Submission 20

Comedian Bio

Jordan Bench has been doing standup comedy for four years. He has been on two cross country tours and has preformed in more than 15 states. Jordan has opened for Eddie Ifft, Nate Craig, Ron Funches, Joe Zimmerman, Jon Rineman, Quinn Dahle, Joe List, Ian Edwards, and Big Jay Oakerson.

Story

I’m a 26 year old standup comedian by the name of Jordan Randolph Bench. I am originally from a rainy desolate waste land overrun with social justice warriors, moral police, tech billionaires, and homeless “no one cares,” otherwise known as Seattle, Washington. My comedy journey began in Wilmington, North Carolina however. Wilmington is quite a genial little beach town if you don’t mind tons of heroine and everyone you know having a DUI. I moved there in the summer of 2012 to attend the University of North Carolina Wilmington. This move was both the best and worst decision of my life. I say best because I started doing comedy there and comedy, for lack of a better word, “saved” my life. I say “saved” because before comedy I was wandering through life like a rebel without a brain; aimless, perfunctory, and incredibly depressed. I say it was the worst decision of my life because comedy eventually led me back to Seattle where I thought it would be a hilarious and groundbreaking idea to get hammered, pull my dick out of a trench coat, and subsequently get tackled off stage by a brain damaged owner of the club. Oh, and also I failed out of college in my senior year. Party! It’s not as though pulling my tiny, rarely used meat hammer (more of a meat tack hammer) and petite, although unwavering set of balls out of a trench coat in a room “full” of about twelve people was a spur of the moment idea. (I say “full” because as any comedian knows most open mics clear out about halfway through and all that’s left is bitter, exasperated, just ready to go home fellow comedians.) Believe it or not exposing my Rick Moranis like unit was something I had been considering for a couple of months before it actually happened. I was in Venice, Florida two or so months before the incident, as my aging parents had just bought a retirement home in the gulf coast beach town. What does one do in an elderly paradise such as Venice you may ask? Hit the golf course and get stuck behind a foursome of 90 something’s who take 30 minutes to find a ball they only hit ten feet? Wander about downtown on a rusted out beach bike from 1993? Take a dip in the Gulf of Mexico and get ravaged by a pack disgruntled manatees? Fuck that, you go to the second hand clothing store and make out like a bandit. Venice is where rich people go to die and either they were so old their kids are dead too or their still breathing children didn’t want to rummage through their closet full of 1940’s trench coats and evening wear so they just said fuck it and donated everything. That’s where I come in. I didn’t walk into the second hand store with trench coats on the mind but when I saw it I knew I had to have it; Khaki in color, double breasted, and too big to the point where it looked cartoonish and ridiculous on me but I could still wear it without the coat tail touching the ground. So I bought it, smelled like old man sweat, only fifteen dollars, what a steal of a deal! My originally plan when I got back to Seattle was to make a black and white short film about a trench coat flasher terrorizing his neighborhood. I wanted to have close ups of me sneaking around trees and through bushes and a shot of me whipping the trench coat open in dramatic fashion. The shot of me ripping the trench open would be from behind so the audience wouldn’t see my twerpie genitals but they would see the victim’s reaction. The idea was to have all the victim’s be startled at first and then fall into fits of hysterical laughter once they realized how unthreatening my manhood is, all the while the song Yakety Sax would be playing in the background. This would happen to a couple different “victims” until I would eventually walk home disheveled and broken with my tail between my legs and the song Old Violin by Johnny Paycheck playing in the background. I never got to make the movie, not that I didn’t have the time I just didn’t put in the effort. So the trench coat sat on a coat rack next to my front door waiting to be pried open to reveal all my glorious disappointment. I guess I did get to live the experience of the movie though. Oh the foreshadowing. (If you haven’t heard Old Violin it’s both astonishingly depressing and accidently hilarious, a masterpiece) About a week leading up to the incident I had a recovering meth addicted homeless comedian, who prefers to go unnamed, living on my couch. Because he was in recovery and I’m an incredible decision maker I decided we should drink beers to excess every day for about three or four days. We’d have bonfires in the back yard at night accompanied by an eighteen pack of Rolling Rocks (cheapest beer the 7/11 next store sold) then I’d play Madden 11 on Xbox 360 till I fell asleep at around four or five in the morning. You know, the usual. Then one night I looked over at the trench coat perched on the coat rack and in a drunken haze the idea swirled into my toilet bowl mind. I said, “Dude, wouldn’t it be hilarious if I wore that trench coat with nothing under it to the open mic tomorrow and did my whole set with my dick out?” I don’t remember exactly how he replied but it was something like, “Haha, yeah that’d be pretty wild.” Not really all that enthusiast but it was enough for me. I’d like to say that I’m not blaming him in any way, shape, or form. It was my idea, he probably thought I wasn’t even being serious, and had he said it was stupid I’m almost certain I would have done it anyway just to prove him wrong. The next night we go to the open mic at Laughs Comedy Club in the University district of Seattle, me with trench coat in tow and already a belly full of beer. The date was August 23, 2017. The only reason I’m absolutely sure that was the date is because it was the day before my 26th birthday. Go figure. So we get to the club somewhat late and all the other comedians are already there and waiting in line to sign up, which means I’m going up somewhere near the end of night. I was very thankful for that because I was nervous as fuck and now had plenty of time to calm my nerves at the bar across the street. I went to the bar across the street because Laughs, like most comedy clubs, charges way too much for beers. So I guzzle booze at the bar across the street for about an hour and a half and then another friend who knew I was about to release my trouser worm to the world, but once again will remain nameless, came over and told me there was only a few people left and then I was up. I apprehensively went into the bathroom and stripped down to my natural, God given form. I put the trench coat over myself and it was so big on me you couldn’t really see my bare ankles or tell I was in the buff. I stumbled across the street and as unassumingly as possible made my way to the back of the room. Sweat was beading down my brow, my chest, and just about everywhere else. I told myself in the beginning that I was going to go through with it no matter what though, and I was sticking to that. That was the whole reason I had gotten shitfaced in the first place. So I wouldn’t back down no matter what. That and I really like to get shitfaced. Then out of nowhere the brain damaged club owner comes over to me asks what’s under my coat. (I call him brain damaged not as insult but because he actually suffered a traumatic brain injury, but hey two birds one stone if ya know what I mean) I say. “Nothing, I’m naked.” With a sheepish grin on my face. He tells me in no uncertain terms that I can’t go up that night and walks away to erase my name from the list. My first instinct was relief because I was still as nervous as a tight clamed nineteen old about to give birth for the first time. Then my drunken idiot self chimed in and remembered that I had promised myself I was not backing down no matter what. I was like Leonard Dicaprio’s character Jordan Belfort in the Wolf of Wall Street when he decides mid speech not to leave his corrupt business. “I’m not leaving! I’m not fucking leaving!” I didn’t say this out loud or even in my head but it was the same attitude. I wasn’t fucking leaving. I leaned over to my meth head homeless friend and said, “Should I go up anyways?” This time he enthusiastically said, “Yes, do it!” I still don’t blame him, I made my own bed and I’ll grudgingly lye in it. I got up just as the comic currently on stage was about close. I walked toward the exit near the stage as if I was about to leave. The comic closed, the host came up and introduced the next performer. I said fuck it ran to the stage while the other guy walked. I mounted the stage and went right up to the microphone, all fear and anxiety gone as I grabbed the mic stand and in my wacky high pitched voice said, “If there’s one thing I consider about being nude!” The with the word nude I pulled the trench coat apart exposing my tatter tot sized cock to the awe struck crowd. Not a second later. WHAM! The brain damaged club owners big meaty paw slap punched me in the chest with a force only businesslike angry can conjure. He grabbed onto the coat and with all his might judo style, hip tossed me over his back and onto my head. He then picked me up and rushed me out the door. I don’t remember if I got away from him or if he let me go once we got outside but once I was far enough away I trued around and yelled, “fuck you!” That’s the last thing I remember of the eye-popping and liver melting evening. The next morning I woke up in my bed and didn’t really think much of it. I knew I was banned for life from Laughs but didn’t care because I didn’t really go to that club very often anyways. Then I picked up my phone and I had a message on Facebook messenger. This was the beginning of end for me as a comedian in Seattle. I once again won’t reveal the person’s name but I will say she runs a show at Jai Thai, one of my favorite places to do comedy in Seattle and she has a lot of pull throughout the city. The message reads, Jordan. I’m sure you’re not surprised I’ve heard what happened at Laughs. In fact, the owner texted me within hours. Word travels fast. You’ve gotta know that exposing yourself to a crowd is some really entitled and predatory behavior. Even if it was fake, no one in that crowd knows that, and I can only imagine how uncomfortable it was for them. I honestly don’t know what you were thinking. Perhaps you can shed some light for me, I’d be willing to hear it. But I should tell you that I’ve thought about it at length and my mind hasn’t changed. You are no longer welcome on our stage at Jai Thai. You have proven that you can’t be trusted to respect the rules of a venue, an open mic, or common decency. Maybe you think that “anything goes” under the umbrella of comedy, and it’s your right to let your freak flag fly out there, but I can assure you: your actions have consequences. I think you have a lot to learn from this community, but you and your friends have an insular little think tank that keeps you grinding against the values of our scene. If you want to come out and watch shows, support your peers, and learn from people, I’m not gonna stop you. I, as a producer, can’t take business away from the restaurant. But at the same time, I can’t guarantee your peers will be happy to see you or make you feel welcome. I’m gonna leave that in their court. Something I CAN guarantee though: if you ever pulled something like this at Jai Thai, you will be 86ed permanently, we will call the cops, and you will face charges. Comedy is an amazingly powerful art, but it’s tricky because technically anyone can do it. And what people do on stage on any given show affects how that audience feels about watching stand up in general. I hope you do figure out how to be funny without being hurtful or gross. But it’s not gonna be in my room. Sent from my iPhone This was the moment I knew I had royally fucked up. I had been banned for life from Laughs which made sense and honestly I knew that would happen going in. But now I had been banned from one of, if not my favorite place to do comedy in the city. Then the “life time” bans just kept rolling in day after day. Seattle Underground, Tacoma Comedy Club, The Local 907, Trenchers, and Scratch Deli. I didn’t receive messages to find out about those ones though. I either heard I was never again welcome at a place through word of mouth or showed up somewhere and was turned away at the door. That was when the darkness unequivocally began closing in on me. I would go to shows that would allow me to go up and most of my comedic peers wouldn’t even look at me. It was one of those moments where you really find out who your real friends are, as hacky as that may sound it was true. I’m genuinely grateful for those true friends that stuck with me and for those acquaintances that just didn’t give a fuck and thought it was what it was; a stupid joke. The funny thing about it to me is the people that were most furious with me weren’t even there when it happened. They heard about it and that was enough. What’s even funnier is the few people that were there told me they thought it was incredibly stupid and reckless but none the less pretty funny. The hatred far outweighed the understanding though. I was on stage at an improv mic called Naked Brunch, where I was thankfully still welcome. This was about two weeks after I’d pulled out sonic the small hog and I decided to talk about it at the mic. There was a group of about seven female comedians sitting in the middle row of the audience. Once they realized who I was one of them yelled out, “You’re the dick guy!?” I had met all of them several times before but it took my door stopper sized cock for them to remember me. Then all seven of them proceeded to turn their chairs to face the other direction. People were figuratively and literally turning their backs on me, the figurative turning of the backs hurt far worse. I actually thought what the seven girls did was genuinely humorous even though I know they obviously meant it to be hurtful. I had never done comedy to the back of someone’s head before and it was downright thrilling. Nearly gave me wood, or twig I should say. The most painful repercussions, the ones that made me regret it the most were the times I would be allowed in a venue to watch but not to go up. It was such a stark contrast from people saying things like, “good set!” or, “funny stuff.” And now they were saying, “you’re horrible!” Even though I hadn’t been on stage that night at all. People would also simply walk away when I would join a circle of former friends talking. I did genuinely fell bad that I could have cost Laughs Comedy Club their liquor license though. I sincerely didn’t know that a bar can lose their license in Washington State if there is full nudity in the venue. Laughs did apparently call the police after I had left though. For a long time I was worried there was warrant out for my arrest. There was never and still isn’t a warrant out for me. Would have been a pretty good, “what you in for?” story though. When I think back on it the police probably showed up and said, “what happened? A guy pulled his dick out at a comedy show? Ok we’re gonna go arrest real criminals now, have a nice night.” Almost everyone I considered a peer disowning me did have quite an impact on me though. It thrust me into a dark hole I still haven’t fully dug my way out of. I know there is no one to blame for my actions but myself but I didn’t expect it to rile people up to this degree. I can’t fault them for feeling how they feel though. To sum it all up if you’re going to do something and you go into it with the “I’m not leaving!” mentality, be prepared to be picked up by a brain damaged business owner and throw out the front door onto your head. And if you’re going to pull your dick out onstage make sure you have a big meaty gargantuan throbbing purple headed warrior, not a small pinky and the brain (brain being my balls). Or just don’t do it at all, but then again who am I to tell you what to do. Full story can be heard on the podcast Unbothered by Thia Rivera