PHILADELPHIA - Meet Natalie Levant, 88, a stand-up comedian from Philadelphia.
Four-letter funny: "I know that people don't expect me to use the language on stage that I use, but that's just in a long line of things they're not expecting, which, to begin with, is that I'm even standing."
UnButtoned: "Aging gracefully, I've come to realize, is slowly disappearing, like Benjamin Button."
At her recent stand-up performance at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar, Natalie Levant worked the steamy back room in black spandex pants, green sequin boots, and a tank top that read: "NEVER KNOW YOUR PLACE."
Some might say a Saturday night at one of South Philly's oldest dive bars - where the dinner menu is beer, and smoking inside is still legal - is no place for a woman like Levant, who turned 88 in September.
Good thing she knows better.
"Ladies, do not listen to any of that s - about aging gracefully. Don't be boring," she said during her act. "So what if your arms look like bags of dead mice? More room for tattoos!"
Levant herself has four tattoos, including the word "L'Chaim," - a Hebrew toast meaning "to life" - written upside down on her bicep, so she can read it. She doesn't give a damn if you can.
For the last seven years, Levant has been performing stand up at clubs, restaurants, and "the best dive bars in the tristate area," from South Philly to Cape May. She's even performed at an Uno Pizzeria and Grill in South Jersey.
Sometimes she asks herself: "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" but she always responds: "Just lucky."
Levant - who describes her style as "wickedly evil" - didn't get into comedy until she was 81, when a man she was volunteering with at Siloam Wellness Center suggested she try doing it at Tabu, a Gayborhood sports bar. Though she'd never considered stand up before, she didn't hesitate.
"The last response that I would have ever made was 'At my age?'" Levant said.
She remembers talking about her life in that first performance and telling jokes like: "We thought safe sex was pulling the bed away from the walls so you didn't bump your head."
But most of all, Levant remembers how it felt.
"I remember feeling totally like I had discovered treasure, like I had discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," she said. "You get back so much more than what you could ever give when it works."
Levant grew up in a Reform Jewish home in Pittsburgh with a serious mother and a father - whom she still lovingly refers to as "daddy" - who found humor in everything. When she was 18, she met her husband, Bob, an attorney, on the beach in Atlantic City.
The couple, who were married for 55 years, lived in Philly's East Oak Lane section and raised three sons and a daughter.