I Got Locked in the Bathroom

My last show of 2024 was fairly uneventful, except for what happened before it started, when I found myself stuck in a bathroom.

I went to pee ten minutes before my show at a house party, and when I tried to leave, I realized that I was locked inside. After several attempts where I absolutely manhandled the doorknob, I had to accept that I was, in fact, locked inside of the client’s bathroom. Considering that when I billed myself as “Denver’s youngest escape artist,” (true story from 10-year-old Max), I neglected to learn how to pick locks and opted instead to hide a key in my pocket, I wasn’t prepared for this at all.

So I called the client, who luckily answered the phone and thought it was hilarious. And in a stroke of genuine luck, the contractor was still there because the house was brand new. I was out minutes later.

While in the bathroom, I texted my magician friends and told them about my situation. They immediately responded and also thought it was hilarious. And they were correct. It was hilarious. But I thought about what would happen in a different situation—what if I texted them and told them that I had just crushed a show? Would they have responded as quickly or enthusiastically? Probably not—and it has nothing to do with the quality of their friendship. It’s that we connect with people who are struggling. And we connect with them when they’re willing to share that struggle with us.

Being locked in a bathroom at a gig is pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but it’s certainly not ideal. And I think my friends could relate to the fear of trying to convince a room full of strangers that you can read their minds when they know full well that just minutes before, I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without someone saving me.

Derren Brown wrote in A Book of Secrets that the things that make us feel most isolated are, in fact, precisely the things that bind us to each other.

Getting stuck in a bathroom is objectively embarrassing. It’s also—if comedy can be objective—objectively funny. And bringing it up at the beginning of the show let the audience see that I was a human just like the rest of them, and we’d be collaborating on this show together.

It’s not surprising that vulnerability is attractive. We like learning about how people struggle. It makes us feel good about ourselves, it helps us learn and feel less alone.

For example, I’ve published a Substack every week since April. Do you know what the highest performing one was called? “Bombs Away: The Worst Performance of My Career.”

One of my goals in 2025 is to be more open and honest about my failures. It’s a weird thing to do because this is a public-facing publication that any client could technically read. So I’m balancing my need to book shows with my need to be honest. But everyone messes up. You can mess up and also be capable of delivering a great performance.

Needless to say—my final show of 2024 started by getting locked in the bathroom. It’s only up from here.