Joshua Cohen - Witz

On the flipside, there’s Johannine or his stunted double out in full ringlingbros regalia, bespoke besuited, tophatted and twirling a cane, to intone a script intolerably wordy with the pseudomystic, this hagiographic, heteroglossolalic Babel he comes on with a delivery polished as impeccably as his necklaced and braceleted and tiepinned and cufflinkedup gems: and now, the star of the show stuff, highshowbiz an antedated American dialect perfected orally only in the century past…the moment, don’t you know, you’ve been waiting for, haven’t you; each to translate this to their own disbelief. Huge womanly hourglasses are suspended from the rigging above; glitterspattered topiary’s rolled in wobbly from the wings, under which a raggedy, shopworn wreck of a lioness outcast from her species’ central casting reposes, alongside a lamb shorn due to health regulations. From a trapdoor, the platform ascends topped with that throne — the aspy hiss of hydraulics — as a screen’s lowered between it and the audience, ten cubits premium silk cut shatnes with nylon to separate the marks from the marked, to keep sanctuaried the paying public from the headlining holy: whosoever would gaze upon Ben’s countenance shall die, they’ll remember, they’ve been warned this prior to curtain in an announcement too serious to be taken for truth (and please: no recording devices, or flash photography), with the screen itself only a makeshift of lastminute, as Him suspended with bungees just hasn’t worked this last week, not what with the late weight or what all the new firms and their highpantsed, lowforeheaded adjusters want to rob Garden, Inc. of for the privilege of their insuring (this worrying, then that trouble with the unions, too, the forecastedly unfavorable reformation of Siegeles’ gaming control board), one of a God’s names’ worth of concerns and then that of marriage you won’t forget, all sagging Ben forlornly no matter what strength of cord they’d use: that of the umbilicus, rattling chains, binding ties. Up out of nowhere, it’s hoped, His shadow appears, an outline: screened, He staggers…the lights falling Him, the trussed stars. He’s deafened, with no sightlines His own. Another drumroll, this triple forte taken down to piano, a muffled muddle to ring in His head with the debut show’s organ’s last rill. Sparks fall from the roof of the sky. As He hikes up His pants and examines His zipper, the audience’s gasp rings out, enormously (a claqued human laughtrack whose mob of mobile organizers extort their commission), with the slots sounding loudly just outside the doors to the showroom — then silence, the toothy glint of a titter: He’s been rehearsed to milk it here honeyed, directed to exploit the silence to when murmur would set in, loosemouthed whispers, and vexations expectant; only now, with a deep dolent smelling breath into the microphone clipped inside the paper carnation of His lapel, to begin.

Line! — Call me Ben… ’s prompted, delivered up to applause — God they hope, how they’ve already paid, how a handful of them have already been paid, grown menschs, womenfolk, and their kinder altogether wetting themselves, O Lord please and thank you, you’ve been a wonderful audience; to ensure a happy house for the prenuptial night, the entire frontrow has been comped. To take a bow to any smashed idol, a hundredthousandmouthed, open to sleeping, napping or nodding, and drool, then there on your knees to beg for approval, acceptance; lose the tie, loosen the collar — Ben, a little respect. It’s that you have to feel a right to be here, among the fleers, exiting still — the chutzpah, once was known as confidence, to be asking of them their money, earned time: not of them but its, though, is how you have to think — the undifferentiated, unindividuated public out there still in the dark; even as its yawningly sparse shadows emerge, at intermission, at close curtain, as individuals, as differently their own as the lights are dimmed up to air their embarrassment, shudders and stretches, watchconsulations then coat and bag checks, seatsearches of shame — a house is what it’s called, He’s thinking, as in a halfhouse, an empty house…as long as it lasts, it’s never a home.

Glitzy and glamaramorous come on come on, unrepentant sleaze, flimflam, hokum, hucksterism, and the slipping of audience finns, the whole razzle dazzle spiel whatever claptrap’s your brand — this scene has it all; and so, they’re always telling Him, it’s hard to believe the reviews, they’re more miss than hit: Ben Bombs, Israel Fails, He Puts The “Mess” In Messiah …fedorad newspapermenschs flock to designate pay telephones, fist the slot for coins returned for putting through their calls, telegraph machines stitched deep into their pockets’ linings, O so that’s what they’re always doing down there: line, dash, line, stop… Spectacle? Check Your Wallet & Watch! Shtunk @ The Shore!! The Whore Babbles On (find out what’s eden our critics, cont. Aleph 2)!!! Though despite the headlines, the sour ledes, the bitterest grafs, the tour’s still been blockbusting (reports have it, unconfirmed except in their unreliable capacity); apparently, there’ve been near riots at the boxoffice, and hahaha not demanding refunds: apparently, there’s just nothing else to do at night, these holying days, and anyway many have been freebied, and in not a few locales actually forced to attend, filed from their homes by police with yarmulked vigilantes assisting in lockstep to the gate, why not, thinking, might as well show up, get their blessing, as promised, which He bestows upon all at the end of every performance. And if you’re following the press on the press, the media always selfmortifying, selfcensorious, its coverage that beats breasts, fills space and kills time, there’s an easy explanation, a one size fits simple interpretation of an interpretation if you will for why the critics especially with their minds and columns and books, too — who needs them, not Him, a mensch of the people — have seemed so hostile lately, still are: it’s not Him they’re disappointed in, as we’re assured in Sabbath eve editorials referencing the weekday review — it’s just in the way He’s presented, profane.

And though He’s been hamming it up as kosher as possible, everything’s just east of being on tonight, say Utah latterly known as Mormondom that’s how far off, make you happy…as if the audience will notice — and how are our notices? Has the backlash backlashed into slavishness, yet? What’s wrong with me, what’s my problem: matrimonial jitters…having these eighteenth thoughts, that prenup this Goldenberg had Him sign this morning too early, how maybe it favored her too much, though she has her own money; after all, she’s the President’s kid, The First Daughter, foisted da Foist, they said da Pope sent a gift, Pius Zeppelini…how to get a disengagement, what are the divorce laws in the state of Kinfusion, how to go about getting a Get, or else — how to avoid such thoughts, and the aufruf; how to put an end to any Genesis before it can gestate into what?

Questions: do you Ben Israelien take you this stranger whomoever to be your fill in the blank, to have, hold, better and worsen, for richer, poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do you — who even knows how His own tradition does this, or did…they’re perusing the video arcana, the archival photographic, the imaging and audio lore; albums are pillaged, the reels are raided as tombs. And soon, begging off the bachelor afterparty, which the stagehands had been planning to host in the Forum, a vomitoriumlike via of Rome annexed incongruously to this unit of Egypt, Ben’s returned to His suite, penthoused atop the pyramid of the Hotel & Q’asino. No apologies to their disappointment. Frozen vodka and warm mashke just sit. The strippers had anyway canceled due to conversion. Hiding high above this iniquitous Whoredom, He’s beyond the reach of radiance, the sizzling of light a dull throb. Registered under any odd surname malaproposed then appended Pharaohnic with number — Jacobson I — Ben’s the lone guest of the alight capstone of this monument memorializing only its own wasted expense, roomed in the glowing glassed pyramid set atop the larger stucco pyramid sloping below. He sits exhausted on a luggagerack under a sconce, an oillamp illuminating the suite, then the desert, the sprawl hazily endless, as if emanating from the very rubble landscaped at the feet of the faces of this gently widening gold, at the very least gilded, edifice, which is set here as it is there or was, Egypt, b’shana haba, alongside the lie of a great riddling Sphinx, in this lockdowned keeping appearing almost domesticated, with its nose again attached in a laudable feat of archaeological rhinoplasty, its paws splayed out in front astride a stretch of statuary, enthroned Ramseses arrayed in factory ruin, wired for light and sound. Ben’s left the bow untied around His neck as if His head’s an opened gift, snifter in hand and a smoke, slippers and a robe — miracle of miracles, He’s left all alone.