Chasin’ the Blues Away

Even if her life depended on it, my wife cannot tell a joke. In all other ways, she’s brilliant. (Beautiful too.) In fact, the way she ruins a joke is in and of itself amusing and (if I may say so) adorable.

She starts off with the premise of the joke (what professional comics call the setup), then she starts to crack up. You can see by the quirky look on her face that she’s thinking of the punch line (what comics call the payoff). Anticipation clouds her story line. Then she starts laughing, giggling, and breaking up . . . until she can continue telling the joke no longer.

This is beguiling to me, and to anyone who’s ever seen her do this — funnier than the joke if told successfully by someone who knows how to tell a joke. Me, for instance.

I say me because early in our marriage she told me I was “pretty funny,” but that I could improve if I studied stand-up comedy and practiced being funny. I found a workshop where a professional comedian taught how to tell a joke and how to write original material. The group (made up of actors and lawyers) had an assignment: At the conclusion of 12 weeks in the workshop, each of us had to deliver five minutes of our own material in front of 200 people in a stand-up comedy club. I did this well enough that the workshop leader said I was good and should continue improving. I said, “I’m keeping my day job.”

I learned that standing in front of 200 people expecting you to make them laugh is a terrifying experience, daunting in the extreme. The comics say, “Dying is easy; comedy is hard.” I confess to feeling flop sweat when I went onstage. But I developed confidence slowly and inserted humorous remarks, and even jokes, into my university lectures and book-publicity television interviews.

This confident joke-telling was not always well received and occasionally unwelcome or even intrusive. Once I was scolded by Gloria Steinem. We were having breakfast with her, her then-boyfriend, and another couple. Full of the confidence gained in my workshop, I ventured to tell a joke at what I thought was an appropriate moment. It wasn’t a bad joke; it wasn’t completely inappropriate. But after hearing it, Gloria pointed out that men were inclined to “take control” of a gathering by telling a joke. She added, “Very few women do this.”

I became embarrassed when I realized she was not only chastising me: It was an indictment of all men . . . for being domineering or control freaks. Or for being men.

I realized she was right, up to a point. Jokes have been staples of locker-room jocks, “male chauvinist pigs,” and other specimens of raw masculinity. And I was being categorized. But what about my feminine side? The part of me that learns when not to tell a joke? I was called to task for taking control, and I learned from the experience that there is a time for being quiet. Thank you, Gloria!

What brings up these memories is the regular gathering of a group of us who meet to tell jokes, Jewish jokes, because we’re all members of a small synagogue in Sag Harbor, Adas Israel. Winters on the East End can be cold, dreary, isolating, and a time for chasing the blues. Especially true during the holiday season. Sure, we have Hanukkah. But there’s more to being Jewish than holiday celebrations, some of which can increase one’s sense of distance from others.

On a recent Tuesday, a dozen of us gathered at Judy and Mike’s home, a cozy and inviting place well stocked with plenty of latkes and lox and nibbles and wine. The only ticket for admission was that each of us had to bring a joke — and tell it to the group. Many of the women who dutifully brought their jokes had decided to read them. (Although the group is technically a “Jewish Humor Havorah,” some of the jokes were more humorous than Jewish, and this was okay with everyone.)

Virtually every woman who told a joke that evening exemplified what Gloria had said about control and male dominance. That is, they read or spoke their jokes with some measure of tentativeness and timidity. We discussed this phenomenon and decided that (along with comediennes like Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers, and a very few others) feminism had made female humorists possible and popular. And much of the content of old-fashioned humor itself was premised on very unlikely scenarios — “salty,” male-oriented, or sex-related — or harked back to social values long gone.

But, together with warm camaraderie and kind friends, we chased the winter blues away on a cold night in December. And planned to reconvene the next time.

Stephen Rosen, a regular Star contributor, lives in New York and East Hampton.