The Funny Man

by John Warner

  And then just as quickly, it ended. The competition came, it upped the ante, and it conquered. $uckerPunch, it was called, and this was not about a boot to the ass, but a coldcocking to the jaw. $uckerPunch starred a former NFL linebacker (Ronald “the Rage” Rangini) who had been tossed from the league for chronic steroid abuse. And the prize was not a thousand dollars, but one hundred thousand dollars plus any associated medical or dental costs. Once the contestants woke up from their sudden nap, no one complained. A kick to the ass wasn’t so interesting anymore.

  There is a special sweeps-week $uckerPunch episode, a half-a-million-dollar giveaway involving a very elaborate setup at a wedding. The bride and groom are told that their planned minister has taken ill and there is to be a replacement. The at-home audience is privy to scenes of Ronald “the Rage” Rangini being disguised with makeup and clothed in vestments, but the wedding attendees seem to take no special note of the hulking man up on the altar. This must be because all eyes are on the bride, who is catalogmodel pretty in a tasteful, off the shoulder gown that showcases a well-turned back. The groom waiting on the altar a step just below “the Rage” Rangini beams down toward her. Does this remind the funny man of his own wedding day? How could it not? He has not become stone and he misses his wife and the boy deeply. (At this time there are still some glimmers of hopes for reconciliation.)

  As the bride joins the groom, they hold hands and the groom bends in for a kiss, but the bride playfully swats his hand and says, “not yet!” and all the attendees have a good, genuine laugh at the groom’s expense.

  The Rage begins the ceremony, conducting the rituals, a hymn, a lighting of candles, etc. He’s not bad, having developed some performing chops during the show’s run. When it comes time for the vows, the bride and groom face each other, and the bride does her “I dos” and accepts her ring over a trembling finger.

  The groom’s turn; he repeats the words: love, honor, cherish, but when it comes time for the part where the minister is supposed to say, “And do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” and the groom is to respond with “I do,” the Rage says, “Are you ready to go to sleep now?”

  The grin disappears from the groom’s face just before the Rage snaps off a short right to the head that drops the groom like he’s been shot. It reminds the funny man of a toy he had as a child, a toy which was actually his father’s toy, found in the attic one day and passed on to him. It was a small wooden horse figure standing on a platform and beneath the platform was a button that when pushed, caused the horse to collapse, its joints suddenly unhinged. When the button was released, the horse snapped back upright, held in tension by the filament that ran through its doweled limbs. The funny man sometimes would lay in his bed, pushing and releasing the button, appreciating how the ruined horse could so quickly be resurrected. As he thinks of this toy, he wonders if he is that toy, unhinged, if there is something that could possibly snap him back to life.

  The groom doesn’t look like he’s bouncing back up anytime soon. He looks kind of dead. The bride’s hands shoot to her mouth as she screams, horrified, and she steps on her own train as she kneels to tend to him, her hands fluttering over his body. The groom is moaning, so he’s not dead, yet. The attendees stand in the pews, craning to see what has happened. In the meantime, the Rage peels off the fake beard and prosthetics, and strips off the vestments to show the $uckerPunch tattoo on his bicep. He taps the bride on her shoulder and she whirls around and starts to jump up and down with excitement. Balloons drop from the church ceiling and confetti cannons fire across the pews. The young people can be seen explaining what’s happening to the old people. The bride weeps and shakes as the Rage hands her a briefcase with $500,000 stamped on the side in gold. By the time the credits roll, the groom has begun to come around. His bride, not quite his wife yet, holds the briefcase in front of him and you can see the effort it takes him to focus on her face.

  The funny man can’t imagine what kind of barbarian would conceive such a thing as this $uckerPunch. He watches it every time it’s on.

  22

  AFTER MAKING THE call to the number on the mysterious glowing card, I awoke in the middle of the night to a gloved hand held over my mouth and a face encased in a neoprene ski mask looming over me. The leather was soft on my skin. I felt more alert than I had in weeks. I thought I must be dreaming.

  “Shhh,” a man said. “Do not panic. Give me your PIN number.” He lifted his hand free so I could speak.

  “My what?” My voice was rough, croaking, but the words came with no trouble. I felt my face and the skin was bare and tight. Somehow I’d hacked off my beard, but had no memory of it.

  “PIN number, bank authorization number,” the man said.

  “I don’t know what it is,” I replied. “I haven’t used anything like that for years.” It was true. All the money is taken care of for me behind the scenes by others. I am sent account statements that I promptly feed into the shredder without even looking at them. It is one of my favorite things to do. I was not panicking because all emotions had been drained from me. If they wanted to kidnap me and sell me into prostitution, or harvest my organs, what did I care?

  “Come on, you know it. It probably hasn’t changed. Most people pick one and stick with it.”

  “Oh-eight-two-six, my wedding anniversary,” I said to the masked man. He nodded to someone behind me and I could hear the keystrokes on a palmtop. “Check,” the other guy said.

  The masked man took off his mask and de-gloved and held out his hand. “My name is Chet and I’m from the White Hot Center.” Chet was the best-looking human I’d ever seen. He looked like the love child of Jim Morrison and Marilyn Monroe: high cheekbones, penetrating blue eyes, and even a little beauty mark above his dimple. He had impeccable manners as well, since he wasn’t flinching from my smell, or the biosphere that was my palm.

  Chet continued. “I will be your center liaison as well as your personal majordomo from this point forward. This is Darrell. He is my assistant. If you ever cannot reach me, which is pretty much inconceivable, Darrell will be available. If neither of us is available, an asteroid has destroyed humanity. We have just made a significant withdrawal from your monetary holdings that we will gladly refund at the end of your stay if you find anything about your experience less than completely satisfactory.”

  Darrell stepped forward, holding the surface of the palmtop out to me. His mask was pulled up and perched on top of his head like a cap. He looked a little like James Dean. I was being abducted by male models. Was it a dream? It may as well have been. I shook my head and Chet and Darrell bobbled in my vision before settling right in front of me just as before. I reached out and touched the lapel of Chet’s jacket, the leather every bit as soft as the glove.

  “With your thumbprint you are signaling your agreement as well as pledging to keep your experiences at the White Hot Center in the strictest of confidences under the harshest penalties,” Chet said.

  I pressed my thumb to the palmtop’s surface and after a couple of beats, Darrell nodded again.

  “Now, why don’t you change into something comfortable? We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.”

  I stood unsteadily and peeled the loincloth from my body. It kept its shape as I dropped it on the floor.

  “I could use a shower,” I said.

  “We’ll take care of that,” Chet replied. “Now get dressed.”

  I did as I was told, throwing on some sweats and a T-shirt with a windbreaker. I jammed my sockless feet into a pair of tennis shoes.

  “Good enough,” Chet said. “Let’s roll.”

  Together we walked out, down the elevator and into the lobby, Chet and Darrell flanking me on either side, holding me fully upright. It had been awhile since I’d stood like a man. Under their leather trenches, they wore black suits with crisp white shirts, no ties. Their masks bulged in their pockets. I didn’t get the feeling I was captive, necessarily, but neither was I thinking I could get away. I fel
t more curious than afraid. This was the kind of thing that doesn’t happen, but it was happening. As we passed the concierge desk, I could see the doorman slumped over and sleeping, his head cradled in his arms. A black SUV with dark windows idled at the curb with the back door open. I crooked my head over my shoulder at the doorman.

  “Don’t worry,” Chet said, “he’ll be fine in a few hours. We gave him the same thing I’m about to give you.”

  A whoosh of air, a stinging at my neck, followed by dreamless sleep.

  23

  THE FUNNY MAN realizes too late that he has been operating under a mistaken notion of the nature and purpose of marital counseling. At first, he figured it a kind of straightforward penance. His wife was angry, justifiably so, just not about the right things. If he could prove his remorse for causing this anger, eventually he would be forgiven. As the clock ticked down toward the start of his tour he dedicated himself to his twice-weekly sessions, one individual and one in tandem with his wife.

  The marriage counselor had been recommended by his therapist. She was an older woman with gray hair kept in a long braid that looked like a llama’s tail, and she seemed nice and friendly enough. Her couch, with its big, overstuffed pillows, was far more comfortable than the angular art-deco model favored by his therapist. The first joint session she laid out her three secrets to successful marriage repair:

  1. Always tell the truth, even if it hurts.

  2. Anger is the most human of emotions.

  3. First thought, best thought. If it comes to mind, blurt it out.

  Her theory, as she explained it, was that most marriages, particularly after the first several years, suffer from over-calculation, each partner being too conscious of the other. A desire to keep order overrules and suppresses honest and open communication, which will naturally sometimes involve conflict. Patterns of sublimation and subterfuge have been established for seemingly noble reasons—a desire to prevent hurt, or avoid strife, to keep harmony—but in reality these are a slow-growing cancer ready to devour the marriage from within. Everything seems fine, up until the moment the cancer is exposed and by that time, there’s no healthy tissue left.

  “I should know what I’m talking about,” the marriage counselor said with a rueful smile. “It’s happened to me three times.”

  In both the individual and joint sessions the funny man initially stuck with dictum one and insisted at every turn that he had not slept with his movie love interest. While admitting to her obvious beauty and general desirability, he listed dozens of reasons why he could not imagine sleeping with her. He detailed her stupidity and vapidity and expressed his indifference, nay, his loathing for her stupid, vapid self. His story about the night of the proposition was consistent each and every time and each and every time when he was finished telling it, the marriage counselor was frowning at him.

  “What’s rule one?” she said.

  “Always tell the truth, even if it hurts,” he replied.

  “So why aren’t you?”

  “Why aren’t I what?”

  “Why aren’t you telling the truth?”

  “But I am.”

  The marriage counselor looked at him, the skepticism etched in her forehead and at the corners of her mouth. “I know you’re lying for two reasons. Number one, when you list all of those reasons why you wouldn’t have slept with her, not one of them starts with ‘because I’m in love with my wife and would never do that to her.’”

  “I thought that was a given,” the funny man protested.

  “And number two,” the therapist continued. “Look at that girl. She’s incredibly hot. I’m the furthest thing from gay and I would do her. You’re not secretly gay, are you? Because if you are, we’ve got a whole different approach for that.”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t expect me to believe you didn’t sleep with her, and don’t expect your wife to believe it either because I’m not going to let her.”

  It’s not that the funny man thought it was a conspiracy, exactly. It was not a setup. Everyone was acting out of good intentions, it’s just that he had been cast in a role in which he did not belong. Yes, he was lost and distant, uncommunicative, and above all, flaky, but he was not a cheat.

  Still, to move things along, particularly because the start of the tour was pending, at the next joint session he decides to confess. “Okay,” he says, “I admit it, I slept with her.”

  “I knew it!” his wife shouts.

  “Me too!” the marriage counselor chimes in.

  He and his wife sit next to each other on the couch. She crosses her arms over each other and begins to cry.

  “What are you thinking?” the marriage counselor says to her. “I don’t want to get into it,” she replies.

  “First thought, best thought.”

  “I don’t want to say something I’ll regret later.”

  “Anger is the most human of emotions.”

  His wife rubs the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I love him. I want to cut his balls off.”

  “Good, excellent,” the marriage counselor says.

  “Good?” this from the funny man.

  “Yes, good,” she replies with an edge to her voice. “Honesty is the only path to healing.”

  For the remainder of the session they explore far more of the cutting off the balls feeling than the love feeling, and the funny man spends many of his words on sincere apologies for the myriad ways he has failed in the past. He comes to understand that it is indeed good that his wife wants to cut his balls off, that this is actually an expression of her desire to possess him, to have him always, and he is glad to have made this small metaphoric sacrifice, especially considering he gets to keep the real ones. At the end, there are hugs all around and as the marriage counselor grips him close she whispers in his ear, “I’m proud of you, you filthy pig.”

  IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE session it seems as though his false confession has stirred some progress. On the way home his wife holds his hand across the center divider of the car and that night they make love. It is better than average lovemaking, like his wife wants to prove that it is something the funny man would miss, but this is totally unnecessary because for the duration of their relationship he has missed it the moment the lovemaking is over. Afterwards his wife snuggles close and things feel so right, the funny man feels that he must tell the truth.

  “Actually,” he says, stroking his wife’s hair. “I never did sleep with her.”

  She sighs into his bare chest. “Let’s put it behind us, okay.”

  “But it’s true. I really didn’t sleep with her. I just said so because it seemed like it would help move things along.”

  “Honestly, don’t do this.”

  The funny man sits up, back against the headboard. “Do what? I’m just trying to set the record straight.”

  “You can’t have it both ways. You don’t get to be the good guy here. I’m forgiving you, which I think you know is very hard for me, so let’s just drop it.”

  This is one of those crossroads the funny man does not recognize at the moment, which perhaps explains why he takes the wrong path in deciding now that he is the victim. He feels heat rush to his extremities and it feels kind of good, actually. He feels alive. Where for most of the previous months he has felt powerless, battered by forces beyond his control, suddenly he feels powerful. Anger is the most human of emotions and he is feeling it bigtime, feeling it toward everyone: his agent, his manager, the love interest, Pilar, his therapist, the marriage counselor, the airline industry, all the people who he would like to unleash his fury on, but because they are not there, he will do what is natural and easy and common. He will turn on his wife.

  “Maybe I don’t want to drop it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I never slept with her and I want some credit for it.”

  “Credit?”

  “Yes, credit. I could have slept with her. I bet I could’ve slept with a
lot of people, but you know what? I didn’t and I don’t.” He is not even sure where the words are coming from. He retains some part of his brain that recognizes them as ridiculous, but they feel so good, even if they are hitting the wrong target. Shooting a gun up in the air is pretty cool too. “I’m pretty goddamn important in this world, mind you. People know who I am. They love me. I bring them great pleasure. There’s a lot of fortunes tied up in me, and for once I’d like just a little recognition that overall, I’m not such a bad guy. I could be a lot worse.”

  His wife’s eyes change from furious to devastatingly sad as her face caves in for a moment, but before she speaks, the fury is back, a low rumble.

  “You, get the fuck out of here.”

  And he does, not because she said so, no way, because he wanted to.

  HIS ANGER IS so liberating he is not sure why it took him so long to embrace it. He unleashes it on everybody, his agent, his manager, even his therapist, and for the first time things start getting done his way, and it’s effing great. Following a session-long rant the day before the tour started, at the funny man’s insistence the therapist added a prescription for cylindrical white ones to the mix to help the funny man sleep because he’s so charged up all day it’s hard to power down at night.

  The tour has been renamed “No Apologies for A-Holes” and the concert T-shirt features a close-up of the funny man’s multimillion-dollar hand not in his mouth, but delivering a big middle-finger fuck you.

  The shows themselves are amazing. It is theater-in-the-round in places more accustomed to tractor pulls and motocross, fifteen thousand capacity minimum, and the funny man stalks the stage like an animal on a chain. It is crazy to do comedy in such an atmosphere, nonsensical; the connection between performer and audience nonexistent. And yet it works. Because of the lighting he cannot make out a single person, but he knows they’re there because of the cheering.