When I lived up in Portland--
Portland, Oregon-- Steve Orlen introduced me
to someone who was to become one of the people who
were to become among my best friends
who are down here in Tucson this year, Mark
Halperin and his wife, Bobbie.
Mark's teaching in the creative writing program.
They lived up in Ellensburg, Washington, central Washington.
And when all of us would get together
and we ran out of gossip and complaints and all the things
that you tell your friends about, we'd sit around,
Mark and I and Steve, would sit around and write crazy letters
and short stories.
This is a story that the three of us wrote.
And we had set only one rule for it.
That was that every sentence, at least
in the first half of the story, had
to have something sad in it.
The story is called "The Old Comedians."
The first half of it is self-explanatory,
but it talks about a bunch of old comedians getting together.
The second half is a letter from someone
who was going to Rosicrucian's College
to learn to be a mystic.
Every Saturday, the old comedians got together.
Some had physical defects, a worn-out mouth, a gimp leg
routine.
One guy's on his uppers.
Fritz Wunderbar's house was chosen this night,
simply at random.
But he'd never heard of them, so they met later
in his garage, a gloomy place.
They did their old routines for a while, there in the dark.
One could hear a sandpaper-like shuffle
from the old gimp and the syllables, yadda, yadda.
Fred Allen was mentioned, but they got too mixed up
with Gracie.
And she's even deader, so what's funny about that,
said Minnigan, as they all cracked a rictus.
Suddenly a noise was heard from above,
like a bird stumbling off its perch to oblivion.
Each touched each for reassurance,
their fire alarms forming the gesture of defeat, the zero.
Something was in there with them, and whatever it was,
it was sad.
The roof gave way, and who but Fritz,
the little pinhead, slid to the floor.
What a mess.
Two large tears, round as lost marbles, slid after him.
The gimp slipped on one, further injuring his best leg.
After a while, Fritz began talking compulsively.
The words of the poem, "Miniver Cheevy," broke from his lips.
"Child of scorn," he muttered.
But his cleft palate formed the syllables, "childish corn."
Thinking he referred to their old routines,
they began to moan and wail the ancient syllables of grief, oy,
oy.
Thinking they referred to him as "goy,"
he tore his pants from his body with a cry.
Chazarai, i.e., garbage, gesturing
toward the withered stump of his member.
"It ain't me eye," whispered the gimp, "it's my leg,"
and collapsed.
Nobody laughed.
How could they?
Rain had begun to fall through the roof hole,
and now it poured down on the white locks of the professor,
as they called him.
An ex-professor of cost economy who
had fallen in love with a showgirl, not knowing he
had not the equipment, lost in a bungled appendectomy.
This would make a great sitcom, huh?
This view of Fritz's remnant was curiously
disturbing to his already precarious mental balance.
Fritz's wife, Flame Wunderbar, standing by the door,
looked nostalgically upon the group,
searching for the ghost of humor past.
Her eyes shone out like shook foil, watery, prematurely aged
and a little despairing, though not without hope,
mixed with a fear of failure.
She carried in her hand a letter from the Rosicrucians bearing
the cryptic sign, which had been hand-canceled.
She opened it with trembling hands.
The letter said, "Dear Mom and Dad, really, it's not so bad.
First, they're all mystics here, even the freshmen,
who wear astral beanies.
Their auras have a distinctly greenish tinge.
One of them, Jerzy Kosinski, got
his name changed to Jersey Weinbaum,
so as not to call attention to himself.
At freshman orientation dinner, we
were served oriental chili peppers.
Nobody could sleep that night for fear
of the great Rosacrucian, a former trapeze artist--
wait a second, I'm lost here--
a former trapeze artist who was represented here by the abbot.
The abbot was in his room projecting visions on the wall
with his third eye.
About him, there was an air of disgust.
On the wall, Gone with the Wind, the garbage scene,
for the 164th time.
The next day, we were led single-file down a long ramp
into the parking lot behind the university.
We were made to stand in a circle for the entire day
while we were beaten about the backsides with paddles.
After this day, we were to be called the novitiate Kosinski,
after the master, a former supermarket
cashier from Holyoke, who started the ball rolling
toward the godhead.
On the second day, he rose from the dead
without the help of concealed mirrors.
Well, Mom, I could have shit.
Remember the chili peppers?
On the fourth day, we were given lectures
in the dogma of the great Rosicrucian.
It went like this.
You guys think you know it all.
Well, there's a parable that goes like this.
God, this is dumb.
A man who was given his choice of three ping-pong balls
or three paddles by the first of the great Rosicrucians, Rabbi
Jaime Doodlesack.
He was told, Stoffel's choice.
The man could not decide whether to bet it or beat it.
For a long time, he stood in the hot desert sun
preening himself and discussing the choices.
On the second day, a weird beatnik
disguised as a wandering Jew entered the monastery,
inquiring where was the game.
Someone asked him if he had seen a man wandering
with three ping-pong balls and three paddles.
He answered, no, not with my wife, you don't.
And thus it was that the second Rosicrucian was identified.
This shows that it's not how many balls you have
but how you play the game.
You guys wouldn't be here if you didn't
know when to get off the pot.
After his opening speech, the great Rosicrucian
flashed a smile and walked off stage.
A long silence, and the girl on my right, wearing a hair shirt,
began babbling in tongues and removing her socks.
I understood every word.
I thought it was beginning to work.
That night, the strangest thing happened,
as if by prearrangement.
A large yellow horse wandered into my bedroom, saying neigh.
This was my first temptation.
I replied, yea.
It went on all night like this.
When they found us in the morning,
I was in a compromised position.
But I got out of it by saying, you guys
don't know when to get off the pot.
No one has spoken to me since.
And the horse keeps following me around and sniffing.
Love, Dobbin Wunderbar.
You too, Dad.
Ah, the way we spent our youth.