Sleepwalk With Me_ And Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia [46]
I tried to conceal my awe for Mitch the first time I picked him and his wife, Lynn, up to go to the club. Sometimes that’s part of the job of an opening act, to drive the headliner from the hotel to the club. Which is really degrading if you think about that occurring in any other art form: “The central pieces in tonight’s exhibition are done by painter Gustav Bringow and the supporting pieces are done by Bill Wilson. They’ll both be arriving momentarily. Bill is picking Gustav up at the Holiday Inn Express in his mom’s station wagon as part of his contractual obligation.”
When the club owner asked me to pick up Mitch, I was in shock. First, I couldn’t believe Mitch Hedberg was going to ride in my mom’s Volvo station wagon. And second, I couldn’t believe Mitch Hedberg rode in cars at all. I had always kind of envisioned him riding in a spaceship or just kind of teleporting onto stage. But I was thrilled to have the chance to pick him up. Picking Mitch up would make it more likely that he’d speak to me.
When I picked up Mitch and Lynn in my mom’s Volvo wagon, I was surprised at their appearance. Their hair was still wet. They were disheveled and not ready for the show. They were just like real people.
The first show went pretty well, and afterward I asked Mitch and Lynn if they wanted to go bowling. I had just bought my own bowling shoes at a flea market so it seemed like a good opportunity. So we went, but I was so rattled to be bowling with my hero that I was awful. I rolled all kinds of ones and threes. I was so embarrassed. When we were walking out, Mitch said to me, “When you said you wanted to go bowling, I thought that you would be good at bowling.” I laughed. It was like he made a Mitch Hedberg joke just for me.
That night Mitch was onstage and in the middle of his set he said, “Oh no, I got to go to the bathroom. Can someone come onstage and tell a joke?” There was this long gaping silence, then he said, “I’m serious, you guys. I really gotta go.” And it’s still silent. People didn’t know what to do.
Backstage I turned to Lynn and said, “Are you gonna go up?”
“Will you?” she said.
“Okay.”
I walked onstage and approached Mitch. He didn’t know I was there because his eyes were closed. I said, “Mitch, I’m here.”
He said, “Oh, thanks, man.” And walked off like this was an everyday thing. The audience looked at me and I looked at the audience and everyone was laughing hysterically.
I took the microphone off the stand, looked down at the floor, and did my best Mitch Hedberg. “I am pretty good at tennis, but I will never be as good as the wall. The wall is relentless . . . There was a jar of jelly beans at the state fair that said ‘Guess how many and you win the jar,’ I was like, ‘C’mon man, lemme just have some.’”
Like a lot of his fans, I knew Mitch’s act so well that I could recite it on cue. It was thrilling. For one moment I was in Mitch’s shoes. Mitch came back onstage, laughed, and said, “Aw, man. He did my best jokes.”
A couple of years later, Mitch offered to perform at my CD release party at the Comic Strip in New York City. He flew himself in, put himself up at a hotel, and, when I tried to pay him, refused the money.
That night I opened up to Mitch and told him that my sleepwalking had gotten much worse and had started to become dangerous. There was clearly something going on that I wasn’t dealing with. Mitch seemed to understand. It was as if, before that, Mitch didn’t think that anything in my life could resemble anything in his life, but at that moment he did.
People always talked about Mitch’s drug habit, but I never witnessed it, so I thought maybe it didn’t exist, the way a kid puts his hands over his eyes and pretends no one’s there. Mitch told me that he wanted to go on tour with me that fall. I couldn’t believe it. I was blue highlighting it in my brain already. That night we talked about how we should play