It’s a crazy world when a woman can’t get through five minutes of comedy without some drunk assholes screaming at her to take her clothes off, but hey, that’s apparently the world we’re living in. Or so Canadian comedian Christina Walkinshaw discovered in September when she did a set at a club called Yuk Yuk’s at Casino Niagara.
In a blog post on her site, Walkinshaw lays out the whole saga. She was in the middle of her set when she heard the following:
“’Show us your tits! Show us your tits! Show us your tits!’ Under normal circumstances, I would shoot them a sassy line, and tell them to shut up. But this club sends us all memos, telling us NOT to talk to the crowd, or engage the staff in our acts. So basically, I have two choices. Keep going, or show them my tits. I decide to just keep going. A few minutes later, they started chanting again:
‘Show us your bush! Show us your bush! Show us your bush!'”
Walkinshaw managed to get through her material and get backstage, only to have a really stellar interaction with a member of the casino staff:
“At the end of the night, the woman running the show came back into the green room. I’m absolutely the worst person when it comes to confrontation. I knew I had to say something to her, but I didn’t know how. I got a little choked up. I finally managed this:
‘Hey, next time some audience members shout “Show us your tits! Show us your bush!” You might want to tell them to be quiet.’
Then I burst out crying. Oh for fucks. I can’t believe I’m confessing to crying on the internet. I never cry. At least I didn’t cry on stage, right? I’m professional enough. My tears seemed to shock her.
‘Oh! Sorry! We thought you liked it.’”
Walkinshaw kept working at Yuk Yuk’s the rest of the weekend because she didn’t want to lose the money, and describes feeling “relieved” when she found out she was asked back to work again, writing, “I knew that weekend was awkward, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it, so I’m glad they didn’t. Or so I thought…”