Changing the Past by Thomas Berger Page B

Jackie took that choice, for Havana was farther from the Big Time to which he aspired. The Atlantic City club proved to be much like the Coronado, with the difference that it maintained no resident performers but every few weeks changed all the personnel of one show for an entirely new group. Owing to Mr. Charles’s recommendation, Jackie was given an opportunity to go on for ten minutes of standup for a few nights, but the reception was lukewarm at best, and soon the arrogance he had so quickly attained by hearing laughter degenerated to what in a weaker character might well have become true self-pity, which is never funny, as opposed to the simulated kind that is so successful for comics who pretend to be victims of their associates, especially the women to whom they are hypothetically married.
    But Jackie Kellog was too tough a nut to be cracked by disregard, he who after all had risen above his lack of superficially attractive attributes to win the respect of his high-school classmates and even the unwelcome devotion of a Betty Jane Hopper (whom he realized, looking back, not only Gordon Riggins but most of the other boys believed both sexually and socially desirable). Far from being discouraged, he acquired strength by hating the people whom he could not make laugh, but he had far too much self-command to display resentment, always the trait of a loser.
    It was at this time that Jackie first formulated what was to become his trademark style: abuse of individual members of the audience, which made the others hilarious and caused the victim him- or herself to laugh even more vigorously or seem that most shameful of Americans, the creature who could not take a joke, viz ., the Poor Sport. It began one night when Jackie could not evoke an audible snicker with his first five, the strongest, jokes. If they didn’t make it, he faced stark disaster, for the material went downhill from there. He found himself praying for a heckler, for an audience is invariably sympathetic to a performer who is being harassed. Had he thought of it, he might have found someone to hire for the role, but it was too late now, and in fact this was the last of his scheduled shows, after which the efficacy of Mr. Charles’s recommendation ran out.
    Jackie stared malevolently at the tables nearest the stage, and of the persons sitting at them chose a man with a huge belly and several chins. “Hey, buddy,” he cried, “didn’t you come in with a whole party? Where’d they go? You eat ‘em?…Where’s the wife tonight?” He put his hand to his ear, pretending to listen for an answer. The fat man remained silent though he was grinning widely. “Dog-training class? What kind of dog does she have?…Oh, you don’t have a pet? But the wife can now bring your slippers and newspaper?”
    People had begun to laugh now. “I know your wife, sir,” Jackie continued, rolling his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I think she made a pass at me the other day: at least she mounted my leg and started to hump it.” He was on a roll now, the audience in his pocket, and this audience, unlike that of the Coronado, included both sexes. Some of the women were even married to their escorts, while others were the spouses of men not present; the point was that wives, like Italian-Americans, fat people, et al., were obliged to enjoy jokes about their own kind, their natural self-interest permitting no choice in the matter. The only wrong was to be ignored. In the case at hand, if anybody failed to make the maximum response she would probably be a single woman, the girlfriend of a married man.
    Jackie finally let the first victim sink back into eternal oblivion and seized another, a relatively young woman with prominent incisors, and proceeded to deliver a series of gibes in which squirrels, chipmunks, and other rodents figured. She colored though of course was constrained to laugh at