The Funny Man

by John Warner

  The funny man doesn’t need to look for any hidden cameras because there is one right there in front of him recording each and every answer to the “questions” that these “journalists” have to ask him. They ask so many of the same questions. He’s not sure why he needs to do so many individual interviews, but perhaps it is all part of the gag. Yes, that’s it: The prank has become a war of attrition. They weren’t counting on the fact that the funny man has nothing better to do. Every seven minutes with twelve-minute breaks every three interviews, a new person is sitting in the chair across from him. The funny man imagines they are pulling people off the street to come in and pose as, for example, “Jennifer Hoffkiss, of KMBC, Channel Nine, Kansas City, Noon News at Eleven AM.”

  Like the rest, “Jennifer” enters the room with an armful of swag, posters, CDs, drink koozies all emblazoned with the film’s title or a picture of the funny man with his fist shoved in his mouth. She is pretty without being beautiful and wears too much makeup. There is a reason she is Jennifer Hoffkiss, Kansas City, and not Jennifer Hoffkiss, Los Angeles, or even Chicago. The interviews are as formal as kabuki. As the video technician changes out the tape they begin with the ritual introduction (i.e., “Jennifer Hoffkiss, of KMBC, Channel Nine, Kansas City”) and handshake, followed by the insincere praise (“the movie looks great”) and acceptance of said praise (“glad to hear it”). Following the preliminaries there are the questions, which are drawn from the following:

  1. This was your first movie. That must’ve been a fun change of pace from performing solo.

  2. What’s it like performing for the camera when you’ve spent so much time working with live audiences?

  3. Tell me about working with the director.

  4. Do you see yourself doing more movies in the future?

  5. What’s your favorite comedy of all time?

  6. How was the on-screen chemistry with (the love interest)?

  7. Who would you like to work with someday?

  8. You did some filming in our fair city? How did you like it?

  9. Is it hard to shove your hand all the way inside your mouth?

  10. What’s next?

  And there is Question 11, which every Caitlin, Ben, Ashley, Kelly, Jeremiah, Elizabeth, Ian, Amy, Bradley and Jennifer from Ann Arbor, Syracuse, Mendocino, Nashville, Tulsa, Boise, Corpus Christi, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Sioux Falls, and Kansas City ask: “Real quick, can you put your hand all the way inside your mouth and say ‘hello’ to our viewers back home?”

  IT IS WEARING on the funny man, but he plays along. He has the grit to persevere. He has the pink, ovoid pills as the Tonto to his Lone Ranger. They are raising the stakes, these prank-show shitbirds, but the only way for him to lose now is to give in. He is fully invested in the charade, and there is no turning back, no matter the frequency or intensity of the warning signs in his path. They are sweating, these fucking, prank-show motherfuckers. They are huddled in the closet, sucking on the stench of their own body odor, sweat pooling in their ass cracks as they watch their monitors, waiting for him to get flustered, to give up the prank-show money shot, but he will not do it, no way. He answers the questions thoroughly, dutifully, semi-consistently. He slathers praise on one city’s barbecue and another’s crab boil. One has the best cheese he’s ever tasted. Another he found to be remarkably free of potholes. It doesn’t matter if any of these statements are true. Each city will receive the flattery with gratitude. Hey, he really knows us.

  The funny man expresses a deep-seated desire to work with every name actor and director of the last quarter century. He is so appreciative of the director that he can’t imagine working with anyone else ever again. His love interest is “a doll,” “a major talent,” “on the verge of tremendous things,” “capable of more and then some.”

  He shoves his hand in his mouth and waves hello to every bored, television-watching mouth-breathing asshole from coast-to-coast.

  At the end of the last interview he steps out into the hotel hallway and finds himself face-to-face with his movie love interest.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey.” He is both surprised and not that they’ve roped her into the scam, but if they’ve gone this far, why not go all the way? The film is likely a career-ender for the love interest as well, so maybe this is the only work she can get. The two of them are apparently alone in the hallway. She is dressed in what the funny man would call “demure sexy,” a summery dress that doesn’t look short until she sits and crosses her legs, at which point the crease where ass cheek meets upper thigh is no longer left to the imagination. There is a small pendant resting in the cleft of her breasts. This is where the camera must be. There, plus fish-eye lenses in the peepholes on the hotel room doors.

  “These things are sooooooo boring,” she says.

  “You bet.”

  “You just get tired of saying the same thing, over and over and over.”

  “I hear you.” The funny man knows he is so close to the payoff. Just a few more seconds and everyone will be his “sucka!”

  “So,” she says. The funny man’s movie love interest twirls the toe of her high-heeled sandal in place, like she is nervous, bashful, searching for the right words. “Remember when I said we should sleep together and you said, ‘let’s not and say we did’?”

  The funny man nods. He feels what he’s pretty sure is a grin form on his face. He is the Cheshire cat who ate the canary and shit out the canary and then re-ate the shit. He stares directly into the pendant just above her breasts. He sees his own eyes twinkle in the blue gemstone.

  “I took your advice.”

  Still, the funny man grins, though his eyes shift to hers. “Huh?”

  “I took your advice. I told someone in one of those interviews that you and I, you know, had an affair thing, on the set. I said it only lasted for the film, and it’s over, but that it was super-hot at the time. I even said you broke it off because of your wife and kid. It’s probably going to hit right around when the movie comes out.”

  “Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho.” The funny man feels the laugh rising from deep in his belly. So deep that he smells the pretzels he had for lunch many hours ago on his breath. He swings around, making sure each of the cameras in the peepholes gets a good shot before leaning down, pressing his face right into the camera at her breasts that smell of talc and sunbeams. They got him. The tears of mirth stream from his eyes and collect in her cleavage. Goddamn if they didn’t get him after all.

  “This is just too much,” he says. The laughing feels cathartic, purgative, medicinal. He backs off from the movie love interest and hunches over, hands on knees. His sides hurt. “Ho ho ho ho ha ha ha ha ha ha ho ho ho,” he laughs and laughs.

  The movie love interest edges further away.

  “So you’re okay with it, then?”

  The funny man cannot speak because he is laughing so hard, doubled over, falling to his knees. He waves a hand at the girl as she backs further away, an I’m-fine-you-go gesture.

  “Great!” she says, far enough away now that she needs to shout. “See you at the premiere! Can’t wait to meet your wife!”

  Alone in the hallway the funny man continues to laugh for some time. He feels the muscles encapsulating his spine start to seize like a closing fist and lowers himself all the way to the ground, back flat, knees raised to relieve the pressure on the lumbar area just as the physical therapist has shown him. Giggles still ripple through his frame, sending the pain coursing along. “Guys!” he yells, his voice echoing through the empty hallway. “Come on out! You got me! This is too much! It’s just too much! Too much, I say!”

  17

  WITH OUR STRATEGY change now officially accepted by the court, and a little time granted for the prosecution to recalibrate anything they deem necessary, I have nowhere to go except to my therapist. I feel light and free as I breeze past the ever-smiling Jill into the office. I’m not sure what there is left to talk about, having achieved very little progress over the years. Sure,
he has seen me through my phases, I suppose, escorting through the superfluousness, helping keep a lid on the flee-floating rage, but now, supposedly, we have “loss of perspective,” and, particularly when looked at from his perspective—a movement from one unsatisfactory state to another—it’s hard to see how our time together can be called “progress” on any level.

  We have mutually agreed that Bonnie and the White Hot Center are off limits, “not a productive area,” according to him. His goal, it seems, is to bring me back to firmer ground, space and time we can agree upon, which means he wants to talk about my childhood.

  Like all therapists, mine is obsessed with this, despite my insistence that there is nothing there. I did not devour an unborn twin in the womb. There was no greasy uncle in a stained tank top with wandering hands, or a babysitter that locked me in a closet. I was not left behind in a department store. I did not walk in on my parents doing it doggy-style. I wasn’t even spanked, my father always preferring the rational road to problem-solving as opposed to blunt force. My therapist says at the roots of any problem there is also some fear, something that sticks, a “psychic stain.”

  I settle into the couch, sitting upright because it is poorly padded and uncomfortable, though stylish. I suppose its lack of comfort serves a function as well, no one really wanting to spend more than fifty minutes on it.

  He, as always, leads with the gesture, his encouragement for me to set the terms of our conversation. I asked once why he couldn’t even inquire into my general health, or even just how my day was going and he said that if he did so, we’d start talking about my general health, or how the day was going, and he had no idea if that’s what we should be talking about.

  “What should we be talking about?” I ask.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “So right now, we’re talking about what I might want to talk about.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do we know if that’s what I want to talk about?”

  “Because you brought it up,” he replies.

  Because I know we’ll sit and stare at each other for a near hour, I tell him about how from ages five to seven I slept on one side of my single bed, my back always turned to the window.

  “Why did you do that?” he says.

  “I was afraid of the monsters.”

  “What monsters?”

  “The ones with giant heads and big teeth that would come through the window.”

  “Why were the monsters after you?”

  “They wanted to eat me.”

  “And how did turning your back on the window help? Did it keep the monsters out?”

  “No, the monsters came in, but if my back was turned I couldn’t see them, which meant that they couldn’t get me.”

  “You’re talking about denial,” he says.

  “Not really.”

  “Why don’t you think so?”

  “Because there weren’t any monsters. You can’t be in denial over something that doesn’t exist. Only if there were monsters would I have been in denial. The whole thing was my own invention. I was delusional, not in denial.”

  The look on his face tells me I’ve scored, a rare occurrence. I wish for someone to high-five. “So what changed?” he asks.

  “I figured out there was no such thing as monsters with giant heads and big teeth.”

  “So you don’t believe in monsters?”

  “Not of the giant heads and big teeth kind.”

  The look on his face indicates that he sees this as progress. I have made an admission, monsters exist, but that’s not really news.

  “What kind of monsters are there?” he asks.

  “According to my lawyer, we all are,” I say. He gives me the gesture, but it doesn’t work on me anymore. I make him ask the obvious question.

  “And do you agree with him?”

  “It seems about right.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Seems like we’ve all done some pretty shitty things, doc,” I say.

  “Even you? You’re a monster?”

  “Especially me.”

  “Because you killed someone?” To be quite honest, up until this moment, the idea that this act that I was on trial for is what made me a monster had never occurred to me. It had felt like the right thing to do in the moment, and even afterwards as it went horribly wrong with the arrest and trial. It is one of the few things I do not regret, right up there with allowing the condom to slip off as my ex-wife and I had sex in our college library, or allowing a funny-looking harpist to play my father to his death.

  “Actually, no,” I say. “I’m good with that.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I say, and I know my answer makes him believe the monster part is most definitely true.

  18

  HE SKIPS THE movie premiere. He uses a trick remembered from his childhood, heating the thermometer on the bedside lamp lightbulb while his wife’s back is turned.

  “A hundred and nine!” she says. “That can’t be right.”

  “Regardless,” the funny man replies, “it’s a fever, and honestly, I feel like shit. Is it okay if we don’t go?” His wife sits on his side of the bed and pushes his hair clear of his forehead.

  “You don’t feel that warm.”

  The funny man chokes up a cough. “Maybe if I sleep a bit I’ll feel better and we can go.” He can see the disappointment in her eyes. She has been saying for the past week how much she is looking forward to the premiere. So exciting and glamorous, an excuse to dress up, real show business, not all the nastiness in the clubs with the drunks. The studio has reserved a suite in the city and they would stay overnight and order pancakes and waffles in the room in the morning and not worry about it because Pilar is taking care of the boy. At the same time the funny man knows she is worried about his fragility, the potential for events to tilt him off course. He would like to tell her that they won’t be missing anything anyway by explaining the whole crazy prank, but in the moment, even though he wasn’t sick in any real sense of the word, he doesn’t have the energy to get into it.

  “No,” she says. “I’ll call, say we can’t make it.”

  Forced into staying in bed all day by his ruse, he is unable to check any news reports to see if the event actually goes off without him as its target. The next morning at first light, with his wife still asleep, the funny man makes a show of stretching and rubbing his eyes as though he’s emerging from a hibernation before easing out of the bed to retrieve the paper from the front porch. There it is, front cover below the fold of the arts and entertainment section, the love interest throwing her head back, showing all her teeth as she pauses for the paparazzi on the red carpet. The article makes no mention of the movie itself, just the event attendees, including the “notable absence” of himself.

  “They could’ve faked the paper,” he thinks. If they were being especially clever they could dummy up a copy and replace the real one at his door with this one. People did that kind of thing all the time for birthdays and anniversaries. Excited at his theory, he rushes to the computer and searches the news and there’s more than thirty stories about the event. Surely they couldn’t all be faked. But looking at each article closely he notices that they are basically the same, the kind of thing a computer program could generate from an initial template.

  So tricky they are. They would be one step ahead of him if he weren’t one step ahead of them.

  Wearing only his boxers and a T-shirt, the funny man drives to the nearest convenience store and scrounges enough change out of the ashtray (he never carries a wallet anymore; it’s someone else’s job to worry about that stuff) to buy copies of every paper he can find, some of them not even in English. In one of the papers he finds an actual review of the movie, someone claiming to have seen it. The funny man recognizes the name of the reviewer. Surely this person would not compromise their professional integrity just for the sake of a television prank show. The words seem to swim around the page,
making it hard to read and grasp the full context, but phrases like brilliant stupidity and sidesplitting idiocy float up and into his brain. He is pretty certain that the review is positive, that the movie is being recommended.

  “Impossible,” the funny man thinks.

  He drives home, scattering the newspapers out the window as he goes, and upon arrival splashes down into his bed next to his still-sleeping wife. This time, he really is feeling ill.

  Throughout the week there are near-hourly texts from the funny man’s agent and manager updating him on the “expected gross” for the movie’s opening weekend. They tell him to get ready to “blast off” because he’s heading for the “stratosphere.” Each text reports a higher number than the last until the funny man flushes his phone down the toilet and that is the end of the reports. His wife (wrongly) reads his obvious distress as nerves. He wonders how they can be so out of sync, how she cannot detect the soul dread that is creeping through his body, threatening to consume him. There was a time where they were linked perfectly, where one could read the other and deliver the exact word, the exact touch, the exact gesture necessary in the moment.

  He is thinking of when his father died. As the baby grew inside of his wife, the funny man’s father seemed to shrink. Right after the wedding, his father thought he’d thrown out his back taking the garbage to the can, but the X-rays showed something more serious, a tumor eroding his spine and another in his lung, the likely original culprit. His father had never smoked (not good for the nut to spend so much on cigarettes), but there it was. “Sometimes we don’t know why these things happen,” the oncologist with the beard that went too far down on his neck said. No shit. Through the chemo his father had to wear a hard, plastic, clamshell brace because the wrong move would snap his spine. There was almost no bone left. They called it a miracle that he even walked into the hospital for that first X-ray. What a dumb use of the word miracle. The brace ran from his groin to his chin and cinched down with Velcro in front and back. It took two people to assist him into it and it was only tight enough once the breath grunted out of him. When people would ask how he was doing, invariably the funny man’s father would say, “I can’t wait to get rid of this brace,” his only complaint, and the funny man’s mother would make agreement noises; what an improvement that will be, and all the while the funny man is thinking very loudly, so loudly that his thoughts seem to be screaming around the inside of his brain, that that brace is never coming off.