Interviewed About Possible Origins for Him

We're on Day 3 of unintentional non-Bathroom Monologue Bathroom Monologues here at The Bathroom Monologues. I swear there'll be fiction tomorrow.


But today I was interview by reader, writer and physicist Michael Tate about the Possible Origins for Him series. Michael enjoyed chapter 18 so much he gave me his Friday Flash of the Month award, then had me over to chat about the series, comics and writing in general. If you want some Easter eggs uncovered, to see how The Joker got me compared to John Updike, or just to know how the series came about, pop over there. We'll both appreciate it.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 18.

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I’m not myself. People say that and mean they’re in a mood. I’m a person and I mean it when I say it. All hosed down and medicated like this? I’m suffocating in simulated normalcy. The haircut and restraints amount to a costume. Feels a little liberating to not be me. I sold them, you know.

Not me’s, silly. I sold costumes. There’s something about costumes, isn’t there? Store-bought or homespun. Face paint or a plastic expression with an elastic band that slips over the ears. A bikini made from leaves. Green long-johns punctuated with question marks. Straw bursting out of seams and sleeves to form a scarecrow in dire need of a Dorothy. Little Draculas and King Arthurs wearing the same brand of tumble-dry-only cape.

I sold him his first cape, you know.

I thought he was there for someone else. He was too big, too broad-shouldered, too bitter in the eyes as he stalked along the racks. Surely he was a bodyguard, there to pick out a costume for some trust fund brat. Or – he was a little old. Maybe he’d ducked out between hostile takeovers to shop for his kids. Despite our military contracts, we did sell to a lot of private sector jackasses. Rich people buy weird things for their kids, especially in October.

He wanted a weird thing in a non-child size. And had to be fireproof.

“Well sir,” I told him. “This is bulletproof.”

A joke. No laughter. No one laughed at my jokes; my cousins said I lacked execution. I looked into his face and he refused to reflect the smirk. He pulled the cape over his tailored elbow. He pulled the material so taut, like he wanted it to fight him. I never even thought of dressing up in my own stuff before he did that. Only went down into the basement, sometimes with a call-girl, for a weekend or two, and...

I took him to the rear chamber and showed off our laser. Such resilient material requires very specialized tools to cut, mend and process. His eyes reflected the beam. His checkbook was out before I powered down the device.

“No sir,” I told him. “The device isn’t for sale. It’s unique.”

But the check wasn’t for the machine. He wanted everything.

“No sir,” I told him. “The store certainly isn’t for sale. And a check couldn’t cover it if it was.”

A joke. No laughter. His check wasn’t for the store. It was for my tip. He had other people, broad-shouldered and bitter in the eyes, to buy companies for him.

I went out to lunch and fantasized over this check. Was this a gag? How badly it would go if something this large bounced in my account? I laid it out on the formica table while eight-year-old wizards emptied fast food pales in preparation for trick-or-treating. How funny it’d be if I signed the check over and slipped it in a goody bag.

Do you know how much can be accomplished in a lunch hour? Apparently a company can be seized, and an entire floor of a building can be emptied. I didn’t even see the moving trucks, though those do blend into cityscapes.

There were no racks left. No cables. No bolts of bendable titanium mesh fabric. I still fantasize over how they got a two-and-a-half-ton laser through a six-by-three-foot door. None of the people who helped me move it in there are still alive. Most of them are in my basement.

I squatted for a while in a rectangle of immaculate linoleum where a shelf had once laid. They took my shelves, too. I admired just how filthy the floor outside my shelf-sheltered rectangle had gotten. It all looks so clean until they take your storefront away.

They left the filth. A box of pens. The purple garbage can. A few jars of flame-retardant face paint, ones I had open for demonstrations. Picking up a jar, I remembered him pulling that fabric across his elbow. A grown man imagining a costume into military-grade materials, and doing so outside of his home. I felt him pulling it taut while I drew two fingers over my cheeks.

Halloween and a check of that size. You can really do whatever you want. You can disregard the warning label and slather yourself in chemical whiteness. You can go home, go to the basement, and put on that tacky bulletproof tuxedo you’ve been working on, and the squirting flower that melts metal, and all that stuff – and you can keep it on when you come back upstairs. Dressed like you want to be, you can go door to door, a magnum in one hand and a pumpkin pail in the other. You might feel too nervous to take your subterranean act abroad, but it’ll pass. It’ll pass when you recognize his cape on the evening news. Then it all bleeds into a long Halloween.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 17.

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That isn’t a skyline. It’s Babel’s legacy. These people got so big they don’t know right from wrong anymore. Bernie Madoff and Oswald Cobblepot. Global Warming and Mr. Freeze. Rome’s burning and they don’t think it’s their fault.

He’s the worst of it. He’s not a registered bounty hunter, and if he was he’d have lost that registration years ago. Go down his file. Uncounted cases of breaking and entering. Possession of weapons-grade technology. Assault and battery. His car doesn’t even have license plates.

He savaged his suspects. Broken ribs. Shattered femurs. Dozens of mobsters leaching workman’s comp and state services. His first week he tossed someone off a building for not talking soon enough. Those tactics don’t work, and even if they did, do you really think it isn’t a crime just because he catches them before they hit the concrete?

The funniest thing about it was the hypocrisy. He’s just a man, and just one man. He can only be one place. When some masked jackass is threatening to gas a billionaire’s party uptown, he couldn’t and didn’t appear as two dozen sailors were held at gunpoint by Kahndaqi terrorists at the harbor. Shows you his interests.

I was the second man into the warehouse. Security cameras caught our charge. Flashbangs and suppressing fire, all high efficiency behavior. No hostage fatalities, and we took two terrorists alive. I collared both of them.

That night we were the second story from the top, beneath a vigilante's rescue of a bunch of rich socialites.

The next day, though? I was the top story.

“UNNECESSARY VIOLENCE BY G.C.P.D.?”

Had I tackled one of them too hard? Was the taser necessary? Kicked the poor mercenary too many times? They went from “terrorists” to “victims.” Suddenly the fact that a guy with an AK-47 had been seventeen under his ski mask mattered to this city.

They wouldn’t even cover my handcuffs as they led me outside. Mayor wanted a public example. My arraignment was the same day that he busted the other sleeper cell. Beat all three of the Islamists into unconsciousness and earned an op-ed about his effectiveness. He was, according to our city’s paper of record, the hero we deserved. We shared one copy in lock-up after the guard was done with it.

Even buried under his cape and press, there was no lenience for us brutal officers. The D.A. refused to meet me. I was probably helping his career, a prime example of how he rooted out evil in the department.

You want to know where I got these scars? You have the department disown me and the D.A. toss me into general population. My first week in Black Gate, I had three visits to the infirmary. I took seven of them with me, so no hard feelings. We laughed it off eventually. I vowed not to take any of this too seriously. This city certainly wasn’t. We’ll all laugh it off - you, me, this whole city – at his funeral.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 16.

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The order was to maim him emotionally, not to terminate. Back then, he and the Kitty-Kat had a litter, and one of the girls grew up to play superhero. An easy dig. She danced across the rooftops, her purple spandex shimmering in the pale moonlight. She had one of those domino masks. I lined it up like a target: in one eye and out the other. I adjusted the butt in the crook of my shoulder and wormed my eye into the scope. My finger stroked for the trigger. And then…

I squeezed on thick air. It was thick – no cool breeze of a skyline, but the mold of a padded room. My cheek rested on a cushion, my eye lined up with a buttonhole. There was a little slot in the door you could see out. Across the hall, a man looked out his slot and babbled about the importance of today’s date.

“April Fool’s Day. Mark your calendar.”

If you visit that asylum today, it’s got bulletproofed glass walls. No singular doors with slots. I don’t even think the calendar guy exists anymore. The purple spandex girl isn't somersaulting around anywhere, either. Everything's new, except me.

He's still flapping around the belfry. Hates me every time. How much angrier he’d be if he could remember all the times I’ve killed his kids. Instead, he’s grumpy over things I never did. Keeps trying to psychoanalyze me with history that never happened. Who gives a damn about psychiatry? Last time, I seduced a psychiatrist into a sidekick. I think she’s on Suicide Girls now. Not sure what our relationship is supposed to be.

I have no problem hating him back. Self-righteousness in a drab wardrobe. If you stretch your mind, you’ll remember me fighting him in Spring of nineteen-forty. But go to the local archives of your favorite metropolitan paper of record, and the first headline that mentions either of us is from nineteen-eighty-seven. Did every journalist miss forty-seven years of a blood feud? Were they all home sick the times I actually killed him?

You don’t believe me because I smile too much and am too white. Permanently pale, except at least twice, this was make-up. It damned sure was originally. But fine, I embrace the life of an entertainer and that somehow makes me unreliable. There’s a punk out there now – I beat him into a bloody paste, then blew up the building for good measure. Today he’s skipping along the rooftops with vigilante strippers. And I’m the crazy one?

Here’s my litmus test for madness.

Do you remember when he drove everywhere in a blue car with eyes for headlights?

Do you remember when the Amazons wiped out Washington, D.C.? Because I do. Dislocated three ribs laughing. They still ache at the sight of a magic bustier.

Do you remember when I finally offed him? Thought that was actually the purpose of all this. On top of the WayneTech Building, every floor wired to blow, showering the highways with glass as I strangled him and he struggled not to slit my throat with a batarang. We were both carried aloft by the explosion and his cape. We were both dead before we even began to fall.

Never got to finish that fall, neither. I landed in a brightly-lit subterranean office, talking to Lex Luthor about forming a league of villains. There was a wall of monitors behind my head. To my immediate left, Groundhog’s Day was on.

If Bill Murray has taught me anything, it’s that my purpose in life is not killing one man. The three other times I’ve done it and didn’t stop the universe rebooting were just scientific confirmation.

My purpose is about a fuller experience. It’s kryptonite smiley faces, crippled sidekicks and poisoned water supplies. It’s about a joyous history of histories. It’s about spending as much of my account as I can before God changes banks on me.

As a little boy I always thought science was the best evidence of God. Atoms are the smallest. No, electrons are. No, gluons. Time’s linear. Or it bends. Or it forks. Or it’s a web. He makes it up as He goes along, and we just presume that’s the way it always was since that makes you look sane to the others.

In a year, or five years, or ten years, you won’t even remember we had this conversation. I’m going to blow your head off, and maybe next week God will get bored and you’ll pop up as mayor. And you’ll pour tax payer money into a committee to discover why my fingerprints and DNA aren’t on record, groping after an origin story that got erased decades ago.

Yeah, I’m the crazy one because I remember back when he had just one sidekick and JFK’s assassination made sense. You all go on pretending this is how it’s always been and I’m just a pathetic headcase. I don’t suffer from this insanity. I enjoy the clarity.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 15.

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Riddle me this.

What caped crusader once carried a gun?

What dark knight now swears never to kill?

Who would be better at removing evidence and covering his trail than the world’s greatest detective?

Now riddle me this.

Who is as pale as a sheet?

Who does not seem to age across decades?

Whose laugh penetrates the mortal psyche?

Who vengefully torments one troubled soul?

Who is unable to be restrained in this asylum, moving from cell to cell to office to lobby to the front gate, all too often without detection or rational explanation?

Lastly, riddle me this.

Was it never to kill? Or never to kill again?

Haunting questions.

More lastly, riddle me this.

Why does Eddie talk this way?

Is it defensive?

Is it productive?

Is it annoying when I do it, too?

So many questions.

But seriously, Eddie. Shut up.

Bathroom Monologues: Possible Origins for Him. 14.

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I don’t expect you to believe it. You haven’t believed anything I’ve said, have you? But it’s all his idea. It’s always been his idea. I think he wanted a me even before he invented one.

My wife was the most patient woman alive. She put up with every failed career choice I ever set my heart on, even the stand-up stuff. I’d do anything for her. But overtime wasn’t making the bills for the two of us, so when she said there was a kid on the way? Couldn’t turn down any opportunities. Fell in with a group of hoods. We were robbing chemical plants, selling patented secrets off to the Scarecrow or LutherCorp or whatever.

He came down on us like black rain. Broke a guy’s jaw. Tossed the ringleader off a scaffold. Kicked me in the solar plexus, knocked the wind out of me and sent me into a bubbling vat. If I’d been able to breathe, it’d probably have killed me to suck that stuff in.

Instead he dragged me out by my ankles. Dumped lye on my face to counteract the acids. Even though he was saving my life, I was begging him not to kill me – “Have mercy, I’ve got a kid on the way.”

Come to think of it, I’ve never seen him kill someone directly. That rule about him might be true. He doesn’t like to murder. He likes to use you.

While I was crying into a mirror, he made me the offer. This hair. This skin. I was perfect to play a monster. Play a mobster. Terrorize the public, kill as many corrupt officials as I could until he showed up. Then go down in one punch.

I did it. Pretending to be insane to stay in the asylum was the hardest part. Whenever the doctors started to catch on, I had to make up a new story to throw them. Pharmacist-gone-terrorist. Avenging a slain circus act. Taking inspiration from other costumed killers. Eventually I even believed a few of my stories. That’s when I thought I was going mad. The company you keep in there will do it for you.

Two months later, he planted the explosives and key cards. I looked like a genius escape artist. Found psychotropic laughing gas and directions to City Hall stashed a mile ahead, in this makeshift cave hideout he built just for me.

The routine came on quickly. He embellished it more with every breakout.

“Claim you poisoned all these fish.”

“Hijack this freighter.”

“Challenge me from on top of this skyscraper.”

And always, the order to do something increasingly stupid when he arrived, get caught, go down. Do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to Arkham. Abide for the next breakout. Read the occasional paper praising him as the dark knight, protecting his city from unimaginable fiends.

I never saw a dime. He pays a perpetually inflating sum per breakout through a phony life insurance policy. It goes to a single mother in Gotham Harbor. A widow. Apparently her husband was a night watchman and got killed one night on duty. Thugs didn’t even leave a body for them to bury. Poor woman went into labor when she heard, and suffered the doubly poor fate of giving birth to baby boy with cystic fibrosis. If he’s going to live any sort of life then he needs intense care, and it’s so expensive.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 13.

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Ahem. Is this on? Mm. Good.


There’s a lonely island near Lesbos. It’s the birthplace of theatrical humor, of soap boxes and one-man shows. That last, because they are all one-man shows. The island was populated exclusively by the male gender, because stand-up is a tough business for the ladies. And because they were mostly the social-critic kind of stand-up comedians, they were largely unfuckable and perilously homophobic. This left them loveless and childless. Many was a night, after their sets, when they would stare up at the stars and pray to gods they’d just mocked for being irrational to give them a child. One uncynical open mind.

And the gods, in their infinite cynicism, sent them a single child. And not any old child, but one imbued of many divine gifts.

The charisma of Richard Pryor.

The guile of Andy Kaufman.

The misanthropy of George Carlin.

Somewhat sadly, the complexion of Jim Gaffigan.

They adored this gift, because there’s nothing funnier to a bunch of Bill Hicks wannabes than a baby that heckles when he's offered a pacifier.

Their island was alone forever. An experimental fighter pilot crash landed amidst this sausage-fest. She was something of a bombshell, and that meant all the boys were after her. Except the actual boy. He was a little disappointed to lose their attention so quickly. The boy conspired to keep her unspoiled and unsoiled, since what’s better for a social-critic comedian than frustration?

The boy even helped fix her plane with aeronautics knowledge he’d picked up while his guardians had been mocking airline food. The two escaped this snarky isle to the modern world, where he promised to spread their way of life – without them, because really, what a bunch of assholes.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 12.

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He started when there were still a few gaslights on the streets. Probably took inspiration from Prohibition, and he's fought snuff, glue, cocaine, venom, all the way to whatever kids do to themselves today. Nobody asks how he's survived at least seventy years of stab wounds, gun shots, druggings and falls from skyscrapers. You figure, he pals around with aliens and amazons. He's probably picked up STDs stronger than the average human, so of course he's timeless. Many think he's immortal. Many are cowardly and superstitious.

They all ask how I made it this long. Wondering why some do-gooder hasn't snapped my neck. Wondering how, with all the times I've gotten it wrong, or lost control of a dirigible, or just didn't care about malfunctioning detonator - how I lasted these decades.

This one I can answer: I'm not the first of me.

There's been at least three. Me, The Boss, and Grandpa. No telling who preceded Grandpa J. He was good, though. A bit of an anarchist firebug.

“Where's the judge? Is he in this room?”

No, it's a bomb. Kaboom.

“Where's my wife? I hear something in the closet. Janine, is it you?”

No, it's a bomb. Kaboom.

“Where's the bomb? I hear this locker ticking. Let me open and snip the wires.”

No, that's a clock. The actual bomb is under the floorboards. Kaboom.

That sort of humor. One day it blew up in his face. As best we can tell, the only thing that made Grandpa J frown was his inability to blow up The Bat. Tried and failed, tried and failed. Somehow that caped freak kept coming back unsinged. So on this last time he hid the bombs in his own coat and held on. By the range of the blast, he also wired himself up to the surrounding nine buildings. No way to escape that intimate a detonation, you see?

Grandpa J was the one who walked away. Depending on when The Boss was telling it, he lost somewhere in the range of a foot, an arm or two, half or two thirds of his face, either half or all of the flesh on his person, and his entire wardrobe save a pair of boxers with hearts on them. Whatever his state, it was gruesome. And Grandpa J made it seven city blocks out of the smoke, avoiding or murdering police until he came to The Boss's little den.

I wasn't even working for him back then. He was operating in a boarded up row house, giving out free meth and beds, and lacing every fifth dose with his newest concoctions. If everybody's high, nobody cares when one guy freaks out and starts eating the insulation.

Somehow, Grandpa J broke in. He shambled straight into the lab. Made eye contact with The Boss. Shuddered from the strain. Gave one gasp that sounded like a laugh, and took his last pratfall. Thud. Dead.

Mmm. The professionalism.

The Boss saw an opportunity. No more Mr. Third-rate Drug Dealer. No mere mad scientist. All those mind-altering gases he'd worked on? Now fashion them so the kids laugh theirselves to death, or see nightmare clowns, or whatever. A little facepaint, a book of one-liners, and suddenly The Boss had a topflight gimmick. Live-action fan-fiction that the crowd thinks is genuine.

If you go back through the headlines, you'll find that period when The Joker began wearing more black and carrying more conventional guns. Mainstream bullshit. See, he got carried away on the power trip. All that buzz Grandpa J had built up around the brand. The thrill of a single phone call convulsing entire police departments. Superheroes who once upon a time wouldn't even visit the scene of his crimes now racing to head him off.

Simply put, he sucked. He couldn't fight. He couldn't plan more than one twist at a time. He had to hire every goon in the city to cover his ass, to get into fisticuffs for him. Twice I tied up the damned Bat over vats of acid I knew he'd never actually fall into. Some weeks I was in clown costumes. Other weeks, bad imitations of movie stars. I spent half a summer as a chauffeur Buster Keaton, powdering myself into monochrome before speeding the boss away from his latest bank heist.

Bank heists. Grandpa J never would have lowered himself to knocking over banks.

The night with the shark tank was it for me. I guess it looks like they’re smiling if you tilt your head like so and huff paint. The Boss stole that one from Grandpa J – and did it worse. The Bat got loose, like always, and got onto our boat. The Boss fell into the motor. Lost an arm. I was gathering the bits in a net when I saw the Bat throttling him. Hit the freak from behind and dumped him overboard.

He lived. I’m sure he had something in his belt for sharks.

The Boss lived – because of me. I had to beat the Bat just to keep him alive. I was so angry that I slapped him with his own dismembered hand. He didn’t laugh. How dare he not laugh at that? That’s hilarious, right?

He lacked class. I explained this as I jammed his wrist down his throat. I didn’t want his hand, or his coat, or his machine gun. Only took the book of one-liners.

If you go back, there’s this period when the Joker goes neon. Bigger smiles. More musical. More explosions, like Grandpa J would have wanted.

Knew where he was buried. I dug up his skull. Put a honking red nose in the socket and left him on my mantle. Talk to him when I’m lonely. He doesn’t talk back – I’m not crazy. I’m just respectful of my elders.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 11.

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I worked at a traveling circus. They weren’t famous for clowns, so I had to try very hard. Fire spitting. Juggling unicycles. I could empty a six shooter into a spinning wheel with a woman tied to it, and I only ever nicked her once, and that was the night after she broke up with me. Some nights I even helped the ringmaster with his lion. I don’t want to credit my outlook to some big cat, but sticking my head in its mouth a couple hundred times definitely loosened me up.

The top act was this family of acrobats. A daddy, and a mommy, and their beautiful little boy, all flying along the ceiling of our tent. They’d somersault along the high wires, swing from trapezes by their feet, tossing their son from peril to peril. He’d come within inches of death, and end up waving and laughing to the audience. They used no net, and he couldn’t be bothered. Mommy and Daddy had him, even if they had him fifty feet up.

The circus had trouble around the major metropolitans. New York, Chicago and Star City were cesspools of corruption. Local fire chief wanted a bribe, and the mayor, and random members of the zoning board, and some union, and the biggest mob, and two-bit wannabe mobs. If you saw our net revenue, you’d wonder why we even bothered with the big towns, but if you don’t hit the bigs, the littles don’t hear about you, and you can’t run the risk of half-empty stands when you’re performing in the middle of nowhere.

That Friday, somebody didn’t get his bribe. Our bearded lady suspected it was this goateed punk who the ringmaster had physically tossed out of his trailer. He had no gang, wouldn’t even give a name. I spotted someone like him around the back of the tent that afternoon, but I couldn’t say if it was him. You may stereotype clowns, but to me, all normal people look alike.

The cannon went off. The lion was healthy. We thought everything was hunky-dory, until our flying family took to the heights. They did these loops. Mommy with her feet on the rail, swinging seven hundred and twenty degrees, hands clasped to her boy, who swung along with her. Two links in a dazzling genetic chain. Daddy sailed in from the other side of the tent, preparing to catch his boy by the ankles.

Afterward, everyone said they saw the ropes snapping. I think people like retroactive foresight. It validates their current horror and hopes of actually being observant next time. But I didn’t hear anyone shriek until all three of them came tumbling down.

I was not fifteen feet from where they hit. Daddy had caught his boy in his arms and tucked a little. He landed on his spine. His limbs jiggled and all his bones seemed to turn to jelly. It still took our strongman to pry the boy from his arms. The kid was in shock, only alive because Mommy and Daddy had had him.

Mommy’s handle skittered over to my feet. I could see where the ropes had been sawed.

Never heard what happened to the boy. He left in a cavalcade of doctors and police, and I didn’t go on with the circus from there. I stayed in town, looking for anyone related to punks who might visit ringmasters. But I’ve got this problem, like I said – you all look alike to me. The fire chief, the mayor, the big bad mob boss and some goateed punk. All that protection money and no protection. Even the caped crusaders in this town hadn’t stopped bullets and dumped criminals in the same jail as cops.

Now I don’t disagree with a little murder and mayhem. If I’d found the guy? I’d have wrung his neck. Killed three suspects that weekend alone, including one whom I dragged to the zoo, and when he didn’t render the confession I wanted, I stuck his head in the mouth of a lion.

You kill that guy, not families. You don’t drop children from their mother’s hands and out of the sky. What is society good for if it’s not going to stop that?

Why, it’s for getting all the guilty people together so you don’t have to aim carefully.

The media already loved me. A clown killed three mobsters in a weekend. Wow, you can’t top that act. Every mug was scared of me, thinking I’m the John Wayne Gacy of organized crime. This make-up might as well be war paint. With that sort of branding? I used it. They all knew me, were all running from me. That was my in. That’s where I got all my goons, people hoping I wouldn’t kill them if they did as I said. And that was just fine, because if enough people follow the clown, then he says who dies, and he can let little flying families keep playing without a net.

I set a mountain of dirty money on fire. I made their corner dealers fight each other to the death for the privilege of paying me seventy-five percent. And if the D.A. tried to get in my way? Well he didn’t look very different to me.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 10.

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Okay, so there was this guy. Had the genius to program microchips that emitted electromagnetic radiation, which disturbed key connections in the brain. It didn’t cause mere migraines – it brainwashed people, made them drones, made them believe they were entirely new people. His chips were so small he could hide them in the stud of an earring or the band of a hat. And he made these things as an intern at a low-end tech company with very little college education. He had no means or help, and he could have turned half the city into his gangs just by donating some baseball caps to Goodwill.

There was this guy. He had a fistful of mind control, and the world’s worst Lewis Carroll fetish. He took his technology and forced the first dumb blonde he met into an Alice costume. Frumpy blue skirt and doe eyes, everything. When he started a gang, they were Tea Party-themed, all wearing hats. He never thought that somebody might knock them off and free his army. He only pulled robberies to support the hatter habit, trying to run away with this girl he’d brainwashed into being his. He never planned ahead and so got caught. When he escaped? He did the same thing to the same girl and got caught by the same detective. He never brainwashed enough goons, never refined the technology any further, never even looked up a chick on Craigslist who might consent to his cosplay. He was a world-eating genius and it was a miracle the guy could do his own tie.

There was this guy – not that guy. This time, I mean me. Sitting at a lunch counter, watching pundits complain about the rise of monster criminals. A terrorist who left crossword puzzles. A giant crocodile in the sewer. And this Lewis Carroll fetish guy. He didn’t have to drop an electric hat on my noggin to screw up my brain. I dashed into the bathroom and locked it, hoped nobody could hear me hollering. Because I’m unemployed, I’m going nowhere, I can’t get my act booked anywhere in the city while this guy is on TV for squandering his talent. I’m hollering that I can do better than that, and I was going to come up with something before I left this bathroom, or before the owner kicked down the door.

There was this guy – not me. The owner. He made the mistake of kicking down the door too soon. All the inspiration I had was Juicy Fruit in my pocket and obscene jokes on the wall. I blame any shortcomings in my act on his lack of patience. I left him incapable of ever wearing a hat.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins For Him. 9.

There is an audio edition of today's story. To listen either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3.

“Why are you this way?”

I wake up and can’t move. My forearms catch on something. I try to roll over, and that’s when I notice the straps. Leather restraints around my wrists and ankles, across my knees, chest and forehead.

I’m in a small room, empty. Three walls are white, one with a little window. The fourth wall is all Plexiglas. On the other side are three people in suits and white coats. One is a blonde, two are brunettes. The brunettes are men – that’s what you call a guy with brown hair, right? A brunette? A bruno?

“Why are you this way?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say. “Can you please come loosen this? I can’t feel my legs.”

They look at their palm pilots and clipboards. They look nervous, like I’ll bite them through the glass.

“How did you access the air conditioning system?”

“Where did you find that many amphetamines?”

“Why did you strangle that orderly to death with a rubber chicken?”

I don’t know what they’re talking about and they won’t listen. My legs tingle. I’m thirsty. There isn’t even a mirror – I don’t remember what I look like. I ask who I am and seconds later they shuffle away. They leave together, like just one of them doesn’t dare stand outside my cell on his own.

Across from my cell is another with a Plexiglas wall. Its inhabitant is a big man. Half of his face is scabs, like he’d laid down on a hot stove and stayed there. I don’t know if that’s true. He tears a button from his cot and keeps flipping it. His bad eye, the one without a lid, stares at me. He’s not restrained. I am. What did I do?

Security walks by often. There’s a camera with a steady red light in one of the corners of my ceiling. It’s not enough. At least one guy comes by ten times that day. Nine times to look. One time he has a newspaper. He presses the front page against my glass. The headline reads: “STATE SEEKS DEATH PENALTY AGAINST INSANE MAN.”

I can’t make out the photo. It looks like a cartoon face. The guard speaks through the glass to me.

“I hope they get you, you sick fuck.”

Night falls through my little window. I feel like I’m not alone and don’t realize for a while that I’m right. There’s a man in a black mask glaring through the pane. We’re however many stories up and he somehow got there. I call for help and nobody comes. I try to smile, to put on an unaggressive face, and he bares his teeth at me. If he could get through the glass I think he’d strangle me.

I blink and he’s gone.

I can’t get up to see if he was really there, and the people who work here won’t help me. It doesn’t matter what I yell. My fellow inmate, the scarred man, wakes up and stares at me with that eye. He calls me a clown and tells me to shut up or he’ll kill me. That’s the only response I get in this world.

Let’s say I’m not an amnesiac. That I just want to stop. To put down my knives and joy buzzers. But everything else is true: the shrinks are terrified of me, the law wishes I was dead, and there are masked faces following me around in the night. What are the choices? Play dead, or be “this way.”

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 8.

There is an audio edition of this story. To listen either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or click this text to download the MP3.

I was in high school. Like now, I was a gangly kid. Very into photography. Mostly funeral photography, but you know, you can only take so many rolls of a corpse in so many poses before they say you're "different." So I helped the school paper. One day I hopped over to a science expo. They were irradiating clowns to see if they'd be funnier when exposed to plutonium. One of the clowns got loose and bit me. I fainted dead away.

Woke up in a hospital room with chattery teeth stuck to my sternum. The doctor said I had two days to live at best and there was nothing modern science could do to save me. Well my father was a super-physicist before he died in a tragic fall from a trapeze, so I set about updating modern science. I constructed the most advanced containment field known to man to keep the chattery teeth from reaching my heart. It all plugged into this purple jumpsuit. Sort of my prototype.

My family was overjoyed and we went out for a picnic. There we were, on the lawn outside a carnival, when this black car rolled by. It turned out my mother was a witness to some mob crimes and they wanted to send a message. So they sent it, at eighty bullets per second. In less than a minute, every relative I'd ever known was dead. I swore revenge over their bodies.

I returned to my family mansion to plot this revenge. I needed a symbol. Something to strike fear into the hearts of superstitious criminals and lazy cops. But what?

It was then that a clown flew through the window. How he got in, I don't know. I couldn't get him out and eventually beat him to death with a broom.

To get the homicide off my mind I went spelunking into the cave beneath the family mansion and was shocked to discover a letter from my dear departed dad. He'd been hiding it for when I was older. Turned out I wasn't actually his. Ma and Pa had found me in a field when I was just a baby amongst the remains of a crashed spaceship. I was the last son of a dead world. A planet of mediocre stand-up comedians. My birth parents had sent me here because the yellow sun would imbue me with superhumor abilities. So the letter said.

Anyway, the next week I got caught in a nuclear test site and the gamma explosion turned me into this. True story.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 7.

There is an audio edition of this monologue. To listen either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming it or click this text to download the MP3.

When I first heard there was a masked vigilante in town I was overjoyed. No more stringing along this rinky-dink corrupt and uninspired P.D. And when I heard he was going by “The Bat Man?” Fell down and wept on a fresh kill. Thank God, somebody campy as shit. A foil I could sink my teeth into.

He was after me within a week. Not me specifically – he thought I was four different criminals. I’m a professional and modus operendi isn’t that hard to fake at this level. Slew a newlywed couple near the harbor, like this particular serial killer was doing that summer. Even posed them on a cot, tastefully. Then I waited in the attic, with my gun and a view through the air vent.

He came in the window, floor length black cape draping behind him, and I drooped. His mask had devil horns, and he didn’t talk! No cavalier monologue, no procedural chatter. He was silent and grim and didn’t even smile as he stepped around my work. Why was his mouth the only exposed part of him if he wasn’t going to smile? The hero is bright, witty, handsome – he’s supposed to be good incarnate. This was an affront to all those Green Lanterns and Wonder Women. What worthwhile chase was I going to get out of this guy?

I almost shot him. Not only because he was trying to bring me to justice. Not only because he was dumb enough to wear body armor everywhere except his face. No, no, no. Because there are some things that are so wrong you can’t correct them straightforward. You’ve got to shake them. Agitate them. If his neck breaks while you’re trying to slap sense into him, at least you tried.

Had to do it myself. If the hero was going to be in black, I was going to be in Technicolor. If he was going to have a spooky bat on his chest, I’d wear a flower on my lapel. If he was going to glower, I’d wear the biggest smile he’d ever seen. I’d show him what he was doing wrong, become the light and laughter of this city while thinning its numbers.

A couple of wild cards at the scene of a crime, a couple of judges asphyxiated with laughing gas – I may have played it too strong. He was on me in three days. I let him chase me, my brooding foil, and made a discovery on the ledge of a building. He was very good at hand-to-hand – had his hand on my neck, my feet over a sheer drop. I had a gun to his chin and he wouldn’t let me go. The big, scary hero didn’t like killing! That’s the extent to which he wouldn’t steal the villain’s act.

That’s hypocrisy. Either he goes White Knight, or he joins my side. Doesn’t matter how many sidekicks I have to beat with a crowbar. He will either kill me and take my place, or he will get on his side of the line.



The Possible Origins for Him Archive.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins For Him. 6.

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I was born ugly. Not a cleft pallet or flat nose or some tabloid rack batboy. I gurgled up at my mother and she sobbed. Doctors had to perform so much surgery just to keep me breathing that cosmetics were out of the question. They left my crib in the basement, under a narrow window. I'm told I didn't cry much. I bled instead. They wrapped me in newspapers because the blankets became too unsanitary to wash. I think they were underestimating the washing machine – it was sturdy. I spent a lot of time with it, testing what would break apart or perish tumbling inside. Me, the washer, dryer, and boxes of things they didn't want.

I learned to escape the crib early. They’d forget to feed me some days, and others, a kid gets bored of lying in his own scabs. Scaled down a landslide of National Geographics and Gotham Gazettes. Learned to read from them. Learned where the jugular was from them, too. You never think about how surroundings influence you like that until you realize all those precious papers have gone up in flames with the rest of the house. I’m still a little absentminded like that. I was so afraid to leave home, so afraid everyone else in the world would want me in a basement that I tried not to think about it all. Departure was simple necessity – you can’t stay in town once you’ve locked your parents downstairs and set a fire. I had my little hoodie up the whole ride to the city, to avoid identification, and judgment.

Nobody tells you how hot it is in a city train station. I was used to the cool of underground. There, it was like steam in thin air. My face felt like it was falling apart. I pulled the hoodie down on the escalator and held my breath. A couple glanced at me. An old lady shrieked. I came up to the top and saw this black man playing a guitar. He was jumping around and laughing to solicit change. He saw the couple, and the old lady, and all the people staring at this new act. He looked at me, and his showman smile went away. I know where it went. I caught it between my teeth, and I’ve never let it get away.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 5.

There's an audio version of today's story. To listen either click the triangle to the left for the stream, or click this text to download the MP3.

It was to impress a girl. Blonde, with glasses and a white coat buttoned all the way up to her chin. A fetish of mine, hard to explain. I’d have been head over heels even if I hadn’t been restrained in the position. She was the newest therapist to try building a career on curing me. So I told her.

I was born to a lower middle class family. Mother died in childbirth. Dad held it against me. I tried time and time again to get him to laugh, but he wouldn’t crack a smile. He’d only crack me across the mouth. This famous grin of mine? His handiwork after I tried to run away and join the circus.

It was all lies. I don’t remember the first thing about my childhood. Considering all the chemicals I’ve inhaled and blows I’ve taken to the head, is that really a surprise? I just had green hair and turned it into an easy gimmick. But this girl wanted rhyme and reason, and I wanted her.

We traded answers in the style of Silence of the Lambs. She asked where I learned chemistry, and I asked why Karl was the funniest Marx brother. My questions were to get her to laugh – let her hair down. She was so uptight, so driven by career that she’d forgotten how to have fun. I actually invented the first squirting flower to get a rise from her. The second one, I used to melt the lock of my cell.

Now it turns out that if you shackle my hands so I can’t strangle a girl, I’m charming. More charming when you think I once tore dad’s trousers during a prat fall. More charming when you hear he broke my nose for it. More charming when you see some hulking hero drag me in, my bones broken and him as grim as the reaper. I’m still grappling with Daddy. Get it?

I didn’t. Went straight over my head. When I escaped I hammed up the humor. Defacing all America’s tuna. Blimps that sprayed psychotropic laughing gas over football stadiums. And I let myself get caught. Twice, then three times. Why? So that I could go back to her.

The third time? She slapped him! She held me in her arms and ordered the guards to kick him out or arrest him. She didn’t care how many people I’d killed that weekend. And with my bloodied cheek cozied up to her chest, I didn’t either.

Fools fall in love. Dead men hit the ground. We were the type to just keep falling. We had sessions while I was still in traction – physically incapable of harming her. What a joke. I’m comparing this to my first pie in the face, and she’s laughing so hard she has to take off her glasses. I got her to take ‘em off, and let me tell you, if there’s one thing that strikes me harder than a blonde in glasses, it’s one who takes them off and dabs at the corners of her eyes like she isn’t sitting the ICU with a sociopath.

Such a girl, woman, lady, doctor, is not the sort of person an asylum wants working on my sort of case. They relieved her that afternoon. I heard her yelling in the parking lot. Everybody did.

I think only I heard her coming back that night, though. She’d developed this bounce in her step during our relationship, something only the doctor and patient would recognize. I also recognize the beeping of an armed bomb. She blew open the wall to the ICU and busted me out. Had a wheel chair, an escape car, and a grenade launcher. That’s a keeper.

I’ve kept it up ever since. The comedy because it’s fun, and the Daddy thing because, well, it’s the story of how we met. You want to know the truth? She is my origin.

Unless I’m only telling you this to get on your good side. You look nice today.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins For Him. 3. (Re-Upload)

Some folks had trouble listening to this monologue originally. I've re-uploaded it. To listen you can either click the triangle on the left to stream it or click this text to download the MP3. Please let me know if it works for you.

So you want to know who I really am. Everybody does. But I’ll let you in on it, and just you. Ever heard of a guy named "Elvis Presley?"

I know what you're saying. "Not another theory about how the Joker is Elvis!"

Sorry. It's all true. The charisma. The fabulous taste in wardrobe. Before I appointed myself court jester, I was The King.

At first getting crowds to go wild was enough, but eventually a guy tires of shaking his hips. Less of a slap and more of tickle man, I was. Nobody really got me, so I ate. Out of boredom, depression, a cadaver – you know, what you do when you have too much money and not enough friends. I was under the influence – twenty peanut-butter-cheeseburgers a day, not an illegal substance at the time – when a tour manager said I had to turn it around and mentioned this radical weight loss surgery. I figured, what the Hell? I’m barely conscious anyway!

Turns out a heavy guy who loses all that fat is left with a lot of spare tissue, and they tried to trim me up. It also turns out that back-alley plastic surgery in the 1970’s was not the most efficient or sanitary affair. The blood loss destroyed my complexion and my smile was irrevocably altered.

When I saw what the doctors had done to me, well. I ain't nothing but a hound dog.

Throttling my third medical attendee, I realized this was what I’d been missing. Not just making them squeal from the stage, but getting down there and laying on some hands. The transition into a new life wasn’t hard; half my impostors looked more like me than I did, and the screams of my new audience were so much more interesting. Let me tell you, singing Jail House Rock in Arkham Asylum is an experience to die for. Or at least get maimed on an operation table for.

This sort of thing's not that unusual, really. One of the Robins used to be James Dean. Get me a cheeseburger and a crowbar, and I'll tell you which.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins For Him. 4.

You can listen to this monologue by clicking the triangle on the left to stream it or clicking this text to download the MP3. I got completely carried away with this recording, but decided not to do it over. Hope you like it.

“I feel so bad for you people. You’ve broken my jaw twice. My knees? Three times. I can dislocate both shoulders at will thanks to you. It still hurts, but it doesn’t matter like it used to. You think that nightstick scares me? A cattle prod? What are you going to do that you haven’t done so many times that it’s numb? You poor people. You’re gonna-- you’re still afraid of being bitten. You’re afraid of a razor on your neck! Puncture you and you squeal. But you could sink your canines into my larynx and I’d giggle. You sad tall people are still so scared of suffering. You’re going to die, you know? You’re going to suffer. I’m not going to tell you the combination and in fifteen minutes, this place will flood with gas. It in invades neuroreceptors, making them fire irrationally until the brain chokes on its own warning messages. The internet tells me it’s one of the worst ways to die. I feel so badly for you, because you’re scared of that.”

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 3.

There is an audio version of today's monologue. To hear John Wiswell read "Possible Origins for Him. 3." either click this text to download it or click on the triangle to begin streaming audio.

So you want to know who I really am. Everybody does. But I’ll let you in on it, and just you. Ever heard of a guy named "Elvis Presley?"

I know what you're saying. "Not another theory about how the Joker is Elvis!"

Sorry. It's all true. The charisma. The fabulous taste in wardrobe. Before I appointed myself court jester, I was The King.

At first getting crowds to go wild was enough, but eventually a guy tires of shaking his hips. Less of a slap and more of tickle man, I was. Nobody really got me, so I ate. Out of boredom, depression, a cadaver – you know, what you do when you have too much money and not enough friends. I was under the influence – twenty peanut-butter-cheeseburgers a day, not an illegal substance at the time – when a tour manager said I had to turn it around and mentioned this radical weight loss surgery. I figured, what the Hell? I’m barely conscious anyway!

Turns out a heavy guy who loses all that fat is left with a lot of spare tissue, and they tried to trim me up. It also turns out that back-alley plastic surgery in the 1970’s was not the most efficient or sanitary affair. The blood loss destroyed my complexion and my smile was irrevocably altered.

When I saw what the doctors had done to me, well. I ain't nothing but a hound dog.

Throttling my third medical attendee, I realized this was what I’d been missing. Not just making them squeal from the stage, but getting down there and laying on some hands. The transition into a new life wasn’t hard; half my impostors looked more like me than I did, and the screams of my new audience were so much more interesting. Let me tell you, singing Jail House Rock in Arkham Asylum is an experience to die for. Or at least get maimed on an operation table for.

This sort of thing's not that unusual, really. One of the Robins used to be James Dean. Get me a cheeseburger and a crowbar, and I'll tell you which.

Bathroom Monologue: Guerrilla Smile, OR, Possible Origins for Him. 2.

Handy eyes-free audio edition: http://atomsk.kenpachi.net/~jwiswell/JohnWiswellreadsGuerrillaSmile%20.mp3

Nobody likes a happy man when it’s somber, and to somebody it’s always a bad time. Seems there are so many bad times and things are so seldom improving that if you’ve had a good year in your life, it’s long past. That’s a stupid thought driven deep into the head of too many a man, and it spawned the Happy Man.

Every free hour he had he’d find unhappy places. If it was gloomy in a hotel lobby, he would come on in, loiter and laugh. He’d tell bad jokes at a funeral until you told him to shut up. He honored requests like that. Yet if he shut himself up, he’d grin deep enough to scare off Daniel Boone. And because there’re so many people who think times are eternally awful in their own way, he was a hated man. They sniffed at his clothes, his wife and his church. Some would even get to slapping him.

He spent too many days near a particular deli and found the worst of it when an individual took to him with a crowbar. Broke five ribs and dared him in front of all the patrons to laugh. The Happy Man couldn’t even simper and was carted to the hospital. Suggesting the mood and morals of the establishment, despite three teens working the counter, two locals gabbing and two more playing chess, no one could identify the assailant. There wasn’t even a crowbar by the time the law arrived.

The Happy Man arrived again some five days later. No one answered his knock-knocks. His diaphragm was so contused he could not take even half a breath, and so could neither tell the whole of a joke, nor laugh at it. Yet he could smile. He bought a sub and sat right in the window, in full view of any passersby, and grinned. He grinned at every patron and tipped his hat to every lady. He applauded the chess games as best as he could, but was never invited to join. The crowd did not appreciate his jests about horses galloping in L-directions.

Every day from opening to closing he sat in that window, grinning with intent. He knew who’d hit him, yet set that grin on everybody in the establishment equally. No, he didn’t want trouble or to file a suit. Weeks passed and no lawyer papers came. Only the Happy Man with a smile and an appetite for an excuse to sit in the window.

He didn’t shy from eye contact a wink until that one morning. He came in with a crowbar, and all the usuals stiffened. They knew it was a different morning because his vest was buttoned, something he couldn’t muster until then on account of his ribs. He let them all see all those done-up buttons, and when their eyes rose to his again, he tapped his lips with the crowbar. Then he coughed. Then he chuckled. Then he laughed in all their scowling faces.

Maybe they would have done something about it, but the law drove by the window. Then they could do nothing save wince and watch him slap his knees. He laughed until a girl he knew walked by. He waved to her down, got up and left his sub behind, using the crowbar like a cane.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins For Him. 1.

There is an audio edition of this story. To listen either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or click this text to download the MP3.

I wasn’t bombarded by cosmic rays. My parents weren’t shot and a clown didn’t fly through my window as I was calculating revenge. I like clowns, though. They aren’t scary or menacing. You make them that way, when all they want to do is make you smile. They don’t care if you’re a Muslim or emo or President of these United States. You could have the codes to all the nuclear weapons in the world, and all a clown wants to do is make you chuckle. That’s why he scares you – he’s unhinged from your forced habits. I like that.

I wasn’t a clown. I was a pharmacist. Used sugar and food coloring to put smiley faces on lollipops for kids who didn’t want to take their medicine. That’s my story. Day after day. Lollipop after lollipop. The child comes in crying and leaves happy, sucking on grape or lime. Mom comes in frowning, fakes a smile for the pharmacist, puts up with his antics, then, when she’s paid and thinks she’s out of eyeshot, goes back to frowning. Mom’s smile isn’t real, kids, no matter how much sugar and food coloring you put on it. You’ve got to follow her into the parking lot, climb into the back seat, catch her by the scalp and dig in there with a straight razor if you want to give her a smile that won’t go away. That’s my story.

But that’s also small scale. Eventually a clown’s got to play to bigger audiences. You’ve got to put money away. 401K – not for retirement, but terrorism. A pharmacist can make a lot, especially when he does his shifts alone and tampers with the billing. And he has access to so many handy chemicals – wholesale!

Adults will pay anything for their drugs. It helps them fake things. I handed them their Rx lies, and rang up the bill. That’s what I’m serving everybody now. Grape, lime, and the bill. This isn’t a trench coat – it’s a lab coat dyed purple! I want to see you laugh, Gotham. I want to see your smile. Not the one you put on when you walk by security guards and bar tenders. You just insist on turning back into pumpkins at midnight when your fairytale fix of alcohol wears off. And if you’re going to insist turning back into pumpkins, then I’m going to carve you like a Jack O’Lantern. I’ll find that smile in there somewhere. That’s my story.