Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan Read Free Book Online Page B

at a deaf disco, which I thought was an oxymoron but it wasn’t. She told me it was a club where they pump the music up ear-bleeding loud and have sets of strobe lights and fog that smells like raspberries. Everyone turns up their hearing aids and dances to the whispers of music or the waves of bass, or they dance to the lights, or to the music they can’t hear because even with their hearing aids they’re still fucking deaf, so they dance to nothing whatsoever. I imagined it looked like the piano breakdown of a Charlie Brown special. And then when the raspberry fog rolls, everyone grinds on each other and starts making out. A really fucked up Charlie Brown special.
    She’d met him there, in the raspberry fog, and they’d been married for almost two years. It wasn’t going so good. Both of you being deaf isn’t even enough anymore. That’s what the world has become. He was nice but lazy, and often jealous. With good reason, because she was cheating on him. She’d met the other guy a few weeks ago at a karaoke bar.
    What were you doing at a karaoke bar?
    I was singing, stupid.
    Singing? You’re fucking deaf, remember?
    So what! I can still sing! she signed. And then she shouted “YOU KNOW I WISH THAT I HAD JESSIE’S GIRL!—DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH—JESSIE’S GIRL!—DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH—WHERE CAN I FIND A WOMAN LIKE THAT!”
    “Jessie’s Girl,” by Rick Springfield. The “duh nuh nuh nuh” was the guitar part. She even sang the guitar part. The whole thing was loud and atonal and slurred together and off the beat, and she was clapping and dancing around as she sang. She was so happy. It was and remains the most tragic thing I have ever heard. The guy who watched the Hindenburg go down had nothing, nothing on Marlene’s version of “Jessie’s Girl.”
    I have always thought of people as punch lines. I laugh at everyone, all the time. I laugh when they fall down, no matter how old they are, even if they break their hip and they’re my grandmother. Jesus my mom was fucking pissed. I laugh when they just miss their bus and then run after it waving their arms in a futile attempt to make the driver stop, and when he doesn’t it means they’ll be late for something very important. I especially laugh when they have nervous breakdowns. Sometimes I think about that footage of Jim Bakker being led away in handcuffs as he whimpers and goes fucking insane and I have to lie down to keep from fainting. The Other Sister and I Am Sam are two of the funniest movies ever made. I can’t even walk into a McDonald’s, not even to steal a saltshaker. All those people stuffing double cheeseburgers into their greedy mouths are just big fat sloppy sight gags to me. I was kicked out of my reading circle in third grade for laughing at a girl who couldn’t sound out her sentences. Years later she told me that I was singularly responsible for the stutter she’d later developed, and for her intense shyness and low self-esteem. The important thing was that I’d made a difference in her life. I have always found the misfortunes of others hilarious, because they’re not me. If there’s such a thing as karma I’m fucking doomed.
    But really it’s condescending and patronizing not to make fun of someone because they’re old or stupid or crippled or morbidly obese. Banged up people don’t want your pity. They just want to be treated like everyone else. Mockery, when done without prejudice or discretion, can be a form of respect. It’s the closest we’ll ever come to true equality.
    But even I had to draw the line somewhere. Some line at least. And laughing at Marlene’s deaf rendition of “Jessie’s Girl” was it. A great shadow of conscience fell upon me. And it was cold, and felt like shame. I couldn’t speak. Thank christ for sign language.
    You sing this at karaoke?
    Sometimes. Why?
    I prayed that the crowd, if not as kind as me, was at least discreet.
    How did you meet your boyfriend?
    I sang