by Michael Ryan
Little Tokyo is in downtown LA, but Little Little Tokyo is in West LA, bordering Santa Monica: two blocks off Sawtelle Boulevard north of Olympic consisting exclusively of Japanese restaurants, karaoke bars, grocery stores, video stores, and shops selling herbal medicine. Don and I met there for our weekly lunch at Asahi Ramen: a big bowl of noodles, vegetables, chicken, and steamed wontons for $6.95: cheap, delicious, filling, and healthy: the best buy in town. It’s ten minutes from Madge’s. I was early, and claimed a table by the window in advance of the lunchtime crowd. I had brought Angela’s file to show to Don, and opened it to look at the photos of her again. She didn’t look like Sabine. That is, she did but didn’t. They were like pictures of her twin, except she didn’t have a twin. Same body, different soul. Then there was the odd coincidence: Angela’s freshman year at UCLA was my last year in graduate school at UCLA. I finished coursework for a PhD but like almost everyone else in my class and since, I couldn’t get a tenure-track teaching job. I was a teaching assistant for four years. My freshman composition classes became more like stand-up routines as I did more open mics around town at night and less research on my advisor’s idea of a dissertation, “Phallocentrism in Restoration Comedy” (which I referred to as “Sheridan’s Schlong”). Angela wasn’t a student in any of my composition classes, but she could have been in the 800-seat lecture class for which I was one of sixteen TAs. She could have known who I was even if I didn’t know her. A disturbing idea.
Even more disturbing was my response to Angela’s story. I could see her mother watch her father blow his brains out, could see him crawling to the gun so he could shoot himself again. Her mother had killed herself exactly like her father— what does that do to you? And on Angela’s eighteenth birthday? It seemed unimaginably cruel. And if both of your parents kill themselves, how do you keep from killing yourself? Does it terrify you that you will kill yourself someday, that this fate is somehow inside you, part of your DNA? I started asking these questions, and of course they didn’t have answers. The problem was that they started to put me into Angela’s skin. Sheed was wrong. I could imagine her point of view. Having lost both parents like this, it was easy to understand why she would risk her life for her brother, to sacrifice anything to save him. Including me. She even seemed heroic. Whatever she had done in the years between her parents’ suicides and now, she had become a brave person. I recalled what she said to me in Malibu: “You do something to me that goes deep down,” and I had responded, “You too,” and meant it.
This is how my head was going when Don walked into Asahi Ramen and sat down across from me. A lucky thing, since the ravenous crowd outside waiting for lunch all seemed focused on my occupying a precious table for two to contemplate my situation instead of wolfing my lunch and freeing the table. There were only four tables for two in the whole restaurant. Because I hadn’t ordered, a couple outside separated from me by a quarter inch of plate glass had been glaring at me as if I were drowning a baby. Don looked upset. When he’s upset, it distracts him and his eyes look everywhere in the room but at you. Asahi Ramen is just not that interesting as interior design: it’s a twenty-five-by-fifteen box with a couple of dollar-fifty paper fans nailed to the walls. I asked him what was wrong.
He said, “Francine just called. She wants to stay in Maui with Doris for a few extra days. I think she’s really unhappy with her life. With me.”
“Did she say something?”
“Just that she’s having the best time since before we were married.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“She comes home from her lecture tours exhausted, the kids are starved for her and eat her alive, and she leaves for the next trip more exhausted than when she arrived. It never stops.”
“What can you do about it?”
“Nothing. My poems aren’t about to pull down 400 grand a year. Somebody’s got to be home with the kids occasionally besides the nanny. When Francine is home we have nothing left for each other.”
I just nodded sympathetically.
“Plus the way Jeb torments Emma drives Francine nuts and he’s worse when she’s home, probably because he wants all her attention. And of course Francine blames me for ‘not parenting him properly.’ ”
“Maybe you should take a vacation with her.”
“Good idea, but first we have to pay for this one.”
“Put it on my bill.”
“Sure, after your HBO special you can become my patron.”
The waitress came over and we ordered our noodles. She was a slight young woman with chopped black hair and a brilliant smile.
“At least you don’t have my problem,” I said to Don after the waitress left. “Sometimes I think there is a constant fuck movie running in my head. The world can’t be as I’m seeing it. Or I should say: them. Women, women, and more women. Even the ugly ones are beautiful.”
“Heh,” Don snorted. “Well, you live in the right town.”
“I even want to get the waitress’s phone number. How long do you think it would take me to learn Japanese?”
“What did Sheed have to say?” Don asked, ignoring my question.
I told him. He listened intently without any visible response.
“I knew you weren’t going to get arrested,” he said when I finished. “At least for this particular adventure. Anyway, Sheed would have gotten you off. If he could get my bonehead brother-in-law off, he could persuade NOW to give you the Future Husband of the Year Award for humping Angela Chase on your wedding day. That’s quite a story he told you about her. Quite a woman, this Angela Chase.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Don read my intonation.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“Yep. She did something to me. If you read this file, you’ll probably fall in love with her too. It doesn’t make any sense, of course. When did love make sense? Doris made sense.”
“You’ve got a funny idea of love, pal.”
“Who doesn’t?” I asked. “In the meantime, what am I supposed to do? I feel like screwing every female who isn’t incontinent or comatose. I got turned on by Krista yesterday. Krista! And then the babe who works for Sheed gives me her number. I think they can smell it when you’re producing testosterone. I think my gonads are on overdrive and the testosterone has flooded my brain pan.”
The noodles came. Don ate his while I whined. I said ever since I walked into the bank on Friday I have been living in the Twilight Zone. I told him everything, dumped it all. Don finished his whole bowl of noodles before I started mine. The couple outside the window next to my shoulder were apoplectic. They were called inside for their table and scowled at me as they passed. The guy had a ponytail and wore an expensive leather jacket and ratty Dodgers cap: a uniform that said, I’m in the Industry. I thought he was going to make a crack as he walked by, and, if he had, I think I would have punched him. I gave him my best high school tough-guy stare until he broke eye contact. I would have loved to make him pay for the last four days of my life.
Don wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.
“I’d suggest you check into a hospital, but you won’t do it,” he said.
“You’re right,” I answered.
“It’s just a lot of shit coming to a head at once.”
“Like a big zit,” I said. “Pop goes my skull.”
“Why don’t you go see your holy man?”
“I probably will. Make another suggestion.”
“Don’t have one. You feel suicidal?”
“I already told you: I feel horny.”
“Same thing in your case. If you act on it, you could get yourself in trouble, since I think that’s what you’re looking for. Has it ever occurred to you that the women you want most you like least? Everybody was pulling for you with Doris. Here was somebody your own age with an IQ of more than sixty. I was looking forward to some nice quiet adult evenings together playing Scrabble.”
I asked him to talk while I ate, before I was forcibly removed from my chair
by the ravenous crowd outside. I asked Don to tell me what he thought of my prospects with the HBO special, Charles’s Apollo gig, and Doris’s inevitable return. He thought I ought to take both the HBO special and the Apollo gig (work as therapy, plus pay my debts), and he admitted that he couldn’t predict what Doris was going to do (my problems would all be solved if she simply murdered me). I asked him if Francine had a key to Doris’s townhouse, since my computer and other valuable personal items were locked inside. He said that if Francine did, there was no way in God’s universe that he was going to give it to me without her permission. He valued his life slightly more than my possessions. Maybe he too would risk his life to ransom me if I were kidnapped, but giving me the key was not a risk: it was suicide. I asked him if he thought it was impossible that I could fall in love with Angela Chase. He said that since my dick was doing all my thinking, he couldn’t imagine why it would be smarter in her case than any other. But when he saw the look on my face, he added:
“I guess I’d have to read the file. Sheed has a gold mine idea here, like a reverse dating service: you get introduced to the person you’ve already fucked.”
“See, I don’t need a shrink,” I answered. “It’s cheaper to have lunch with you and find out how screwed up I am. I’m even going to buy lunch today, you’ve helped me so much.”
I paid and we left. After walking me to my car, Don gave me a hug—in his case, it was always a bear hug. I’m a reasonably big man—six feet, one eighty when I’m in shape—but Don was so much bigger that when he embraced me I felt like a child. He thumped me on the back with both hands, nearly crushing my shoulder blades.
“I’ll call you this evening,” he said. “You can call anytime until Thursday afternoon: that’s when Francine and Doris come home and throw your computer off the pier. After Thursday, let it ring once and hang up and I’ll call you back when the coast is clear.”
“Francine will think you’ve got a girlfriend.”
“Yeah, hundreds of them. I can barely swat them away they’re so thick. I hate to think about how she’s going to feel when she gets home and the kids descend on her. I’ll call you after I talk to her and pretend I’m glad she’s having so much fun without me.”
12.
It was the second time in as many hours that I sat in my car not knowing where to drive it. The plush contoured black leather interior of the Z seemed, appropriately, like a padded cell: at the split second between Don’s departure and my getting into my car, I was alone in the universe. Plus I had given him Angela’s file, so I couldn’t go home and read it over and over again and make myself feel even worse. But I decided to go home anyway. I could take Sparky for a walk, check my phone messages, and maybe pick up my gym bag and go work out.
I didn’t get to the gym and Sparky didn’t get his walk. There were two messages on my machine. The first was from Sheed via Tori:
Robert, hi. This is Tori. Mr. Sheed asked me to tell you that he has given your HBO contract to Mr. Keene, and that Mr. Keene will contact you after his review. Hey, and that’s super awesome you’re going to be on HBO! I am totally impressed. Well, I gotta go. You looked so sad when you left this morning I wanted to give you a big teddy-bear hug. Hope I see you at the club or something. Bye. Beep.
Number two:
Robert Wilder. Gleggi Ungar from Irvine Improv. I’ve booked a room for you at the Laguna Hotel for Tuesday and Wednesday nights, assuming you’ll be driving back to Santa Monica after your last show on Thursday. Would you call me if you’ve made other arrangements? Ken Mishima asked me to tell you how much he’s looking forward to your performances here. So am I. I’m a big fan. Please call if there’s anything I can do for you. Otherwise we’ll see you here at seven P.M. for the sound check. Have a safe drive down to Orange County.
I had completely forgotten about the Irvine Improv gig, and now I remembered that Doris and I had planned to drive back from Baja Monday so I could do it Tuesday night. Today was Monday. A Monday very different than the other Monday would have been. That life could change so fast like this was dizzying. But then I had done it myself, hadn’t I? I was the one that started this avalanche sliding down the hill.
Was I in any shape to perform? The show must go on, right? You just don’t cancel in this business or you put yourself out of business. Ken Mishima, the manager of Irvine Improv, was a good guy. I didn’t want to cancel on him. On the other hand, it would be worse to have a nervous breakdown on stage. Stand-up is just at the edge of a public nervous breakdown anyway. I’d rather drop acid and go skydiving. Before I walk on stage I’m terrified of going blank. I’ve never gone blank, but I’ve had panic attacks during performances which took me out of my body, so that I was somewhere on the ceiling watching my mouth move. But when I get into a groove on stage, everything disappears. That’s the pleasure, that’s why I do it. I come alive, I’m with the audience, it’s a dance: I lead, they follow. I don’t need to say how sexual it is. That’s obvious. When people laugh, it opens them up—the mouth opens, the breathing changes, body rhythm changes. It heals them. They live longer. It’s a cliché, but there’s no arguing with it: it’s all timing. The pain gets ex-pressed. Tension and release, just like sex.
That’s how I got hooked. I never wanted to be a scholar, but I loved teaching and stand-up is just like teaching without books and without decorum. You’re supposed to transgress, to reveal surprising, gritty truth, and do it lightly. It goes right to the heart of cherished cultural assumptions. If it doesn’t, it’s nothing—like Letterman and Leno: polite entertainment. There’s such a thin membrane between educating the audience and offending them. You have to make them love you without them thinking you’re trying. I have always believed that the only way to do that was in fact not to try. Let the audience make its own decision about me. I disagreed with Charles. Never would I take out a joke because the audience didn’t laugh. I’d move it, I’d change the delivery, I’d fiddle with the timing. But if it hit home for me, I wouldn’t take it out.
I loved the writing and performing but I didn’t like anything else about a comic’s life. I didn’t like traveling and I didn’t like drunks and I’m constitutionally incapable of promoting myself. When I meet somebody “important” I invariably offend them, just to get the issue settled. And what does a comic get when he makes it? A movie or a sitcom. I didn’t want a movie or a sitcom. Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy: they all quit stand-up. It burns you out, it’s too much stress. It can kill you—literally. I started out with those guys. They were all doing the same clubs I was in the early eighties. Now they’re them and I’m me. I don’t want what they have, I don’t want their lives, but when one of them has a big success, I think it should have been me. Envy: pure and nasty. I never told anyone that I really believe stand-up is the modern version of cultural wisdom transmitted around the campfire. I have a reputation for being at best cerebral and at worst arrogant. It hasn’t done me any good. After almost fifteen years in the business, I seem to have offended just about everybody with my superior “purist” attitude. But Bucket kept getting me gigs, one after another, treading water, not sinking and drowning. For all I knew, the Irvine Improv could be the last club date I would ever do.
So I’d take it. If I was going to self-destruct it may as well be on stage. Krista and I could share a room in the locked ward. Don was right. The work, and thoughts about the work, were the best way not to think about Angela Chase. Plus I needed the money. But there was no way I could perform in this state. Just the thought of performing made my heart start pounding, which made me remember to breathe, which made me remember Tran Hanh.
Mr. Hanh never made appointments or answered his phone. If you wanted to see him, you had to leave a message. If there were too many people coming on a certain day, he would return your call to gently suggest another day. This was the only concession he made to chronological time. But you could come anyway if you were willing to wait. When you met with him, you stayed as long as you wanted to. Onc
e I showed up at two P.M. and didn’t get to talk to him until six. He would simply continue to meet with people until there was no one left. If you didn’t want to wait that was fine. The people who felt they really had to see him waited. On this day, I would have waited a month.
As it turned out, I got in pretty quickly. There were only two people sitting on the mats in the anteroom, which was bare except for a discreet incense burner, a woven mandala on each of the walls, and a water cooler that dispensed a fresh fruit juice concoction of Mr. Hanh’s invention. The rule was silence. The idea was to be quiet and attend to your breathing. It worked. Usually by the time I saw Mr. Hanh, I already felt better than when I arrived. The two people before me were not a couple. The man was middle-aged, Mediterranean, short and stocky. He wore Michael Jordan’s basketball jersey, number 23, which revealed thick black hair that covered his shoulders and arms. His arms looked more like legs: short ugly legs, with forearms like hams. But the ugliest thing about him was a pink inch-wide scar from his collarbone up his neck to the tip of his chin. His throat had obviously once been cut, probably not by accident. I thought he must be proud of it to display it like that. However long he had been quiet and attentive to his breathing, he had an incredibly serene expression on his face, so that, despite his brutal scar and thick arms and hairy shoulders, he appeared happy.
The woman, too: she was in her sixties, sitting cross-legged in a horrible mallard-green pantsuit and heavy jewelry. Her hair had been laminated the color of a brass urn and looked almost as hard, as if it would ring if you tapped it with a quarter. One of my journalist friends used to say that Ronald Reagan had had his face lifted so many times that when he smiled you could see his skull. I thought of that when she smiled as I sat down on the mat across from her. But, like the ugly man, she seemed at peace, at least at this moment, in this place. I wondered what they had gone through in their lives before they landed here.