It Ain't Over (27 page)

“When we made that list, even after people told me it would be impossible, it convinced me we were doing things right,” says Troy. The company now produces three barrels a day—not a huge amount, but as Troy says, “our production process is slow and meticulous, a point of pride with us.”

Troy’s success has filled her with a new sense of accomplishment—and a belief that patience has its own special rewards.

“Because I had special-needs children, I focused all my energy on them instead of on a career. And yet it was the boys who brought us to Asheville, where I have found this wonderful new business. Charlie and I now have enough people to care for the boys full-time, and they have their own interests and passions.

“After many years of caring for Marshall and Coulton, I achieved a certain peace of mind when I realized that the skills I learned raising my boys—to be resourceful, tireless, and adaptable—were the very same skills that would help me be successful in business. And that’s a good feeling.”

Robin Fox, 55

Bridgewater, New Jersey

“B
y age 29, I was a typical suburban housewife, living in New Jersey with a husband and two kids. Now, I love my children, but I was bored out of my mind. A fun night at the Fox house was the kids going to bed and my husband turning on a TV show about the Civil War while simultaneously reading a book about the Holocaust. I wasn’t as happy as I thought I should be.

But I was funny. Being funny was my way of fighting back against the boredom and the “mean girl” moms in my community. I was overweight, and these women were so skinny I could have fit them in the crack of my ass, and I didn’t care about fashion or who had the nicest house, so they didn’t like me.

It was all like being back in junior high: I’d play the clown to win people over. One night some friends and I were playing mah-jongg with the neighborhood bully and queen of mean when she complained that her dog was always eating her underwear. I said, “I hope you take them off first.” And
everyone laughed. She was livid. I had learned at a young age how to defend myself with humor.

For me, laughter is the opposite of being unhappy. I didn’t have the greatest childhood, but I would watch
I Love Lucy
and laugh so hard. Lucy taught me that being funny made you likable. You can’t hate someone who just made you laugh. I also loved Totie Fields—she was chubby like me—and Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, who also weren’t beauty queens. I always wanted to be a comedian like them, but I had no idea how to do it.

Then, when I was in my early forties, a friend signed me up for an audition at an improv group at the Jewish Community Center. She insisted that I try out—so I went and got accepted right away. I was very good at it, and I enjoyed getting the laughs. Phil, one of the men in the group who ran a comedy night at a nearby arts center, started pestering me: “Why don’t you come and do ten minutes of stand-up?” I told him, “I don’t even know how to write jokes” and didn’t follow up.

Then one day I was talking with my daughter, who was considering going to New York University to study art but wasn’t sure it was practical. She said, “Mom, I don’t know if I’ll get a job after I graduate.” And I said, “Listen, you’ve got to follow your dream if you want to get a job you love doing. Do that, and you won’t ever feel like you’re working. You’ll always feel like you’re just fulfilling a part of yourself.” And she said, in a very PMS-y way, “Like you did with comedy?” I said, “That’s different.”

Then I thought about it. What was so different about it? So I told Phil, “Put me in the lineup.”

I had a month to get material together for a ten-minute show. I wrote and wrote up until the night of the show, and surprisingly it went really well. Two days later, I signed up to take comedy classes in New York City.

As I was walking to my first class, I passed a street fair and a gypsy offered to tell my fortune for five bucks. She pointed at me and shouted, “You. I need
to talk to you. You are starting something new today and you are going to be very good at it.” I thought,
That’s a good sign
.

The class was at the Old Gotham Comedy Club. Back then, it was a small place with pictures of real comics on the walls and little votive candles on the tables. Very nightclubby. Just like on TV. I loved the class. The students were all different ages, all types of people, but they loved comedy the way I did. There was a woman who was an author, a man whose dad owned a deli, a guy who had already taken five classes—he was the least funny out of all of us. We would take turns performing our material and get feedback from each other and the teacher.

Class met on Sundays and Mondays. And the big perk was that you could sit in on any comedy show Sunday through Thursday for free. I became a night owl. Watching the pros night after night was like a master class in comedy. I saw that there were so many styles and ways to be funny. I would also watch the amateurs on the new-talent nights, and I was encouraged by the fact that I was just as funny as they were.

After ten weeks, the class ended, and we had a little graduation show. My improv group and family all came to see me. Afterward, we went to a celebration dinner, and Harrison Ford was sitting at a table near us. I was like
Oh, me and Harrison are both in showbiz now
.

That was 11 years ago, and from that moment on, I’ve never stopped.

I’d do two or three open mics a night, four nights a week. It was so hard. I’d feed my kids dinner at five, get in the car, drive 50 miles to New York, sit in traffic, get to the first show at six thirty or seven and keep going. I’d get home at one or two in the morning, touch my foot to my husband’s in bed to let him know I was there, and then wake up and do it all again the next day.

Some nights I would just cry in my car. I’d be stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, I’d have to pee, and I’d be exhausted. I’d think,
This is too
hard
.
I’m insane to be doing this.
But then I’d say to myself: “If you don’t quit, tomorrow you’ll be that much closer.”

I’ve never been an alcoholic, but there’s a 12-step expression I can relate to: Once a cucumber becomes a pickle, it can never be a cucumber again. I couldn’t go back to what I had left. I felt reborn. This was the first thing that excited me in a way I had never felt before.

And, really, what were my alternatives after my daughter and son left for college? I didn’t want to be a Realtor, or become one of those attendance ladies at the high school—they were like prison guards. I had to make comedy work because the career I had always wanted was
this
career. I was lucky my husband was so supportive. He said to me, “What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t encourage you to do what I know is going to make you happy?” Now he’s my manager.

During the first two years, people started hiring me to do shows. Early on, I drove two hours to do a show at an Elks Club for $50, and I made everyone laugh. A woman came up to me afterward and said, “Do you do country clubs?” I said, “Sure, I do country clubs.” I showed up and they put me on while people were being served food. I performed for 15 minutes and nobody even noticed I was there. I thought to myself,
I don’t need thi
s. But I did. I needed it more than anything, and that’s why I kept going. I needed to be good at something. After more shows like that one, I started to become bulletproof.

A comic’s next goal after open mics is to get stage time at a real club with a real audience. There are four ways to get stage time. Well, there are five, but no one ever asked me to have sex in exchange for career advancement.

The first is doing a show called a “bringer.” You bring five or more people and you get five minutes on stage. You perform for your family and friends and everyone else’s—it’s more like a recital, not your typical tough New York City crowd. I had few friends and a small family, so I was limited in the number of people I could perform in front of.

The second way is to “bark”: You stand in front of a club and hand out flyers, trying to get people to come inside. I would bark for Sal’s Comedy Hole in New York in all kinds of weather, from freezing cold winters to roasting hot summers trying to get an audience into the club. Shows started at eight p.m. and I’d usually go on around one a.m., when the only people left in the club were other comics.

Third, you can “intern.” I would go to Sal’s office once a week and do a little administrative work for him, and he would give me a spot on stage.

The fourth way is by doing “contests,” and I did as many as I could. About seven or eight months into my comedy career, I entered the amateur division of the Ladies of Laughter contest and made it through two rounds. There were 1,000 people in the audience, and the wave of laughter I got almost
knocked me over. When I entered that same contest in August 2012, competing against 200 comics, I won the grand prize.

Anyway, one night after hours of barking, I saw an ad that a club owner who ran three comedy clubs in Manhattan needed an intern to drive him around. I emailed him right away: “Schlepper mom at your disposal. Seventeen years of dragging my kids all over town. Sure as heck can take you wherever you need to go. I’m punctual, responsible, and promise not to bother you.” I got the job that day.

Every Saturday, I picked up “Mr. Big” at his house on Staten Island and drove him to the city. I’d double-park outside clubs for two or three hours. The highlight was when comics would come sit in the car with me for a few minutes. In return, Mr. Big let me go on Wednesday nights at 11:15, one of the last spots of the night, when no one really watched, but it didn’t matter. I did that for two years. Finally, he decided that I could drive him in on one or two weeknights and I could perform that night.

By that point, I’d been doing comedy for four and half years and that was my big break. For the next six months, I got to go on during prime time because Mr. Big wanted to move quickly from one club to the next. So he’d say, “Hurry up and get Robin on so she can drive me.” I’d go up and hit it out of the park. It was so exciting.

Then I auditioned at a comedy club in Times Square that put on five or more shows a night. I did three or four shows a night, three to five nights a week. I was lucky. I hardly ever got hecklers. But there once was this guy who said, “Let’s see your tits,” so I threatened to take off my bra and smack him with one of them—without leaving the stage. This was the training ground I had been searching for. Other comics saw me do well and started to ask me to do shows with them. That’s when it all started really cooking.

At the clubs, I met a lot of other comedians who were trying to break into
the business. You know how a kid goes into the lunchroom and walks around with her tray not knowing where to sit? I felt like that kid my entire life—I mean, from infancy until I started doing comedy. But when I went into comedy, I felt like I was in a cafeteria where everybody was like me. Every seat felt perfect. Yes, other comedians were competitive, but they understood my motives and respected my bravery. We were all on the same ship. That ship might be going down, but we were still on it together.

When new comedians today ask me how to get gigs, I tell them, “The best advice I ever got is to be funny—that they can’t deny you.”

Today, I’m living my dream. I’ve had these big show-business moments, like when I appeared on TV on the stand-up comedy series
NickMom Night Out!
I perform all over and I tour doing theater shows with the Ladies of Laughter and other groups. I now perform at a lot of great comedy clubs, like the Gotham, the same club where I took my first and only comedy class. I do shows for fund-raisers, schools, community groups, women’s groups, churches, temples, and corporations.

But I also do gigs that other comedians shy away from. I do seventieth birthday parties in people’s living rooms with a dog humping my leg. I always feel like my mom is going to jump out of the kitchen and shout, “Sing for grandma!” I’ll drive five hours to perform at a club. I flew up to Canada to do a show for 500 women in the middle of nowhere. And when we
got
to nowhere, we drove another two hours! I did a great show and got a standing ovation.