I was not born with just a single funny bone.

Rather, I came equipped with an entire skeletal structure. Things make me laugh—uncontrollably. And it seems, the more awkward and inappropriate the circumstances, the more likely I am to lose my tenuous grip on decorum and snort-laugh in public places.

There was, however, a span of a few adult years during which I fell hard for the belief that it was time to take life more seriously. People were suffering and struggling, and who was I to be continually rooting like a truffle pig for the funny in everything? That time in life was about as chaffing as Brillo pad underpants.

And so, I took my new-found seriousness and my best friend on a volunteer trip to Costa Rica. There, I met David, a young man with so very little to laugh about. Neither the AIDS virus in David’s body nor the effects of his debilitating stroke were contagious to me. But his blissful giggle got into my blood stream and quickly devoured my soul.

David and others like him lived in a drab, green brick building in the busy heart of San José. A looming steel fence surrounded the building as well as the meager patch of grass out front. A large rolling gate at the entrance allowed visitors in. I would come to learn it also kept those less friendly out.

No one came to visit David in his simple room at the hospice. No one stopped in to admire the intricate crafts he’d made and set on his bedside table. No one asked him what music he was enjoying while he listened to his scuffed up Walkman.

For a great portion of this old-school Christian culture, having AIDS assumed homosexuality. And homosexuality made one an outcast of society. The combination of the two stamped David as an untouchable.

David and I were thrown together with no instructions for our time together and with a daunting language barrier looming between us. My Spanish barely hobbled along on the best of days. During my time in Costa Rica, I repeatedly told strangers I loved them, when what I intended was to ask their name. David was kind enough to clear this up for me, but not until he’d had a few days of giggling at my expense each time I met someone new.

In keeping with my new vow to be a serious grown up, I attempted to be practical—volunteer-ish. I wanted to impress the hard-nosed Sister who ran the hospice, overseeing all activities therein. I brought forth my skills and training in physical rehabilitation. The big guns of seriousness.

I tried to do the appropriate things. The sorts of things an industrious volunteer would do. I sought to understand the severity of David’s circumstances. I wanted to take seriously his disabilities, limitations, and the societal prejudices surrounding his life as a young disabled, gay man with AIDS.

The harder I tried to stick to the straight and narrow of volunteerism, however, the more David’s sunny mischief charmed me. He continually pulled me further and further from those daunting facts of his life. In hindsight, I can almost hear him saying: that stuff’s no fun. Let’s do something else.

David was impervious to the nun’s ever-watchful God-fearing eyes, and he continually lured me into a place where the silliness between us flew like silver bursts from a sparkler.

I tried to remain in the closet. Just me and my skeleton of inappropriate humour. I attempted to stifle my laughter when his face broke open like the sun as I inadvertently said something rude in Spanish. I kept my giggles to a dull roar when I upended a bedside tray full of his medications, and he lost his mind in snorting merriment.

I held out for my elusive solemn streak. Under the Sister’s watchful eye, I wanted to “help”…in the right way.

I arrived one morning, and the steel gate trundled open. I was already sweaty by 9:00 a.m. and the pollution of the city clawed at my lungs, but I had a brilliant rehab plan for David.

Popsicle sticks and tape would be needed. After a somewhat lewd game of charades to demonstrate to David that I needed popsicle sticks, he eventually stopped laughing and helped track down our rehabilitation tools in the scant craft studio.

David’s big brown eyes watched my every move as I set about the task of securing all the rehab apparatus. I glanced around to see if Sister was watching from on high. The further we moved into the brilliance of my rehab plan, the more David snickered. I did not look up into his bright brown face, even as I taped him into place. This was serious work.

Just before I rose from the tile floor, I felt like Michelangelo at the foot of his David. His masterpiece. I closed my eyes and stood. When I opened them, the silence between this beautiful young man and I stretched for eternity. Long enough for the universe to show me what a fool I was.

My beautiful David sat on a beat up recumbent bicycle. I had duct-taped his stroke-afflicted foot to the pedal. The hand of that same uncooperative side was lashed to the handlebar with more tape. David stared at the fingers of this incapacitated side of his body. His smile began to emerge, first as a thin sympathetic line. Growing wider and brighter as he looked from his hand to me. There was no translation needed for the look on his face.

Are you f*cking kidding me?

I felt it then, welling and swelling like bubbles rising from the ocean floor. It would not be denied; this beautiful thing inside of me that knows there are laughter and humour in all things. No matter how difficult.

I stared at the popsicle sticks I had strapped to each of David’s fingers like Edward Scissorhands. The thin wood threatened to snap under the pressure of his deformed grip. David’s laughter began to leak. It soon filled the dim hallway like a tidal wave, sweeping away any need to hide my true self.

As I lay in a giggling heap at his taped and tethered feet, I felt a relief so profound it brought me to tears. There was nothing this man needed from me other than for me to be myself. He wanted all of me, for as long as possible. I set him free of the popsicle sticks and miles of tape. He set me free of so much more.

From that day on, in our short time together, ours became a torrid two-week love affair with silliness and laughter. The Sister’s watchful eyes were nowhere in sight. In fact, they never were.

I said a broken-hearted goodbye to sweet David, knowing I would never see him again. On that day, we squeezed one another for a long time. Our tears mixed and I took him under my skin. I breathed him into my lungs. I drew him into my veins. He was my medicine.

I thanked him for setting me free, and I vowed to remember the marrow of my bones. I was born believing laughter is light, and that it can be found if you dig deep, open wide, and take yourself a little less seriously. It might just be what someone needs.

~

Author: Melanie Maure

Images: Author’s Own

Editor: Catherine Monkman