Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker

by Finder, Henry

  But I don’t want to get bogged down in generalizations about what’s wrong with their relationships to make them so desperate for a myth. Let me just take some of the specific stories they’ve been reporting, and deal with those. This one guy, a foreign correspondent who has actually moved into our building, has been saying he often sees a queue outside our apartment door—as he puts it, “like in Eastern Europe.” From what we’ve heard, he goes into vivid detail about long lines of depressed-looking people shifting from foot to foot, wearing shabby clothes, carrying pathetic little parcels and lunchboxes, etc. He says one time a dowdy woman in a babushka, with a heartbreakingly small chicken she was dangling by the feet, told him tearfully that she’d been waiting outside our door for over two hours.

  Now, Ed and I have been victims lately of a certain amount of economic sabotage—mainly from the Manhattan Cable TV company, Con Edison, and the phone company—and more than likely what this guy saw was a few repairmen, etc., who had failed to show up at the assigned time and then, hearing a radio or something in the apartment, assumed we were home and hung around trying to get in. As for the all too colorful touch of the woman with the undersized chicken: first of all, it was a Cornish game hen, Ed’s favorite food; and second of all, the woman was his mother (who would be astonished to hear the word “dowdy” applied to herself, or “babushka” to the Hermès scarf she wears to cover her curlers). She had come over to cook dinner for Ed’s birthday while we went to a movie, and she accidentally locked herself out when she went into the hall (absent-mindedly holding the game hen), thinking she heard a burglar.

  It’s true that Ed and I have some problems in the area of consumer goods. We wouldn’t dream of minimizing that. And if some of our visitors get disenchanted when they see us using paper towels for napkins because we ran out—granted, they have a valid point, and we’re working on a better-organized central system of supply. But lately one of Ed’s ex-girlfriends—who of course claims that she always wished us the best and feels just awful being obliged to say anything negative about us—has been blabbing it around that we’re so unhappy we don’t even have enough faith in our relationship to invest in the basic necessities. She made her observations on a couple of transient visits to our place while I was away on business and Ed let her come over out of the goodness of his heart—and, I might add, her idea of “basic necessities” is a decadent bourgeois fantasy. She has gotten enormous mileage out of recounting how shocked she was when she saw that we don’t have a toaster. For her information, we make toast in a frying pan because we prefer it that way.

  Another thing these reports always mention is the bribes. They say Ed’s and my relationship is corrupted by bribery at every level. One story that comes up over and over (always in the same words, curiously enough) is that I was seen going to various Village stores, buying stuff, and getting it wrapped up in pathetic little parcels, and then later that evening was seen giving the same parcels to Ed as a bribe to keep him at home. Again, the details are accurate as far as they go, but the story fails to mention that it was Ed’s birthday eve, when (using money we could have spent on a toaster) we threw a huge birthday party, at which some of the guests apparently got too drunk to put what they saw into context. On top of which, when their own rowdiness provoked a noise complaint from upstairs, they went and reported the next day that Ed and I were destabilizing our neighbors.

  Then there’s the stuff about low morale—how Ed and I have such a demoralizing effect on each other that neither of us has been able to make a dentist’s appointment for the entire year we’ve been together. The woman who’s the source of this news may not have realized, as she flipped through our appointment books while Ed was in the bathroom, that we have our own priorities and are not in the habit of going to the dentist right around the time of Ed’s birthday, or on other days when we have a lot on our minds—for example, when my birthday is coming up.

  Oh, well—whatever we do or don’t do is grist for their mill now that this revisionist line about us has set in. If Ed pinches me on the bottom in public, it’s seen as evidence that we have a degenerate, sexist relationship—which makes us hypocrites into the bargain, since that’s the kind of relationship we set out not to have. It doesn’t occur to people that if Ed pinches me on the bottom, maybe he’s doing it for exactly that reason—that he’s being ironic.

  I could go through every one of these stories—the one about us being seen drunk on the street (it was Ed’s birthday, for heaven’s sake!), the one about me being seen at midnight wearing dark glasses and looking “alienated” (I’d simply had too much to drink), etc. I could go bing bing bing, right down the list, but what good would it do? People just aren’t skilled at interpreting what they see, and we can’t spend the rest of our lives correcting them. If some intelligent, attractive person wants to move in with us for a few months and really observe us with an open mind, great. Otherwise, everybody who’s interested can find out all they need to know by going to the Superba, where we still hang out, and looking at the front table, where recently Ed carved our initials in a heart. The heart was already there, along with a mess of other old carvings, and when Ed put our initials inside it, they looked raw and pale by comparison. He wanted to age them by rubbing them with cigarette ash, but I said no, I liked it that they looked fresh. I said all the other initials had probably been carved by people who hate each other now and are no longer even on speaking terms. Ed said I was right—that we were still new, even though the heart was old and ready-made.

  1984

  GEORGE W. S. TROW

  DO YOU KNOW ME?

  I WAS well known. I was so well known everyone knew me. I was the best-known person in the world. I put on my plaid shirt and my thick boots and the thin-wale corduroy pants and I was the best-known person in the world. And then I went slowly. I looked in the mirror. I wore the thin-wale corduroy pants because I think the thick-wale is effeminate. I went out my door. I went down the stairs. I lived on the second floor—no indoor entrance; I had to walk up and down outside stairs to get in and out. Outside stairs. My outside stairs. My weather-stained porch. Not a very pretty porch. No room for a nice chair. Paint peeling off, just like loneliness sloughing off the skin. Onto the sidewalk. I walked onto the sidewalk, watched the sidewalk, focussed on the sidewalk. I saw my thick boots only as a blur. So cracked, that sidewalk. The little shoots of grass, the roots of trees working the cement into dust. I was so well known that that sidewalk was well known.

  I was quite well known when I was still quite young. I had many friends. Bobbi and Sammi and Tadi and Ronee and Bilye. I had so many friends. I liked friends who were girls but had boys’ names, but ending in a different letter than a boy’s name would. That was the kind of friend I wanted, and that was the kind of friend I had. That was my preference. My preference was for people just like that. I wanted to be specific. I wanted to be so specific that no one would have any doubts. That was the only reason I was that well known. Because it was so specific. Because there wasn’t any doubt. People with a name like Sammi or Ronee or Jami or Tonee knew that kind of name was my preference. That made me well known.

  Would you know me if I showed you my papers? Would you know me if I showed you my Bulldog Editions? Would you know me if I showed you my Special Home Editions? Would you let me show you the Blue Final and the Final Blue? Will you glance at my papers? Will you have a look? Do you know me when you have a look? Do you know me when I call you on the phone? Do you know me when I walk on the sidewalk, when I watch the cracks? Do you lie there and think, “It’s him. He’s on the sidewalk”?

  Do you remember the texture of my nose? The slightly grainy texture, as though it had been rubbed and rubbed and rubbed? Do you have a general impression of my face—just that, a general impression? Nothing more than that? Just a vague feeling that the face is a type of face, a face of a type that a certain kind of person would have? Is it abstract, the way you feel, when I tried so hard to supply detail? I wanted everything so cl
ear, so specific. I went to so much trouble. I dressed in a certain way. I dressed three times. I put on my clothes and then I took them off, and then I put them on and then I took them off, and then I put them on in a final way that was very specific. Then I walked slowly. Keeping my eye on the pavement. I made the pavement so specific. I made my friends so specific. Sometimes it happened that they thought they were general, but they were wrong. I made them specific, down to the details. I knew all the details and went over them three times. That was my preference.

  Do you remember my preference? Do you remember the way I made them nervous? That was part of the preference. Do you remember the way I made them reluctant to wear their uniforms in public? That was part of my preference. So specific, my preference. So specific, the way the little uniforms looked under a big bulky coat. Would you know me if I wore a uniform? Would you know me if I wore a bulky coat? Would you know me if I moved a step closer? Would you know me if I took off my hat? Would you know me if I showed you a clipping? Would you know me if I took a clipping and circled my name so it would stand out, and then attached a small piece of white paper (with gum or mucilage) with my name typed out just like my name typed out on the Linotypes and on the wire services and on the special identification cards they require in so many places, typed out on plastic? Would you know me if I typed my name out? Would you know me if I asked you for a dime? Would you know me if I asked to walk you home?

  1979

  CHET WILLIAMSON

  GANDHI AT THE BAT

  History books and available newspaper files hold no record of the visit to America in 1933 made by Mohandas K. Gandhi. For reasons of a sensitive political nature that have not yet come to light, all contemporary accounts of the visit were suppressed at the request of President Roosevelt. Although Gandhi repeatedly appeared in public during his three-month stay, the cloak of journalistic silence was seamless, and all that remains of the great man’s celebrated tour is this long-secreted glimpse of one of the Mahatma’s unexpected nonpolitical appearances, written by an anonymous press-box denizen of the day.

  YANKEE STADIUM is used to roaring crowds. But never did a crowd roar louder than on yesterday afternoon, when a little brown man in a loincloth and wire-rimmed specs put some wood on a Lefty Grove fastball and completely bamboozled Connie Mack’s A’s.

  It all started when Mayor John J. O’Brien invited M. K. (“Mahatma”) Gandhi to see the Yanks play Philadelphia up at “The House That Ruth Built.” Gandhi, whose ballplaying experience was limited to a few wallops with a cricket bat, jumped at the chance, and 12 noon saw the Mayor’s party in the Yankee locker room, where the Mahatma met the Bronx Bombers. A zippy exchange occurred when the Mayor introduced the Lord of the Loincloth to the Bambino. “Mr. Gandhi,” Hizzoner said, “I want you to meet Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat.”

  Gandhi’s eyes sparkled behind his Moxie-bottle lenses, and he chuckled. “Swat,” quoth he, “is a sultanate of which I am not aware. Is it by any chance near Maharashtra?”

  “Say,” laughed the Babe, laying a meaty hand on the frail brown shoulder, “you’re all right, kiddo. I’ll hit one out of the park for you today.”

  “No hitting, please,” the Mahatma quipped.

  In the Mayor’s front-row private box, the little Indian turned down the offer of a hot dog and requested a box of Cracker Jack instead. The prize inside was a tin whistle, which he blew gleefully whenever the Bambino waddled up to bat.

  The grinning guru enjoyed the game immensely—far more than the A’s, who were down 3–1 by the fifth. Ruth, as promised, did smash a homer in the seventh, to Gandhi’s delight. “Hey, Gunga Din!” Ruth cried jovially on his way to the Yankee dugout. “Know why my battin’ reminds folks of India? ’Cause I can really Bangalore!”

  “That is a very good one, Mr. Ruth!” cried the economy-size Asian.

  By the top of the ninth, the Yanks had scored two more runs. After Mickey Cochrane whiffed on a Red Ruffing fastball, Gandhi remarked how difficult it must be to hit such a swiftly thrown missile and said, “I should like to try it very much.”

  “Are you serious?” Mayor O’Brien asked.

  “If it would not be too much trouble. Perhaps after the exhibition is over,” his visitor suggested.

  There was no time to lose. O’Brien, displaying a panache that would have done credit to his predecessor, Jimmy Walker, leaped up and shouted to the umpire, who called a time-out. Managers McCarthy and Mack were beckoned to the Mayor’s side, along with Bill Dinneen, the home-plate umpire, and soon all of Yankee Stadium heard an unprecedented announcement:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, regardless of the score, the Yankees will come to bat to finish the ninth inning.”

  The excited crowd soon learned that the reason for such a breach of tradition was a little brown pinch-hitter shorter than his bat. When the pin-striped Bronx Bombers returned to their dugout after the last Philadelphia batter had been retired in the ninth, the Nabob of Nonviolence received a hasty batting lesson from Babe Ruth under the stands.

  Lazzeri led off the bottom of the stanza, hitting a short chop to Bishop, who rifled to Foxx for the out. Then, after Crosetti fouled out to Cochrane, the stadium became hushed as the announcer intoned, “Pinch-hitting for Ruffing, Mohandas K. Gandhi.”

  The crowd erupted as the white-robed holy man, a fungo bat propped jauntily on his shoulder, strode to the plate, where he remarked to the crouching Mickey Cochrane, “It is a very big field, and a very small ball.”

  “C’mon, Moe!” Ruth called loudly to the dead-game bantam batter. “Show ’em the old pepper!”

  “I will try, Mr. Baby!” Gandhi called back, and went into a batting stance unique in the annals of the great game—his sheet-draped posterior facing the catcher, and his bat held high over his head, as if to clobber the ball into submission. While Joe McCarthy called time, the Babe trotted out and politely corrected the little Indian’s position in the box.

  The time-out over, Grove threw a screaming fastball right over the plate. The bat stayed on Gandhi’s shoulder. “Oh, my,” he said as he turned and observed the ball firmly ensconced in Cochrane’s glove. “That was speedy.”

  The second pitch was another dead-center fastball. The Mahatma swung, but found that the ball had been in the Mick’s glove for a good three seconds before his swipe was completed. “Stee-rike two!” Dinneen barked.

  The next pitch was high and outside, and the ump called it a ball before the petite pundit made a tentative swing at it. “Must I sit down now?” he asked.

  “Nah, it’s a ball,” Dinneen replied. “I called it before you took your cut.”

  “Yes. I know that is a ball, and I did swing at it and did miss.”

  “No, no, a ball. Like a free pitch.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Wasn’t in the strike zone.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “So you get another swing.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you miss you sit down.”

  “I just did miss.”

  “Play ball, Mister.”

  The next pitch was in the dirt. Gandhi did not swing. “Ball,” Dinneen called.

  “Yes, it is,” the Mahatma agreed.

  “Two and two.”

  “That is four.”

  “Two balls, two strikes.”

  “Is there not but one ball?”

  “Two balls.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “And two strikes.”

  “And if I miss I sit down.”

  Ruth’s voice came booming from the Yankee dugout: “Swing early, Gandy baby!”

  “When is early?”

  “When I tell ya! I’ll shout ‘Now!’ ”

  Grove started his windup. Just as his leg kicked up, the Bambino’s cry of “Now!” filled the park.

  The timing was perfect. Gandhi’s molasses-in-January swing met the Grove fastball right over the plate. The ball shot downward, hit the turf, and arced gracefully into the air toward Grove. “Run, Peew
ee, run!” yelled Ruth, as the crowd went wild.

  “Yes, yes!” cried Gandhi, who started down the first-base line in what can only be described as a dancing skip, using his bat as a walking stick. An astonished Grove booted the high bouncer, then scooped up the ball and flung it to Jimmie Foxx at first.

  But Foxx, mesmerized by the sight of a sixty-three-year-old Indian in white robes advancing merrily before him and blowing mightily on a tin whistle, failed to descry the stitched orb, which struck the bill of his cap, knocking it off his head, and, slowed by its deed of dishabille, rolled to a stop by the fence.

  Gandhi paused only long enough to touch first and to pick up Jimmie’s cap and return it to him. By the time the still gawking Foxx had perched it once more on his head, the vital vegetarian was halfway to second.

  Right fielder Coleman retrieved Foxx’s missed ball and now relayed it to Max Bishop at second, but too late. The instant Bishop tossed the ball back to the embarrassed Grove, Gandhi was off again. Grove, panicking, overthrew third base, and by the time left fielder Bob Johnson picked up the ball, deep in foul territory, the Tiny Terror of Tealand had rounded the hot corner and was scooting for home. Johnson hurled the ball on a true course to a stunned Cochrane. The ball hit the pocket of Cochrane’s mitt and popped out like a muffin from a toaster.