Joshua Cohen - Witz

You, you’re so funny, you do standup, too, how much you make, maybe I can break into it, seems like a good racket, you know anyone I can call — gimme a number, a letter behalfed, the coin of a name…

Hymn, yet another Benny says, that’s not how you do it…He stomps His left foot, right, then His right lags a little behind, adds maybe another Bennie, and really, come off it, says why not yet another of them — you think He’d ever be caught dead in a shmatte like that, a house robe, think again, keep yourself dreaming.

The women return, hotflashing, moodswung, and with faces severely refreshed, flushed with sample kit makeup, looking like overflowed bathrooms begging for maids: they turn Him around, the only one of them unnamed, the One — hauling Ben called to the carpet brand new, one with a slip of tag, the other wielding a pen.

Why’d you drag me away from the buffet? He wants to know. The carving-station just got a new roast.

You left your nametag in your room, maybe, one woman says (her name’s Elaine), no need to run up and fetch it, says the other (Explain), we just wanted to get you another…you know, Elaine says as Explain picks up as if dust from her unfashionable, also unironed, lapel, before you forgot who you were, Elaine laughs, then Explain, and then the both of them together and how — one would laugh just a giggle longer than the other and so all the timing would be off and the effect would be ruined; it’s terrible: they’d get separate motelrooms to stay in and wouldn’t talk to each other for days.

No problem, He says. Me, I want to forget.

It’s an act, if still in development — until they can afford to quit this job, then their Mondays and Wednesdays dayshifting a diner opened to service the eating days of a local yeshiva: Elaine would say, I feel bloated, and Explain would say, this is how it must look to feel bloated. Explain would say, I have cramps, I feel terrible, and then, get this — Elaine would say, you look great, never been better…

Nu? says Elaine, meaning name, and guess who explains. Ben says what it is, Ben, and how everyone laughs altogether, doubles now doubledover, folded for the packing or stack like napkins or sheets, amused He thinks at mine this amateur impersonation, my rank this hobbyhack, sad. They’re slapping knees, drizzling tears like shpritzes of lemonlime squeezed, a pinch sprinkling salt over the shoulder. Bin Eden, known to most though as Fats, Head of Q’asino Food & Beverage, he approaches to ask if everything’s alright, Mister…in a capacity competently official, solicitous in its sincere swiftness, with his silent bows and craft of cunning obeisance in lipspittle, nosedrool, and swallow, and how the Bens gathered together shriek His Israelien name, then laugh even harder, heaving their tongues against teeth, a howl massed from their mouths almost vomiting up on the floor and its latterly vacuumed carpet a morningafter cholent, of sorts, slowly warmed in the gut, bussed from buffets, earlybirded especially greasy, but just as He begins to serve voice and register protest, bin Eden’s already moved on to his next guest: got to pass on the love — hand to crossed fingers, them old meet ’n’ greets — at least a false sense of feely importance, clapping impersonators on the back, hugging them and cheekily kissing and saying incredulously I almost didn’t recognize you, hahaha his sharpie brows and his slitty eyes and the scrawny, bent humble hunch of his frame on his way zigzagging down the welcome-line only of Hims, how’ve you been doing, baruch hashem, the wife and the kinder, enjoying yourself, have a great stay.

Their nametags, also, say obviously enough Benjamin Israelien, but underneath that writ expected are their real first olden names they’re given over to slowly forgetting, from which they’re changing, converting; what used to be referred to as their appelations Xtian, Unaffiliated, and then the names of their goyish hometowns; example: Harry, Mizpah , Larry, Shiloh , Gary, Lodi , here with his lovely wife, Vicki, doneup in drag.

My name, He says, is Jacobson, hymn, Jacobson, Esq., why not, from where or, more perfectly, from whom He gets it and what else (name, life — nomen est roaming, perhaps), He doesn’t know — and then there’s the touchy issue of quote His accreditation end quote; Jacobson, Esq. just once overheard and now, underspoken — the name, it’s been said, of His father the lawyer’s old lawyer of his own according to the will Israel’d left they’ve since scrapped. Elaine falls for it, asks Him to spell it all out for her: and He tries, capital-J-AC-O-B-S-O-N comma space capital-E-S-Q period.

And where am I from — Wishniak Hill, maybe you’ve heard of it, it’s in Joysey, where else should it be? and Explain shrugs, goes and pens it onto His tag.

Hello, My Name Is: and yadda, she pins it to His lapel, its spike sticking through His bathrobe, His breast (later observers would describe Him, Him as Him — as if they’d known, or could’ve told the difference if only to tell it again well after the fact — as the height of inappropriateness, here in a house robe piped in pink, over His mother’s own robe trimmed in purple, both rattytatty, and holed), pricking Him to weep, His sacred heart. To pump Himself, then, from this nick of a question, Ben asking, what’s in a name — whether an inoculation against self, or a sanguinary palm smeared to mark the forehead in confusion, disbelief…blood, Ben thinks: maybe mine aren’t just impersonators; Jesus, do you think so they’re clones? Could be, could be worse. Holding Himself against the pain, the pains of both wound and thought, He tongues lips, sets teeth. Elaine hands Him a program. Explain blows a kiss to His booboo, is what she says from lips swollen with enhancement, botulinum, collagenital. He opens the paper to read right to left. How late tonight there’re still two midnight sessions to choose from: Doctor Tweiss’ scheduled to talk in the Shishak Suite about minimally invasive surgical options to, and He’s quoting: Get The Most Out Of Your Sinuses ; competing with his brother Doctor Tweiss who he’s up late doing the Ramses Room in a discussion of the Metametymparapsychologyality of (Im)personational (Im)personation: An Excursus in Pretty Pictures & Lite Muzak ; please pick up your vouchers from Registration, it’s urged.

Fat, frizzy almost menschs swarm Him away with them into an elevator then upstairs to either or both sessions included ( How To Be Two Places At The Same Time: A Seminar for Expectant Mothers ; a prerequisite for How To Do Two Things At Once II: A CrashCourse , kneepads not provided), but the food — it’s back down on the floor below buttoned the lobby’s L. Ben jiggles a flabby wriggle from their frazzled, cuticlebitten grasp, attempts to take the elevators again and this direction down, but the doors’ve already shut, fallen. He rests Himself against the buttons to summon the lights, God forbid walk a floor. Suddenly, the hallway’s hobbled through with Bens halting with walkers and quadcanes, disabled to wheelchairs (electric and wheeled by Himself, by His own best companions both in drag and in friendship, and in the spirit of charitable help), incarnations of any fate that might be His, forever robbed of their futures — with their constant flowmasks or nasal cannulas hooked up as if by strands of saliva to little, wienerlike oxygen tanks tubing attendance, and, too, them lying their spacesaving, moneysaving accommodation in the Q’asino’s sprawled ballrooms and hallways and even in the elevators He’s waiting for still atop a host of rental and stolen stretchers hauled, gurneys rolled on casters that squeak to suspect an infestation of mice from function to food again and again.