“Women Aren’t Funny,” By Laura Hulthen Thomas (Fiction ’14)

2014 fiction alum Laura Hulthen Thomas was recently featured in The Temz Review. Read an excerpt of “Women Aren’t Funny” below: 

Women Aren’t Funny

“The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what’s more male than that?”
                              – Christopher Hitchens

Mona used to kill it, slay it, crush it. She’d launch perfect zingers at the dinner table or the house party or the back of the classroom where the shop guys and petty hoods, ace wisecrackers all, mocked their teachers. She would wrench guts and split sides and when her victims caught their breaths, the shop guys and the hoods would gasp that she should do stand-up. She’d still been just a kid and didn’t realize a woman’s entire act was a never-ending improv.

She’d been funny once, all right. Consistently hysterical, and it was this consistency that had made her so deadly.

So why couldn’t she come up with a snappy comeback to the knife Bo had just thrust to her throat?

The blade’s tip was just tickling the skin sagging from her neck’s hollow. Another joke, the frilly gobble pregnancy had made of her throat. Their commitment to horsing around meant that Bo was funnier than ever. The knife gag made them both double over with laughter, although she had to be careful not to actually double over onto the knife.

Mona tipped her head back and laughed. Bo’s hand stayed firm at her throat, steady as she goes. “I’ll give youz a rough chop,” he threatened in the gangster voice he’d perfected.

What could she say to one up that? Tears streamed down her face, it was all so funny. Earlier that evening, Bo had started a water fight when the dishwasher flooded. They were both still drying out in the cool night’s breeze, huddled around a newborn fire in the Weber kettle. While Bo’s horsing around never seemed forced, these days her antics fell flat and dangerous. When he’d flicked water at her, the droplets had beaded gently on her arms, sprinkled her hair like a cap of lace. When she’d snatched up a Pyrex measurer to lob a real splash, she’d lost her grip and sent the cup sailing into his crotch. He’d laughed, sort of, and rubbed his jeans. She’d said something about not shooting until she could see the whites of his balls. Neither laughed at that.

Perhaps women stop being funny when they start trying to be, Mona had thought.

Read this story in its entirety here: https://www.thetemzreview.com/fiction-laura-hulthen-thomas.html