I remember when I was a magician. I took a volunteer from the audience and asked him to lie in a box. Then I sawed him in two. I divided the box into two halves with his feet poking out one end and his head sticking out the other. The audience gasped. Then I realised that I had forgotten how to do the rest of the trick. I had forgotten how to put him back together.
Medical science was at a loss. Nothing could be done. I tried to return the man to his wife. She said he wasn’t half the man he used to be. She decided she only wanted the lower portion so I had to take the top half home to live with me. He is still here, his head peeking out of the box as he lies in my sitting room. Sometimes he weeps. He lies there gently sobbing. It can be quite depressing so I push him out the front door into the corridor. ‘It’s cold out here’, he complains but I say nothing. I just close the door and go off to watch television. He’ll be OK for a while. I did return once to find a cat sitting on his face. He almost suffocated. I shooed the cat away. I doubt it will happen again.
Sometimes I take him to the pub. I get him a drink with a little straw and put it on a table by his head. We might even meet up with some of his friends. Well, they are more my friends now. He complains so much his friends have started to ignore him. They talk to me instead. We laugh and sing. We rest our pints on his box.
It’s hard to know what to do with him. It’s hard to know what to do with dependents in general. Even when you mean the best, things can so easily go wrong. I remember a friend of mine, a beautiful woman with a fantastic laugh. She was very popular. Very, very popular. So much so that when she was temporarily immobilised and taken to hospital everyone sent her flowers. The flowers just kept arriving from all those who wished her well. Her hospital room filled up with flowers and soon it got to the stage where we could no longer find her. When you opened the door, all you could see was a wall of flowers. We called out for her but our voices must have been smothered by the compact thicket of stems and petals. We never saw her alive again. She starved. At least she passed on knowing that she was well loved.
Maybe I should get my half man flowers. A lot of flowers. An awful lot of flowers. It would be for the best. I would be free of him. He would no longer suffer. He would be released and, at the very least, it would be a fragrant death.
4 comments:
Well...it’s nice to see a picture of you at long last! I think you look very proffesional in that outfit and the big saw sets it off a treat! The thing is though… not a lot of people in the business take the trouble to dress up anymore. I’m up to here looking at this new brand of comic turned out in some old t - shirt and a pair of jeans and trainers. If you ask me…I think dressing smart is half the battle in having a successful act. The number of times I was having a bad night with the audience and do you know what saved me? It was the reflection of myself dressed in a smart tuxedo in a mirror behind the bar. I’d catch sight of myself and the next thing I’d feel my backbone stiffen..I’d say ‘Come on Barrymore pull yourself together!’ AND it worked. I’d be back on top in a jiffy. If that didn’t work I’d strip off.
But getting back to the point, I respect the way you treated that man. A lesser man would have walked away from that situation but you obviously have a code of ethics that extends to the punter who volunteers to be sawn in half. All the same I don’t think you can bring him flowers. They’re not allowed in hospitals now, it’s to do with Health and Safety. No grapes or bananas either. You’ll have to bring him something else
Yes, that's me in the picture. When I was a young buck with it all ahead of me. Now it's all in my head.
I'm pretty sure you're saying something important here but I can't hear it over the sound of my own bloody laughter. Stupendous stuff Mister Fugger and if you want shot of your half a man I may know a woman who is into 'that sort of thing'
He brought a woman home from the pub once. She almost suffocated him. She was worse than that cat in the hall.
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