Guest post written by author Eden Robins
Eden Robins loves novels best, but they take forever so she also writes short stories and self-absorbed essays. She co-hosts a science podcast called No Such Thing As Boring with an actual scientist and produces a monthly live lit show in Chicago called Tuesday Funk. Previously, she sold sex toys, wrote jokes for Big Pharma, and once did a stand-up comedy set to an audience who didn’t boo. She lives in Chicago, has been to the bottom of the ocean, and will never go to space. WHEN FRANNY STANDS UP is her first novel. Find out more scintillating tidbits at monkeythumbs.com and on Twitter and Instagram @edenrobins.
After 37 days of awkward summer romance, I had decided my eighth-grade boyfriend and I were not meant to be. And when I broke the news to him over the phone (give me a break, I was twelve), I figured he’d be upset. Maybe say something like “what did I do?” or “I don’t want to be ‘just friends,’” or even call me a bitch. Standard 20th century tween stuff! Instead, he was silent for a moment. I smushed the phone against my ear, wondering if he’d hung up on me. But then, he yelled (yelled!): “Germany needs a third empire! Kill all the Jews!”
So that was my first breakup.
This is one of those stories that has pinged around in my brain like a ‘90s screensaver ever since. Free-floating and oddly disconnected from the rest of my life. Not like I hadn’t experienced other breakups since, not like I hadn’t experienced more antisemitism. But I was never able to make sense of it, or slot it in context with the rest of my life. I mean, the story was weird. It embarrassed me. It had the potential to bring every conversation to a screeching, humiliating halt. And I always got a sneaking feeling that people didn’t believe me.
When I was doing research for my debut novel When Franny Stands Up – a queer Marvelous Mrs. Maisel where jokes are magic – I took a stand-up comedy class in Chicago called Fem Com, taught by the ridiculously talented comedian Alex Kumin. I took the class because I wanted to know what the creative process of joke-writing was like, and what it felt like to stand under a hot spotlight, microphone at my lips. What I had not planned to learn was how writing stand-up comedy would help me rewrite my painful memories until they made sense. Until they were mine, and not just a collection of stuff that had happened to me.
Now, I’ve written plenty of personal essays about my life, but somehow this was different. Personal essays didn’t offer the same catharsis as picking my memories apart to find the humor and absurdity in them. Of writing and rewriting to find the perfect word with the perfect rhythm to make a joke funny, funnier, funniest. It really rankles me when people think being funny means you’re unserious. There is nothing harder or more serious than the gentle but persistent demands of humor. Look closer, closer, what about this shadow? Shine that light here, don’t be afraid, and don’t look away. I have such respect for comedians, because to be truly good they must be brave and above all, honest.
I once heard someone define trauma as a “rupture in meaning-making,” and in my short, one-night tenure as a stand-up, I found comedy to be an art form that mends this rupture. Not only that – that rupture becomes something totally new, something bright and bold. Like the Japanese art of Kintsugi – mending the cracks in pottery with gold – or the visible mending of ripped clothes. If there will be scars no matter what, why not make them beautiful?
Transforming difficult and traumatic experiences into jokes forces you to stop hiding from them, to spread them out in front of you. You approach them with all your senses – what shape are they? What’s that stench, really? What did he say, exactly? It’s a kind of therapy, applying physical senses to memory instead of just vaporous feelings. I was finally able to examine my thirteen-year-old Nazi-obsessed ex, really look at him, and suddenly I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. I didn’t care if the story made people uncomfortable or made them doubt me. This was my shitty experience, and honestly? It’s fucking hilarious. Because I say so.
And when I made an audience laugh at it with me? That was pure magic.
This experience of doing stand-up was the inspiration for the Showstopper – the magic in When Franny Stands Up. The Showstopper is a kind of magic that only female stand-up comedians have. By being honest and gently molding their secrets and traumas on their own terms, the comedians in my book get to experience the kind of healing that I did. Then, when they make their audience laugh, the audience gets to feel that comedian’s Showstopper — something unique; a mystical or pleasurable or wacky feeling that only that particular comedian could bestow. The audience might feel like a Hollywood starlet, they might believe they can fly, they might have a literal orgasm right there in their seats. Each Showstopper can only be conjured by that particular comedian. By bringing something new into the world with the power of their voices, they turn pain into pleasure. They defang their memories and remake themselves into something glorious. And hilarious.
It wasn’t easy for me to examine this old memory – which happened at a tender, confusing time in my life. And so many other memories came flooding back with it. But I had had enough of feeling small and ashamed, and as the jokes came, they fit together like a puzzle that made me make sense. These stories were mine, but they didn’t define me. And when I made people laugh, I knew I wasn’t the only one who needed to hear them.
