the uses of laughter

last night
i interviewed a boy, tall, and so thin his friends
say that shaking his hand is like grabbing nails.
he laughs and and they laugh.
his thinning hair covered with a knockoff yankees cap.
The Y is too small.

We were sitting on a bed
drinking tea and the boy was telling his story of losing his life savings to a guy he still calls his friend. Meanwhile, the TV behind him played "Wedding Outtakes
Volume II"
And he says that the worst part of being robbed of one year and a half's
worth of salary
was not the money
or his future
or having to see
the faces of his children
but
knowing that he, duped, had duped his friends and cousins too.
And he is telling the story and he is laughing
in the moments of the story where you might expect
outrage
and/or sadness and/or shame
He is laughing. He doesn't know the word Yankees.
There are looseleaf poems in his pocket
addressed to the abstract hypocrite
and behind his ear, hypoglycemic bridesmaids
are collapsing into the furniture
into the grooms
into the priests
and i ask him why he is laughing he says:

"in every job
one person become rich
one person become not rich.
it is not also your idea?
in the school
it belong to the person to first position
it belong to another person to last position.
Every person want to approve. But every person
cannot approve. This is how the school, the job, this is how the life.
and in the last part it belong to God."

oh my god,
i think.
he still doesn't
even
know
he was
scammed.

And then
his tale told,
my microphone put away,
he starts to sing.
And my friend, whose
bed this is, and tea this
is, tells a story about this boy:

how he had a tailor shop
during taliban time
and he would sing and tap his fingers on the loom
the taliban heard it
and burst into the shop
and started to search
saying 'where is the tape, the tape'
and the boy said:
my dear brothers,
there is no tape.
no tape in here.
the sound you hear is just me singing, and drumming on the loom.

and then he sang and he drummed for the men until they cursed
and left the shop and he sighed.
And breathed.
And thanked God
They hadn't searched his drawers
and found the porn.