Eggplant: A Standup Comedy Routine
Performed at The Hyena Comedy School Theater
Mission Street, San Francisco
23 February 2004

I moved here from London three years ago. I thought I was the Definition of Cool back in the UK because I wore Prada leg-warmers to parties, and I would only date men with moustaches.

Trouble was, moustaches were out of fashion back then so I was kind of lonely.

I thought about getting a pet, but animals were forbidden in my building. So I came up with a cunning plan: I went to the grocery store and bought a giant eggplant.

I named it Fergie after my favorite ex-member of the royal family.

We became pretty close, Fergie and I. She was a very special vegetable.

Everyday I would tie a leash around Fergie’s stumpy green stem and take her for a drag around Hyde Park.

I always felt safe walking her late at night – people would take one look at me and Fergie and give us a wide berth.

I didn’t feel comfortable about leaving Fergie at home all day when I went to work, but there was a sign on the front door of my office which said: “NO PETS ALLOWED.”

I tried to get an exception for Fergie, citing in her defense, her quiet and sensitive nature.
The next day there was a new sign on the door: “NO PETS OR EGGPLANTS ALLOWED.”
I wasn’t about to abandon Fergie so I resigned.

I had to make a living somehow. For a number of years I’d headlined as chief pennywhistler in The Kensington Duran Duran Tribute Band, so I decided to try street performance, playing solo Pennywhistle medleys of Duran Duran songs outside the Mug & Mullet pub on Kensington High Street.

It was dispiriting work: after four hours of pennywhistling my brains out, I’d made about 50 cents. The entire donation came from the Mug & Mullet barman who told me he’d gladly pay me -- to stop.

In the end I was forced to leave London altogether when Fergie, in a state of playfulness, bit an old lady and stole her handbag.

On the run from the cops, my friend Bob hid me in his basement while I made my getaway plans. The first thing was to destroy all evidence of the crime, so with a heavy heart and a light béchamel sauce, we cooked up a mean eggplant parmesan.

Then we discussed my escape. I said I wanted to go somewhere where someone like me could blend into the crowd. Without hesitation, Bob suggested San Francisco.

As soon as I stepped off the plane I could see he was right – the cluttered skyline, the endless bagels, the Statue of Liberty. I got back on the plane: it was the wrong town.

At last I arrived in San Francisco but narrowly escaped being thrown out of the country shortly after landing following a misunderstanding with an immigration officer.

In compliance with the strict new U.S. immigration policies, I was led over to a Xerox machine. I dutifully pulled down my trousers, plopped by bum down on top of the machine and waited.

But the immigration officer just kept staring at me. Then I figured out what the problem was. “Ohhhh. I didn’t realize you wanted a THUMBprint.”

It wasn’t long before I got into the San Francisco lifestyle. I would go for a run every morning at dawn, eat tofu with every meal and fill the tank of my car with a revolutionary new fuel made from sunflowers, hemp, and dog hair.

I mixed the fuel at home in my bath-tub, selling it for a dollar fifty a gallon to friends. For a while I had a nice racket going until a little kid spied me slinking off with his Airedale Terrier and followed me home from the park on his tricycle.

The little twerp caught me red handed, clippers aloft and legs akimbo, about to give the Airedale an ‘air-razing experience.

Then all hell broke lose. The kid started crying, I started laughing and the dog, not knowing what else to do, did as dogs are wont to do, which is to say, he did doo doo.

Seeing the mess on the carpet hit me with a wave of nostalgia: when compared with Airedale terriers, eggplants make such nice clean pets.

One of the highlights of my regime here in hippy, happy San Francisco has been following-up my daily run with an invigorating shot of wheatgrass at my local juice joint. I don’t honestly know why I bother: It might look like Absinthe but it tastes like Abs—olute rubbish.

It also costs five dollars a pop. Which I resent even though each glassful is blessed by a bald guy in a sarong who chants sections from The Mahabarata as he shoves a fistful of turf—which for all I know comes from the local dog run—into a hand-crank meat grinder.

You can get pretty high on wheatgrass though. Once, as an experiment, I ordered a double shot.

Ten minutes later I was reeling down Haight Street passing out loaves of bread and plates of fish to passers by, a gaggle of worshipful acolytes in my train. I was bigger than Jesus .

It wasn’t until the wheatgrass wore off that I realized not only was I NOT bigger than Jesus, but that I had been signed up for the juice bar’s week-long bowel irrigation course.

San Francisco’s one of the few places where you can you walk into your local juice joint and get a colonic cleansing and Ashtanga yoga class with your 16-ounce carrot and ginseng.

In fact, my neighborhood’s so great for that kind of thing. I can go to the bicycle repair store and get free dance therapy classes with my semi-annual tune-up.

And Valerie, the woman who runs the Laundromat across the street, is a certified energy healer.

I went to see Valerie for a reading once. You get half an hour for $10, which is great: by the time you come out from behind the red velvet curtain at the back of the store, your laundry is perfectly dry.

But the downside is, she wants to be paid in quarters.

Plus, in the end it all transpired to be a bit of a wash-out.

“Beware the spin cycle,” she said, reading my aura by sprinkling the contents of a packet of Tide over my head. “In the heat of the moment, your delicates may shrink.”

She was right: by the time we were done, my delicates had shrunk. Unfortunately, so had my opinion of Valerie.

Since then, I’ve been very skeptical about alternative healing. It’s what people resort to when there’s no alternative.

A bit like shopping at Safeway.

Actually though, I shouldn’t knock holistic therapy. I’ve been going to acupuncture for a few weeks now to treat a terrible recurring nightmare I have about waking up in bed with Kermit the Frog.

At first I thought the acupuncturist was a little weird. She kept going on about cheese…
…and that I had to get my cheese flowing.

The next session she asked me how things were going and I told her that my cheese was flowing very well. But to tell you the truth, I was getting a bit bored with eating nothing but fondue.

The last time I went, the acupuncturist stuck me with the needles, left the room and completely forgot to come back. I woke up in her office the next morning, half-naked and with needles sticking out of me in all directions.

I looked like a pornographic telecommunications hub. Half the neighborhood was using me to get wireless Internet access.

Since then, things have gotten worse: every night I’ve been having these terrible recurring nightmares about waking up in bed with Kermit the Frog – and Miss Piggy.

After all that I was ready to dump the granola and give up this holistic healing nonsense altogether, but I thought I’d just give it one last try when some friends, invited me to a naked moonlit ceremony at Ocean Beach to celebrate the Dawning of Pisces.

At first, it was kind of cool being naked under the stars by the sea. We all stood in a circle holding hands and taking in turns to tell the group about what special gift we could bring to the world to make it “a better and more loving place.”

“I bring peace,” said one.
This other woman says, “As a yoga teacher I help people get in touch with their celestial inner selves.”

Then everyone looked at me.
“I cook a mean eggplant parmesan.”

Copyright 2004 Chloe Veltman