Note: This is juvenilia, written when I was a teenager. I'm now fairly embarrassed by it, but I'm leaving it up here because a number of people were kind enough to read it and say complimentary things. Feel free to enjoy it, if you will, but don't judge me on it. ;-) - May 2020.
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Because He's Not You.
Laughter.
The banter flickers back and forth, such a staple of life here that neither ever really listens. It's never a competition, just a schoolyard game. They're like two kids, and they joke because they're incapable of stopping, even for a moment. Because if they can't laugh they'll end up crying. Sometimes, one of them will score a particularly good hit, and then there is laughter on both sides. Trap has the craziest laugh you ever heard, the widest, cheekiest grin. His eyes are like a devil's, golden and glinting with delighted evil. He is irrepressible, incorrigible, impertenent. Disarmingly attractive, and he knows it. His laughter sparkles with danger. For him, the joy is in the hunt, the pursuit of quarry, he plays his victim cruelly for all that it is worth, but somehow, he never oversteps the borders of jest. His gift is in caricature, in the twisted way that he reflects what he sees of life. He imitates McArthur in the shower, affects an upperclass British accent while playing golf, and proffers martinis in the voice of a Southern belle. He is a dancer, here and then gone, so swift that it is impossible to catch him, and only his mocking laugh remains. Together, they are a double act – The Ritz brothers, the Mills brothers, Groucho and Harpo, Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee. One wears an old tuxedo, snorkel mask and flippers, the other a pinstripe suit with the pinstripes running the wrong way, a McArthur cap, corncob pipe, and styleright black and white wing-tipped shoes.
With him, it is a war. An amiable one, but still a war. Always, he seeks to prove himself, to wrest the title from the man who has held it for so long. I hate to admit it, but sometimes he comes damn close. For him, humour is a more personal thing. He is indiscriminate, sparing no one in his quest. He plays humour to the hilt, uses it as a calculated force, to empower or release. His laughter is like himself. Softer, reserved, genial. Only his blue eyes betray him, though they sparkle with goodwill, and a childish delight at every triumph. There is no subtlety here, less elegance in his wordplay, yet at the same time he manages to avoid the crudity and innuendo which to Trapper was bread and water. BJ has no specific target, anyone and everyone is fair game. His jokes are childish, contrived, somehow without freshness or life. Maybe just because I've seen it all so many times. It is possible to know what BJ will say long before he actually does. The banter still flies back and forth, but now it is an offensive, unwieldy thing, merely another weapon in our barrage of friendly fire. It is only in practical jokes that he truly comes into his own. Exploding cigars, buckets of water, rubber chickens – these are his genius. He is a master of innocence, enabling him to continue a jest long after his subject tires of it. He is always there, poker-faced, honest, friendly, impossible to suspect. Which, of course, makes him brilliant. He has a long, thin, respectable face, and balding honey-blonde hair. He tucks his shirt in tidily, and smiles in secret behind his morning coffee.