On this four year anniversary edition of Grade A Nation, Chris Thomas chats with Mike Cotayo. There is a famous joke about Mike: "a comic, a social worker, and an escort walk into a bar, and they're all Mike Cotayo." Okay, enough kidding around! Mike Cotayo is a great comic that has done it all and seen it all. From flying through a windshield in a car crash at 18 months old to getting HIV in a West Village sex club, Mike has a ton of life experiences to incorporate in his stand up material. We cover Mike's: -lack of confidence in himself growing up because of the inability to use his left hand and hatred of being treated differently due to having a disability -stand-up comics that he idolized from an early age -riding the Staten Island Ferry as a young man hooking up with other men and getting a thrill in encounters with total strangers (don't call him the Staten Island Ferry Fairy....show some respect) -experiencing assault without consent while on a Holocaust museum field trip  -what made him interested in social work and his assessment of how he did as a social worker -smoking crack; just say no folks! -his thoughts on why he was engaging in behaviors he would tell his social work clients not to do -how after contracting HIV he decided to pursue his stand-up dreams -having success as a stand-up that became almost too much to handle due to the arrival of panic attacks -sometimes identifying as gay and sometimes identifying as bisexual over the years -grieving after the passing of his mother and his love for family -whether he can see his dad being with another woman in the future -a brief stint as an escort  -his sometimes self-destructive tendencies in his comedy career -getting props from his peers in stand up comedy -falling in love with a married woman that is a mom and having her leave her husband for him, only for the ex-husband to end up living in their basement (I smell a My Two Dad's reboot in the works) -being an extra on SNL and his comedy goals A spectacular conversation with an honest and funny man! Go to https://www.funnymanmike.com/ to learn more about Mike Cotayo.