Corkle was probably
too old to be starting a new career, especially as a stand-up comic.
He'd rationalized that he was only testing the waters. It wasn't so
much that he longed to stand on stage and make people laugh. It was
more that he hated teaching. He just didn't think he could do it any
longer. Stand-up seemed like a natural alternate path—one that
would utilize the bits of teaching he liked, lecturing and spinning
yarns to make a point, and abandon the parts he hated like grading
papers and listening to students whine about their marks and the
amount of work they had to do just to get by.
He'd scanned his
audience on the way backstage—a young, local crowd that came to
drink and grab-ass and winnow themselves into brief and casual
couplings. They had little interest in comedy, at least not comedy
like Corkle's that aspired to more than scatological mental
pratfalls. He figured he would relate better to an older crowd. His
peers thought he was engaging and witty. His students didn't usually
share that opinion, not at first anyway. It took his classes the
better part of a semester to warm up to his droll asides. He didn't
have a semester to get through to this group. He only had five
minutes—the emcee had told him six if it was going well.
He wanted a
cigarette even though he'd quit years before. He thought he might
like a drink as well, not to steady his nerves, but to loosen his
tongue and make him more glib. This young audience didn’t scare
him. He got up in front of kids just like them every day of the week
at the university satellite campus where he taught freshman
composition and creative writing. Their indifference and unassailable
hipness frightened him not at all. He did loathe them though, most of
them, especially the club-hopping, self-indulgent little bastards he
imagined to be in this particular audience.
At age 42, Corkle
was working on his own indifference, trying to get out from under the
awful weight of it. He thought stand-up might be one way to do it. If
he failed, he would be back grading lamentable, angst-laden stories
about hormonal vampires and wishing all the while that one of the
more violent characters would spring from the page and rip out his
throat. It would be a vast improvement over life as he knew it.
When he was finally
introduced, Corkle ran through the door and bounded onto the tiny
stage with as much animation as he could muster. His effort was not
met with a smattering of applause. No one acknowledged his
appearance. He had brought no entourage. No one had come out to watch
him make a fool of himself. No one cared. Corkle was not deterred. He
couldn't afford to be.
He had decided on a
nondescript ‘How you guys doin’?’ for an opening line. He was
too new at this craft to worry much about a trademark opener. Again,
no one acknowledged his presence. He launched into his act.
His bit was a
stream-of-consciousness riff on terrorism told from the viewpoint of
a young and inexperienced terrorist named Habib. He thought it was
funny and edgy—a punk terrorist trying to get noticed, trying to
get girls, trying to get respect, but never quite connecting in the
way that he wanted.
Corkle saw Habib as
the loser in all of us grafted onto a disaffected Middle Eastern geek
growing up in America—a kid who would never have fit in anyway.
Habib latches onto the Great Satans of Israel and America that he
hears about in the mosque as the authors of all his misery. He
decides that blowing stuff up is a valid response, only he’s not so
good at that either.
He keeps going back
to his Imam for guidance and support:
‘Would
it be okay to conceal the explosives in a VHS tape case?’
‘No,
you idiot. Nobody watches VHS anymore.’
‘Is
it necessary to visit the occasional strip club in order to truly
appreciate the decadence of the infidel society?'
‘Only
if you bring your Imam along to provide spiritual direction.'
'You
would accompany me to such a place?'
'Of
course, my son, but you must promise to buy me a lap dance.'
Corkle wasn't all
that sure of his material. He thought it might be dated. He thought
it might seem too sympathetic to terrorists to sit very well with his
audience. He thought he might have erred in attempting something
vaguely preachy, something instructive, something with an ultimately
unpopular message, in an Oklahoma beer hall.
The audience might
have agreed, had they been paying any attention at all. They were
not. He saw at least two couples making out against the back wall.
The clack of balls from several coin operated pool tables punctuated
his jokes in odd places. Even the people at the tables right in front
of the stage seemed more engaged with their own conversations than
his monologue.
Corkle trudged
toward his finale. He wanted a big finish, but it depended on winning
over the audience before he got there. It didn't seem like that was
going to happen. He felt betrayed by circumstances, not unlike young
Habib, who finally succeeds in his own explosive conclusion. Habib
blows himself into Jihad heaven, and finds himself in a room with
gold walls and jeweled fixtures. There is a huge canopied bed covered
with silks and damask and brocaded pillows. He is ecstatic. His
beatific reward is just as advertised. The door opens and his
allotted seventy-two virgins enter.
Habib is aghast.
Nooooo! This cannot be. There must be some mistake. The
virgins are supposed to be pretty. These are not pretty, although
they certainly must be virgins because they all look like Danny
DeVito in drag. No burka was ever opaque enough to mollify Habib's
disgust.
There was little to
mark the end of Corkle's act. Certainly no applause. Not even a
heckler to voice relief that it was finally over. Corkle sat at the
bar and knocked back a gimlet. He got a second one to nurse, and
watched the lime oil swirl like smoke around the ice cubes.
“Pretty grim up
there, wasn't it, Professor?”
He turned to regard
the reality of the girl he had glimpsed in the mirror behind the bar.
The two dimensional phantom between stoppered bottles resolved itself
into an agreeable mish-mash of disparate parts—neon hair, multiple
piercings, a gingham shirt tied in the front under red suspenders
that were superfluous to the job of holding up denim shorts no wider
than a belt. Fishnet stockings and high-top sneakers finished the
ensemble. Corkle forgot why he had turned around.
“What?”
“Grim…your
act was pretty grim.”
Corkle nodded. “I
thought it was funnier when I wrote it.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Do I know you?”
Corkle asked.
“Yeah, but you
prolly don't remember. I took your course year before last. Dropped
after the first exam, though.”
“Oh. Did I fail
you?”
“Nah. Actually I
aced your test. I just thought I had better stuff to do with my
time.”
“Oh,” Corkle
said.
Her dark, expressive
eyes and pointed chin with just a hint of dimple did not make this
easier to hear. She climbed onto the bar stool next to his, crossed
her legs, and helped herself to a sip of his drink.
“Tasty,” she
said. “I'll have one of these.”
Her name was Cheryl.
She lived in a rental house with a roommate named Janice and a
rottweiler named Zombie. Both she and her roommate skated for a local
women's flat track roller derby team called the Pipe Dreams. She
worked the copy desk at Staples to pay the rent and buy groceries.
She had an on-again-off-again boyfriend named Stang. Currently he was
off-again, but it had been two weeks and she expected him to come
around any day now looking to hook back up.
“Okay, your turn,”
she said.
“What?”
“I told you about
me. Now you tell me about you. That's the way it works.”
“The way what
works?”
“Conversation. You
married? I don't see a ring.”
“Separated.”
“Why?”
“That's kind of
personal, don't you think?”
“Then tell me
something that isn't. I don't care.”
Corkle drained his
glass. He thought about ordering another, but discarded the idea as
folly. He stood up.
“I have to go,”
he said.
“Take me home.”
she said.
“I don't think
so.”
“C'mon. I need a
ride. My roommate left me stranded.”
“I'm sure there
are plenty of young men here who would be happy to give you a lift,”
Corkle said.
He thought that
would be the end of it.
“I was hoping for
somebody who wouldn't try to slip me a roofie.” she said.
***
She told him more about herself
during the ride home. Fortunately, it wasn't far. She'd been raised
by her grandparents, she and her sister, Patty. They were twins.
Patty still lived at home in Joplin. Patty was the good girl. Their
dad was the black sheep of the family, but Cheryl felt she might give
him a run for his money. Their mom had died when they were toddlers.
No one ever spoke of her. Cheryl thought that was odd. Patty didn't
seem to care that much.
When Corkle pulled the car up in
front of her house, she wanted him to come in. Corkle declined.
“You have to meet Janice,”
she insisted.
“Why?”
“You just do, that's all. Don't
make everything so complicated.”
Janice, was a thick girl—ankles,
arms, hair, everything—thick and sturdy. Her eyebrows had taken the
rest of her features hostage. She was curled up on the sofa next to
the dog, loading a bong with leaves and buds from an enameled
canister.
Corkle hadn't smoked pot in
years. Part of him knew this would be a very bad idea. Another part
of him, the part that had got him separated from his wife of ten
years, thought it might be okay. Cheryl held the lighter while he
took his first hit. As soon as the smoke hurled itself into his lungs
in a full body slam, he knew he'd done the right thing. His eyes
teared up and he fell into a coughing fit. He tried to hand the bong
to Cheryl. She was laughing too hard to take it from him. It was way
funnier than his act had been.
Cheryl went to the kitchen for
drinks and snacks. The dog lifted its head, cleared its throat in a
muffled growl, and went back to sleep. Janice stared at Corkle like
she was trying to read his mind.
“She's not going to sleep with
you, you know,” she said at last.
“Uh . . . okay.”
“Just sayin', in case you were
thinking otherwise. She's not that kind of girl.”
“Neither am I,” Corkle said,
and giggled.
Janice was no more easily amused
than his audience at Guffaw had been.
Cheryl returned with a bottle of
wine and a bag of microwave popcorn. They passed the bottle around.
Corkle took a swig and wiped the bottle on his sleeve. Neither Cheryl
nor Janice bothered so he quit doing it after the first time. Cheryl
decided to continue the narrative of her life. Janice yawned and
scratched the dog behind the ears. Corkle guessed that she'd heard it
before.
Cheryl's grandfather, the one
who'd raised her, was a preacher. He had a big church in Muscogee.
Its principal affiliation had been Southern Baptist when he'd
started out, but he'd grown increasingly fundamentalist and
intolerant of any ecumenical viewpoints. Eventually they'd had to
change the name of the church to avoid any confusion. He was a
fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher.
God does not take prisoners, he was fond of saying. God is a slash and burn deity. He might forgive sinners, but He has no truck with those whose faith is not correct. It's not enough to believe Jesus died to save you. You have to believe everything in the Bible without question, and not one thing more. Otherwise you will spend eternity in the fire.
Cheryl thought this was a funny
way to preach salvation. She had come to the conclusion, after
considerable thought, that God wanted her to be happy. Her
grandfather, obviously, did not. He wanted her to be miserable, just
like him. Cheryl swore he was the unhappiest man on the face of the
earth. That would have been okay if he'd been content to let it rest
there. Instead, he wanted everyone else to be just as miserable as he
was.
Joy did not come from God. Joy was the outward manifestation of a sinful heart. Even worse, joy was just the tip of the iceberg.
Nothing she had ever done that
made her feel like she belonged in the world was correct enough to
appease the old man. If she got good grades, she was prideful. If she
got mediocre grades, she was lazy. If she wanted to be a cheerleader,
she was immodest. If she wanted to go to a dance, she had given
herself over to lust. If she wore her skirt too short, she got sent
to her room without any supper. When he found out she'd kissed a boy,
he came and got her out of school and whipped her with a belt until
she'd had no more tears left to cry. Then he made her stand up during
Sunday Services while he announced her shame to the congregation. The
old ladies who came to church alone and camped out in the pews at the
front of the sanctuary clucked their tongues at her.
When she'd turned eighteen, she
ran away from home. The first time, he'd found her cowering in a
friend's closet. He took her home and locked her in her room for a
week. Patty sneaked food to her from the kitchen. The second time,
she'd run to her dad's place. He didn't want to have anything to do
with her. He let her know straight off that she wasn't welcome. No
explanation. She'd shown up in the morning. She was supposed to have
been at school. He was hung over, angry that she'd dared to trouble
him with her problems.
“Don't be here when I get
home,” he said as he got into his truck.
She stuck her thumb out on the
highway and got a ride to school, and that was the end of that.
Three months later, she'd tried
it again. This time, she went to Tulsa. She'd made her way to the mall
at Woodland Hills, and hung out there until she hooked up with some
college kids at one of the bookstores. Janice had been among them.
Janice let her crash with her, helped her get a fake ID, a job, a new
life unburdened by her grandfather's ideas of righteousness or
propriety. She'd been gone almost three years now. Life was pretty
good. She had friends, she had a job, she had roller derby, and
whenever she had a little extra money she took a few courses at the
satellite campus where Corkle taught.
She started trying to get Corkle
to talk again. The pot had made him more amenable, but he still had
reservations about sharing too much. He liked being private.
“C'mon,” she said. “Tell us
your first name anyway.”
“Kevin.”
“Better than Professor, don't
you think? Saves a whole syllable.”
“I suppose. You've probably
gathered I'm not that thrilled with teaching any more.”
“You mean you were once?”
“Probably not. I wrote a book
while I was still an undergrad. It won an award, sold a few thousand
copies, and died on the vine. I thought I'd do it again, but it
didn't happen. I got married instead. Found out I was going to need
an income. Somehow I convinced the faculty advisers to credit my book
toward a doctorate. That got me fast-tracked through the program
while my wife supported us. After that teaching was pretty much the
only thing left to do.”
“So what happened to the wife?”
“You sure are curious about my
married life.”
“What I'm curious about is why
women leave—on account of my mom.”
“I thought you said she died?”
“If she died, where's her
grave? How come nobody will talk about her? She might be dead, but
that's not all there is to the story.”
Corkle thought about that. She
could be right, but it sure didn't have anything to do with him. And
his wives? current or former—there were two of them now—they
didn't have anything to do with Cheryl or her mother. He really
wanted to be out of this conversation, but he was sitting on the
floor in her house, smoking her dope, and drinking her wine. Being
civil at least seemed appropriate.
“My first wife finally left
when I started seeing the woman I'm separated from now,” he said.
“Apparently she didn't think I should be dating a graduate
assistant while we were still married, even though she hadn't said a
civil word to me in years. The real problem was she had a lot more
ambition about my future than I did.”
“And your second wife?”
“Same problem as the first
really, although in her case it's just insecurity. She thinks if I
cheated with her, I'll cheat with someone else.”
“And would you? Cheat with
someone else?”
“I haven't, if that's what
you're getting at.”
“You've thought about it
though, haven't you?”
Corkle shrugged. He hadn't
thought about it. Not really. He had neither the patience nor the
inclination for philandering, not anymore, not after the first time.
He could have just said that and set her straight, but he was
distracted by her smile. He would not have thought it possible, until
then, for a girl in fishnet stockings, sneakers, and neon hair to
capture sardonic so completely.
