What’s Under Bill’s Bed This Year?

You know that feeling you get when you throw a ball of wadded-up paper across a whole room, and it actually goes into the wastebasket? Or when you’re driving you make it through three yellow lights in a row? You know you didn’t really earn this feeling, but it still feels great. I’ve experienced that same jubilation of trivial triumph in connection with a writers workshop sketch comedy show called The Gong Show.

My wife and I have been attending the Wildacres Writers Workshop near Little Switzerland, North Carolina for almost 30 years, so we’ve figured out pretty well how to prepare to make the most of the week. But The Gong Show throws a monkey wrench into our system since there’s almost no telling what costume or prop item our fellow writers might need for their comic skits or what we ourselves might need if we’re recruited to play roles in the madcap farce. One year a skit director asked the hundred writers in the dining hall if anyone had a chicken hat. Three people raised their hands. Someone next to me marveled, “What are the odds?” to which another table mate responded, “Oh, about 50-50.”

One year I wrote a skit set in an Old West saloon, but there was nothing close to resembling a bar available on the retreat campus. So I bought a set of brown sheets, thinking I could throw the flat sheet over a table and presto! a saloon bar. When I tried out my vision, however, the setup didn’t look anything like a bar. So I shoved the sheets under my bed to deal with later. Two days later, a workshop faculty member showed up at our door and said he and another faculty member were going to enact vultures in the faculty skit that year and he had been steered to our room to ask if we might possibly be able to help with costuming. He asked, “By any chance do you have any brown or black sheets?” And I said, “Are you kidding me? Of course we do!”

Another year, a writer came to our room excited to try out a skit idea. The skit was to be titled “The Wrong Show” and would feature a series of people showing up for the “The Gong Show” who had misheard the name. One would be looking for “The Bong Show,” another for “The Thong Show,” and so on, culminating in the final actor asking, “Is this “The Dong Show”?

Now, let me back up a little. Two days earlier a writer who knew I’d played a Scotsman in a few Gong Shows had come to our room with a costume bag in her hands. She said a friend had been a kilt-wearing Scottish highlander for Halloween and was ready to throw out the costume when she spoke up and said, “I know somebody who might be interested in it.” The costume was obviously inexpensive and didn’t look good enough for me to want to replace the costume I already had. Except one part of it did stand out as meriting special mention. The costume came with a 2-foot long dong. The idea was that the dong would be worn under the kilt, and if people asked—as they unfailingly do—”What are you wearing under your kilt?” the Scotsman could hike his kilt for a shocking surprise. The dong looked like a long stuffed tube sock, more like a tiny cloth elephant’s trunk than a phallus. But I thanked the costume bringer and said I would keep it under my bed—well under my bed—until the end of the week in case anyone could use it. So, returning to the time frame above, when the director of “The Wrong Show” mentioned her finale would involve an actor looking for “The Dong Show,” I said, “You’re not going to believe this. But right now under my bed I have just what you need for your skit’s climax—a 2-foot-long dong.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on. Only one year did I have brown sheets, and that’s the very year I was asked for them. And only one year was there a dong hidden under my bed. Maybe the gods appreciate the creation of fun and joy in the world, and every once in a while they take a hand in such projects, just for laughs.

(My thanks to Wildacres Retreat, where this essay was written.)