Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The Bloody Leotard

Dear Friends,

The June Hard Taco song is called, “Big-Calved Woman.” It’s a little misogynistic, has only two chords, and features a rather grating vocal track. If that doesn’t scare you away, what if I tell you that it is performed by hornets and Chinese puppets?!  (These are your deepest fears, according to the “browser cookies” in your computer.)

If you were able to ascertain my darkest secrets by querying my cookies, you would discover that I have been harboring a lot of guilt for something I did when I was 17.  I broke a ballerina’s leg. This particular dancer was male, but he was wearing a frilly pink tutu, so one could feel justified referring to him as a ballerina. The injury took place as the result of me running my parents’ station wagon into him in a parking lot, pinning his legs between two cars. It was probably the first time he had ever held his feet in fifth position.

The maimed ballerina was an aspiring comedian working as a “ballet parker” at a Milwaukee club called Comedysportz. I spent many evenings and weekends at that club because I was on the Nicolet High School Comedysportz team. Every Saturday morning, we would match our wits against one of the other schools, and by “wits” I mean “ability to think of terrible puns while cross-dressing.” It was the only sport I did in high school and shut up, it is too a sport. Competitive improv a sport in the same way that beer pong is a sport. Some people are certainly better at it than others, but everyone finds themselves hilarious after playing for an hour. Also, as it turns out, both increase your risk for having your legs crushed in a car accident.

As a Comedysportz team, our charge was to improvise sketches based on suggestions from the audience. This was the early 90s, and even though Viagra hadn’t been invented yet, comedy club audiences could be relied upon to offer the same suggestions every week. It would start like this:

Referee: The Nicolet team will be playing a game called, “Foreign Movie.” First, can I have a profession?

Audience, in unison: PROCTOLOGIST!

Referee: Okay, good, and how about an emotion?

Audience, in unison: LUST!

Referee: Lust it is. Thank you. Now how about a famous person?

Audience, in unison: ANNA NICOLE SMITH!

It didn’t take us long to recognize that if we spent the week practicing a long-form sketch about Anna Nicole Smith’s hilarious appointment with a lusty proctologist, we wouldn’t have to improvise anything. It was a funny sketch, actually, and we got pretty good at it.

As the year went on, something changed in the collective conscience of our audiences. Would it be possible, each spectator independently wondered, to see how it would play out if Yasser Arafat or Mrs. Doubtfire visited a licentious proctologist? It was a reasonable request, I suppose, but I was our team’s Anna Nicole impersonator, and I had become too specialized.  Even with a scarf wrapped around my forehead, I couldn’t do the scene without the Texas accent.

One winter evening at the end of my senior year, I pulled into the parking lot and was greeted by a sprightly parking attendant in a tutu. We knew each other casually. He was a recent graduate of one of the other high school programs, and was now interning with Comedysportz in hopes of breaking into the professional league. He probably recognized me as one of the cocky but decidedly mediocre kids on the Nicolet High team.

What he didn’t know about me was that I was downright lousy at driving stick. As he gracefully marshaled me into an open space and lifted into his relevé, the station wagon lurched forward and smashed into his leg.  I quickly backed up again, and he crumpled to the ground. Mortified, I jumped out of the car and ran over to help him up. I realized as I bent down that I was looking into the eyes of the saddest man in the world. It was like the Ghost of Christmas Future was showing me that I wasn’t funny and that I should stop trying, or I would end up like this poor bastard… writhing in the snow, clutching a fractured tibia through a ripped leotard. My interest in the performing arts dropped off dramatically after that night.

Last weekend I went to my daughter’s ballet recital. The six-year-olds were adorable, but I still have a visceral reaction to seeing teenagers in tutus. I guess it’s strange to feel shame whenever I see a ballet dancer, but it’s not as weird as being afraid of clocks and kidney diseases! (Your browser history again.)

With warmest regards,
Zach

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