Capítulo 4: #4. The Black Beetle
Everyone loves a good laugh. Everyone from your local cashier to that one guy who was the whole butt of jokes back his high school class, or maybe the entire school itself.
The Black Beetle's that one place that isn't like other comedy clubs. One, it isn't really a comedy club, it's a successful gothic style restaurant with some decent food. Instead of selling instant noodles for twice the price like some places, this restaurant bothers to make customers a ramen inspired dish, or if you don't prefer that, you always got the class mi bakso and among other Indonesian dishes. As a regular, this place is always crowded, even at lunch time. Rest assured, it's not always the food that makes people come to this place.
We customers at the Beetle have a particular taste in comedy. We like our comedy just like we like our coffee: black.
Well, except for Gavin, he likes white coffee.
The Beetle was filled with air conditioners. I swear, the hairs on my skin are going up so high that I would recommend that you come in here as if you were dressed for winter, even though winter doesn't arrive here, unless fake snow, but boy that kind of snow is faker than the hoaxes I've seen on the Internet. Everybody needs a good laugh, especially when you're feeling down.
In the club, the comedian up front was on a small stage that's not hard to spot once you enter the Beetle. True to its name, most of what was in here was black, but to make sure everyone could see, some of the floors and ceilings were given a dash of gray.
"I went on a date with this woman I met on the Internet." He said gaining everybody's attention. "Bear with me guys and girls. I met her at a restaurant, we talked about our lives. I told her that I worked with animals. 'Oh that's nice' she said. 'Are you a veterinarian?' I said 'Yeah but I help the actual vet euthanize the animals he thinks can't go any longer with life'. The front row bursts with laughter and everybody else at the back follows suite.
Every time I step foot here, whether it be day or night, there's always somebody bringing up something to knock the stress out of anybody these days, the people who work nine to five jobs and go through all of life's challenges, the stress, the trouble of getting into traffic, and sometimes dealing with people they don't like.
"I'm not perfect, then again who is?" said another comedian. "I have a friend who really accepts me for who I am. No joke. This friend never sees my flaws….cause he's blind."
Another comedian goes. "So there's two neighbors. Neighbor One is out in his back yard, cutting the grass and making sure the place seems clean. He sees smoke coming from his neighbor's backyard. He peeks and sees his neighbor and some fire. "You roasting something?' Neighbor One asks. 'Yeah' Neighbor Two replies 'I got to get rid of these bodies'."
Sometimes we get female comedians as well. "My husband and I had decided that we'd have a recreational room, to put his drum set and my keyboard". She once said. "We were still thinking of a color. On the same day, I saw him watching a horror movie. There was this scene where a guy gets his intestines ripped out before the dark red blood spewed on the floor. 'Hey!' I yelled out to him. 'That's it! That's the color I want for the recreational room'".
This is the Black Beetle for you. Cracking up dark jokes like there's no tomorrow. It's absurd. It's creepy. Sometimes it can be outrageously controversial when you get people makes jokes on the disabled, the mentally ill, and other topics the average person wouldn't say on a morning daily conversation.
But that's the beauty of it.
What kind of person seeks comedy that has comedian use "love" and "relationships" as topics? You wouldn't find an audience like that here.
Imagine anybody using their 'life story' of being single just to make people laugh.
Imagine laughing at somebody just because they don't have a partner in life.
There's a saying "it's funny because it's true". If you were using yourself as a punching bag for laughter, then there's likely chance that people will take your words for real.
Do you really want to get a reminder about your love life through a joke? Get drowned in feelings because you're either single or because you broke up with someone? No, how about your life's flaws or troubles being used as a joke by yourself. You really want that if you were a comedian?
No, I don't think so.
You want to have a good time, laugh your socks off, rolling on the floor until your stomach hurts but you're still having a good time. Get rid of all the pain that's cause you in what you would call your dark spot. When you can't tune in onto TV, or when your friends are too "busy" to come to you in the times of need, find something that'll make you laugh, it's a basic human need, sadly not everyone tends to it, because they're too ignorant or they've find ways to drown in what they see as "medicine" that will help them, or in rare cases, killed themselves.
I've lost friends to the last two things.
***
On one particular afternoon, I found myself visiting an old colleague from high school. By colleague, I didn't mean an actual colleague, but rather the one guy who made an impression on everybody back then, for all the wrong reasons. His name was Yaasir, and he was an outstanding son of a gun.
Right now, he was dying.
The heart monitor was beeping right next to my ear. He's got some tubes stuck to his left hand, said tubes connecting to his IV bag.
"I'm surprised you're here." He told me. "I wasn't liked by everybody back then."
"Nobody's perfect. Well, you've probably heard that phrase millions of times." I chuckled.
"I wish I had your enthusiasm." He said with a frown on his mouth. "It's hard to live like this. Not just the dying part, but what's inside of me now." He then looks at me with a glare. "How? How do you do it? How on earth can you be nice to me? After what I did back then." I raised my eyebrow
"Don't give me that look. You know what I mean."
I said. "That was long ago."
"Yeah the last time I told that to somebody, they said it was an excuse!" He ranted. "It's hard to get it out man. Not trying to say that I'm feeling guilty because I'm stuck in a hospital bed and I'm at a state of life and death here but…"
Yaasir was stuttering as he spoke. The beeping on his heart monitor was faster than it was before.
"It's my fault that your friend killed himself. I was the asshole who pushed him over the edge, not knowing what the hell happened to him before I did what I did." He started. "Hengki. He fell from that roof like an apple, but an apple has a likely chance of surviving a fall like that. Nobody told me anything about what he had been though. His dad, his house suffering a massive flood, combined with his not so good grades. I was never like him because I lived differently, but how I lived is irrelevant at this point."
I was still silent, listening to his story.
"You're probably the fourth guest I've had today, after both of my parents and my co-worker. Even if I wasn't in this hospital bed, he would still haunt me."
"Who?"
"Hengki's voice." Yaasir gulped. "I couldn't sleep these last few days. The voices, his voice in particular, just invading my brain like a battlefield dammit! Last nice I saw his pale face. Call me crazy, maybe I am, but I saw it in his eyes. That flaming glare he had."
"When was the last time you watch a horror movie?"
"I'm serious!" Yaasir exclaimed, then huffed. "I'm sorry, I just...please forgive me."
"Of course."
"No I mean forgive me. Forgive me as both a former schoolmate and a human for being such an asshole in the past. I don��t want to go like this, not while a lot of people hate me.'
Makes me wonder if Hengki himself was here. My friend. My schoolmate. My brother in discussions and conversations. My nerves clenched seeing the look on Yaasir's eyes.
"I forgive you." I said tapping him on his shoulder. "Though you were what you called yourself as an 'asshole', every human being in this universe is flawed. We were not created as beautiful or amazingly skilled creatures. You and I are as flawed as the next person we meet in life." I then laid back in my chair. "Anybody who is living and has a breathing system, but is still able to admit what they've done to the absolute, deserves more than my forgiveness. I would want to be friends with you, should you recover from your current state." I smiled at the end of my sentence
Yaasir's eyes widened. "I-I'm grateful, but what's gotten into you? Have you been smoking?"
"No but I have been absorbing comedy at the Black Beetle."
"Are you serious?" He said. "My co- worker told me about that place. Full of messed up jokes."
"Would you like to hear some?"
"Not really."
"Hear me out for a sec."
"Okay, you did me a solid for forgiving me. Best I could do is listen to your jokes. Might make me feel better."
"Okay. What's the similarity between a fireplace and a man on fire?" Yaasir tilted his head. "You can get warm if you place your heads near either one of them.
He started to connect the dots, then laughed in embarrassment. "Why am I laughing?" He said.
I tell him another. "Young man lives in a house. There's a ghost haunting the place, but the ghost was the one screaming in horror. Why is that?"
"Why?" Yaasir asked.
"Young man was too busy masturbating to some porn and the ghost saw him in action."
"NO!" Yaasir said in laughter, "How and why?"
We were both laughing at this point.
"Here's one more. It's slightly long though." I said before I tone my voice down. "What separates me from everybody else from our high school?"
Yaasir took a moment to think. "Uh, you being here?"
"Almost. The fact that I'm here shows that I am better than my friends or anybody else that hated you. Of course not everybody can forgive you. No, no, no! I am nobody to force others to forgive any man or woman's mistakes, but what kind of person allows their hatred to take control over their mind and not forgive their enemies? The weak! That's what it is. My father, rest his soul, has taught me that I always have to forgive and forget, so that I may live a better life and show to the world that I am not somebody who's attached to the past, regardless what bad memories were there. Forgive and forget, such a simple phase, most likely to be taught by parents all over the world to their children, yet how many of those children grow up to be adults and still follow that phrase?"
"Not much?" said Yaasir.
"Exactly! Not much." I recalled. "I laughed hard once back in college, when my uncle reminded me about forgiving and forgetting, yet the man himself couldn't do it when he had to confront his boss after the boss fired him for being absent to work lately. My uncle, whose face was red with fury, punch his face like a boxer would, and was doing time for a couple of months, just avoiding an actual year sentence jail. Also." I whispered. "If I was a great doctor, and I could cure anything, I wouldn't hesitate to cure you, let you continue on with the life you have been blessed with. Some people take it for granted, only then realizing and then be appreciative it when they're either at near death or slammed a wake up' hammer on their heads. In your case, you are awake now."
Yaasir was silent, but I noticed a smile forming on his face.
"I wish you a happy recovery. I do. Maybe when you do recover, you and I could get a drink together at the Black Beetle. That'll probably give you a kick to enjoy life more." I rose from my seat and headed to the door.
"Tirto?" He called me as I turned to him. "That thing about forgive and forget, including that story about your uncle."
"Yes?"
He started to chuckle, then he laughed. His laugh filled the room more than the air conditioning in his room. He looked at me with a large smile, his white teeth, reminiscence of a toothpaste commercial, was showing.
"That actually is funny."
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