Joshua Cohen - Witz

An ingathering of seemingly every freak who’d ever stuffed a pillow down his pants, then gave that pantsed pillow a secret name they’d tell anyone who’d never ask after only one lchaim of schnapps too many and so perhaps those many names or that Name aren’t so secret, it’s usually Help: windchapped and undermoisturized faces listing toward eczema; dark dangles of meshmade ties lazily shadowing immense purchases of paunch, belts of leather thongs braided hidden around girth, under gut — dressed for this westerly freeze just like their easterly mothers would’ve insisted, in multiple layers and, hymn, maybe that’s all they are, all there’s to it: people draped fat in infinite layers for warmth, layer after layer nylon to woolen and yadda on down to their stained cotton briefs; at night in their own rooms to peel downily away to the unnamable kept hot and heart with within — a molten unknowable nothingness, a core boiling barren of Him — sleeping in beds tossed by the blue light of screens, to become their very own nobodies themselves. This being the very first annual meeting of any orientation Ben would ever attend, and He’ll attend it all wrong, unofficially, uninvited, no blame. His parents, or so He’s gathered from an albumed stash of official linnerdance portraitphotographs, from the trove of souvenir programs, kept from going starrily yellow by the careful preservation of experts lately involved with a forthcoming museum to be housed in His house at the Garden (its projected opening date, this upcoming Rosh Hashana — the first week of the newest New Year), had been much more proficient in attending such meetings and gatherings, pitchstrategy sessions and infotainment plenaries to be focused on PR message discipline and trial technique, training camps and miscellaneous congress: as laymembers, they were never caught lying down; as board members, never bored, always attentive, and in good standing: during speeches, they’d sleep on their feet; they were even officers, at least Israel had been, Hanna maybe just a Hadassah or Sisterhood corresponding secretary or else, with Edy an event cochair, her husband presiding over an immemorial annualization of bar association brunches, inns of court functions, and other purposeless conferences held toward the winter what with Joysey’s Teachers’ Convention break flown south to greater Orlando (though in relative youth, with their portfolio barren earth, how the family would install its members in a chain hotel fanned above the swamp that is neighboring Kissimmee). And so this feeling for meetings maybe isn’t so genetic. Still, how hard can it be to be Ben-as-yourself, especially if it’s just long enough to help your feigned to food and drink for what’s gratis. Not to be Himself, only one of His selves, a mere tear oozed to this ocean, the giddy, overheated shvitz of the five, sixthousand strong here who if not Him or even of Him then have at least all been doneup alike, padded to pop, aping devolved His every mannerism, making an attempt to be accurate even to Him and His mortification to the last mindless gesture holding as public reaction (Him made mindful and foremost, aware, withholding that that’s being manifested by all) — this summit of gesticulators signifying familiarly similar, simianly familial, as Ben enters the room disappointment in disastrous unison.

A sigh, a roll of the eye, a forefinger shrugged. As this meeting’s inaugural, first annual, indulge them, this reactionary rudeness is the only organization obtaining: a total insanity prevails over disorder, two to a room if not to a bed. A shtus of klutz, a pure riddling mess, through which al-Cohol, Q’asino proprietor and seventh son of the newly elected though others hold Shadeappointed Palesteinian president, makes his buying rounds, pressing impersonated flesh, and comping next Shabbos packages, gladhanding anyone rolling high and hard down the pyramid’s loss, leaving the house with their gain; this as tomorrow’s wedding guests — friends and family of the Shades, associates and the internationally owed — enjoy the spectacle, joking amongst themselves they hope the rabbi gets the right groom, hahaha.

Ben makes His way to the rows of the buffet, the tables bent over backward with everything He’s ever liked, with anything He might like, too, if He’d ever had it: varenikis stuffed with pierogies themselves stuffed with you never know what as a foretaste of Messianic eternity; platters of everything you could ever possibly do to a fish before eating it: smoked over fires of rainforest woods rare and endangered, cauldrons of thick stews of lamb and beef whose names noodle out to eighteen letters long, in consonants as chewy as fat. Pre-warmed plate in hand, He lines behind innumerable Bens as two old women, they’re old to Him at least, they’d take offense, tsking drag Him as yet unidentified out toward Registration — to the table unsteadily folded out alongside the frontdesk — and stand Him there His fingers twitchy on the mammillate clangor of bell. To be singled out here, Jesus. Two women, both of them convinced of a singular estrangement from His strangeness: minimumwaged to be consecrated to the act of its identification, intent on an official acknowledgement of their how perceptive they are to be followed by a rectification of His own unrecognizable estate. Maybe it’s His sense of humor that isn’t in the Schedule, maybe it’s because He’s all the while smashing the table with the empty plate that is His head, shrieking along the lines of you’re not understanding this, lady, I’m Him, I’m really Him, the emes mamash, I mean for real. As they leave to He hopes get the Manager who, hoping further, might fittingly as if a creation made manifest of this very convention be imaged as God: a Ben as everything more than such Bens, taller and wider and with infinitely more eyes and ears and noses and mouths, and beards and chutzpah, desked in perpetuity and promoted imperiously, allpowerful, and yet always seeming to be off for the night — a crowd of lesser Bens crowd around Ben, minatorily minor Benjaminites shaking heads, stomping tribal trouble, whispering amongst themselves, giggling: is my squeal, He’s thinking, all that highish, no, can’t be, I don’t believe…and no, I don’t have an impediment! but the retort’s enunciated clearly: not yet you don’t, you’re too Young Ben — I’m supposed to be doing an impression of Him when He’s old.

The real Ben doesn’t point, one Benny’s insisting, a Teofils flown in from Warsaw it was, especially for the event. What He does is He squeezes His hands into fists, like so, then shakes them out loose, while stomping His feet.

And another, he’s New Orleans I think it was called, now Bet Mississippi…that’s rage, you with me? Entitlement, follow? I know a faker when I see one.

Me, too.

And yet another, from Angels, you know it. I know Him and, let me tell you, friend, you’re no Him.

And you are?

I don’t know you, Ben says, who are you to me, who in God’s name? I just wanted freedom for free, an offnight out, what I needed, one measly miserly gulp of unsupervised air — and now this. I’ve never seen you before in my life. I don’t know you to hate you as much as I do, just leave me alone, I’m sick of this hearing…then waves His arms above His head as if the unangeled wings of His ears, brings them to clap Himself down on His forehead like Oy — as if applauding His own perplexity, I’m not sure.

Can I get a gevalt? Better make it to go.

And, nu, ease up on the gimp, will you, says another Bennie or Benny, whatever they’re calling themselves nowadays, for use in propagating any calling into which they’re being coopted: the name’s impersonation, another jibes, not assassination…remember, you’re trying to be Him, not kill Him.