BLAH BLAH BLAH (2013)
A short story excerpt from the published collection "The Most Important Thing Happening" (2013)
(Author’s Note: The entire collection "The Most Important Thing Happening” is subtitled “A Novel in Stories.” There are eleven stories in all and this one, “Blah Blah Blah,” is story number three.)
—And that, my followers, is a pound of fact, a pinch of opinion, and you can keep-a-change!
The crowd went wild, but the crowd always went wild when J. Aaron Epsom signed off from rehearsal. They were mostly paid crew and interns, but either way, J. Aaron was used to applause. His trademarked brand of faux hubris caused Now magazine to declare him “the Rock Star Pundit on a Muzak Broadcast landscape.” The saucy news he served up on a nightly basis was at first off-putting to the network’s programming chief, Howard Howard, but Howard warmed to J. Aaron when he saw the overnight ratings spike seven months ago when he first went on the air. Now a pending book deal was merely the appetizer toward world domination.
J. Aaron gave a few last-minute notes to prep for the 8:00 p.m. live broadcast and retreated to the greenroom where his hot chai awaited. He did not particularly care for the taste of hot chai, but drank a mug nightly out of superstition. The evening of his very first show had gone so well, he had felt electric, and as he stepped backstage, one of the interns, a cute thing named Tamala, handed him a sample of the beverage. He had shouted out HOTCHAI! while improvising a pose that some would call a samurai/ninja hybrid and others would call desperate. Tamala laughed and then slept with him. He hadn’t refused a cup since. Though the night of the fourth show, he fired Tamala. Her laugh ended with a snort that was grating.
He passed the writers’ room. Barry remained. Barry Gooz always remained.
—Look who’s making me shine, J. Aaron said.
—Yay. It’s you.
—Pretty great monologue. Pretty fair. Especially the third joke. Why is it always the third joke that kills? I love third things. Someone should write a doctoral theorem on that.
—Thesis.
—Even if the second joke bombs. Crazy. You didn’t write that one, did you? It felt more like I wrote it.
—But you didn’t.
—Well—some might say that in delivering the joke so well, I crafted it anew in the moment.
—You didn’t craft it anew, insisted Barry—because you didn’t write it.
—Who did? Lorenzo?
—No.
—Shmoopy?
—Again, no.
—Z-Dog? Puppy Pound? Shahanga? Felt Tip? Klargle? Moonwash?
—No. And why hasn’t Howard given me a nickname yet? I’ve been here longer than everyone you just mentioned. I’ve even been here longer than Schnauzerhaus.
—You go home to your kids right after the show every night. Howard doesn’t give nicknames until he’s stone-faced drunk. That’s why Steve’s nickname is Stonefaced. Wait! Was it written by Stonefaced?
—No, said Barry. —It was gpownin74_yapwow.
—I don’t know that nickname.
—That’d be a complicated nickname. It’s a username. We’ve been encouraging viewers to blah in their own jokes.
—Blah in?
—You know. Blahblah. The newest social media craze. If you don’t update your “whatchadoin” every 20 minutes, it makes up something for you.
—That sounds really productive.
—It is a wellspring of humor.
—Just like you—sometimes. Speaking of, where’s the rest of the writing staff? Got hot dates before the show? I do. That goes without saying.
—Yet you said it.
—With Rojeta. That new intern. Where did we find her?
—She’s Tamala’s sister.
—Whoosh. Their parents have got to stop naming people.
—You said “whoosh.”
—I did.
—Out loud.
—I’m trying it on for the show. New shtick. I’m gonna say words that are actually just sound effects.
—Onomatopoeia?
—No thanks, I just went. Here’s another word I’m trying on. Poom.
—Poom isn’t a word.
—Are you sure? I think it’s the sound a bag of flour makes when it hits a swimming pool.
—How would you know that?
—Check your swimming pool.
Barry forced his own glasses askew as he rubbed his closed eyelid with his thumb. It gave the impression he was exasperated, but with what J. Aaron hadn’t a clue. He sighed all the way down to the fluid building up in his lungs and attempted to end the conversation.
—Well—have fun dating the second crazy-named sister.
—Hey! I wonder if there’s a third? I love third things! What do you think her name would be?
—Shahanga. She’s on our writing staff.
J. Aaron yanked his smoking jacket off of the only chair in the room with wheels and hurried to the elevator, tapping the button nine times before—
—ROMCOM!
—Mr. Howard!
—Please. Call me Howard. Mr. Howard’s my father, may he rest in peace someday soon.
Howard caught J. Aaron before the elevator doors could close, but Howard Howard always caught J. Aaron. If there was anything that irritated him more than the nickname ROMCOM (the etymology would make very little sense even with a backstory), it was the giver of that nickname: Howard Howard. Howard gave nicknames but did not have one himself even though he desperately needed one.
—Smoking jacket’s a beauty, Howard Howard insisted.
—Actually, the smoking jacket is to impress a beauty.
—How kind. My niece will be flattered.
Poom. J. Aaron had completely forgotten that he had agreed to take Howard’s visiting niece Saphsa to—where was it?
—Not everyday she gets to eat at a restaurant that looks like a mini Big Ben.
That’s right. Howard Howard had specifically asked J. Aaron to escort Saphsa to “Whales,” the all-you-can-eat British-themed eatery in City Square.
—You should definitely try the Haggis Loaf appetizer.
—I thought haggis was Scottish.
—Hey, if Americans can serve French Fries ...
—I’m thinking maybe a change of plans.
—Oh, stated Howard with more than a hint of disapproval— she really has her heart set on Whales.
—Great. You can take her there yourself. My change of plans involves a different individual of the feminine variety.
—You don’t have to talk like that. There isn’t a camera on you.
—I’m taking Rojeta to doughnuts, then steak. These European models need a pillow of carbs to line the intestine before the beef scoots in.
—The model will understand when you cancel. I am, after all, your boss. Saphsa will meet you at six.
—That’s cutting it awfully close to the 8:00 p.m. show.
—You’ve shown up five minutes before and been fine.
—I’ve shown up five minutes before and been great—but I never had a stomach full of haggis. You know I can’t eat that sort of thing or ...
—Or you’ll balloon to your old weight?
—I was going to say, “Or I’ll lack energy for the show.”
—Then have the lamb fries.
—I would if I were going.
—You will and you are.
He stated the last five words with a face that reminded J. Aaron of his father. His father wasn’t much of a father. Probably why J. Aaron didn’t particularly care for fathers. Either way, the face had its intended effect. J. Aaron found himself walking the sidewalk toward Whales, trying to get all the laughs out of his system he might subconsciously associate with the name Saphsa over dinner.
Man, that third joke killed. What is it with the third joke? The truth of it stuck in J. Aaron’s craw. Blahblah, huh? He wondered what it might take to join in on the socialness. He typed the URL into his MiniPowerPad 3.0 and assessed the instructions:
Email: Username: Password: Confirm Password:
It seemed miraculously simple. Though others tended to tend to J. Aaron’s details, J. Aaron knew all four of these details by heart. In fact, three of them were identical. This social media thing really was easy. He took ten minutes to type in the information (his clumsy thumb continually replacing the j with a k), and felt nervousness in his stomach as the first prompt appeared:
Compose your first blah: 110 characters or less
Characters? What’s a character? J. Aaron didn’t realize he would need to write some sort of story. Unless character referred to the amount of letters, which made no sense as just saying “letters” took less time than saying “characters.” After assessing other sample blahs, J. Aaron assessed that characters indeed meant letters and considered the process of blahing futile. He was just about to delete the account when another prompt appeared:
You have 133 followers.
Glory be to the Creator. J. Aaron knew he was successful— popular even, but he had no idea that 133 people per minute were ogling him (the fashionable term for using the Ogle.com search engine). They had social networked their way into being his loyal subjects in less than sixty seconds. And he hadn’t even blahed anything yet. This was remarkable.
He was late for dinner.
Just one, he thought. He stood in the center of Center Square and pored over the line. He gazed into the distance and allowed his eyes to glaze while staring at the twinkling lights atop the Hardaway Building. This was important. His first missive to his followers. It could be philosophical. No. That would go against his newsman-next-door persona. An ironic perception about this trash bin of a city? No. He was supposed to love this city. It was in the bio that his writing team had crafted.
Hmm. He knew just the thing.
In City Square. Preparing my bowels for both the haggis and the blind date awaiting me. Whoosh.
He made himself laugh so he knew it was awesome and started walking.
He approached the tourist portion of City Square. Every eatery had a theme and every store had a ten-foot-tall icon in front: a toy sculpture or soap carving or brownie tower. All the while, flashbulbs popped as sightseers recognized their witty nightly news anchor. J. Aaron feigned a wave as he tripped over an animatronic jaguarundi outside the Endangered-Species-Themed Buffet.
You have 478 followers.
Wow. He had been advised to mind his ego, but this sort of reinforced it as fact.
He entered the restaurant through the mouth of a humpback whale wearing the bearskin cap of a British Royal Guard. Just inside, a hostess stood at a kiosk on the part of the tongue that would otherwise taste bitterness.
—I believe I have a reservation.
—If you have any hesitancies, you should eat elsewhere.
—No. A reservation. An appointment to eat.
—Oh. Sorry. I’m a literalist. And we don’t take reservations.
—Not even for J. Aaron Epsom?
—I don’t know what that is.
—It’s not a what. It’s a who. It’s a guy with almost 500 followers. Me.
—Your first name’s Jay?
—No. It’s the letter. The letter J.
—And you say it out loud?
—Am I on your list or not?
—Did your Union Jack vibrate?
—I beg your pardon?
—If I didn’t give you a wireless flag buzzer and if it didn’t vibrate, then your name hasn’t been called. Kapish?
—Poom.
—What? the hostess asked.
—Sorry. I thought we were making up sound effects.
—Unless, that is, you’re meeting a lady friend, the hostess stated as if she had only just remembered it.
—Lady friend?
—Someone said to call her if a handsome famous fellow shows up. Could that mean you? Had she ever seen you before?
—You see this face? You’re welcome.
—Her Union Jack vibrated twenty minutes ago. She’s over there eating a second helping of Buckingham & Cheese Salad.
J. Aaron tiptoed past the Renowned Nannies Pictorial History and peeked around the corner. A fluorescent velvet Stonehenge framed her head like a halo, which was unfortunate because blacklight was not at all flattering to Saphsa’s girthy silhouette.
He sauntered over, making certain to brush past a table where he heard his name whispered—you know, give them a thrill. And then, the inevitable: he squeezed snug into the booth, the table pressing into his belt line.
—Tiny booth.
—I had to scootch the table your way, she said with a mouthful of green and brown.
—Scootch. That’s a neat word.
—I didn’t invent the word. I just did it to the table.
—Wow. Salad. Why do I smell onion rings?
—It’s the deep-fried cubed ham.
—There are fried cubes in the salad?
—Of ham.
—Clever. Almost like a meal.
—You don’t remember me, do you?
J. Aaron Epsom knows there are four stages in a successful performer’s life. The first is called the urge. It is the moment when the epiphany hits a certain someone (who has no other skill set than performing) that performing is what he/she was born to do. The urge convinces the performer that singing / comedy / jazz-hands were inbred from the fetus stage and that they will die—oh just die—without making a life of art or at least consistent applause.
The second stage is called the bottom. This is when the performer becomes convinced that he / she is no better than the eleven thousand others auditioning for the same jobs. That he / she should have seized the opportunity earlier to learn a functioning motor skill. That unpaid repertory is a reward, not a due. This is also the stage when the performer makes his / her first actual friend in show business. The actual friend is special. The actual friend understands the performer’s lowest moments and needs. The actual friend becomes empathy rather than competition. The actual friend truly gets you. For some, this is the final stage. Performing life remains at this level while plasma donations and barista gigs pay the utilities.
Only a handful reach the third stage.
The third stage is called the ceiling. Brazen, overflowing success. This is the stage where the performer eventually forgets the actual friend ever existed. As J. Aaron glanced up from the Andrew Lloyd Webber crossword on his menu into the eyes of Saphsa, he was instantly cognizant that stage three was peaking and that he was about to be thrust down the mountain into stage four.
Oh, Howard Howard—what have you done?
—I beg your pardon?
—We were in the Hordelings together.
—What? Were we? In that building with the tree in the lobby?
—Yes. We improvised together.
—There were, like, a hundred of us in that troupe.
—There were seven. She said it after a prolonged moment of silence.
—I mean, including the audience. Did you say your name is Saphsa?
—Yes. Saphsa Eloquin.
—That is one bizarre stage name.
—That’s my real name. I was using a stage name back in the Hordelings.
—Of course! You were—Pam.
—I was Rhonda.
—Yep! Rhonda something with an M.
—No.
—With a consonant.
—Rhonda Oerboerseau.
—I meant in there somewhere. A few consonants. In the middle. Sandwiched among a lot of vowels. Wow.
—You don’t remember me at all.
—I have no recollection of a Rhonda Oerboerseau. Is that Dutch?
—How should I know? I made it up.
—You were really good. Really good at making up a name. Did we do any sketches together?
—Yes. We were in a seven-member comedy troupe for three years. We did many many sketches together, Orvin.
—Shhh. Hey now. I know I’ve upset you, but there’s no need to call me Orvin.
—How is Aaron any better?
—It isn’t. That’s why I made up “J. Aaron.”
—That’s ridiculous.
—No. It’s famous. I’m famous. I have nearly 500 followers.
—Yes. I know.
—You what now?
Turned out Saphsa Eloquin née Rhonda Oerboerseau had an ongoing Ogle alert that notified her when any online action occurred for “J. Aaron Epsom.” She had been among his first 133 followers. She had read of J. Aaron’s bowel preparation for the date and how she had been compared to haggis.
He took a quick gulp of his water to cool the steam. He was not going to let this girl grab his goat in public. Grab his goat? Is that the saying? It should be. He pondered the nuances of the euphemism while a lone ice cube lodged itself between his cheek and uvula.
—This is all really bothering you, she stated with both pity and disappointment.
—Why would it bother me to forget you? I’m supposed to just take your word that we did all these things together? Ha. Ha ha. Do you know how many people wish they were seated in your chair at this table at this moment?
—I know one who wishes she wasn’t.
—So, you invited me here to humiliate me.
—I’m not the one who winced at the fried salad cubes.
—That salad has chocolate-covered hardboiled eggs in it. It’s begging for ridicule. You can’t penalize me for that! And Howard should have told me that you were a previous acquaintance.
—Howard doesn’t know.
—What do you mean Howard doesn’t know?
—I’ve never told my uncle that I perform. I don’t want any favors in the business. I’d rather make it on my own.
—Lady, the business is favors!
—“Saphsa” — you don’t get to call me Lady.
—You expect me to believe that you arranged to have dinner with me—ME—and that you are NOT looking for a job.
—I don’t need a job from you, Orvin.
—Stop. Calling. Me. That.
—I came to have dinner with you because you hurt me.
—Here we go.
—Stop it. I don’t expect you to understand. You weren’t the same person. We all make mistakes, but you hurt me and it has been hard for me to let go of that hurt.
—What’s the angle here, Orca? What do you think I’m going to give you?
—No fat jokes. Please.
—You’ve got to be kidding me.
—I’m not interested in anything you can give me. I’ve allowed the way you hurt me to rule me for a very long time. It’s turned me into what you see before you.
—I can hardly see you behind that menu.
—Stop it. You becoming famous—on every billboard and magazine—it just made things worse, so I thought if I reconnected and reminded myself of the friend you once were—
—This is a hidden camera show.
—A what?
—This is that show. What is it called—Doinked! Where they mess with celebrities’ heads. Am I getting Doinked?!
—Please lower your voice.
His eyes met hers. His smile dissolved.—You’re serious.
—This is important to me. Necessary, she muttered as her eyes fell to the salad.
—You thought we were friends? I don’t even remember you.
—Clearly. I am not here to gain anything from you. But, for my own well-being, I needed closure and it appears I have seen the extent of how much of that is possible with someone like you.
—Someone like me?
—Forget it. I will now close this chapter. Tomorrow, I begin an opportunity that will change my life.
—Right. Reverse psychology. Make me think you have a better opportunity so I offer you an internship because you read somewhere that I date interns.
—For your information, I have a book deal with Shrub & Sons Publishing.
There it is. J. Aaron could feel the rage broiling behind his right eye. Why the right eye before the left? J. Aaron didn’t know. Perhaps rage moved like it was reading a manga comic in Japan.
—So, we cut to the chase. An exposé. You’re here to extort money out of me to stop you from tearing me apart in some exposé.
—It’s not an exposé. It has nothing to do with you.
—Of course it doesn’t. I just happen to be the only famous person who has hurt you. I suppose it isn’t about me at all. It’s probably a photo book of baby seals dressed like people.
—It’s a book of paper dolls.
—What?
She pulled out a sample. —Only for adults. With real fashion. I always found great escape in paper dolls as a girl, but every adult escape I’ve found is destructive. I’ve decided to create an innocent one. But, instead of paper clothing, it’s actual clothing.
—Are those tiny pajamas?
—Mmhm. And they’re made of the finest materials: silk, cashmere, leather. It’s a high-end coffee table book for the child in all of us.
—Children shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
—You’re missing the point.
—This is real? This is really the book deal? Not some factual trash about me?
—I’m here to forgive, Orvin. Forgive and move on. I really need to. For my own well-being.
J. Aaron peered through narrowed eyes for the slightest of moments before bursting into laughter.
—You’re laughing. Saphsa quivered. Don’t laugh.
—You really—you just don’t—don’t get it.
—Don’t mock me.
—You aren’t giving me much of a choice, Saphsa. I mean, if you were exposing me for money, at least there would be something to respect. But, this? You think this is a chance to change your life? I’m sorry, Saphsa. But, this is just a new way for your world to come crashing down.
—I beg to differ.
—Is it too late to stop this?
—I sign my publishing deal tomorrow at the Hardaway Building.
—This isn’t a fresh start.
—Please.
—This is nothing.
—You think I am nothing? I am trying to be filled with graciousness and forgiveness here while you are filled with hubris and judgment.
—And jokes. Don’t forget the jokes.
—I’d say it’s quite easy to forget your jokes.
—Hey! No ragging on my jokes.
—Your jokes? I didn’t realize you wrote any of them yourself.
—Ha. Ha ha. Nice angle. Making light of me just because I didn’t get here on my own.
—Oh. I know you didn’t.
—Whoosh.
And there it was. From the moment they made eye contact, J. Aaron knew the fuse was being lit. He now understood where the bomb was intended to drop: in his own lap. This deranged woman—this performer (clearly in stage two) has deluded herself into believing that she knows him and that he owes her. Now, the ploy was clear. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Earth to unfamous person: you will never get what you are after.
—You listen to me, Rhonda—if that is your real fake name— doors have been opened for me, but I funnied my way through them. I force-talked and lampooned my way into opportunities thinner than the space between this table and my spleen. I did it. I! I! I! It’smy turn! My stage three! The third is the best. I love third things! They rule. They are the best part of life. The best jokes—and you will not take my third thing away.
—You know, famous people die in threes.
—Don’t ruin my third-is-awesome speech!
—You really think you can talk your way out of a guilty conscience?
—Who said anything about a guilty conscience?!
—You just did.
—What?!
—Here.
She showed him her MiniPowerPad 3.6 (wow, she has the new one) and revealed the latest blah attributed to J. Aaron Epsom:
Dinner is not going well. Feeling quite guilty.
Nausea set in. J. Aaron was certain that he never wanted to smell the scent of deep-fried cubed ham again. He scrambled for his own MPP to confirm this crisis. There it was. Words he had not written— attributed to him alongside another update:
You have 1738 followers.
Disaster. Clearly, twenty minutes had passed and blahblah had blahed J. Aaron’s second blah for him in his absence. He plopped his forehead upon the table, flushed red and narrowly missing his fork tines. The vibration of it shook Saphsa’s 64-oz. unsweetened tea. He was perplexed. A random choice of second blah for blahblah to make on his behalf. Also startlingly insightful.
—I did not write that.
—You didn’t have to. Blahblah profiles you psychologically by observing your habits and then reflects them in subsequent whatchadoins. Some say it is truer than what you would write yourself.
—How is that possible?! I wrote one blah! One!
—It was snarky, derisive, and self-serving. That’s a lot of information.
—And now everyone has seen it.
—Perhaps everyone should.
—What is that? What sort of threat is that? he said with venom and wildness in his eyes.
—Go ahead and talk, Saphsa countered, unhinged. —That’s what you do. Your precious funny famous voice. You just keep talking.
—You are mean and you take up far too much booth space. There. It is said.
—Another fat joke. Keep talking.
—I’m going to call the concierge and have you escorted out.
—Whales English Eatery doesn’t have a concierge.
—I will have you life-flighted out with a hospital helicopter.
—Talk.
—I will ask my twenty strongest friends to roll you back into the ocean.
—Orvin, if you go any further, you won’t be able to take it back.
He was waving his water glass in front of his face now, on a tirade loud enough for surrounding families to hear. He was calling her all known categories of dirigibles, insisting that entire herds of cattle could be saved in a flood by using her as a flotation device. At one low point, he compared her appearance to an entire family of border collies melded together into one gooey yipping orb. He was on a roll, the venom flitting from the end of his tongue like so much pent-up insecurity. He was hurling insults, not of his own making, but every one he could remember being used against him in his childhood. His pain became hers because how dare she—how DARE she for one moment think of taking away what he had earned ...
—Stop it now, she insisted. —This is your last chance.
He prattled on ... his voice. His precious, famous, hilarious voice.—This is less than a pound of fact and more than a pinch of opinion—
—Orvin. Take it back before it is taken from you.
... it was a miracle, a salvation of the modern airwaves, the antidote to his anxiety. It was his wit, his tongue, his beloved and sovereign voice!
But Saphsa silenced him with a stare. The stare like her Uncle Howard’s. The stare that melted peace. Her insistent gaze burned into the bridge between his nose. He would have skittered away had he not been wedged betwixt the booth and table. The silence hushed the restaurant. All eyes were on the celebrity and this behemoth. She bared her teeth first, and then with a whisper slowly hissed the same word three times:
—blah. blah. blah.
She burst into tears and stormed out of Whales.
Saphsa was gone.
The chatter reprised from the customers in the eatery as if no fracas had occurred. J. Aaron pushed the table away from his abdomen. There were fumes of fried ham cubes lingering in the air. Discombobulated, he brought his water glass up to his mouth.
tik.
What the—? Something had fallen into the bottom of the glass. He fished it out. It was a tooth. A human tooth. His own.
J. Aaron ran like he had not run in a year. Of course, he hadn’t actually run in a year. The show had runners to do that sort of thing for him. He ran with one hand cupped under his chin, the other holding his MPP where he could read it while sprinting. Should it hurt this much to sprint? J. Aaron couldn’t remember, but thought nothing should hurt this much. Especially while your teeth were falling out.
(phing.)
It was the sound of another blah coming through. An interesting sound like whoosh or poom. He made a mental note to remember it. This was all, of course, before he read the blah in question:
A fourth tooth is falling out.
Where are they getting this information? And is blahblah actually considered a they or an it or perhaps a collective? J. Aaron did not know what a collective was but he belonged to several. And furthermore, this information was inaccurate. Only three of his teeth had fallen into his cupped hand.
pamp.
Okay. Now it was accurate.
In different seasons of J. Aaron’s life, he held prevalent what he considered the single pivotal question in life. The question in question changed, of course, as he matured. What began as where did I come from? soon became where did all these other people come from? Later, why do I have to have a name like Orvin? gave way to is this lazy eye operable? Soon after, is there a higher power? transformed into can the higher power get me a hotter girlfriend? And finally, can a live show go into syndication? became why are all my teeth falling out?
Why indeed. It was not the normal comeuppance for a bad date, except perhaps one that ended in fisticuffs. Had Saphsa cursed him? And if so, how would that be plausible? She’s an actress, for crying out loud—worse than an actress: a comedienne. And an unmemorable one at that.
tik. pamp. tiktiktik.
The teeth were falling out in pairs now. Chunks. Some hitting his cupped hand, most spilling to the concrete. He ran harder, scrambling to get to the studio as if all solutions would become clear inside.
He slammed the writers’ room door three times before Barry Gooz awoke from his siesta on the casting couch.
—What?! What! Is it showtime?
—I’m bweeding fwom my mouf!
—What time is it? What are you talking about?
—I had a bad ebening ad I’b bweeding fwom my mouf!
—Aaron—you’re bleeding from your mouth!
It was the first time J. Aaron had attempted to say something out loud since the incident at Whales. (tik. pamp.) It had not dawned on him that the absence of teeth would (tik.) deter his pronunciation. This was going to be a problem.
—Did you get mugged?
—I need teef!
—Did someone punch you in the mouth? Was it Rojeta? No—I bet it was Stonefaced. He’s engaged to Rojeta. You can’t go on the air looking like that.
—Da’s why I NEEB TEEF!
—What you need are some teeth.
—YEJH! TEEF! TEEF!
The two of them scurried to the makeup department, J. Aaron dropping the few teeth he had caught like marbles, kicking them inadvertently into corners and crevices. (phing) Now, my lips are going numb. Is this my recompense for so much bad behavior gone unpunished?
He stopped cold in the middle of the hallway, blood dripping from the slits between his fingers. He stared at the message. It was truth. Not the bad behavior, because J. Aaron would not call his habits something so derogatory, but the numbness—the numbness was true. He had not even noticed until he read it. His mouth was deteriorating fast, eliminating his ability to speak for himself. It became clear that the only words the public was going to hear from him tonight would come from this machine—this blahblah. These words that his followers
(phing) You have 3468 followers.
would assume were coming from his precious mind.
Barry Gooz doubled back down the hallway with Facial Enhancement Artiste (the moniker she preferred over “makeup lady”) Felicia Schulman. Felicia was carrying several sets of dentures in a Ziploc freezer bag.
—Wow, sweetheart. You weren’t joshing, Felicia opined, interrupted only by the smacking of her bubble gum.
—Why would I lie about J. Aaron losing his teeth?
—I assumed it was a euphemism for being really really drunk.
—No, we call that stonefaced.
—Oh. That explains Steve. Goodness. Mr. Epsom looks like a baby or an old man or someone in-between with gingivitis.
—Can you fix it?
—I can fix anything in the facial arena. But, I’ve never had to replace all of the teeth at once—not on such short notice.
—Will it work?
—Oh, I can fit him with a new set, but only if they’re ALL gone.
—What?! We can’t wait for that! He’s on the air LIVE in five minutes!
—Okay, sugar. I’ll run go get my pliers.
He lay there on the hallway linoleum. To have made such a fortune. To have wooed so many fans. All with the wit and savvy of his tongue. And now—now—it would all disappear in an instant. In an evening. In a single broadcast. This, he imagined, was terrible irony.
Yes! Of course. That was the solution. Irony! Convince his followers that this was all an act—all part of his beloved smarm. He could actually perpetuate the unsightliness of this deterioration and milk it for all it was worth. He would make this tragedy appear to be intentional. A—what do they call it? A statement! Yes! He would make it appear as if his inability to speak was merely a statement. He couldn’t say anything because he was saying something—perhaps a criticism of other talking heads. It was brilliant. Genius. But, how to perpetuate the idea?
He lay prone as a pool of his own saliva and mouth-blood warmed the back of his neck. He pulled out his MPP. The pain. The pain. Oh, the excruciating pain. He would blah. He would blah like blahblah had never been blahed before. (phing)(phing) Two more whatchadoin’s had just been added:
Why am I being so vulnerable with you followers? I trust you least of all.
You have 7982 followers.
ARGGH! He’d better blah quickly—before the blahblah out-blahed him. But, what to type? How to best illustrate irony? It was a formidable thepainthepain challenge. J. Aaron was not an irony fan because you could never be certain that the intended target would catch on to the ironic nature of the irony. J. Aaron did, however, rather enjoy ironing, which is ironic.
He crafted what he considered a top-notch self-deprecating sort of entry:
All of these blahs have been ironic. Or have they?
Ha ha. He thought about adding LOL, but did not because he only laughed internally and did not want to lie. Instead, he added a blushing emoticon. He was just about to click “submit” when he realized it wasn’t a very good joke. Too obvious. “Or have they?” No. He would delete that portion. Much better. Of course, now it wasn’t a joke at all. It was merely a statement. Yet perhaps that is the joke. He wished he could send two blahs before this so that this would be the third. THEN it would be funny. He clicked the “submit” button anyway and read what appeared on the screen:
All of these blahs have been iconic.
Iconic?! That’s not what he meant to type! Curse these clumsy thumbs! Well—iconic and ironic are almost the same thing—right? He couldn’t remember, but the nausea building within insisted otherwise. Or maybe that was the pain from the exposed nerves in his mouth thepainthepainkillmenow.
Barry and Felicia rounded the corner with Howard Howard in tow. Felicia held pliers and Barry clutched a bottle of alcohol. They rushed at him like a triumvirate of bullies smelling a freshman.
J. Aaron wasn’t certain which was worse: Barry Gooz scrubbing blood off of his face with rubbing alcohol, Howard Howard screaming at him for rejecting Saphsa, or the wrestling match Felicia was having with his remaining teeth. She was much more robust than she appeared. That girl had the strength of a farmhand, and as she planted her boot into J. Aaron’s sternum to leverage herself, a molar was set free with a trajectory toward the ceiling tiles. J. Aaron felt himself begin to pass out, his face being rubbed raw and the yelling and screaming all merging into a single monotonous hum.
The hum continued and became a drone. The drone persisted and became a whoosh. J. Aaron was out cold.
All was silent, save the whoosh.
J. Aaron felt as if his eyes were open but all about him was blackness. There was a lone illumination: the soft blue glow of his MPP. He reached out for it, but it seemed to no longer be in his hand. He stepped (Was he standing? He did not remember climbing off of the floor) toward the glow. It appeared close. (phing). No. The sound was far off. J. Aaron walked briskly, reaching out for the glowing light. He found himself trotting, then sprinting, the pain a phantom memory now.
And then the light grew larger and larger until J. Aaron found himself standing at the foot of his own MPP, now the size of a monolith before him.
|
J. Aaron stared up at the blinking icon, uncertain of what to do next.
—Speak to me.
It blinked. Seven, eight times. Mocking him.
—Speak to me, blahblah. Tell me what I really think.
And then,
All of these blahs have been iconic.
—That’s not what I meant to say. That wasn’t the real me.
All of these blahs have been.
—How can you say that? I haven’t even written most of them. You—the blahblah machine. You’ve been generating them for me. Not that they weren’t true. Some of them—okay, all of them—were truer than my own blahs. Truer than my own words—maybe even than my own thoughts. Perhaps I haven’t been completely honest.
All of these blahs have.
—Listen, I’m in the entertainment business. Yes, many say it’s the news business, but the moment I make that funny, don’t I open the door for it to just be my own perspective? And isn’t that the point, that we each have our own perspective and mine is more important because I have so many followers? Doesn’t the number of followers reinforce the fact that my perspective is the one that is correct? Can you really give me one piece of evidence to the contrary?
All of these blahs.
—Touché. But again—they weren’t all me. Some were true, some were you, some were fabrications, some were deceptions, and at least every third one was a joke. What I need to know is which of these is the real me?
All of these.
—Not possible. I can’t be all of these things. I would implode if I were all of these things. I know. I used to be a truer person and it didn’t really work. Back with the Hordelings. We used to sit on the roof of our apartment building for hours on end, improvising scenes that weren’t funny at all. They started funny with a suitcase of unicorn dolls or a man giving birth—you know, ideas the audience had thrown out earlier that evening. But, the scenes always ended up playing out what was in our head—or rather, deeper than the head—behind the head. The soul. The transition from laughter to pain was always subtle and surprising. The sort of thing you want to slam the door on, but in those moments, the momentum was a force of nature all its own. I don’t know where so much overflowing truth came from. Those moments didn’t have a fence or a rule to hold back the unexpected. It became a therapy or life force for us. At first, I engaged in it all to be the funny one, but whenever it would turn— that’s what I called it when it got personal: the turn—that’s when I would leave the circle and sit cross-legged on the roof ledge. If you left the circle, you couldn’t be tagged in. I liked to watch. I discovered a weird calming that would come over me when the others would get raw and weep or lash out or throw something off the roof. One time, I didn’t sit far enough away from the circle and I was tagged in. I didn’t know what to say, so I started rambling about this road trip my Dad took me on for his work when I was nine. He thought I was asleep and never knew I saw the bad things he did there. You’d think I would remember which city. But, what I did remember was that it had been the first day in my life I had felt unwarmably cold. Those were the only words I could come up with to describe the feel- ing and I immediately regretted saying it out loud. The Hordelings all wrapped around me like a blanket and started smothering me. Just this sense of people an inch from me—overbearing people. They thought it was affection, but the only reason I had said the thing I said was so that I could throw the trash can off the roof. Is that so bad? It was true. Just because I’d rather throw something than feel something—what does that make me? It doesn’t make me anything. It doesn’t make me anything good or bad. It just makes me no thing. It makes me a comedian. One rather beefy set of arms was wrapped around me most tightly and I forced my fists up through the embrace and shoved the arms off, knocking the girl in the forehead. Yeah. It was a girl. Funny, huh. I said something witty about the size of the arms not realizing it was a girl. Some girl. I forget which girl. Large girl. And no one laughed and I thought—isn’t this why we all came together? To laugh? Isn’t that the purpose in finally finding others who crave what you crave? At least I thought that was what I had found. Up until that moment, I thought I had been looking for a group of people who all craved their own success. But, in that instant, as they shunned my joke and rallied around Rhonda—got it. That was her name—as they rallied around Rhonda, I realized that I was not looking for a group of people who all craved their own success. I was looking for a group of people who all craved my success. That is when I left the Hordelings for good and begged Howard Howard for an internship with the network. I left the second stage of a performer’s career behind and I went to great lengths—and I mean great lengths—to make certain that I never remembered it again. Everything after that was one fist to the rope at a time—one strenuous pull of my entire body upward—and it has been agony. Sheer agony. And this aloneness—not just aloneness, but an unwarmable aloneness—grows everyday. I think what I am doing is taking care of myself. I reject others for the sake of my own success because I need that warmness—or what do they call it, warmth? I am desperate for that warmth and I will find it, either through the laughter of a studio audience or a trio of dateable sisters or the sheer volume of followers. I will use my snarkiness and my wit to dodge the conversation every time it turns and I am at risk of being tagged in. I will instead redirect with the blahblah and the audience will love me for it. That’s how you get a top-rated show and a best-selling book—a best-selling life. I fully understand what it makes me. I fully understand that I am less than human and less than warm. But I will achieve warmness. Oh, I will achieve warmness yet. Because, as you have said to me time and time again, some of my blahs may be ridiculous—but all of these blahs have been iconic.
Nothing. No response. He waited.
Still nothing. Absolutely nothing. Until—
He regained consciousness abruptly at his news desk, the camera blinking before his eyes. He caught a glimpse of Barry Gooz running off stage, having just snapped a pellet of smelling salts under J. Aaron’s right nostril. The live audience was aflutter with applause, urging him toward another scathing late-night program. He sat and stared, wide-eyed, not yet fully abreast of his surroundings. His right palm was just below the note cards his writing staff had written, yes, the same as usual. His left hand tapped his ring against the water glass. All was ritual. He at least appeared alert.
He felt the enamel of his teeth against the inside of his lips. A full, shiny, smooth set. All crises had been diverted. Felicia had provided a miracle.
His vision barely fresh in his thoughts any longer, J. Aaron gave the briefest hesitation. Would he change things now that his life had been so rattled? Would he speak truth tonight or just another set of verbal blahblah?
The intro narration came to completion:
—He’s a pound of fact, a pinch of opinion, and you can keep-a- change! It’s J. Aaron Epsom!
The music wrapped. The spotlight landed—and J. Aaron smiled a wide, perfect grin at the studio audience, his teeth perfectly white.
Perfectly artificial.
And as J. Aaron attempted to lick his lips in order to sink his teeth into the next comedic victim, he discovered that he could do nothing more than grunt.
The audience, hushed, stared in puzzlement.
His smile persisted. The teeth were whole—but his jaw was clenched. J. Aaron swallowed hard with the understanding that his teeth were not going to separate. His mouth was not going to open. The artificial teeth were stuck together. Oh. He thought to himself. This.
This is ironic.
(phing.)
Fear of his audience mounting inside of him, J. Aaron Epsom took one last glance down at the device in his hand.
Or is it?
Next: Read "THE WHIPPERSNAPPER" Short Story #4 from Mark Steele’s Novel in Stories “The Most Important Thing Happening” (2013)
©2013 Mark Steele / Published & Permissions by David C. Cook Publishing