Manhattan Loverboy (7 page)
His secretary got on to fill me in on some background details. I was to meet Mr. Whitlock in seven days for an amateur night at what he referred to as a classy uptown nightclub called
YUK!
HE WHO LAUGHS LAST
THINKS SLOWEST
I wrote a couple of jokes and tried practicing them in front of a mirror. I called Veronica and told her that Whitlock and I had bonded, and he was helping me with the under-developed parts of my life.
“Did he reinstate your grant?”
“No, but he is going to help me break into a new career.”
“How?”
“I’m going to do a stand-up comedy routine at a club in upper Manhattan called
YUK!
”
“What?”
“It sounds kind of weird, but it can lead to good money and, more importantly, I’m trying to get into his good graces.”
“Where and when will this occur?”
I told her when and gave her the address of the club and said that if she wanted to meet me there we could go on a date afterwards.
“Listen,” she broke in, “you better be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Well, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but…” Her line went dead. When I called her back at work, the line was busy. I figured I’d see her at
YUK!
At the appointed time, I dressed well, popped a couple of muscle-relaxants and anti-depressants, and went to
YUK!
It turned out to be a filthy, stuffy, overpriced dump with the kind of audience that goes to Karaoke bars. When I decided that this wasn’t for me and turned to go, a very large-backed guy approached me.
“You look lost,” he said.
“I always look that way. I was just leaving.”
“What? Did we offend you?” he replied, threateningly.
I explained that I was a friend of Andrew Whitlock.
“The philanthropist, sure. We was expecting you.” He put his shaggy arm around my bad back and walked me through the crowded audience, up a short, dark flight of steps. I thought he was taking me to Whitlock’s table until suddenly a spotlight came on, and I realized I was on a stage. Picking up the mike, he said, “Folks, a loud round of applause for the comical investigations of Joseph Aeiou!” He then left me alone there. They started applauding for no reason at all.
I nervously recited a joke, “Why are Jews such rough lovers? `Cause they’re not Gentile.”
That joke was an insider for Veronica, but I didn’t see her. Others, mainly from the bar, moved over by the stage. I went through my short list of set-piece jokes. Soon the manager with the shaggy arm had to knot on an apron and assist the waitress. The audience seemed to be a homogeneous group of some kind. Were they the Elks? Maybe the Rotary Club? I didn’t recall any tour buses parked outside. After a punch line, I shielded my eyes from the spotlight and searched for Veronica. I couldn’t see her. I then searched for some common thread that might suggest the audience was unified. Were they all wearing Viking-horn hats? Maybe they were Oriental. Nothing was apparent.
“I’m the only comic that impersonates a clitoris,” I said, and stuck out my tongue tip just a bit at the right side of my wet, sealed lips. Then I tilted the left side of my face down, so that my mouth was vertical. A staunch silence roared, but then I heard a single girlish giggle. It was the sound of nervous embarrassment for someone else—Veronica’s tender titter.
Unintentionally, her laugh seemed to permit an onslaught of laughs and foot stomping. Noticing a clock on the far wall, I realized with utter relief that my ten minutes were up.
“Thank you very much,” I said. As the houselights went up, I found a standing ovation before me.
From nowhere, the manager was up on the stage alongside me, yelling into the mike, “What do you say we give our champ one more round!” All cheered.
“I’m outta material,” I whispered to the manager, but he had dashed off, beyond hearing, back to servicing the tables. I was alone. The intermission had ended, and the spotlight had pinned me back onto the stage. Not knowing what else to do, I started feeling through my shirt pocket. I had purchased a magic card deck in the event that something like this might arise. I nervously undid the wrapper and realized that I had never bothered to learn the tricks. Spinning about-face, I started reading the instructions, ‘To operate the magic card deck…’
Behind me, all the while, I could hear a steady seepage of laughter. After several minutes, the instructions were only getting more confusing, and even though the audience was still laughing, I was getting increasingly nervous. I finally tried slipping the instructions back into my pocket, but accidentally dropped them on the floor. There was no time to pick them up. I began yanking other things out, looking for something else to joke about. My wallet, matches, keys, loose change—all dropped to the floor. People kept laughing, but it was bad laughter. They were laughing at the wrong things.
“What’s so funny about that?” I finally had to ask. All laughed again.
“Look,” I finally admitted, “I’m not a comedian, I work in a bookstore.”
“A bookstore!” someone responded. People were choking on laughter.
“Yeah, a fucking bookstore. What’s wrong with that?” What’s wrong with that? I thought to myself. It was where life had led me. I was adopted and, like most everyone else, I was mistreated by emotionless parents. Cycles of grade school, high school, and college had done their work at building me up and grinding me down. Now all my self-esteem could buy was a part-time job organizing the forty-eight cent outdoor books at the Strand.
I could sleep late in the mornings and attend school in the afternoons, and I’d work out theories in history: the trends and cycles, the machinations of conspiracies, the mathematics of economies, the depletion of the American spirit, the diffusion of the American dream…. “Sometimes, I’ll admit, at bored moments, when I’m daydreaming and shouldn’t be held strictly responsible for my thoughts, I find myself pretending I’m other people and…and…” Shrieks of laughter from the audience made me realize that I had unintentionally muttered aloud all these intimate thoughts. I froze. I could feel my eyes melting with tears.
“That’s enough,” said the manager, who had climbed up onto the stage and was tugging at my sleeve.
“They’ve no business! That’s my life they’re laughing at!”
“Ah, son, they just want a laugh,” he replied. The laughs were now like waves nearing high tide. They receded only to hit back harder. I snatched a beer bottle and threw it into the laughs.
“Hey,” the manager whispered, “I’m liable if you hurt someone. Now I want you off my stage!” Then, into the mike the asshole announced, “Our next performer…”
Before he could finish his sentence, I shoved the manager off the stage into the tables below. Then, taking hold of the microphone and its stand in both hands, I swung it around once like a hammer-thrower and released it. Still the laughs washed in. I started screaming obscenities into the crowd. They kept laughing. Finally, I dropped to the floor in a seated position and buried my face between my knees and put my hands over my ears, closed my eyes, and wondered, what did I do to deserve this? Nothing! I had done nothing, and therefore nothing wrong. I lowered myself off the platform until I got caught on something. In fact, something was holding me.
“What’s the idea of knocking me off the stage?” the gorilla manager asked, lifting me up by the belt of my pants. “You want it, it’s yours.” The manager tumbled me back onto the stage. I scrambled around to the stairs, but the manager raced around blocking my escape.
“Help!” I yelled, shielding my eyes from the glare. “Someone notify the police! Veronica, help!”
The laughs had taken charge. I could no longer see or hear her. I might as well have been standing on some desolate bridge. I just let go, collapsing into the dark pool of audience before me. I hit my head on something and just lay there.
“It’s only stage blood,” I vaguely heard someone say. Hands suddenly reached out of the darkness, grabbing me, applauding, slapping me softly.
“Give him air,” the manager said, inspecting the gash on my forehead. I counted to three, and then with a hop I pushed the manager aside, took to my feet, and rushed out the door.
“Shit!” some guy screamed, and then chased me. Several people in the audience also pursued.
I raced down Second Avenue. They were going to drag me back inside and throw me up again on that stage of fire. They wanted more laughs. I could feel a trail of wetness, blood trickling down my forehead.
“They’re laughing at me! They’re laughing at me!” I yelled, but no passerby helped. They only dodged me. I finally raced down onto a subway platform. Holding my wound, I boarded a train, the number six, packed with disparate, desperate New Yorkers, underscoring the sad fact that although people can break up, places cannot. New York was doomed to be locked together into one unharmonious circle of woe. When I finally got home, having lost enough blood to fill a pail, my phone was ringing. I answered it. Someone on the other end was laughing.
“Who is this? WHAT DO YOU WANT?!”
“Whitlock,” he replied, “I saw your performance. I’m very proud of you. I had no idea you had that kind of talent.”
“YOU WERE THERE?” I yelled. “Why didn’t you help me? They tried to kill me.”
“They loved you.”
“They chased me!”
“They were running you like the bulls in Pamplona. I bet if you do it again next year, they’ll make an annual event out of running you.”
“I don’t like being run. My head’s bleeding.”
“I’m giving you an extra five dollars for that. Who, by the way, is Veronica? At one point you yelled out, ‘Help, Veronica.’”
“No one, just an expression I commonly employ in moments of despair.”
“Oh, I’ve got good news.”
“What?”
“The manager has told me that he’ll book you again next week.”
“No thanks. I’m never going to revisit that humiliation and pain.”
“Actually, I have something else lined up as well.”
“What?”
“An A.M.”
“Ante Meridian?”
“Assistant Mortician in a funeral parlor in Brooklyn—Malio Funeral Home.”
“No way.”
“Think about it.”
“It gets even more disgusting when I think about it.”
“You might find a nice girl.”
“Huh?”
“A nice girl.” He paused, “You might meet a nice girl.”
“What?”
“You might find yourself alone with her in a room together.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t.”
“Maybe, on second thought,” he said, “a younger girl, or…boy, if that’s what you’re into.”
“Where would I meet these people?”
“At the place of business.”
“Huh?”
“You know, clients.”
“What?”
“Meeting people. A little cold at first, a little strange, but you don’t worry about convention, do you?”
“Huh?” I sensed that the patriarch had a couple of drinks in him.
“They can’t really chat in their condition.”
“Wait a second, what are we…”
“That’s right.”
“Huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you think…”
“Positively.”
“Have you ever…”
“Who hasn’t?”
“We’re not talking about…”
“The exact same thing.”
“Huh?”
“Huh, crap. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t.”
“I think you do.”
“You’re disgusting,” I said, which was followed by rigid stalactites of laughter. I hung up the phone and went to wash my hands. His implications made me feel dirty. The phone rang. I lifted it and hung up, and then washed my face. Again, the phone rang. I hung up again, unplugged the phone, and cleaned it. Then I brushed my teeth, gargled. For some intuitive reason, I scrubbed my reagan. The next day, I plugged the phone into the wall outlet, and it rang immediately. I picked it up.
“Take it easy now, son.”
I hung up and unplugged the phone again, then went to work at the Strand. After work that night, I came home, ate a banana, and read
The Prophet Unarmed
on the toilet (took a dump that resembled a deer’s hoof). Soon it was 3:00 a.m. I plugged the phone into the wall outlet; it rang. I picked it up.
“Just listen to me a minute,” Whitlock said. “I want to help you if you just let me.” I hung up. It rang again. I picked it up and hung it up. It rang again. I picked it and hung up. It rang again. I picked and hung up, it rang again. I picked it and hung, rang again. I picked it hung, rung. I hung it rung…I rung, it hung…. Finally, I unplugged the phone, whanked off, and fell asleep with a gob of goo on my lower belly and a cockroach staring at me from a distant wall, befuddled.
About a week later, while sitting on some boxes in the Strand Bookstore, inspecting some “art-photography” books (thank god for the First Amendment!), I was called to the manager’s office.
“Today, Joseph, this gentlemen has purchased your loyalty.” He pointed to Whitlock, who was standing there dressed in military regalia.
“Hold it a second, I’m not a slave!” I hollered.
“No, but you are no longer employed with us,” he explained. The manager left the room, and I was alone with the necro-bag.