Submission 7

Comedian Bio

Keifer Harvey first began performing stand-up and sketch comedy in November of 2007. He’s appeared on several network television shows and has performed with The Second City. He’s played clubs across the world including The Laugh Factory, Zanies, and The Improv.

Story

Comedy is a place for the broken and disenfranchised to have their voices heard. To tell stories of misdeeds in hopes of some form of redemption for their honesty. The problem is I’ve always had an issue with being honest. Not out of malice but out of my own insecurity. The good thing about that in stand-up is you have thousands of people seeking that same validation through small versions of truth. What used to be harrowing stories of smoking crack became harrowing stories of surviving bad first Tinder dates. I call it “white woman bravery” AKA “TaylorSwifting”. It’s the idea of taking an innocuous occurrence and giving it a morbid quality, value, or details to seem more heroic or at least to give the narrative some semblance of justice, while painting the self as carefree, strong-willed, sexual, pure, and communicative through their power of sharing a story for likes, claps, and retweets. All of these stories need a villain. Every villain has a backstory. Here is mine. I heavily got into comedy when I was 21. I lived in New York City at the time, interning for a show during the day and doing mics at night. Anytime I drank beer the words of my dad would echo out to me, “you have addiction in your genes so don’t drink or do drugs.” I didn’t listen. I was swept in the moment of seeing my idols brilliantly perform, and then failing to do the same. I would go home every night between 3-5 AM and cry myself to sleep because I didn’t understand why I was so bad at stand-up but also why I couldn’t stop trying. I would go to my internship at 8 AM and sneak off to sleep in the bathroom because I was so tired from the night before. I moved back home after my internship, with intentions to return to New York in a few months to pursue a career in stand-up. While home, my dad relapsed on drugs. He missed my college graduation and I said I wanted nothing to do with him. He’d frequently call to try and get me to see him or talk to him. The one time I did come to see him he asked me for money so I left. The next call I got from him outside of him saying, “he would never forgive me for that” was him telling me he had a heart attack. I told him I’d have to come by the next day because I had a show to go to. That’s where my priorities were. I was convinced to see him at the hospital. He looked worse than I expected. He reiterated he hadn’t forgiven me for leaving him without giving him $20 but knowing that the doctor was performing open heart surgery on him and he was to make a full recovery, I knew that we would reconcile. His surgery was a success. I took a picture of him in the hospital bed covered in tubes so one day I could show him, “this is how we almost lost you because of your addictions. Don’t do this again to us.” I got a call around 5:30 AM from my mom who was in Atlanta at the time saying, “something happened at the hospital and you need to get down there.” I drove straight there and got to the parking lot when my stepdad called and said, “I’m so sorry.” I asked him what he was talking about and he just said it again, “I’m so sorry.” I ran from the parking garage to his hospital room and saw him there. All the tubes were gone. He was lifeless. Cold. I dropped to my knees crying. My uncle came by and scooped me up like a baby. All my dreams of reconciliation, growth, of hearing “I forgive you” were gone. Just having a dad. My dad. Was gone. That night I went to an open mic. I trudged through a 15-minute set then thanked everyone for their support. At his funeral, a lot of his friends and people from his programs told me how much he lauded me and my pursuits in comedy and various accomplishments. I wanted this to make me feel better. Instead it turned me cold with the realization of 2 things- 1. he loved me so much but his addiction had such a stronghold on him he couldn’t fully articulate it so NO ONE deserves my love again and 2. Everyone who I’ll ever know and get close to will die and I don’t want to feel that type of hurt again. Every relationship I had felt like a bridge I was planning to cross all the way over and then burn it down. Every friendship made me feel paranoid and alone. Associates just felt like networking. I dove deeper into my work and performing. I never really took time to mourn, opting instead to do comedy every night and get engulfed in a world of drinking and promiscuity. I moved to Chicago in 2011, opting for more opportunity to grow in stand-up and a shot at The Second City, a place I fell in love with almost immediately. I slowly built a reputation as a hard worker and someone who could do improv, sketch, and stand-up. I moved back to Birmingham at the end of the year to be in a relationship with a girl who I met that summer. She was a sorority girl who loved improv, different from anyone I had dated before. Her parents were old south, small town racists. Opting to call me “Tyrone” or telling her if she didn’t end things with me they would cut off her college funding. Things took a turn when she had to repeal her offer of a sorority function because her parents were worried what it would look like to their community when pictures were posted of her with a Black boy. She went with her friend Robbie instead, wherein they got drunk and made out on the bus and I’d find out the next day after reading the text message exchange describing their romp, “like high school kids.” Instead of ending things, I drove to Tuscaloosa and hooked up with an old girlfriend I would occasionally vent to. We stayed together despite our constant fighting and mistrust, eventually leading to a night after a show where she berated me for talking to another woman so I got drunk. I passed out on a friend’s couch and once we got to the car she told me how I embarrassed her. I cried asking why she was so mean to me despite how nice I am to her, and asked her to take me to my car. She refused saying I was too drunk and I said, “I would rather die than be around you anymore.” I woke up the next morning in my bed naked with tear streaks down my face. I asked what happened and as she was getting dressed she said we had sex and she was mad at me for falling asleep after because she wanted to tell me something. I didn’t remember anything. Telling friends in our improv troupe the next day they told me, “don’t say anything about it to anyone because no one will believe you” so I kept quiet. I moved back to Chicago that summer after being offered a show at The Second City. One of my first nights back, I attended a comedy party where I saw an old friend from open mics whom I would flirt with frequently. I was going through a phrase of “dunking” where you dip your finger in the front shirt pocket of someone. I thought this would be my “thing”. After drinking heavily at this party, I approached her in her neon pink top and said, “What up?! Dunk!” while swiftly dipping my index finger into her front pocket. She started screaming, “what the fuck are you doing?!” I tried to explain while being pushed away and later apologized to the response of, “it’s fine.” Feeling incredibly remorseful, I apologized again the next day and the following week, both times being met again with, “it’s fine, let’s move on from it.” Truth be told, no one had moved on from it. After jumping from relationship to hook up to break up over the next couple of years, I saw my name continue to rise in the Chicago market. I was opening for big names, headlining local clubs, and touring. There was another comic who I had an interest in and in March of 2013 she invited me to a whiskey party. We drank heavily and I offered to walk her home to Pilsen. We made out at the bus stop, held hands on the bus, and finally walked to her apartment. She told me the train wouldn’t be coming for several hours and I asked if I could hang out until then. We make out some more and swap turns in the bathroom. We go into her bedroom where we kiss again and as we’re getting undressed she tells me she doesn’t want to have sex with another comedian. I say I understand and we fall asleep on her mattress on the floor. The sun comes up and through hazy eyes, I see her sigh deeply and ask what’s wrong and she tells me I have to leave. I talk to her two days later through Facebook asking what’s up and she says that she had a string of bad situations and that flared things up for her but doesn’t think I’m a monster and wouldn’t want to ruin my life or career. We continue to hang out occasionally and by this time had started relationships with other people. She moves to New York and as time goes by, she sends me rude messages and when I inquire why she says because she still felt weird about that night and had heard about the party from the year prior. I apologize again and say I thought we had moved on and that it’s best we don’t talk anymore. My drinking increases. My promiscuity increases. I forget the stigmas of overly sexual Black men. The plot to Birth of a Nation where this scary, rapey Black man chases the white woman, choosing death over fucking him as the Klan kills him in an effort to defend her honor. I forget the story of Emmett Till, where a white woman claims he sexually harassed her and it leads to his brutal murder at the hands of her husband. I forget about the Central Park Five, wrongfully accused of raping a jogger and put into the prison system for 21 years. I know as long as I’m with another consenting adult, my actions are fine. Who is to judge me for having sex or flirting or trading dirty photos? Then 2015 rolls around and I start dating around again, eventually getting in a serious relationship. She tells me she might be in love with me. I push myself to do the right thing. Every now and again slipping up but thinking if I hide it or don’t let it happen again, it won’t matter. I make little reassuring judgment calls to myself. “MLK cheated and he lead the Civil Rights Movement, that doesn’t make him a bad person.” “John Cena has done more Make-A-Wishes than any other celebrity and he cheated on his first wife, that doesn’t make him a bad person.” Later that year, I was hosting a show when a comedian who previously lived in Chicago had come back from New York. I asked her the intro she wanted and misspoke it on stage. She talked about it for 2 minutes before getting into her set then chastised me for my hosting. I tweeted about it and she sent me a message asking about it and why I deleted her on Facebook. I explained that I didn’t like how she approached me about it and that I deleted her due to her association with the girl from before who had moved to New York. We argued online with it all concluding with her giving me the middle finger after a set at a club we were both performing on later that night. Her ex-boyfriend who was my roommate told me not to worry about it. That following year, a dream comes true. I got the Mainstage at The Second City. I get hired on what would have been my dad’s birthday. I cried and thanked the producers. I remember seeing the sea of congratulations online. But as every comic knows, when there are 99 people laughing, you still focus on the 1 person who isn’t. In my case, it was this woman who lived in New York from the Facebook messages. She posted, “congratulations to all the men in stand-up and improv who have continued success despite multiple sexual assault allegations.” My heart sank. My dad’s birthday will forever be associated in my brain with Second City and her. Second City launched an investigation, concluding my innocence and that we could move on. But I couldn’t move on. Neither could she as she posted it again. And one more time with a “and he’s not even that funny.” She targeted my friends for being friends with me. She called me a bad person. I was upset. I stopped sleeping. I started drinking more which lead to acting out more. Having sex with other staff members staff, tourists, and comedians. Doing all the risky things I felt I couldn’t with the person who would tell me how much they loved me every night. On Halloween at a comedy club party, I almost had an orgy with some of the staff. When it was interrupted, myself, a server there, and another comedian went to the bathroom. She said she, “only wanted to fuck him” and I explained that the door was jammed so I would guard the door. He said he was fine with it and she said she wanted me to go outside and guard the door from there. I rolled my eyes and said OK. After standing for a minute and hearing them, I walked away telling a passerby, “I think that bathroom is open” just for them to get walked in on. The more I’d try to slow down, the more I’d have to face things. So, I drank more, cheated more, slept less, became vindictive, and felt more detached. After a trip to China, two friends were arguing on social media about one of them deleting the other. After liking the status of one of them, the other grew upset and following a discussion, asked if I would say something about call out culture. I mulled it over and at 5 in the morning while in Toronto, I wrote a long piece calling out call out culture. Most people understood it and liked it, some people had a personal feeling towards the idea because they felt they themselves had limited options. Then the New York comedian popped up again, “wah I got called out for what I did to women wah” and it lead to another woman who I hadn’t met ranting about me, ending it with a hashtag of me being a serial abuser. I got a lawyer who said essentially, “if you sue them, this could go public and you’ll look bad because it’ll look like you’re hiding something by suing them.” So, I opted to stay silent. My improv group stopped talking to me citing they felt I should’ve told them and that I crossed boundaries by inviting random girls to come to the show. When I pointed out that one of the other people on the team knocked my glasses off on stage they justified it with, “maybe she was mad at you” and said I liked “negative attention.” It all eventually lead to my break-up after I attempted to come clean about my infidelity by offering half-truths. She eventually found out detailed accounts of other misdeeds. The last message I’d ever receive from her after saying I hope she has a safe trip to Boston was a response of, “you gave me chlamydia.” Followed by her sister texting me, “I’m coming for you motherfucker.” Within the next few months I had been called crazy, told I victimize myself, called a stalker, a predator, pervert, a piece of shit, a shitty person, a monster, a sociopath, a narcissist, a guy who jerks off in front of couples, told no one wants to hear my side or that I’ll come off defensive. I saw a tweet about me get 80+ retweets, channeling Roy Bryant, Trump, and Birth of a Nation as it was lead off with, “As a straight white male, I feel it’s my duty to say that Keifer Harvey is…”. I was planning my suicide, feeling like my life and career were over. My manager dumped me. I kept thinking about how he once casually said the n-word to me and how I was too scared to tell him how much it bothered me. He called my agents to inform them and they called and dumped me as well. My initial thought after the phone call being, “my old roommate who is also on the roster does a joke recalling a personal story about having sex with a woman who ‘doesn’t want it’.” I lost all my bookings, festivals, deals, jobs, potential jobs, associates, and friends. My dream job rescinds an offer for another show citing, “we thought you’d use more of your stand-up” but I know the truth given it was a week after I had a nervous breakdown backstage 5 minutes before a show where I was crying and vomiting all over the place. Calls stop coming in. Emails stop getting responses. Every action I’ve ever had or haven’t had is brought into question. Sending Instagram messages asking about someone’s flesh eating virus, asking someone how they’re doing, and crowd work to a newlywed couple from a show 3 years prior are used as evidence to show my pattern of terrible behavior. That girl who I made out with after the whiskey party? I become “the guy who crawled into her bed.” The girl from the Halloween party? I blocked the door as she screamed and pushed through me to valiantly dance with the rest of the party-goers. The girl who confronted me about a bad intro and messaged me about deleting her on Facebook? I yelled at HER at the show, messaged HER to berate her to where she had to block me and then I messaged her on Twitter. I never even followed her on Twitter. My ex pens an op-ed detailing the break-up and me lying, being manipulative, and scary. Gone are the stories of going to the hospital with her, flying to China together and the trouble in the airport, helping her through anxiety attacks, buying a website for her birthday, crying together watching Philando Castile, all of the encouragement. It’s cognitive dissonance. I did bad things so the good things are all a lie. I fall into a deep depression, feeling alone, stressed, getting threats. Being told where I can and can’t show up. It spreads throughout the comedy circuits. Some of the stories are framed so bad that people will only tell me, “they heard things.” I start reading this book, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” and reach out to one of the subjects for advice. He tells me, “stay away from social media, it’s toxic for your mental health.” So, I give all my passwords to a friend in a different country and ask to not have them until the new year. I take time away from stand-up, secluding myself. I’m either home, at the gym, or my therapist’s office. I start taking antidepressants. Sometimes looking at the bottle like, “If I take all of these, I’ll never have to feel this way again.” I start going to church and 12 step programs for sex addiction. I quit drinking, quit doing drugs, and become totally celibate. I work to become the exact opposite of what they say and think I am. In real life, the bad guy isn’t given a monologue to explain why he is the way he is. It’s human nature to enjoy a train wreck, especially if it was close to its destination and even more so if we can say we threw a rock that helped lead it off the track. I saw so many traces of my dad in me from this experience. The addiction, isolation, ego, wildness, vindictiveness, pettiness, sadness, and quest for validation. He never got a chance to say he forgave me, and some people probably never will, but I get a chance to at least forgive myself.