Brenda Monk Is Funny Read Online Free PDF

announced to the group.
    Brenda looked around at the faces in front of her: three men and two women. All three men were comedians, and of the women, one was a junior TV development researcher who would pretty much sleep with anyone who had ever thought of a joke. The second was the wife of one of the comedians. She looked tired. The oldest of the male comedians, an American named Linus, was approaching his fifties. Already a legend in some respects, he had gained true notoriety five years previously by piercing his foreskin live on stage with the earring of an audience member during a late night show and since then his once legendary promiscuity had dropped off even if his dick hadn’t. He had once performed with Bill Hicks, a fact he never tired of referencing, and at one stage in his career it looked as if he would go all the way. He could have been George Carlin, he liked to say, if he’d worked a little harder. Jonathan considered him a kind of mentor, even though he mostly pitied him now. Linus’s commitment to stand-up as ‘art’ gave him an almost mystical aura and even though he was more interested in the theory rather than the practice of stand-up comedy these days, his taste was impeccable and he was always engaging. Right now, though, he was engaged in rolling a joint on his lap using some of the finest medical marijuana money could buy, which he quietly explained he’d managed to bring all the way from LA in a very expensive designer candle he had carefully melted and reformed around the packet of green buds.
    Brenda watched him lick the cigarette paper shut and twist the end, remembering how he had once propositioned her outside a disabled toilet while Jonathan was onstage. He couldn’t promise full intercourse, he had cautioned, but he could promise everything else. She had declined and he had smiled – their friendship was sealed. In the land of the amoral, the man (or woman) with one scruple is king.
    Linus sparked the end of the joint, took three deep drags and passed it straight to Brenda. She took it and pulled once before passing it to Jonathan. Then came the whoosh of the MDMA high, pushing up through her body and breaking a warm wave over her brain. She felt perfect, she felt that this was the only right place on earth to be. She felt her tongue push against the back of her front teeth and tried not to clench her jaw.
    ‘Brenda is fucked,’ said Linus, grinning, ‘her pupils are like fuckin’ dinner plates.’
    Brenda giggled and Jonathan’s arm tightened around her shoulders.
    ‘So, Linus, I’m working on this bit about the new censorship,’ started Matt, an eager, ambitious comedian in his mid-twenties who clearly couldn’t believe who he was hanging out with.
    ‘You referencing Carlin’s seven words you can never say on TV?’
    ‘Yeah, I guess, I mean, that’s the thing, the words have changed now so…’
    ‘Sure, the words have changed, but the ideas haven’t. You got anything new to say? Anything original to add?’
    ‘Well, I was going to start in with some stuff about how women can say some words, but men can’t…’
    ‘So it’s a “differences between men and women” bit?’
    Linus didn’t bother to hide his contempt. Jonathan smirked and Matt blushed. Brenda watched on as the tired wife discreetly tugged on the sleeve of her husband, Mike.
    Brenda knew, as everyone knew, that this forty-four-year-old comic had settled into a nice, quiet stand-up career consisting of a solid twenty-minute set he performed for decent money around the country. He wasn’t at the Festival to perform an hour long show, although every year he said he would, if he could just find the time to write one. She also knew, as everyone knew, that somewhere deep down, as much as he loved his wife and kids, Mike clearly felt that they had ruined his once promising career. The pressure to make money had led him onto the relentless B-list club treadmill, driving around the country performing the