When I peeled myself off the Velcro wall, I collapsed on and snapped in half my arrow-thru-the-head gag. It was not funny.
Letting the Krazy Glue set, I reloaded the bed catapult, clipped on my yellow squirting lapel flower, and fetched my googly-eye glasses.
In the wavy bathroom mirror, I saw that the glue job didn’t pan out. The arrow tilted down. I picked the thing off my head and wrapped it in the pages of comic strips. I went through my closet: fake bald head, fake Mohawk, alien antennae, horns, elephant nose, oversized ears. I settled on the blue, red, and green beanie with the purple pinwheel on top. But I knew it wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t what I needed. When you’ve got your heart set on an arrow-thru-the-head gag, all the other panoply pales. I twirled the pinwheel and felt hollow.
I hurried through the morning: bug juice all over me from the dribble glass, the fly-in-the-ice-cube bonking me in the nose; a handful of peanuts from the spring-loaded snake canister. Then I slipped the injured arrow-thru-thehead gag into my bottomless backpack and rode the zip line out into the streets of Funny Town, determined to buy a replacement. Dead set on finding it.
Have you heard the one about the guy who walks into a bar … and it hurt? The one about the drunk who rubs a lamp and a genie grants him three wishes, and the guy wishes for a glass of beer that can regenerate when he finishes it, then the genie says, “Hey, the other two wishes, buddy,” and the guy says, “I don’t know, just two more like this, I guess?” The one about the guy sitting on a bench with a box, who says to the guy next to him, “If you can guess how many kittens I have in this box, I’ll give you both of them?”
They’re tired, but there’s a joke maybe you haven’t heard. And it goes like this: There’s this guy who moved to Funny Town after his fiancée left him at the altar, and now he’s taking small gigs in jokes. When the guy goes to sleep, right before he closes his eyes, he wishes he could cry again, but he can’t because it’s impossible in Funny Town. And when he tries to weep, sob, moan, in the dark, in his tiny quiet moments of privacy, instead he lets out a guffaw that echoes across the world.
That one’s still in the works. It’s my original. We all have to come up with an original. Taxes.
After an admirably placed oil slick and bed of thumbtacks, my unicycle was useless. I slipped on my oversized red thumb and hitched a ride with a rainbow-painted Beetle.
“Where you headed?” asked the driver.
I could barely breathe, packed between the eleven clowns in the backseat, but managed to wheeze, “Acme Clothes.”
“Holy Smile,” shouted one of the clowns. “That’s on the other side of Funny Town!”
“Can’t get you all the way there, buddy,” the driver told me. “But close.”
I thrust my hand into the cockpit and formed an OK sign. I shifted around and patted my backpack, feeling for the arrow-thru-the-head.
“What you need at Acme?” I couldn’t tell which clown was interested, my face pressed to gigantic red shoes.
“Arrow-thru-the-head gag.”
Paisley kerchiefs and bowling pins went flying around the car, along with hoots and hollers.
“A classic!”
“Oldie but a goody!”
“Like there’s an arrow stuck right through your HEAD!”
I couldn’t laugh. “I broke my old one,” I said.
The car fell silent.
“I’m going to get a replacement,” I said.
“And how do you feel about that?” It was whispered.
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt quite like this. It’s like there’s just nothing inside me.”
Suddenly, the gigantic red shoes, the billowy polkadotted pants, the frizzy rainbow wigs, they all vanished, and I fell to the floor. The clowns had stacked on top of one another, giving me room on the seat. I regrouped and stretched. They stared at me. I caught the driver’s oversized sunglasses in the rearview, and then he bent the mirror away from me.
“You keep that on the inside,” said one of the clowns.
I patted my backpack.
“We’re all crying on the inside, man,” said the driver.
But then there was gridlock. All the clowns leaned out the windows and honked their noses at the other clowns and some penguins that were crossing the street, caught up in the mix.
The honking was deafening. “That’s not going to fix anything,” I shouted, covering my ears. Then, I slipped out through the trap door.
But after the guy lets out the guffaw through the entire world, he gets out of bed, clicks on the nightstand lamp, reaches under a loose brick in the wall, and removes a cigar box. Inside the box are yellowed photos with turned up edges. The photos are of a man and woman cuddling a baby. The man and woman are dead now and the baby has grown up, and he looks at the photos.
But, no. In fact, his parents are alive and well, living across Funny Town in an inflatable moonwalk. And the grown-up baby wishes they were dead. And he doesn’t know why. When he thinks of his father shaking other men’s hands with a buzzer strapped to his fingers, the guy crumbles onto the floor, activating a set of chattering teeth and slowly deflating a whoopee cushion with the sound of a remorseful French horn.
After sliding down the big blue slides and silver firemen poles, and slipping on banana peels the rest of the way across town, I read the sign in front of Acme: CLOSED. BE BACK HALF PAST A FRECKLE.
I removed the arrow-thru-the-head gag from the comic strips I wrapped it in and put it on. In the windows of Acme, I studied the down-turned arrowhead.
“Pssssst,” I heard from the alley. I whipped the gag off my head and scanned the street.
A guy in a gorilla suit and a trench coat waved me into the darkened corner, glancing around wildly.
“You need something?” he whispered, thrusting his crazy gorilla eyes close to mine.
“Arrow-thru-the-head,” I said, and slid my foot back.
Then the guy flipped open his trench coat and went riffling through his hidden pockets. He pulled out a metal briefcase and clicked it open under my nose. And there it was: an arrow-thru-the-head gag, delicately cradled by orange foam.
“It’s the latest model. Real nice, man,” said the gorillasuit guy. He placed the briefcase on the ground and eased the thing out. He put it on my head. “The arrow slides, man.” He pushed the feathers of the arrow, and the tip jutted farther out. “It’s like you’re sliding the arrow through your HEAD!”
I picked it off and slid the arrow back and forth. “Pretty cool,” I admitted.
“Pretty cool? This shit isn’t even declassified yet.”
I absentmindedly twirled the gag in my hands. The gorilla-suit guy chomped a banana. “It’s not right, though,” I said. I handed the thing back to him.
“You’ll never want your old gag after you’ve had this one, man.” He demonstrated the gag again on his own furry head.
“Yeah. It’s just not what I’m looking for.”
He clicked the briefcase shut, threw it into his trench coat. “You don’t know what you want, bro.” Then he scaled the fire escapes and swung out over the rooftops.
Next, the guy goes to the kitchen, pours himself a glass of his finest bourbon, and sits down to write a suicide note.
He writes that he can’t take it anymore, all the laughter, all the good times, all the sunshine and love. He writes that he’s going to take his own life because he’s no good for this place. He’s only a minor joke, not anything that this town would miss. He writes that he does wish everyone well, but he knows that everyone will be well, which is partly what is making him kill himself. It might make a decent joke. Maybe a funny anecdote, at least.
He heads into the bathroom and cleans himself up. He shaves. He lights a cigarette and sits down at his dining room table. After his final drag, he puts the smoke in the ashtray and raises a gun to his head. He whispers goodbye and pulls the trigger. A flag bursts out from the nozzle. It reads: BANG.
At noon, I headed to the bar.
I waved a hello to the rabbi and asked the frog on his shoulder how things were going. I avoided the ostrich and the cat with the sunglasses and their master, the guy with perfect change all the time. The duck was already getting to the bartender, asking if he had “any grapes? any grapes?” The psychiatrists took turns asking the light bulbs if they really wanted to change. I shook my head at Kowalski with his handful of crap, repeatedly shouting, “Look what I almost just stepped in!” Santa and the Easter Bunny shared a laugh at the blondes, who scrambled for the dollar on the floor.
Then, right before I walked into the metal bar, at forehead level, in front of me, I took a closer look. I noticed that the rabbi’s Torah was ripped; the frog was looking malnourished; the ostrich and cat with the sunglasses were on choke chains; the guy with perfect change all the time was nursing his “beer,” but eyeing the top-shelf stuff; the duck and the bartender had their fingers crossed; the psychiatrists’ pens were filled with invisible ink; Kowalski was inching toward the door; and the blondes were starting to show.
I walked into the bar, and it hurt. As I fell, I shouted out, “How can you laugh?” But then I was seeing fireworks, stars, birdies.
When I awoke, I ordered a beer and eyed the lamp. I took a swig and rubbed the thing. The genie materialized, giving me a little wave. He stretched.
“You got three wishes,” he yawned.
“I want to know why I want my arrow-thru-the-head gag,” I said.
Everything stopped. All eyes turned to me. The genie shrugged to the bartender, who folded his arms. And the genie, my old partner, snapped his fingers.
I came to on a dirt road. The world looked gray and brown, dusty. I adjusted my googly-eye glasses, which Slinkied into themselves and formed lenses. I fiddled with my yellow squirting lapel flower, which folded and bloomed into a sunflower. I spun the pinwheel on my hat, and it flew off, a butterfly. Gone into the sky.
I flipped my backpack off and withdrew the arrow-thru-the-head gag. It was still broken. It wasn’t morphing. It wasn’t going anywhere. I put it on, and it remained broken, there on my head.
A pickup truck rolled up the dirt road, spraying dust behind it. It clattered to a stop in front of me. A beautiful, sad-eyed girl stepped out.
“Where you headed?” she asked.
“I don’t know where I am.” My legs gave out, and I knelt down.
She took up my arrow-thru-the-head gag. I watched her as she flipped it around, studying it. “What is this doing on your head?” she said.
“It’s a joke. Like you got an arrow right through your head.” I smiled weakly.
“No. No,” she said. She reached around my chest, curving the arrow to look as though it were stuck through my heart. “That’s where it goes in these parts. It’s not fun.”
She touched her breast. I saw a bloody bandage. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“No, but who is? Where you need to go?”
I stood up. “I need to go where there’s honesty, pain.” I shuffled my feet, felt stupid.
The beautiful girl put her hand on my shoulder. She cradled my head. She pulled me into her and squeezed, bending and breaking the arrow. We kissed. I felt her sadness. Oddly, I wanted to help her. I wanted to tell her a joke, make her laugh, cover it all up for her.
I felt my chest heat up. The plastic arrow straightened, hardened into a blade. It shot cold through us. Stabbed, we stuck together, in the big lonely world. Finally, for one glorious instant, everything raged cruel and alive.