THE AUDIENCE IS curious, ready, leaning forward in their seats.
This is back at the club where it all started. The funny man has not been here in a long time and yet it is unchanged, except that someone has cleaved the big table that used to sit in the middle of dressing room and collect beer bottles in two and the two halves have been crudely fastened back together with two-by-fours nailed like railroad tracks across the top. He thinks maybe he should be a dude and spring for a new table. He does not know any of the performers, but it’s clear they are in awe of him. Sure, he’s had his setbacks, but they would kill for the opportunity to rise high enough to fail so spectacularly as him. No one notices if you fall out a first-story window.
A woman from the entertainment magazine that dabbles in politics has been following him around for three straight days and she stands in the corner of the backstage room and winks at him when he looks at her. Since she has begun her surveillance, the funny man has been taking pains to appear grounded, grateful for the opportunity to perform again, just as his agent and manager have suggested. He removed the pills from his medicine cabinet because he knew she would snoop there, and indeed, not five minutes after arriving she asked if she could use “the little girl’s room.” It amazes the funny man how predictable it all is, but this is to his advantage. Knowing what’s to happen ahead of time means it’s all easy to prepare for. The easiest way to dispose of the pills so they wouldn’t be discovered was to take them, so that’s what he did and after they kicked in he wondered why this hadn’t been his recommended dosage all along.
The woman is young, like right out of journalism school, and she has that green smell about her. She is tiny and dark, with short hair sculpted into a soft fin across the top of her head. She wears black exclusively. Her ears are small and pointed. She looks like an elf as raised and outfitted by eighties new wave musicians. She marvels at the view in his apartment, like she’s never seen such a thing before. She uses words like honor and privilege when she talks about this particular assignment. She has been asking a lot of questions and the funny man can’t remember all his answers, but he’s sure he’s doing fine. He’s practically a professional talker at this point. He’s lost track of how many questions he’s been asked and therefore answered at this point in his career. She’s writing lots of things down and the recorder seems to often need fresh cassettes. The funny man imagines it will be a very long article, maybe even the cover. He may or may not have slept with her. There is a feeling there and snippets of images: small, upturned breasts, a trail of fuzz heading down from her belly button that he would not have noticed if he hadn’t seen her naked, but while he sleeps hard on the pills, the sleep comes with extremely vivid dreams and it gets hard to tell them apart from reality.
These vivid dreams are still another side benefit of the pills that no one explained to him before.
When it is the funny man’s turn to go on stage, he takes his place behind the audience and as the previous performer introduces him he can hear the catch in the guy’s throat. It’s probably the biggest thing that ever happened to him, introducing the funny man. The funny man has timed the ingestion of the pills perfectly. His head is both soft and clear, his gaze warm and sharp. His performance is sure to be enhanced. There will be piper paying later, usually in the form of sweating and the shits, but the funny man is all about sacrifice, now that he knows what you get for it.
The welcoming applause is eager, aggressive, the claps a little slow, but loud. They have a “you better show us something” quality, and boy, will he. He’s shown them a lot in his life and miracle of miracles, he has even more. How is this possible? It is possible because everything is possible … for him.
Before the funny man even says thanks for his welcome, he quickly fakes shoving his hand in his mouth and then gives his widest smile and shakes his finger and there’s a lot of laughter because everyone is in on that particular joke. It’s a good start, just as he planned.
Most of the jokes are oblique references to his recent troubles, self-deprecating and they land with some force and regularity. Often the setups get bigger laughs than the punchlines.
I haven’t been up to much lately …
The jokes themselves aren’t particularly important, though. They are merely the setup for the new thing. It is like a boxing match. No one expects to knock a guy out with body blows, but you need to throw some shots there to get him to drop his hands.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” the funny man says, “that this comedy business just isn’t for me.” He pauses to allow the audience to boo. “No, seriously, I’m done with it, that’s what I’ve come here tonight to tell you all. For me, the joke’s over.” More booing, only lighter this time. He seems very serious, like he’s deciding to pack it in right in front of them.
“However!” the funny man shouts, lifting a finger into the air to signal attention. “What I am going to do, is dance!” At this cue, the music starts over the public address system and the funny man kicks into his routine where he shakes only one part of his body at a given time. With practice he’s gotten really good at it, his whole body entirely still, save his arm from the elbow down, or his head from the neck up. He can even wiggle his ears and move his hair back and forth in such a way that he looks like he’s wearing a wig. That took some practice.
At first, the laughter is tentative, but it progressively grows in volume and intensity and some are even clapping along with the music and whooping and the funny man feels fucking great, remembering what it’s like to bask in such love. Colors swirl in his vision as he now whips his head back and forth like he might unhinge his skull, which is not planned, but sometime the greatest comedy comes from accidents.
He knows now is the time to strike, now is the time to show them what he has, and he goes still except for his leg, which begins to twitch wildly, and with a practiced flick he is able to disengage the tendons and ligaments that hold his foot at the ankle and he flops that fucker around like nobody’s business, really flaps it around better than he ever has before, bouncing it off the stage as it twirls almost 360 degrees, and that’s when the cheering turns to horrified screaming.
A woman in the front row yells, “Oh, my god!” and points at the foot and this causes everyone else to look, which is what the funny man was going for, but soon there is the sound of glass breaking as the woman in the front row falls into a dead faint and takes out the cocktail table with her. From somewhere in the back a keening wail like a harpooned seal rises in intensity. Other people appear to be fainting as well, or holding back their hurl with hands over mouths, and still others scramble for the exits. His last image is of a young couple about the age he was when he first met his now ex-wife. They are at a table, a couple of rows deep and all around them is chaos, a panicky stampede, but the young man has wrapped his arm around the young woman’s shoulder and with his free hand, he covers her face by pulling it to his chest. “They’re going to make it,” the funny man thinks.
As the music track ends, the funny man stands on stage under the spotlight, his foot canted almost backwards. In front of him is wreckage. He hurts, but not from the foot.