A Place Beyond Shame, Part 5: System of a Clown (part 1 of 2)

Kings Highway, Brooklyn. 1999.

"Dude."

In this case, it wasn’t an exclamation, or an expletive, or anything else. It was just a statement. The look in my brother Josh’s eyes was dire- not really sorrow, at this point, it was just confusion.

"Yeah...dude."

"That makes...what...two?"

"Two this past year."

I thought about it. "Christ. You know the old numbers rule..."

"DON’T say it."

We sat on a stoop wearing a mixture of what was formal and what was convenient. Mere hours ago, we had been going about our lives, and now here we were on a cool spring day in Brooklyn at the apartment building where our Uncle George had just recently suffered his last heart attack. George had been a grizzled old guy with no neck and a thick face. Apparently some biological zoning ordinance had relocated every scrap of hair on his head to his ears and eyebrows. It often struck me how much he resembled Darth Vader, in appearance, sound, and coloration, at the end of Return of the Jedi. My earliest memory of him was watching him and my grandfather argue about baseball.

Upstairs our folks were working out the details with the landlord, and Josh and I had just got off the phone with the hospital. We had come out to get some air. Old Jews in Brooklyn don’t believe in the concept of Hell; instead they leave their thermostats at 110 in the middle of summer. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to bother them. Must be all that wandering in the desert. Over the course of the last five years, the eldest generation of Josh and my family- the Jaffes- had dwindled to nothing more than our immediate family.

"Dude."

"Dude." I acknowledged.

I took out a deck of old playing cards from some long-defunct casino and shuffled it- a nervous habit of mine, and a holdover from my dear Las Vegas.

"Can you not do that now?" Josh asked.

"Sorry." I tried to stick them back in my jacket and they scattered to the ground. As I bent to pick them up, another deck fell from my jacket. Josh put another stack of yellowed cards down to help me.

"So why did Aunt Rose give us all these cards?"

"I dunno. Knew we were into games I guess."

"Why did Uncle George HAVE this many cards anyway? "Dunes Casino" Wasn’t that, like...Vegas in the sixties?"

I tried to picture my Uncle George running through Circus Circus with a thin cigarette holder, a psychotic Samoan lawyer, and a near-fatal dose of crystal meth. It didn’t work. I dunno.

I fanned out the cards and looked at them. Seven of Diamonds, Deuce of Clubs, Jack of Hearts, and Nine of Spades.

"Wait...I’m getting an idea." Josh looked at me, bright-eyed. Clearly, this was one of those bright, shiny ideas that gleamed like a new toy. I listened.

"There's the Vegas rules for Poker, Blackjack, and even Solitaire, right?"

"Yeah."

"There’s the D20 system, the Storyteller system, the Palladium system, right?"

"Josh, you’re a genius! The Vegas Rules System--copyright Synister Creative Systems!"

"Well, don’t look at me. I think this was Uncle George’s idea."

"So, yeah. Let’s see. We do it all with cards. All cards--that way, you can go from live to sit down no sweat, just like the game requires, and you can play wherever--I mean, who doesn’t have a deck of cards?"

"Yeah, I hated looking under bookcases for 20 siders whenever we didn’t have any."

"Actually, my idea for using the dog as a random number generator would have worked if she didn’t keep chewing the numbers off."

"She was covered in post-it notes. She looked like a fridge with ears."

"It was still a good idea."

"No it wasn’t. Dogs are TOO random."

"Well, we’ll try it again with something else. Maybe a lizard. Or an orphan."

"Or an Amish."

"We don’t know any Amish, you homo."

"Andre."

"Dre’s Puerto Rican."

"Oh yeah."

Approximately a half-hour later we had come up with a basic system that granted characters four Qualities to coincide with the suits in the deck.

Josh hunkered over his laptop on the stoop as Brooklyn happened around us and listened patiently to my suggestions.

"Speed, Strength, Brains, Personality"

"Too Palladium."

"Physical, Mental, Social, Mystical"

"Too White Wolf."

"Mentality, Health, Heart, Soul"

"Too Snapple."

"Mind, Body, Body, Body, Boobs, Butt..."

"Stop looking at her and pay attention!"

"Mental, Spiritual, Physical, Cultural."

We high fived.

"Ah! OOH! Whatcha gonna do? When you make a game with the two-half-Jews?"

"I know my systems, kid."

"Okay, so basically, they get an attribute, and a skill or a power or something, and draw, and they add the number on the card to the number on the sheet to beat a target number. "

Josh continued to stare at his screen. "Needs work."

"Yeah, okay...well...Jokers, For example. Jokers could screw you over somehow. Like cut your total down. Like a failure or a botch."

"And Aces could be real good."

"Aces should be ones."

"Why?"

"Because, otherwise, something else would have to be ones, and that would get confusing."

"Why can’t the numbers start at two?"

"That would make the deuces ones- serious pain in the pooper."

"Good point."

"So, how about Kings? They could be good. And if you get a king of the appropriate suit, it would be totally bangin’. "

"Nootchies. I’m all über it. "

"Hey, wait a minute. Is it right for us to be sitting here discussing our new game system when our Uncle just kicked mere hours ago in this very building ?"

We both suddenly got very cold.

"We’re evil."

"We are scum."

"We’re total bastards."

"We’re total dorks."

We ascended the staircase somberly and buzzed up to the unnaturally warm apartment.

Sandwiches, as it turned out, were waiting for us.