Is This Comedy Monologue A Rape Confession? [UPDATED]
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What do you call it when you misrepresent yourself as someone’s desired partner, don’t listen when she repeatedly tells you to leave, come uninvited into her room and penetrate her while she just lies there? Well, at a recent New York City improv festival, this guy, who by his own account did just that, called it comedy.
This video is from the Asssscat 3000 show at the Del Close Marathon, held August 14. The audience was invited by the comedians to tell a true life story to inspire an improv set, and this man, who introduced himself as Eric, told a story from his time on the waitstaff at Second City Chicago.
As the story goes, an “old drunk girl” gave her number to a waiter, who had a girlfriend but suggested Eric go instead. He claims “peer pressure” from the fellow staff led him to call the woman, “without saying, hey I’m a different person, is this okay?” and to take a cab to her hotel. He says she opened up the door and said, “Oh no.” This is how he recounts the dialogue:
“You’re not the guy I wanted.”
“But I’m the guy who showed up.” This elicits cheers.
She said, “Well I’m not letting you in,” but “she leaves the door open so I’m like bingo…. I walk in there and I kind of close the door.” She told him to leave, again, and he says to himself, “All right, it’s now or never.” He says he kissed her, they started making out, and when the comedians start uncomfortably joking about the police and the Fifth Amendment, Eric says, “I’m pretty sure she felt safe,” that she was stronger than him and had him “pinned down.” He then says he went for the “fishhook,” which is how he says he tells it to his friends, and demonstrates penetrating her with his fingers.
The woman allegedly said, “Please tell me you have a condom.” She took off her pants but wouldn’t let him take off her top. Then, in his words: “She laid on her back and I did my work.” At this point, people in the audience start booing.
“There’s not a woman in this theater who could resist you right now,” one comedian jokes in the video. Well, presumably because he didn’t listen the last time.
The rest of the men — all men — onstage react in a variety of ways, from noting the women behind him shaking their heads unsmilingly to asking if the women was attractive.
“I wish for a million reasons that there would have been at least one woman on that stage,” writes Splitsider’s Halle Kiefer, who was there but who ultimately thought the comedians handled it well, saying that one “went on to specifically call out the monologue as being about rape multiple times.” Another attendee, Stephanie Streisand, writes, “He was at the [festival] after party. He was smiling until one by one people were going up to him to let him know he was a rapist. He left the party early.” And a third woman who was there, Poupak Sepehri, says she was “shocked and uncertain about what to do. At some point, I was going to get up and leave, but I was sitting very close to the stage and didn’t want to disturb the performers.” She concludes,
So, if you’re a female Second City customer from out of town, you’re a little older and a little drunk, and you are interested in one of the waiters, given all the justifications above, it’s OK that the cook/host shows up in your hotel room and rapes you.
We contacted the man who’s believed to be in this video and will keep you posted. We’re told that he no longer works at Second City and that he’s moved away from Chicago.
Update: According to this blogger and several other sources, the person in the video is Eric D. Angell, whom we also contacted this morning. He hasn’t responded.
One Night At Asssscat, Or What To Do With A Date Rape Monologue [Splitsider]
On The Subject Of Rape [Poupak’s Parisian Life In New York]
Re: On The Subject Of Rape… [Stephanie Streisand Tumblr]
Full Video [Yowie]
Video via Yowie