'Jack Dempsey Comes Into My Room Every Night' and 'Proust Impersonator', by Christopher Nicastro
Jack Dempsey Comes Into My Room Every Night
Jack Dempsey comes into my room every night to kick my ass. Barges right in through the closet, swinging haymakers, fully kitted out in his velvet trunks and brown leather boxing gloves. And I know what you’re thinking. Jack Dempsey was heavyweight champ in 1920, how big could he be? Like a buck-seventy soaking wet? And to that I say well, yeah, but so am I, and I never had to fight my way through a boxcar for a hot meal.
I took an apartment over Dempsey’s old restaurant on Broadway between 49th and 50th because I figured fuck it, I like boxing. I like Dempsey. I like old New York. Landlord even went so far as to warn me. Shook my hand when I walked in to tour the place and said, “Yeah, Jack’s none too pleased that we’ve converted the building into housing,” and I laughed it off as a joke, but nope. First night I’m there, I’m dozing off and Jack runs in with a referee and a timekeeper and the timekeeper’s got a fuckin’ bell with him and the ref pulls me aside and bids me touch gloves with Jack and says, “Okay gents, I gave you your instructions in the dressing room. Let’s have a clean fight, obey my commands, and protect yourself at all times,” and the whole time I’m just thinking who the fuck are you? But before I can even say anything the timekeeper rings the bell and Jack starts laying kidney shots into me and I start stumbling around the bedroom, knocking over lamps and the neighbors start to slam on the walls, telling me to keep it down in here.
At first I think, wow, what a nightmare. Thank god that was only a one time thing. But again. Nope. Jack returns every night, totally bloodthirsty, totally dissatisfied with how easily he kicked my ass the previous night, demanding I give him a more competitive bout.
My girlfriend asks why I don’t just pack up and move, and I tell her the unit’s amenities in relation to price are far too good to give up.
My boss asks why I’ve been coming into the office with black eyes and busted lips, and when I tell him the truth, that Jack Dempsey’s been coming into my room every night to kick my ass, he asks if I’ve considered selling tickets, and when I propose a gate fee to Jack he says sure, except now I really can’t get out of the situation because our ticket sales are so good that I’m pretty much profiting by living here, and where else in this town is a landlord going to pay you for a dishwasher and in-unit laundry?
And honestly, it’s gotten to the point where I’m able to survive the fight into the later rounds before Jack knocks me out, so I’ve canceled my gym membership because it’s pretty solid exercise, and since Jack never fails to put me to sleep, I haven’t had to refill my ambien prescription.
I know people who have mice and I know people who have roaches, and I know people who don’t have any natural light in their bedrooms. It’s a tough town. No apartment’s ever going to be perfect, or at least that’s what I remind myself every night when the crowd wanders in, when I’m pulling up my trunks, and when I’m lacing up the gloves, preparing for Jack Dempsey to come into my room and kick my ass.
Proust Impersonator
I spent a number of years working as a traveling Marcel Proust impersonator for a scholastic speakers association. The work itself wasn’t terribly difficult, although maintaining the mustache became a chore and required frequent re-waxing.
One day I asked my boss if I could be Mark Twain instead. You know, spout off pithy quotations, do a little crowd work. Cigar. White suit. No need to wax the mustache. Sounded more fun. Besides. I wasn’t much of a Proust scholar. I quit reading him somewhere in the middle of the third volume.
“So did everybody else. That’s where we all quit,” my boss said, rubbing the excess icing from his donut onto his paisley tie. “Sorry, kid. No dice. Too many Twains on the road. I have an opening for a Joyce, though. Had to shitcan my last one for cranking it mid-performance.”
Most audience members, whether at a school assembly or a corporate event, figured I was a magician.
“Do a card trick,” some wiseass would always shout, usually after I explained that for a while I used to go to bed early.
Often I would ignore the hecklers, especially whenever a VP of sales at an office holiday party asked if I kept a rabbit hidden in my top hat.
On one occasion a receptionist set out my madeleines while I got prepared in a conference room, but by the time my tisane finished steeping, the audience had scarfed up the entire tray, leaving me to pretend one of the party’s Pillsbury cut-n-bakes was actually a French tea cake.
The damndest thing happened when I snapped up a bite, though. Its crisp, over-baked edge crumbled between my teeth, and the center—raw and doughy for a fleeting moment, already soggy before the second bite—sent streams of a ghostly current shooting through my spine, unlocking memories I once thought lost. As though they were sputtering by my mind’s eye, like a dusty Bell & Howell projector warming up, like film leader counting down and bleeping at two—images of forgotten Christmases scrolling by, tracking into view: Choking on the stiff scents of Yankee Candles. An overbearing heat in my parents’ house during the Christmas Eve party, my friends and I unaware we’d maxed out the thermostats while playing with them. Chill of window glass against my forehead, pressed to the casement, hoping to see Santa’s sleigh sail across the full moon in silhouette.
I scooped up the prop tea cup. Cheap, ceramic, emblazoned with the sort of lilies one might find at Combray. A sudden wash of chamomile cleansed the memories and flicked off the projector, vaulting me back into the fluorescent office with the grey heather carpeting and columns of open-concept desks.
“Oh, duh, he’s Groucho Marx,” I heard someone whisper.
After that, the monologue ceased to be a form of rote recitation. All at once I was capable of creating the illusion that I was a transmission from the Fauborg St Germain in 1913, able to impart the mystic strangeness of uncovering buried sensations. While out on the road, I started requesting other personal “madeleines” on my talent rider. In Minneapolis, a sip of a Baja Blast recalled futile attempts to use Lindsey Chandler’s clarinet as a bong at her house party. A soft pack of Parliaments in Tampa transported me to a hardcore show in a church basement, when somebody’s mother—who’d been running the bake sale in the chapel next door—jumped into the pit and chipped my front tooth with her wedding ring.
The snide comments about being a magician slowed down. Even when the crowds had trouble figuring out who I was, they paid attention. Often rapt, often silent while I described the Proust family nanny putting me to bed without a hug from my mother. During the evenings, tucked under motel sheets, I burned through the remainder of volume three and half of volume four. I’d found a rhythm, and my boss was impressed with how frequently I was getting booked through word of mouth. Too impressed.
On a drive from Wichita to Houston, my phone rang.
“Allô?”
“Kid, it’s me. Listen, your numbers are through the roof. None of my Prousts have ever booked this well.”
“Oui,” I said, “Just doing what I can, I s’pose.”
“Well I have some great news. I’m gonna demote one of my Twains and let you take his slot.”
I pulled off the freeway and onto the shoulder.
“Is that such a good idea?”
“Ordinarily I’m not one to screw around with success. But if you’re pulling these figures as some French clown nobody ever gave a damn about, imagine how you’ll kill as Twain.”
Beyond the windshield, a calm flurry of snow broke out.
“You can pick up your white suit and cigars back at HQ on Monday.”
I didn’t last all that long as Twain. I was far too sweaty and anxious for the repartee, and I learned rather quickly that the cases of mistaken identity weren’t limited to Proust. Instead of asking for magic tricks, most audiences begged me to explain relativity theory. In an instance that still baffles me, a student shook my hand, tears in his eyes, to tell me how much Oliver Twist meant to him. Not even two weeks deep into my Twain tenure, I tossed a cigar that I thought I’d properly doused into a pre-school gym’s trash can and half the building went up in smoke. An omen, I figured. The gig wasn’t for me. By Christmas I’d left the industry entirely.
To tell you the truth, I don’t even think about those days so much anymore. My wife never asks, my kids would never get it, and, well. Anyway. Sorry to bother you. It’s just that I got a whiff of your mustache wax from all the way over here and it sorta brought me back.
Christopher Nicastro is a writer and filmmaker in Brooklyn. His fiction has appeared in Maudlin House and The Argyle.