Is this funny?

“Are you saying you don’t feel like a bull?” He asked the question with his usual brand of playful contempt.

“Well, I do have a habit of running straight toward every red flag that I see.” I glanced up at him from the breakfast nook table and smiled, silently suggesting that present company was not excluded from this statement. When he did not smile back, I quickly shifted my gaze downward to his long legs, dangling from the kitchen counter.

“Funny,” he replied flatly.

“That’s the idea.” I sighed and picked up my pen, looking back down at my worn, pocket-sized notebook. I was trying my best to perform how I imagined intense creative focus might look on me, were I to finally take my standup seriously. I immediately lined out a tag I had just added to try and save a failing joke. The entire Portland comedy scene had heard me do the same stale bit about my childhood at least 15 times in the last month alone. It never got laughs.

“You know, Karl Marx was a Taurus,” he offered.

“So is Janet Jackson,” I quickly replied. “Her birthday is the day before mine.”

I didn’t look up to see his reaction. It always gave me a subtle satisfaction to remind him of the stark contrast in both our specific tastes and levels of education. I continued to pretend I was fully engrossed in writing out my set for that night. “I’m thinking of retiring the summer camp bit. You know, the one about the homesick girl in my bunk who thought her dog was sending her letters? Nobody ever laughs really, I think it just makes me sound like I was a bully or something.”

“You were a bully. You still are! Especially when you don’t get your way. Which according to this is a hallmark of your kind.” He lifted his phone slightly in my direction, indicating he was still on some astrology site, reading about the strengths and weaknesses of my sign.

“We’re stubborn. We’re not mean,” I retorted. “And anyway, aren’t Tauruses known more for like, loving food and sleep more than anything?”

“This says they’re most known for their loyalty.” His words delivered a jab, and I did my best not to wince. My partner had long suspected me of cheating on him with a fellow comedian, and he was unfortunately quite correct. Mercifully, he changed the subject. “Do you think you want to do anything special for tonight? I could make us a reservation somewhere.” A familiar knot made of guilt had already tightened in my stomach.

“Eh. I don’t care about my birthday that much. Plus I have a show so it’s not like we’ll have time to really go anywhere. Are you coming to the club?” He hadn’t seen one of my sets in weeks, and though it was a relief on a certain level, it had recently started to concern me.

“Honestly,” he sighed, “I doubt it. It gets old hearing you talk about us so much on stage. And half of the stuff isn’t even true! I never know how to show my face afterward, knowing the entire room just heard jokes about this horrible, fictionalized version of me.”

We had had this conversation many times before, and I dutifully made my same tired counterpoints. “But I never use your name! Ever! Nobody has any idea who you are. I just say ‘my boyfriend’ or ‘my partner’ or ‘him over there in the gray sweater looking like he wants me to fall off the stage.’ Plus not that it matters, but some of that stuff is real. The road trip fight is real, the weird smell stuff is real… it’s meant to make me look bad, not you. And it’s also some of my only reliable material, it always gets laughs! I could cut the bit about your parents if you really want me to. It’s not really working anyway.”

In one swift motion he hopped down from the counter and put his phone in his back pocket.

“I need to go to work,” he said plainly, and as he made his way out of the kitchen, he ended the conversation with his central thesis: “If you’re the one who’s supposed to look bad, why am I the one who always feels terrible?”

After a brief, self-conscious pause, I shouted into middle space, “Alexa! Play ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’!”

“Funny.” He said it from the living room in the exact same tone as a moment prior, only this time I could tell he meant it even less. I heard the front door close behind him as Janet Jackson started her iconic, breathy, early 90s intro on the sound system. I was about to laugh when an invasive thought immediately stopped me: I was far better at amusing myself than amusing audiences. It was a disturbing revelation for an already insecure comedian.

That night I arrived an hour early to Helium Comedy Club, hoping to steal a moment with Dylan. He was the host of the event, as well the subject of my ongoing infidelity. I found him laughing with the bartender and took a seat beside him. “Hey, Dylan. Do you know what order you’re putting us in tonight?” I asked with an unconvincing casualness.

“Yeah, 10 minute sets and I have you going up third. Does that work?” He was matching my feigned detachment.

“Actually I was thinking I could go first since it’s my birthday. I thought maybe my boyfriend and I could go do something after I go up– I mean I’ve seen everyone’s sets a hundred times.” Dylan scoffed at my request.

“You’re still with that guy? Wow. OK well... I mean... if you seriously think you want to open, be my guest. I’ll put you first.” It was clear that Dylan did not think I had the chops to be the opener, and he forced a laugh that enraged me. I wanted to end things with him right then and there but I knew I wasn’t going to.

“Thanks,” was all I could muster, and I stormed off to find an empty booth so I could be alone with my notebook, going over the new material a hundred more times in my head before trying it out in front of an audience. In front of my partner.

By the time the show started, he still wasn’t there. I stood on the stairs to the right of the stage, scanning the room over and over again for his familiar shape, but there was no sign of him.

Dylan introduced me with somewhat sarcastic enthusiasm, shouting, “Ladies and gentlemen, kicking us off tonight, we have the funniest woman in Portland… give it up for Jamie Edwards!” I walked on stage to the usual applause and quickly gave Dylan the customary handshake as he exited. While I removed the thousandth microphone from the thousandth stand, I caught something not in the corner of my eye, but in fact the very center of my field of vision. It took me at least four complete seconds –an eternity on stage– to fully register the sheer absurdity of what I was seeing.

Sitting casually at a table in the very middle of the dark room was what appeared to be a man in a huge bull mask. He wasn’t moving and nobody around him seemed to acknowledge him. Shocking and surreal, the sight of him looking toward the stage absolutely paralyzed me. “Keep it going for Dylan!” I heard myself say long after the applause had died. The crowd dutifully began clapping again, as I bought myself a few extra seconds to try and make any sense of the bull in the audience.

The mask itself was challenging. Even if there hadn’t been a face behind it, and even if there wasn’t an entire person behind that face, the specific texture and form of the bull’s head made it difficult to behold. It was crude and woven from plant material, like something that might be a prop in a student film about a fictionalized pagan harvest ritual. At the same time, it was incredibly cartoonish. Almost friendly. It was practically a perfect rounded oval, with almost no discernible details. It reminded me of a child’s drawing, and the way adults so often have to pretend to know what animal has just been rendered, searching the crayon marks for any recognizable clues that might designate a smiling blob as something more specific. In the case of the mask staring back at me, the horns were the only real giveaway.

A more seasoned comic would have pivoted and instantly improvised an opening bit (if not an entirely new set) addressing the bull head-on. But after 3 years, I still hadn’t developed that level of confidence, and I was certainly not one to engage in crowd work. Hecklers were historically able to derail me with ease, and I had never in my life been tempted to try out a “Hey sir, what do you do for a living?” with someone in the front row. I wanted desperately to run directly offstage and out into the street. For a moment, I considered pretending to faint so I wouldn’t have to face this bizarre tear in reality.

In the end, I did perhaps the strangest thing possible: I delivered my entire set as rehearsed, as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I made the usual hand gestures and facial expressions, remembered all my segues, all while pretending I couldn’t feel the hollow eyes of the bull boring into me for all ten of my mediocre minutes. They were like two black holes attempting to suck me in, so I kept my own eyes to the sides and back of the room until it was finally over.

Still in a half stupor, I stood out of view on the side of the stage as I heard Dylan return to introduce the next comedian. I made my way down the side stairs, searching the dark for the bull but he was nowhere to be found. I was certain I had not imagined it. I left Helium immediately and biked home in a daze. Had my boyfriend been there? Had he seen the whole thing?

As I walked through the front door of our little bungalow, I called out to him,“Hey, are you here?? Something crazy just happened! Hello?!” I continued to yell his name as I walked back to the kitchen to get a glass of water. And that’s when I saw it.

There, staring at me from the breakfast nook table, was the bull mask. I gasped and staggered back a few steps as though it had attempted to lunge at me. It was lying face up, unaccompanied by a body. As I attempted to collect myself, I noticed there was a colored square of paper just below the bull’s ear. Taking a cautious step forward, I removed the post-it and brought it inches from my face, revealing its message:

“Happy Birthday.”

I knew in an instant I would never see my boyfriend again. After a brief pause, I took the mask in my hands and raised it to my face. It was heavier than I’d imagined seeing it from the stage, and it hung effortlessly from the top of my head. I slowly entered my living room, now a shamed and pitiful minotaur. I made my way slowly to our gray couch and layed out on my back, keeping the mask balanced on my face. I stared up at the ceiling through one eyehole at a time, wondering what it was I was supposed to be feeling. Surprised at the sound of my own voice, I heard myself shout, “Alexa! Play ‘Bull Rider’!”

I fell asleep listening to the words of Johnny Cash, wondering how I was going to make this funny in the morning.