The Funny Man (27 page)
I thought of Mitch Laver taking a 95-mph fastball to his pretty face and walking away none the worse for wear.
“I am here to help you in this pursuit. To put it most simply, to help you is my desire and I want it very badly, which is why we have a hundred-percent success rate.”
A pleased murmur rolled through the crowd.
“Ah ah ah ah,” Mr. Bob said, waving his finger. “Do not think that because our success rate is perfect that it will be easy. On the contrary, it is very hard, but because we want it so badly we do not quit, ever, even if it nearly kills you. Our logo is the phoenix because the phoenix is forged in fire. While being a phoenix is very awesome, fire is extremely unpleasant, even for future phoenixes. Until the moment you become a phoenix, fire burns. You should know that you will spend some time in fire here at the White Hot Center.
“Now,” Mr. Bob continued, “before we share a toast, let me tell you of just a few of our ground rules. Number one, I have a personal, twenty-four-hour-a-day open-door policy. If you need me, I will be there for you, no questions asked for as long as you need.
“Number two, anyone who tries to avail themselves of my open-door policy without first addressing your needs with your Center liaison is subject to immediate expulsion. You liaison is there for you, make use of them.
“Number three, everyone’s program is customized to their specific issues, which means you will be welcome at the White Hot Center for just as long as necessary, but not a moment longer. We will know when it’s time for you to go and when it is that time, you will go.
“Lastly, anyone caught within a hundred yards of the southwest compound may be killed without warning. Very serious about this one, folks. Very, very serious. Okay, let’s toast! To desire!” Mr. Bob raised a goblet that had magically appeared in his hand and we did the same before clinking glasses with the people in closest proximity. “To desire,” I said to a young girl next to me who I instantly recognized from the front of my cereal box. She wore a warm-up suit similar to Mr. Bob’s, though hers had a small bunny patch on it.
“To desire,” she said.
We drained the liquid. Chet appeared at my elbow just as a female version of him touched the young girl’s shoulder.
“This way, sir,” Chet said, steering me away, as the girl was led off in the opposite direction.
T
HE ALMOST UNIVERSAL
consensus is that the sequel must be a joke.
“This is a joke, right?” they say. The nearly four-hour-long nonsensical rambling heap of garbage is the funny man pulling a fast one on the entire nation. “Very Kaufmanesque,” they say. “If it’s true, that would be like, awesome,” they say. The public is ready to go with it, and that is what the funny man’s manager and agent are encouraging him to do now that they have seen it as well, the only two people in the theater at their particular showing to stick it out through the entire run time.
“Let’s just put a release out,” the manager says.
“Yeah,” the agent says, “something like, ‘ha ha ha, you fell for it, suckers.’”
But the funny man is pissed. He is being tragically misunderstood. On the Web site that tabulates all of the reviews and labels a movie either “tasty” or “putrid,” the funny man’s film is only 1 percent tasty. He finds the positive review and reads it out loud to the manager and agent.
“’This film is meant to provoke and challenge, to disturb and upend. It is rare that we are given something that can be safely labeled
genius
, but that’s no doubt the case here.’
“See,” the funny man says, “this guy gets it. Smithy Carruthers, knows what the fuck is what. What’s wrong with the rest of you?”
The agent and manager exchange looks.
“Uhh …” the agent says.
“Umm …” the manager says.
“Out with it, assholes,” the funny man says. He no longer hesitates to call his manager and agent what they self-evidently are.
“Smithy Carruthers is a fake identity owned by the studio. He says every movie they put out is a work of genius.” The funny man searches for Smithy Carruthers’s reviews on the Web site and sees this is true. “Borderline genius.” “Approaches genius.” “Gets near genius and brushes up against it and comes away smelling like genius.”
The funny man throws the manager and agent out of his apartment and goes to war to defend his film. Because his testicles remain ridiculously swollen he cannot take to the airwaves, so he hits the blogs. He posts messages anywhere and everywhere defending the movie, explaining the movie, explicating the movie for the slack-jawed yokels of America. He expects to be welcomed as a visiting dignitary, to be celebrated for his virtual presence among the anonymous people who usually have to content themselves with shouting into the void, but no, he is beset by savages who can type more quickly than him. Even on the message boards at the Web site dedicated to him and his greatness he seems to be suddenly and universally loathed. It is like they have been laying in wait for him and now have pounced. They are a Venus flytrap and he is their fly, their chunk of ground meat. This is blood sport and he is armed with a peashooter.
The funny man is outnumbered millions to one. No one will jump in on his side. It is the world’s largest pile-on. Sites go down, servers crash. The global temperature ticks up one-tenth of one degree because of the extra energy expended delivering the virtual blows. They hit him from every angle, wearing him down pixel by pixel. His fingers blister on the keyboard. His spelling degrades to their level and his balls will not stop throbbing. Finding it impossible to compete on the message boards, he goes to instant messenger in order to take on his foes, one by one, like a martial arts master surrounded by bad guys:
M
OVIE
G
UY45:
If you have to explain it, it’s not a good joke.
F
UNNYMAN:
UR right it’s not a joke. That’s some serious shit up there. If you weren’t so stupid you might get it.
M
OVIE
G
UY45:
That’s what she said. Lol!
F
UNNYMAN:
That doesn’t even make any sense.
M
OVIE
G
UY45:
Like ur movie. ROTFLMAO!
F
UNNYMAN:
eat shit n die!
M
OVIE
G
UY45:
that’s what she said. Lol, ROTFLMAO! LAWSMAHOIYF!
Funnyman: what the f does LAWSMAHOIYF mean?
M
OVIE
G
UY45:
Laughing While Sticking My AssHOle In Your Face.
F
UNNYMAN:
Seek help, you sick fuck
M
OVIE
G
UY45:
That’s what she said. Lol!
Finally, by the end of the day, the funny man gives permission for his agent and manager to release a statement saying it’s all a big gag, but at that point, no one believes him.
He is ruined. He is misunderstood.
T
O THE EXTENT
possible, the mess of the sequel is cleaned up. The film had been pulled from theaters by the end of the opening weekend and all of the cast and crew were given bonuses by the studio in order to buy their silence and prevent the slow trickle of tell-alls from showing up in the media. A company run by two fourteen-year-old South Koreans was hired to scrub any evidence of the funny man’s typing tear across the Internet.
The only one who wasn’t willing to shut up about it was the funny man. The studio had used its leverage to keep him out of any of the mainstream outlets, but when a woman named Dagmar Neuborgen, host of Duluth cable access’s
Sewing Time with Dagmar
, managed to get an interview request through, the funny man flew himself to her studio (the Neuborgen homestead basement) and because no one was paying any attention to him, did his best to do something to grab some attention.
But nothing worked.
As he sat down the funny man complimented the Neuborgens on their paneling, saying he’d never seen anything like it, which was the truth, and declined the offer of tea, accepting plain water in a mug with a picture of a cat wearing a sombrero. Looking at himself in the monitor he tried out some different smiles before settling on one he called “pleasantly bemused,” which he wore as the red camera light snapped on.
He tried everything. He compared his comedic influence to the holy trinity: Bruce, Pryor, Carlin. He laughed, he raged, he stalked the Neuborgen basement, clawing at the paneling like a cornered animal. He considered, then abandoned, then reconsidered some choice racial slurs. He looked at Dagmar Neuborgen’s crucifix nailed to the wall, at the handsome Christ figure’s feet, nailed, one over the top of the other, and said how he identified with the man, how he now knew what it was like to die for someone else’s sins. The funny man stared into Dagmar Neuborgen’s cornflower blue eyes and thought that those eyes must be why Mr. Neuborgen had fallen in love with her, and she shook her head sadly and said, “None of this is very original, is it?”
A
FTERWARDS, THE FUNNY
man spends his time gazing out the apartment windows, searching for protestors, but the world has taken no special notice. The video pops up on the Web site designed for the purpose of sharing videos like a famous comedianactor having a meltdown on a cable-access show and sees it only has seventy-eight views. He looks one hour later and sees seventy-nine views. Three days later it is eighty views and he realizes he is the only viewer.
There is now nothing left for the funny man save his once weekly overnights with the boy and a last stab at marital counseling.
At what will turn out to be the final session, the funny man holds a foam ball that the couples therapist has encouraged him to squeeze any time he feels anxious or angry. The therapist has been talking like the funny man and his wife are making great progress, but this is true only if the progress is toward a final dissolution of their marriage.
The ball is stamped all over with the name of an antianxiety drug. The funny man knows that some people would call this ironic, but he knows also that that would be wrong. His wife and the marriage counselor look at him. It is his turn to talk. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he is so completely wounded by everything.
“I think, I guess,” he says to the ball, but speaking to his wife, “that when it comes right down to it, I feel like you never really believed in me and I hold some resentment over that.”
“Ha!” the wife says. “Haaaaaaa! Ha! Ha! Ha!” She fakes wiping a tear from the corner of her eye and grabs the foam ball from the funny man. She shakes the ball at him. “That’s the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever said, you fucking shitball.” She fakes throwing the ball at the funny man’s face and he flinches.
The marriage counselor, the impartial arbiter of their marital disputes, looks at the funny man and frowns and says with an edge to her voice, “Look, it’s important that both parties want to work on the issues, otherwise we’re wasting everybody’s time.”
His wife has launched into a list of supportive things that she has done that even the funny man must admit sound impressive and yet he somehow he still feels empty, a sponge of need that drains as quickly as it is filled.
“Maybe I’m a terrible person,” the funny man says.
The funny man’s wife deflates, slumps in her chair and speaks down to the ball, “Do you see? Do you see what I’m saying?”
It is his wife who pulls the plug on the marriage and he is sort of grateful for it, though he is also devastated at the act. It is the objectively right thing to do, but he never would’ve had the courage to do it himself.
She always was more than I deserved.
When the divorce summons comes, the funny man goes to his lawyer’s and breezes past the receptionist without pausing and enters the lawyer’s office without knocking. He picks up a bronzecast model train engine off of the lawyer’s desk and tosses it from hand to hand as he paces.
“How many zeros?” he asks the lawyer.
The lawyer holds up a lot of fingers.
“Can I afford that?”
The lawyer nods.
“How long?”
The lawyer holds up five fingers.
“Weeks?”
The lawyer shakes his head.
“Days?”
The lawyer nods. The funny man wrenches the train engine in his hands and groans. If he cared about things like money anymore, he would be caring deeply at this moment, but he cares about nothing.
The funny man sighs. “Make it happen,” he says.
“W
ITH MIND OVER
matter, nothing matters,” Mitch Laver said to me after taking virtual Roger Clemens’s heat off his face. That’s what they preach and teach at the White Hot Center.
Mr. Bob wasn’t lying about people not understanding the true boundaries of physics. When it comes to the physical world we have our known knowns and our known unknowns, but we also have our unknown unknowns. The White Hot Center traffics in the unknown unknowns.
You’d understand if you’d been to the White Hot Center.
It started with the sessions. Mornings, Chet would fetch me from my room at first light and escort me to the training center. The grass would still be wet with dew, and as we walked we’d pass foraging peacocks and peahens. Chet wore an all-black tracksuit. Mine was canary yellow. Only his had the phoenix insignia. Clearly there was some kind of code behind the colors, but I’d been unable to figure it out. Except for my trainers and Chet, I had been almost totally isolated from others. A slight, Asian-looking woman delivered the meals to my bungalow and someone (Chet, maybe) was cleaning up after me and restocking the canary yellow track-suits and fresh underwear in my wardrobe, but I never saw them. When I wasn’t in training, I would be eating, and then shortly thereafter, sleeping, jostled awake by Chet the next morning.
Blacktopped walkways snaked around the grounds, little white chain fences reminding everyone to stay on them. Buildings of every imaginable architectural style were visible across the hilly grounds. I could see a Le Corbusier, a Gehry, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Koolhaas. My own bungalow where I mostly slept off my treatments was clearly a Frank Lloyd Wright. It was like a child playing with models had planted them all over the grounds. Later, I asked Chet about it and he said that in some cases, certain guests would fulfill their remunerative responsibilities with commissions.