The Funny Man

by John Warner

  ON THE PORCH my father sipped his scotch and gazed out at the dying light of evening. My father was definitely not a drinker, but I’d counted this as the old man’s third cocktail. We had a little time before Beth and her parents were to arrive for a “get to know you” dinner that would actually go incredibly well as our mothers bonded over their mutual belief in their children’s stupidity and drown their disappointments in a mid-range Chablis.

  “They key to happiness,” my father said, “is keeping your nut small.”

  I spit my sip back into my glass. I didn’t care for scotch then. “What?”

  “Your nut, your expenses. You’ve got to keep them under control, and I’ll tell you why it’s important. It provides flexibility.”

  I stirred my finger inside my glass, trying to induce the ice cubes to melt and cut some of the harshness of the liquor.

  “How long have we lived in this house?” my father asked.

  “My whole life.”

  “And six years before that, which means in eighteen months I own this thing outright.”

  “And how many kids do we have?”

  “Just me.”

  “You know why?”

  I sort of hoped it was because my parents had only had sex once. I just shook my head.

  “Because I did some calculations that on my salary we could afford to provide completely, and I mean completely, for one child, so we had one child. Believe you me, we could’ve had more. Your mother is a sexy woman.”

  “Dad, please …”

  “Tell me, have you ever wanted for anything?”

  I shook my head. I had not had everything, there were others with more, but there was no doubting that I had plenty, more than my share.

  “And how long do I keep my cars?”

  I pictured the American-made sedan in the garage. No one would call it stylish or contemporary. “Long time.”

  “That’s right, seven years minimum, which is how long they’re designed to last without major issues. And where do we go on vacation?”

  A slide show played in my mind, lots of miles in the back of the latest sedan, sunburns, costumed tour guides … “Let’s see, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore, Colonial Williamsburg, Disney World, Santa Fe …”

  “Right again, all in the good old U.S. of A., because I’ll tell you something, we’ve got a lot to see right here and Europe costs.”

  I ventured another sip. Watered down, the scotch wasn’t so bad.

  “Let me tell you something,” my father said. “I’m still south of sixty and eighteen months from retirement and if I wanted, I got enough dough to buy a boat, and when I get that boat, if I decide I want one, I’ll take it on the water where there aren’t any roads. Who can beat that?”

  My father leaned forward, elbows on thighs, and looked down at his scotch. “Flexibility, son. It’s the key. Nobody owns me. Yes, I work for the man and I live in the suburbs and have a wife and a kid, but because I’ve kept my nut small I’m beholden to no one other than my own conscience. They think they have me, but they don’t. I’ve got them. They talk about the American Dream and this is it. What most people don’t understand about dreams is that they can look a lot like reality. I’ve lived my whole life this way and I’m the happiest motherfucker in the world. And I want to say that I’m proud of you.”

  My father drained the last of his drink and smacked his lips and squinted at the sunset and then clapped me on the knee as he stood. “Time to face the music, son.”

  I’VE LONG AGO lost control of my nut. My nut is like Godzilla, a baby reptile irradiated into a rampaging monster. The only person who could even guess the size of my nut is my accountant, who has been using words like belt-tightening, reining in, and constriction, which all mean the same thing. There are, of course, the residuals, the steady trickle of money tied to what I’ve done in the past, and there’s a standing offer of six figures plus for a “no-holds-barred” interview with British television, but Barry has forbidden it, and if I manage to get acquitted there are endorsement deals from Japan and Scandinavia stacked up like planes trying to land during peak travel hours. Turns out infamy might pay almost as well as fame as long as I’ll take it in yen or kroner.

  But all of these possibilities are reserved for after, so for now, I sign things. Each week, a delivery, a giant rolling mail hamper filled with pictures and objects and unmentionables and it is my job to sign them. I receive twenty-five dollars for each signature and if I’m really humming, I can sign upwards of 150 items per hour. Ironically, this revenue stream was not open to me prior to my arrest and trial. In fact, I used to gladly give my signature away for free. (Almost always gladly, anyway, save the one unfortunate “elbowing” incident that was blown entirely out of proportion as an example of my “violent” nature during the prosecution’s case.) But now, suddenly, my signature has significant value, at least as long as it’s dated postarrest, which slows down the process a little, but not much.

  I’ve been letting the shipments stack up, because, let’s face it, it’s not exciting work, but with nothing but idle time for the next ten days I dig in and get busy with a permanent marker. My signature has devolved into an illegible scrawl, but each scrawl is the same, so it is known to be mine. Each item has been previously opened by an assistant, the payment removed and verified. I’m almost certain the assistant steals some of the cash payments, but whatever. If I lose the case, he’ll be out of work, so maybe he’s just planning for the future. I sign dozens of pictures, concert T-shirts, CDs, commemorative posters, DVDs, all items I’ve produced, many of which I barely remember doing, making sure to keep them with their return addresses so my assistant can get them repackaged and sent. When I grow bored, I start to personalize each item at first with individual words chosen from the dictionary:

  Hey Garth:

  Logorrhea!

  (Signature)

  (Date)

  … and then with nonsense (non)rhymes:

  Janet:

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  Monkeys share 98% of their DNA with humans.

  (Signature)

  (Date)

  On a lampshade someone has sent, I begin a story, writing around its perimeter:

  Gene:

  A long time ago in a village far, far away there lived a man with enormous testicles. The man’s testicles were so large that he was forced to cart them around in a wheelbarrow. Over and over he goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor, why are my testicles so large? Can’t you please give me something that will make my testicles smaller because I’m in love with a girl and I’m afraid she will never love me back because of my enormous testicles …

  I enjoy my own story. It’s both silly and juvenile, my stocks in trade, and every time I write the word testicles, I giggle. I enjoy it so much that I work on it through the night and into the morning, covering the entirety of the lampshade in the text, the letters growing smaller with each revolution until there is no room left to even finish the story, let alone for a signature and date and I decide that I might as well keep this particular item and that it is probably now worth much more than twenty-five dollars anyway.

  I consider sending it to her. I could do it anonymously, but surely she would know who it’s from. I can picture her opening it, the dawning realization on her face, like a flower opening to the sun. I see it like it has actually happened. I would like her to see my creative powers, such as they are. She is too young to know what it was like during my prime years, the phenomenon of me and yeah, it’s my ego talking, but I have regrets about that. But on second thought, isn’t it even better that there’s love there in the absence of that, that it’s not part of the equation? Isn’t it purer that way?

  Of course, contact could land her in trouble as well. She has many millions of endorsements at risk that any association with me would surely taint. I am incompatible with her brand.

  Even when there is not a tournament currently going on, I can turn on my television at an
y random time of day and within forty-five minutes she will be there on-screen urging people to buy something, something that she dearly loves and believes in. My favorite is the commercial for the hamburgers where she is on the court, smacking balls over the net with all of her power and grace on display, when suddenly, in midair, one of the balls turns into a half-pound “chunk burger” and she drops her racket and grabs it out of the air, gripping it so the condiments (ketchup, mustard, grilled onions, jalapeño-jack cheese, roast beef bits, Parma ham, sautéed mushrooms, avocado, and a single pineapple ring) are clearly visible, bursting from beneath the bun. The soundtrack kicks in, seventies soul, seduction music, organ and wah-wah guitar, and as she opens her mouth and takes a bite, the condiments spill down the front of her pristine white top, leaving a trail between her modest, pert breasts, but she does not care, no sir, she is under the spell of this hamburger. For the moment, her life revolves around this hamburger; she is the chunk burger’s captive and she loves it. She simply can’t get enough of this chunk burger. If an asteroid from space impacted the Earth, threatening the extinction of the human race, she still would not be distracted from this burger. If piranhas were working their way up from her toes, she would not pay heed because of this burger. If fire were threatening to consume her, no sweat, got the burger. You can tell by the way she licks the lingering grease off her lips.

  The commercial ends with the tagline, “can’t live without it,” and her performance is convincing. The commercial is so good that millions of people seek it out and pass it on to their friends, telling them that this is something to see.

  Even though I could do this too, it’s more fun, more meaningful when it happens organically, without design, so as morning comes, I turn on the television and idly scratch at the monitoring device as I wait to see what I can’t live without.

  10

  THE FUNNY MAN and his wife are embarrassed by the ritual, would never tell anyone else about it, but first they’d come to love it and then they’d come to need it. In the beginning it was just weekly. One of them would look at the other across the breakfast table and say, “Do you want to call?”

  “Should we?” the other would say.

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t we just do it the other day?”

  “A week ago two days from now, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Okay.”

  And the funny man would stand and get the cordless phone and bring it back to the table and invite his wife from her seat onto his lap. He would cradle her across his legs as she steadied herself with a hand draped across his shoulders. They both had the number memorized, but it was also on autodial, and the funny man would hit the button and listen to the ten-note tune and once he heard the ring and entered the account number and pass key (their wedding anniversary) at the appropriate prompt, he would place the phone between him and his wife, holding the speaker up near their pressed-together ears.

  What they had discovered is that at a certain point, money makes money and then it makes more money and after that, still more money. At that point there was only one account and the money flowed in automatically and grew as if by magic, and the phone number was a special automated system where one could call and get the account balance for that day recited to them by a pleasant sounding computerized woman. Even though they continued to pay their bills: mortgage, utilities, diaper service, cleaning help, meal delivery, etc… . the amount was larger each and every time.

  After hearing the number, the funny man and his wife would look at each other wide-eyed, astonished. How does one have more money despite still spending money on things like nonstick pans and a pool table and a convection oven and that one weekend in the mountains where they rented the cabin and each cabin had its own outdoor tub fed by the natural springs and the cabins were strategically placed in relation to each other and the natural foliage and no two people since Adam and Eve had spent more time naked.

  Usually after the ritual one of them said how “lucky” they were and the other nodded, offering their lips to seal the agreement with a kiss.

  At some point, it became daily, something they both needed to get started, and sometimes it was done in the bathroom as they brushed their teeth, or over the kitchen sink as the breakfast dishes were rinsed, or as they worked together to stuff the child into that day’s clothes.

  On one day, a fair bit down the road after they’d moved into the second house, where even the closets were like rooms, it was the wife’s turn to declare themselves lucky.

  She is in the bathroom and because the funny man is in the bedroom, sitting up in the bed flipping through channels on the television, she says it loudly into the mirror as she clamps a device on her eyelashes.

  “We sure are lucky,” the funny man’s wife says.

  “What?”

  “I said, we’re lucky.”

  “What?” This house is large enough that a person in the bathroom cannot be heard in the bedroom without shouting.

  “Lucky!”

  “I can’t hear you,” the funny man says, muting the television. His wife appears in the bathroom doorway. “I said, we sure are lucky.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean?”

  “I mean, do you really think we’re lucky or are you just saying that?”

  “We say it every day.”

  “But do you believe it?”

  “We’re pretty fortunate, I think, considering,” she says, turning back into the bathroom.

  The funny man jumps from the bed and follows his wife into the bathroom, fishing his penis from his fly and relieving himself as he speaks. “Considering what?”

  “Considering everything,” she says, still looking in the mirror. “Can’t you wait until I’m done?”

  The funny man extends the show of peeing, swirling the stream around the bowl, grunting out the last few squirts before giving the works a vigorous shake and tucking it back through his fly. “Not really,” he says. “Are you interested in my prostate exploding like the Hindenburg?”

  “That’s not funny,” his wife says.

  The funny man follows his wife back into the bedroom where she searches through the closet for the right pair of shoes. “What if I told you that I don’t think we’re lucky?” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if I told you that luck has nothing to do with what we are?”

  The funny man’s wife bends over to place her shoes on her feet and he steals a glance down the front of her blouse, which makes him want to forget the argument he is for sure trying to have. “What do you mean?” she says.

  “I mean, I think our circumstances are not so much due to luck, but to hard work and vision.”

  The funny man’s wife steps toward him and runs the front of her hand gently down the right side of his face and then the back of her hand across the left side of his face. “I’ve got to go. Let’s talk about it when I get home.”

  THE FUNNY MAN spends the day preparing to talk about it when his wife gets home.

  First he looks up luck in the dictionary and sees that it has to do with chance. He looks up fortune and sees that it means pretty much the same thing as luck and that essentially they both mean things happening “without design,” things that are “fated.” Things that were meant to happen no matter what.

  The funny man decides to break down the issue. He goes to the office supply store and purchases an easel, a large pad of white paper, and three different colored markers.

  At the top of the first page in black he writes money. He asks himself, Is the steadily growing account growing because of luck? No, it is growing by design as a function of sound fiscal planning rooted in the deep traditions of capitalism. Is contemporary American capitalism a matter of luck? Definitely not. It is a matter of having proved itself a superior basis for commerce. Just ask the former Soviet Union. Below the word money he writes not luck in b
lue.

  He turns the page and writes the thing at the top. What about the thing, which is what has produced the seed money that is now growing on its own and continues to provide ongoing employment in front of sizable crowds for which the funny man is paid handsomely? Is this lucky? The funny man thinks on this for awhile, remembering back to the moment it came to him, and no, this was not luck, inspiration perhaps, but inspiration is 90 percent perspiration and perspiration implies work, which is not luck.

  Because he sees that he could easily run out of paper, rather than turning the page, beneath the thing he writes the boy. His son had inspired the thing—he’s said that in the interviews. Is that lucky? Not really. Perhaps if the boy had been adopted it would be a sign of luck, pure chance handing them just the right little baby boy, but no, this is his son, product of his loins and his wife’s loins, or his loins and some other part of his wife, the female equivalent of loins. This is not luck so much as good planning, or maybe chemistry, which is in the realm of science, and is, therefore, not luck.

  What about the boy’s general good health and well-being, that he had been born with a hand that he could try to shove in his mouth? This is not luck, the funny man figures. Sure, people with retarded children with flippers instead of hands might be unlucky, but the rest who don’t, like him and his wife, aren’t lucky, they are simply some word that means what has happened is what should happen under normal circumstances. Call it “the odds.”

  Now, he was wearing a condom when the boy was conceived. That’s true. Generally, society would hold that condom failure as unlucky, a bad break (ha ha ha), but the child is undeniably a good thing. Wouldn’t that then be a stroke of luck?