Old Memory

Breath

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.

I can’t begin to describe what it’s like to bring someone back.  To pull a person from the water and, with training and care, to breath life back into their body.  It’s better than any orgasm I’ve ever had and the memory of the five I saved bolsters me when depression strikes.

To put it scientifically, I transferred energy from me to them.  Restarted their hearts and kept their brains alive with oxygenated blood by breathing for them until it kicked in and they could start breathing for themselves.  CPR is hard work, too.  Lots and lots of energy expended, passed to the lifeless body beneath one.

But when their heart starts beating and they suck in a gasp of air on their own …  at that very moment, that very instant, you are a life giver.  You have stood toe to toe with death, spit in his eye socket, and torn one from his bony grasp.  You have proven that life and hope can accomplish anything, even the resurrection of dying flesh!  You are three axe handles across the shoulders and towering miles about all others; a demigod striding the Earth, accomplishing miracles of life as you pass!!

Then they throw up in your  mouth.

(I’m told parenting is much like that, but those who make the comparison always smile, so I’m never sure if they’re serious.)

My Funnest Joke

Sadly, you’ll have to have a pretty good imagination for this …

It was the eighties and everyone was doing stand-up.  People you couldn’t imagine doing stand-up were doing stand-up.  Chances are Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman were doing stand-up.  Hell, they did a entire friggin’ movie about the stand-up craze in 1988 called Punchline … in it, Tom Hanks and Sally Fields did stand-up.

Sally Fields!!  Seriously … Gigit doing stand-up!  Like I said, it was the eighties and everyone was doing stand-up.

Including, of course, yours truly.

I had my heart set on being a comedian for a living.  I did comedy magic under the names Alexander James and – to my eternal shame and wonder – Brucie the Magnificent.  Pure stand-up I did under my own name, but was far less successful at it.  However, I came up with a bit of visual comedy, prop comedy, that was incredible.  I can honestly say that people lost bladder control, they were laughing so hard.  There wasn’t a dry crotch in the house after this gag.

Background:  I was booked to work a bachelor’s party.  A guy in San Francisco was getting married and his buddies decided they wanted to throw him a complete blowout for a bachelor’s party, so they leased an entire strip joint for the night.  They hired a rock band, several strippers, and me.  (Like I said, it was the eighties … had to have a stand-up comic.)

I was going to have an audience of fifty or so twenty to thirty somethings, all successful business-type people (again, it was the eighties … Reagan’s America), all male, and all pretty well blotto by the time I’d be doing my set.  The other acts either had electric guitars or bare tits (in the case of the bass player, both), so I had to plan my act accordingly.

I went to a adult book store to pick out props.  Specifically, I was looking for the biggest rubber dildo I could find (for a “In Case of Power Outage, Break Glass” gag I was considering) or, failing that, maybe an inflatable woman … just because inflatable women are funny.  I found both, so I bought both and was working up an act when I happened to notice something odd.  When you pinched the inflatable woman’s lips closed, because they all have that same “OH!” shocked expression, it looked like she was frowning something terrible.  It not only formed a frown with the lips, but pulled the phony eyebrows down in a glare.

And the joke was born.  I ran back to the store to buy a second inflatable doll, stopped on the way home for some glue, a little tape, a small bottle of flesh colored paint, and some Velcro, then went to work.  After I was done, I simply sat there and laughed.  I had a killer closer that I’d never be able to use anywhere else, but it was going to be something they remembered and laughed about for years!

Here’s how the gag worked:  At the end of my twenty minutes, I walked back stage and brought out the first inflatable woman, telling the audience of drunken guys that this was an inflatable girlfriend I’d gotten for the husband to be, just in case. I pointed out the oral and anal apertures, then spread her legs and launched her at the guest of honor.

Got some laughs, sure … but that was just the set-up!

Then I asked them if they’d ever seen an inflatable wife … or wondered how it was different from an inflatable girlfriend?  Without waiting for an answer, I walked back stage and brought out the altered inflatable woman.  I simply stood there until the laughter started, which meant that everyone had noticed the fact that the mouth was tightly shut in a furious frown, then turned her around to show that the anus was not only closed tight, but missing, and waited for the bigger laugh, then – as a topper – turned her upside down and, grasping her ankles, strained to pull her legs apart against the Velcro I’d glued to her inner thighs.  As it ripppppppppped open with that familiar sound, and my soft grunt of effort, there wasn’t a man in the audience who wasn’t gasping for air … and I noticed that the strippers and female bartender were howling as well.

I never said a word, just displayed the inflatable wife, put her through her paces, left her at the guest of honor’s table, and walked off.

The best joke I ever told without every saying a word and the only joke I’ve ever told that I’ve never been able to tell anywhere else.  I mean, where else than at a bachelor’s party could you get away with something like that?

Nevertheless, still a nice memory of a mediocre career as a comic.