Sometimes in cultivating a sense of humor, children are just dummies
by Cora Fisher
I’m walking down Grove Street on a balmy spring day with my Father, Peter, and his buddy Seth after they pick me up from school. The scenery seems out of place with Seth in it, the bright green trees with blossoms contradict the the usual nighttime haunts on the Bowery where he lives. But whenever they’re together the two of them make sense like the odd couple: one tall one short. One bald, one sandy blond with glasses. Both with dramatic noses. They amuse each other with jokes and diversions. Today the energy is upbeat, they are in good spirits.
We get to the corner of Seventh Avenue and Barrow, right in front of the Shopsin’s diner. My father stops mid-step.”Cora—“He begins to set up his delivery, directed more towards his audience of one than me. ”What do you call this?”He starts to make flowery gesture with his big hands, the same hands that he uses in construction jobs, upcurling his pinky like a girlish debutante. He blows lightly across the row of fingernails like they were freshly painted, and at the same time the corner of his mouth forms a crooked smile.”I don’t know.”(As though he were talking through a bull-horn, barritone): ”A blow job!”They howl with laughter.
In this moment Seth reminds me of a hyena. (He’s probably heard the joke more than once, so he must be laughing out of some kind of piety, brotherly love, or duty). I try to get my bearings but the notion of a blow job is still vague to me. I always thought it was something sexual—what could it have to do with a manicure?
