You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery (19 page)

I started performing shows at UCB back in 2009. If you haven’t heard of this theater, I’m sure you’ve heard of the many, many successful folks who’ve come out of it. Amy Poehler was one of the founders, for God’s sake. This fact had me occasionally licking random spots in the dirty theater, hoping to ingest some of her leftover DNA. The space itself was a basement theater underneath a grocery store and a McDonald’s. Was it glamorous? Nope. Was getting to perform on that stage for four years magical? Abso-fuckin’-lutely.

After doing a few duo and group sketch show runs, I decided that I wanted to host and produce my own show. And from that came
Celebrity Funeral
. Every few months I would host a mock funeral for a celeb who was still alive. Other comedians would perform eulogies as surviving family members, costars, and totally made-up acquaintances as I served as master of ceremonies. For example, some eulogies at the Mariah Carey funeral were:

1. My girl Alison Bennett being wheeled out as a postal worker who’d had her arms and legs chewed off by dogs because she was playing the song “Emotions” and the high note made them go insane.

2. The ridiculous Hannibal Buress playing P. Diddy. Diddy used his eulogy to set the record about his and Mariah’s hit single “Honey.” Mariah was supposedly super into entomology, and the song was actually written to warn folks about the impending bee crisis.

3. My friend Eliot Glazer closed out each show by reciting a poem as Maya Angelou. This would always derail into sexy territory. If you’ve ever had doubts about a Jewish gay man pulling off a spot-on impression of a late African American poet laureate, you have not met Eliot.

It was essentially an old-school roast, and I loved it. But no matter how exhilarated I felt onstage, no matter how proud and satisfied I was after a sold-out show full of laughs, I would be nervous as fuck
the next time we performed. I’d go through the same song and dance: I’d talk to folks backstage while having a totally different, freaked-out conversation in my head. I wasn’t able to feel my legs. I’d have to focus on my breathing because it felt like my body wasn’t going to do it itself. But a new, fun addition came along with the stage fear. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was taking nervous shits.

Don’t judge me. What I was experiencing is known as fight-or-flight. In fight-or-flight, your body thinks it’s in such extreme danger that you are about to die. It rushes a bunch of adrenaline into your bloodstream in case you need to fight or get the hell out of the situation. Your palms are sweaty. Knees weak, arms are heavy. There’s vomit on your sweater already, mom’s spaghetti. Wait a sec! My mom doesn’t make spaghetti. Sorry, guys, sometimes I lose myself in Eminem lyrics. But that is how I’d feel, minus the pasta puke.

It’s this fight-or-flight adrenaline dump that makes mothers lift cars off their babies and helps people outrun bear attacks. For me, it was a lot more literal. It was an adrenaline
dump
.

Every time before I went onstage for those few years—every single time—I would give myself a little pep talk in the mirror (more specifically, my powder compact as I sat on the toilet). It would go something like this:

“Mamrie. First of all, you look great. Honestly, that lack of exercise and late-night Kettle chips eating is really paying off. Also, you are gonna be amazing in this show! Quit freaking yourself out. As soon as you hear your first laugh, all these crazy feelings will melt away. And hey, worst-case scenario, you shit onstage. Right there in front of everyone, you shit your pants and it splatters on the floor underneath your dress like an unexpected prom birth. If that happens, you’ll move back to North Carolina. No problem. Change your name. Everyone probably thinks Mamrie is a stage name anyway. You can take a couple of years of courses at the community college to become a dental hygienist. Marry a man who is intellectually beneath you but loves you to death and makes decent Crock-
Pot meals. Not your ideal life, but you’ll still be mildly
un
happy. Now, get out there and make ’em laugh.”

Okay, so I’m no Tony Robbins, but there
was
something comforting about giving myself the worst-case scenario options. Every show, I would have to take over the bathroom, and every time I’d get the pep talk. It got to the point where no matter what time I was on, even up to my live shows today, the people around me knew that I was gonna need a solid ten minutes in the bathroom by myself.

Here’s my advice to anyone who experiences panic attacks. Be vocal about it. I’m not saying stand up in the middle of class and pull a Kanye. (“Mr. Ginsberg? Imma let you finish but I just want you all to know I’m having a panic attack. I can’t feel my legs, and learning about WWI is not a good look for me right now.”) But I am saying be open about it with your friends, your family, even your coworkers. My friends no longer bat an eye when I have a panic attack. Some have even turned it into a drinking game. If I start to feel the wave of anxiety coming toward me, whether we are grabbing a martini or doing an interview, I will just casually say, “Heads-up. I’m experiencing a panic attack so I might get quiet for a while, so just take the lead on talking.”

It isn’t something to be embarrassed about. In fact, more than likely you already have a friend who experiences the same thing. They might just not have a name for it yet. They could’ve been calling it “kooky floating maniac time.”

For example, there was one night when I was still bartending at a seafood place on Park Avenue, before I booked my first commercial and hightailed it the fuck out of there. This was when I still reeked of steamed crab legs and would fill a coffee cup full of Baileys and vodka as soon as I got to work and pretend it was a latte. For five years, I bartended at this restaurant.

Word to the wise: Never work at a restaurant where you can’t eat the food. The other waitstaff would drool over tasting the daily specials, picking each other off like they were basketball centers to
get an extra bit of the shrimp cocktail or lobster mac and cheese. I stood behind that bar selling people on how sweet the Kumamoto oysters were and how well they paired with champagne. Meanwhile, I would dry-heave at the thought of eating those barnacle-looking loogies.

I remember one shift when a new waitress on the floor looked like she was having a major struggle. I watched her almost drop plates of empty lobster carcasses all over a table she was clearing and then walk into the bathroom on the verge of tears. When she came back out, I decided to get the scoop, expecting to hear she had lied in her interview and this was the first time she’d waited tables, or that a table just screamed at her for a two-dollar surcharge for mixed greens as a side.

“Mary, is everything okay? You look upset.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Is it because they’ve started making us wear these ties with crabs on them and ninety percent of the male customers make an STD joke about it?”

She went silent for a second. Maybe I had cracked the case, and not just the case of Modelo I was pounding behind the bar to deal with the incessant onslaught of crab jokes.

“I don’t know. Everything feels weird and off. Seriously, there’s no way I can balance three martinis. I’m gonna drop the tray,” she said, clenching and unclenching her hands like they were cold.

Bingo! Panic attack. I could finally pay it forward for that first panic attack that Maegan so calmly walked me through years before.

“Okay, have you ever had a panic attack before?” I asked as she shook her head no, tears welling up in her eyes. “Well, I think you’re having one now. Here’s what you need to do. I’m gonna pour you a glass of tequila. You’re gonna go into the private room, sit, sip, breathe, and it will all feel okay in twenty minutes. I’ll drop off these martinis and finish up your last table, okay?”

She nodded, clearly taken aback by how quickly I’d whipped up a plan. Poor thing had probably been hiding her first panic attack
for the past half hour. I couldn’t even wait tables hungover, let alone with mounds of adrenaline coursing through my body. And there she had been shakily tying lobster bibs on customers and balancing trays of twenty coffees all at once.

When I finished up her table and the restaurant was officially closed for the night, I went and checked on her. She was relaxed and a little tipsy. But she wasn’t alone. Three other servers were around her, telling her how they got panic attacks and sharing their stories.

Here’s the deal, dudes: No matter how bad you are panicking, it’s going to eventually subside. It’s scary as hell! But it will pass. Take this analogy, for example:

In the summer of 2014, I got to shoot a travel series called
Hey USA!
with my partner in crime, Grace Helbig. It was seriously a dream job. How many people get to travel around the US all summer, having their days filled with adventures that they don’t have to plan? I’m not going to lie and say that waking up at five a.m. to whale-watch, meet Iditarod dogs, and learn to trout-fish all before four p.m. and all while having to be “on” in front of the camera isn’t exhausting! But it’s a very rewarding type of exhaustion.

This is from the first episode. NBD—just having a snowball fight on an Alaskan glacier. Sometimes I pinch myself at how cool my job is. Also, because I’m super pinchable.

Now that I have made sure I don’t look like an inconsiderate asshole, here we go. Grace and I were on day three of our stop in Portland, Oregon. Unlike other shooting days, when we packed four or five activities into one day, this entire day was going to be spent white-water rafting. I was pumped.
*
I love doing stuff on the river, especially floating on a tube with an inflatable cooler of cheap beer beside me. However, I learned real quick that this wasn’t going to be rafting with a coozie. These were straight-up
rapids
. Thirty seconds on the river and we were going down a class IV (out of six) rapids. I almost fell out, and our cameraman cracked his helmet against a boulder. But that wasn’t the craziest part.

We were shown a small waterfall before we got on the river, to assess whether or not we were comfortable going down it. The guide told us about half the people decide to go down it, and the other half chicken out. As soon as I saw the falls, I thought to myself,
Somebody grab the Shake ’n Bake, ’cause it looks like we’re having chicken today.
But I couldn’t do that! There was a film crew with us! There are two things I never want to do on camera.

1. Show da pussy.

2. Be a pussy.

Plus, Grace was gung-ho to go down them. “We’ll regret it if we don’t do it,” she said as we were stationed on the bank about a hundred yards from the falls.

“You’re right. I’m in.”

As soon as I agreed, I immediately regretted it. I think it goes without saying that I started panicking. How was I going to paddle hard enough for us to go over the falls if my arms felt like two Sour Punch Straws? Everyone else on our crew had already gotten out;
they weren’t going over them.
*
It was just going to be Grace, me, and the guide. He started feverishly repumping the raft. I started feverishly asking questions. “What’s the ratio of rafts that flip? Has anyone died going over the falls? How long are you in the air? I’ve bungee jumped, is it scarier than that?” After the thirtieth or so question, he cut me off.

“Look, the only thing you really need to worry about if we flip is getting sucked back into the falls. That’s why we have to paddle super hard and get some air going over them.”

“What happens if you get sucked in?”

“If you get sucked into the falls, you are stuck. The pressure of the water will hold you down, but it’s going to release you after fifteen seconds if you don’t fight it.” Fifteen seconds of being stuck underwater sounded like an eternity. “Just remember, it
will
release you. You just have to stay calm. What I like to do is sing the Indiana Jones theme song when I’m stuck. It keeps me more calm than counting.” And he kept pumping up the raft. I looked at Grace in complete shock.

“One last question,” I added. “How many times have you been sucked under?”

“About three,” he replied nonchalantly.

“Okay, three times. You said you’ve worked here for three years. Those odds aren’t that bad—”

“No, no. Three times this month.”

I turned to Grace, who now looked like a ghost in pigtails.

“Grace? You really want to?” I asked her, hoping the desperation in my voice would assure her she could drop the act and we’d get the fuck off the river and go drink in our hotel bar.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” she replied like it was no big deal, but I knew it was, because when Grace is uncomfortable her eyes bug out and
her mouth turns into Grumpy Cat’s. But thank goodness she was putting on her tough-girl act, or else I would’ve been a mess.

“Okay,” I said, slowly turning back to the front of the raft while white-knuckling my paddle. We had said we’d do it (on-camera, no less!) and we were going to see it out. There was no pep talk. No emotional halftime speech. We nodded at each other like two kamikaze pilots agreeing to their fate. When all was said and done, no one got sucked into the falls. Grace and I paddled like we were trying to qualify for the Olympic rowing team, and our raft sailed over those falls with ease. But I took our guide’s advice to heart.