‘em next year probably.

Yesterday in London, I had breakfast and a nice catch up with my friend Alessi, singer, songwriter, and founder of one of my favorite bands, Alessi’s Ark. Alessi is expecting a human baby in a few months and she let me touch her belly, which was a special and also fascinating moment, partly because it occurred to me that I’m not sure if I’d done that before in my whole life. Wild.

Alessi also told me about something called spoon theory, which is (here is where I paste a sentence from Wikipedia because I am jetlagged) “a metaphor describing the amount of physical and/or mental energy that a person has available for daily activities and tasks.”

“Some people take spoons from you and some people give spoons to you,” Alessi explained.

Alessi and a lot of other people gave me plenty of spoons over these past twelve days and I’m grateful because my metaphorical silverware drawer was running on empty. Dammit- I think I just added a gas tank metaphor on top of the silverware drawer metaphor. Sorry.

Okay, it’s time to hit the salad bar. Membership has its privileges. And also pineapple chunks.