The Comedian

The Ole Oscar Theater in New York was a shithole, Luke thought to himself. A comedian has to start from somewhere, he would say to his friends after the fifth round of shots at the Lab. Yep, we all do, one would say, and what about hecklers? Luke would pour himself another one, down the hatchet, a cool grin and “that shit makes you tougher doncha think? It gives you character, talent alone is nothing boys, you should know that by now...”

In those nights at the Lab there was always the man to whom they owed the rent. A comedian too, an old one, Lenny Bruce style, sitting in a wheeled chair behind them with the gazette always at the same page, the horses, a matter that had brought him in the audience for once, winning money or losing money, no shakes, no embarrassing silence and no fame, just some win win extra buck with no kicker.

Occasionally Luke would look at him, the only source of doubt for what he was saying, a piece of a fussy audience that man was, while those scared boys would yeah yeah Luke like little monkeys holding hands in circle, all scared of the stage.

Fifty miles far from the Lab Luke had lost that cool grin of his. He wasn't home, his father wasn't there either and he would really need to get some confidence and some sense of belonging now. His father Jonah was at work, struggling to make ends meet in this recession.

Tense like a howl sitting on a thin branch he moved his eyes from the leather cushions to a big tall glass of tap water in front of him. He felt like he had to drink it all as if he was in some strange hospital, humor surgery, yeah, but was he that good? Fuck it. What the fuck, fucking job... Hecklers were already shouting out there, beyond that thick crimson curtain, getting warmed up for the hunt: let's bring him down, let's pay these five bucks and have a laugh just like in High School ok? You're all set guys? And then a greedy Hitchcock-like “yees...” just when the curtain was slowly pulled open and revealed the dark mahogany stage where the bird was going to put his tiny hairless foot. Woop woop! And Yeah, ALRIGHT!! All those c'mons hollered from the back row where the “Heckler's spectators” were sitting ready to watch their show.

Luke appeared showing a two-bit worth confident smile, he didn't even look like he was out of control on purpose, as many comedians would rather go for, and he happened to be there without a plan. He knew for a fact that the owner wanted him to finish earlier so that those naked girls could get on stage. Smudged and confused notes came up to his mind altogether: smokers, white is beautiful, the coward street fighter, Scranton police, girlfriends on bachelor's parties, weed, Nixon horsefucked in prison, dykes on holidays, fuck English, how I spent the first day with my dick, satisfied taxpayers, limo hookers, Elvis taking a crap while singing, my new van, let's get high, and finally his favorite let's kill dogs and avoid war... The long list was scrolling down too quickly in his head and he couldn't catch any of those lines. He looked at the green emergency exit. I'm fucked, he thought while the seconds passed and the temperature in the audience got hotter. Oh yes, he could already spot the hint of an unfair phrase out of the lips of those unfriendly faces. Fuck it.

Hi... I'm Luke and I'm a comedian...

Silence, just a quick “hurry up!” shouted a guy with a big coke from the front seat.

You know, what I don't understand about comedy gigs is that huge glass of water they want you to drink. Why not whiskey uh?

Silence.

…You know I've drank it all and now I need to take a long leak... So? What's it about? Do they want me to finish earlier cause the guy has to clean the crapper before ten?

Silence. Luke thought that one of those clues at the Lab was just right for the intro: “Forget about the list, just improvise some stuff that they can see: a stool, a glass of water, the curtain. Make them feel like you are a good improviser and you'll win their respect.”

A possible sign of appreciation from the audience, if real, was not to be put into words, but just the low breathe and the sound of straws shaking ice in the cocktails.

You know? I was born in Fyffe...

Heckler: Where is that?

Oh it's Alabama man...

He wasn't even born in Alabama, a Brooklyn Jew he was, but he thought that he could create something funny out of that lie, and he was wrong now that it was too late.

Heckler: The fuck are you doin' here?

(Laugh)

Oh well, I get paid to make you laugh asshole...

Luke knew that he had pushed it too far and too soon. But those excited verses from the women out there made him stronger. Problem was what's next to that? He knew it was just a jolly, a sparkle of nitro for a slow car running in a straight line, and what about the incoming bends? What about those driving skills? What about talent and character? A suspended bunch of glorious seconds were to disappear soon to leave him in a new and even worst beginning. He knew that, so he rushed it.

And what's that lousy Jamaican shirt you're wearing pal?

A collective laughter, definitively brief.

This is not Cancun mister, this is the Ole Oscar friend... And Luke looked around as if he was not sure about the importance of that name. And they laughed, and finally he thought he was on the right track. Only that guy wouldn't let it go that easily, they were still even after all.

Heckler: you got something against my shirt jerkoff?

Oh no, not at all, just against who's wearing it, that's too much for you sir, you look like an optical illusion...

He knew that last phrase was too long, it did sound like a conversation bit, nothing like a comedian on stage. Just two people arguing in the street, that's what it looked like, and why a comedian should do that? Where was the difference? That heckler wasn't going too far, it was his job, and Luke's job was to stall it with style, evoking people's laughter to shut him up, make him hesitate so that he could grab the ball and get on with his act again.

Do you know how many smokers live in Fyffe? Jeezus, would you believe me if I tell you that...

Hecker: I wouldn't believe to any of that shit you gonna say anyway bozo...

Oh... Is that a fact?

Heckler: Yeah!

Oh yeah?

Heckler: Yeah!

Right...

Voices had destroyed the previous calm of a difficult game yet still open, some laughing and some booing at Luke. All it had been ruined now, that sacred silence was gone. It was the democratic chance of every comedian who would step in that cage of lions that now had been covered with soap. Luke reckoned that he still had to learn how. His act was over. The heckler had won. Ashamed like hell Luke was now standing there with the mike up is ass. Then he came off the stage facing the boos of the front row with that guy still calling him looser, go home and whatnot.

When the girls started to dance a lousy can-can all half-naked Luke was already having a light beer alone, small tears in his eyes, his hands clasped in two fists.

The owner's head popped out of the big crowd like a plastic puppet reciting “you don't even get the open bar tonight boy, and what's with that stunt anyway? Man up Luke, and do it fast for another place cause from now on you're just another customer here. I don't wanna see your ass on that stage anymore, okay?

He arrived home with his red Chevette whose scratches were covered with stickers saying “laugh at name and I'll get paid”, “I'm not a man, I'm a comedian”, “Yes I know, I'm driving a shit-car”, “Call me loser please”, “One day you gonna read of me” and so forth...

His old man and him had been living in a old house for twenty-six years, which was Luke's age and just half of his mother's when she had reached heaven after having bounced on Manhattan's asphalt.

That same old house seemed haunted that night that had finished too early for Luke. He opened the front door and went to the kitchen, put together a baloney & mayo sandwich, grabbed a coke from the fridge and turned the small TV set on. A reporter was trying to say something under a cloud of dust, a twin set of skyscrapers had collapsed behind his back. America would air that tape forever, and Luke turned it off, tired to see more of that sad footage after seven years, now that offices were the most safe places in town, being no people in them.

Outside the kitchen window a parade of sport cars slowly cruised down the road. Those powerful engines muttered something bad in the chilly air, and it reminded Luke of that fucking guy in the audience, trying to waste his act all the time. That bastard owned him from a privileged position, so easy, thought Luke. And what about the people who had paid five dollars for the show? He fucking hated the guy.

He stepped on the stairs, no sound from the first floor.

Dad?

Silence. That heckler's voice was sill bouncing like a spiky little ball in his head.

Dad?

Walking the dim corridor he got no answer, maybe he was sleeping. That early? Luke wondered if everything had to be fucking early that night. He entered his father's room, Jonah as in “Jonah and the whale”, real Jewish.

Dad? Dinner?

The bed was empty, but Luke saw one hand lying on the floor beside the bed. Fuck! Dad! Oh God. The ambulance got there but it was too late. Jonah had killed himself putting some lye in a full glass of lemon cordial. He had left a piece of paper on the bed. Luke read it again and again sitting alone in the kitchen.

A man without a job is not a man anymore son.

Forgive me,

your father.

The crack had brought the Lebovits to their knees. Their bank account had been frozen for months and bills were long as cheap toilet paper. Not a word, Luke was intelligent enough to understand how his father's smile had changed during that 2008. But he was a good man, the best man on earth.

On Bar Mitzvah Jonah gave to his son some toys and a nice comedy record: The Andy Kaufman Special aka Andy's Funhouse, recorded 1977 and aired on ABC in 1979.

Luke thought about that voice changing, making impressions and then becoming real again, the voice of a sad man who just wanted to please himself, that was it. He wanted to make himself laugh first of all that Andy. Audience's reaction was a consequence of it and nothing more; he wouldn't care and they would laugh, he owned the stage as a shy guy whose act was perfect, locked up in his own world, high quality art.

Luke would put much effort into being normal, confident, and that would crash him before he could make the difference. There had been comedians too afraid of locking themselves up, even the big ones, miserably laughing at their own jokes to fill up that embarrassing silence, trying to be cool just like the audience did whenever it turned into a stupid giant with no face, a bunch of human beings backing up the heckler or the satisfied one just the get an identity in the group, so easy. “The more risk a comedian takes the more bravos he would get in the end”, the Lab would teach him, but it was a very thin line to walk and Luke knew it.

After the death of his father he practiced in the mirror for three month, but still he couldn't get what he wanted. Vanity would precede him. So he moved away from it and turned on the camera. At the beginning he couldn't get rid of the electronic eye but in time he would go down to the kitchen, eat his sandwich and suddenly remember that it was all on tape. Then he would watch himself changing expressions and vocabulary inside his most familiar environment, but still it wasn't enough. It seemed too easy and unnatural.

When he realized that he needed a job he got it in one day: Kitchen Porter in a Thai restaurant downtown, he said to his father tomb before laying a rock on his grave. He started to cry at night thinking of him but he would always get up early in the morning when all New York City seemed as if it was built that same night, ready for hope and progress. He would cycle to the City Hall, put his backpack down and an empty paper glass in front of him. Then he would start talking as if he wouldn't care, taking a big load off, moving his hands all over his body just like he did under the shower, singing occasionally and removing with all those clever lines all the grease that American society would dump on individuals. Luke would see amidst the people a giant moving on fake behalf of its single members, talking politics and smiling like an hypocrite. The way he would show this grudge would make him look like an unintended creep that was left alone in his room to complain with himself, and all the people in the street would laugh at him as they never did and as if they didn't want him to notice. Luke had never thought comedy could have been so real.

One night he decided to get back to the Ole Oscar. There in his mind was still the memory of that night with the heckler and that dead hand beside his father's bed.

The owner didn't recognize him, Luke was just another asshole booed on stage after all. He left the glass full of water on the stool and moved away the curtain. The people down there were talking loud and didn't expect him to start that soon but nobody complained.

Sorry I'm early but I don't care, really I'm sorry folks but I couldn't give a shit...

He looked honestly stressed and a couple laughed immediately at that opening. That heckler was there, same seat, drinking his tall soda. Luke spotted him and his mind didn't even go “what the hell”, he just went after him as if he was somebody that happened to be in his cross-hairs for too long.

Say man? Why are you looking at my dick?

Laughs.

Heckler: Hey how you doin' darlin'? What you gonna do this time? Run?

Luke remained serious till he could, than he panicked for a bit and returned to the heckler pretending to be someone who was afraid of get beaten up in the street. The rest of the audience saw him taking off his shirt and jumping as a the slimmest boxer they had ever seen.

No man, I'm gonna stay here just for you... ding, let's fight the heckler... bum bum, bum bum!

He pretended he was boxing with him, a real looser living in a world of his own, fighting the dragon with a wooden sword. That number had been a must for comedians as Richard Pryor in the seventies: a ridicule slim boxer trying to scare the big one.

More couples began to laugh: the show had been unpredictable and funny till that moment and there was nothing better for five bucks.

What's your name Ace?

Heckler: “fuck you” is my name bozo...

Suddenly Luke got what hecklers were about: angry people with no creativity, not even the two-bit fast rebuttal you would get arguing in the streets. They would just take advantage of their easy power by bombing a difficult profession. Most of the times, Luke reckoned, they would show more muscles than brain, sitting aside some tits and legs with a nasal voice who would get wet on some man's talk.

Alright, listen Fuckyou, I went downtown the other day, I cycled all the way to fuckin' Manhattan and I saw a couple of Fuckyous in front of Ground Zero ok? Do you remember what happened? – alright, maybe you were watching American Gladiator and drinking a flat can of Miller and whispering some “Too Fast and Too Furious” bullshit to your lady “Titsandlegs” over there – but I have some consideration of your tribe and I'll tell you what happened alright?

Luke got the attention of the audience, his flanks were almost covered now, but he had to keep on. It was a risky improvisation and yet a story was about to be told.

This tribe of yours man is a pure fuck-up lemme tell ya... Do you know how to spot a Fuckyou member in the street? Ok, ok... Folks you're lucky tonight, you got yourselves the biggest sample you'll ever get, but I wasn't this lucky you know?

I was crossing the street with that big nowhere in front of my face reminding me how words fly even higher than planes when I hear a voice behind me saying “That's fucking huge Wendy! Jesus Wendy! Do you see that?” I tell you, Wendy was having fries while trying to walk as a Dalì elephant on her ten-inch stilettos. Her MacDonald big ass would nod the slowest “no” on earth folks, and it meant that no other chick, not even Paris Hilton could have his own Fuckyou boyfriend. He was her own fuck-up deal guys, cause who among the “chewing mortals” would walk her around all the time believing the fact that a giant “Taylorist burger burp” could mean true love to him, that making love to a nail-painted pudding could make him fart as he was still ten, feeling all the luv in the world while watching what those Islam warriors had done to his country and his flag.

Audience was hypnotized.

I tell you folks, I was trying not to, I know I got a job to do and since I'm cooooomedian and I have to make you laugh... I must take the shit out of these Fuckyou boys and Titsandlegs women all the time, even tonight, right boy? He concluded addressing the heckler.

Heckler: FUCK YOU MAN!! I'LL FUCK YOU UP KNOW!!

You see what I'm saying folks??

And everybody laughed crazy. It was a real show, and even more real when the heckler jumped on the stage and started running after Luke who was still engaging the audience with “you see what I'm saying?” Then the heckler's girlfriend hollered “Fuck him up Jim!” but Jim had too many fat muscles to get a hold on Luke who had stepped out of the stage and now was shaking hands to all the people who could hardly believe that it had been a total improvisation.

At a certain point, tired to run, he went outside through the emergency exit. The audience followed him in the silent street of another night started early and already about to finish.

Luke grabbed a yellow plastic cone from the asphalt and started to wave it at Jim like a sword. Jim ran toward him as a raging bull but Luke felt ready and still sober like in all those five weeks after that miserable night.

He waited for the right moment and then he hit Jim from above as a crazy toreador. The fuck-up beast bit the dust and closed his eyes. The people stopped laughing. The police came, handcuffed Luke who watched out of the car window and saw that old comedian from the Lab shaking his head from the top of his wheeled chair.

Luke Lebovitz managed to be a comedian, but never a man.