Out of Whack

by Jeff Strand

  A couple more lines into the skit, there was a long pause. A blank look came over Travis’ face, as if he’d forgotten his lines. Then his eyes rolled upward, his head lolled backward, and he dropped onto the stage with a loud thump.

  The weight of the world went “Nyahh nyahh, fooled you!” and came crashing back down upon me.

  Travis’ fall had earned a decent laugh from the audience, as such sophisticated humor often does. The only thing we had in our favor was that the audience was assuming this was all part of the act. But I wondered just how much more messing up we could do before they caught on.

  I pushed back my chair and stood up, trying desperately to think up something hilarious to say. “So, he’s drunk again!” I announced. Nobody laughed, most likely because it wasn’t funny. I walked toward the stage, unable to stop wringing my sweating hands together in preparation for a really spectacular nervous breakdown. Laura was still staring at Travis in a state of shock.

  “Is he still breathing?” I asked.

  Laura poked at him. “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  Wonderful ad-lib there. We were not doing well.

  I knelt down next to the table and tried to recall the lines to the skit. Then, failing that, I tried to recall the name of the skit. Then I tried to recall my own name. Oh, I was ever so screwed...

  “Should we remove him from the stage?” Laura asked, gesturing toward Travis.

  “Nah,” I said, figuring if things got really rough I could take out my frustration by kicking him several times in the head. Or maybe I could even get some laughs by stretching out his ears and tying them together.

  “So, Daddy,” said Laura, “would you like to watch me draw?”

  It was a pretty decent cue, and I could have kept the skit flowing with a large number of responses, including “Yes,” “Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” or even by nodding my head. But I remained frozen, sweat running down into my eyes, trying to recall lines that might as well have been NASA rocket schematics.

  We were silent for a moment.

  “I can draw lots of things,” said Laura.

  More silence. I blinked several times, my eyes burning from the sweat. What was wrong with me? Why was this so difficult? What was the big deal about standing here on this stage...with people watching me...staring at me...analyzing my every move...

  I could see by Laura’s pained expression that she was about to give it up as a hopeless cause. We’d cancel the show, never be invited to perform anywhere ever again, and go on to work for soulless corporations in unfulfilling, miserable jobs for the rest of our lives.

  The silence continued.

  Then was broken by a snore.

  This wasn’t some delicate snore, either, this was one of Travis’ Good-God- Is-That-A-Human-Being- Or- Malfunctioning-Heavy-Machinery snores. And he said I snored! There were several hearty chuckles from the audience.

  At this point Laura managed to help our situation a bit by turning toward the audience, rolling her eyes, and sighing loudly in frustration, giving the impression that all of this was planned. Travis continued to snore like a lion with tuberculosis, and the audience’s chuckles intensified. I relaxed...not a lot, but enough to keep my heart from exploding all over the place.

  We let him snore a couple more times then Laura reached over and rolled him onto his side, ceasing the cacophony. “Now,” she said with another sigh, “shall we begin?”

  “Yeah,” I said, even though the words were still nowhere to be found.

  Drawing... drawing... something about a tumor.. Aunt something... drawing... I’m Daddy... shit shit shit shit shit!

  It just wasn’t going to work. I was too nervous to ad-lib anything worthwhile, and in my frantic state I absolutely was not going to remember the lines. All I wanted to do was stand up and sprint off the stage. I’d deal with the fallout in the morning.

  What the hell had Laura been thinking, dragging me up on stage like this? We should have canceled before things got out of hand. Trying to perform without Travis had been flat-out stupid. And now we were totally, utterly, irrevocably—

  No, wait a second...

  I had another reprieve, even better than Travis snoring! I had the “Our Never-Ending Love” poem in my pocket! That would give me another couple of minutes to get calmed down and perhaps into a state of mind sufficient to fake my way through the other skits.

  “Actually,” I said, standing up, “I’m going to read a poem.” I took the paper out of my pocket and unfolded it as I stood in front of the microphone. “Our love is a love that will never end,” I read, “for I love you from the depths of my soul...”

  “Who cares?” asked a loud voice from the back of the room.

  It was Kirk. I hadn’t even seen him come in. He was leaning back in his chair, a smug look on his face. Things then became very clear—this whole damn thing was set up by the bully I’d humiliated in high school! He’d probably spiked Travis’ drink, and then...okay, maybe not, maybe I was just being paranoid. He seemed pretty sloshed as well.

  “Our love is a love that will never end,” I read, starting over. “For I—”

  “Louder! We can’t hear you!” Kirk called out.

  I really wished that Laugh Attack had a bouncer. I glanced around for the Master of Ceremonies so I could gesture that I wanted Kirk removed, but now he was nowhere in sight. That’s probably why Laura and I hadn’t been removed ourselves.

  “For I love you from the depths of my soul. On a moonlit beach–”

  “I didn’t come here for poetry! I want jokes! Bring on the next act!”

  I stopped reading and stared at him. Half the people in the audience had turned around in their seats to see who was causing all the commotion, some of them muttering angrily about drunks who think that they’re being funny when they heckle. Any calmness I’d been starting to feel had completely vanished.

  “Where’s the giant cane to scoop them off stage?” Kirk demanded, pounding his fist on the table. “Get rid of them and let’s see some people with real talent!”

  “Attention, attention,” said Laura, making her voice sound like a public address system. “To the asshole in the back row, your car is illegally parked. Please remove it before it gets towed.”

  “Hey, baby, take it off!” Kirk shouted. “Let’s get some tittage going!” He began making hooting noises.

  All of a sudden, the panic I’d been feeling was replaced by anger. In fact, I was about as pissed as I’ve ever been in my life. It wasn’t just some macho impulse to defend my girlfriend (though I was always happy to be feeling a macho impulse) it was all the frustration of this evening’s disaster finally taken too far. So, Kirk thought he’d get revenge for high school by wrecking our show? Forget it! That bully wasn’t going to win!

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said to him. “Could you stand up for a moment?”

  Kirk shook his head. “Nah, I’m fine.”

  “No, no, it’s important. Stand up and let everyone see you. Let them all take a good look.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “What are you trying to prove? That hourly masturbation makes your legs weak? Come on, stand up!”

  Kirk just gave me a lopsided grin.

  I shrugged. “Okay, I understand. You don’t want to jostle those hemorrhoids any more than necessary. I guess that explains things—if you’ve got a pain in the ass, you act like one.”

  “The only pain in the ass I see is you,” said Kirk, pointing at me.

  “Is that semen under your fingernail?” I asked, my voice filled with horror. “Good God, man, tug on it all you want, but clean up afterward! Personal hygiene is nothing to be taken lightly! I hope you didn’t touch anybody on the way in!”

  Okay, so I wasn’t exactly filling the air with a sparkling array of clever wit, but the audience was laughing and they were firmly on my side.

  Kirk pushed back his chair. “How would you like me to come up there?”

  “No way! I’m not going to tug on it for
you! That’s what your cousins are for. I washed my hands before the show.”

  “Real funny,” said Kirk, standing up.

  “Please, sir, I can assure you that there’s not a man, woman, or animal in this room who wants to bear witness to your genitalia in its wilted glory. Then again, maybe I should let the audience speak for itself. Anyone who doesn’t want to see this man’s horrific shriveled willy, make some noise!”

  The audience cheered and applauded loudly. Kirk just stood there, face red, looking as if he wanted to charge at the stage bellowing in fury. I really felt kind of bad for him, but he had brought this on himself.

  When the audience response died down, I said “Okay, now to let the opposition speak. Anybody who does want to see it and brought their magnifying glasses, make some noise!”

  A group of women at one of the front tables began to clap and hoot. “Let’s hear it for Kirk’s cousins!” I announced, gesturing toward them. The audience began to applaud some more.

  Kirk clenched his fists, looked around the room, and walked out into the lobby without a word.

  “I apologize for the all the hemorrhoid, masturbation, and semen references,” I told the audience. “Now back to the more delicate, heartfelt portion of our show.”

  I knelt back down at the table, so pumped with adrenaline that I probably should have gone around saving infants trapped underneath cars. “So, Ashley, what do you want to draw? Do you want to draw our house?”

  The lines were there. My energy level was there. And, if you can forgive my raging ego for a moment, I’d like to point out that the rest of the show was fantastic. The best response we’d ever gotten.

  Sure, it took being seriously pissed off by a loser ex-high school bully to do so, but from then on my paralyzing stage fright was a thing of the past.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “A Bit of Revenge, A Bit of Business”

  Travis’ eyes opened in mid-snore. He sat up, looked around our dorm room as if he’d been deposited there by particularly thoughtless aliens, and rubbed his forehead as if suffering from an atrocious hangover. I was seated at my desk, staring at him with my lips pressed tightly together in anger.

  “What happened?” he groaned.

  I said nothing, but continued to stare at him.

  “Really, what happened?”

  “You owe me a hundred bucks,” I told him, turning around and returning to my textbook.

  Travis started to get out of bed, found that his head wasn’t quite ready for the journey, and flopped back down. “Why do I owe you a hundred bucks?”

  “Bail.”

  “Bail?”

  “Yes, Travis, bail. When one is found naked on a public street and urinates on the leg of the officer who is attempting to arrest him, that person generally is not released from the police station until his stupid best friend provides the bail.”

  “I don’t remember pissing on a cop!”

  “Do you remember streaking the student union?”

  “No!”

  “I’m sure the Photography Club will be happy to give you souvenirs, then. What were you thinking?”

  “I don’t remember anything! I know I came into the comedy club, and I tried to cover for being late...and I don’t know what happened after that.”

  “Nudity is what happened after that. Gobs and gobs of completely uncalled-for nudity. Oh, yeah, your parents are on their way and should be here in an hour or so.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  The door opened and Laura entered, a pair of candy bars in her hand. “Oh, you’re awake,” she said, looking at Travis. “Has Seth told you your court date yet?”

  “You guys, this isn’t funny,” said Travis. “My head hurts and I can’t feel my tongue and I’m not in the mood for any joking around. So what happened?”

  “Okay, okay, we were making that all up,” I told him. “After you passed out on stage last night, you didn’t do anything out of the ordinary except sleep with Rex.”

  “I beg your fucking pardon?”

  I picked up the phone and dialed Rex’s number. “That reminds me, he wanted to apologize to you after you woke up.”

  “You guys are full of it,” Travis said.

  “Yeah, well, you were full of Rex.” I spoke into the phone. “Hey, Rex, he’s up. Come on over.”

  “We didn’t mean for it to happen,” said Laura. “You woke up while we were carrying you home and got away from us. We didn’t know that you’d seduced Rex until it was too late. Does it hurt to sit down? Would you like a pillow?”

  “No, it does not hurt to sit down. Now tell me what happened with our show!”

  “I forget,” Laura said.

  “I forget, too,” I added.

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in!” Laura and I said simultaneously, in a singsong voice.

  Rex came inside, shutting the door behind him. His head was hung and he looked sheepish. “Hello, everyone,” he said.

  “Would you like us to leave?” I asked.

  “No, no, that’s all right. You both know what I did.” He turned to Travis. “Last night when you burst into my room and said you wanted me to teach you all about being gay, I let my libido get the best of me. I knew you were drunk, and when you removed your pants I should have thrown you out into the hallway. But...I’d been drinking a bit myself, and I have to admit that I find you very attractive, and once you bent over my bed and said ‘Give it to me, Resident Advisor, give it to me!’ I just couldn’t control myself.”

  “I didn’t do that!” Travis insisted. “I’d never be that drunk!”

  “If it’s any consolation, I was too excited and it ended quickly. Your shirt is in the dryer right now, by the way.”

  “You’re making this all up,” said Travis, his voice quivering.

  “I can assure you that it will never happen again,” said Rex. “I was weak, and you were curious about homosexuality, as well you should be. I just can’t tell you how bad I felt after Seth and Laura knocked on my door asking if I’d seen you, knowing just how much of you I’d really seen. I hope we can still be friends. What do you think?”

  Travis looked physically ill. “I think I need some aspirin,” he moaned. “And a laxative.”

  “I have to get going,” said Rex, heading for the door, “but if you want to talk some more later, by all means come on over. I may have unlocked a side of you that you’ve wanted unlocked for a long, long time.”

  He gave a light wave to Travis, then left. Travis stared at the door for a long moment, then turned to me. “Seth, I need you to be honest with me. Did I sleep with Rex last night?”

  “Sleep? No.”

  “Did I have sex with him?”

  Laura and I looked at each other, then at him. “Nah.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Travis appeared about ready to weep. “I can’t believe Rex agreed to go along with a joke like that.”

  “It was his idea,” I said. “He suggested it while we were carrying you down the hall last night. I was as shocked as you are. Maybe we should make him a member of Out of Whack.”

  Travis’ eyes widened. “What happened with that?”

  “Seth was incredible!” said Laura, then she excitedly related the details of last night’s adventure. Feel free to read the last chapter again if you want the full experience of what she told Travis.

  After Laura finished with her story, Travis shared his own tale of woe. Kirk had taken him to a bar and bought him some drink called The Drano Alternative. One shot of that and Travis’ sense of wise judgment went straight to hell, causing him to enter the wonderful world of astounding intoxication. The rest of the evening was pretty much a blur and a blank.

  He was genuinely distraught over what he’d done, and Laura and I had already agreed to let the whole thing slide, though we reserved the right to bring it up whenever Travis annoyed us even the slightest little bit. So, Out of Whack was still active, and ready to kick some comedic butt!

  * * *


  Over the next couple of months, we were able to turn our success at Laugh Attack into several more gigs at small comedy clubs within a few hours’ drive from Sharpview. We certainly didn’t make much money, barely enough to pay for gas and bottled water to pour into the radiator after Laura’s car overheated, but we were gaining a bit of exposure and having a great time.

  Now, to answer the question that I’m sure is on your mind: No, I’ve never been so hungry that I’ve eaten the Pez dispenser along with the Pez. And no, I’ve also never purposely sprayed shellac on my teeth to prevent tooth decay. I really don’t know why you wonder about these things.

  Another question that may have been in your mind, if you’re interested in how this narrative turns out and not just thinking “END, BOOK, END! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IN HEAVEN PLEASE END!” is whether or not I was given more of an acting role.

  Yep, sure was.

  I now had two roles, excluding the club wielder and the reading of the poem. I was a man obsessed with old Orville Redenbacher commercials in a new skit I called “Comedy Hell,” and a man obsessed with yolk in a new skit I called “The Weirdo Obsessed With Yolk, Jeez, What a Psycho.” They were two very different types of obsessions, so it wasn’t like I had a narrow acting range.

  And though I certainly suffered from a fair degree of stage fright, whatever had happened on stage the night with Kirk had broken through my mental blank-outs. Maybe I wasn’t as talented as Travis and Laura, but dammit, I could perform!

  Laura and I continued to be as lovey-dovey as can be. I never got the opportunity to kick Travis out of the room for the night, since Laura refused to make love in our dorm for health reasons (she mentioned once that she felt uncomfortable walking into the place without an oxygen mask), but we found various other locations for our passionate activities.