Congratulations, You're the Best Jester

Brand new fiction from 1325 Publishing's very own ARBOGAST

Everyone always joked that the Year’s Best Jester award was cursed. An albatross. A goddamned black mark that always ended with a “Gone to New York” or “Gone to Los Angeles” obituary for the many winners who disappeared into obscurity. None of the winners ever amounted to anything other than winning the award itself.

And yet Colm Kilpatrick wanted the award badly.

A ten-year veteran of the small-time beer-and-chicken wing comedy circuit of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, Colm had worked his material down into a tight ten minutes. None of the open mic hacks could hang with him and his Glorious Ten. Sure, Colm did not always get laughs. Some crowds, especially the ones that thought themselves sophisticated, tended to groan at his admittedly predictable punchlines. And yeah, it was a valid critique to say that Colm’s observational style, with its reliance on puns told with a dry, deadpan delivery, marked the comedian as a rip-off of Steven Wright (one local alt rag had called him “Steven Wrong”). But still, Colm persisted. He practiced positive thinking, he did yoga three days a week, and he kept a nice, leatherbound notebook everywhere he went just on the off chance that he’d see something remarkable.

Oh, and he dreamed about Annie Sanchez. He really, really wanted Annie Sanchez to suck his dick. In a perfect world, Annie Sanchez would blow him while he held his Year’s Best Jester plaque above his head like a conquering hero. Sometimes Colm saw himself booping Annie on her head right before or immediately after he finished. Such were the comedian’s noxious wet dreams.

Colm had long loved Annie from afar. And by love, Colm mostly meant lust. He did not respect Annie, and he certainly did not find her talented. The fiery comedienne’s sorority girl gone bad routine was tiresome and goofy. Half the jokes were about bad sex, while the other half were about getting drunk in class or pregnancy scares that ended as wet, greasy taco farts. Annie always defended her comedy by calling herself a “storyteller.” When the criticisms were especially harsh, Annie would make mini-speeches in Spanglish about how her routines were part of the Mexican tradition of Lunada, where spellbound listeners would hang on every word of the female speaker underneath the desert moon. Colm knew it was all bullshit, but he liked it when Annie would get wound up and her big, full breasts would bounce with every angry exaltation. Also nice were the pouty purses that her partially enhanced lips would make when she’d overexaggerate Spanish nouns and verbs. No, Colm did not consider Annie his equal in comedy, but he did want her stripped naked on his bed.

Colm was okay being called a pig so long as he was still also called the best comedian in Buffalo. And Niagara Falls too. Toronto was pushing it, but then again Colm had the confidence to say that Canadians aren’t funny. Even Norm was overrated.

After months of preparation, which saw him perform almost every night at any club that would have him, Colm drove to the Polish American Citizens’ Club in Lockport. A heavy curtain of cold rain kept the neighborhood drenched in noir ambience. Colm lit up a cigarette to satisfy the gods. Halfway through his smoke, he felt a nudge in his ribs. He looked down and saw his competition.

“Hey, bub,” the tiny voice said. “You playing to win tonight?”

Colm looked the man over several times. The man was horseshoe bald with a ginger moustache that obscured his upper lip. His suit was polyester, and the width of his collar left no doubt that his clothes came straight from 1977.

“Well, are you stayin’ alive?” Colm asked in jest.

“A non-sequitur,” the man said. “These judges don’t go for that kind of humor. It’s too easy. Dadaist nonsense, I think. But hey,” and here the little man shrugged his barely-there shoulders, “a joke is a joke.” The man then offered his hand and introduced himself as Felix Yudofsky of Utica. Colm took the hand and shook. He had to suppress a giggle or two once he realized that yes, Felix Yudofsky was a full-blown midget. The thin glow of a streetlight made this fact clear.

“You done one of these before?” Colm asked.

“Sure have. This is my sixth year in a row. My first two were stinkers, but the last four have been great.”

“Why didn’t you win then?”

Felix threw up his hands and stomped his feet. “Prejudice, maybe. Last year they voted with their hard-ons, and in 2020, only a black comic was going to win. Before that we had to suffer under the rule of Russ Cool. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why that was a problem.”

No, he did not. Colm and every other resident of Western New York knew about Russ Cool, aka The Cool Guy of 96.9. Cool had been the last of the shock jocks. Even at eighty he was still pulling pranks on stunt boys and making believe that he was prank calling the DMV and whatnot. Because of this brilliance, Cool had been anointed as the ultimate judge of humor. His word was the final say at every Year’s Best Jester. The problem with this was twofold: One, Cool had a Cro-Magnon’s sense of humor. To him, a man slipping on a banana peel and grabbing a naked tit to save himself was the height of comedy. The Picasso of Punchlines. The man was simply a moron.

The other major problem was that Cool was on the take. He picked winners not based on the power of their sets, but rather on their connections to the sponsors. If someone was a cousin of Mike Iannucci of Iannucci’s Bakery, then they’d win. That’s how three members of the DeForrest family, of the DeForrest Funeral Home, had each won the award between 2002 and 2006. Cool’s reign of terror finally ended in 2019 when he was arrested for B&E after breaking into his ex-wife house and using several free hours to record himself lovingly rubbing his naked appendages on all her silverware. It was the only funny thing the Cool Man had ever done.

“So, you think you’re going to win it this year?” Colm asked little Felix.

The comedian chuckled and pointed at the growing line outside of the community hall. “Look at those bums and tell me that any of them are funny.” Colm peered over at the growing line forming outside of the community center. There, tucked close to the cold brick wall was an assortment of various freaks—two fat dudes practiced judo, one pan-faced woman read poetry aloud to herself, and at least four creatures of indeterminant sex, race, and religion were taking turns twerking. Colm visualized shit sliding out of one of their jeans and started laughing to himself.

“Jeeez, buster, save some laughs for in there,” Felix counseled.

“Felix,” Colm said with total composure, “I’m so confident in my Glorious Ten that I can go in there giggling and still win.”

“Ten? You mean ten minutes? Kid, they only give you seven in there.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, only seven minutes, and they’re strict about it. I’ve seen plenty of hacks get cut off mid-sentence. Now if you’ll excuse me, I got to practice. They’ll be opening the doors soon.” Felix trundled off towards the brick wall. Once secure in his spot, the little comedian reached down into a dark corner and produced an evil-looking puppet.

“You can’t lose to a ventriloquist. No way.” Colm’s attempt at regaining his confidence was not successful. The once brash and cocksure comedian was sweating. Seven minutes. Seven fucking minutes! The Glorious Ten could not be altered in any way—trimming three minutes was simply not possible. The Glorious Ten worked so well and was the pinnacle of human achievement (or at least human achievement in Buffalo) because it was one continuous joke. Each small sub-joke and tangent could not be detached from the greater whole. To do so would be to commit a crime against art.

Colm started biting his nails. He walked towards the line with bleak thoughts in his head. He made sure to pick a spot way in the back behind one prop act and a lanky fellow who looked like he was one bad word away from suicide.

“You’re still the best. You’re still the best.” Colm fidgeted in line. His positive thoughts were peppered with cynicism because he knew that he was fucked. “Maybe I can do crowd work,” he thought. “Hello, sir. What do you do for a living?” That kind of stuff was meat-and-potatoes down in Jersey, and Colm thought it might offer a way out.

He nixed the idea. It was a bad move to start a new attack during the biggest moment of his career. Best to stick with his strengths, but his strength was the Glorious Ten.

“Maybe I can try and cut a few things here and there. Maybe cancel the dramatic pauses.” Colm shot this thought down too. He did not know where he could begin to trim, and he worried that his perfect timing would get muddled up. After thinking about the problem until his head hurt, Colm resolved to simply plow forward with the Glorious Ten. Time restraints be damned; his routine would be so hilarious, so tremendously perfect that the judges would have to let him tell it in its totality. And if one tried to stop him, Colm would just raise his voice and talk over them. Winners never bothered with the pleas of peasants, after all.

Colm was so lost in his own head that he did not notice that the line had moved. When he looked up, there was a gap larger than ten feet between him and the next participant. Colm did a small jog to catch up. By the time he stopped, the line moved again. Now Colm was directly beside the open door leading into the main theater. There, curled around another wall, were the remaining participants. Colm counted fifteen in front of him. He settled in knowing that a final decision had been made—the Glorious Ten would be completed.

Colm snarked and sneered at the other comedians. The first five or so were mirror images of each other: rotund and florid men with heavy accents and thick glasses telling safe jokes about pop culture and dating. One grizzled old black man, who appeared to be blind, broke the mediocrity but telling at least two funny murder jokes, the last one of which caused one of the judges to audibly gasp.

“Don’t worry, bitch,” the scratchy-voiced comedian said, “I wouldn’t murder you. That is unless you plan on voting for someone else. In that case, you’re deeeeeaaaaaaad meaaaat.”

“Thank you. Your time is up,” said one male judge. “I must remind you and the rest of today’s participants that crowd work is expressly prohibited. Therefore, you have been disqualified, Mr. Jackson.”

“You motherfuckers don’t know comedy at all. And you watch yourself, bitch.” The comedian named Jackson bumped into the mic stand on his way off the stage. He then tripped going down the stairs, with his black porkpie hat sliding off his head and landing near the judges. The one female judge picked it up and flung the hat into a far corner. After that, she curled herself up into a ball and put her arms around her shoulders to protect herself from the mean blind comedian. For his part, Colm laughed at the fact that nobody bothered to help Jackson up; the old bastard slipped and slid through several herky-jerky motions until he was upright again. He eventually limped away in the wrong direction, going deeper into the Polish American Citizens’ Club.

The next act up was Felix Yudofsky. His short, halting wobble to the stage made Colm chuckle, and he stayed that way throughout the set. Felix was an awful ventriloquist; his lips moved visibly, and when he was interrupted by a belch, he said “Excuse me” with a completely placid dummy seated next to him. The dummy’s name was Sinclair, and in the rich tradition of Otto and George, Sinclair roasted Felix. Short jokes were his specialty, and Colm legitimately laughed when Sinclair asked if the mohel had also circumcised Felix’s feet. Felix found his groove, and the last chunk of his set sent several spectators into convulsions of laughter. Colm was impressed and a wee bit angry. Such a short and ugly ventriloquist had no right being that funny. All ventriloquists should be Jeff Dunham handsome, Colm told himself as Felix killed.

Felix was halfway through a joke when he was cut-off by one of the male judges.

“That’s seven minutes, Mr. Yudofsky. Any more from you will result in disqualification.”

“Nuts. I was just getting to the good part.”

“Do you want that on record?” the judge asked.

“What are you, a teacher?”

“Yes or no, Mr. Yudofsky?”

“Yes and no. Yes, I like what I said, and no, comics shouldn’t have records unless it’s a legal one full of narcotics and prostitutes.” That line made at least one other comic double over.

“Ok, Mr. Yudofsky. Your comments, because they caused laughter, will be considered jokes. As such, you are hereby disqualified for going over your allotted time.”

Felix cursed them all. Literally. To Colm’s surprise, the midget comic got up on his stool and started spitting out oaths in a mixture of English and Hebrew. His narrow eyes burned with hatred as he swore oaths of blood vengeance against all the judges.

“And by the way,” he said, “that chump over there is going to do ten minutes. I hope you plan on disqualifying him too.” Felix said this with a little Vienna sausage finger pointed at Colm.

“Hey, fuck you!” Colm spat back. The judges told Felix to leave the stage. The ventriloquist did so, and he scurried off in the same direction as the blind Jackson before him. One judge mumbled something about a plot between the two. The specter of police protection was invoked.

Eventually, after three more stinkers, it was Colm’s turn.

“Mr. Colm Kilpatrick,” one of the judges announced. Colm thought about crossing himself but decided on showing a confident front instead. He strutted like Ric Flair to the mic.

“How are we doing tonight, everybody?”

Nobody reacted. So, Colm repeated himself. This time someone clapped. It was Annie Sanchez, who proved to be the last comic waiting. Colm gave her a wink, which was not well received.

“So, I don’t know about you all, but whenever I fly on Spirit Airlines, I can’t help but think about the jungle.”

“Mr. Kilpatrick!”

“Ugh…yeah.”

“Is this the beginning of your so-called ‘Glorious Ten?’” The female judge asked. Her eyes were finally dry after Jackson’s vicious tongue lashing.

“Maybe.”

“If your next joke involves toucans in the front, then we will disqualify you on grounds of time theft.”

“He steals everyone’s time with those boring ten minutes,” Annie quipped.

Colm began to sweat. They were right; the next part of the joke did indeed involve toucans. The judges knew about the Glorious Ten, and they were dead set on stopping him. Colm looked back at Annie. She flashed a mischievous grin, then used her right hand to mimic masturbation. The invisible fluids were tossed directly at Colm’s panic-stricken face.

In desperation, Colm made the decision to escape from jokes and lean into honesty.

“Ok, then,” he said. “You see her there? Her, Annie Sanchez. Right there with the big peaches and dumb face. I have this elaborate plan where she sucks my dick after I win this competition.” Colm went into detail about his sexual fantasies involving Annie. He improvised; sometimes he was himself, and sometimes he was an exaggerated version of Annie, even down to her Spanglish accent. Colm gyrated on the mic stand, tipping it over at several spots. He groaned and moaned. When he finished, he ended everything with the pithy, but predictable line: “And that’s why I’m an aristocrat.”

Annie looked at him in horror. The judges refused to express themselves. One merely said, “Thank you,” and Colm walked off the stage and out the back door. He knew better than to follow Jackson and Felix down into the cellars.

“Fucking white men! I can’t stand them,” Colm heard faintly from the stage. If nothing else, Colm had at least achieved one thing: Annie was so flustered that she discarded her usual routine in favor of a tirade.

Colm waited for twenty minutes outside. Even in the late spring, Lockport was cold and looked like it could snow at any moment. Few cars passed by the Polish American Citizens’ Club. Colm also noticed that all the other comics had gone home. He was all alone, and for the most part he hung around simply out of a failing faith in his own ingenuity.

“Colm Kilpatrick,” a voice said from behind him. The speaker was one of the male judges. A real nebbish sort, with thick-rimmed glasses and a hawk-like nose. The poor schmuck came to a comedy tournament in a sweater vest, which should have been a clear sign to everyone that crowd work was forbidden.

“Yeah.”

“Please come back inside.”

Colm re-entered the main stage area. The room proved empty except for the judges. One of them told Colm to take the stage again.

“Mr. Kilpatrick,” the man said. “We were warned ahead of time about your ten-minute-set. The fact that you managed to perform brand new material in seven minutes impressed us. Although we all found your ‘jokes’ both lowbrow and crude, you were by far and away the best comic of the night. As such, we are pleased to inform you that you have won the Year’s Best Jester.”

One of the judges walked up to Colm and handed him a simple wood-and-bronze plaque. Taped behind the plaque was a cheque for two thousand dollars.

“As this year’s winner, you have an open spot at Uncle Junior’s Chuckle Hut. You can perform there any night of the week so long as you give the manager five minutes notice.”

“Are you kidding?” Colm was excited. Uncle Junior’s was one of the last true comedy clubs in Western New York, and only professional comedians got to perform there.

“Yes, we’re serious. One more thing, please refrain from trying to consummate your set with Ms. Sanchez. She has already left the building.”

Colm made the okay symbol with his thumb and forefinger. He took his plaque and cheque with a bounce in his step. He more or less skipped back to his car. As he put his keys in the driver-side door, someone called out to him.

“Congratulations, cocksucker.”

Colm turned around in time for a small rock to hit him square in the forehead. The thrower was the nominally blind Jackson, who produced another rock from his pants. This one hit Colm in the leg.

“Hit him again!” Sinclair the dummy screamed. Felix busied himself with opening a pocketknife. Colm did not wait around; he got into his car and screamed out of the parking lot. He looked back once to see one of Jackson’s rocks go wide.

“Animals,” he whispered to himself.

***

In the weeks following Colm’s victory, he had his tires slashed, his windows smashed, and his routines heckled. He barely slept at night, for a series of black SUVs would drive past his window at night blaring the most obnoxious music. During daylight hours, Colm kept seeing Felix and Sinclair the dummy in his periphery. The pair were stalking him, he knew, and yet the Buffalo cops refused to do anything about it. One detective even had the gall to recommend counseling.

“I’m not crazy,” Colm had said. “Gang stalking is real.” That had not gone over well. The police stopped taking his calls altogether.

Colm’s performances suffered as a result of his torture. Besides the abundance of hecklers (including Jackson, who would get more laughs from the cheap seats than Colm would get from the stage), Colm just couldn’t crack Uncle Junior’s Chuckle Hut. He went from performing three nights a week to just one. The manager, Gary Gigante, pulled him aside after his final performance and gave him the bad news.

“I ain’t never had to do this before, but we gotta rescind your open spot. You’re pushing them away, not drawing them in. Maybe try something else other than all that sex stuff about the dead chick.” Annie Sanchez had committed suicide a week after the tournament, but that hadn’t stopped Colm from pretending that she still owed him a celebratory blowjob.

“But shocking is funny,” Colm had plead. “Dark humor, man.” Gary Gigante was unmoved. Colm was out of luck.

Despondent after losing everything, and unable to even enjoy rest in his own home, Colm made one last fatal decision.

He attempted to reach out to the previous winners of Year’s Best Jester. He hoped that there was some kind of help center for winners. Besides obituaries, Colm found that the 2012 winner, Eddie Kozlik, worked as a therapist in Lackawanna. Colm shot him an email, which was answered almost immediately.

Come to my office tonight after close. I’ll fill you in.

Colm arrived at the nondescript office at nine p.m. A generic-looking fellow answered the door.

“Colm?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Come in. They haven’t followed you?”

Colm knew that the man meant Felix and Sinclair. He told the man that he hadn’t seen the duo in two days.

“That’s a good sign. You’re almost out of it.”

Colm asked for clarification, but the man offered him coffee and a seat first. He proved to be none other than Eddie Kozlik, the one-time king of one-liners.

“It really is a curse,” he said. “All the winners have had shit lives since winning the thing.”

“You seem to be doing alright.”

“I haven’t had a patient in two weeks. I spend eight hours each day losing money. I’m one more slow week away from losing the building. Unpaid rent.”

“Jesus. Any others still alive?”

“I think so, although we avoid each other. None are still in comedy, that’s for sure. I think that’s the great joke—the cosmic punchline. The tournament turns the best comedians into cautionary tales. The best routine turns into a punishment, and that’s kind of funny, if you think about it.”

Colm chuckled to himself and agreed. “And those two?”

“They always stalk and harass the winners until they either become irrelevant or die. Jackson always heckles and throws stones, while Felix and that dummy do everything else. I’m not entirely sure that they’re human at this point. They’ve been part of the curse for a long, long time. They even go after non-winners, too. That girl from your set—Annie Sanchez—I’ll bet they killed her.”

“Intentional overdose,” Colm said, repeating the coroner’s judgement. “Easy to pull off these days.”

“A lot of murders are covered up as suicides thanks to fentanyl,” Eddie added.

“Fuck. Feels like some voodoo shit.”

“That’s the way I think about it, too. Some witchdoctors made it a rule that nobody can get too popular if they come from Buffalo. And if you haven’t been followed in over two days, that means they’re done with you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that your comedy career is over. It’s like Felix and the dummy know when someone has thrown in the towel. They stop following you the minute you give up. Have you given up?”

Colm sighed. “I lost my open spot at Uncle Junior’s, and all the money is gone. I wanted to make a go as a full-time comedian, but that’s not possible.”

“My advice,” Eddie said after handing Colm another cup of coffee, “look into the trades. Something low-status and not easily traceable. You don’t want anyone to be able to search your name online. Go as far underground as possible.”

“Just quit it all?”

“Well, Colm. You won the top prize for comedy and look what you got for it. You haven’t made anyone in laugh in a long time. Isn’t that an obvious enough sign?”

“Yeah, you’re right. The joke’s over. The king of comedy has retired.”

“And we know how that movie ends…” Eddie said with a light tap on Colm’s shoulder. Both men laughed. Colm noticed that Eddie’s face changed as soon as he saw Colm crack a smile. The older comedian looked twice over his shoulder, almost as if telling a joke was dangerous. Colm realized that yes, telling a joke as the Year’s Best Jester was in fact dangerous.

He left the barren office and went home. After numbing his mind with television, Colm recited his prayers by his bedside. He finished his plea to God with a promise to never tell another joke again. With that, Colm pulled back the covers and turned off the light.

He enjoyed blissful, uninterrupted sleep. No black SUVs bothered him, and no rocks hit his windows. He didn’t even dream about Annie Sanchez’s puffy lips; he felt the comfort of a long, gray, and cold world ahead of him.