Flirting with Death

It has all the makings of a classic anxiety dream. I am in a dark comedy club. The tiny stage is adorned with just a microphone and a stool. I recognize friends sipping drinks at a few tables in the crowded club. The emcee is making an introduction: "Give it up for our next performer. You read his column in USA Today. A big hand for Walter Shapiro!"

This is the moment of existential dread. Naked onstage, with no props, no scenery, no place to hide. The audience is rapacious in its demands: loosen our inhibitions; make us laugh. Onstage, life is stripped to bare essentials. The voice, the timing, the jokes are your only weapons. Every second of uneasy silence is a little death. I launch into my monologue: "You've been reading about Kenneth Starr and grand-jury leaks. Well, I can't get one. I'm the Rodney Dangerfield of investigative reporters." A small laugh, less than a guffaw, more than a titter. But that's all I need. I'm launched.

Let others call it a nightmare. For me, this onstage persona has been my other life for the past 2 1/2 years. Several times a month I'm out there with my fresh-from-the-headlines political jokes, trying to become the Mort Sahl of the '90s. The New York Observer described one of my early performances: "He holds the microphone like a dead fish." Trust me, I've grown as an artist. I have a monthly gig, along with four other talented baby-boomer comics, at the Gotham Comedy Club in Manhattan. The Washington Post dubbed our performance LAUGH RIOT IN THE BIG APPLE. My sold-out one-man show in Paris prompted Le Monde to gush, "Jerry Lewis, move over." (O.K., I made that last one up.)

Why do I do it? Why is stand-up comedy my way of letting go of the rigors of producing a newspaper column on deadline? Am I a raging egomaniac hooked on the adrenaline rush of immediate public approval? I prefer more subtle explanations. How gratifying to discover and nurture a new talent in midlife. I relish the I'd-be-scared-to-do-that praise from weekend rock climbers and hang gliders who view me as a fellow daredevil. But, mostly, it's as fun to get laughs now as it was when I was cracking wise from the back of the room in fifth grade. I get a surge of pleasure each time I score with my New York Times shtick: "The Times still hasn't figured out how to handle gossip. What they need is a special page brimming with dishy detail called 'News We Disapprove Of.' Or, this being the Times, 'News of Which We Disapprove.'"

Every show-biz saga has a pivotal scene in which the pleasure of performing is undermined by the poison of ambition. For me that painful moment came earlier this month when I snagged a tryout for the Letterman show. My instructions from Dave's people were explicit: "You'll do seven minutes at the Gotham at 9:30 Tuesday night. We'll be watching." I was primed, since I had just done two killer half-hour shows at a Planned Parenthood benefit in Greenwich, Conn. In hindsight, perhaps I should have realized that contraceptive-loving wealthy suburbanites were not the best test market to prepare for late-night-TV comedy.