Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Just for Laughs
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Standing curbside outside The Comedy Store on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, my breath is coming in fast, short, pulsing gasps. My bowels are quivery. I track my Lyft car—still a good mile away—as it crawls through traffic. With shaky fingers, I text my driver, Hurry up, please.
My name is Noah. I’m vacationing in Los Angeles. Taking an adult break from high school teaching and single parenting my two kids.
The comedy club’s two-drink-minimum, still buzzing in my head, doesn’t do a damn thing to dull my feeling of exposure. From any direction—a distant rooftop, a passing car, a half-opened hotel window—I could be shot. At six feet tall, I’m an easy target for every chambered bullet in America.
Inside the Comedy Store was different. Safe. Safe from the Second Amendment. No weapons are allowed.
Before entry, a security guard wearing shoulder-length dreadlocks checks for weapons with a hand-held magnetometer. In black jeans, black tee shirt and—judging from his stance—a black belt in martial arts, he projects the imposing, no-nonsense authority of a prison guard.
In its heyday, A-listers Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Robin Williams tested out new material here. They had to contend with hecklers, drunks and the occasional virtue signaling audience, but never gun shots.
While dressing in my hotel room before the show, a TV news broadcast reported, “Since 1968, more Americans have been killed with guns than in all our wars combined.” During an interview, a South Dakota U.S. Senator told the funniest joke of the night.
He claimed that ranchers need semi-automatic battlefield rifles to kill prairie dogs. The punchline depends on knowing that prairie dogs are twelve inches long, weigh under three pounds and don’t wear Kevlar vests. I wasn’t laughing.
If some gun owner wants to kill himself, or even murder his family, the joke’s on them. Playing Russian roulette with your own life is perfectly fine with me—one less gunner to shoot up my high school. Me? I need to live. There’s no one else to raise my children.
The killing fields are everywhere. Shopping malls, supermarkets, concerts, convenience stores, movie theaters, parades, churches, post offices—and schools.
Because seemingly every crazed killer in America is well-armed, just last week my students were yanked out of their history and science classes for active shooter drills. Maybe we should teach them first aid for combat wounds too.
Still no Lyft car. I want to run, hide, shelter in place. My jaw is clenching, teeth grinding.
Like a man dying from a long illness, I have time to reflect. Nothing awful is going on in my personal life, although the possibility of getting shot is personal enough. Maybe it’s time to quit teaching, but where can I work that’s safe from gun violence? Even military bases have unwanted shootings. Maybe the U.S. Army needs to hire the Comedy Store guards.
Lately, after a nightly news report about more slaughtered young people, grieving parents and paralyzed, gun-worshipping politicians, I can’t sleep. I toss and turn with night sweats.
I can’t handle living in a shooting gallery. It’s not funny.
