The First and Second Funniest

"There isn't room for two in there, " I tapped on her chest where I approximated her heart to be.
She waved me off.
My cat scratched at the door.
"You want out, buddy? Join the club," I said.
"Oh Fuck you."

Three hours later I was drunk.
"Another?"
"Yesss. Ablumber," and as simple as that, I was asked to leave. That's the trouble with Applebee's. It's okay if you're cock-eyed drunk and screaming at a flat screen TV for your football team, but one guy sits at the bar drinking nothing but gin for three hours, breaking up the monotony with short bouts of quiet sobbing, and all of a sudden people are disturbed. Excuse me for being an extroverted introvert. I'll take my pain into the shifting dark of a back alley somewhere away from your precious jalapeño poppers.

Three months later, I'm at the bus stop by the Wendy's next to my house. I'm trying to call Bryan, but the damn 2 is stuck on my cell phone, and it's just the most irritating little tone coming out of this thing, so I chucked it across Hillside Ave. It flitted along the whole way over four lanes of traffic, looking like a tar-dipped robin, and finally came to a stop right outside the doors to the CVS pharmacy. To the only on-looker, Cheryl, it was the most hilarious thing she had ever seen. I would later half-seriously challenge this claim, but only half-seriously because I rather enjoyed being the most something to her.
Anyway. I'm far from rich. I'm a copywriter at an advertising and marketing agency. I didn't throw the phone because I have the means to replace it. I threw the phone because—well, for the same reason I've broken three of the knuckles on my right hand, on three separate occasions. So at this point, I've got to go pick up the phone that I've made a big show of disposing of across the street. According to Cheryl, this was the funniest part of it. She said it would have been funny if I had walked away. It would have still made it into 95% of her humorous anecdote conversations. But this was the cream to top it all off.

"You stared at it for a moment from across the street, then you got this look on your face like you were admitting defeat and you fast-walked over. It was so hang-dog. So punchline to a joke." She said.
"I'm a punchline to a joke."
"Absolutely," she got up and fed another dollar into the jukebox, "and that's when I remembered where I know you from. You're also the second funniest thing I've ever seen."
"Oh, good. I hate competition."
She put the saddest music I had ever heard on. Fantastic, here come the unprompted confessions, I thought, here comes what's left of my dignity. It was like she had the User's Manual for the Miserable Bastard memorized. She knew just how to drag the schlub out of me.
"Yea," she said "you're the dude from Applebee's. The crier, right?"
"I think you're mistaking me for someone else."
"No way. I'll never forget that hang-dog look. You looked like the saddest person in the world."
"I'm glad my misery amused you."
"So it was you."
I fought the urge to spill the entire contents of my soul out onto the high table we were standing at. I imagined myself presenting it to her in something like a soggy Whole Foods tote bag, pulling out handfuls and letting her examine them as they slipped through my fingers hitting the table with a satisfying series of slaps. They'd resemble a fish's innards, because nothing quite glistens like fish innards and that's what the injured bits of ourselves do. They glisten beneath low barroom lights and get pretzel crumbs stuck in them when you sweep them up into your arms and drop them back where they came from.