Words Fail Me: Short Humor Volume I

By James Sarver

The first collection of short humor from James E. Sarver, in the tradition of S.J. Perelman, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor, and Christopher Buckley, except nowhere near as good. "Words Fail Me" is a book that will stay with you long after the last page is turned, if only because you'll forget it's sitting under your iced tea on the end table next to your recliner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781678111649

Book preview

BOLLYWOODWINKED

I want to be in love, thought Sima. I want to be in love with a handsome young man who can dance and sing and impress my parents not only with his earning potential, but also his ability to lead a choreographed group of seventy-plus people in an impromptu production number celebrating his love both for me and for India’s rich cultural heritage.

But where, she thought, am I gonna find a guy like that?

She had watched enough movies to know that you didn’t just bump into guys like that coming around the corner of — wait, yes you did!

She ran outside and started rounding every corner she could find.

*   *   *

Sima, said her mother, your gait is developing a distinct leftward slant. Why don’t you go around some corners to your right, for Shiva’s sake?

"But Mama! In the movies the girl always is going to her left around the corners! I will never meet a boy if I go to the right!"

I met your father going to the right, countered her mother. And your grandmother met your grandfather by going straight ahead and not rounding the corner at all.

That was the old days, said Sima. Things have changed.

Pshaw! said her mother. You young people! Think you know everything. Go ahead, then! Go to the left! See how long it takes you to find a handsome young man who can sing and dance!

Sima sulked outside. Her best friend Goyan was there, practicing his dance moves. Despite his best efforts, not a single bird or squirrel had joined in.

It’s hopeless, he said. I will never be a great movesman. I will die alone, without a wife or children or a large villa in Spain procured with the profits from my four thousand starring roles.

"Oh, you and you and you! All the time you! shouted Sima. I am the one with real problems. You are a man. Life is easy for you. For a woman — life is impossible!"

Sima, you are the prettiest girl in Pashtur. You could win a beauty contest in which every other girl was spotted nine of a possible ten points. You will have no trouble with finding a hus- band! In addition, once you are married you will have dozens of male lovers who will come knocking on your door!

That is a sweet dream, sighed Sima. But it is only a dream.

I’ll be lucky to find a dog who will marry me, said Goyan. What an execrable existence!

Who cares about you? cried Sima. Show me a corner in Pashtur I have not gone ’round at least thrice!

Oh! said Goyan.

Ah! said Sima.

Then they started to dance together in perfect harmony, and sang a song that both made up as they went, but somehow sounded as if it had been written by a professional. Music was provided by an unseen orchestra. Goyan’s body did things that no chiropractor would have sanctioned, and Sima’s voice soared up and down the octaves like a seismograph during the Big One. For the finale they did a two-minute tap routine that neither had ever practiced before, and then held a high E for more than forty seconds.

Heaving with exertion and exhaustion, they stood cradled in one another’s arms, staring deeply into one another’s eyes, tableauing before the village’s fountain for a camera crew that wasn’t there.

*   *   *

Sima’s father took her aside that evening. I hear you were cavorting by the fountain with Goyan, he said.

Not cavorting, replied Sima. Capering. Gamboling. But not cavorting. Cavorting must be saved for my eventual husband.

Your mother and I cavorted before we were married, said her father.

I do not want to hear this! said Sima, putting her hands over her ears.

You misunderstand, said her father. I am not angry that you were cavorting with Goyan. I am pleased!

"We were not cavorting!"

Gumboots the village idiot knows cavorting when he sees it, daughter, and this afternoon he witnessed it in spades at the village fountain.

Aiyah!

Why don’t you just marry Goyan already, you silly girl? He is obviously in love with you and you are obviously too dunderheaded to see it.

Goyan is not in love with me! He is in love with Botifata, a girl from the next village over! He has said so many times!

"Gumboots says that Goyan spends his every day practicing his kicks and changes in front of the mirror — a mirror bordered with thirty-seven separate photographs of you! Creepy and obsessive, but what else is young love, Sima?"

Those photographs are of Botifata! I have seen them!

He swapped them out when you visited his home. Gumboots told me. Goyan did not want you to know of his undying ardor for you!

"That is madness, father! Goyan does not love me!"

This went for another half-hour, during which dad and daughter traded jibes, canards, witticisms, goadings, and platitudes via patter, rhyme, rap, blank verse, and tone poem. They tangoed, salsa’d, foxtrotted, waltzed, and rhumba’d. Near the end they even boogie-woogied. But neither could convince the other. Goyan was not in love with Sima, and Sima was not in love with Goyan. The scene concluded with Sima’s father wagging his finger at his daughter as she, hands on hips, rolled her eyes heavenward.

*   *   *

Sima went to her grandmother for advice. How am I to find a husband? she pleaded.

Sima, you are only ten years old, answered her grandmother. Give it another year or two before letting panic set in.

But by then all the good boys will be taken!

What about Gumboots? He has eyes for you.

Three of them, thanks to his birth defect.

Or Rislor, the village sadist. I’ve heard him whispering your name as he pulls the legs from locusts.

Grandmother, you are not helping.

These old orbs of mine have seen more than they care to remember, Sima. True love, false love, love that can’t remember where it put the car keys—

Grandmother!

"Look, dear, I know what you want from me. You want a song that starts off soft and sweet but transforms a quarter of the way through into a saucy, bouncy number in which I reveal myself to be a knowing, wise old woman with something of a salty tongue. But that’s not me, Sima. Half the time I can barely remember my own name. The other half I think it’s Broderick Crawford. She shook her head. I’m eighty-nine years old! And you expect me to keep three-four time?"

Sima stared at her, eyes large, mouth half-open, her expression eager.

No! said her grandmother. "Wipe that look off your face! The one where you’re reacting to my saucy, bouncy number! Because it is not happening!"

Sima’s expression didn’t change, but she pushed her chin forward, as if nudging her grandmother on.

Her grandmother sat up in bed defiantly. "Not…happening. Arthritis in every last joint, and you want me to do a heel turn? Guess again, girly-girl!"

Sima threw up her hands. "Why can’t anything go the way it’s supposed to?" she snapped.

*   *   *

The next day Sima found Goyan waiting outside her front door. Gumboots, the village idiot, was with him.

What do you want? barked Sima.

Are you talking to me or to him? asked Goyan.

Both of you! said Sima, her nostrils flaring impatiently.

Gumboots said, I am here for moral support.

Sima, said Goyan, I am madly in love with you. I always have been. I always will be. Here is my hand, for you to take, and symbolize our love.

Sima stared at him in horror.

What is the matter? he asked.

She is staring at you in horror! said Gumboots, then let out a piercing howl and ran as fast as his two legs, and vestigial tail, would let him.

Is this true? Goyan asked Sima. Are you staring at me in horror?

I cannot see my own face, Sima said, but ‘staring at you in horror’ sounds about right.

Aiyah! shrieked Goyan. Why do I follow Gumboots’ advice? He is not the village idiot for nothing!

He told you to tell me that you are madly in love with me?

Goyan’s shoulders slumped as if the great weight upon them had finally forced them to give way. He has listened to me drone on about my love for you for years, Sima. He grew tired of it and advised me to tell you, before it was too late. He looked Sima in the eye. Before you rounded the proper corner and found a proper man.

Sima opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. Except air, or else she would have died. But she could not bring herself to make a sound.

Never mind, said Goyan, slinking away. Forget that I was here. Forget what I have said. I hope that we can still be friends. But if we cannot be friends, best of luck to you and your future husband, and your dozens of male lovers.

Sima watched him go. As he rounded the corner to Nan Street her heart sank for fear that he would meet a girl coming the opposite way.

*   *   *

Sima lay in bed that evening gazing up at her ceiling, which her Uncle Rijav had cleverly painted so that it looked as if there was no ceiling at all, but open sky. Sima loved to pick out the constellations, even if Uncle Rijav had gotten them all wrong. Ursa Major looked like a raccoon and Orion like a woman getting her hair done. Sima liked to take these old constellations and rearrange them into new ones, such as Barnaby the Loyal Dog and Pierre Bouchard the Millionaire Suitor. Once she’d even made a megaconstellation composed of every single star in the painted sky, a constellation she’d called Eternal Lovers. It was in the shape of a man and a woman, holding hands, like on a wedding cake.

She felt like singing a song, but couldn’t think of a melody, or lyrics. She kept watching the Eternal Lovers, as if they could provide her guidance. But they were as silent as she was herself.

Oh, pooh, she finally said. I could do worse.

*   *   *

She found Gumboots down by the river, rolling around in the mud. Gumboots, she said, come here.

He dove in the river to clean himself off — which no one in their right mind would have done. He emerged even dirtier. He trod up to her with a light-footed, if pestilence-ridden, gait. Yes, Sima?

Where is Goyan, Gumboots?

At his house, I should think. Have you looked there, Sima?

No, I came here first. Will you come with me to see him?

I would go anywhere with you, Sima!

Here, take my hand. On second thought, keep a two-meter distance.

*   *   *

At Goyan’s house Sima knocked on the door and waited for Goyan to answer. When he did she said, Goyan. I wanted you to be the first to know.

The first to know what?

I am going to be married.

Huh? said Goyan, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He had not been awake for long.

I have found my husband, Sima said. We will be married as soon as the dowry is settled.

Goyan’s face did not seem to know what to do with itself. First he was grinning with the surety that he must be the husband in question, then he was scowling with the surety that he couldn’t possibly be the husband in question, then he was perplexedly frowning because all the surety had left this universe and headed for another.

"Is…is it…me?" he dared to ask.

No, said Sima. It is Gumboots.

*   *   *

They were married, over her parents’ objections (and Gumboots’ parents’, who felt that any woman who married their son should have an eleventh toe to match his) later that month, in a ceremony held on a raft in the center of the river. Attendance was sparse — attendance was zero — no one even bothered to answer the invitations — but Sima had found a man two villages over who would perform a wedding in exchange for a sack of moldy potatoes, dozens of which Gumboots had stockpiled in case of a moldy potato shortage.

They spent their wedding night in Gumboots’ hovel, where Sima attempted to teach Gumboots the rudimentaries of singing, dancing, and mugging for the camera. He was a slow learner, but after