He didn't want to be the funny one anymore. He didn't want to have to be the one who broke tense moments with witty comments. He didn't want to be the one who had to make a sarcastic comment about everything because that's what was expected off him. He didn't want to be Chandler anymore.
He'd been funny for 17 years, which was all his life. Even before he could speak, his mother told him, he was the baby in the crèche who'd make strange faces when soiling his nappy or about to gurgle. At 6 months he appeared to be trying to create his now infamous sarcasm filled expression, whenever a baby toppled over because of their exceptionally large head, or put a building block in his or her mouth or bumped into the wall, baby Chandler was there with a face that said, "Could they BE more pathetic?" and "I know! I can't believe I'm one of them either!"
He'd first discovered that he was funny aged 4, when an Indian shopkeeper had been telling his mother, Nora, what a horrible stereotype Apu from The Simpsons was off Indian retailers, and as his mother and him left the shop the man said, in a thick Indian accent, "Thank you! Please come again!" Chandler had sarcastically replied, "Yeah that Apu's a really stupid, made up man." The man behind Chandler had laughed abruptly and only increased his volume when the clueless shopkeeper said, "I know! Now please buy something or get out! Thank you!"
Little did Chandler know but the man who had laughed was actually extremely drunk and would have laughed at anything, including being told that he was going to need extensive and painful surgery on his reproductive parts, which he later did require thanks to a nasty accident with a lamp post and a dog, but that's another story. But to Chandler that laugh had been the building block for his personality, that along with his crippling self loathing. He'd loved seeing the happy expression on the man's face, not realising at that age that that expression was achieved by 6 beers consumed less than 15 minuets before, to celebrate the fact that he was the only one at his AA meeting that had managed to resist alcohol for a whole month!
As the years and the quality of Chandler's comedy timing had increased so had the laughter. Aged 7 he was the only kid in his all boys' school playground, apart from the popular boys, who wasn't being given unwanted wedgies by bullies and all because, "Chandler's funny when he's not crying."
A couple of times some new bullies that arrived at the school immediately spotted Chandler as the weak prey he was but their punch delivering hands had been stopped by fellow bullies' threats and explanations of Chandler's immunity from beatings, "Leave him man, he's ok. He's real funny. Go on, say anything and he'll make a joke 'bout it!"
Even some of his teachers were more lax with him than they were with others. When Chandler, aged 12, handed in a particularly bad piece of maths homework the teacher had called him to his desk, about to ask for an explanation but before he could speak Chandler had said, "Could my answers BE any worse? I mean I know you can't divide 56739 by 13 and get 9 but when am I gonna need that in the real world huh? "Oh Chandler you've won $56739 between you and 12 other people! Now to receive your share you must tell us correctly, how much should you receive?" Hey, if the answers not $9 then I don't wanna know!" The teacher had smiled and just told Chandler to try harder next time, they both knew he wouldn't.
It seemed the only people that didn't warm to Chandler's humour, eventually (when people first met him they wanted to flush his head in a toilet because the nervous sarcasm just would not stop coming), were his parents. The more people that laughed at his jokes at school, the more his parents argued at home. Ever since his birth he'd only seen his parents argue. They never hugged or kissed each other like the parents on those sitcoms on TV. They seemed to hug and kiss other people a lot though, like the butler or the "hot mom" next door, and once Chandler had walked in on his dad trying on his mom's underwear but just laughed it off as his dad playing "dress up", he was only 5 at the time. Another time he had seen his mom drinking something out of small glasses off the pool boy's chest in their pool house. She hadn't seen 8 year old Chandler looking. At night he used to wake up crying but he never knew why.
After what seemed like aeons, his Dad, Charles decided to move out. Chandler was told this terrific (!) news while having Thanksgiving Dinner. His mom had also yelled, "Your dad would rather sleep with the house boy than with me!" Which was reason enough to need a life time of therapy but made even worse by the house boy deciding that that would be the best moment to suggestively say to 9 year old Chandler, "More turkey Mr. Chandler?" And that was when the projectile vomiting of the pumpkin pie started! From the age of 9 Thanksgiving meant nothing but hate and pain for Chandler, so he decided to boycott it in every way. That even meant not eating traditional Thanksgiving food but substituting it for fruit roll ups and macaroni and cheese instead.
He got through his parent's divorce the way any normal child would, with a carefully regimented program of denial and wetting the bed. He saw less and less of his dad who had moved to Las Vegas to perform in some sort of show, he wasn't too clear on the details and was sure that was the way he'd like it to stay. And his mother, well she had turned to writing to help her through. Writing hot, steamy erotic novels that women on planes could not live without. He just wished he could have a mom that didn't feel the need to share her work life with him. I mean he didn't want to hear two different versions of page 79 of Mistress Bitch and then be asked which was better, a page that his friends later got their hands on and used as substitute porn. Oh to have a normal mother who worked long hours and came home and ignored her child, that was his dream!
He supposed that his humour had steamed from his family life, someone had once said to him, "You use humour as a defence mechanism don't you?" He'd replied to that with some lame joke about a soldier at war firing jokes at his enemy instead of weapons. That someone, by the way, was his month long therapist, whom his mother had suggested talk to Chandler while in the middle of having sex with him.
Now in his final year at his all boys high school he discovered that being Chandler had got him no where. He was nearly 18 and still a virgin, his parents hadn't got back together as he had so desperately hopped they would and people thought he was funny in person but no one really liked his written comedy, which was what he really wanted a career in. He had no future, no idea what he wanted to do. Well that was a lie, he had one idea off what he didn't want to do, be in a dead end, boring office job making no difference at all, with people actually having no idea what he did.
And with these thoughts in mind, he sat at his desk in his bedroom, staring out of his window at a dog attacking a postal worker, wondering how to change. He decided he'd work from the outside in. Now staring in a mirror he looked at his thin, long physique and saw nothing desirable. Well he supposed that his incredibly blue eyes were sort of ok, but shadowed by his incredibly boring but unruly hair. It didn't matter what he did, he could blow dry it or use gel, but he still got this little cow licky thing at the back of his head that really bugged him. And his nose, "Come on, has there ever been a more boring nose. It might as well not be there, at least then I wouldn't have to smell Grandma's delightful little releases of gas after everything she eats! Lady, if you're tooting even after eating mashed up corn, you have got a problem!" he said to himself.
There was only one thing to do, join a gym! Why could he suddenly hear really ominous music from somewhere? Oh well! He'd join the gym and go there every morning before school and soon everyone would think he was a hot stud! Well he hoped that no one at his all boys high school would think he was a hot stud, although he was pretty sure there was a rumour going around he was gay. His Aunt Muriel (how he hated that family name) had once asked him if he was going to move to San Francisco with his boyfriend once he finished school. After repeatedly insisting that he wasn't gay he said, "I only wanted to go to San Francisco for its monuments! And no by monuments I don't mean penises!" When he then asked his Aunt where she got the idea he was gay she simply replied, "I don't know, you just have that…quality about you." God he loved it when people were vague!
As he got ready for bed that night he set his alarm clock for 6 o'clock, ready for a long work out at the gym. It was only once he was half way to the gym the following morning, in his tight gym clothes, that coupled with the cold morning did nothing for his "reputation", did he realise he needed to become a member first and would not be able to work out that morning. "Why does the world feel the need to make me its butt monkey? Why?" he wondered as two female joggers running past pointed at Little Chandler and went away laughing, "Why!"