Page 4 of Always the Bridesmaid

‘I can’t let you do that,’ Drew says, though we both know that I will ultimately be the person staying behind.

I hold up one hand. Stop. Wait.

‘You haven’t heard my condition yet,’ I say. ‘The firm can bump me up to first class.’

I wink at him playfully but neither one of us believes for a second that I’m joking.

3

CHARLIE

There’s sweat running down my chest, between my moobs, making a little puddle in my belly button, which is bedded into my ever-so-slightly-too-chubby beer belly. I have a dad bod but without having a kid to justify the look – unless a Peroni baby counts.

I am coming into the final five minutes of my set at the comedy club in Camden, which Time Out recently named in its top three comedy venues in London. My set has developed into its current form over a gestation period of nine months or so. I can therefore call it my comedy child.

But this child is still a new-born and my nerves reflect the infancy of my professional career. It has only been since the inception of this latest material that I have started being paid regularly for gigs. Though I have worked the comedy circuit – the dingiest, smelliest, stickiest, most questionable pubs and clubs – part time alongside a swathe of low-skilled and poor-paying jobs since dropping out of university a decade ago, it took the first nine years to hone my craft and establish myself sufficiently to warrant half-decent payment, and now I headline slots in some of the best comedy clubs in the city.

Despite this recognition that I have a modicum of talent, I still get nervous to the point of throwing-up before most of my gigs. Maybe years of rejection, imposter syndrome or my innate introvert (which I have the ability to hide well but which is ever-present) are to blame. I think of myself as a social extrovert. Sort of like a social smoker – I can perform for crowds, I can be the life and soul of a night out, but once the drinks stop flowing, so too does my habitual joviality.

Tonight, I hurled my guts up just minutes before coming on stage as the headline act – less fancy than it sounds on a Tuesday night, of course, but I have aspirations of headlining this particular venue in a weekend slot. One day, maybe even being invited on shows like Mock the Week, 8 Out of Ten Cats, Never Mind the Buzzcocks… One can dream.

What has raised the stakes for my slot tonight is that one of my best mates, Jake, is sitting in the audience, admittedly well-leathered, with nine of his closest pals, which includes his brother and his dad, who are over from the USA for his wedding this coming weekend. It’s his stag night and, though Jake left the organization of the day and night’s pub crawl to his three ushers, one of whom is me, he had insisted on the night ending at my gig.

I’ve tinkered with my cracks tonight, tailoring them for the stags. So whilst I have been with the group since lunchtime today, I have paced my drinking, only appearing to drink in some of the pubs that formed the eighteen-hole ‘pub golf course’, to ensure I am the right level of drunk-enough-to-perform this amended set but not so drunk my performance is a damp squib.

I rub my hairy forearm across my forehead, collecting beads of sweat and wiping them down my signature Hawaiian stage shirt. Unusually, I am finishing my set largely off-the-cuff tonight.

‘Ladies, gents, say hello to my mate Jake down on the heckling table at the front here. Cocks, by the way, the lot of you!’

I am pleased the rest of the table laugh along with Jake. The stag guys have been good sports all night, actually, which is a relief, as I am well aware that British humor often doesn’t translate for an American audience. I always use Rebel Wilson at the BAFTAs in 2022 as a particularly disastrous example of comedians from different territories just not able to land their jokes. Those put-downs didn’t pack any punch.

‘It’s Jake’s stag night, folks, which means by tomorrow morning, we’ll be able to congratulate his bride-to-be on her near miss.’

The crowd responds appropriately.

‘After all, what is a stag if not a male mammal looking to buck a load of hinds and add to his harem?’ I pull a face of surprise and clamp a hand over my mouth, then remove my palm and ask the audience rhetorically, ‘Is that too much in this age of post-Me Too apocalypse? I’m looking specifically at one of Jake’s mates here, who is built like an absolute brick shit house, covered in ink and, frankly, looks a bit unstable. Essentially, he looks like a US Marine.’

The guy, Brooks, takes it well.

‘Have you ever noticed how the US Marines are so much bigger than our British Royal Marines? They’re like Vikings to our garden gnomes.’

I take a strategic drink from my pint of beer, which I have placed on a small table nearby the X marking center stage, where I’m standing. I wait for the laughter and murmurings of the two hundred or so people in the crowd to subside.

‘In all seriousness, which is what you’ve come here for tonight, right, seriousness? I have known Jake and his bride-to-be Jess for a while now, though seemingly not long enough to be invited to be his best man, which is why I’m having to deliver that speech to you all tonight to end my set.’ More laughter. ‘I love them both dearly but I have been questioning Jess’s judgement of late, in particular since their engagement. I had always thought of her as a smart woman. Attractive and quirky in the best way. Now, I question how smart she is, having settled for the obvious choice. Six feet two inches of tall, broad, dark, handsome, well-paid, mildly amusing, athletic…

‘Where was I? Oh yes, having chosen someone like Jake over someone…’ I gesture to myself. ‘Chubbier, quirkier, perhaps with a slightly receding hairline under sort of out of control, not wavy, not straight, strawberry blond locks, and about ten feet shorter. What was she thinking?’

The room is amused but nobody more so than the group sitting around Jake.

‘This might be news to Jake but I did try it on with Jess once.’

The crowd gasp and ‘ooh’ playfully in participation, all well-humored, I think.

‘I sidled up to Jess in a Soho bar and I delivered that line every woman wants to hear. “Is your father a thief? Because he stole the stars and put them in your eyes”.’ I take another strategic drink of beer. ‘Unsmiling, Jess told me, “My dad died when I was a girl”.’ I pause, contorting my face in the way someone might after sucking on a lime – exaggerated for stage. ‘You might call me Maverick, the way I spectacularly crashed and burned.’

As the room settles, and after one final swig of beer, I say, ‘I wish Jake and Jess well and I wish you all well. You’ve been a wonderful crowd and now I can finally drink myself into oblivion with the rest of the stags.’

I finish the set the way I always do: by reaching for my acoustic guitar from where it is perched on a stand to one side of the stage. I start to sing, the way one might tell folklore around a campfire.

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