But doctor …

This old joke is best known in the form delivered in the clipped prose of Rorschach, the half-crazy antihero superhero in Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon’s comics novel Watchemen:

Heard joke once:

Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel.

Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.

Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.”

Man bursts into tears.

Says, “But doctor …

I am Pagliacci.”

Good joke.

Everybody laugh.

Roll on snare drum.

Curtains.

It has spawned an array of spoof memes, with this perhaps the best known:

doctor: treatment is simple. go see orville, very funny clown

pagliacci: what about pagliacci?

doctor: pagliacci? man i could not name a more suckass clown

pagliacci:

doctor: just downright dogshit of a clown

I have done one of my own:

Heard joke once:

Woman goes to doctor.

Says she’s depressed.

Says men don’t respect her.

Says they pedantically tell her things about her own area of expertise.

Says it makes her feel all alone.

Doctor says

“Treatment is simple.

Rebecca Solnit has essay.

Go read it.

At least you will see that this is not just you.”

Woman bursts into tears.

Says, “But doctor …

I am Rebecca Solnit.”

This of course has happened in real life:

“At a NASA Earth meeting 10 years ago, a white male post doc interrupted me to tell me that I didn’t understand human drivers of fire, that I def needed to read McCarty et al.

Looked him in the eye, pulled my long hair back so he could read my name tag.

“I’m McCarty et al.”

This moving variant, riffing on a classic SFF theme, is my favorite:

Heard joke once: man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him.”

Man goes to Pagliacci’s show. The theatre is full of laughter from the moment the clown trips onto the stage late. Man is overwhelmed with joy and an impression that life is bursting with meaning. He comes out of the theatre singing, and dances home under the stars.

The next day, he thinks he’ll go again. But when he turns up at the Box Office, they say Pagliacci has disappeared. He looks backstage, but the only trace there was ever a clown there is a very ragged script, which Man pockets.

Man has a burning passion to see Pagliacci again. For three decades, he travels the country and the major world capitals, looking for him. Nobody has seen Pagliacci. Nobody outside that first town has even heard of him, or recognises the script Man has copied out.

One day, a woman comes to his door. “I have heard about your search”, says the visitor. “Alas, I cannot tell you where Pagliacci is now. But I can still help”. She pulls out a strange machine. “This device”, she says, “can send you to the past, where you know where to find him.”

Man seizes the opportunity. He sets the contraption to take him back to that night where he saw Pagliacci, and makes his way to the theatre. When he gets there, he realises there's a risk of running into himself. “I can’t be recognisable”, he thinks.

Not to worry. It’s a theatre, so there’s sure to be costumes backstage. Sure enough, in the first dressing room he tries there’s a harlequin's suit and some shoes — albeit a little too big for him. For good measure he cakes some white facepaint on as well.

Realising the show must be about to start, he runs to the wing, so as not to miss a moment. The curtain rises, but nobody appears on stage. “This is a disaster”, he thinks, “This was the most important night of my life. I can’t let it not happen”.

But Man has had years of reading and re-reading the script. He knows precisely what needs to be said and done, and precisely how it needs to be said and done. He runs onto the stage to take over, trips over an uneven floorboard, and kicks off the evening of non-stop laughter.

At the end of the show, Man leaves a copy of the script in a dressing room, and leaves secretly. Then another thought strikes him: if he was Pagliacci the whole time, then how did the doctor know about the show?

He decides to use the time machine again, and goes back to earlier in the day, so he can find the doctor. He goes to the hospital and, disguised in a white coat and stethoscope, he sneaks into the doctor's office to wait for him to appear.

Finally the door opens, but he finds himself looking not at the doctor, but at a version of himself, thirty years younger. “I’m depressed”, the younger man says. “Life seems harsh and cruel. I feel all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.”

“Treatment is simple”, replies the older. “Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him”.

As the patient closes the door behind him, the older man sits back in his chair and chuckles to himself, “But doctor … I am Pagliacci”.