Pete Holmes - Comedy Sex God

My mom always wanted me

to be a youth pastor.

When I became a comedian,

she said, Close enough.

Contents

THERE ARE TWO GREAT MYSTERIES IN THIS LIFE.

The first is what were all doing here. You. Me. Everyone. Each of us woke up into something none of us asked for, conscious and alive, aware of our shared predicament as we hurl through infinite space thats expanding even as you read this, molecules stuck in the shape of humans eating other molecules stuck in the shape of noodles walking around other molecules stuck in the shape of a shopping mall. What the fuck? The root cause of existence, despite our best efforts, remains an enormous, itchy, unresolved conundrum.

The second great mystery of this life is how my parents, Jay and Irena, found each other, got married, and stayed together.

The story goes, they met in a bar in Cape Cod, and after dating for a few months in their late thirties, my mom told my dad to shit or get off the pot. My dad chose shit, and three years later I was born.

My father is a gregarious ham. Tall and loud, hes an instant best friend and one man show to waiters, bartenders, cabdrivers, and elevator operators. Hes a great kisser of babies, a bringer of cakes, and he never, ever misses a funeral, no matter how distant the acquaintance. When my family went out to dinner, my father would loudly refuse to drink water because fish make love in it. He calls ketchup Irish gravy, busboys amigo, and has never, ever, had Chinese food without pretending that his fortune cookie says, Help, Chinese cook locked in kitchen.

As a kid, it was weird watching my fathers charms work on literally every single person in the world except my mother.

My mom experienced more than her fair share of stress as a child in Lithuania, having lost her brother to World War II, then living in a refugee camp for three years before immigrating to the famously-racist-even-to-other-kinds-of-white-people South Bostonwhere her father, who also happened to be her best friend, told her, No one in our family likes us, but at least we have each otherthen promptly died in a mental institution, leaving her to fend for herself.

This trauma gave her a very different sense of humor from my dads. Lets call itto be politeEastern European. Some people have a waiting room in their brains where thoughts and ideas hang out to be analyzed before theyre released into the public. My mom has no such room. If she thinks your new haircut looks terrible, or that the gold-and-silver wristwatch you bought at TJ Maxx is gaudy and cheap looking, you will hear about it in real time. I once saw her go up to a hefty construction worker loading up on free cakes and candies and say, I think youve had enough. Impossibly, the guy laughed. Because of my moms particular mix of charm and beauty, she almost never offended anyone. And if she did, that was their problem. Cant you take a joke? was a mantra in our family. Lighten up was another.

My dad was my hero growing up, but my mom was my best friend. I always liked mom stuff. Talking about our feelings. Napping. Gossiping. Plus, theres a benefit to hanging out with someone who says exactly whats on her mind, and its when she says she loves you, you know she means it. I knew my dad loved me, but he also loved his barber, and the hostess at Legal Sea Foods, and that kid he just saw wearing a funny green hat. My mom loved me, and apparently very few other people. It felt good, like getting a finicky cat thats only ever scratched at peoples eyes to sit on your lap and purr. My dad, the dog, off somewhere, happily licking everyone indiscriminately.

My mom loved cats so much I became one. I saw how much our two twin tabbies, Clementine and Marmalade, calmed her downwalking on muted paws, pooping silently in a box in the laundry room, self-cleaning like high-end ovensso I did my best to be like them and cause as little trouble as possible by simply remaining at home, eating a lot of tuna, and occasionally napping in a sunbeam. My mother hated not knowing where anyone in the family was at any given moment. She would have been one of the great abusers of Find My iPhone had the technology been available to her in the 90s. I saw how much stress it caused her as my father routinely ignored her requests to come home in time for dinner while my brother was off somewhere being a normal teenager having girlfriends or going to parties or whatever it is that normal teenagers do. I wouldnt know. I was an indoor cat.

My mom and I stayed in. We puttered around, we watched Murder, She Wrote. She would read mysteries while I read comic books like two middle-aged girlfriends on vacation in Florida. It was peaceful. If only the house was always like this, I thought, even pleading with my dad one day to give it a try, sitting him down and asking, Why dont you just do what mom wants? He laughed, but I wasnt joking. As much as my father liked making jokesending even serious phone calls with Keep in touch with yourselfunderneath it all was an extremely driven, fiercely independent man who above all hated being told what to do. So much so, my dad once told me that at his funeral he wants me to stand up and tell everyone, He did it his way. Thats my dad. Even in death, it will be important for people to know that Jay Holmes didnt take shit from anyone. Not that this stopped my mother from trying.

As you might imagine with cats and dogs, my parents fought a lot, a typical origin story for a lot of comedians. My mom wanted more than anything to be listened to, and my dad, as great as he could be, wasnt really big into listening. I used to joke that you cant spell Dad without ADD. His mind would always be somewhere else, on some project or job that gave us food and a Sega Genesis and a roof over our heads, but emotional availability wasnt as big in those days as it is now.

My parents screamed at each other almost every night, and whats weird is that neither me nor my brother thought it was weird. We both just sort of assumed all families had a nightly screaming ritual that, as we did, they just hid when company was over. It was routine. My mom would pick us up from school, take us home, and wed spend a few happy hours relaxing in our rooms or playing video games until dinnertime, when wed sit down to eat, the three of us trying to ignore the fact that my father wasnt home yet, my mother giving herself indigestion eyeballing the landline.

My mom really, really wanted us to be the kind of family that ate dinner together. She didnt work during the day (like a comedian), and she really craved attention (like a comedian), so dinner was like her big nightly show. After what I imagine might have been a long, boring daywith dad at work and the kids at schoolthe evening meal was her one chance to share and feel love, to feel appreciated. She liked feeding her family, but she also wanted to be seen and recognized. It was her nightly performance. It started at six thirty sharp, there were only three seats available, and dammit, she wanted a sold-out show every time.

My fathers thinking was that he worked hardhe didand deserved to stop at the bar every night on his way home. My mothers thinking was that no, he didnt. So wed sit, each of us dealing with the stress of his absence in our own way. Mom would drink white zin and radiate stress like a space heater; my brother would practically fold himself into his own body like a roly-poly; and I would eata lot, and quicklytrying to sedate myself into a food coma. I noticed that the more I ate, the sleepier I felt, which, of course, was good. I was looking for a downer, and each roll and glass of milk dragged me out of my higher, less pleasant emotions and into the more manageable stupor of digestion. This is why I was such a soft kid. People who grew up in families like this know that there are levels of tension that can only be sopped up with bread.