Work Text:
“Hello! My name is Richie Tozier, and can I just say, I’m thrilled to be here! Full disclosure, I fully expected them to pull me off stage before I could get those words outta my mouth. Just have the moment of ‘oh shit! Who let him on! We gave him this stage as a fucking joke! Jeff! Jeff, get the fucking hook!’ So, thank you Radio City for having me, means a lot!”
Richie adjusts himself, standing straighter before relaxing again, his face going into a put-upon frown. “Okay, but actually, before moving forward I do have to say, I have a bit of a confession. I’m coming out with something that I feel like all of you truly deserve to know. I’ve held it in for a long time. But… I feel like it’s time I’m honest with myself and you. I’m tired of living a lie...”
“I never fucked any of your moms.” Richie shifts so he’s staring despondently down at the stage. “I talked a big game, but I have never in my life fucked any of your moms. Sure, she called me, and we talked about it, but I let her down gently. She cried, I cried, but eventually we moved through it.” Richie lets a beat pass.
“However, I did absolutely get plowed by your dad. Admittedly, I wasn’t really expecting much, you know, he’s getting up there, but you know what? With a little Viagra and a few breaks? That man can do it. He must do yoga, or something shit, cause the acrobats, woof!”
“Side note, imagine if that’s how you fucking found out I was gay. You come to this show, and you’re thinking ‘I’m about to see Trashmouth Tozier the straightest comedian’ – shut up, you know I’m right, I exuded the shit out of those straight vibes for 20 years baby, I honed that shit! I was performing overcompensated straightness better then majority actually straight comedians! – ‘the straightest comedian there is perform on stage’ and I come out and say, ‘I fucked your dad,’ that fills me with such euphoria, the idea of someone coming in with that expectation and I’m just coming out of the gate with that gay content.”
“The chances of it are so low cause – y’know – but imagine the confusion, the fucking anger and betrayal, fucking chef’s kiss. Gah! I love making people mad. I have such a talent for it, always have, always will, so it would be such a shame not to lean into it at least a little bit. I certainly got kicked to shit during my younger years enough to have empirical evidence to show that my whole being is very punchable, anyway.”
“I’m thinking one particular instance, where I got beaten pretty bad on a bridge, it was called the Kissing Bridge, but I was very much not getting any action on that bridge – I was about 13 and looked exactly the same as I do now just longer with a little more hair but the same or maybe worse fashion sense – oof, I know! Sorry to anyone with a working imagination for that image! – and what was I doing on that bridge, you may ask? Were you being obnoxious on that bridge? And the answer is always but also no!”
“Instead, I was just existing on the bridge, I was thinking my thoughts and being all introspective about my place in the universe – nah, fuck you, I’m joking, I was thinking about this cute guy. Specifically, about how much I wanted to hold his hand – which, ugh, 13-year-old-Richie keep it fucking PG, man, Jesus! – and buy him ice cream – I know! – so, I was just drowning in the closet. I was up to the brim with gay thoughts, the carving another boy’s name in a bridge – which I did! – kinda gay thoughts. And this group of guys, who just hated me with an incredible sort of passion, came up and they were like, ‘you acting gay on this bridge, Tozier?’”
Richie sighed “‘…yeah.’ So, I got beat to shit, not the first or last time, but that was a pretty bad one.”
“They saw me, my bullies name was Henry, and he and the rest of his buddies just zeroed in on that shit – they saw me, and the homophobe alarm went off in their heads – ‘beep gay thoughts beep beep’ like fucking Robo-Cop. And I was asked later by my parents why I was beat to shit, and little me couldn’t exactly say ‘Mom, Dad, the reason I’m messed up it because I was actually being real gay on that bridge’ so instead I went.” Richie widens his eyes, slouches down. “’They don’t like Jewish kids, I guess.’ Which admittedly, that excuse doesn’t work when one of the kids that periodically beats you up is also Jewish, I give little me a ‘C’ for effort.”
“Though, it wasn’t like my parents were gonna call me on it, come on, I lived in Derry, Maine – I just heard a gasp, one of you just figured out the Henry thing, so, good for you, but this isn’t a show about that, you gotta listen to The Horrified Losers with Bill Denbrough and Mike Hanlon for that, and yes, I am plugging my friends! This my comedy show, and I’ll plug whoever I want. While I’m at it, buy Beverly Marsh’s clothes and, I don’t fucking know, visit some buildings designed by Ben Hanscom, go visit the NYU library, and I fucking don’t know, uh, get an accountant? And uh, get some of your risks analyzed, sorry, not all my friends are famous, much more difficult to plug them – but yeah, I lived in Derry, Mane and I was a freak of nature for the sole reason that my parents gave a shit about me and my friends. That was revolutionary for Derry. But no matter how good my parents were – still are – some shit in Derry you just don’t talk about.”
“I had a group of friends, we called ourselves the Losers – I know, I know – and that was our name because, you may have guessed, we were fucking Losers. Make sure to put a hard-L on that one. Now, there was seven of us and between us, there were 3 parents – 2 of which were my parents – in that, who upon being asked all of the Losers agreed was actually a good parent. Not great. I really hogged all the good parents, sorry gang.”
“So, you may be wondering, why am I bringing this up? Well, dear audience, you need that background to understand how exactly we got to do any of what I’m about to tell you. Because if you thought that we as a whole we had good parents or parental figures for even a second, you would not believe what I was about to tell you. In defense of my own parents, they saw me and knew they couldn’t control me, so they just got some really good health insurance and made sure I was getting good grades and let me be. Now, shit is about to get a little crazy. I will say, to start, everyone is alive. Which is what everyone wants to hear when any story starts, right? That everyone survived, because that just fills you with such confidence in what you’re about to hear. Makes you feel super secure, right? As it should!”
“Alright. I’m 13 years old and I’ve discovered the majesty of your mom jokes – height of comedy, as I’ve already shown, right? – and at 13 I certainly know moderation? Right? Wrong! I say that shit like it’s going out of style, I say that shit unprompted! I say that shit when my friends are trying to just live their lives! During tests! When we’re riding our bikes! Eating ice cream! At sleepovers! I say it always! I even say that shit to my friends with the dead moms! I cannot be stopped!”
“But my friends, they learn to deal with it because they love me – fucking gross right, a grown man talking about positive emotions? Go back to talking about being hate-crimed! – and also because they, very early on, figured out a safe-word for my mouth before anyone had a concept of what a safe word even was. When they need me to shut up they just say, ‘beep beep,’ which is self-explanatory, simple, and effective. The effectiveness only increased when we turned 16 and they started using their car horn instead of their mouths but that is whole other thing.”
“Little side note, I beg of you to not yell that at me while I’m out walking with my dog – nobody asked, but she’s a rescue pitbull named Doctor Dog, and while she is largely unimportant to the story, she matters to me – if you yelled that at me that would just spook us. Me and my dog and we’re both nervous vomiters – twinsies! – so if you wanna say it to me, like tap me on the shoulder or some shit, I’ve got so many traumas, man, my therapist will get mad if I get another one.”
“So, my friends have a safe word, and they know when to use it. Which, honestly, is every damn day during every fucking conversation with me – and they are right to do that! I am emotionally, romantically, and sexually repressed – what a winning combination – and I act like it! They beeped me a lot. Like I said, fair. But the thing is. The thing is. The entire thing was a preteen mating technique and they all – except the object of my affections, he’s so intelligent but also so emotionally stupid he gives me a run for my money – knew that, so sometimes they would just .. let it go. Because the guy – Eddie, lovely Eddie – never once beep’d me! That little shit just ran with it! He would scream so loud and just fucking thwap me on the arm or face – at least he hit me in the face until he couldn’t reach it. And now I’m supposed to tell you he is, and I quote: ‘5,9 is average, you piece of shit! That is the average male height, not everyone can be a gargantuan moron!’ He’s my favorite, but onward!”
“So, Eddie would hit me and call me names, to you know, show that he reciprocated my feelings. Gay, am I right? But again, as you can maybe guess from everything about me – and from little you’ve heard about him – we did not get our shit together. We spent hours together just talking about our futures and making plans to run away together – I know! I know! That is so fucking cute and so fucking sappy and so fucking gay! – we made plans to just take my beat up 1964 Ford pickup that really shouldn’t have run and go fucking anywhere, our plan was New York – hell yeah! I know! We were young and gay, and we had big dreams, okay? – and we’d get an apartment while he went to school to be a doctor and I’d do standup and we’d have a dog or maybe a cat depending on the day and some-fucking-how, we still didn’t know we were in love! How the fuck did we manage that?”
“In fact, we did not get our shit together until we were fucking 40. Which, actually, is when our dear friend Stanley bet we’d get together, that piece of shit. Our lovely friends, the lovely Losers, made a bet in 8th grade – that was 1990! – about when we’d get together. Everyone other Loser was like ‘before college’ or ‘during prom’ and Stanley looked at us and put down ‘when we’re in our 40s.’ Fucker! I hate that he was right! He is so fucking smug about it too! He only got about 100 bucks cause, hello, we were in 8th grade and that’s all the money we had, but he was so fucking smug when they gave it to him. He actually framed it, it ended up being fucking 20s and 5s and not a 100 because they all reached into their wallets right then when we told them all. And that fucker framed the money and gave it to me for my birthday with a little placard that says ’fucking finally.’”
“Love you, Stan, you’re my best friend but you are also an irredeemable asshole who wears fucking cardigans of all things. You are not Taylor Swift, and you can never be – full disclosure, I have enjoyed a good T-Swift moment since 2008, not an OG Swiftie, but a fan, and I am not ashamed! Her music is perfect for every emotion a repressed, closeted comedian who never got over his first love could ever experience, and you can fucking quote me on that, put that on a damn album cover! – but yeah. Back on track.”
“Can you tell I have ADHD? Is it at all obvious? Cause it should be!” Richie laughs. “But yeah, I spoiled the end a bit, but we were 13 and all our friends were already so exhausted with all the mutual pining and the internalized homophobia and the shared hammocks – oh yeah, we did that! He used to shove my glasses off my face with his feet and instead of being grossed out I got fucking hard and I have never in my life had a foot fetish! Feet are arguably the least sexy thing second to elbows – listen, listen, they’re always dry and they’re often pointy! Not! Sexy!”
“Puberty is a fucking trip. But guess what, I got him back because he admitted to me while drunk that he got hard anytime I cleaned my glasses, so really, who is weirder? The correct answer is – drumroll please! – both of us! We’re both fucking weirdos and we are fucking aware of this, thank you very much! And our poor friends had to just had to deal with this!”
“Just imagine that! Our 5 lovely friends who have no other friends, no other options – do I love them all to death? Yes! Did I have any other options for friends? Fuck no! I didn’t need any more friends, but it would’ve been cool to have the option to be like ‘nah man, 6 friends is my max friend limit’ but, alas, we were all fucking Losers – so they just had to deal with us. We all hung out together almost every day until we we left for college – and Eddie and I never got better. Instead! We got worse! I made him mixtapes and climbed through the his window to his room at night to hang out, he held my hand because he was, and heavy air quotes because this fucker is the bravest person I’ve ever known, he was ‘scared to walk home alone,’ and he always bandaged my injuries from my general jackassery.”
“I was fucking doing the stunts from Jackass before anyone had even considered that that should be a show, I was an insane person – and this is me saying this now, I fucking mean it – I got injured constantly and do you wanna know why? Cause Eddie always got really touchy when I was injured.” Richie thumped his forehead with the mic. “Whenever it rains I am in incredible pain from both my wrists, I can’t type or anything, because Eddie always kissed my wounds after he wrapped them.”
“And every single Loser, except Eddie, knew this. They saw me with my skateboard, hairspray can, and lighter – yeah, use your fucking imagination, I had to shave my head from that stunt, and I have a permeant burn scar behind my ear – they tried, they tried so hard to get me to stop. But, as my broken body can attest, I did not stop.”
“My nickname was Trashmouth, though Eddie probably said it most, and my friends had to ‘beep’ me so I’d fucking breath, are you fucking kidding me? Of course, I didn’t stop! I spent my entire youth jumping off a cliff into water that was less water and more human and toxic waste – I should have fucking superpowers for that, I should’ve become fucking Toxic-Man, okay, maybe not that name but I will keep workshopping it! – and to be clear, about the whole jumping into that water, heavy air quotes on water, every single one of my friends did it too! And they are not fucking dumb! None of us were! I was the valedictorian of my high school – plot twist, I fucking know! – and two of my other friends came close to snatching that from me!”
“And we spent our time swimming in shit and piss and other stuff I don’t even want to think about! And before any of you youngsters are like ‘well, that was just the 80s and early 90s,’ no! No, it was not! We were just super fucking weird and stupid as shit! Stan has OCD – specifically about cleanliness – and Eddie is a hypochondriac, and they did it too! And guess what! There wasn’t exactly a shower we could use to wash it off, so we had to go home, smelling like a fucker sewer – which we also would also sometimes go into for both funsies and for less funsies – and none of our parents ever said a word. And we knew we smelled! I could smell myself! Do you know how bad something has to be for a teenage boy to be able to smell himself? I genuinely think my dad and mom were just like, if we ignore it, it’s not happening. Which is honestly pretty fair.”
“Never overestimate the mental power of parents that just … really don’t want to know.”
“Now I’m 42 and have to explain to my doctor that ‘no I wasn’t beaten by my parents I just really had to impress this cute boy by doing random stunts’ because I’m on this honesty kick and it seemed like a good idea until I started talking. And she just stares at me – she’s the best, by the way, she’s a 5’1 Jewish grandmother and she has this perfect look on her face at all times that just screams ‘step out of line and I’ll bury you while you’re sleeping,’ she’s my inspiration, she’s who I want to be when I grow up – and she asks, in the most condescending voice I’ve ever heard, ‘Did it work?’ And how do you answer that without getting into it? So, I tell her and she’s just … she is reevaluating my mental capabilities before my eyes, I see it on her face. A completely reasonable response! I would feel the same way if some idiot said to me ‘well, he married someone else, but then he got stabbed in the face by our childhood bully who turned into a serial killer – Henry Bowers, the Kiddie Killer of Maine – and then got impaled again by that same fucker and he divorced her for me while recovering, so kind of, yeah!’”
“My doctor did not appreciate that. She just stared at me for a while she attempted to process the number of bad decisions that must have led to literally every part of that sentence.” Richie nodded, face scrunched. “Yeah.”
“But yeah, Eddie did all that. He got impaled – yup, not as sexy as anyone might think, it was very gross! Would not recommend having someone bleed to death on top of you, no bueno, man – and as he’s bleeding, and I genuinely think he’s about to die, like I’m denying it but in my brain, he’s already dead – yeah, ‘wow’ is right, thank you for that random audience member. It’s all very melodramatic, imagine sad music where your kind of tearing up but the movie you’re watching is shit so you don’t want to admit it got you, it was like that. I was holding his body cause the thing impaling him got torn out and I’m pressing a jacket – my favorite jacket, I might add! I wore that jacket for 20 years and then he goes and bleed on it, but nobody ever likes when I add that part to the story cause then it makes me sound like a ‘heartless jackass’ or whatever, but I was looking cute, and he was honestly not looking great cause of the, you know, blood loss – so I press that jacket down on his whole mess and I’m telling him he’s gonna be okay and that I’m not leaving him, all that jazz. And this man, he says this to me.”
“’Richie, Trashmouth, listen to me,’ and I’m ready for poetry, I’m already crushed and so ready to burn those words into my brain. He says ‘Richie, listen to me, I have something to tell you.’ ‘Anything, buddy, what’s up?’ ‘Richie… I fucked your mom.’” Richie moves his eyes up to the ceiling and stares. “He uses his last words, the last words he will ever say on this Earth, to fucking dunk on me like I have never been dunked on before. He uses his last words to get revenge for about 12 years of ‘your mom’ jokes. He used his last words to fucking eviscerate my asshole without even dropping his pants. What the fuck.”
“And he dies. I’d gotten the chance to know him again for 3 days, realize that ‘oh shit that was love,’ and he dies, Eddie dies.” Richie lets out a harsh breath.
“But like any good protagonist, that bitch comes back to life – yeah clap for all those grey hairs that fucker gave me! Piece of shit! You know what’s more stressful than your loved one dying? Dying and then coming back to life only to almost die again! Fucker! My hair was mostly brown – I said mostly – before you came along! But yeah! Nothing can keep that asshole down, not even getting impaled by a clown can keep that sweet ass down. So, we get him to the hospital and he’s not even close to okay, but he survives after faking us out, and he wakes up a week later all groggy from his fucking coma and pain meds and it’s just us in the room cause I lied and said I was his husband – oh, don’t make that sound, like anybody from Derry is watching this shit to narc on me for something I did over a year ago – I said I was his husband cause I am desperate with a capital ‘D’ and nobody was exactly pushing me on it cause I came in sobbing and holding his bleeding body.”
“It was a super attractive look, 10 out of 10 would recommend traumatizing both yourself and the entirety of a hospital staff with your screaming.”
“So, he’s waking up and I’m so fucking happy but also, I am livid. Actually livid. Because really? Those were your last words? I fucked your mom. That’s what we’re going for. We spent 3 days realizing we’re still in love with each other after 22 years apart - oh, we had that conversation! Super fucking fun and not at all humiliating. Submitting to the idea of being known? Best. Feeling. Ever. I didn’t at all want to die during it – and I have all this shit ready. I have a speech prepared, I have run it by our friends and they’re like ‘sounds good’ – a lie, they told me to chill for a second and maybe take a shower but who gives a shit, they were wrong, and I was totally right – and I’m ready. And then this fucker opens his eyes and, without pause, he says ‘marry me, Trashmouth.’”
Richie turns slightly away from the mic and screams. “You fucking asshole! Are you kidding me! I have just spent the last week at your bedside after hauling your ass out of decrepit house – don’t ask, it’s not as fun as you’d think – I have spoken to more doctors than I have ever seen in my life, I am fielding calls from your wife about you because she’s a perfectly lovely woman,” Richie makes a face at that, stopping his rant to look down at the ground with his eyebrows raised. His point is made. “I am getting calls from my manager and every news reporter with nothing better to report on then a potential drug induced breakdown – so, altogether…” “It’s been the shitty week to end all shitty weeks. It smashes the rest of the other shitty weeks I’ve had in my life; it makes every other shitty week seem like a walk in the damn park.”
He turns back, staring down the audience, “So, of course, I said ‘yes’ – thank you! Yes, I am engaged to be married! I’m gonna be a fucking trophy husband, baby! He makes that mad risk analyzing money – yeah, I don’t fucking know what that means either, he’s explained it, but I get distracted by his arms every damn time.”
“My mother was fucking thrilled, she thought I was going to be a spinster for the rest of my life, and after I told her and she lost her damn mind – she, like everyone with a brain – was completely aware how gone on Eddie I was when were kids, and she loves a good romance, and this hit all the buttons for her. Come on, childhood best friends turned fiancés after reconnecting and one of us is even married? The drama! The catharsis! It’s been months and she still cannot get over it. She can’t stop mentioning it to her friends and neighbors just how cute it all is. My dad had a slightly different reaction, he was just confused.”
“Now, the thing is, I may or may not have ever come out to my parents before saying I was engaged – I know! Bad form! But that’s my brand! – and while my mom was all in, my dad just sort of stared at me like ‘Is this a bit?’ and then when it became clear it was not, in fact, a bit, he was thrilled. But he did have a few questions. Namely, you’re marrying Eddie Kaspbrak? Yes, dad, I’m marrying that Eddie.”
“Eddie spent a lot of time at our house, so parents got pretty comfortable with him there, they loved Eddie, my mom thought he was the positive influence I needed – oh, I know! – so they loved having him over. Eddie was 4 foot whatever with a fucking fanny back, who would look at that and go, troublemaker. My mom saw this cute kid who was so polite and sweet they constantly thought I was somehow tricking him into being my friend – fair but mean! – so she watched us like a hawk. That is, until we turned 14. Now, dear Eddie, thought we were home alone but as you can guess, we were not.”
“He comes in hot; I had just spent that entire day just showering him in ‘your mom’ jokes and nicknames that I cannot tell you for fear of actual death, and he comes in, and he yells, bless his heart, he yells at the top of his lungs: ‘get the fuck out here Trashmouth, I’m about to kick your concave ass into the fucking stratosphere!’ Amazing. Iconic. But my parents were home. They were in fact so home, they were on the couch. Eddie was in the entryway and he just,” Richie widens his stance and throws his arms out, face wide and mouth open, not unlike a fish.
“But my dad just looks up from his newspaper and says, ‘oh hi Eddie, he’s in the kitchen’ while my mom goes through the stages of grief. To be clear, they both love Eddie, she just thought I’d already corrupted him, not that he’d been completely feral before we met, no, that it was my fault. I got grounded for him saying that to them! That is fucking true! Turns out while my mom was bought into the Eddie she met, while my dad looked at him and just knew he was a shithead, he’s pretty good about that, so he was just like ‘yeah, that plays.’”
“’So, jump forward 26 years from that day, and when I tell him I’m marrying Eddie, he’s a little confused cause ‘wait your gay?’ and then his brain caught up and was like ‘oh yeah, you are, aren’t you?’ which! Father! Fucking rude! What does it say when your Silent Generation - a generation known for their emotional intelligence as you can tell from the name - father fucking knows your gay before you did.” “I was rightfully a little offended, but then he comes out with the ‘Son, you were obsessed with Madonna, what else was I supposed to think?’ Fair! But rude! Very fair! But very rude! And then he kind of goes quiet, and I think I’m gonna hear some nice affirming words from old Wentworth Tozier.” Richie looks out at the audience, face blank.
“’Why couldn’t you have said this in the 90s? Now I owe your mother 120 dollars.’”
“Thank you for having me New York! It’s been great to be back, I’ve missed your dad’s sweet ass, so give him a ring for me!”