Brenda Monk Is Funny Read Online Free

saw all his tricks, but the execution was so perfect you couldn’t help but marvel. As he reached the mic stand, flicked the mic out of its cradle and moved the empty stand behind him in one easy move, you knew already that this was going to go very well.
    ‘Good evening, good evening, good… evening.’
    First laugh.
    Jesus, he could get a laugh off ‘good… evening’ these days. The audience were at pre-orgasm stage before he even opened his mouth, all he had to do was tip them over the edge and keep them coming. His mouth curled up at one side into a smile that said, ‘I am in full control.’ It was sexy – he was feeling sexy and it showed. A woman near the front let out an involuntary yelp. Manna from heaven. Jonathan, who had been strolling along the front of the stage, stopped dead in his tracks.
    Second laugh.
    Brenda shook her head. This was too easy, even for Jonathan. He’d be irritable later, complaining that he might as well have not written any material at all, although you’d never know it to look at him now. He turned his head and gave the woman his full attention.
    ‘Good
evening
,’ he said straight to her pink face.
    Third laugh.
    ‘Are you going to let me do this show, or should I just take you outside and show you all my jokes at once?’
    The audience erupted. The woman buried her face in her hands. Her friends laughed enviously, faces upturned, white throats exposed, ready for kiss or kill and both equally welcome. Brenda felt a dead weight in her stomach. She’d forgotten that this is what happened when he didn’t know she was in.
    ‘Of course, I shouldn’t let you flirt with me, madam – I do have a girlfriend.’
    Pause.
    ‘Four hundred miles away.’
    Fourth laugh.
    Brenda swallowed hard and steeled herself for the hour ahead. The roller-coaster ride had begun and she was trapped behind a metal bar of her own making. She couldn’t leave without attracting his attention, and in any case she knew she wouldn’t even if she could. She was in it now.
    ‘Anyone here in a relationship?’ A world-weary tone. ‘Isn’t it
wonderful
? So, my girlfriend is amazing, but she’s an arsehole. No, no, she’d love hearing me say that, she agrees with me. In fact, she told me she was an arsehole on our first date. It’s one of the reasons I went back for a second…’
    Fifth laugh.
    ‘But I could never leave her. She makes the best “come noise” I’ve ever heard. No, seriously, listen…’
----
    Brenda and Lloyd stood in the bar waiting for Jonathan to join them.
    ‘It’s a great show,’ Brenda said, then sipped her drink carefully. ‘Really great – the best I’ve seen him, really.’
    Lloyd smiled warmly. ‘Well, he’s got you to thank for the material,’ he joked with some small but well concealed discomfort.
    Brenda nodded and smiled, although the nausea had not yet subsided. She had just sat through exactly fifty-five minutes of hellishly detailed, comedically brilliant observations on her relationship with Jonathan; her own relationship with her parents and how it affected her relationship with Jonathan; a run-down of her sexual preferences with notes on each by Jonathan; a compendium of her personal body neuroses and an eloquent and at times actually quite moving speech from Jonathan on how he didn’t mind any of them; a story about the first time she farted in front of him and how it made him feel, and, by way of a finale, an extended fantasy set piece about their future together which brought the house down. It was a lot to take in and the fact that Lloyd was standing less than a foot away from her, furnished with the knowledge that she liked to stand naked facing the wall with her arms outstretched, hands on the plaster, legs slightly apart and be felt up by Jonathan from behind before sliding to the floor, did not fill her with joy.
    Of course Jonathan had used her as material in the past, but this was beyond anything he’d done before. She was the whole show,