Recently I was watching a Netflix special where the whole crux of the one-hour stand up routine was to examine the concept of 'tension' in comedy. How you set up the joke, build it, play with the audience's emotions until the tension in the room can be plucked like a guitar string, creating its own unique note.. and then you drop the punch line. The act of dropping that punchline releases the tension which is seen in the laugh. Greater the tension, bigger the release, louder the laugh.
Like an orgasm at the end of a successful one night stand.
A successful one night stand like most stand up situations starts way before we reach the main punchline. The opening I'm-cute-AND-funny banter, the I'm-offended-haha-just-kidding overtures, the casual-but-intentional contact with skin, then the body-slam of some lacerating personal trauma that shines a wholly different layered light on all the revelations of the night, to finally end up with the last laugh. And boom, suddenly you're naked with the comic and the punchline is the release of all that sexual tension - and it's fun!
Now, what would happen if, when it's all said and done, the audience is leaving the theatre, discussing where to grab a bite and checking if they have all their belongings, and the comic comes back on stage and says "So... to continue what I was saying..."?
That's what the three-day-later phone call from a successful one-night stand feels like to me. To mix metaphors, Elvis has left the building and my partner has just asked for the menu to see what to order next.
I've heard it said that a successful one night stand can be converted into a viable relationship but it feels like a lie. Can you imagine the same level of attention and intensity of a stand up routine that continues across an extended period of time? Not an hour every day, or even 4 hours at a stretch, but days or months or years and decades? That's what a viable relationship is but if one had to live it at the same level of intensity, it would destroy me, make me forget laughter, and most likely lead me to murder.
Or one deliberately dials back to pace oneself, thus changing the very nature of the sexy, unplanned, non-viability-testing beast that got you going in the first place.
So what does one seek or expect on the second night after the first night already covered the first few steps from getting to know you banter to skin contact - and done it well? What fills that second hour of distance run if one has to avoid the inevitable disappointment of trying to recreate the magic of the first night?
All these thoughts go through my head as I see the comic's caller ID pop up again on my phone which sits next to where I'm typing my confusion. I suppose it's only polite to answer, while wondering fruitlessly why I'm responding to the promise of another sexy encounter with politeness and tremulous anxiety about longer-than-another-day viability.
Bleagh.
