it's 10AM so i'm off to Safeway. they say it's good to walk twice in one day. when i see the Oroweat truck i feel at ease. the coin-to-cash is out-of-order as usual, they tape the BROKEN sign to it a week later. but there's something different this time: a beautiful couple, an old woman and an old man, are putting their groceries down on the conveyor belt. they've gotten A LOT of groceries, like a MASSIVE AMOUNT of groceries.
me: i can tell you two have been married for like 50 years.
Cloris: you are so PATIENT. i've never met a patient person like you.me: i'm training to be a monk. i like to drift. think. waste time. waste my life away.
Cloris: it's gonna take like 30 minutes to unpack all our carts. are you sure you don't want to go in front?
me: and miss this meditation time?
me, meditating to myself: as Abbot Butt taught me, you'll never go ahead in life if you go ahead in line...
Skylar is the cashier. she pulls a wrinkled bill from the cleavage of her ample bosom encased in a pilly tan sweater that clashes with her pale white skin.
Skylar: my sweater is begging for autumn. i'm on autopilot most days. i look down at 10AM and see a 20 in my chest, i pull it out, i've had a lot of experience with that, and i use the cash to buy my cigs. i'm 20 but i'm like a 50-year-old boozehound with a hoarse voice.
Botic, Cloris's husband, plops the last item on the belt.
Botic: so what's that gonna be? $50?
Skylar peruses the list, checking it twice: donut, eclair, Rangoon roll, Astro Pops...
Alan Watts: i could use that cocktail.
Skylar: Raisin Bran with the sugar raisins, mangos for SNL, tiny trash bags, three spaghetti sauces, red sauce, white sauce, yellow sauce, Italian meatballs, homemade meatballs...
Lucio Rossi: never go Italian, always homemade.
Skylar: potato chips, kale chips, red salt, blue salt, orange salt, a case of beer, wine, and water, one banana, green bananas, yellow tomatoes, unripened red tomatoes that are yellow, vacuum bags, a rake, pizza rolls, hot dog rolls, hamburger rolls, pea salad, lemon bacon, a mop, edible handcuffs, onion soup that's British not French, TV dinners even though we only have a radio, batteries for our plugs, cottage cheese like my thighs, a beanstalk like my husband, and tea.
Alan Watts: go with the pepper tea. don't put sugar in the pepper tea, it dilutes the tea's pepperiness. get both boxes of tea, the English Teatime and the matcha tea with turmeric. i like my tea how i like my 1980s Twilight Zone: 5 minutes of the episode a day. English Teatime is such a rich full-bodied tea, it looks like black coffee made mocha by milk.
Jen R: this list is FULL of sugar. you two are gonna get diabetes. which is worrisome at your advanced age. but it's a weird thing because people who get diabetes end up being healthier because they HAVE to eat healthy and exercise...
Alan Watts: 5-minute daily bursts of insulin each day. but it's probably better to get day-long doses of stem cells.
Cloris: as you can see, we're stocking up for the winter. we can't hide it. we have a cabin up in the mountains.
me: i'm imagining it now, you raised 3 beautiful kids up in that mountain house your whole lives. 100 years of bliss. i only wish i had been your son. i only wish i had lived your life. you've restored my faith in complete strangers. your history is etched on your voice. oh Cloris, you have the nicest, sweetest, calmest voice, a florid voice, a voice of kindness.
i hug Cloris deeply with both shoulders and kiss her on both cheeks.
me: what was i doing here again?
Cloris in a love buzz: to buy something?
me: no, it was for THIS.
the Smashing Pumpkins are in a camper van whizzing by down the highway up the mountains. Billy is driving on one hour sleep.
Billy Corgan: i'm blind as a bat. i need my glasses.
Jimmy Chamberlin: when i thought of a band van...
Billy: how old were you when you stopped wearing a T-shirt with your name on it?
Alan Watts: everyone except Billy will say Age 9. it is the burden on the rest of us to teach.
D'arcy: you still wear your BILLY shirt all the time.
Jimmy: at least wear the ZERO shirt, that shirt is cool.
James Iha: yeah, except people think it's for the band Zero...
Shirley Valentine: why are you kissing my stretch marks?
Costas: your stretch marks are like the lines on your face, every line indicates you've had a hard life, and you survived, you survived it, you're a survivor. you are a beautiful old woman.
Shirley: fine but you don't have to KISS the stretch marks, that's weird.
Costas: Princess Diana would come with Costas all the time on holiday on my boat here in Greece to these dark-blue waters.........oops, Costas say too much...
Princess Diana: holiday was the only time i could be fee. i wish my whole life was holiday. not the drudgery of being in that Royal cage.
Costas: Costas, coast, get it?
microwave: when you heat your cocoa for a minute, the handle of the mug is in front, 30 seconds and the handle is in the back...
Shirley Valentine: so Tom, do you ever just stop and gaze at the Mykonos sunset from a water cafe at, like, 6PM or so?
Tom Cruise: weather doesn't exist for me, i'm always running.
Costas: Tom?...
Tom Petty at the U.S. Open: into the great wide Open...
Dirg; if a girl's no longer talking to you on Instagram, it means she's found a man...
Catholic parade in El Salvador: to be religious in El Salvador requires risk. you have to be a circus performer, you have to have the guts to stand 100 feet high up in the sky on a Virgin-Mary totem pole...
Al Pacino: hey hey, you got any pelican porn?
Al Pacino: the pelican beak is a wonder to behold. it's the Ninth Wonder of the World.
George Harrison: the first words i saw were Gently Weeps.........that was quite fortuitous...
Super Mario: sorry i stomped on your bag of DoorDash when i went to your front door asking for my gardener payment.
Abbot Butt at Confession: i don't believe in God, but i want to be a sex god, you know?
Father Navin: not really.........Catholic priests get free danishes.
SNL: like your DoorDash, it's more satisfying when it's just once a week...
Coco Gauff: i'm the continuation of Roger Federer...
The Terminator: silicon pump? that was my mom's breast pump.
The Terminator's mom: the breast pump is both for milk and sexual gratification...
Roger Federer: my tennis shirt? i ride ponies with it.
man with stovepipe hat: i live in Northwest Angle. i'm a mathematician who likes Prince. sure i can only get my groceries in Canada but that's fun, i get to see the dailies of the Da Vinci's Inquest reboot on my way home from work...
tyromancy: when the fortuneteller takes all your cheese...
lotus pods: the landscape of every alien planet in sci-fi.
Alan Watts: i drank lotus tea with Buddha Master Kermit the Frog.
Kermit the Frog: i really thought you were Jim Henson.
2001: A Space Odyssey: if only the astronaut had velcro to scratch his nose on so he didn't have to take off his helmet in space...
Kubrick: sorry, i used all the velcro for my shoes.
me: we're the first house on the block with a lawn so all the highway problems get solved in front of my house, all the cars, trucks, buses, and big rigs are parked right on my curb...
me: i'd do anything for a bag of Hershey's Kisses in front of me.
Jen R: that's easier than getting a real kiss.
The Twilight Zone "Stranger in Possum Meadows".
mom: Scout is an unusual name for a grown man.
Scout: yeah well you have a picture of Jesus on your trailer-park trailer wall.
mom: that's Judy Garland. i'm falling for you, stranger, after only five minutes.
Scout: Danny is a fine boy. you must be proud of him.
mom: i guess.
Rod Serling: here is where this Twilight Zone turned into an Unsolved Mysteries kidnapping episode.
Scout: remember Otter Pops in the '80s?...
Steven Spielberg: this is E.T. if i tripped acid during the writing of the script.
Greykid the cat: your mousepad is for me to sit on and form a cat loaf. mouse pad, makes sense to me.
Super Mario: large black garden trash bags are too unwieldy. they're like those tall-ass spiky cactus-head gangly moving totem poles i fight in the desert. run the dishwasher in the MORNING, people are trying to sleep. i'm not rich, i just got a good deal on a house.
Keanu Reeves at Berkeley: my wife is the beautiful tall svelte statuesque lady with the sexy white hair who invented CRISPR.
Belgian Formula 1 driver: i wanted the checkered flag, not the chicken flag...
Abbot Butt: why do you believe in God? because you don't know the future...
me: you look like the son i would have had.
A Hatful of Reactions: how so? surely not the pink hair.
me: your whole vibe is my whole vibe, the sarcastic storytelling. you have my dad's face.
A Hatful of Reactions: this is getting weird. like "Stranger in Possum Meadows." let me guess, only you can be the REAL Cure fan.
me: what's in that white-box tractor trailer in the Carmel Hotel parking lot?
A Hatful of Reactions: either a horse or King Kong.
Fuerza holding a Shakespearean feather quill ink pen: if it's not in the script of your life written by God, write it yourself.
Jean-Luc Picard: the back of my left ear is so bad it looks Cardassian.
Cardassian: our skin is unmoisturized, scaly, and dry as a motherfucking husk. that's health to us. our ancestors were spotted leopards.
that lion guy from the 1980s Beauty and the Beast live-action TV show with Linda Hamilton: what did i do after the show? The Vision of Escaflowne...
Hitomi from The Vision of Escaflowne: why does a lady have to choose? i fucked Allen AND Van. why can't a woman have FULL LOVE? why must love be limited?
Hitomi in the final episode of The Vision of Escaflowne: i was inspired by Sherry Stringfield saying goodbye to Dr. Mark Greene on the train on ER...
Pinnacle Man: i'm not Pinnacle Point Man...
Iruka from Naruto: i end up with the ramen-shop girl, right?...
Naruto Shippuden: did you watch all 500 episodes? are you starting to feel that maybe you've wasted your life away?...
The Twilight Zone "The Cold Equations": a 1980s episode of The Outer Limits...
Fermat's Last Theorem: this episode is OLD, i was solved AGES ago...
Transformers One: i mean the original 1980s Transformers cartoon was an unintentional comedy...
John Belushi: i was unfeeling? no, i felt too much. too deeply. except that one time when that NYC taxicab ran me over in the snow, i didn't feel that at all.
Stand by Me: i spotted a spotted deer...
me: i want you to be my mommy.
Beth Gibbons: thank you.
Jen R: which new album will come out first, Portishead or Daft Punk?...
i run into the couple again in the Safeway parking lot as i walk and they get ready to drive.
Cloris: you have yourself a good rest of your morning. i made a deal with my husband Botic, he lugs the groceries to the car and i'll do the driving.
me: i imagine it now, you two getting into your car and driving down that highway over there up to the mountains. on a clean clear road, no traffic, no cars, because it's 10AM. back to your secret shelter where you raised your family in silence. away from the madding crowd. you don't have to do the grocery shopping for six months. you don't need to enter a grocery store for six months. oh what a glorious life.
Cloris: do you want to join our family?
me: what do you think, Jen?
Jen R: this will be your only opportunity for the rest of your life to do something meaningful. this is your last chance to escape your life.
we all get in the car.
Jen: WHOA!!! this car is the double-decker bus from The Liver Birds!!!
Botic: got it on reddit.
with our endless food and eternal drink on hand, and the noon sun fast approaching with its toxic heat, in the butt of the Bird Bus, we leisurely set upon the highway, drive down it up it, to a house unknown, to a hidden location ethereal, the magic mountain, the cool wind, the forest away, away from EVERYTHING, noiseless, on a stretch of highway i've never been driven along before...
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