Laughs Unlimited is a comedy club and lounge nestled neatly in the Historic District of Sacramento, right in sight of the Tower Bridge. Its talent it hosts ranges from Open-Mic Night to celebrity Comics with a spectrum of calibers. Next month features Pauly Shore if that gives you an idea. Heath was set to go on next. He wasn't famous yet, not really, but he had started building a career five years ago and it was starting to give him some credibility. This time it was a new town, and not some dive hideaway either, but a real city comedy club. He'd have to thank Randal, his agent, for setting it up. It'd be a paying gig, but if he wanted to make it in this town he needed to make an impression.
He nursed the glass of scotch he held, watching how the stage lights played off the blocks of ice floating in the amber liquid. The guy up on stage was young, a decade younger maybe. Heath should have been that young too, if he had started when he meant to. But now he was making up for lost time. The trade off was that he still felt young. The change Arcadia had on him had given him an extended life. Yet since his escape the lines of reality were blurred, broken in some places. Those places he avoided when he could. All he wanted was to entertain, to make others forget their worries and just enjoy life. Making people laugh was what overcame the fear he felt that he blocked out in his mind.
"Let's give a big round of applause for Jhonny the Maniac. Next, we've got a new comic just starting tonight. He's just dropped in from Washington having performed in Rainier Beach and Tukwila. Let's show him some California hosplitality and give him a hand, Heath Moore!"
Heath stood up and strode out on stage at his cue, the scotch still in his hand. His wild sandy brown hair brightened and his even complexion smoothed in the lighting, hitting him in his big brown eyes that seemed to glisten as he squinted against it. Looking out into the crowd he saw it was of modest size, not a huge turnout, but not awful either. Heath smiled and waved, and as they often did the crowd smiled with him. "Hey, thanks for that," he said to the announcer as the mic was handed over. He pulled it up to his chin and waited a few beats for the crowd's applause to die down as he pulled his thoughts together.
"Well you can see I've brought my prop for the evening," lifting his glass and then setting it by the stool where a bottled water sat to refresh the entertainers. "I hope you've brought yours too because it's just more fun when you've got your best friends right there with you. Jack, Morgan, Gordon, & Jim. I brought the Christian Brothers myself. I'm not sure where the other one went off to but I'm sure we'll meet up later." The audience murmers a few chuckles. Heath is at ease, you have to be when you're on stage. It's got to feel more normal than normal or else everyone sees how sense you're really feeling in the pit of your stomach, right next to the liquor.
"Yes, I'm Heath Moore," he continued, introducing himself, "And yes, I've come down from Washington. Anyone here from Washington?" He got a few yelps of acknowledgment out of the immediate silence. Heath peered out at them and clapped lightly himself, "Nice, nice. When I'm out of state people always come up to me and ask what you're supposed to call someone from Washington. Is it Washingtoners, Washingtonites, Washiganders? It's quite a mouthful, isn't it? We've already got three syllabals as it is, right? God, I'd hate to be from Massachusetts. They don't even want to be associated with the word. They call themselves Bostonians. People from Washington might as well call themselves Seattlites, but then we'd just be asked what we're supposed to be orbiting. I mean, you can't be expected to say the whole thing. So when people ask me what you call someone from Washington, I just tell them that there's a much easier word you can use. Hippies." He got a bigger rise of laughter that time as he continues to smile and walk about the stage.
"You know why, right?" he asked, speaking over the fading chuckles. "It's not just our obsession with organic foods either, but back in the 80's we were pretty famous for the grunge movement, cause that's where Nirvana and Pearl Jam started up. So we've got a lot of indie rock culture for the past few decades, and ultimately a lot of those socially alienated angst filled youths grew up into adults. And instead of drugs and sex to distract them from their problems, well, now they have coffee and babies. And everyone knows we drink a lot of coffee. I mean a lot of coffee, so much that we invented Starbucks and bottomless cups. I read an article on some Starbucks statistics that we consume more coffee than any other state. And I'm pretty sure even those Bostonians drink a lot of coffee so to drink the most has got to be pretty extreme. Grunge isn't exactly music you can get tweaked out to though, so I'm guessing we invented that to balance out the caffeine."
The audience was laughing more now, some who got the jokes, and others who were getting caught up in the merry atmosphere. A flash of teeth and it was smooth sailing from there. He could feel the energy in the air, building up. It was sheer joy, glamour, a raw emotion brought out by the power of laughter. He could feel it filling him, their smiling faces warming his broken soul. He'd do alright here, he thought.