Morning had failed to seep around what was left to it by the edges and corners of blinds and doors.
Now noon also took its turn, to no avail.
Bing stared in the dead light, squinting. White letters, blaring and blurry across his black screen, shifted to sharpen until he could see.
be nice to fungus.
acceptable athlete’s foot.
That’s right…
Like all ideas for bits, this one too seemed worthless in the no-light “dawn” of sober day.
Some standup Bing was turning out to be.
Should he rifle through a few more of his captured, forgotten lines? But why?
Years of stagnation and fuzz had almost succeeded in teaching him to expect all hopeful notions for what his self-sent words might mean to crumble immediately upon his return.
How many scores of would-be jokes had fallen in daylight to feeble, zany punchlines lacking even the dignity of set-ups?
Besides, he found the thought of himself on stage now to be more of a laugh than could be drawn from anything recitable. To actually take his strange material, voice, face, and body, and present it all in front of others would be…
But where did the humor go overnight? How could what have once seemed so funny end up just as sad, and desperate, and meaningless as any other path a previous Bing might have waited for and sensed coming . . . always just beyond the next . . . what?
Useless.
Still staring at the iun, Bing was almost aware of a not-so-sudden change in his thoughts’ direction.
Perhaps all his lines collected so far had really just been for practice. He sure had learned through the years to recognize whatever it was that made certain ideas seem “funny” or “worthwhile” enough to thumb in barely punctuated lines across his iun’s face.
Should he just go smoke again now, and start over (yet again) from scratch?
Bing all but watched the shifting pictures at the base of his conscious wonderings center and sharpen around an inconspicuous old black box, fancy and sleek, which lay now beneath him and his bed. Beyond lining inner layers of seasoned dinge and ash, he almost saw the gleaming, friendly silver pipe awaiting him, nestled up next to a rainbow family of red, orange, blue, and yellow plastic canisters.
That would sure give him what he’d need to go on stage, right?
I don't know anything 