Remarkable People I have Known: The Comedian

He actually was very funny and like most people who are funny something of an anomaly.  I was twenty-three when we first met, one evening downtown.  He wore a clerical collar and claimed to be a minister.  He also had at the time a wife, a young quiet mousy woman somewhere in her twenties. I think the Comedian would have been moving towards his forties.  He was very genial, kind, hilariously funny, with a quiet deadpan delivery.  One night very late he phoned me asking if he and his wife could spend the night being suddenly without a roof.  I only wished I could help them and claiming as an excuse my tiny housekeeping room with only a narrow foamy to sleep on I felt awful about turning them down.

I saw him again two years later in a Foursquare Pentecostal church we were both attending sans young wife, along with the Great One.  I began to harbour doubts about him when another Remarkable Person about whom I shall write next post complained about the way he agressively sexually hit on her one day.  He also mentioned cavalierly about his way of coping with the orgasmic screams of a woman in his building that involved a jar of Vaseline on his bedside table.

We continued to run into each other.  I found him to be a very ungrateful dinner guest, theatrically gagging himself with his forefinger when I offered him a stir fry with soybeans.  (if you must know, gentle reader, I do happen to be an excellent cook!  But don't respond to my dinner invitations expecting steak or Chateau Briand!).  During the same visit he also proceeded to lash out against homosexuals as being broken, warped and immoral and that the only reason so many are found working in health care and other helping professions is that it's their way of dealing with their self-hatred.  Yes, he actually did say that, he who could not be trusted with unescorted young women.  Thus ended the friendship, such as it was.

There was still a lot of fun and laughter when we previously visited.  He had a crass way of trying to impress others about all the celebrities he knew when he was doing stand up gigs in Las Vegas. I asked him please to spare us his name-droppings.  He also told me a lot of great jokes.  Here are two:

Did you hear about the prayer meeting that included Catholics and Jews?
Oy Vey, Maria!

What do you call a Jewish baby that hasn't been circumcised?
A girl.