Day 11 - Only Laugh - Chapter 11 (1,983 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 11

The bus rattled like a box of bolts, which technically it was when you broke it down to its simplest components.

Tony sat on his own, about 2/3rds of the way down the length of it. He had been riding all day. All different kinds of routes through different parts of the city.

He wasn't really lost, he knew where he was. He was wandering because he felt a little lost. He couldn't describe it to anyone, no one could feel what he felt, and he was at a loss for words. He had been quite serious when joking on stage. Nothing was funny any more.

Nothing at all. He could laugh, but he didn't really feel it deeply. He knew that X and Y would produce Z, where Z equalled a laugh. The reality of that was as good as real algebra though, meaningful and meaningless unless you held the key.

He had stopped going on stage after about 2 more months of producing the same equation, week after week to bigger crowds and more and more money. Money that was still coming in.

He had turned down many offers, offers from the most unlikely of places. He didn't need to be a spokesperson for any company, any product or service. Yet a number of them wanted to attach themselves to him. He looked at his manager and agent and the growing list of employees seem to self propagate. He didn't recall hiring any of them personally. He grew them like cancers, they leeched off of him naturally sustaining themselves and multiplied until they infected the whole system.

His assistant, hired to broker his whims and keep him amused, creative and in the zone became less of an enabling nurse to more and more a doorway that no one except Jane and his Agent could get through. That arrangement suited them all.

Jane wanted him to turned things down, wanted him to stop and settle and change to something else. His agent and manager wanted him to turn down the offers until the right one came along. Until that point of sale, he had integrity and cache. That was a genuine point of difference, he was not a starving artist ready and willing for the break. He wasn't needy, he didn't need the money or the endorsement of sponsors. That made him even more desirable, and then only the big players would come knocking.

One large multinational had come knocking. Life and personal injury insurance, from the worlds largest insurer. They had a micro brand they had bought for the cooler kids who wanted to live life on the edge but with a strong rope. They identified with Tony and his … unique lifestyle on the edge of self destruction, but not nihilistic enough to fear real self-harm. Not on purpose anyway.

The offer had scared them all, it was a lot of money. A Lot.

They had not turned it down though.

The agent was thinking about playing hard to get, Jane was thinking about a way out of this dead end road of stage and hospital beds.

Tony wanted to know how the ad would be funny. Why would it be funny.

To be clear with himself he didn't care about the script or the set up, whether it was lame or clichéd or even uncool. He wanted to see what professional funny looked like. He had heard stories, he had watched Mad Men and wanted to see the sweet science of mirth and cleverness in action. Want to peek behind the emerald curtain and see the magic being made. The magicians tricks needed to be unveiled for him to feel a little more like he had a place in the world.

He was out there, pulling rabbits out of hats every week and every time he felt surprised when he reached in and found the outstretched bugs-bunny ears in his hands. He would stand, listening to the voice coming out of him, he knew the lines and knew the make up. Then the audience would laugh. Sometimes before he delivered the punch line. They could see it coming, they knew what a joke sounds like and could tell from the cadence of his words that the orange light was on and red was a short brake away. He wondered on the traffic light metaphor, trying to find a joke, but he suspected that in that scenario it was he that was the punchline.

They laughed every time but it wasn't funny. Tony was funny, that was now the deal.

He had healed completely, but he reopened the psychological wounds of the attack, the stage dive and the blood, the blade and even the eventual trial, which made him obscene amounts of money.

So now six months after his last stage appearance, the questions turned to his absence, making their hearts fonder still. It felt like he could do no wrong, could squander no lead on his fans. Even his critics missed him, wistfully complaining that he was a coward for hiding, wanting him to say anything that they could jump on.

It was time to do something new. The material felt old, in a modern age of instant replay, mobile phone video and you-tube-insta-broadcasts, the length and age of a comedians material was a short half life. Deteriorating quickly and becoming deadly, radioactive in the lack of fresh material.

Even with different audience members, it was the same gag. Find something different, something that sounds funny and hammer it until it is misshapen and worth laughing at, or at a pinch - with.

This is why and how he felt lost. He had always thought that when he made it, he'd feel like an adult and in charge. It was not like that at all. He was tenuous and unsure of how and why it worked so well. Truly stunned, like a deer in headlights wondering what that bright bright light is before the oncoming vehicular assault renders it all a reddish, bloody blur on the ground.

So he hid, mainly from his own life and demands, on stage he was fine, all the other things were the ones he avoided. Requests for interviews, appearances on panel shows and opinion seekers wanting his take on so much. He stayed as silent and away from it as he could. Not because he had nothing to say, most things made him so very, very angry and he could have ranted for hours, days and weeks on any random topics. He saved such ire for the stage, where it worked and it belonged. Away from that he understood so little of why people wanted him.

On stage he felt at home, but like he was an imposter. Comfortable in a stolen skin, one with someone else’s name in block letters somewhere inside, waiting for some errant mother to find in the lost and found one day. Then it would all be over.

Some one would look beneath it all one day.

Surely they would.

So he hid.

He grew his hair out, refused to shave and groom himself. He was hiding from himself, the recognisable self. He spent days traversing the city, no one knowing who he was and not giving him a second thought other than staying a good distance away from the scruffiest person on the bus.

His phone was his insulation. It never rang, it was permanently forwarded to voice-mail. If he wanted something he would text John, if he needed to talk he would call Jane who was always so pleased to talk to him, no matter what she was doing or where she was. She had a job in the Tony machine, approving merchandise and signing things off for him. She was making good deals, and spent more time with Tony's agent that he did.

He had headphones, permanently plugged in to his ears. Sometimes they were there for show, when they were louder and drunker he would kill whatever he would listen to and try and find what drove these people who fought and loved in public. At times public transport was a cesspool and the worst of humanity. Most of the time it was just dull and banal. Tony was interested in both in equal measure. He stood in their way on many occasions, glared at by angry citizens who saw nothing but an unkempt ball of hair. They expected him to smell of urine or alcohol but not of curiosity and cologne.

When the weather turned dark so did his taste in music. Winds would buffet the bus's sides, and the rain came at him in multiple ways depending on the route and the age of the particular vehicle he was in. Sometimes they leaked and he would sit in the path of the oncoming drips and drafts. Welcoming the invasions that most avoided. Dark, Gothic and self involved.

When there was a fight brewing, he chose a more emotionally keyed soundtrack. Cavalleria Rusticana was a favorite. He'd assume the motivations of jealousy and competition on the unsuspecting bus riders who became the tenors and sopranos in his view. His fellow passengers joined the chorus, singing along in their own way, even if ignorantly so.

Music swelled and the emotion over flowed into the occasional fisticuff. Much less often than he had wanted or expected. Enough times that he could predict who would throw the first punch. There was some logic and art to his understanding now. When a man tenses and coils in a certain way, he gets a look to him. A carriage you can read, you can predict and you can pinpoint with that degree of accuracy.

Then he would see them coming on the bus. Before a word was spoken, before a look was given, he could feel the air change. He knew this and was instantaneously rewarded with validation from the drivers who had years under their belts. They had the same sense, not of curiosity or scientific applied methods. They knew because they knew, they grew out of a knowing of their craft. Certain routes, certain times and a certain kind of person. They would drive on eggshells, counting the stops and watching the rear-view mirrors and video screens on the newer models.

A huge sigh of relief if nothing kicked off on their portion of that persons night.

Tony knew and felt it with them, reminding him he could see it all.

He felt a little less lost now. He had a connection to the world, it wasn't funny. Or at least not yet it was not, but it made sense.

He hit the button on the side of the bus, the bell pinged and the light behind the sign illuminated the darkness in that corner of the roof. It was late and the side lights of cars passing by and of street lights flickering picket fence patterns as they went past the bus on it's circuitous journey of the night streets. It lurched to the side, moving to the bus stop where Tony would depart.

He nodded at the driver and tipped a finger at him. They all knew of him, but had no idea he was who he was. He was a fixture, a regular seat filler with a day pass. He was not the only one, but they all knew he was not as bad or as odd as he looked. He was easy.

A few steps more and he's on the pavement wondering where on earth he was. He picked up his phone and dialed his assistant.

“Come pick me up.”

“Where are you?” John was alert and ready to do his bidding, though they had not spoken many words in the last few weeks at least.

“Don't know.” Tony looked about and saw no street signs.

“Come find me.”