Until the Last Dog Dies

by Robert Guffey

  Danny’s a weird guy, a real shut-in. The only time he ever leaves his room is to go to the clubs. He lives in a small apartment with his dad, who’s a retired mechanic. I don’t know how he got the brain he did, but of all the comedians I know he’s the one most deserving of success. He’s kind of like a cross between Jackie Mason and Andy Kaufman, both wise and insane at the same time. He’s the gentlest soul you’ll ever meet, though it’s difficult to talk to him because he’s constantly in character. He has a hard time relating to people off-stage. That’s a common occupational hazard, I think.

  He got goofed on a lot as kid. Hell, which one of us didn’t? Danny claimed it was because of his last name. As a result he became obsessed with the JFK assassination. He’s fashioned a lot of jokes around it, more than you can possibly imagine. The one I remember the most is a little two-liner that goes: “Did you know that Oliver Stone is making a sequel to JFK? It’s called KFC, about the assassination of Col. Sanders.” He says it with such a straight face you almost believe it might be true.

  “You killed again,” Heather said as we slid into the seats on either side of her.

  I shrugged. I rapped my knuckles on the bar to get the bartender’s attention, then held up one finger. I don’t know why, but a beer tasted best right after a performance. “I think I sucked. I always think that.”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Heather said. “You know you were good. You think they were laughing out of politeness?”

  “I could’ve been better.”

  “You could always be better,” Heather said, tossing a peanut in the air and catching it on the tip of her tongue. She had a talented tongue. It was her best feature, in fact. “You could always be worse too,” she added. “You could be dead.” Heather was thirty-two, three years older than me. She wasn’t an attractive woman, she was just kind of average. She had mousy brown hair, hardly wore make-up and had a scrawny, underfed body. Nevertheless she had a way of shaping the space around her as if it belonged only to her, a way of moving across the room that announced to everybody in no uncertain terms: “I know exactly who I am, I don’t care what you think about me, and get the hell out of my way.” She had Attitude, with a capital A, and that more than made up for her plainness. Her looks grew on you after awhile. She had a beautiful smile, wide and bright and enticing. I think she’d had sex with about twelve different comedians on the L.A. nightclub circuit (none of them Danny or me) and in every case the relationship ended with her dumping him, not the other way around. I often wondered what it would be like to be her boyfriend, but I was also afraid of being eaten alive. One night when I’d had one too many drinks I made an awkward, fumbling pass at her that ended with Heather physically removing my hand from her left breast while suggesting various alternative placements for it like the garbage disposal or the inside of the microwave oven. It was kind of embarrassing. The night ended with me slinking out of her apartment while she visited the toilet. The next morning I called to apologize, but she quickly changed the subject. Neither of us had mentioned the incident since then.

  “What if I am dead?” I said. “What if we’re all dead and this is Heaven?”

  “Gee, wouldn’t that be Hell?” Heather said. She tossed another peanut into the air. This time it bounced off the side of her mouth and landed somewhere on the floor. “Shit!” she said and peered angrily at the floor, as if intent on retrieving the peanut and strangling it for its impudence.

  “The Peanut That Got Away,” Danny said into his beer. “Starring Hardy Kruger and Alec McCowen. Rank Pictures, Great Britain, 1957.”

  Another obscure reference. Sometimes I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

  I spun around on my stool and watched Karen Griffin performing for a few moments. She was telling a joke about political correctness: “You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that us queers should just get back in the fuckin’ closet. The world seemed less weird that way, don’t you agree?” The audience laughed and clapped. She was really winning them over. “I mean, have you ever heard of this children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies? It’s about two lesbians who raise a kid. I’m totally against that, man. I mean, shit, dykes can’t raise kids. After all, it says so in the Old Testament. Genesis I:I: ‘Dykes can’t raise kids.’ It’s right there on page one! Just the other day I saw a sequel called Heather Has TWELVE Mommies. Now, this is getting way out of hand. It was a pop-up book! I opened it up and these turkey basters flew out and almost hit me in the head. Shit, nearly knocked me out cold, man.”

  She had the audience in stitches. “She’s getting more laughs than I did,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Of course,” Heather said. “The audience is afraid she’s going to kill them if they don’t laugh.”

  Griffin did look scary. She insisted on wearing this skintight black body suit on stage, and her kinky hair was spiked out in all possible directions; the top of her head looked like the jumping jacks I used to play with as a kid. Even more scary were her eyes. She suffered from some weird condition that enabled her to bulge her eyes out of her head until they appeared to be as big as cue balls; this was both nauseating and funny at the same time. Her skin was as black as the depths of the Cayman Trench and her body impossibly lithe, as if she spent the majority of her time swimming deep underwater. She looked like the offspring of a mutant aquatic spider from another planet that had attacked and raped a human being on some lonesome road late one night out in the middle of nowhere. I would never say this to her face, of course.

  Heather might. I don’t think they were too fond of each other. I never knew why.

  “I think it has more to do with the fact that she’s god damn funny,” Danny said, responding to Heather’s snide remark. He turned around, planted his elbows on the bar behind him, and watched Griffin ripping into some poor heckler in the front row. “I want to marry her.”

  Both Heather and I stared at him in shock. Danny very rarely made any reference to women whatsoever, except perhaps in a comedic way. I wasn’t even certain he’d ever been on a date, though any guy on a stage tends to attract groupies, no matter how unappealing he is.

  “Are you high?” I said.

  “No,” Danny said very seriously, “I think I love her.” It was hard to tell when he was joking or not. He brushed his hair back with his hands, then smoothed out his flannel shirt. “After her set I’ve decided I’m going to ask her out on a date.”

  “She’s a dyke,” Heather said. She had this bemused look on her face that was rather hilarious.

  “I know,” Danny said. “That just makes her all the more intriguing.”

  Heather glanced up at the ceiling and rolled her eyes.

  “He’s got to be pulling our legs,” I said to Heather.

  “Don’t you bet on it, kiddo,” she said, tossing yet another peanut into the air. This one dropped right down her throat. She almost choked on it. For a moment I thought I was going to have to perform the Heimlich Maneuver. I began slapping her on the back as she coughed and sputtered like a backfiring car. Fortunately, just as Griffin was finishing her set, Heather got her coughing under control. When I turned to look at Danny he was already walking toward the stage. Heather and I watched him approach Griffin as she stepped off the side of the stage, while behind her Lenny grabbed the mike and began doing his usual patter in between acts. We saw Danny lean toward her ear in order to be heard over the noise. After talking to her for no more than twenty seconds, Griffin flashed a wide ivory-white smile (the first time I’d seen anything even remotely resembling a smile on anything even remotely resembling her face) at which point she extended her elbow (I thought, My God, she’s going to disable his floating rib with a quick jab in the side!) and allowed Danny to slip his arm through hers. They strolled off toward the backstage area arm in arm, looking like long-separated sweethearts.

  Heather and I remained silent for quite a while. I felt like a witness to a rare religious miracle.

  At last I muttered, “That must’ve
been staged.”

  “I don’t think so,” Heather said, turning her back on Lenny’s patter and addressing her beer mug once again.

  “Excuse me, what’re you talking about? You think Danny has the ability to sweet talk the Insect Queen of Venus into a candlelit dinner within twenty fucking seconds?”

  “Yes.”

  I sighed and knocked back a swig of beer. “God damn it, you’re probably right. The universe really does work like that, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s an odd-shaped world full of odd-shaped folk.”

  “Why don’t I have that ability? I mean, I’m a professional comedic linguistic technician. Words are my stock in trade, fachrissakes! I should be able to flap my lips and make women roll over and play dead, right?”

  Heather shook her head. “It’s gotta be in your genes. You’re good enough to make people laugh, but you’re not persuasive.” She began waving her finger in the air as if she were about to make a brilliant philosophical point. “Now Hitler … Hitler, on the other hand, was the exact opposite.” She took another sip of her beer. “He was persuasive, but he couldn’t make people laugh.”

  “How do you know?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno, have you ever seen footage of Hitler crackin’ out witty one-liners, making all those wide-eyed German boys in their sexy S.S. uniforms bust a gut over jokes about sauerkraut or Volkswagens? No, you just see him waving his fist around, complaining about Jews and taxes and things like that.”

  “Maybe they just never show the footage of him being funny.”

  “So you think they’re hiding it? The Jewish media is suppressing evidence of Hitler’s scary talents, is that it?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Yes.”

  As Heather finished her beer Danny and Griffin emerged from the back of the club with their jackets on, looking like they were primed for a night on the town. Griffin was beaming like a little girl in love for the first time, falling all over Danny as if she couldn’t bear not to be in physical contact with him for more than two seconds.

  They strolled right up to us. Danny said, “Well, we’re heading on over to Ye Rustic Inn for a few drinks. You want to join us?”

  Ye Rustic Inn was a funky little bar in Los Feliz where some of us hung out after our gigs were finished, swapping jokes and offering constructive (and/or deconstructive) criticism on each other’s performances. I was about to accept Danny’s offer to join them, just to observe the synergy between an angry black lesbian and a neurotic white shut-in, when Griffin suddenly leaned over Danny’s shoulder and said, “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but why don’t you just keep your ass planted where it is, okay? I want Danny all to myself.” She slid her hands down Danny’s chest and ran the tip of her tongue over his ear lobe.

  Somewhat taken aback, I replied, “Well, hell, I didn’t want to go anywhere with you two anyway.”

  “And I have to wash my hair tonight,” Heather said, not even turning around to face them. She was watching them in the mirror behind the bar.

  Danny said, “Well, uh, I’ll see you guys later then … I guess,” as Griffin dragged him toward the exit.

  When the doors closed behind them I turned to Heather and said, “Well, how do you like that? Can you believe that?”

  “Yes.” Heather paid the bartender for her beer.

  “You’re certainly taking this in stride.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t affect me.”

  “Doesn’t affec—? Are you crazy? This affects everyone in the world. The mantle of the Earth is shifting, the galactic center dissolving, the universe retracting at a faster pace than ever before due to the mere possibility that Griffin and Danny might procreate tonight and spawn who knows what kind of evil homunculi. Can you even begin to comprehend how this might alter the gene pool?”

  “Let’s hope they stick to the shallow end of the gene pool, far enough away from us more highly evolved primates to not derail us from our upward spiralling path.” She rose from her stool.

  “Hey, where’re you going so early?”

  She sighed. “Home, I guess, then to bed.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a long night, hasn’t it? I’m not doing much of anything either. You know … thought I’d go back to my little rabbit hole, maybe heat up a can of Campbell’s chicken soup, the kind with 33% more chicken in it, sprinkle some Saltine crackers on top … you know, watch the snow on my black and white TV I bought at a yard sale, then retire to my mattress on the floor for a restless, lonely night’s sleep.”

  Heather and I stared at each other for a few seconds, me with an affable smile on my boyish face, she with a totally unreadable, stoic expression. So forceful was the orgone energy in the room at that moment I could feel the sexual tension exploding out of our bodies like forks of lightning, interlocking, spinning, dancing an electrical dance. I knew I had her within my grasp. I just needed to close the deal with a few smooth, well-spoken words.

  Before I could open my mouth, however, Heather said, “Well, hope you have fun, then,” and left the club.

  I watched the doors swinging shut … back and forth, back and forth … then returned my attention to my glass of beer. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the bartender snickering over my rejection, so I glared at him insanely like Mohamed Atta staring at the Twin Towers right before blowing them to smithereens. He decided to clean the opposite end of the bar, leaving me alone with my pain. I dropped a peanut into the glass, watched it break the surface tension, studied the resultant ripples that spread out quickly in concentric circles. I sighed and thought: Most people call me bi-sexual, because whenever I try to have sex with them they say, “Bye-bye, bye-bye!” I giggled into the beer and figured I might as well add that to my repertoire. Yeah, might as well.

  Later that night, as I was sitting at home eating a bowl of Campbell’s chicken soup with Saltine crackers sprinkled on top, I heard a strange news report on the radio (the snow made watching TV impossible). A major university had just released the results of a five-year-long scientific study; the scientists involved had come to the conclusion that the deterioration of the ozone was due not to the burning of fossil fuels, but to the methane in cow farts. I glanced at the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. Nope, it was the middle of September. It was a serious report! Imagine the amount of tax-payer’s dollars that had been used to fund such a thing. Why didn’t the scientists just break down laughing halfway through the first day? That would’ve ended the whole charade right there. More disturbing still was the fact that the newscaster didn’t erupt into wild guffaws while reporting the silly thing. I often wondered if most of the human race wasn’t suffering from some kind of strange disease, an anti-evolutionary trait that prevented them from detecting the mad humor that surrounded them each and every day.

  Little did I know that this would prove to be more than just idle fancy.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Last Gasp of a Narcissist

  (September 22, 2014)

  Two nights later I played a different club, Prospero’s in West Hollywood. The crowd was smaller, the weather cooler. I went on at eight p.m., right after the M.C. described me as “a cross between Aristotle and Groucho Marx, except not as dead. Please give a big round of applause for the one and only … Elliot Greeley!”

  I loved performing at Prospero’s. The atmosphere was so much more relaxed. I could always expect an intelligent crowd. They allowed me to do what I liked best, which was to just let my mind wander in a kind of stream-of-consciousness rant, relating strange incidents that might have happened to me only hours before going on stage. Every sentence didn’t have to end with a punchline. Some of my best performances had been at Prospero’s.

  Tonight I put two wooden stools on the stage. On the top of one stool I placed an old cassette recorder I’d found at a thrift store in Long Beach. I hit play, then strolled over to the other end of the stage, picked up the microphone,—no e
motion in my face whatsoever—sat down, and began chatting just as the tape kicked in. On the right side of the stage my recorded voice attempted to tell a sad story in a way that was funny—but in a pathetic sort of way; meanwhile, on the left side of the stage, I told the story seriously, without once cracking even the wisp of a smile.

  I don’t want to bring you down or anything but, uh, when I was eighteen I tried to commit suicide? I’ve been seeing an analyst about it for three years. He says I suffer from delusions of persecution, but I’m sure he’s just saying that to destroy me. So far the only real thing we’ve learned is that I have an uncontrollable urge to run through red lights because I was born Caesarian.

  Anyway, one night when my parents were out of the house I decided to … y’know, off myself or whatever. So I pop about a hundred pills … actually, it was a hundred and one pills because I figured I just might need that extra pill. So, you know, I’m just kickin’ it, watchin’ some TV, trippin’ out on this whole death thing, when I think, “Hm … maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea after all.” So I call my girlfriend Tina.

  Let me tell you, Tina was the most beautiful, loyal girl in the world. She’d do anything for me. But her parents controlled her every move. Her mom would monitor the phone to make sure I wasn’t calling too much. So tonight Tina’s mom decides to answer the phone… .