The OK End of Funny Town

by Mark Polanzak

  I put my arms down to my sides. I hung my head. Then, it all came clear. I lifted my finger to the doorbell, pressed on the concave button gently, sensually, pushing inward, sliding my fingertip down its slick face with all my love. Quiet. Anna lifted her beautiful head, and her eyes, now on fire, blinded me.

  READY SET

  You made it. Good. I need your help with this, friends. Mom, just stand back, don’t worry. Okay. We’re here in the field where I first kissed you, Laura. Remember? You see the cyclical symbolism to this spot? A first and a last. Here, in this endless stretch of toxic green grass in every direction, help me set the scene. And, just for depth, for one moment, take in the brown tepee, frosting-topped mountains lining the northern horizon, defining an end to this place. Hey, that’s great: the two porcelain-white clouds have arrived. Notice how they’re strapped like cottony earmuffs on either side of the sun, the sun that is tacked to the circus-tent-blue sky like a yellow button. The clouds look just how I wanted: one comedy face, one tragedy. You can see it, right? Just look, think, think of me, think of how you feel about me. I am leaving. I am taking off this very minute. It is good and bad. Good for me, maybe. That’s what we think, say, repeat. Got to go. I have a destiny. Sad, though. Definitely sad. We know that. The truth is always a mixture.

  Now, hand me that ladder, Jack. Perfect, an eighteen-rung wooden job. Set it here, right in the middle of the field. Oh, Laura, don’t be sad. Here, quick hug. You’ll see. This is going to work. I just want it to go right. Now, Adam, I am going to climb this ladder, and when I do, I want you to remember every time we died laughing—all at once. A good memory to recall is the time when you walked into our apartment, and there on the black and white checkered kitchen floor, I had laid out a full outfit of my clothes in a human shape: empty, armless, blue button-down shirt, one sleeve bent into a wave; empty, feetless black shoes pointed outward below the bottom of my empty, legless jeans; and an empty, headless hat and wristless wristwatch set to midnight, and I groaned from the living room, hidden from you, “I melted, dude.” I melted away. Or when we were on the balcony, and you showed me some constellations, and I shouted, upset with wonder, “How could the Milky Way belt be our own galaxy!” Like, how the fuck can we see what we, our own planets, our own existences, our own little lives are inside of? And you explained, pretty nicely, that it is like sitting in the shallow end of a pool and looking straight out. You can see the whole pool: surface, bottom, sides, but you are also in it. You said, here we were, looking up at the deep end of the galaxy, straight out to the end of everything, staring up and out, far … staring at the end, the other side, the great beyond, from this little warped balcony, just us … drunk. You ended it with “drunk,” and I thought that was perfect, because we were there, and we were doing all that big, cosmic shit, but we were also just drunk, you know? So, maybe, start with one of those two memories, where we laugh together. A tiny joke. A grand, godlike guffaw.

  This goes for all of you: each and every one of you has a teary, perfect, sentimental, but also funny and really real letter hidden under your pillow. So just when you think you’ve heard the last from me, I’ll slay you all again with a torrent of unabashed emotion, saying everything we couldn’t in person. It is tactfully written of course. I’ll be the last thing on your minds as you drift off to dreams of us getting together again to do something normal: get a beer, or just sneeze and notice that I am right there to say, “bless you.” I’m right next to you in an everyday situation, buttoning my shirt, smiling. But this dream of normal hanging out will feel like our own secret hiding place, a secret ghostly feeling of home, of comfort. You’re going to see me wink at you in your dreams for a long time to come. I hope our dreams mix. I hope I wander into yours, when you dream of me. I’ll take over my part in your dream, because I’m dreaming of you in that same, lovely, normal life we had. A fantasy phone line crossing of dreams. Dream that I float in through your open bedroom window, that I smile at you … Remember me …?

  Mom, I need you to be filled with pride now. Proud, remember. You’re thinking of me getting on the bus for the first time in kindergarten. You’re saying goodbye to me, going off to do the ten hundred things I’ve done and that you’ve eased me into, with worry, but pride, remember. The ideal face for this moment is one that is starting to be overcome by tears of joy. This is my destiny. Picture me: here, look through the frame I’m making with my fingers. I’m draped in medals, on center stage, inside a stadium that is so grand that the dome touches clouds, and it is full up, all full up with fans, reverent students, professors, government officials, news teams, and they are all hushed, waiting for me to speak to them, but all I do is thank you, Mom. Thank you, Mom. You were the one who got me here. Without you, I couldn’t have dreamed of all this … and all that. Your little boy is a man. And you’ve always got something on me, because when the milkman came, and I opened the door, and he handed me the bottle of milk when I was, like, three years old, I dropped it and it shattered on our foyer floor. I cried, feeling like I was wrong, and you comforted me, explaining that I was okay. You were a little taken aback by my reaction, but you taught me that lesson that so many people don’t understand. Move on. No use crying. Unless the tears are triumphant, proud tears, like you are conjuring now. Good. Good dress, too, Mom. Simple, elegant, black. Your hair is catching the wind very nicely. Good. The age-lines on your face are all the years I owe you. I will get it all, and I will give it back to you. Know this. Perfect. Stay there, a little behind the crowd of my friends: Adam, Jack, and Laura. You can easily take a step back and let me go. Perfect. Hold it.

  Your job is tough; I’m not going to lie, Jack. But if anyone can do it, it’s you. Here, take this rope and grapnel. You are the strongest. You always were the best athlete. Big, blue varsity letters on your jacket. You’re precise, too. Always teaching me a game to play, beating me, encouraging me to get better. Remember when we made up those, like, soldier-war courses in my basement, with tennis balls flying through the dusty light; old, crumbling desks and chairs acting as barricades over the concrete floor. We invented a point system for advancement and retreat, where the goal was to grab the flag and get to the end without the other shooting you down with gun-shaped hands? Remember? I do. You always won. I would slump over the dusty cardboard boxes, filled with dusty photo albums, falling slowly across long-neglected weight benches or sofa arms leaking their fluff. I wilted, collapsing, clutching my chest in the dusty light of the moldy basement. We’ve known each other for so long, man. Somehow, we stuck with each other. How? With all those other friends fading away and away, one after the other, we stayed together. How? Wonder about that as I climb the ladder. But then shake your head, say, without words, with only a gesture and moan, looking down, kicking a rock: “I guess this is it. All these years fly. Go on, good soldier.” You, too, buddy. Then, at that moment, you must heave the rope and grapnel up over the sun and snag it good. It has to stick. It has to support me. The rope is long enough; I’ve measured it from the top of the ladder to the sky. This has to happen before the earth rotates, and the sun gets too close overhead. I need a good fulcrum, enough tension to yank me away. So, don’t think you can overdo it. I know you can do this. You are an honest, workhorse friend. Anything for me, right? You are capable. I always envied your determination. A big compliment that I want to leave for you. Wherever I wind up, whatever I meet out there, know that I believe you could be doing what I’m doing, but doing it better, because I trust you more than I trust myself. It’s okay to get cheesy. This is it, man. You big lug, you got a job to do. I’m stepping up now. When I am standing on the top rung—you know the part with the little warning against standing up there—that’s when you must heave the rope, hook the grapnel into the sun. You see it, right? Look right at it. Let it burn your retina for a moment. Blaze this image of me into your head. I’ll be silhouetted, but I will be smiling about our friendship. Do something big in my absence. Here I go. Handshake when we should’ve hugged.

>   Last night, we did it right, friends. I’ll pause on the third rung to say this. Last night, the night before I leave, we just sat around with some beers on the kitchen floor, backs resting against emptied cabinets and emptied drawers, looking over photos with turned-up edges, laughing, and telling stories. No one mentioned what we all knew: I’m gone in a day. We just wanted one more night of goodness. And it was. I’ll touch my heart now to show you all that I’m serious, that I’m touched. Another good night to take along with me. Adam doing that trick with his eyes, where it looks like they’re gone, rolled back in his head. Jack extinguishing everybody’s cigarettes when he notices they’re not quite out, always helping to see things through to their proper ends, snuffing them. Laura informing us of how the French philosophize our climaxes—les petites morts. Good work, friends. And, Mom, a last good homecooked meal, your chicken and mashed potatoes, a joke about me having to eat more vegetables, as if it were a concern now. Did you really think you could convince me, even now? Our good dog begging for table food. Me giving it to her, with a wink—I mean, what could you do? I’m leaving. I can cheat a little. Then, you sitting me down—serious for a moment—giving me a feather, mentioning how you have this thing about feathers you find, which I never knew, all this time, something that has to do with Dad. After he died, you started seeing feathers everywhere and collecting them. A piece of heaven. He’s okay. We’re okay, aren’t we, Mom? Well, that feather is in my breast pocket, and if anyone asks about it, it’s personal, it’s family, it’s a keepsake from my mom, and somehow, from Dad, too. Yeah, that’s from Dad, too. Enough feathers make a wing. I’ll believe in this with you. It is good to believe in something spiritual, I think, now. Thank you for everything. For the good and the bad we shared. You were there. I hope I was there for you. A son who knows his mom like a grateful cub, like a friend when the leaves fall and nights end with embers.

  Okay. Laura, do you know what to do? Because I’m already up on the third rung. When I get to the fifth, you have only a second to touch my ankle before I’m out of reach entirely. I won’t be looking for it, because by that time I will have resigned myself to leaving. Break your countenance, run forward, and touch me, turn me around for a kiss, one last one. For God’s sake, there are never too many last kisses. I will wish that you would spin around, letting me see every side of you. Your face, your friendship, your intimacy, your hair, your newness each time for me. Let me see you in the ways I’ve seen only one person. Spin every which way that I know I love. One last time. So, remember, fifth rung. I won’t be thinking of it. Maybe you’ll whisper into my ear, with your hands clasped, resisting the urge to grab me down, “Stay …” But that’s up to you. It would really add to the scene. If you do say it, I’ll say something like, “Oh, baby. I’ll come back for you.” I won’t know, neither will you, if that is true, but it could be. I’ll hope and you’ll hope, while I’m up on the fifth rung, that it will come true, but after that, we’ll just have the guesses at night, the sappy songs that make us believe for another sharp shining second. I’ll miss you, though, baby. I love tracing your back with my fingers, our little game of spelling out words on your spine that only you can understand: “Soul,” “Mate.” How funny it is to remember how we met. At high school. I had fainted right there on the bench while we were waiting to go home after school. You gently woke me, introduced yourself. Funny how people meet and then how they end up in love. End up in the middle of a hundred loves with one person. Isn’t it? Time flies. I’ll remember your eyes, close to mine, while kissing. Yeah, I do open my eyes. Your closed eyelids pressed gently over a kissing, joyful face. I’d sink into the sand with you. But I’ve got to do something now. You’re in here with me. Remember, fifth rung. XO, baby, XO.

  Jack, you hold that rope taut when it comes to it. Laura, you know your part. Mom, stay there, just like that. Adam, when I’m at the top, I want you to wave. Just wave, because we’re cool, man. We’ve always just been cool. Nothing fazes us, right? This one does, but we’re going to be very cool with this one. We will smile, separately, someday, secretly, thinking that we were better friends than we ever let on. So just wave. Play it cool, bro. Here I go. But, just as I leave, you got to take that boom box, hit play, place it down on the grass, and let that beautiful song, the song with that triumphant climax, play so loud that the speakers rattle. I want that beat and those chords screaming through that little boom box we used to take to the park. So just hit play. I’ve cued it all up. A perfect soundtrack. Me, up there, a silhouette against the sun and sky, with those notes floating around us all. And just when the part comes that everyone closes their eyes to, the part where everyone bows their heads for a moment of silence, when everyone imagines the earth exploding with heart-shaped paper-cut-out fireworks, I’ll be gone. You’ll drop your head on the one, start to hum the notes, and on the two, you’ll look up, trail off with the humming. I’ll be a dot on the horizon. Be cool, man. Here goes nothing, right?

  At the first beat of a song’s beauty burst, the bass drum—BOOM—do I know my part? It’s the easiest one. Tug the rope: it’s sturdy, has weight, so thick and strong that my fingers don’t touch my thumb. The rope, it stretches impossibly high, up and out. I can feel that the rope has impossible tension, a tremendous force, aching to yank me from my spot. All I have to do is hold on tight, pull myself up an inch, maybe less, get my heels up, get onto my toes, and place my feet in the air, and the rope, the anchor, the momentum, the power will do the rest. Then, all I have to do is close my eyes, breathe, feel the sharp, quick sinking and rising, the up and down of my stomach as the wind rushes past my face fast and loud, feel the creaking power of the enormous rope, hold on tight. Speed. Out and down. And then all I have to do is let go at the top of the pendulum’s arc, let go and let the force fling me up over the mountains, arms stretched. Fly. Just let go. Just pull up. Just step out. Just say goodbye. That’s all it takes. There’s nothing to it, really. Everything’s in place. Just go. Just go. Just let go. Step away: it will work. Say goodbye. Look over everyone’s face. Look. Smile. Just let go. Blow a kiss. Go.

  ORAL

  He’s down there doing his usual, which is a mix of entering her with his tongue and vaguely kissing her pussetta stone, and she’s up there doing her yoozh: moaning with head back and eyes closed, really trying, but they both know where this is headed: nowheresville.

  Wes gives up before losing all feeling in his jaw. “Did you?” he says while swiping at his cheeks with a fist, a moment he’s always found awkward.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She places her palms flat on her forehead, elbows to the slowly spinning ceiling fan.

  Tonight’s sex-kerplunk caps off only two weeks of anticlimax, but they’ve already established it’s her fault. He’s got a suspicion, though, that Anna’s just protecting his feelings of inadequacy. He’s gotten her off before, and, on the flip side, even her worst, seemingly obligatory trips down have eventually finished him off. It’s mysterious.

  “I want ice cream,” she says, sitting up in sudden determination.

  Wes hears: I want to scream, but quickly realizes sex is no longer on her front burner. “I’ll get it,” he says, buttoning his shirt. “Just wait. You stay.”

  Then, Wes is reaching for the keys and feeling Anna’s eyes on him as he walks out the door.

  Beholding the colorful array of ice cream brands and flavors, Wes drifts.

  If she really wants babies, it’s not very persuasive to suddenly go frigid like this. One day, they’re twentysomethings having a roll in the hay, the next she’s talking about growing old together, teaching Junior how to throw a curve. He wasn’t expecting that.

  Plus, there’s nothing less sexy than babies. He’s not ready. And “babies” makes him think of his and Anna’s bodies as biological things, things that are for procreation. He shudders at a lightning-quick Miracle of Life flashback. High school Growth Education class. Placenta?

  She mentioned the B-word in bed of all places
, too. Maybe it wouldn’t bother him so much if, right after she brought the whole thing up, he didn’t thoughtlessly blurt out, “I want kids, too.” He’s always erred on the side of being a liar rather than admitting he’s a jerk. But maybe it isn’t jerky to have a fear. Something will go wrong, if he is a father. If only he had some patience, some nerve. If only he thought about the ideas, expressed concerns. If only he were honest with her. This lie, this crime of nonpassion, it’s crawled into bed, gotten between them, interrupted lust like a child.

  At the register, Wes discovers he’s got Rocky Road.

  Apart from Anna’s not getting off anymore, there are other new features in Wes’s world. For one, the new girl at work has an ass like an onion, making him cry each time she picks up an errant pencil off the newsroom floor. His eyes have increasingly lingered on the escort classifieds that he lists for the Weekly and started seeing an encoded message in their breast sizes: “DD,” “E,” and, once, impossibly, “DDD.” Anna’s emails now contain links to Most Popular Baby Name sites.

  Joe, the copy editor, takes cigarette breaks every 30 minutes, and Wes starts bumming. One day, Joe waxes expert on oral.

  “You spell out the alphabet,” he says, pulling a Newport from his lips.

  “Out loud?” Wes asks.

  “No. No.” Laughing. “You just trace the letters while you’re going down on her.”

  “And that works?”

  “Yeah, and it keeps up the variety.”

  “Genius.”

  “G-E-N-I-U-S.” Joe speaks each letter while licking his knuckle. “I copyedit, bro: I know letters.”

  “What’s with the menthols, Joe? You been institutionalized or something?”