Free by Amanda Knox

Author:Amanda Knox [KNOX, AMANDA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2025-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

Punching Down

I DON’T OFTEN ENCOUNTER SOMEONE who is cruel to me in person. In fact, I somewhat pride myself on the fact that if someone meets me in real life, they come around to seeing me as the person I really am. Negativity usually comes at me from a distance. The tabloids disparage me for clicks. Haters I’ve never met release their rage into the comments section. I delete and block like a game of Whac-A-Mole.

On good days, anyway. But I’m not always my best self. It got to me when the Daily Mail ran a story about how crass it was that I’d given a talk to some law students. They got the Kerchers’ lawyer on the line to say that the very idea of me giving a talk was offensive. Even as I raised awareness about criminal justice reform, I was the villain.

Against my better judgment, I found myself dwelling on this as I arrived at a comedy club to celebrate my little sister’s birthday. We all piled into a booth at the back of the room to watch her favorite comedian perform. The first comic warmed the crowd up nicely, closing with a line about how he couldn’t be happier now that both white girls and Black girls have big butts. I found myself laughing in spite of my bad mood and the crassness of the joke. I sipped my glass of chardonnay, letting the tension go. This will be fun, I told myself. Who knew I needed a night at a comedy club? There was one more opener before the headliner, another local guy, and when he took the stage, I felt a glimmer of recognition. Where did I know him from? Then, a few jokes in, he said, “Have you ever been in a room with a famous person and you didn’t realize it?” The back of my neck started tingling, and I broke out in a cold sweat.

I’m often recognized. People come up to me in airports, at the grocery store, in restaurants. Without context, people often can’t place me. “Did we go to high school together? You look so familiar.” Sometimes I tell them who I am; sometimes I don’t want to deal with it. “Just one of those faces,” I say. When I have a chance to be anonymous, I often take it.

I like it when the focus isn’t on me, so I was thrilled when, a few months before this night at the comedy club, Chris was invited to be interviewed for a podcast hosted by two local comedians to talk about his novel. I tagged along to the recording session and sat quietly in the corner. I’d brought along a cross-stitch project I was working on for Chris’s birthday: a scene from Super Mario Bros.

At the end of the interview, one of the comics took Chris down the hall to show him where the restroom was, and I chatted with the other comic, showing him the gift I was working on.

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