Bing rose from cold porcelain, hastily flipping through batched lists of symbols. His hope was to pinpoint his iun’s little recorder again before it would prove too late.
Slow smoke wafted up, both leaving and reigniting an old and gnarly stench as it disappeared into a misaligned, gravelly fan that whirred and clipped above. The fan’s work sounded like the jolts of many saws all catching on chunks of splitting wood. And Bing’s mind felt about as rough, as if the smoke had first morphed into porous rocks that jumbled now around his wet, mental barrel to knock away any and all protuberances.
At last he spotted the recorder’s sneakily obvious, ancient-tape-deck form hidden amongst its rows of like cohorts.
What was he supposed to say again?
There was and wasn’t a science to keeping ideas together in those precious seconds after they had flashed themselves into being. It was a skill, quite un-teachable, which Bing was glad to have gotten better at.
He tapped the screen and saw the usual large, shifting blocks begin to count new seconds up from nothing.
If he could just swing back and lock onto whatever it was he had been thinking before the…
That’s right.
“There’s this wall,” he began, half squinting into the mirror to his left to track a cluster of perfectly still, non-human faces, all seemingly quite at home within his own, “It’s like a line I always cross. I go from being funny to . . . to just . . . too much. Wait, what am I talking about?”
The three partially lit white 8’s onscreen continued to alternate which of their seven lines to cause to gleam.
Bing let himself drift to catch up, then launched out again in a willfully softly spoken flurry: “It’s, like, I know I want to make people laugh. But as soon as I actually want that, the jokes stop coming. I think I get why, though . . . why this always happens. I never realized it, but I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be one of those guys that just stands up there on stage and makes everything up as I go along. But shouldn’t I be that? Shouldn’t it always be that kind of now-or-never thing? Isn’t comedy supposed to live right at the edge of that line, where everything could fall apart at any moment? I always thought I wanted to feel sort of trapped up there on stage, where the bits would either show up and save me or not. Isn’t that what makes it real?”
He let the questions sit.
Universes were formed in the briefest of silences before he heard himself continue: “But that’s not me, is it? I see that now. I’ve just always thought I was supposed to be that person. But the bits come to me whenever they come, like right now. And it’s inspired . . . it’s real . . . if I don’t plan it out. It’s just all the silly things I think about. Yeah, I’m still so afraid of going too far and crossing that line. But it seems like right at that point of almost too far is where my mind . . . or the weed . . . wants to always get as close to as it can.”
A few more seconds took their formation.
“It’s so funny,” he began to conclude. “Again, I realize who I am, and it ends up not even being about me at all. I don’t ask for my jokes or try to make them up or anything. I never have. Why would I assume performing has to be the opposite? Oh shit! That means I’m already . . . totally . . . ready!”
I don't know anything 