" You got this, girl." "This is your special... and you're special." "Ugh, yuck." "Well, it'll be great." " You sure about that?" " What did you say to me?" " I asked if you're sure about your performance." "You don't seem that confident." " Well, what do you know?" " I know a lot." "I'm you." "I just don't want you to get so nervous that you mess up, like that one time in show choir when you auditioned for a solo and they couldn't hear your voice because you had one of those inside farts." "You know, like one of those farts that's like" " Yeah, I know." "Why are you bringing this up now?" "You don't have to be so rude." " I'm not being rude." " Yes, you are." "You don't have faith in me." " You don't have faith in you." " Wow." "You know what?" "You're awful, and I don't need you." "Hey, I'm sorry." " You don't love me anymore." " Of course I still love you." " Then kiss me." " No." "Okay, yeah, fine." "Oh...oh..." "Oh..." "Whoa, okay." "Wow." "Whoa-ho." "[giggling]" "Oh, oh" "Oh, hey, hey, hey, hey!" "Stop, I need to focus." " You suck." " [scoffs] [sighs]" "Ow!" " [snickering]" " Did you just hit me?" " Yeah, I did." " Ow, ow, ow!" "[coughing]" " I am gonna kill you!" " Why are you doing this?" " [cackling]" " Stop it!" "Ugh!" "[glass shatters] [coughing] [panting]" "Oh, no." "Why did you make me do that?" "I guess I'm on my own." " Psst." " There you are." "You're all right." " Yeah, you are too." "You're ready." " Yeah, I know." "That's what I was saying the whole time." "But it feels good to hear you say it." " Go get 'em, tiger." " Ow." "[suspenseful music] [cheers and applause] [hip-hop music]" "♪ ♪ [cheers and applause]" "[cheers and applause]" "Hello, hello." "Thank you so much." "Thank you guys for coming." "[cheering]" "Thank you for coming." "I really appreciate it." "This is a very special night for me." "And I am so glad to be doing this in New Orleans." "I love it here." "[cheering]" "I am such a fan of this place." "I've had so many messy memories here." "I fell in love here." "[crowd whooping]" "It started like any classic love story." "We were on mushrooms." "And I don't think I'll ever do mushrooms here again." "New Orleans is spooky when you're sober." "Like, it's scary enough." "I've real estate signs that, in all caps, say," ""Haunted."" "Like, you're very upfront about it." "It's like, "Yeah, this is a one-bedroom apartment, but you won't be alone."" "So we were on mushrooms, and we were trying to make out in my hotel room." "Failed miserably." "I don't know if anyone else has tried to make out on psychedelics." "I had a hard time figuring out whose face belonged to who." "So we stopped." "And in the morning, we discussed our experiences, and I said that I felt like the door was wide open in our room and there was a third presence, like a third person there." "And he said the exact same thing, which means a pervert died in that hotel, and his unfinished business was to watch us hook up." "And that terrifying realization actually brought us closer together, and that was essentially the beginning of our relationship." "So I just want to find that ghost and be like, "You can rest now."" "My boyfriend and I just had our two-year anniversary." "[cheering]" "Thank you." "I think we'll give it another two years before we call it quits." "It's hard." "Relationships are hard." "And I know they take a lot of work to be successful and healthy." "But I feel like I'm doing most of the work, because I'm fixing him." "And I don't want to be one of these girlfriends that's like, "I need to change my man." "I need to fix him."" "Because I love him the way he is, but... everything he does is wrong." "And I need to change him." "I like for people to take their shoes off when they enter my home." "And he does that for the most part, but sometimes he forgets." "And I have wood floors and a big rug in the living room." "And we were about to leave the house, and he goes, "Babe, I have my shoes on, but don't worry;" "I'm standing on the rug."" "And I was like, what logic are we working with?" "When he saw the wood floors, did he see lava?" "And I explained to him, like, "No, babe." ""I don't want people to bring their shoes into my home" ""because I don't want them to track dirt in." "That gives me more to clean up."" "And he looked at me like I was explaining new math." "Just never occurred to him." "And I also can't tell if I'm fixing him for me or for his next girlfriend, because if we break up and he starts dating somebody else, he's gonna take his shoes off at the door." "And she's gonna be like, "He's so clean." "He's so conscientious."" "No, bitch, that was me." "I did that." "If you feel like you're currently dating Mr. Perfect and he does everything right, you should thank all the exes who came before you for all the hard work they put in." "Anything that you see a man do that's considerate, he's doing it because, at one point in time, he made a mistake, and then some woman yelled at him." "And if you're not laughing, it's because you're currently being yelled at." "And you're welcome." "We already did the meet-the-parents thing, which I was nervous about, because I never introduced a significant other to my parents before." "And I think they were just happy that I brought somebody home, because I didn't start dating anybody till I was 23, and I didn't bring my boyfriend home till years after that." "So my mom's request for a person got broader and broader as the years went by." "At first, she was like," ""I want you to bring home a God-fearing man."" "And then years went by, and I didn't bring anyone home." "And she goes, "I want you to bring home a man."" "And then years went by, and she goes," ""I want you to bring home..." "a woman?" ""It's cool." ""Totally fine." ""I just don't know what you're doing." "Can't really read it."" "And then years went by, and she goes," ""You know what, you do you." ""I'll just adopt some grandkids." "I don't care anymore."" "But it's good." "My relationship with my mom is getting stronger, which is really cool." "I figured that, as I got older, my relationship with her would be more adult-to-adult." "But what's happening is, I'm becoming an adult, and she's becoming a teenager." "Is that happening to anybody else?" "[applause]" "It's so strange." "She keeps doing and saying things that she thinks are really cool, but they just weird me out." "We were talking about weed recently, because my brother's going to art school in Colorado." "So..." "He's minoring in weed." "And she goes, "I don't know" ""why he had to go all the way to Colorado for weed." "I can get weed whenever I want."" "And I was like, "You can get weed whenever you want?" "Do you have a dealer?"" "And she goes, "No, it's in my room."" "Which is not "getting" weed." "That's having weed." "And I was like, "Okay."" "And she was so proud of it." "She's like, "Yeah, I can smoke anytime I want."" "And I was like, "Cool,"" "and then changed the subject very quickly." "I think that may have been an invitation for us to smoke together, but I didn't want to take it, because I smoke and drink to escape my life stressors." "And if I get high with one of my main life stressors," "I don't think I'm gonna have a good time." "And when I went to visit her, I had a rental car, and I let my mom drive it." "And the steering wheel was thinner than the steering wheel in her car that she drives every day, so she made note of it and was like," ""This steering wheel is too thin." "I like a big, thick steering wheel."" "And I was like, "Okay."" "And she goes, "Yeah, you know why?" "'Cause it reminds me of gripping a big dick."" "And I was like, "No!"" "And then she kept going... and was like, "Yeah, bet you didn't think" "I had a preference."" "And I was like," ""Why would I ever think about that?" "No, it hasn't crossed my mind."" "But looking back at how many grips and covers and cushions my mom used to put on her steering wheel when I was younger... safe to say that Mommy likes it big." "Which is good for me to know, because it shows me that we have more in common that I thought." "I like getting to know my mom as an adult, because there were so many holes of knowledge when I was younger." "There were just so many things I didn't know." "Like, I knew certain things, but didn't know the backstory of those things." "I knew that she doesn't like white people." "And I could take some guesses as to why." "But it was never explained." "One day, we were in her car, and she stopped to let this old white couple pass in front of us, and she lets out this deep sigh like, "Ugh..." "White people."" "And I was like, "Uh...what's wrong?" "They're not even talking to us right now."" "And she goes, "Memories."" "And that's where the conversation ended." "And she would do that a lot." "She'd just chalk things up to memories, and I would never follow up and ask what those memories were." "And I was so young and just, like, left to my own devices." "I would, like, make up stories as to what I thought she was saying." "Like, I imagined if I asked her, like, "Mom, what do you mean when you say memories,"" "she'd say something like," ""Well, Sasheer, when I was 11 years old," ""I went to the public library in Little Rock, Arkansas." ""And I was buy myself," ""and this old white man came up to me" ""and put his hand on my shoulder." ""And something about his hand on my shoulder" ""and me holding the book" ""sucked us into the world of the book." ""And we landed in this magical forest" ""where the trees could talk to us" ""and the dirt tasted like licorice." ""Now, we didn't know where we were," ""so we split up to find help," ""and the old white man went one way," ""and I went another way," ""and I found this cave." ""And inside the cave was this big, beautiful dragon" ""with a purple tail and glittery wings." ""And she spoke to me and said that she would take care of me" ""if I just stayed there with her." ""I lived with that dragon for the next three years of my life." ""And on one of our morning walks," ""Crackle and I" ""that's her name, Crackle the Dragon" ""we saw the old white man." ""And I don't know what kind of adventures" ""he went through on this three-year journey" ""in this magical land," ""but he looked totally different." ""He was shirtless, and he was ripped," ""and he was carrying a bow and arrow." ""And he saw me with Crackle," ""and he thought I was in danger." ""And he shot Crackle through the heart." ""And I cried and said," ""'You don't know what you're doing!" "'" ""But shooting the dragon through the heart" ""is what we needed to get back to reality." ""So we landed back in the library." ""And the old white man returned to his job" ""as the Little Rock public librarian," ""and I started classes at a segregated high school." "And that's why I don't like white people."" "[applause]" "I eventually asked my mom about it, and I was way off." "Way off." "My parents named me Sasheer, which is hard for some people to pronounce, which I get." "There's two "S"s in there." "So..." "One's a "sss," one's a "shh."" "So it's like, "What do we do?"" "And the people who get my name wrong the most are white people." "And I don't want to make it a race thing." "But..." "Numbers are in." "Studies have shown that the demographic that consistently gets my name wrong are Caucasian." "I did this show once, and the host was white, and probably still is." "And..." "She could not get my name for the life of her." "Kept saying things like Shasheer or Saheer and moving letters around in my name and attacking it like a Sudoku puzzle." "And I was like, "It's cool, really." "You can call me Sheer for short if you can't get it."" "And she looks at me and she goes," ""Can I just call you Jane?"" "And I was like," ""If you want to give me a slave name."" "[applause]" "You can't do that." "Just change someone's name for the convenience." "Is this "Roots"?" "Are you trying to Toby me right now?" "And every time that happens," "I want to get so sassy and be like," ""Oh, I'm sorry my name's too ethnic for you." ""Sorry you can't fit all that heritage in your little lips."" "[cheers and applause]" "But I don't really have a right to be angry in that regard, because my name's not actually from any island or African culture." "It's from "Star Trek."" "My parents are Trekkies." "Technically Trekkers." "That's what the fans were called when the show first came out." "And they were watching an episode together" "Season 2, Episode 50-- and Captain Kirk was flirting with this alien princess, as he does." "And he gave her a rose, and she goes," ""Oh, we have something like this on my planet, except it's made out of crystal and it's called Sasheer."" "And my parents were like, "Yes!" "That'll be our daughter."" "And they gave each other a Vulcan high five and called it a night."