Mosche hits the stage, and a conversation

Mosche went up first.

To be fair, the crowd inside the main area near the stage gave him about as much applause as they gave any other comic. You went and stood at the edge of the bar area, under the dimmed-but-not-blacked-out lights, and clapped for him just in case he could see you at the back. He didn’t seem to notice you, but maybe he was just being professional.

The issue for him was that, pretty much as soon as he mounted the stage, you could tell he was even more nervous than usual. It had to be because Iris was in the crowd, maybe seeing his act for the first time. When he was dating Tasha he had someone who understood that a bad set, or even a full-on bombing, was part of the process. Having a bad night didn’t mean you were bad.

You had no fucking clue about Iris’s knowledge of stand-up comedy, and unless she’d been willing to sit through Mosche’s various rants and monologues about the art form… Well, it was entirely possible that a bad performance would cast a shade over their burgeoning relationship.

The good news was that Mosche opened his act with a couple of his stronger jokes, which got some chuckles from the crowd if not full-bellied laughter. You took that opportunity to back off back to the bar, rejoining Gemma and Sabrina. Tasha had slipped back around to the Comics hangout area since part of the whole thing was seeing and being seen by the comics that were doing better. Comedy was, after a certain minimum bar for skill and execution, about contacts. Experienced comics giving younger comics not just advice, but potentially even jobs whether it was opening for them on tour, following them into writer’s rooms for television, or even writing jokes for them.

“Can I be honest?” Sabrina asked you quietly as you re-joined your girlfriends.

“Always, obviously,” you said, sliding an arm around her as she sat on the bar stool.

“I don’t hate Mosche,” Sabrina said. “And I’m not, like, asking you to abandon him to the wolves or whatever. But… he went from being your weird-but-likeable roommate to giving me the major Ick really fast. Like, I don’t want to want to be mean to him, but after being so fucking destructive to Tasha through his social incompetence and insecurities…”

“You feel bad for disliking him so hard, after trying to be friends with him,” Gemma filled in.

“Yes,” Sabrina sighed. “Exactly.”

“I know,” you said. “On the one hand, I know everything that happened with Tasha is bad. But on the other hand, up to that point, I’d always thought he was sort of a funny chapter in my life that I’d be telling stories about down the road. I didn’t think we’d stay in contact, but I also thought if I ever ran into him sometime, or if he really did get famous and went on tour or something, I would want to grab a beer with him. And he’s still that guy, but with his body weight in baggage.”

“I think you’re both being too soft on him,” Gemma said, then held up her hands defensively. “I’m not saying we should go out of our way to attack him or whatever, or make his life miserable, but he’s facing the consequences of his actions. I mean, seriously - he was reacting to ghosts. Tasha has been pretty explicit with us that she wasn’t giving him any signals about wanting to sleep with or fuck anyone else until he made it sound like he wanted it. And then he made assumptions about what she was doing when it was just normal stuff, but he thought it was her throwing herself at person after person. I don’t think he’s mature enough to handle any sort of serious relationship, including strong friendships.”

“Harsh,” you said.

“Doesn’t make it not true though,” Sabrina said.

Mosche, on stage, had transitioned out of his act and for some fucking reason had decided to practice his crowd work. You had to admit that he had the gumption to do it, but crowdwork was very much his worst comedic skill. He had lost the laughter of the crowd, and you could hear the groans starting to mount.

“I think, in a year or so, he’s going to look back at this summer and have major regrets,” you said. “Those are the real consequences of his actions. And we don’t need to pile on him to make that any less potent. So I think we just let things lay where they fell. Gemma leaves in two weeks, and Sabrina and I go back to school in three. That’s not a long time that we need to put up with him and whatever happens with Iris, right?”

“You know, sometimes it annoys me that you’re the most reasonable person in our trio?” Sabrina asked.

“Wait, do you think you’re second-most reasonable?” Gemma asked in surprise.

“I mean, I don’t use cunt in my non-sexual lexicon,” Sabrina said.

“That is an attack on my country and I won’t stand for it,” Gemma snorted and laughed.

“I’m also not the one going back to live in the land where everything wants to kill you,” Sabrina pointed out.

“Not everything,” Gemma countered. “Just, like, most things.”

You rolled your eyes and leaned in, kissing Sabrina on the side of her head and then slipping around her to give Gemma a kiss on the forehead. “Can we just agree that, as I am the most reasonable by a mile, I can veto any major **** moves when any of us are angry at someone?”

“A mile?” Gemma asked. “Do you hear this, Sabrina? He says he’s more reasonable by a mile.”

“Maybe a yard,” Sabrina said. “Or a foot.”

“Definitely not a mile,” Gemma said.

You rolled your eyes and started clapping as the host for the Open Mic cut into Mosche’s time a little to get him off the stage. It hadn’t been awful, but it hadn’t been good either. You were pretty interested to see what Iris thought.

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