July 29 (UPI) -- Dusty Slay's second full-length Netflix special, Wet Heat, is streaming Tuesday, and the stand-up comedian says it wasn't always clear to him that comedy was the right path.
Slay, 43, told UPI in a recent phone interview that he was a fan of comedy from a young age, but his own aptitude for it came later.
"I was always trying to make people laugh," he said. "But I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, from Alabama when I was 21. And about 2003, I moved with a friend and then we had some problems. So I moved out and got my own place and I didn't have any friends, so I took an improv class. And that's how I got into stand-up -- I took improv, and I did improv for a long time."
He said the idea of doing stand-up professionally didn't enter the equation until around 2011.
"I won a stand-up comedy competition," he recalled. "And I thought, 'Maybe I could do something with this.' So I started to take things a little more serious, and then in early 2012, I quit drinking, and things became very clear to me, and I got very good at comedy -- Well, I got good at comedy much faster. I wouldn't say I got very good right away, but I got much faster."
