The OK End of Funny Town

by Mark Polanzak

  We must have been a sight on the subway: two identical men in suits, one with shades on at night, his arm around my shoulders, me supporting him when the brakes screech, when the car gathers up momentum.

  I plant my clone at the cheese and crackers table, pour him a ginger ale, and tell him to just hang here for a minute. There’s a massive installation hanging from the ceiling, all cords and wires and computer screens entangled. I spot Laura in the back, in front of Televicious, encircled by men with shaved heads, stylish seeing glasses, women with pink Mohawks and little handbags. I know them. They know me. Laura waves me over.

  “Where have you been all my life,” she says. I kiss her on the cheek and wave a little wave to the circle of artists. They say hello, but I’ve obviously stopped their conversation.

  “How did you find this mad genius? And, moreover, how do you put up with her?” I think it’s Jacob that asks this.

  “I love her,” I say. Everyone awwws at this. I pull Laura away from the group, and they follow me with their ten eyes. “Laura,” I whisper in her ear, “I’ve brought my clone.”

  She laughs, pushes off my chest. “What?”

  “Remember? My clone? I brought him tonight. Look.” I point to Gary who’s munching on something at the food table. People are giving him a wide berth.

  “Who is that?” Laura’s done laughing.

  “I’ll introduce you.”

  Gary wipes his hands on my slacks and I introduce my girlfriend to my clone. Laura doesn’t take his hand when he offers it. She’s pissed. Gary goes back to munching.

  “This is my night,” Laura says, outside on the street. “Are you nuts? Bringing some homeless guy to my opening?” She crosses her arms, sucks her lips into her face. She doesn’t see it, clearly, that he is me.

  “Laura, the guy’s me, and he’s had a rough time. So, can you please try to be nice? Try to understand this?” Laura looks over my shoulder. I turn around and Gary’s standing in the entranceway to the gallery. He’s gazing up at the black sky above the streetlamps. Laura shouts to him. “Gary? Hey, Gary!” Gary looks at her, removes my aviators. “Gary, what kind of con is this? What do you want from us?”

  Gary doesn’t do anything. He looks at the two of us, me and Laura.

  “Is he deaf, too?” Laura asks me. “Hey, buddy! What are you doing here?” She annunciates each syllable. What. Are. You. Do. Ing. Here?

  And I look at Gary, in my suit, the group of Laura’s artist friends inside the gallery, staring back out to this little scene we’re causing. I see Televicious glowing in the back, a double-helix of monitors and nooses. Laura shouts. “What are you doing? Where did you come from?”

  And for a blink, I can see through my clone’s eyes. I see me, looking dumbstruck in a suit, standing next to Laura whose arms are crossed on Mass. Ave. This couple. This time. This place. The big alien satellite sculpture behind us in the middle of Porter Square, sending out signals to Andromeda. The streetlight flashing green and red at the same time. Stop. Go. The conical shade of incandescence, streaming down from a streetlamp like a photon tractor beam. Televicious throwing mad, bouncing images over our bodies. The glowing yellow windows of the apartment building across the street going dark, one, then another, then another. Cigarette red cherry burst at a gas station, a childhood home. A laser beam shooting from a policeman’s flashlight into an alley, illuminating the ankle of a metal giant. Cars sailing, floating, flying west, east through the world like spacecrafts. A shooting star. The flutter of a specter between us. A little green alien diving into a trashcan. A secret experimental beast shaking his cage. Roaring. A broken vial. A puff of smoke. Neon blue liquid, dripping down a sewer drain. A robot’s “ON” switch. Square red eyes. Numbers etched into bone. A stork. Ear of corn. Crop circle. Black cat. Blue lips. Purple and orange border on coffee cup. A new constellation. Black hole. Umbilical wires and circuits. Cave drawing. Installation. Post-apocalyptic ashen rubble. A blue lake on Mars. Telescope. Worm hole. Time machine. Stegosaurus. Sugar on tongue. Smelling salts. Sun spot. First fire. Flying saucer. Tombstone. Clay. A daisy. Sea foam. My father, me a sparkle of dancing light in his eye, gazing down at my mother in their marriage bed. Laura stretching. Nexus. My blue-lipped bowl, spinning and spinning. Waves. Eons. Boulder. Pebble. Crow’s caw. Belly button. Man in cab. Woman on phone. Anyone. Anywhere. A proton. A neutron. An electron cloud, firing madly. A hydrogen atom. A deafening big bang. A blinding burst of white light. A sharp gasp of oxygen.

  And I say, “I have no idea.”

  2.

  TRAVEL TO FANTASTIC PLACES!

  THE OK END OF FUNNY TOWN

  When I peeled myself off the Velcro wall, I collapsed on and snapped in half my arrow-thru-the-head gag. It was not funny.

  Letting the Krazy Glue set, I reloaded the bed catapult, clipped on my yellow squirting lapel flower, and fetched my googly-eye glasses.

  In the wavy bathroom mirror, I saw that the glue job didn’t pan out. The arrow tilted down. I picked the thing off my head and wrapped it in the pages of comic strips. I went through my closet: fake bald head, fake Mohawk, alien antennae, horns, elephant nose, oversized ears. I settled on the blue, red, and green beanie with the purple pinwheel on top. But I knew it wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t what I needed. When you’ve got your heart set on an arrow-thru-the-head gag, all the other panoply pales. I twirled the pinwheel and felt hollow.

  I hurried through the morning: bug juice all over me from the dribble glass, the fly-in-the-ice-cube bonking me in the nose; a handful of peanuts from the spring-loaded snake canister. Then I slipped the injured arrow-thru-thehead gag into my bottomless backpack and rode the zip line out into the streets of Funny Town, determined to buy a replacement. Dead set on finding it.

  Have you heard the one about the guy who walks into a bar … and it hurt? The one about the drunk who rubs a lamp and a genie grants him three wishes, and the guy wishes for a glass of beer that can regenerate when he finishes it, then the genie says, “Hey, the other two wishes, buddy,” and the guy says, “I don’t know, just two more like this, I guess?” The one about the guy sitting on a bench with a box, who says to the guy next to him, “If you can guess how many kittens I have in this box, I’ll give you both of them?”

  They’re tired, but there’s a joke maybe you haven’t heard. And it goes like this: There’s this guy who moved to Funny Town after his fiancée left him at the altar, and now he’s taking small gigs in jokes. When the guy goes to sleep, right before he closes his eyes, he wishes he could cry again, but he can’t because it’s impossible in Funny Town. And when he tries to weep, sob, moan, in the dark, in his tiny quiet moments of privacy, instead he lets out a guffaw that echoes across the world.

  That one’s still in the works. It’s my original. We all have to come up with an original. Taxes.

  After an admirably placed oil slick and bed of thumbtacks, my unicycle was useless. I slipped on my oversized red thumb and hitched a ride with a rainbow-painted Beetle.

  “Where you headed?” asked the driver.

  I could barely breathe, packed between the eleven clowns in the backseat, but managed to wheeze, “Acme Clothes.”

  “Holy Smile,” shouted one of the clowns. “That’s on the other side of Funny Town!”

  “Can’t get you all the way there, buddy,” the driver told me. “But close.”

  I thrust my hand into the cockpit and formed an OK sign. I shifted around and patted my backpack, feeling for the arrow-thru-the-head.

  “What you need at Acme?” I couldn’t tell which clown was interested, my face pressed to gigantic red shoes.

  “Arrow-thru-the-head gag.”

  Paisley kerchiefs and bowling pins went flying around the car, along with hoots and hollers.

  “A classic!”

  “Oldie but a goody!”

  “Like there’s an arrow stuck right through your HEAD!”

  I couldn’t laugh. “I broke my old one,” I said.

  The car fell sil
ent.

  “I’m going to get a replacement,” I said.

  “And how do you feel about that?” It was whispered.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never felt quite like this. It’s like there’s just nothing inside me.”

  Suddenly, the gigantic red shoes, the billowy polkadotted pants, the frizzy rainbow wigs, they all vanished, and I fell to the floor. The clowns had stacked on top of one another, giving me room on the seat. I regrouped and stretched. They stared at me. I caught the driver’s oversized sunglasses in the rearview, and then he bent the mirror away from me.

  “You keep that on the inside,” said one of the clowns.

  I patted my backpack.

  “We’re all crying on the inside, man,” said the driver.

  But then there was gridlock. All the clowns leaned out the windows and honked their noses at the other clowns and some penguins that were crossing the street, caught up in the mix.

  The honking was deafening. “That’s not going to fix anything,” I shouted, covering my ears. Then, I slipped out through the trap door.

  But after the guy lets out the guffaw through the entire world, he gets out of bed, clicks on the nightstand lamp, reaches under a loose brick in the wall, and removes a cigar box. Inside the box are yellowed photos with turned up edges. The photos are of a man and woman cuddling a baby. The man and woman are dead now and the baby has grown up, and he looks at the photos.

  But, no. In fact, his parents are alive and well, living across Funny Town in an inflatable moonwalk. And the grown-up baby wishes they were dead. And he doesn’t know why. When he thinks of his father shaking other men’s hands with a buzzer strapped to his fingers, the guy crumbles onto the floor, activating a set of chattering teeth and slowly deflating a whoopee cushion with the sound of a remorseful French horn.

  After sliding down the big blue slides and silver firemen poles, and slipping on banana peels the rest of the way across town, I read the sign in front of Acme: CLOSED. BE BACK HALF PAST A FRECKLE.

  I removed the arrow-thru-the-head gag from the comic strips I wrapped it in and put it on. In the windows of Acme, I studied the down-turned arrowhead.

  “Pssssst,” I heard from the alley. I whipped the gag off my head and scanned the street.

  A guy in a gorilla suit and a trench coat waved me into the darkened corner, glancing around wildly.

  “You need something?” he whispered, thrusting his crazy gorilla eyes close to mine.

  “Arrow-thru-the-head,” I said, and slid my foot back.

  Then the guy flipped open his trench coat and went riffling through his hidden pockets. He pulled out a metal briefcase and clicked it open under my nose. And there it was: an arrow-thru-the-head gag, delicately cradled by orange foam.

  “It’s the latest model. Real nice, man,” said the gorillasuit guy. He placed the briefcase on the ground and eased the thing out. He put it on my head. “The arrow slides, man.” He pushed the feathers of the arrow, and the tip jutted farther out. “It’s like you’re sliding the arrow through your HEAD!”

  I picked it off and slid the arrow back and forth. “Pretty cool,” I admitted.

  “Pretty cool? This shit isn’t even declassified yet.”

  I absentmindedly twirled the gag in my hands. The gorilla-suit guy chomped a banana. “It’s not right, though,” I said. I handed the thing back to him.

  “You’ll never want your old gag after you’ve had this one, man.” He demonstrated the gag again on his own furry head.

  “Yeah. It’s just not what I’m looking for.”

  He clicked the briefcase shut, threw it into his trench coat. “You don’t know what you want, bro.” Then he scaled the fire escapes and swung out over the rooftops.

  Next, the guy goes to the kitchen, pours himself a glass of his finest bourbon, and sits down to write a suicide note.

  He writes that he can’t take it anymore, all the laughter, all the good times, all the sunshine and love. He writes that he’s going to take his own life because he’s no good for this place. He’s only a minor joke, not anything that this town would miss. He writes that he does wish everyone well, but he knows that everyone will be well, which is partly what is making him kill himself. It might make a decent joke. Maybe a funny anecdote, at least.

  He heads into the bathroom and cleans himself up. He shaves. He lights a cigarette and sits down at his dining room table. After his final drag, he puts the smoke in the ashtray and raises a gun to his head. He whispers goodbye and pulls the trigger. A flag bursts out from the nozzle. It reads: BANG.

  At noon, I headed to the bar.

  I waved a hello to the rabbi and asked the frog on his shoulder how things were going. I avoided the ostrich and the cat with the sunglasses and their master, the guy with perfect change all the time. The duck was already getting to the bartender, asking if he had “any grapes? any grapes?” The psychiatrists took turns asking the light bulbs if they really wanted to change. I shook my head at Kowalski with his handful of crap, repeatedly shouting, “Look what I almost just stepped in!” Santa and the Easter Bunny shared a laugh at the blondes, who scrambled for the dollar on the floor.

  Then, right before I walked into the metal bar, at forehead level, in front of me, I took a closer look. I noticed that the rabbi’s Torah was ripped; the frog was looking malnourished; the ostrich and cat with the sunglasses were on choke chains; the guy with perfect change all the time was nursing his “beer,” but eyeing the top-shelf stuff; the duck and the bartender had their fingers crossed; the psychiatrists’ pens were filled with invisible ink; Kowalski was inching toward the door; and the blondes were starting to show.

  I walked into the bar, and it hurt. As I fell, I shouted out, “How can you laugh?” But then I was seeing fireworks, stars, birdies.

  When I awoke, I ordered a beer and eyed the lamp. I took a swig and rubbed the thing. The genie materialized, giving me a little wave. He stretched.

  “You got three wishes,” he yawned.

  “I want to know why I want my arrow-thru-the-head gag,” I said.

  Everything stopped. All eyes turned to me. The genie shrugged to the bartender, who folded his arms. And the genie, my old partner, snapped his fingers.

  I came to on a dirt road. The world looked gray and brown, dusty. I adjusted my googly-eye glasses, which Slinkied into themselves and formed lenses. I fiddled with my yellow squirting lapel flower, which folded and bloomed into a sunflower. I spun the pinwheel on my hat, and it flew off, a butterfly. Gone into the sky.

  I flipped my backpack off and withdrew the arrow-thru-the-head gag. It was still broken. It wasn’t morphing. It wasn’t going anywhere. I put it on, and it remained broken, there on my head.

  A pickup truck rolled up the dirt road, spraying dust behind it. It clattered to a stop in front of me. A beautiful, sad-eyed girl stepped out.

  “Where you headed?” she asked.

  “I don’t know where I am.” My legs gave out, and I knelt down.

  She took up my arrow-thru-the-head gag. I watched her as she flipped it around, studying it. “What is this doing on your head?” she said.

  “It’s a joke. Like you got an arrow right through your head.” I smiled weakly.

  “No. No,” she said. She reached around my chest, curving the arrow to look as though it were stuck through my heart. “That’s where it goes in these parts. It’s not fun.”

  She touched her breast. I saw a bloody bandage. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “No, but who is? Where you need to go?”

  I stood up. “I need to go where there’s honesty, pain.” I shuffled my feet, felt stupid.

  The beautiful girl put her hand on my shoulder. She cradled my head. She pulled me into her and squeezed, bending and breaking the arrow. We kissed. I felt her sadness. Oddly, I wanted to help her. I wanted to tell her a joke, make her laugh, cover it all up for her.

  I felt my chest heat up. The plastic arrow straightened, hardened into a blade. It shot cold th
rough us. Stabbed, we stuck together, in the big lonely world. Finally, for one glorious instant, everything raged cruel and alive.

  OUR NEW COMMUNITY SCHOOL

  Subject Matter

  In the beginning our New Practicals catalog threatened no one. Despite its newness, despite its never being seen before in an adult educational institution, people were not shocked, were not appalled, weren’t even suspicious, at first. The courses were “accessible.” Our students—all men and women choosing to continue their education after obtaining their BAs and BSs and settling into careers and families—remarked that we should have taught these subjects all along. One such New Practical offering—SWT/110: Staring at Walls and Thinking While Seated—was a smash hit. Within days of its appearance on the website, the course had filled. We scrambled to find an additional instructor to teach a second section. The fact that this course was not offered at any community school, that it did not fit into a traditional pursuit—English, Music, Biology, or Business—did not bother anyone. Yes, we saw it as a gimmick. Yes, we understood that there was no traditional academic value in sitting and staring at walls and thinking. But we saw that folks in the community were struggling with the undertaking of Staring at Walls and Thinking While Seated, and as educators, if we could provide an expert to teach us—yes, us, we live here, too—then we have a responsibility to the town, to the community, to help, to educate.

  The classroom set up of SWT/110: Staring at Walls and Thinking While Seated was remarkably similar to any other course one would have taken. We did not experiment with the form or presentation of the class. Certain traditional elements were yet present in those first mild experiments. There was a classroom. Rows of desks. A chalkboard. An instructor, who paced back and forth, sometimes making notes on the board, sometimes sitting at a desk, sometimes struggling with a DVD player and television on top of a rolling stand. Students doodled in margins. The class met in the school’s main building. There was a bell. The only unique ingredient, then, was the content. There was a growing demand for less academic and more useful offerings. The students were assigned an hour of staring at a wall in their home offices, then their dining rooms, then their bedrooms. In class, groups of students would observe ten to fifteen minutes of one another staring at the wall with the chalkboard, then the opposing wall with affixed pencil sharpener to compare and contrast differing results. Our critics chuckled to themselves, figuring we’d go by the wayside. But after Staring at Walls and Thinking While Seated, we created more New Practicals: Looking in the Mirror While Depressed; Developing Personal Superstition to Provide Irrational Hope and Dread; Walking Aimlessly in Known Locations; Improper Memories of the Dead; Novel Reading Without Paying Attention. All of these courses remained in the schoolhouse. We heard some ponder aloud: “Is this really school? Are these legitimate ‘classes’?” But many accepted the offerings, showing up to the institution’s building for particular classes that met at particular times with particular expectations.