From
WBUR in Boston:
Two years ago, film professor Will Lautzenheiser noticed a persistent
cramp in his leg. Within days he was comatose, his organs failing one
after the other as vicious strep bacteria swept through his body. He
ended up spending five months in a hospital Intensive Care Unit, and the
attack of necrotizing fasciitis — flesh-eating bacteria — cost him all
his limbs.
Here’s the punchline: Will now performs stand-up comedy. Except that, lacking legs, he calls it “sit-down” comedy.
“The amputations have been, in a way, the grim apotheosis of my sense
of humor and sensibility before this,” he said. “My kind of gallows
humor is maybe uniquely suited to such an absurd and horrible situation.
And humor is a great way to be resilient — if you can’t laugh, you
weep.”
Humor is also a way of lightening up a very serious topic — say,
disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark federal
law on the civil rights of disabled people, turned 23 this week, and to
mark the anniversary, the New England ADA Center
invited Will and three other comedians with disabilities for a public
“Laugh and Learn” panel to discuss being disabled and being funny.
An advantage of being an amputee: ‘I’ve stopped biting my nails — cold turkey.’
Humor has historically been a way of dealing with difficult issues,
said Oce Harrison, the center’s project director, “and we’re also
feeling like we could all really use a laugh right now in Boston,
because of the marathon bombings, and every day in the paper there are
evildoings.”
I can’t imagine cracking a joke about a marathon victim’s injury — or
joshing as an outsider about the other panelists’ disabilities:
paraplegia, ADHD, Asperger’s. But this is something different: people
with disabilities laughing at the situations they find themselves in,
and at the world’s reaction to them, and thus making it OK for others to
laugh as well. It’s another way of “being seen,” and educating the
public, Harrison said.
(Beginning
2nd from left) Veronica Blackwell, Jack Hanke, Will Lautzenheiser and
Joe Genera made up the “Laugh And Learn: Comedians With Disabilities”
panel at the Institute for Human Centered Design. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
In an interview before the panel, Lautzenheiser ran easily through
the amputee jokes that he heard long ago in the schoolyard: What do you
call a man with no arms and legs who’s by your door? Matt. Who’s in the
ocean? Bob. Who’s on the wall? Art.
He can tell those jokes to relax his audience, but he avoids certain
variants that don’t describe his own injury. “I can’t make fun of anyone
else who’s lost limbs,” he said. “But I’m entitled to make fun of my
own disability. And the situation — it’s a lot more absurd or ridiculous
than one might think, and the jokes are, day to day, practically
endless.”
In fact, Will’s amputee jokes began in the hospital, when the surgeon
told him that his deadened limbs would need to be cut off. He was a bit
loopy from medications, he recalls, but his response was “Well, it’s a
good thing I learned to play the violin when I did!”
The humor continued through the long hospital ordeal. “The basic
nature of the situation isn’t funny at all and wound care isn’t funny;
it’s really horrible and painful,” he said. “But if you can try to make
that process a little less stressful for everyone, that helps.”
And on it went after Will’s discharge. People would compliment his
wheelchair, and he’d respond: “Thanks. Cost me an arm and a leg!”
His quips aim to put people at ease. “Otherwise, they might just see
me as an object of pity,” he said. “It’s not common to have a
quadrilateral amputee just sort of around, and I really don’t feel that
way about myself. I certainly have a disability. There’s a lot I can’t
do. But I don’t want to be just thought of as a disabled person. I’m a
person who has a disability, or a person who’s in this particular
situation, but it hasn’t affected me that badly mentally, and I’m still
pretty much the same person I was before.”
A unique Facebook profile photo (Courtesy)
In the last few months, as Will has begun to bring his humor out into
the comedy world, that world hasn’t always been set up to receive him.
When he arrived for a gig at a Boston club in June, the stage was not
wheelchair-accessible — so he worked that into his act (Which also
included a friendly competition with his friend, Steve, over whose 2011
was a worse year: Steve had ended up living out of his car, but losing
all your limbs is a tough act to beat.)
The comedy performances help Will, he said — it’s important to “be
visible,” and becoming a character on stage allows him to air topics he
might not in normal life. His first comic monologue included some of the
best and worst things about being an amputee. On the good side:
- “I don’t have to wash my hands after I pee.”
- “I can have unique profile pictures on Facebook, that look like I’m eating my arm.”
- “It’s allowed me to kick a lot of bad habits: I’ve gotten off
morphine, methadone, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, special K, and I’ve stopped
biting my nails — cold turkey!”
On the bad side: “The worst thing about being an amputee is that you
can’t masturbate. I always have to ask someone else to lend a hand.
Actually, maybe that’s the best thing about being an amputee…”
People are curious about amputee life, Will said, and “the gruesome
reality of it is that I need help — even going to the bathroom. If I
didn’t have a bidet toilet, I’d be stuck. It was really absurd before my
partner and I got that installed. Thank goodness for the bidet —
independence in the bathroom!”
Will is still in intensive rehab, so he cannot return to teaching for
now; he formerly taught film production and screenwriting at Boston
University and had just started work at Montana State University when
the bacteria hit.
He cannot return to making films at this point either, he said, until
he can find an interface that would allow him to control a camera.
But comedy, he can do.
Not everyone finds him funny — in particular, Will’s identical twin
brother, who is now looking much less identical. “This is all too raw to
him,” Will said.
But his parents support his comedy. And he is hoping that his
day-to-day comic approach helps model the therapeutic uses of humor for
some of his new comrades in rehab: Boston Marathon bombing amputees.
“It’s OK to laugh,” he said. “The situation is ridiculous. I mean, amputation turns out to be — who knew?! — just ridiculously funny.”
