You’re a comedian? Me too

   – circa 1950s, circa 2020s

THE PAUSE

“Women. You can’t live with ’em … ”
and pause,
wait,
hold it,
little bit longer … aaaaand … that’s it.
End of joke.

Buddy Sego was big. Bigger than his namesake, Buddy Hackett. Bigger than Jackie Mason (and less Jewy, people would say, just not out loud). Bigger than Rodney Dangerfield, Milton Berle, Henny Youngman—bigger than all of them. At the moment. At this moment. In this moment.

Buddy Sego was hot.

“Women drivers … ” And then the pause. Oh, that increasingly famous, wonderfully maddening, impossible to imitate Buddy Sego pause. Just the way he said “Women drivers” and then … nothing … just stood there, unblinking with one dark eyebrow raised, his left fist holding the mic up to open, unmoving lips, waiting to say the rest of a joke that would never arrive, waiting for the laughter—growing loud and then louder inside the silence of the famous Buddy Sego pause—to die down enough for his voice to be heard. Waiting for the next joke.

Blink.

“Your wife like to shop?” Pause.
Lips open, still. One eyebrow raised.
Audience already howling. Shop!? Of course she did. They all did, didn’t they? ‘Lucy, where’d you get that hat!?’ I mean c’mon. Does my wife like to shop?
Pause-as-punch-line—often Buddy didn’t even need to finish the joke. He knew the ones best left unfinished, and for those jokes he never wrote a punch line. Didn’t need to. Let the audience do that.

Blink.

Buddy Sego had the “it” factor plus. Indefinably, indisputably present. Can a man be both brutal and boyish? The Moms loved him. Edgy but with that hint of vulnerability. The daughters wanted him—wanted wholly misogynistic, vaguely dangerous Buddy in a time when misogyny did not yet exist—or, if it did, was as rare as a woman doctor, a Black person at the Whites Only water fountain, a homosexual. The Dads just wanted to be him. Oh, they did. Some even more than they wanted to be Frank Sinatra. This was Buddy time.

He says what he thinks, the crazy son of a bitch.
Please don’t say ‘son of bitch,’ dear.
And from the stage, from rabbit-eared, B&W television sets, from Buddy:

“Women … ”

And Dad was already laughing, a head of perfectly oiled and parted hair shaking up and down, a tacit, if not vigorous, acknowledgement of a shared and unspoken punch line.

Blink.

Not all of the jokes lacked punch lines—but still and always there was the Buddy Sego pause.

“My wife said she likes long walks on the beach. I said, Great … why don’t you take one?”

Hey, honey—you like long walks on the beach? Dads would yell toward kitchens as they laughed hard and turned those well-lubed heads from TV screens to enclosed rooms with White appliances and then back. And what smells so good?

And the daughters would think, Buddy would walk with me on the beach, yes he would, a long way, at night—and more than just our feet would be scrunching in the sand.

And Moms would shout an answer to Dads: Meat loaf! or Pot roast! or some other such red-meat thing as they hurried to finish before the potatoes got cold and maybe catch the last of Buddy’s act and decide that they alone understood him, could be the one to care for him, to understand why he had to say what he said. Or something like that. They could take care of him, that much they knew.

“My wife told me I never say those three little words anymore, so I said, “Get me a beer” …  I’m not good at math.”

‘I’m not good at math’—oh that’s rich, that’s rich
 Don’t laugh so hard, Dear, you’ll tip over your meat loaf.

And the Dads would only rise from their recliners, push aside their TV tables, and walk across the living room to turn off the TVs when they were sure Buddy Sego had finished with them.

Blink.

Buddy wasn’t always Buddy. Not when he was younger. Robert. Not when he was very young. Robbie. Not when his father would scream regularly at his mother for this and that and those other things, actions, cold dinners, late dinners, dusty end tables, spotted carpet, talking, too much talking, too many Goddamned, mouthy words, those things that seemed in Buddy’s mind, in Robert’s mind, in Robbie’s mind to blend, all of them, everything, into the sound of his father’s voice, loud, so loud, loud even inside the bedroom he’d try to escape to Where do you think you’re going, you fucking, little shit? and would sometimes and sometimes not make it and even when he did Get back out here and sit at the Goddamned table! it didn’t matter unless his father was really into it and his mother had become the sole target of his father’s words and other things that would be explained as his mother’s, this woman’s, her just being clumsy or Yes, I can’t believe I keep bumping into this that or the other which is why she favored long sleeves and scarves and going out as little as possible and how Robbie/Robert/Buddy learned not to finish his words, his sentences—just try not to have any thoughts, none at all, whatsoever, at least not complete ones—not the ones that existed outside his bedroom door or inside whenever his father and his voice would enter, leaving this woman, that woman, clumsy and waiting. Bitch.

Blink.

Buddy Sego was playing the big clubs, the best shows. The Bitter End. Café Au Go Go. Ed Sullivan. Griffin. Carson. Johnny had even called him over for God’s sake. Waved him over as the applause still echoed around the silence of his last joke, motioned for him, Buddy Sego, to sit down, right between Johnny and a still-chuckling Ed McMahon, just to chat, just to get to know what this Buddy Sego was all about, just to catapult him instantly onto the A list, just like that, and as far away from Robbie and Robert as he could possibly get.

“My wife said, ‘You know what you did’ …  She’s right. I do … But she doesn’t.”

But she doesn’t. Get it, honey? But “she” doesn’t.

Yes, he’s something, isn’t he? Now eat up before it gets cold.

Look, Johnny’s calling him over. He’s calling Buddy over. You know what that means, don’t you? Lucky son of a bitch.

Blink.

Claire’s in the kitchen, drying the last of two dinner plates. The rest of the dishes have been neatly stacked in the cupboard above the counter. It’s a studio apartment. It’s what they can afford for now, basically one room with the bedroom, kitchen, and living room in their respective corners, with only the bathroom walled off and against the fourth corner. “Big night for you tonight, baby. I’m excited for you. I wish I could be there, but I’ll have something special waiting for you when you get home.” Claire’s hair is straight, shoulder length, and chocolate brown. She wears it down, always—the way Buddy likes it.

Buddy turns on the bed where he’s been sleeping so that he’s facing the kitchen and Claire, who’s reaching up to open the cupboard above her. Buddy lets his eyes trace two apron strings as they arc across the back of her skirt, outlining an ass that could be bigger, he thinks, but that he still finds pleasing. He has told her it would be best if she stays home, that her being there would only make him nervous, make him lose his edge, his timing.

She says she understands.

As the gigs get bigger, she’s been staying home more, is being asked to stay home more. This is not lost on her. Nerves, Buddy would say. It didn’t used to be that way, she thinks. Not in the beginning, she thinks. Not in those little clubs with their smoke and noise and you, my Buddy, cutting through it all with your jokes, with your Buddy Sego delivery:

“My wife gets the last say when we buy a car … if the passenger seat isn’t comfortable, forget it.”

And I’d start the laughter from a back table and it would be as real as I could make it and it would spread and pretty soon the whole club would be laughing because, Jesus Christ, you were funny and the people just needed a prompt which I was happy to give them until you got more and more popular and the clubs got better and better and now the people go in expecting to laugh and I’m staying home, waiting for you, preparing something special.

“The Duplex—it doesn’t get bigger than that, does it, Buddy?”

“We’ll see, baby. Who knows where it’ll all end up?” Buddy watches this slim woman, this small-breasted, not-too-tall, brown-haired, slim woman as she holds a dinner plate, momentarily motionless, in the air. He idly pictures his hands on her hips, on the curves of her hips just below her waist. Now, mentally, he may or may not be loosening the apron’s knot. He’s still not fully awake.

Claire reaches up and into the open cupboard, opens her hand—her fingers are surprisingly long, slender—and lets the second dinner plate fall onto the stack with a loud clank. Buddy flinches, then rolls over.

Blink.

Buddy is backstage at the Duplex, clearing his throat, getting ready, listening to his audience getting just as ready. A nondescript man approaches him, no paper, no pen being held out. He has something besides an autograph on his mind. His voice—and this is how Buddy will remember him: as more voice than man—is just above a whisper: “You oughta know, electricians are still on strike.”

“That’s what all the signs are about outside?” Buddy had just walked right through them and entered the Duplex through the stage door. Sure, they sounded angry, loud, but it was just noise to Buddy, a single dissonant roar that would largely disappear as soon as he disappeared behind the Duplex stage door. It was nothing he wasn’t used to. He had paid as little attention to the signs as he is now paying to the voice. Eyes straight ahead. Sure, the commotion was a little uncomfortable, a bit unsettling, but nothing new. And he has a set to do—at the Duplex of all places. Carson has waved him over for God’s sake.

“You deaf?” The voice rises slightly, but still closer to a whisper than not. “You can’t read the signs?”

Buddy just raises an eyebrow and cocks his head. He has no idea why. He just knows he wants a moment alone and talking back to this … person … engaging this … voice … will squelch any chance of that. The audience is growing louder. A few Where’s Buddy?s become audible.

“Listen, you should know this. Scabs set up this whole place tonight. Amps, mics—the whole shebang. They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” Eyes shift from side to side then back to Buddy. “They find out I talked to you, I’m dead meat, you know what I’m saying?”

No, Buddy doesn’t, not really—and he doesn’t really care to know. He just keeps that one eyebrow raised and continues to stare.

“Just be careful. I’m telling you this ’cause I’m a fan.” He leans in closer, and Buddy feels his other eyebrow shoot up, his eyes widen. The man’s face softens, smiles. “‘Women drivers’—that’s rich. I wish I could say it like you do.” A paper and pen appear. Buddy signs “Best of luck, Buddy Sego” and turns toward the stage and the voice falls silent.

Blink.

Buddy let the opening applause bounce throughout the Duplex, listened to the chants of Bud-DY! Bud-DY! The signs and screams on the sidewalk outside no longer existed in his world. The nondescript man with his whispered words and a pen and paper had simply disappeared inside a series of Bud-DYs. Buddy’s world right now was sitting on the couch between Ed and Johnny, standing front and center behind a mic at the Duplex, reaffirming his audiences’ adoration with the silence of a raised eyebrow. And as this audience started, finally, to wind down, he stepped to the very front of the stage, scanned the entire club, and then, indeed, raised that eyebrow. Signature move. And once again he let the applause and chants rise and rise and run their course. Still facing the audience, he took three steps backward and one to the side, positioning himself directly behind the microphone stand, and reached out with his left hand.

Blink.

I don’t know. Some idiot must have crossed the wires.

Keep pumping on the chest. Regular rhythm. That’s it. You get tired, you tell me. I’ll take over.

Can someone get this mic out of his hand? Jesus Christ, it’s like his fist is welded to it. I can’t even budge his fingers.

Poor bastard, never knew what hit him. Who is he anyway? Anybody know? I’m not much for comedy clubs. Keep him flat. Just slide the stretcher right underneath. That’s it. And keep pumping that heart.

Blink.

THE BIG PAUSE

Buddy comes to. He’s standing. He’s still on stage, holding the mic. He hears scattered noises from the audience. Idle chatter. The clinking of ice in drinks. Drinks? Chatter? People at tables? Sitting, drinking, paying him half attention at best? This is not the Duplex. No. It’s a club. Just a club. Johnny is not seated up front with Ed beside him. Johnny is not here at all. Not the usual buzz, the anticipation he’s come to expect from SRO crowds looking front and center stage at the spot on which Buddy stands clenching a mic. Just idle chatter. Such as you’d hear in any small club. Or Denny’s, for Christ sake. Yet oddly, this is now where he’s been the whole time, the “whole time” of that night, that is—of this night. This is the gig, this club. And he is this night’s comedian, trying to tell jokes over lazy gossip and ice-filled glasses:

“I’m not saying my wife talks a lot … because I can’t get a word in edgewise.”

Eyebrow’s up. Check. Mouth open. Check. Mic in left fist. Check. Nothing. What’s with these people, they deaf? Next joke:

“My wife once told me to think before I speak … and I haven’t spoken to her since.”

A voice, female, from the table in front of the stage: “She’s lucky.”

A second voice, female, same table: “You got that right.”

And a third, this one male, from the back: “Douche!”

And a fourth, older: “Hey, jerk! The ’50s called, they want their material back!”

Pretty soon Buddy was being handed a check for fifty bucks by some guy in an apron that said “Bratz ’n Beer,” shown the door, and told “Listen, pal, don’t call us, we’ll call you.” And the odd thing to Buddy wasn’t the very different style of clothes that people were wearing or that he was wearing, wasn’t the very different style of the cars that whizzed past him as he stepped off the curb to cross the street and head to an apartment he knew was home but had never been to before, wasn’t even the smartphone in his pocket that could answer anything he asked unless he asked it: “What the fuck just happened?” All this was slightly strange, yes, yet strangely familiar.

No, the odd thing was his act, more specifically, the reaction to his act.

The odd thing was the comment from the front table, from a woman, from two women, sitting at the front table, half listening to his act at best and then telling him, basically, to go fuck himself.

Blink.

It took awhile, but he finally found a newspaper vending machine. The front page was displayed in the door’s window. He looked at the date. The month and day seemed right. But the year? He shook his head once, hard, from side to side, as if somehow to shake himself out of this year, out of this century for God’s sake. Yet here he stood, reading unfamiliar names in unfamiliar articles on the front page of a newspaper with an unfamiliar date that placed him where he now was. Yes, where he now was. He looked around. Maybe things here aren’t so unfamiliar. Maybe it was just a bad night on stage.

And, accepting that, Buddy walked home.

Blink.

Claire is about to walk out the door. Buddy rolls over on the bed to face her. “Where you going, honey?” Her hair is up. Up. It’s never up.

“Where else? To work. And I’m running late. Client’s expecting me in five. Good luck with the gig tonight. Maybe this’ll be the one, hey? If I get through with everything in time, I’ll try to make it.”

To work? Client? “Try”to make it? Another hard shake of the head as the apartment door starts to close. Of course. She’s a lawyer. I know that. Get a grip, Buddy. And practice. Got the “wife” jokes going tonight. All new material. Good stuff, too. But I need to run through them one more time. Where’s a mirror? “And you’re wearing those … pants? To work?”

Claire opens the door a few inches, just enough so she can be heard. “Why should today be any different? Wait, it’s not the pair I wore yesterday, is it?” She looks down quickly then back up. “Funny boy. I’m late. I’ll make it tonight if I can.”

Her hair’s up.

Blink.

The stage is small. The drums are still set up for a band that hasn’t played since last Tuesday. As are the amps. One of which Buddy’s mic is already plugged into. It’s as much preparation as the club is offering. Buddy walks out to the center of the stage and positions himself behind the mic. No one introduces him. He’s on his own. He scans the audience for Claire. She said she’d try to make it. There seem to be more women than usual. Some are at tables without men. Others are with dates—they’re the ones leaning into each other, laughing. The others are married, Buddy thinks and lets the joke write itself. Two women, White, are with Black men. What’s with that? Buddy’s eyebrow raises with no joke in mind. And some of the couples—well, Buddy would be hard pressed to say whether they were Black or White. To each his—or her—own, but all hell’s going to break loose when people see this. Buddy eyes the exits before realizing that all hell is not breaking loose. And that there’s a great likelihood that everybody in the club has already seen everybody else in the club. Another single shake of the head, hard, from side to side. Son of a bitch. He grips the mic with his left hand, removes it from the stand, and holds it up to his mouth.

“I’m Buddy Sego.”

Silence. No Bud-DYs! No nothing.

He smiles. “Any married couples here tonight?”

A few scattered nods. The couples on dates are still laughing, quietly, to each other.

Still no Claire.

“My wife said she wanted a big diamond for her birthday … so I took her to a ball game.”

The old Claire, hair down, would already be starting the laughter from a back table. One of the Black guys chuckles. He’s wearing a Mets jersey. Mets jersey? His date shoves a thin, White elbow into his ribs, squints at him hard and holds the look. She’s wearing jeans. Almost all of them, men and women, seem to be wearing jeans.

One chuckle from the Black guy, beyond that nothing. Claire should be sitting at a back table. Claire should be laughing. Let’s try something edgy, really hold the pause:

“My wife suspected me of cheating with her best friend … I never knew she was that close to her sister.”

Black guy’s afraid to look at me now, but his date sure isn’t. She’s whispering something to him and he’s nodding up and down real fast like he’s trying to agree before she even gets the words out. What the hell. Buddy just lets ’er rip:

“My wife told me to feed the dog … so I made her a sandwich.”

And now Buddy is hearing from his audience.

“Who is this asshole?”

“What century you living in, doofus?”

“You want a sandwich? My husband here will give you a sandwich.” At that the Black guy balls his hand into a fist and places it on the table between him and his … wife?

What is going on here? The eyebrow. Get that eyebrow up and keep it up. Draw the pause out. Long pause. Longer pause.

“My wife asked me to take her out to dinner and I said, ‘Sure’ … … when we got there, I asked her what time she wanted me to pick her up.”

And that’s when it starts getting ugly. Men, women, Black, White, indeterminate, even the ones on dates who didn’t seem to be paying attention:

“You stink!”

“Get him out of here!”

“Haven’t you got a rock someplace to crawl under?”

Buddy is starting to wish he did. A flash of the Duplex crosses his mind and is just as quickly gone. He is here, definitely right here, in this dipshit club, with material that should be killing them—not me. And where the fuck is Claire? Buddy looks once more to the back tables. At the table closest to the door a man sits, alone. It looks like he’s writing, on a pad, quickly, almost furiously, as if he’s taking notes in some history class and the final is the next day.

But no Claire.

“My wife asked me if I loved her … and I asked her to finish the sentence.”

And that’s when objects start to be thrown. First napkins. Then an ashtray. A bottle. Then the man with the fist stands up, or is pushed up by his wife, and Buddy finds himself off the stage and half running, half ducking his way to the front door and past the man still furiously taking notes as Buddy makes his way out onto the sidewalk. As the door closes behind him, he steals a glance inside to see if anyone is planning to follow him. No one is. The man who’s been taking notes stops, looks up, and smiles.

Blink.

“Buddy, did you see today’s Times?”

Claire was already sitting at the breakfast table, which doubled as a lunch table and tripled as a dinner table. Theirs was a small apartment. Buddy dubbed it The Four Corners when they first moved in. “That’s where everything is,” he’d say, “in one of the four corners of one room,” and for a while he and Claire would laugh whenever he said it. They had decided it would be best to keep things the way they were, as inexpensive as possible, until Claire’s clientele grew or Buddy’s audience grew—or both. If and when that happened, they could reassess their living arrangements. Claire would often chuckle when they discussed “living arrangements” and Buddy would just shake his head, something he seemed to be doing more and more.

“It was hell last night, Claire. I wished you’d been there.”

“In hell?”

“You know what I mean. I swear to God, some Black guy was getting ready to coldcock me.”

“Some Black guy?”

“Some guy, some guy. Some guy was ready to coldcock me. Better?”

“Read this, my little sexist racist.”

Buddy stopped himself mid-headshake, took the newspaper from Claire’s outstretched hand, and started to read the lead article in the Times’ Entertainment section:

Comedy Genius Chased from Club 

Last night, in BBs, a small club with but fifteen tables, a curtainless stage replete with scattered drums, amps, and miscellanea from forgettable acts, and the smell of flash-fried everything permeating, let me say, everything, I experienced a transcendent back-to-the-future moment. In the span of a handful of jokes, I witnessed a comedian bomb.

And ladies and gentlemen, did that bomb ever explode.

Sadly, BBs patrons were too eager to fling everything from insults to ashtrays to realize that they were standing witness—sitting witness?—to comedy history in the making, throwing barbs and bottles at the inevitable future of comedy.

And that future, ladies and gentlemen, is Buddy Sego.

He’s a tall, thin comic, with dark features not unlike his material. On the surface this young comic’s jokes infuriate with their seemingly misogynistic swirl of bile that joke after joke seems to relegate women back into long-discarded aprons and enclosed kitchens, behind vacuums while draped with pearls and scant hope of achieving more than second-class citizenry.

Yes, this critic is old enough to remember well America circa 1950s.

Permit me, readers, to offer a Buddy Sego joke, or more accurately, a joke from the mouth of Buddy Sego (there’s a difference, bear with me here):

“My wife asked me to feed the dog—”

At this point Mr. Sego will pause, for a very long time, one eyebrow raised as if to say, Are you ready for the joke? or, more to the point, Are you in on the joke?

“—so I made her a sandwich.”

BB’s patrons were decidedly not in on the joke, not that one nor any in Mr. Sego’s abbreviated set. I say “abbreviated” because after criminally too few jokes it was all Mr. Sego could do to escape out the front door with his material and quite possibly his life.

I was there, serendipitously it turned out, to sample BB’s unique corned beef and hash—what is in that sauce?—complemented with one of their many delightful craft beers when I found myself instead devouring comic genius. Apparently the rest of Buddy’s audience had chosen to order from a different menu. A menu of the obvious. A menu where cliché is served literal, misunderstanding is the side dish, and irony is at Market Pricing, too rich to partake of.

Regular readers know that I like to dig beneath surfaces, that I studied Buddy with care as he delivered his material. I considered every twitch and every tone, every nuanced facial gesture. My conclusion? This, readers, is no misogynistic swine. His jokes, it seems to this critic, are far too, let me say, over the top to be taken that way by any reasonably sentient observer. Rather, Buddy’s comic vision circles back through the once-revered, now often reviled, comedians of the late ’50s and early ’60s, assimilating the all-too-real misogyny of the time, tapping into that cruel vein, and then stripping the lode bare of any euphemistic pretense. Even the back-handed compliments particular to that era (to wit, “my better half”) are expelled from Buddy’s world. What’s left is so over-the-top, so dehumanizingly sexist that it becomes clear that Buddy is—surely must be—satirizing—lampooning, if you will—all those among us still clinging to the misogynistic perspectives of well over half a century ago.

This is meta humor, folks.

Buddy is not telling us the joke when he’s telling us the joke. No. His persona is telling each joke as someone who truly believes what he is saying, as someone who is very much not Buddy Sego. The real Buddy Sego, comic genius Buddy Sego, lives inside his long pauses. The jokes are throwbacks to comedians from another age—and, full disclosure, I found the humor to be as insidiously clever as it was blatantly cruel. But the pauses, the pauses—they are Buddy. This is where he lives. This is when he raises an eyebrow and gives us time to think, beyond the joke, about what he’s really saying to us, about who we once were—and about who too many of us still might be.

And the corned beef and hash, by the time I got to it?

As cold as Buddy is hot.

~

Buddy folded the newspaper in half. “I’m doing all this?”

“Apparently so. It’s in the Times.”

It wasn’t long before Buddy’s phone started ringing.

Blink.

Jimmy looked away from his guest to ask his cohort a question: “Hey, Guillermo—are you even listening?—you are—okay—do you think this guy’s sexist? I’d say ‘misogynist,’ but we don’t have time for you to look that up.”

Big laugh from Guillermo. “No, Jimmy, I don’t think Buddy Sego’s sexist.” A second big laugh from the man on the stool.

“You even know his name.” Now Jimmy’s laughing. “You really were listening.” He turns to his guest, who is sitting in a padded chair next to the host’s desk. “Well, you heard it, Buddy, you are Guillermo-certified, one hundred percent not sexist. What do you think of that?”

“I’ll have to ask my wife.” And Jimmy’s audience roars while Jimmy Kimmel thinks about how long he’ll have to wait before they can rebook this guy.

#

“Okay, I read Shapiro’s article in the Times about how you’re a meta-feta-not-a-misogynista comedian.” Colbert takes a drink from the cobalt blue mug on his desk, taps his prompt cards on that same desk, and looks straight at Buddy Sego, his first guest of the night, sitting in another padded chair beside the desk of another late-night host. “Is he right or is he too much mumbo and not enough jumbo? Before you answer, let me share a joke you recently told at one of New York’s better night clubs:

“My wife asked me what I thought would be an appropriate thing to have engraved on my mother-in-law’s tombstone … I suggested, ‘And another thing.’”

Colbert holds the prompt cards in front of his face, either to stifle a laugh or to hide it. His face is red. He shrugs his shoulders inside his suitcoat as if to recompose himself. “So, what exactly are you, Mr. Buddy Sego? After hearing one of your own jokes, tell me: Are you a misogynist?”

Buddy shrugs his shoulders inside the Black t-shirt Claire thinks goes well with his jeans, just not on stage, baby. Long pause. Eyebrow up. He’s getting more comfortable on these shows.

“It would seem that I am, Stephen.”

Colbert doesn’t even try to hide his laughter. He just tosses the prompt cards on the floor behind his desk and feigns shock. “Oh my God, staying right in character.” Colbert puts his left thumb and index finger up to his chin, strokes it as if pondering the meaning of life, perhaps his own. “Hmm, now which one of me does that remind me of?”

#

Jimmy Fallon chooses to be non-confrontational, nostalgic: “I remember when Johnny …  Carson,” he adds in deference to Buddy’s youth, “if he liked a new, young comedian, and I mean really liked him, and this didn’t happen very often, would call him over, after his last joke, just wave him over, have sit between him and Ed … McMahon, and just chat, get to know him. Share a few laughs. And for that comedian a career would be launched, with just a wave. Can you even imagine—a moment like that?”

Buddy starts laughing, not that he wants to. He just does. To the point of tears. And he soon finds he can’t stop. And he doesn’t know exactly why he’s laughing, and he doesn’t know exactly why he can’t stop. He just is and he just can’t.

“What’s so funny, Buddy? Buddy?” Fallon looks out as his audience, raises his hands palms up and shrugs his shoulders. “What am I missing here?”

THE NEXT PAUSE

“Let’s just do it. Move out of this apartment—apartment?—out of this room? Four Corners is starting to close in on me. Each corner’s a room for Christ’s sake.” Buddy was sitting on the side of the bed, wearing only a pair of pale blue boxer shorts.

“I’m comfortable here, Buddy. The Four Corners—it’s home. We used to laugh when we said ‘The Four Corners,’ when we’d talk about ‘one corner, one room.’”

“‘Used to,’ baby, ‘used to.’ This has become a—a box to me. That’s all. A coffin.” Buddy was talking fast, too fast, he thought, as if he wanted to be through with his words as much as he wanted them to linger and convince.

“My clientele’s building. Slowly. You know I won’t represent certain people, just can’t do it. But word of mouth, word of mouth—it’s building. I might be able to afford something bigger, maybe, in six months, a year.”

“Claire, I’m rich right now.” Still too fast. “I’m fucking rich. I can afford it.” And Buddy immediately regretting using “fucking” and hoped he was talking so fast that Claire didn’t notice, hadn’t heard, not that Claire didn’t sprinkle her vocabulary with the occasional f-bomb. But “fucking” set the wrong tone, definitely the wrong tone, the very last tone Buddy wanted to set. Confrontational. Buddy didn’t do “confrontational,” not off stage at least. Not if he could help it. Confrontational was loud. Confrontational was sounds on the other side of doors. Confrontational was memories. Buddy tried not to do those either.

“Then go afford it, Buddy. I told you, I’m still growing my clientele. When I can afford to move and when I want to move, and if I want to move, I’ll fucking move. Got it?”

 She’d heard. Buddy squirmed on the side of the bed, looked down between his feet and shook his head hard from side to side as if to shake loose this moment, this conversation, the direction, the place it was going. He didn’t like arguments. No arguments. Not where words became noise, loud empty noise, senseless, swirling noise. He was never comfortable arguing, trying to find his thoughts, to finish his thoughts out loud. He didn’t want this to get loud with Claire, he should not have said “fucking,” he did not want this to get loud, to turn into red noise inside his head. Except for a too-small bathroom, their apartment had no rooms, no doors—get back out here, you fucking little shit—no doors to close between him and the noise—if there was noise—no doors except the front door, and that didn’t lead to a room. I should not have said “fucking” I should not have said “fucking” I should not have said ‘fucking.” Buddy was not aware that his hands were tight over his ears.

“This doesn’t have to be complicated.” Claire spoke calmly, quietly. “You’ll be able to hear better if you uncover your ears.” Buddy looked up—she’s calm, speaking calmly—breathed out—quietly—and let his hands fall to his thighs. “You’ve got the world right now, baby. Every talk show wants you, every club, every streaming service—and probably every woman. I’m happy for you. It’s all there for you. Take it any fucking way you want.” Claire snorted a small laugh as she looped her thumbs through the front belt loops of her jeans. And just as quickly, she removed her thumbs and grabbed the front of the over-sized, Black t-shirt she was wearing—it was one of Buddy’s; jeans and a Black t-shirt had become his stage outfit; Claire said she thought it was a cliché at best and pretentious at worst; Buddy had asked her why and Claire had just shrugged and said it was his show—and wiped her nose. “Any way you want, Buddy—with me, without me, wherever you want you to be. It’s all there for you. You’ve come a long way since BBs.” Claire laughed. “Sorry I wasn’t there.”

I’m starting to like her hair up, I do, the curve of her neck from her back to the first clip, the way her jaw curves, a delicate motion, up to her ears. No earrings. No pearls. Claire. Buddy felt himself growing hard and thought briefly about pulling the sheet over his boxers.

“Coffin or not, Four Corners is my home.” Claire reached both hands under the front of her—his—t-shirt, once again lifted it to her face, and covered the end of her nose. Buddy couldn’t tell if she was wiping her nose or scratching an itch. For a moment, her stomach was exposed, bare, the indent of her navel just above the jean’s metal fastener, and Buddy, for that moment, pictured himself wholly inside of her, curled and quiet. Claire let the t-shirt fall. “Your home, right now, can be anywhere you want it to be. Like I said, baby, it’s not complicated. Now excuse me while I get ready for work.” Claire turned to go into the bathroom, the only actual room inside The Four Corners.

Buddy heard himself talking, quickly, the words coming in bursts, as if he were sitting in an electric chair with the warden telling him that if he had any last words, it was now or never. And as he heard himself talking, it was as if he were hearing a different voice than his, familiar, yes, but different, speaking for him. “One favor, Claire, this afternoon, leave work early, meet me at BBs, I’m going to call them, tell them I’ll do an afternoon set, just for shits and giggles, why not?”

Claire looked back at Buddy, scrunched her nose and eyes and cocked her head slightly to the left. Buddy watched one strand of chocolate-brown hair escape the clip and fall to her shoulder. “At BBs?” She squinted. “An afternoon set?”

“Yes to both. I want there to be light, I want to see you when you first walk through the door, tell me you’ll be there, in the back, sitting in the back, at the table by the door, just tell me that.” Buddy had no idea why he was saying what he heard his voice—that voice—saying. He felt as if he were falling into the middle of a long Buddy Sego pause and no punch line was coming. And no one was laughing. Or calling his name. Just one long, empty pause.

“You’re nuts, Buddy.”

“And let me add horny.” The bedsheet remained piled beside him.

“OK, mister horny nuts, I’ll try to make it.” Then it was Claire’s turn to pause. “I really will.”

Blink.

Buddy’s there early, before BBs is even officially open. He says he came early for the corn beef and hash. Why not? It’s good enough for the Times. It’s his pay for doing a set, an arrangement he’d made over the phone. While the cook fires up whatever needs to be fired up, Buddy strolls over to and steps up onto the stage. An electrician is checking out amps she says have been shorting out. “A short’s the hardest thing to pin down.” Buddy’s not sure if she’s talking to him or to herself but decides to hit a cymbal with the fingertips of his right hand in response. Nothing. The electrician just keeps working and talking, maybe to Buddy. “Amps are as good as they’re ever gonna be. Best fix for these guys is new ones. Just replace the whole shebang. Might as well check out the mic while I’m at it.” She looks up and speaks directly to the man on stage. “I’ll be honest, an inspector sees this he’d either be paid off or shutting this place down. This place is a death trap—and not just for you comedians.” A small chuckle. “Hey, maybe I should be performing.” Brown shirt, brown pants, brown cap pulled down on her forehead as if to block a nonexistent sun. Not one memorable thing about her, Buddy thinks, except for the White oval patch with the red lightning bolt sewn above her shirt’s left breast pocket and the Ms. Sparky embroidered in matching red script above the right. Beyond this, if he had to describe her to someone, he’d be hard pressed to come up with anything specific—just the kind of person who’s in your life and then isn’t as soon as she’s finished giving you change, fixing the leak, or waving you through the school zone. In a moment, this lady in brown will simply never be seen or thought of again—except for the voice, something about that voice.

“Listen—” Buddy pauses to hear a name that’s not offered and then resists the urge to call her Ms. Sparky “—do me a favor, when you’re finished here.” He motions to the amps and then the mic. “Sit out there, at a table. I want to try out a new joke. Get the timing down, that’s everything in my business, the timing.”

She nods. Buddy assumes yes. The bill of her cap is pulled down so far over her face, Buddy wonders how she can even read one of the many meters and gadgets that hang from her belt. “How about you let me hear the joke first?” Which Buddy proceeds to do:

“My wife’s expecting … aren’t they all?”

Ms. Sparky pauses, then her brown cap shakes once to her right and once to her left. “I don’t get it. I mean I get it, the joke, but—and no offense—I don’t get you. What planet you been living on? You’re that Buddy What’s-His-Name, right?” Buddy knows she doesn’t expect an answer. That voice, though, something familiar about that voice. “So, why’s everyone’s so hot on you anyway, Mr. Buddy? The joke’s stupid.”

Buddy’s first thought is to ask Ms. Sparky not to write a review for the Times. “Fair enough. But one more favor. Different joke. And I want you to hear it the way they’re going to hear it.”  Buddy waves his left arm out toward the tables and empty chairs. “I want you to hear it with the right facial expressions, delivery, the right timing. Before this place opens up.”

“Then you’ll shut up?”

“Then you can tell me that joke’s stupid, too, and I’ll shut up.”

She shrugs her shoulders and steps off the stage. “Which table?”

“The one in the back … no, farther back, by the door.”

“You know what?” She sits at the table and faces the stage. “You’re nuts.”

“So, I’ve been told.”

“Let’s make this quick, Mr. Buddy Somebody-or-Other. They told me you’d be doing something here this afternoon. That’s why I’m here. To check out the equipment. Don’t have enough time as it is. To do it right, I mean.”

Buddy approaches the mic.

A voice yells from the back table: “Be careful. The mic’s on. Just leave it in the stand. It should be fine, but I got it plugged into one of those crazy amps. I just need to finish checking it out. We don’t need to redefine hot mic. Hey, maybe I really should be the one telling the jokes.”

Blink.

This is stupid. I’ve never just blown off a client before. I’ll make it up to her. Good lord, I’m going to get there early—I think. I don’t even know when BBs opens. It’s not like there’s not going to be a table available. It’s not like Buddy was advertised. He’s just going to suddenly be there. But he did ask that I sit at that one table, in the back, by the door. I’ve been with him so long. Too long? Ha. He’ll be—one of us will be—gone in a week, maybe before, I know that, and that’s okay, for the best really, my best, I know that too, but I do love the son of a bitch. He used to make me laugh even though I hated the jokes. Ha. Now I just hate the jokes. 

Blink.

Buddy let the joke run one more time through his mind to be sure he had it down, the timing, that’s what mattered:

I asked my wife what would make her happy … but I’m still living there.

Good enough for an audience of one. Ms. Sparky’s going to hate it. But let’s see how it plays and let her get back to work.

Blink.

People have been wandering in for the last hour. Enough for a show. Buddy looks around for the Black guy with the fist and laughs to himself: maybe hit him with some preemptive meta humor. He has no intention of running out the door this time. The smell of flash-fried food reaching the stage is familiar, and Buddy finds that oddly comforting. Everyone in jeans, all the women in jeans. Okay, a skirt or two would be nice, but okay. Then he remembers what he is wearing. He looks up and the seat in the back is empty. No one coming in or sitting at the tables has bothered to notice Mr. Buddy Sego standing just off stage, staring at the front door. The electrician, Ms. Sparky—she’s long gone. He tries to picture her, but nothing appears beyond a brown, pulled-down cap and a White patch with a jagged red line. Then the voice, that voice, no Ms. Sparky, just that familiar voice, telling him, now, to just let ’er rip. Audience of one, none, or a thousand and then some, doesn’t matter, just grab the closest mic and let ’er rip.

And he does. Buddy Sego raises one eyebrow, reaches out and grabs the mic as he watches Claire walk in through the front door right before he tells the first joke.

Blink.

Buddy’s settled in and saying nothing, just stretching that pause as he scans the crowd.  Carson’s audience is already laughing. They know what’s coming.

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IN LITERATURE