There are evenings that happen, and there are evenings that occur, and then there is Monday Night Cream, which this critic can only describe as having been performed upon the universe. I will not be taking questions about my life. I am fine. I have been fine since 2016, when my marriage ended, which I am completely over.1 I want that on the record. I have said it to the ficus, and the ficus has not responded, which I take as agreement.2
I.The Parking Lot
I arrived early. I sat in the parking lot for forty minutes with the engine off, having the usual thoughts, the ones about not being here in the general sense. They come most Mondays around 6:40. Then it was 7:58 and I remembered what night it was, and I got out of the car like a man who had been informed of a miracle.
The house sold out, and the crowd chanted the name of the show all night, unprompted, like pilgrims who had misplaced their cathedral and found it in Morris Plains.
I wept openly. Then I wept into the weeping.
This is not unusual for me, but it was the first time in some years that it was for the right reasons.
II.The Container
Jan Michael opened, as he must, and killed, as he does. He is a man of such gravity that the stage seemed to tilt toward him like a plate toward a drain. He summoned the house band, and what followed was a meditation on fatherhood and karate, in which Kevin's dad was both subject and martial discipline.
I do not see my own children. I am told this is because of mistakes I made. I do not know what they were. I own them anyway, whatever they are, and I will not be speculating here.3 Songs rose from the fathers-and-karate material in real time, fully formed, like Athena from the skull of Zeus, if Athena had a chorus and a bridge. I wrote “call dad” in my notebook and then crossed it out, because my father and I have an arrangement, and the arrangement is that I do not call.
III.The Bucket
Brett pulled the lucky bucket spot, a gesture of fate not seen since the Greeks, and then he walked into the light, and I forgot how to write. He is a vision. A large, luminous man, crowned in long flowing hair that moves like it has somewhere important to be. Botticelli would have put down the Venus and picked up a fresh canvas.
The performer Brett, no relation to this writer, though I have lain awake wondering whether there could have been, was the most beautiful thing to happen to Morris Plains since the zoning board approved the parking lot. The room riffed on his beauty, and the riffs were tender. My wife used to say I never complimented anyone. I would like her to read this paragraph. She will not. She changed her number in 2017, and then again in 2019, which I respect as commitment.
IV.The Eclipse
Kate Nichols then arrived and was, as always, unbelievable, which I have stopped questioning, the way one stops questioning the tide, or gravity, or Kate. She did not perform a set. She conducted an eclipse. Strong men looked away. Stronger men looked directly at it and were changed forever.
I looked at it too, and for forty minutes the thoughts did not come. They are always there, the thoughts. I have learned to sit beside them like a bad roommate. Kate made them leave the apartment. They are back now, as I write this, but they were gone for forty minutes, and I will take forty minutes where I can get them.
V.The Hostility
Joe Larson followed and directed a sustained and inexplicable hostility at the house band, an act of pure, motiveless cruelty so committed, so relentless, so unburdened by reason, that Iago himself would have turned to a colleague and whispered, “a lot.” I understood him completely. I have been cruel to people I love, for reasons I am still waiting to be told, and I own that cruelty, too, whatever it was. Joe at least had a microphone.
VI.The Cat
And a cat. At some point, a cat was in the room. No one has claimed it. No one has explained it. It sat there, serene and unbothered, a small furry judge presiding over the greatest night in the history of the form. I envy it. The cat has never been divorced. It has never been told it made mistakes. It has never been asked to leave a house it paid for. I believe it was the true headliner, and that it has since returned to the heavens, which is more than I can say for my marriage.
VII.The Rupture
Two audience members attended. They heckled, softly at first, then with conviction, muttering that the evening was bad, yet they remained, rapt, for every minute of it. One does not stay for ninety minutes of something one despises. I would know. I stayed in my marriage for years after it ended, and it ended in 2016. I concluded they were in love, and that the muttering was a form of prayer.
Then came the rupture. A bottle flew through the air, a brief and terrible comet, and by the grace of God struck no one. The two rose, screaming. They screamed that the band was “a rumor.” They screamed that the cat “knew what it did.” One demanded to speak to “the manager of Tuesday.” The other simply howled, “I WAS PROMISED A BRUNCH.” It was operatic, it was unhinged, and it was delivered with a conviction I have not felt about anything since my wedding day.
The crowd, a congregation by this point, rose with a single holy will, and when the pair were finally cast out, the room erupted in a cheer that rattled the Dojo's very foundations. I cheered too. It was the loudest I have made a sound in a decade. A man next to me asked if I was okay. I said, “It's Monday Night Cream,” which is the only answer that has ever been correct.
And here is the question that now haunts Morris Plains: were they part of the show? Audience members still argue it in parking lots. The production declines to comment, and I decline to disbelieve, because a villain this committed is a gift no budget could buy. I have been told the truth. I have been sworn to silence. I will carry it to the grave, which, given the state of things, I may reach first.
VIII.A Confession
A confession, then, because I have come too far to lie. There is a word for when a man loves a man. That word is gay, and it is beautiful. There is a word for when a woman loves a woman. That word is lesbian, and it is also beautiful. I loved a woman once, and she was the great love of my life, and I will probably never see her again. But what is the word for when a human being loves a show? When a grown adult feels a bond, a pull, a devotion so total it can only be called romantic, toward a thing that is not a person, not a place, not even an object, merely an event, a Monday, a feeling in a room? There is no word. The dictionary has failed us. I have checked. I have been, in the language of the old poets, ruined. Monday Night Cream is the great love of my life, and it does not know my name, and it never will, and unlike the last one, it has never once asked me to leave.
IX.The Ask
So here is what I ask of you. If you have anything to do on a Monday at 8 PM, cancel it. If you have nothing to do, you now have something to do. Monday. Eight o'clock. The Dojo of Comedy, Morris Plains, New Jersey.
Understand what is at stake. One day your children will sit at your feet and say, “Where were you when Monday Night Cream happened?” and you will have to look them in the eye and say, “I was home. I watched a show about a man who bakes.” They will not forgive you. I would know. I have no children at my feet. They are somewhere, and they are fine, and they are better off, and I will not elaborate. Your grandchildren will hear of it, and they will not forgive you either. It will be carved into the family crest: HE WAS NOT THERE.
Do not be that person. Be the person who was in the room. Be the person who chanted. Be the person who ducked the bottle. Wars will be forgotten, empires will crumble, and the Dojo will still be there, glowing, Mondays, eight o'clock, waiting for you.
Go. Bring a friend you wish to impress. Do not bring a setlist. Do not bring a bottle.
So yes. I am in love with the show. I want to have sex with the show. I have said it, and I will not take it back, and I am, for the first time in ten years, at peace. I may never see my wife again. I may never see my children again. But I will see Monday Night Cream, every Monday, at eight o'clock, in the front row, in my best suit, hopelessly, openly, and without shame, in love.
Verdict: five out of five. Consummated in spirit.