Now what? -- By the final days of my senior year in college, I felt like a truly cool person, perhaps for the first time in my life.  Then I graduated.

An audience of two

As a kid growing up in the Central New Jersey suburbs, I would entertain my parents after dinner with performances entirely improvised, and marked by a manic silliness occasionally seen in my work today.  I must have sensed they needed a laugh.  Dad, an Italian-American, served during World War II in the U.S. Army Air Corps and then worked as a draftsman.  My mother, German-American, was doing well as a claims adjuster in the insurance industry before she insisted on chucking it all to be a full-time mother.  They had no kids other than yours truly.  I liked baseball, war comics, and getting dirty.  What a tomboy!  And yet deep, deep inside me glowed a real sense of ladyhood.  It’s complicated.

Talent night at the Drew University coffeehouse

It wasn't until junior year of college that I summoned the nerve to do formal stand-up comedy.  In preparation for talent night, I wrote, re-wrote and endlessly rehearsed every joke, causal aside and "ad-lib" that woud be my five-minute act; today, my stand-up is a shade more spontaneous, though I still prepare carefully.  The coffeehouse performance was a hit, and although years would pass before I persued stand-up comedy as a career, something about me had changed.  I was no longer just a shy, lonely kid.  I was a shy, lonely kid who had proved she could be funny onstage.  

Trapped  

The tagline "New York City's Woman Trapped Inside a Woman's Body" was coined near the beginning of my comedy career, while I was still getting used to a female body.  Women's bodies require a little more maintenance than the other kind. I shall spare you the details. (Your sense of relief is palpable.)

  A   c o m i c ,   a n d    o t h e r     i d e n t i t i e s     

"I’ve always found Alison a very decent and likeable human being, easy to get along with and extremely conscientious.  She is principled and idealistic, but tolerant of others."

Thomas Bontly (1939-2012)

Author and English Professor