They're Callin' Again (2/9)

 Wrote about my laugh, something that has become very much entwined with who I am. I was always self conscious about it, and would try and distance myself from it. Now I wouldn't have it any other way.

I love feeling free and happy.

        I heard myself laugh in an episode of Frasier. Season Seven, Episode 18 “Hot Pursuit”

        It is at 4:24 and in response to the line “Aw Niles, to you a sketchy neighborhood is when the cheese shop doesn’t have valet parking,”. There is a laugh that sounded almost entirely like mine. A barking cackle that rose above the laughter around it.

I was drunk (and maybe I had smoked, it was a Saturday night, sue me) and it was a very disconcerting, out of body experience. It didn’t sound like me, not exactly. The hallmarks were there though. The same impact, the way I knew that man’s throat hurt exactly the way mine did, how he could feel the laughter buzz in his chest after he’d done it. I heard my own laugh, that wasn’t my own, watching my favorite show and I felt suddenly very strange.

I always clock laugh tracks or audience reactions where one person is loudest. I always think “Wow that one lady sure liked that joke,” or “This show’s really got his number huh?”. No judgement, I like knowing that the reactions are authentic and not pre-recorded. And I have always been aware of my laugh. I know it’s not the most demure little giggle. Hearing something so similar in that episode threw me for a loop. A sudden moment of realizing “Oh when people hear my laugh, they hear it,”. I’m not always the one commenting on the laugh, sometimes I’m the laugh.

I’ve always been self conscious of my laugh. I knew that it, like everything else about me, is pretty over-the-top. I laughed very loud, and it could be argued obnoxiously. I didn’t have to make apologies for it, but I spent much of my life doing just that. I started laughing on the inhale, which made my laughs quieter but I ended up sounding like a creaky bed. This drew comments too. I then started laughing exclusively through quick inhale/exhales through my nose. Quieter still, but I sounded like I should be searching for truffles. This also got comments.

I didn’t see how I could win.

In High School, I was talking with a group of friends in the hall. Somebody made a joke and I laughed at it. A girl I liked turned to me and said “That laugh was disgusting,” and turned back to the group, the conversation chugging along as normal. That cemented a lot of the worst stuff I thought about myself. I got exceptionally self conscious going forward, and my laughs retreated ever further inward. I felt very uncomfortable laughing, because people would comment on it.

In the words of Godspell (which would go on to be adapted into international best-seller The Bible) “If that light’s under a bushel/You’ve lost something kinda crucial”. I felt myself diminishing, the edges of me sanded away to be inoffensive. (I am cautious about the use of the word, I want to assure you this will not turn into a diatribe on cancel culture and wokeness in comedy) I was someone who loved to joke, loved to laugh, loved to be a part of a group laughing together. I couldn’t laugh as hard as I wanted to, as hard as I needed to because I was terrified that everyone would comment or confirm my worst suspicions; that I was doing something wrong, that my laughter was an issue to be worked through or resolved.

I got to college, surrounded by entirely new people, a completely new culture, and more opportunities to laugh than I’d had before. And I found my laugh again. It wasn’t a slow process of beckoning it out like a stray dog, still shaking with eyes wide and wet with mistrust. I was in the Red Door, watching UiP’s first show. I remember there was a fish boy. I remember being astounded by what I was seeing. My experience with improv had been entirely short form games, little activities to build comedic muscle for sketch writing. And I was there seeing a group I had signed up to audition for, and I laughed and laughed. I was surrounded by people who didn’t so much as cast a glance in my direction as I did. The percussive feel of a nail gun in my chest, the view of the ceiling tiles as I threw my head backwards, the thrum at the end of my nose that lingered afterwards.

I loved laughing in rehearsals. I loved seeing comedians who I adored make the smartest choice. I loved laughing at the silliest bits of object work. I loved standing on the back line and doing a full 360 because I’d just been bowled over by the team members I was lucky to share a rehearsal space with.

I loved doing shows and laughing louder than the audience. I loved seeing the smartest people I knew prove it time and time again. I cherished those moments, and the ache in my stomach after a good show. I still hold the laughs I had at UiP the watermark to which I hold other laughs. I haven’t laughed like that, or as often, since the pandemic. I will snort or chuckle, I’ll even guffaw. But when I truly laugh these days, I’m back in the Red Door. I see the lights on my face, feel the tension in my legs like a coiled spring.

I know my laugh is loud. I’ve been too often the loudest one to laugh at a joke. I’ve gotten the sideways glances as I hide my face. I’m not going to apologize for it. I can’t fake my laugh. I can’t force it even if I tried. I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of inauthentic places. I’ve been surrounded by, and contributed to, cultures of fakeness and lied compliments. I’ve been in mean spaces where the goal seems to be to inflict as much cruelty on people not there as possible. I’ve got my share of regrets for perpetuating cycles of cattiness.

But I don’t regret my laugh. I don’t regret being impossibly and spontaneously real. I don’t feel shy about showing people that I thought the funny thing that they did was funny. I don’t miss the opportunity to show it. I love my laugh, and I love sharing it. I love my cackle, and I will never shy away from describing it as such. My laugh is obnoxious and loud and abrasive and sometimes a bit too much. I love it because it’s me. I love it because it’s more than me. My laugh is authentic, my laugh is never untrue, my laugh is always exactly how I feel, unfiltered by my own neuroses and inclinations to be unkind.

I miss hearing my laugh as often as I once did. I’m glad that gentleman enjoyed that episode of Frasier. I know I surely did. And I knew I liked it more knowing I had a comrade.