Watch or listen to the stand-up comedy special 'Sicko' (1999) by Doug Stanhope on Comedy Buff. Transcript available.

Doug Stanhope

Sicko

Ladies and gentlemen, Doug Stano. How are you guys? Alright, what a day. Man. What happened? I blew a speaker in my car today. That sucked. Yeah, he was a motivational speaker. Now, I've got the bad taste in my mouth, but I feel a lot more positive. And that counts for something, you know. I just found out I'm gay a few weeks ago in Oklahoma. That sucked. Because I had no idea. Some guy in a bar told me.
You're a faggot. Aw, shit. I'm a faggot. How am I going to tell my dad? Hard enough breaking it to him I was an asshole. He's going to hate this. I got shit from a guy in a one-nighter in Oklahoma but wearing an earring. Yeah, what are you, queer or something? You got women's jury in you some kind of homo. Everybody in the world has an earring. I know a guy who's got his lip pierced. He's got his schmeckle pierced and he runs a chain in between them.
I can jerk off just talking too much but I'm the freak. I was going to get my dick pierced but I figured, hey, it stings enough when I pee. You know what I'm saying? Sure, we've all been there. I have like three friends now who've actually done that that went ahead and got their lunch pierced like that. And they tell you it's supposed to, you know, enhance the sexual acts somehow. Which is bullshit because, you know, if it did, they'd sell clip-ons, you figure.
I'd sell them in the toilet for 75 cents in a machine or something. That would turn me on. If a girl had herself pierced down there, that would turn me on. But not because she had a ring down there. Just the mere fact. If she's going to do that to herself, she's going to let me do just about anything, you know? She's not going to be whining about taking it in the air since she has a big hook of metal in her snatch.
No. I'm wrong, tell me. It's nice to be back in Houston. Oh, goodness gracious. So, uh, so I got hammered yesterday in celebration. Not because it was Thanksgiving, just because it was the day of the week. I have been drinking. Did you ever drink so much of a certain type of alcohol that you get so sick you can never drink the same kind of alcohol again? I decided that's how I'm going to quit drinking.
One at a time. One per night. I'll be 70 years old walking around with a bottle of, you know, cream de coco. Fucking dollar store, bottom shelf alcohol. You never heard of it. Pork slugger? What's pork slug? You got little chunks of bacon bits in the bottom. I had to quit drinking, man. I drank so... Like, my mom moved in with me. It's my fault, too. Fucking talked her into it. That's what I... Do you know in some states now when you get a DUI, they give you that breathalyzer right in your car that you have to blow into before you can even start your car?
That's what I need on my phone. You know? Because I get hammered and I come home and fucking just start calling people in the middle of the night and talking shit and get myself into shit I can't get out of, you know? And I called my mom because she was living in Florida. I'm living in LA and I called because she'll take a phone call from any drunken asshole in the middle of the night if you'll listen to her complain for an hour.
And she's going, "I fucking hate Florida. These redneck sons are big gung gung gung." And I'm just drunk and I go, "Mom, move out to LA. Bring your seven cats. It'll be a ride. I'll pay for it." And she took me up on it. Fuck, you know, because she doesn't drink is the problem. She doesn't know the rules. You can talk all the shit you want with your drinking buddies. They're not going to hold you to it, you know?
No, fuck it. Let's sell all our shit and live in a van and just drive around the country to a big party. They don't show up the next day with the van going, "Uh-uh, are you ready? Don't we stop?" They know the rules, you know? But Mom, Mom, I'm serious. She called me up three days later. "I'm having a yard sale. I can't believe I'm doing this. This is crazy." So I moved her out there with her seven cats and now...
And I was just sweating the drive. I'm like, "Fuck, I had to drive cross-country." And I wasn't even thinking. Now she'll be in my house forever. She won't fucking leave. All she does is... Seven of the ugliest fucking cats you'll ever see in your life. Dude, they look like burn victims, these cats. Cattered ears and fucking milky eyes, fucking limping around straight cats. And I'm not a cat hater, you know?
But she treats them like they're imaginary friends, you know? She talks to them. My mom will sit with a stack of pictures this high of her cats sleeping in different positions. And show them to you. One of them. Look at Flutty sleeping. And look at them on his belly. And the whole time the cat is sleeping right there. Fucking look there. If I want to see a sleeping cat, it's fucking there. My God!
She just fucking stumbles around my... Five months stumbling around my apartment, farming cats in little bathrobes that are only this short, you know? And she'll walk around in pet cats right in front of you, with the grandma panties all pulled up in there. And that unkempt bee splayed out around the side. Looks like someone stepped on a spider, you know? Come on! Put on some fucking clothes! Go get a job!
Do something! Go out! Have a life! I can't even jerk off in my own house! And that's a problem! Because she never leaves! The only time she leaves, ten minutes a day, she'll go down to the 7-Eleven and blow all my money on scratch tickets. I have to scramble for the nearest porno and try to beat off in under ten minutes. I don't even want to! I just have to take advantage of the time, you know? I know I'll want to later on.
I won't be able to. Do you have, do you have any idea how horrifying it is to be sharing an apartment with only your mother? You have your favorite porno in the VCR, your pants at your knees, dick in your hand, nervous trickle of perspiration dripping down your forehead, hoping you get done in time. You hit play on your favorite porno and it starts at a different place than where you left at last?
You're trying to be a nice guy. You should ever do a favor for someone like that, will you? Just think you'll be a nice guy and it turns into a never-ending ordeal and ruins the rest of your life. You know, you see someone with a flat tire and you think, "Oh, I'll be a good guy, I'll help the lady with her flat tire." But then when you pull over, the fucking lug nuts are all rusted on and the spare tire doesn't fit because it's an idiot spare.
And she's got a baby in the back seat with the whooping cough and it's raining out and some abusive ex-husband that might show up at any second. Bone books, she has a friend who lives around here somewhere, so you drive her around for four hours trying to find some friend's house that doesn't exist. Baby starts coughing up blood, so you have to take him to an emergency room, find out he's got lymphoma.
Next thing you know, you're laying in a hospital bed donating bone marrow to keep this baby alive because you wanted to be a nice guy. What my mother's doing to me, she's sucking a bone marrow right out of me. That's why I'm glad to be here. Glad to be here. I'm just taking any shitty gig in the world. Doing band breaks for the mechanical band at Pistol Pete's Pizza. I don't give a fuck. Does it have accommodations?
As long as you get me a hotel, I need some alone time. That's the only part of working the road I'll never get sick of is hotels, you know. I love to stay, even shitty hotels. See, the problem is that when you do comedy, a lot of comedy clubs will put you up in the comedy condo, which is an apartment that all the comics stay in every week. And that blows because you look at the calendar and you see some of the freaks who stayed there before you.
I know half of these guys. I know this. And if you don't know them, the staff will be glad to tell you about it at the end of the show, you know. Because that's what we do. We get licked up after the show and tell road stories and the waitresses will go, "Oh, you missed it. Last week John Fox was here and he was doing blow and he was fucking some 450 pound girl with a bullet wound in her face. And Stock Kennedy was in the other bed watching and beating up."
And you go, "Ha ha, those crazy guys." But then you go, "Wait, I'm sleeping in that same bed. I don't want to hear this shit. Tell me what I'm checking out. You." I had to follow Jason Stewart in a condo in St. Louis one. Jason Stewart is like the bonfire of flaming homosexual, fucks, anything. I check into the condo, the nightstand drawer is all filled with condoms and lubricants and stuff. I just laid there the whole week staring at the ceiling, knowing I'm laying in a bed still moist with the ass sweat of some confused fraternity kid.
I could sleep a wink. Give me the shittiest Motel 6 in the world before that. People rag on Motel 6, but you know it's a shithole. But you know it's a shithole when you check in. The price is on the sign. You get free HBO, free local phone calls. One in ten chance of getting crabs from the bedspread. I can live with those odds, you know. I know a thousand whores and truck drivers have fucked in the bed, but I don't have to hear the stories first hand from the front desk lady, you know.
Oh, 106. Oh, there's a roadway driver in there last night. He was fucking some 450 pound girl with a bullet wound in her face. Enjoy your stay. Anyone drive truck here? Truck drivers? Kings of the highway? None? Do you? Who does? I'm not talking about ice cream trucks now. I'm talking to your big 18-wheel road-clogging pieces of shit that ruin the road for fucking everybody. Not that personal against you, not that personal against you, but I just hope you all die Ebola virus deaths where you get a truckload of infected monkeys and one of them nips you on the back of the neck, you bleed out of your eyes, your guts all soup up and spray out your ass.
You're fucking ruin the road for everyone. You do like 42 miles an hour in a 70-mile-an-hour zone, but then shitbag number two, he can do 42 and a half, so he'll swing it on out, clog up both lanes, all the way to San Antonio and the race is on in here. Just as you're about to pass, then shitbag number one spills his coffee all over his porno magazine, jacks it back up and on your neck and neck. Who do you get behind?
Do you get behind the one, you know, hallucinating after three days on the road doing truck stop speed? Or the one slinging liquid pig shit out of the back of his rig all over your windshield, you fucking asshole. I have tapes of the Reginald Denny beating in the L.A. riots, that truck driver they beat the shit out of, I beat off to that tape, ladies and gentlemen. I try to time it so I can come right while he gets hit in the head with the brick.
But that's why I love this business, because it's a healthy outlet for that, you know. I get mad at you, I yell at them, they laugh, I get paid, we all go home shit-faced and happy, you know. Because otherwise I'm stuck behind that prick for 30 miles staring, screaming at the inside of my windshield, you know. Take off the highway, go take it out on some poor kid in a McDonald's drive-thru, it's not his fault.
I'm yelling at him, "If I wanted fries, I'd ask for fries!" What did he do? Poor kid's sweating his ass off of four bucks an hour in some grease factory, he doesn't need my shit on top of it. Meanwhile, he's in there beating off in my fish sandwich, if I wanted fries, I'd ask for fries. I'm eating his jizz at some trucker's store. No one wins there. You're gonna give someone shit, just make sure they deserve it first, you know.
My pet peeve is the flower girls who come to the bars, get those out with their little basket of flowers, and they stalk you around the bar. As soon as you start talking to a chick, they come, "Jack, you have to buy a flower for her, make you look like a real dickhead when you won't buy one." Would you like to buy a flower for your pretty little lady friend, or do