So I figure, what've I got to lose? All I need to do is remember some of my old man's favorite gags and to get him started back laughing on the road to recovery. I figure, what could it hurt?
So this grown-up son walks into his father's hospice room, pulls up a chair beside the bed and sits down. The son looks into his old man's pale, dying face and says, "So this blonde gal walks into a neighborhood bar where she's never been before, and she's got tits out to HERE and a tight little heinie and she asks the bartender for a Michelob, and he serves her a Michelob except he sneaks a Mickey Finn into her bottle and this blonde goes unconscious, and every guy in the bar leans her over the edge of the pool table and hikes up her skirt and fucks her, and at closing time they slap her awake and tell her she's got to leave. And every few days this gal with the tits and the ass walks in and asks for a Michelob and gets a Mickey Finn and gets fucked by the crowd until one day she walks in and asks the bartender can he maybe give her a Budweiser instead?"
Granted—I have NOT landed this particular shaggy dog story since I was in the First Grade, but my old man used to love this next part....
The bartender smiles so nice and says, "What? You don't like Michelob no more?"
And this Real Looker, she leans over the bar, all confidential, and she whispers, "Just between you and me..." she whispers, "Michelob makes my pussy hurt...."
The first time I learned that joke, when my old man taught it to me, I didn't know what was "pussy." I didn't know "Mickey Finn." I didn't know what folks meant when they talked about "fucking" but I knew all this talk made my old man laugh. And when he told me to stand up and tell that joke in the barbershop it made the barbers and every old man reading detective magazines laugh until half of them blew spit and snot and chewing tobacco out their noses.
So this grown-up son walks into his father's hospice room, pulls up a chair beside the bed and sits down. The son looks into his old man's pale, dying face and says, "So this blonde gal walks into a neighborhood bar where she's never been before, and she's got tits out to HERE and a tight little heinie and she asks the bartender for a Michelob, and he serves her a Michelob except he sneaks a Mickey Finn into her bottle and this blonde goes unconscious, and every guy in the bar leans her over the edge of the pool table and hikes up her skirt and fucks her, and at closing time they slap her awake and tell her she's got to leave. And every few days this gal with the tits and the ass walks in and asks for a Michelob and gets a Mickey Finn and gets fucked by the crowd until one day she walks in and asks the bartender can he maybe give her a Budweiser instead?"
Granted—I have NOT landed this particular shaggy dog story since I was in the First Grade, but my old man used to love this next part....
The bartender smiles so nice and says, "What? You don't like Michelob no more?"
And this Real Looker, she leans over the bar, all confidential, and she whispers, "Just between you and me..." she whispers, "Michelob makes my pussy hurt...."
The first time I learned that joke, when my old man taught it to me, I didn't know what was "pussy." I didn't know "Mickey Finn." I didn't know what folks meant when they talked about "fucking" but I knew all this talk made my old man laugh. And when he told me to stand up and tell that joke in the barbershop it made the barbers and every old man reading detective magazines laugh until half of them blew spit and snot and chewing tobacco out their noses.
Now the grown-up son tells his old dying father this joke, just the two of them alone in that hospital room, late-late at night, and—guess what—his old man doesn't laugh. So the son tries another old favorite, he tells the joke about the Traveling Salesman who gets a phone call from some Farmer's Daughter he met on the road a couple months before, and she says, "Remember me? We had some laughs, and I was a good sport?" And the man says, "How're you doing?" And she says, "I'm pregnant, and I'm going to kill myself." And the salesman, he says, "Damn... you ARE a good sport!"
At seven years old I could REALLY put that joke over—but tonight—the old man's still not laughing. How I learned to say "I Love You" was by laughing for my old man—even if I had to fake it—and that's all I want in return. All I want from him is a laugh, just one laugh, and he's not coming across with even a giggle. Not a snicker. Not even a groan. And worse than not laughing, the old man squints his eyes shut, tight, and opens them brimming with tears, and one fat tear floods out the bottom of each eye and washes down each cheek. The old man's gasping his big toothless mouth like he can't get enough air, crying big tears down the wrinkles of both cheeks, just soaking his pillow. So this kid—who's nobody's little kid, not anymore—but who all he knows to do is tell these stupid jokes, he reaches into his pants pocket and gets out a fake plastic carnation flower that just for laughs sprays water all over the old crybaby's face.
The kid tells about the Polack who's carrying a rifle through the woods when he comes across a naked gal laying back on a bed of soft green moss with her legs spread, and this gal is a Real Looker, and she looks at the Polack and his gun and says, "What're you doing?" And the Polack says, "I'm hunting for game." And this Real Looker, she gives him a big wink and she says, "I'm game." So—POW!— the Polack shoots her.
It used to be this joke constituted a gold-plated, bona fide, surefire laugh riot, but the old man just keeps dying. He's still boo-hooing and not even making an effort to laugh, and no matter what, the old man has got to meet me halfway. I can't save him if he doesn't want to live. I ask him, "What do you get when you cross a faggot with a kike?" I ask him, "What's the difference between dog shit and a nigger?"
And he's still not getting any better. I'm thinking maybe the cancer's got into his ears. With the morphine and what all, it could be he can't hear me. So just to test can he hear me, I lean into his old crybaby face and I ask, "How do you get a nun pregnant?" Then, more loud, maybe too loud for this being a mackerel-snapper hospital, I yell, "You FUCK her!"
In my desperation I try fag jokes and wetback jokes and kike jokes—really, every effective course of treatment known to medical science—and the old man's still slipping away. Laying here, in this bed, is the man who made EVERYTHING into a Big Joke. Just the fact he's not biting scares the shit out of me. I'm yelling, "Knock-knock!" and when he says nothing in response it's the same as him not having a pulse.
I'm yelling, "Knock-knock!"
I'm yelling, "Why did the Existentialist cross the road?"
And he's STILL dying, the old man's leaving me not knowing the answer to anything, when I still don't get it. He's abandoning me while I'm still so fucking stupid. In my desperation I reach out to take the limp, blue fingers of his cold-cold dying hand and he doesn't flinch even when I grind a Joy Buzzer against the blue skin of his ice-cold palm. I'm yelling, "Knock-knock."
Nothing kills a joke faster than asking my old man to explain himself, but I'm yelling, "Why'd the Old Lady walk out on her husband and her four-year-old kid?" And laying there in that bed, my old man, he stops breathing. No heartbeat. Totally flatlined.
So this kid who's sitting bedside in this hospital room, late-late at night he takes the joke equivalent of those electric paddles doctors use to stop your heart attack, the hee-haw equivalent of what a paramedic Robin Williams would use on you in some Clown Emergency Room—a kind of Three Stooges de-frib-ulator—the kid takes a big, creamy, heaped-up custard pie topped with a thick-thick layer of whipped cream, the same as Charlie Chaplin would save your life with, and the kid reaches that pie up sky-high overhead, as high as the kid can reach, and brings it down, hard, lightning fast, slam-dunking it hard as the blast from a Polack's shotgun— POW!—right in his old man's kisser.
And despite the miraculous, well-documented healing powers of the Comedic Arts my old man dies taking a big bloody shit in his bed.
No, really, it was funnier than it sounds. Please, don't blame my old man. If you're not laughing at this point, it's my fault. I just didn't tell it right, you know, you mess up a punch line and you can totally botch even the best joke. For example, I went back to the barbershop and told them how he died and how I tried to save him, right up to and including the custard pie and how the hospital had their security goons escort me up to the crazy ward for a little 72-hour observation. And even telling that part, I fucked it up—because those barbershop guys just looked at me. I told them about seeing—and smelling—my old man, dead and smeared all over with blood and shit and whipped cream, all that stink and sugar, and they looked and looked at me, the barbers and the old guys chewing tobacco, and nobody laughed. Standing in that same barbershop all these years later, I say, "I'm yelling, "Knock-knock!"
I'm yelling, "Why did the Existentialist cross the road?"
And he's STILL dying, the old man's leaving me not knowing the answer to anything, when I still don't get it. He's abandoning me while I'm still so fucking stupid. In my desperation I reach out to take the limp, blue fingers of his cold-cold dying hand and he doesn't flinch even when I grind a Joy Buzzer against the blue skin of his ice-cold palm. I'm yelling, "Knock-knock."
Nothing kills a joke faster than asking my old man to explain himself, but I'm yelling, "Why'd the Old Lady walk out on her husband and her four-year-old kid?" And laying there in that bed, my old man, he stops breathing. No heartbeat. Totally flatlined.
So this kid who's sitting bedside in this hospital room, late-late at night he takes the joke equivalent of those electric paddles doctors use to stop your heart attack, the hee-haw equivalent of what a paramedic Robin Williams would use on you in some Clown Emergency Room—a kind of Three Stooges de-frib-ulator—the kid takes a big, creamy, heaped-up custard pie topped with a thick-thick layer of whipped cream, the same as Charlie Chaplin would save your life with, and the kid reaches that pie up sky-high overhead, as high as the kid can reach, and brings it down, hard, lightning fast, slam-dunking it hard as the blast from a Polack's shotgun— POW!—right in his old man's kisser.
And despite the miraculous, well-documented healing powers of the Comedic Arts my old man dies taking a big bloody shit in his bed.
No, really, it was funnier than it sounds. Please, don't blame my old man. If you're not laughing at this point, it's my fault. I just didn't tell it right, you know, you mess up a punch line and you can totally botch even the best joke. For example, I went back to the barbershop and told them how he died and how I tried to save him, right up to and including the custard pie and how the hospital had their security goons escort me up to the crazy ward for a little 72-hour observation. And even telling that part, I fucked it up—because those barbershop guys just looked at me. I told them about seeing—and smelling—my old man, dead and smeared all over with blood and shit and whipped cream, all that stink and sugar, and they looked and looked at me, the barbers and the old guys chewing tobacco, and nobody laughed. Standing in that same barbershop all these years later, I say, "Knock-knock."
"
The barbers stop cutting hair. The old goobers stop chewing on their tobacco.
I say, "Knock-knock." Nobody takes a breath, and it's like I'm standing in a room full of dead men. And I tell them, "Death! DEATH is there! Don't you people never read Emily...Dickerson? You never heard of Jean-Paul...Stuart?" I wiggle my eyebrows and tap the ash from my invisible cigar and say, "Who's there?" I say, "I don't know who's there—/ can't even play the violin!"
What I do know is I've got a brain filled with jokes I can't ever forget—like a tumor the size of a grapefruit inside of my skull. And I know that eventually even dog shit turns white and stops stinking, but I have this permanent head filled with crap I've been trained my whole life to think is funny. And for the first time since I was a Little Stooge standing in that barbershop saying fag and cunt and nigger and saying kike, I figure out that I wasn't telling a joke—I was the joke. I mean, I finally Get It. Understand me: A bona fide gold-plated joke is like a Michelob served ice cold...with a Mickey Finn... by somebody smiling so nice you won't never know how bad you've been fucked. And a punch line is called a "punch line" for a VERY good reason, because punch lines are a sugar-coated fist with whipped cream hiding the brass knuckles that sock you right in the kisser, hitting you—POW!—right in your face and saying, "I am smarter than you" and "I'm bigger than you" and "I call the shots, here, Buddy-BOY"
And standing in that same old Saturday morning barbershop, I scream, "Knock-knock!"
I demand, "KNOCK-KNOCK!"
And finally one old barbershop codger, he says in barely a tobacco whisper, so soft you can hardly hear him, he asks, "Who's there?"
And I wait a beat, just for the tension—my old man, he taught me that timing is crucial, timing is EVERYTHING—until, finally, I smile so nice and I say, "Radio not...."
